Forum:The Great UnNews Revolt of 2010

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Greetings, fellow ... what are we? Anyway, I'm having some fun while spreading the word about some "improvements" with UnNews lately, and I thought, "Why not a foment a counter-revolution, an announcement of of UnNews identity crisis and subsequent devolution into a role of Big Brother Watcher." The proletariat, of course, will be too simple minded to see through this ruse.

As an act of propaganda, this apparent paradigm shift will serve to instill a sense of empowerment in the common user, while serving the greater good, as religion served the corrupt, as intoxicants serve the English, and as blinders serve horses.

The UnCanninator

So, I hereby declare this to be the semi-formal declaration of counter-revolution against the Cabal. We are assuming control of all state-run telecommunications and mind control devices including the UnCanninator.

If you're rushed, this is the gist of it

Oh, I almost forgot why I'm really doing this. The enterprising User:SPIKE is artfully engaged in the spiritual reengineering of UnNews, and we've got a forum of sorts going at UnNews:Newsroom for this and other discussions. Talk will be limited to technical, coding, policy, and other UnNews-peculiar items.

We invite admins to weigh in on proposed changes and such, and discourage trolls, whose entries will be deleted. Cheers! Rev. Zim_ulator (Talk) I am the dirt under your rollers 13:10, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

Will there be free booze and partially dressed women?! ~ 13:58, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

Good to see you showed up, matey. You've saved me the trouble of a personal invitation. Open bars, wet and hash, free sex (if you find someone willing), Kosher snacks, gator-kabobs, and a large bucket to hold our nefarious ideas. This is going to be revolting. Cheers! Rev. Zim_ulator (Talk) I am the dirt under your rollers 14:21, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

Yay for kosher gator kababs! Two remarks I have - I think I noticed the lead articles templates becoming smaller, I think keeping them more prominent compliments the page layout. Also, I think putting the UnSignpost as it is on the page doesn't add a lot to it - after all it's already presented on its own main page. Maybe do a nice template with the UnSignpost logo and direct readers to the main page? "UnSignpost 75th edition out now, go here to read!]]. Also, the whole "call now to get an interview" - do we really need that? Maybe this can be removed? ~ 19:10, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

I can't testify as to the Kosherness of the gator kabobs; pretty sure they use brains, feet, and sphincter muscle.

Your first thing, Mordillo: I'm leaning the other way, towards a more compact and less cluttered looking format for the main page, and I think tightening up the masthead and headlines are good for this. In fact, I think there.s too much space between the end of the headline and the separator line below.

I agree about the UnSignpost. Let's remove it. Cheers! Rev. Zim_ulator (Talk) I am the dirt under your rollers 15:27, March 18, 2010 (UTC)

The new formatting makes the whole page completely unbalanced, as you have three smallish leading articles with a very long list of recent articles. This doesn't look appealing. I think if you want to clear the page, remove the "call for interview", make reference to the unsignpost and remove the content, consider removing the unfunnies etc. ~ 20:42, March 18, 2010 (UTC)

UnFunnies, UnWeather, etc. could be in a row of clickable icons. Whether the right column and the left column are of the same length will vary according to the length of the lead paragraphs in the feature stories, and according to the number of stories in the past week and on the one- and two-year anniversaries. It will also vary according to user screen size and local font and style selections. Should Zim have a mandate, when working the feature-story rotation, to check and see that the columns approximately line up? and stuff he can move between columns to balance them? Spıke ¬ 10:56 19-Mar-10

Style guide

Agreed (sorry about the UnSignpost guys. I've been adding it to the page to help give it some pizazz). I also noticed that our link to the team has been merged with the audio section in UnNews:UnNewsAudio (dunno when this happened but I was looking for that list for, like, ever). I'm going to spend some time trying to make the style guide more succinct because at first glance to the thorough improvements that have been made to my guide, my first response is a "tl;dr". Hopefully that's alright, and I'll be poking my heads in and out of the newsroom! --EMC ^[TALK] 09:11 Mar 19 2010

I've been editing the Style Guide for completeness. If you edit it with the goal of minimum size, the result may be a hash. In particular, I'll restore the introductory paragraph on "Ignorable policies" to avoid intimidating new users who don't know the concept. I added it based on many discussions with Mr.N and Mordillo where I proposed that something be written down, and their minds seemed to start racing about ways it could be misused to limit creativity. In contrast, half the introduction is surplus.

For your information... MrN and Mordillo's minds never "race". They more just kinda wander with the odd stroll, occasionally breaking into a brisk amble. MrN 11:17, Mar 19

The code comments in UnNews:UnNewsAudio say the lists pertain only to UnNews Audio: a list of news readers, followed by a list of other Uncyclopedians whose writing has been read. If there is a list of contributors to UnNews at large, I don't know where. Spıke ¬ 10:37 19-Mar-10

Nope, that's the list I was referring to (UnNews Audio). I'm a bit torn on how much is being needlessly explained on what a lot would probably consider "common sense" by the ignorable policy insinuation and explanation on its page or template and a few other tidbits here and there. I'd op for getting rid of the ignorable policies bit altogether because it's more likely to confuse than anything else, but I'll have to find the discussions and read over them and add my two-cents there instead of making a mess of things. I think it (the style guide) can be made more succinct and should have less distracting instructions on formatting. In the Beginner's guide, pages on formatting are very simple and succinct because they are, by far, the most confusing part of editing for new users. The less cluster, the less confusion, the greater success. Pages on behavior and etiquette are a bit more light in contrast, and appropriately so; I think pages on formatting should be as basic and non-convoluted (is that a word?) as possible. Thoughts? (also, please direct me to some discussion links, aye?) --EMC ^[TALK] 11:07 Mar 19 2010

“Oh, I almost forgot why I'm really doing this. The enterprising User:SPIKE is artfully engaged in the spiritual reengineering of UnNews, and we've got a forum of sorts going at UnNews:Newsroom for this and other discussions. Talk will be limited to technical, coding, policy, and other UnNews-peculiar items. We invite admins to weigh in on proposed changes and such, and discourage trolls, whose entries will be deleted. Cheers!”

~ Rev. Zim_ulator (Talk) I am the dirt under your rollers 13:10, March 17, 2010 (UTC) on this forum

EMC, "distracting instructions on formatting" is what a Style Guide does--and every time I see Zim "tidying up" a user contribution, I consider adding more instructions to the Style Guide, as it would be more sensible if we just coded stuff that way in the first place. The Beginner's guide (I mean UnNews:About) is concise partly because I moved coding details to the Style Guide. That note "from the Chief" is mostly supposed to be about the business of working together and not about the details of coding stories. Spıke ¬ 11:26 19-Mar-10

PS--Zim, thanks for the props, but this is not "spiritual reengineering." I have no opinion about whether the Front Page should be sales-y versus deadpan, or the threshold for crap articles. All I'm trying to do with these documents is tighten nuts and bolts: write down the way things seem to work. Spıke ¬ 11:31 19-Mar-10

User:SPIKE I apologise for my use of the term "spiritual reengineering". It's one of those phrases I use because of my "deep spiritual conviction" (make a choking sound when you say that, son), and I whore that about myself in UnCyc. What I meant was similar to, as you put it, "tightening down nuts and bolts". Don't worry, I haven't endowed you with supernatural powers... yet. Cheers! Rev. Zim_ulator (Talk) I am the dirt under your rollers 00:00, March 20, 2010 (UTC)

Not to worry, Chief. I didn't read that much into the term, just wanted to emphasize that I don't have some cosmic new vision to impose on the place. Spıke ¬ 00:04 20-Mar-10

Cool. Clearly I am the arbiter of all things cosmic, at least around UnNews. Of course, you realize, this wizard is wearing no clothes. Rev. Zim_ulator (Talk) I am the dirt under your rollers 15:24, March 20, 2010 (UTC)

PPS--EMC, regarding discussion links: Here and UnNews:Newsroom. Some of this discussion started on Zim's talk page (now in User:Zim ulator/archive9). Spıke ¬ 11:48 19-Mar-10

Hello Spike and Zim. Is this the place to join in this conversation or should it be somewhere else? BTW. Congratulations to you both for remodelling UnNews which was looking like the shabbier younger brother of the main site here. --RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 21:18, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, we're holding negotiations at UnNews:Newsroom. Rev. Zim_ulator (Talk) I am the dirt under your rollers 22:20, March 22, 2010 (UTC)