Forum:Forest Fire Week for November?
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I've seen a number of comments in various places recently suggesting we stage another Forest Fire Week. It's been close to four months since our last, and I'm all for another purging.
Now, I know there's much more to maintenance than relentless huffing, but I think a concentrated sweeping-out is necessary every once in a while. We have well over 20k articles now, and there are bound to be a lot that don't remotely deserve to live. So, comments, suggestions? —rc (t) 07:19, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, if there are no further objections, I think we'll be good to go tonight. —rc (t) 19:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Score: +9 funeral pyres / +5 admin votes
- EXTREME FOR I have been for downsizing since I first got here. I even mentioned it in my interview. [/Dwight] --
07:22, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Why the hell not? Although I say restrict it to pruning rather than purging. And make sure it's something that would easily be deleted in VFD. I would be cautious around articles that look like work was put into them. Crazyswordsman...With SAVINGS!!!! (T/C) 07:26, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- As one of those who waxed nostalgic about this recently, I'm obligated to vote FOR on proposal FFW. ~ T. (talk) 09:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Oh yes even in my limited time here, I've come across a load of tripe. BUT
ONLY IF IT ISmaybe it could be CALLED BONFIRE NIGHT WEEK, in a seasonal celebration of foiling historicalterrorismbad articles and a big burninating pyre. --no, yuo
chat 09:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC) - For, but only if it's not called BONFIRE NIGHT WEEK, as FFW is the name, and FFW is the game. --Sir Modusoperandi Boinc! 10:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- EXTREME FOR, and yes, I will be suggesting those God-aweful iArticles again. --Uncyclon - Do we still link to BENSON? 10:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- For calling it super happy fun time week. As to whether we should have one or not, meh. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 10:35, 8 Nov 2006
- For but only if it's called Infidel dogs related articles Jihad week" which would be hence forth refered to as IDRAJW. -- Brigadier Sir Mordillo
GUN UotY WotM FP UotM AotM MI3 AnotM VFH +S 10:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Let's do it. -- Hindleyite 10:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Whatever it may be called, this adds to the abundant "for" votes.
10:52, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Oh hell yeah. Flamethrower lit, awaiting further instruction. -- Sir Codeine K·H·P·B·M·N·C·U·Bu. · (Harangue) 11:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Sounds good to me. Shall we have the Spanish Inquisition assist us in the genocide? -- 12:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Against. Being an inclusionist, I think we have way too much deletion around here, but then, I realize this isn't going to change your minds, so carry on.--<<
>> 13:20, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- For. I've said it before, I'll say it again: I can't believe we're really at 20,600 articles. There must be a mouse in the counter.--Procopius 13:24, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Against Looking at various comments and such, I'm afraid that in the overzealous huffing spree that you fellows would end up deleting some good articles, or ones with quality ideas and piss-poor deliverance would be lost. This is something I don't like about FFW, who knows how many huffed dead-linked uncategorized articles had good ideas but were short and ugly. Eh, I'd be happy if you focused more on careful pruning than lighting a match, which is my current impression of FFW.--Witt,
of 
UNion Entertain me* 16:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Careful pruning actually falls under the responsibility of everyone, but how many users devote their time to finding other people's articles and nursing them to health? The trouble is, not nearly enough. For the most part, people are content to work on their own projects and edit a number of pet articles, leaving a huge number of half-baked ideas to rot in the sun. Sad as it is to discard the spoiled leftovers, failing to do so causes the place to stink. ~ T. (talk) 16:48, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- For. Note that any admin forest-firing should be ready to restore burnt articles' ashes to the user's userspace - David Gerard 16:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Against. Give it until January. I think FFW should be a twice-a-year thingy, kinda like the Poo Lit. —Hinoa KUN (talk) 17:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- So when does this vote end and who calls it? 18:47, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Against. Until there is a "clean up the pages that fucking need it and have been marked that they need it for fucking ever week." If that happens I am all for some controlled burns. ---
Rev. Isra (talk) 19:00, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Y'know, after thinking about it for a bit, I'm going to change my meh to an against. Just for show though, as people seem overwhelmingly for. I don't think we need it yet, and there are much more constructive things one could do in the mean time. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 19:15, 8 Nov 2006
- For sort of I'm all for deleting the hell out of articles, but I know other people aren't so, I think perhaps a new FFW style is in order: Use the T. Lyons created FFW template for articles deserving of FFW deletion. We'll do this for a week, then wait a week, and then admins go through the stack and delete what they think should go, and during the intervening week, people work to save the articles with potential. Or not, as is more likely to happen, but at least this way there's a one-week grace-period between the tagging and putting to sleep. Just an idea. --Sir ENeGMA (talk) GUN WotM PLS 20:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you catch my drift.--The One and Only Czar Yah 20:58, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- STRONG AGAINST - Too many good articles caught in the blaze. Mr. Briggs Inc. 21:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC) Eh?
- For. Just in time for the holiday season.
t o m p k i n s blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 22:15, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- Against, while I am all for deletion, I belive that "Increased Traffic to VFD Week", "Speedier QVFD Week", "Clean Up Crap Article Week", and "Contribute to Pee Review Week" should all come first. Random acts of violence turn people away. I remember panicing when I saw the first FFW, because I was just finishing up an article, and didn't want it deleted. I ended up submiting my article after the week was over. --Sir Zombiebaron 23:14, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- comment BURN IN HELL FOR YOUR SINS!!!!!!User:Mrthejazz/sig 23:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
- It is well known that I will delete anything, at any time. FFW or not. However, if it gets other admins to do likewise, for.
Sir Famine, Gun ♣ Petition » 11/9 01:31
- Against. I don't usually agree with Zombiebaron, but... what he said. c • > • cunwapquc? 03:04, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
- Against - I think we already do a good enough job with deleting cruft. -- Sir Mhaille
(talk to me) - For: It'll give me a good way to burn off law school stress. --Sir gwax (talk)
16:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC) - ForIt must all burn! BURN!BURN! BURN! BURN! Especailly that shitty Chuck Norris article and the traversty that is Oscar Wilde.--Winstanley1 23:56, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
- For. -- Sir C
Holla | CUN 04:50, 10 November 2006 (UTC) - For. But only if I get to dress up like a Fireperson. --Anyone 14:27, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
- How about Forest Fire 24/7? --User:Nintendorulez 14:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
- For alternative "final plan" I suggest a forest holocaust. --Nytrospawn 22:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
- Against. I agree with Zombiebaron, and will further elaborate that this slash and burn attitude doesnt really help anything. A much wiser expenditure of time would be to put some of this wasted effort into improving bad articles, or giving them a direction to grow in. Wiping them out in a scorched earth policy makes it no more likely that they will re-appear in a quality manner, because they will just get started again from the ground up. People were promoted to admins not because they were good at deleting things - as they couldnt delete before they were admin - but instead because they were good, creative writers, who were dedicated to helping this community. Rather than replace this unique glow of clever writing with a red glow of flames, why not set weeks out where you go around trying to make things better for once? A system exists to take care of bad articles, and these "forest fire weeks" are just juvenile excuses to delete things randomly. I have never understood why people think this is a good way to endulge themselves, because it is not and never will be something that is within the purpose of this site. It gets in the way of new writers, I know it got in the way of my writing when an article I started was deleted twice several minutes after I first made it and during the writing itself. Lets drop this and actually do something productive, shall we? ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 01:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
- It's unrealistic to think that article improvement drives will make a significant overall dent in the pile of mediocre content on Uncyc. That's essentially what the Colonizations were, and while I certainly think they were worthwhile in that we got a few quality articles out of the deal, they evidently weren't maintainable. Not to mention that for a lot of people (myself included), humor writing is more of an inspiration thing than a sit-down-and-hammer-out-some-funnies one.
- I also disagree that deleting articles doesn't improve a page's chances of being remade better. A bad start is worse than a nonexistant article because people might feel forced to stay faithful to that rotten base.
- And finally, "juvenile excuses to delete things randomly"? You seriously think everyone who supports FFWs does it just for the enjoyment of destruction and with no thought toward actually improving Uncyc? Our normal system for taking care of bad content, while useful, does not prevent an accumulation of garbage, it only stems the flow. Plenty of stuff gets through the cracks and FFW is a chance for us to clean up what maybe nobody caught the first time around. —rc (t) 02:35, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
- Conversely, when FFWs happen though, good articles sometimes slip through the cracks. But I guess it all evens out (note: I AM NOT ANTI FFW. I SUBMITTED ABOUT SIX ARTICLES SO FAR TO BE DELETED, AND I HAVE NO INTENTION OF STOPPING). I just want to make sure it truly is the garbage that gets burninated. Crazyswordsman...With SAVINGS!!!! (T/C) 03:00, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
- By saying it is a juvenile excuse to delete things, I am not saying that people are doing it without thought for improvement, but instead that it is indeed an excuse to delete things. When I first got into the Village Dump in an active manner, I saw Forest Fire Weeks as a part of Uncyclopedia, perhaps an indispensible one, and they had a sort of cool factor that any sort of pyrotechnic display would. Who doesnt want to delete things randomly for a week, especially under leadership sanctioned effort? Its sort of a mob mentality, others have done it and are doing it. But in reality, after witnessing forest fire week after forest fire week, afterwards I have never stood back and said "Hey, the site seems cleaner now!" While I agree that sometimes a total restart is necessary, as I sometimes do this with articles I find and want to rewrite, other times short, semi sucky articles have a good concept to them that is perhaps poorly worded or poorly carried out. These are destroyed along with the ones that probably have nowhere to go. While under normal circumstances we would differentiate, with some going up for deletion in the system we have established, and others being tagged with NRV or being stubbed, this goes out the window in a forest fire week. Just as I would prefer to let some guilty men free rather than convict innocent men, I would prefer that these articles would indeed remain to be expanded, even if it means that truly crappy articles have to go through the actual deletion process. This process allows oversight, and prevents articles with potential from getting wiped out. Colonizations and a sort of week of improvement are similar in intent but different in concept - colonizations pick an article and focus everyone on it for a week, whereas a week of improvement would instead have no focus except to look through random pages, and try to find an article which catches your interest. Or maybe you look through the NRV's, deletion request, or just at stubs. The same thing people do when they go on a destructive deleting spree. I understand why this isnt as popular an idea and has been rejected every time this or something similar was proposed, its so much harder than just deleting things, but it would ultimately be far more effective in reaching the ends that Forest Fire Week's are led under the guise of. ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 03:06, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
- I am generally in agreement with Rangeley. Deleting of articles, while neccessary, is also something to be undertaken with caution. I know from experience with the normal deletion process that killing a bad article does often lead to an even worse article replacing it when the subject is a natural one for an encyclopedia. I also know from the normal deletion process that some people are way too trigger happy, and I worry that we magnify that during forest fire week. I encourage you all to reflect on your first experience at this site. If your first work had been cut down before you'd had a chance to bring it into fullness would you have stuck around? I suspect I would not. (Non-writers aren't allowed to answer the question.) I should also point out that while I have been in and out of the site recently due to rather large changes in my life, whenever I am here I always remark to myself on how we really are amazingly efficient at marking content that needs attention (the maintenance tags do work at that) but very bad at following through on it. Occassionally I go through the Fix category or Expand category and try to improve as many as I can, but it is hard work and we need more people doing it. But we CAN do it. I am fundementally a deletionist who believes that most humor can't but made from expanding a stub, but there really are some great ideas in some of these pages, and some of them just need a little love. Deletion is easier, and a lot more fun, but I don't think it serves our goals as well. If everyone who posts on this forum regularly were to pick out a needy page or two, we could clear out the maintenance tag categories of all but the hopeless pages. Then we could have our deletion. Alright, well, that's my old man get off my lawn rambling. Take it as you will. ---
Rev. Isra (talk) 05:14, 19 November 2006 (UTC) - (In response to Rangeley, Isra conflicted me) I agree that an article with a good concept should be saved. But I think the ratio of bad to good articles/ideas here is poor enough that it's necessary to risk some of those potential ideas if it means purging the site of a lot of junk. And this is not the criminal justice system, it's a website. Articles are not people.
- Now - how many people do you honestly think would participate to a significant degree in an article improvement drive like the one you suggest? We've both been around Uncyc for a long time, and I can say without hesitation that from that period of experience, I think such a drive would do next to nil.
- By saying it is a juvenile excuse to delete things, I am not saying that people are doing it without thought for improvement, but instead that it is indeed an excuse to delete things.
- You're contradicting yourself. If you think people are using it just as an excuse to delete things, you are indeed saying they're doing it without thought for improvement. Also, you didn't respond to my assertion that the normal deletion process isn't sufficient for keeping Uncyc from becoming a virtual landfill.
- And please, knock off the condescension. Accusing people of submitting to a "mob mentality" and taking the easy way out (as well is being "juvenile") is hardly helpful. —rc (t) 05:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
- I am generally in agreement with Rangeley. Deleting of articles, while neccessary, is also something to be undertaken with caution. I know from experience with the normal deletion process that killing a bad article does often lead to an even worse article replacing it when the subject is a natural one for an encyclopedia. I also know from the normal deletion process that some people are way too trigger happy, and I worry that we magnify that during forest fire week. I encourage you all to reflect on your first experience at this site. If your first work had been cut down before you'd had a chance to bring it into fullness would you have stuck around? I suspect I would not. (Non-writers aren't allowed to answer the question.) I should also point out that while I have been in and out of the site recently due to rather large changes in my life, whenever I am here I always remark to myself on how we really are amazingly efficient at marking content that needs attention (the maintenance tags do work at that) but very bad at following through on it. Occassionally I go through the Fix category or Expand category and try to improve as many as I can, but it is hard work and we need more people doing it. But we CAN do it. I am fundementally a deletionist who believes that most humor can't but made from expanding a stub, but there really are some great ideas in some of these pages, and some of them just need a little love. Deletion is easier, and a lot more fun, but I don't think it serves our goals as well. If everyone who posts on this forum regularly were to pick out a needy page or two, we could clear out the maintenance tag categories of all but the hopeless pages. Then we could have our deletion. Alright, well, that's my old man get off my lawn rambling. Take it as you will. ---
- I made no contradiction. Take for instance this, you and your co-workers are brainstorming ways to advertise your company and you come up with an idea to throw flyers from windows towards the masses below. Its not as though you arent thinking about how to help your company, but people chose that way of advertising most likely because throwing things out of windows is a fun experience, moreso than doing other ways. But just like with a forest fire week, the means which was chosen does not necessarilly help - if you throw it out the windows of your building, the only people who receive flyers will have already seen the sign outside the building and be aware of your company, thus not actually increasing exposure and perhaps making them mad at you for dropping a leaflet on their head. Ofcourse this is enterting irrelevance, but is nonetheless an example of a tactic being chosen and perpetuated because of its fun value rather than its effectiveness. Many people join in, yes with the mob mentality (I dont view this as a negative, its just how things are, when everyone seems to go along with something everyone will do it) thinking it to be an accepted way of helping the site which happens to be fun too. But what I am saying is it is not effective, and while its fun it is actually detracting from the goals by both putting efforts into a task that is not helping the site improve and taking away efforts from things that actually improve the site. And as I said, the idea of having a week where people improve crappy articles probably will never be wanted because its not as fun as deleting - but I welcome people to prove me wrong and actually go through with it. It would certainly be more productive, and would certainly help towards the goal of a "cleaner" site. If this is seen as too much, we should not opt for continuing the failed idea of forest fire weeks just because it is not desired to put effort into constructive things. Instead, the system in place can be continued, the oversight can be continued, the bad articles can be deleted, the articles with potential can be kept for another day and expanded on another day. And about the condecension... I am not saying this as though I am above it all, Forest Fire Weeks are tempting to join in and appear to be fun, but I also recognize that this fun does not jive with what we are supposed to be striving for. Everyone has a juvenile side to them, especially people who write humorous articles, but when it comes to running a site we should not let it get the best of us. ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 06:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
- That's a cloudy analogy at best. It's not a matter of option 1 being "improve content" and option 2 being "have fun but don't improve anything," but rather of 1 being "leave bad content to rot" and 2 being "remove bad content at the cost of some decent content." Choosing to advertise by throwing flyers out of a window is ineffective - choosing to remove poor material by temporarily relaxing deletion policy is and has been effective in that goal. Again I repeat that the regular deletion process will not keep Uncyc from becoming a garbage dump. —rc (t) 04:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
- Strong Against: Deleting articles without warning to those watching them, with haste, without correcting dead links to the articles, without respect to any series that they may or may not be in, without respect to the purpose behind their creation, without respect to how recently they've been edited -- usually without respect to almost anything except size -- is foolish, needlessly incendiary to editors caught up in the blaze, and outright a bad idea. There's nothing wrong with "spring cleaning". This is not spring cleaning. It's a rampage. Every article deserves A) notification, B) a chance to respond/to remedy issues, and C) more eyes looking at it before it gets wiped out.
From a more fundamental standpoint, what's wrong with short articles? No, seriously, I want to know. Who is harmed? What are short articles hurting? The "Random Page" feature? Is that really a travesty? If an article is on a popular subject, it'll grow or be rewritten. If it's not, it's not going to get a lot of eyes. Either way, nobody is harmed, so what's the big deal? The articles that I would concern myself with are those which are sizable and unfunny, on topics that people are likely to stumble into. I recently took pruning shears to Internet, but there's countless more that could use a good trim. Things like Saddam Hussein, Water, Rocket, etc.
By the way, has anybody else noticed the correlation between how many quotes an article about a person has at the top of it and how bad it is? -- Rei 22:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I hate to sound like an asshole here (I say that a lot...), but I don't see the appeal in "improving" shitty articles. For one thing, it's difficult. It requires a lot of work for marginal gains. Who's to say improving a mediocre article is really better than just deleting and giving someone another crack at it from scratch? I can't see why having an unfunny, half-completed article helps a talented writer to improve it into a funny, full-length one. I don't need unfunny jokes, random references, unfinished ideas, etc. to take a concept and make it into a real Uncyc article. In fact, those things are entirely determintal to the process of writing a good article, correct? Why then, should we oppose something which serves primarily to rid the site of incomplete jokes, stub articles, non-sensical takes on irrelevent topics, and the like? Keeping them around assumes 2 things: 1) that people will sometime fix them up. I think this is, in general, demonstrably untrue. Most shitty articles stay shitt. Always will. 2) that it would be better if they were fixed and not tossed and started all over again by another article. I believe this, too is demonstrably false. If we pitch it, and then someone comes back and writes a shitty article on the topic again, we pitch that too. But if, after we pitch it, someone writes a good article, starting from scratch, on the topic, we've won. Success. In no way can you say "inclusionism" improves the "aggregate funniness" of Uncyclopedia, given the current situation. Bad articles generally won't be improved, either by their original authors (IPs who've long sense left) or other writes (who don't care). Why then, keep them around?
The only good point I think you've brought up is how disheartening and, frankly, cruel the deletion process is to new users. If my shitty Fyodor Dostoevsky article got deleted straight off, I probably would have quit. But then again, I at least made a real attempt to write a whole funny article. I may have failed, but I did more than most noobs. This is why I propose, probably futily, ignoranly, and unrealistically, a seperate namespace for noobs who care about their writing, one with more hand-holding and a more lenient deletion and help process. Sort of like Little League baseball compared to the real thing. We help them hit it off the tee, whereas in the real world of Uncyc, they'd just get hit by the pitch. This is, I think, the ideal situation: we delete all shitty articles without remorse, and yet still give noobs a chance to grow.
And on a side note, Fyodor Dostoevsky should be deleted. I formally request any admin who deems it fit to delete it right now, because I think a better article could be written on the topic, by me or someone else. In fact, I've thought a few times about rewriting it, because it so embarasses me, but I can't stand to write over my own work. I can't blank it, that's against the rules. I can't improve it, because it's a fucking travesty. So please, someone delete it. Or not. If you truly love it, you'll love it enough to set it free. And with that, my novella is complete. --Sir ENeGMA (talk) GUN WotM PLS 00:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
- God you talk alot, my eyes glazed over before the end of the first paragraph. Please shorten yourself. --Sir Zombiebaron 01:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
- I have absolutely nothing against of getting rid of unfunny content (with warning, with review!). What I object to is A) removing content with no warning or review, B) removing content with haste (such as not checking to see what links to it), and most importantly, C) removing things just because they're short. There's a big difference between "short" and "unfunny". Why does Saddam Hussein deserve to stay more than, say, Bug-Rug? Just because it's long? I find a big pile of garbage on a topic that people are likely to check to be much more annoying than a little article that is linked to by articles which it is relevant to (in the example case, Bug (physics) and Rug (physics), linked from Systeme Incrediblé). Deletion is only the answer if the article is nonsense. If "short" is the only problem, the proper solution is to move to Undictionary.
- In short, my point is: if you're going to clean up the neighborhood, don't pick up a tin can off the side of the road and leave a festering landfill in the middle of Central Park. -- Rei 17:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
- I had another admin actually delete an article I was writing. It was a paragraph long at the time he deleted it, and was 3 minutes old - I was still in the process of writing. This has happened to me before with an article being deleted while I was writing it and it was still short. Thats the problem with Forest Fire Weeks, admins have the ability to restore articles, most people dont - and most people will lose what they were in the process of writing. Less extreme cases where articles are left for a few hours or over night in a sort of short form probably occur all the time. Normally common sense would tell you that these articles are still being worked on, why should we have a week where common sense is thrown out the window and people merely see how many things they can delete and how low the article count can get? ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 18:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
- I had another admin actually delete an article I was writing. It was a paragraph long at the time he deleted it, and was 3 minutes old - I was still in the process of writing. This has happened to me before with an article being deleted while I was writing it and it was still short. Thats the problem with Forest Fire Weeks, admins have the ability to restore articles, most people dont - and most people will lose what they were in the process of writing. Less extreme cases where articles are left for a few hours or over night in a sort of short form probably occur all the time. Normally common sense would tell you that these articles are still being worked on, why should we have a week where common sense is thrown out the window and people merely see how many things they can delete and how low the article count can get? ~Sir Rangeley
- In short, my point is: if you're going to clean up the neighborhood, don't pick up a tin can off the side of the road and leave a festering landfill in the middle of Central Park. -- Rei 17:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)