Forum:Uncyclopedia Reconstruction

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"Uncylopedia sure was better back before them dang kids arrived! Now watch me jump this crack in the pavement!" ~ Evel Kneivel

I remember 2007 on Uncyclopedia. 2007 was amazing. 2007 Had everything. 2008 sucked. The reason: Same as Famine's. Uncyclopedia sucks now, why? Stupidity is tolerated everywhere. One thing that I think could be changed, is that the best of Uncyclopedia, The featured pages should not be allowed to be changed greatly. Sure they can be changed rarely, but I think our precious Featured pages should be locked. This is my opinion as to how to repair Uncyclopedia. --Capercorn FLAME! what? UNATO OWS 21:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

2007?! 2006 was where it was at, man. Everybody knows that...except for the heretical 2005ers, the blasphemous 2007ers and, of course, the small cadre of heterodox 2008ers. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 23:05, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Some article "defending" should be done, but locking featured pages would be a bad idea. Some of them have been improved since they were featured, and some of the 2005 features basically sucked.
The problem with uncyclopedia is clearly 2005, and the stupidity of that age that was tolerated, nay, encouraged. You can not tell me that nonsense is more tolerated now, we are cleaning up some of the old incoherence-as-a-badge-of-honor templates, have replaced the old Oscar Wilde page, and rewritten several nonsensical biographies. Since 2008 is the farthest year from 2005, it is clearly the best year evar on uncyclopedia :)--Mnbvcxz (Annoy) 23:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Only mid-to-late 2006 and early 2007 was good. The rest of the time has sucked. Blame gangsta rap music and video games. --MegaPleb • Dexter111344 • Complain here 23:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

That's ok, I thought 2005 was the best to be an Uncyclopedian (I cite the sharp rise in new users as evidence). All kids of crazy crap happened. You never knew what to expect. I remember the shock of the first reskin I saw (Pirateopedia for "Talk like a Pirate Day"). Also, you could edit the front page as an unregistered user. Those were freaking awesome days.--<<>> 01:16, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, any year is better than 1850 was for Uncyclopedia. No potatoes. 30 November 1900, too, was a day that lived in infamy. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 06:36, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

At the risk of being pedantic - and consequently immensely unpopular - I want to remind all of you that 23.5.2006 was great, everything else sucked. -- Style  Guide 10:54, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually...

2007 was the best year. In '07, I had 5 features. In '08, I had two. You might say this is because I got lazy and/or writer's block, but I say it's because of gnomes, global warming, and Nostradamus, in that exact order. Also, happy new year everyone! • • • Necropaxx (T) {~} 08:29, Jan 1

Let's not forget: 2008 was almost wholly absent of my presence. 2007, I rocked the house. --EMC ^[TALK] 22:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

But

2008 was good until Cajek fucked off around August. By that I mean we somewhat lost sight of the writing and then the Wikia thing just... really made the place lethargic. --Sir DJ ~ Irreverent 08:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

First, I am not really all that into BHOP-style discussions. This thread to me, unfortunately, belongs in that category. Forget about that good year/bad year nonsense. If you really want to rant about that, there is always BHOP for you to blow as much as steam as you want in that regard until the cows come home. What I really want to say here is that, no, you can't improve something by denying the room for improvement. Besides, what is the logic behind having just a small group of ten or so anonymous voters deciding what is good for this website and what is not and insisting on having that decision dictating its future until the end comes and the trumpets sound? Yes, sometimes tough decisions must be made in order to shape or reshape the culture of a community, but "stupidity"? Come on! How is one supposed to define that anyway especially in the context of an environment that is by and large, well, "stupid"? Seriously, stuff Famine, and stuff the lot of you who think such-and-such year is a "good year". This is not the 1950's, and you must be effing dumb to buy into that "status-quo" mentality. In order to lead something like this website to a better future, you need fresh ideas, not politics. Don't get me wrong here, this forum is supposed to be a very good place for people to share ideas about writing new stuff, but what it actually is at this moment is nothing more than a boxing ring for people to punch each other's lights out. Now that's what I call "stupidity".

If there is anything that truly needs to be overhauled, it is this forum. Set aside a place for the elitists to banter about politics if that's what's needed to shut them up, but I reckon we can get a whole new spectrum of things going on in this website if we dedicate this forum for dicussions regarding interesting news items and weird things in life. This website is already a decade behind the rest of the Internet. Don't let it die as a stubborn old coot. --The Colonel (talk) 10:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow. I like how you got onto us for "punching each other's lights out," then go on a tirade about what's wrong and how much we suck. That's AWESOME. Will you be my master?--<<>> 14:34, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of Famine... — Sir Sycamore (talk) 14:43, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Only our haircut is a decade behind the rest of the internet. The rest of us is at least two decades behind. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 15:10, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

That explains why Duran Duran aren't in the charts anymore... — Sir Sycamore (talk) 15:16, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Isn't. There was only one Duran Duran. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 15:36, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

You won't be so sure of that when you see Jane Fonda these days. — Sir Sycamore (talk) 15:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Is she still as hot as she was in those pictures of her manning an anti-aircraft gun in North Vietnam? Sure, she's a commie, but chicks with guns are hot! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 15:43, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree with the Popcorn Kernel up there. 2006 was definitely the best year. - T.L.B. WotM, UotM, FPrize, AotM, ANotM, PLS, UN:HS, GUN 16:42, Jan 1

I didn't realise I was talking to you, Brad. Oh, unless you are the sort of "elitists" that I have just mentioned, which I presume you aren't. But, then again, given your reaction, maybe you are after all. Drat, I am torn here!

I'll just continue with my "tirade", whether you like it or not. Heck, you can just turn your back at me, if you so wish, and go back on you discussion on that domain name thing, which I don't think really matters unless you are the sort that gets all worked up and sensitive about petty things like names, which I also presume you are not. Now, call me a jerk for derailing this thread just for the sake of my own purpose, but since I have got the attention from at least three significant individuals here who can actually do something, I'll just make a little introduction of this particular idea I have got for this forum, which I call the "everything-goes" discussion settings. On one hand, I believe that there is always room for everything, but I also believe that everything should have its own place. Hence, the strategy I am proposing here is pretty much about dividing this forum into various subforums, where people can yammer about their own things to their heart's content without getting into each other's face. In other words, if it all works out, there will be a place for people who just can't shut up about why we are not locking this or why we are not banning that, a place for people who loves talking about weather or just fluffing around, and, of course, a place for the inner child in everyone of us that just scream and laugh for reasons grown-ups don't understand. I have even got a structure in mind already, and it is up to you as to whether or how to implement it, since I have got my own things to look after anyway:

• A main forum called, of course, "The Main Forum", where people can fluff about pretty much everything "safe-for-work", from gun rights to gummy bears, and, if you so wish, things that are not-safe-for-work given they are lawful and properly labeled.

• On top of that, there is of course a subforum called "Benson's House of Pancakes", where everything Benson-related is welcome.
• Front page/VFH/Featured discussions", which is a place for people obsessed with whether something should (have been) on the front page.
• "Pee Review" - I don't really need to explain this one, do I?
• By popular demands, more subforums can be set up for more specific topics such as cars, boats and, of course, computers.

• A serious forum dedicated to discussing the tedious mechanics (or politics) of this wiki from the top-level ideas it's based on right down to levels as low as where a button should be and how a piece of code is to be written. This forum is to be divided into two subforums:

• "The House of Commons", a place in which users in general can go "murr murr" at each other to their heart's content, and
• "The House of Lords", an admin-only forum where big men (and women) can talk about big plans and big... you know what I mean.

• "Help desk", where you get help for pretty much everything except, of course, your schizophrenia and other problems not directly related to this wiki.

The main goals of having these settings are to 1) not suppress, but seperate the politics from the creative process, 2) establish a long-term investment from which materials can be drawn for new articles, and 3) redefine what the front page should be as our community lives on. What I am proposing here is neither original nor drastic, and some other websites (wiki-based or otherwise) are already doing it with various degrees of success (e.g. the SomethingAwful forum, a forum of a non-wiki website from which user-generated picture and written materials are adopted for the main site). At the moment, we don't really take what people can contribute seriously unless it is from a few people whom a few others see as "significant". This is essentially a continual, futile search for one or two online messiahs, who invariably come and go and leave the community back in Square One at the end. On top of that, we don't have anything to support or contribute to these "messiahs", and we simply expect them to pull fantastic articles out of thin air just because we either see too little of ourselves or just too arrogant to do anything that we see as "below us". Believe me, if we don't start building our own support network, this community will eventually fall apart like an old mining town. You can either listen to some idiot who thinks adding a proper, decent image to an article is not "work" (or hard work, sometimes even) and fool yourself into believing that we are or can ever be godly and above all, or you can start considering proven concepts from outside this wiki for a change. Really, I beg you. :/

(I have pretty much spent half of my morning typing this stuff, and I'll check back here tomorrow and see if, hopefully, I can get some proper response from some mature adults and not just a bunch of petty little hipsters. I have done my part offering you what I think is useful, and if you think the otherwise, that too bad that I have upset you. It's life - deal with it.) -- The Colonel (talk) 23:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Just a side note: Am I the sort that sees others' moral failings but not his own? Maybe, but did I say I was perfect? ;) --The Colonel (talk) 23:20, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes, I'm totally elitist. As such, I will now educate you about how the forum actually works, since elitists love showing off knowledge and have no use for others' ideas, unless of course it increases their knowledge. Oh dear, the whole concept is so contradictory. Anyway, here is how it works here now.

• • • PEE REVIEW-An extremely useful resource of fleeting use that could always use more reviewers. Please, God, go review there, we need all the help we can get. In fact, we need harsh criticism as you seem to be in the mood for. That'd rock.
    • HELP-A Help forum that almost no one uses. If you go there and find someone to help, you rock.
    • BHOP-This is a forum for random stupidity. The "count to a million" page is particularly useless/fun.
    • GENERAL FORUM-This is the forum for the general populace. It is often heterogenous and has a mish-mash of useful topics like "Let's get serious for a change" and stuff that should really be in BHOP like "Morning Woodstock". Anyway, expecting discussion here to be all serious all the time just plain doesn't work.
    • MINISTRY OF LOVE-This is really the only forum that's always serious. As such, it is often ignored, since seriousness is so rarely funny.

In conclusion, I can't speak for anyone else, but I DO like suggestions. Making wild blanket condemnations for how the site is run (particularly with what appears to be only a superficial understanding of how it is running at the moment) will not make you popular around here. Or really, much of anywhere. Something Awful's forums work great, there's no question. I don't think our forums are totally disfunctional, however. One last thing... if your forum posts are very long, only us long-time users who remember articles you did forever ago and really liked them will bother reading them. Twitter-length posts are the most-likely ones to be read.--<<>> 01:41, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I will also go so far as to say that not only will people not stop you from moving this forum topic to BHOP, but people will probably appreciate it. Many people. Even people who mock you here.--<<>> 01:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I knew I forgot to do something! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 04:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

We're not a serious wiki--It's impossible to have completely serious forums here. If a forum gets too off-topic, just move it to BHOP. People dropping silly one-liners around here keep the discussion interesting, keep people coming back, and have even given me article ideas, but I doubt I could continue a totally straight-faced, serious, all-business discussion for very long. Frankly, even this is too much for me. Meep meep, wazzoo! *Ahem.* Anyways, yeah, I'm immature and stuff. Sue me. - T.L.B. WotM, UotM, FPrize, AotM, ANotM, PLS, UN:HS, GUN 14:44, Jan 2

People seem to be replying to their own comments a lot in this thread. Is it a bandwagon yet? - T.L.B. WotM, UotM, FPrize, AotM, ANotM, PLS, UN:HS, GUN 14:44, Jan 2

I appreciate your response, Brad, and I apologise if I seem to have been too harsh on all of you here.

Granted, there is really not much we can expect, at least at the moment, from this forum or the vast majority of the visitors using this particular facility. The reason I am mentioning this is that although we are currently facing an underwhelming situation with the view of front page features and the synergy within this particular online community, there are quite a few things we (especially you guys) can do to turn things around. What I have to stress here, however, is that there is never a quick fix to all the problems we are facing here, and we must accept this reality and do whatever we can to improve the things we have still got.

The reason I am placing my focus here is that this place is supposed to be where everything begins. We need a forum that encourages the community to simply make more noises, be those in the form of one-liner comments or giant walls of text. What really matters is that as long as we can get a variety of things going on here, we have already made our first step in fixing our problems already. Of course, as TLB (sounds like a yummy sandwich, which makes me feel kind of hungry given that I skipped breakfast this morning) mentioned earlier, not every person enjoy long-winded "serious" conversations since, as he puts it, that this is not a "serious" wiki. I, on the other hand, often get quite easily irritated with one-liners. Now take the two of us each as an example of a demographic of our visitors here. In the past, we didn't have much emphasis on the forum. If people couldn't get along, we would ask them to shut up, often in an impolite manner. Sometimes, people would get along at the end, but, in most cases, that would be just an unrealistic expectation. Eventually, those with the loudest and most persistent voices won - the one liners. The "serious" posters, the images sharers, the "weather people" (those who talk about weather), the storytellers... died off. Whatever diversity the forum was choked out of existence. The obvious solution, indeed, is to divide this whole place into smaller subforums. But don't take this as the entirety of the idea. Try and look at this as a conservation project. Our goal is not to draw some new lines in a map, but to restore a diverse ecology in a certain region. Hence, in order to make this whole thing work, we need to implement a few new strategies:-

1. Be articulate and precise as to what belongs to a subforum and what doesn't. The ability to convey crystal-clear ideas is central to a good leadership. If you can make clear rules as to what can be posted and what can't, you have already made the first step towards a healthy forum already. Keep those rules in a prominent place so that everyone can see it and will have no excuse to break them. (Note that "no rules" can also be a rule here, e.g. "BYOB" in the aforementioned SomethingAwful forums, which stands for "Be Your Own Boss", obviously.)
2. Cultivate general interest of the forum in the community. Try and be, not just the moderators of the forum, but the participants of it. Actively generate conversations that you feel comfortable in handling so that hopefully - I mean, hopefully - the rest of the community will follow suit. This can be a long and very painful process, but in time and with patience, it will yield good results. Divert the regular IRC traffic to the main site as much as possible so that materials generated therein can be retained here.
3. Don't fuss about small things. Debates are good. Arguments are good. Sometimes even dramas are good if you look on the bright side. As in a real ecology, things always tend to try and eat each other up at one point or another. As long as the tension between opposing posters does not contradict the purpose of the subforum, and as long as a heated situation is justly and timely diffused, dramas should be never be that much of a... well, drama.
4. Make honourable mentions of significant forum contributions. Showcase notable user-generated text and images on the front page or a dedicated page and link it from a prominent place of the front page. By do this forum goers will have more incentive in generating useful contents.
5. Give room for each person, physically. MediaWiki is designed primarily for showcasing articles-size materials, not piece-meal chatters belonging to a regular forum. The forum should be rearranged so that each post has a reasonable amount of space away from each other. The staircase approach is good only when the post length is small and containable within two or three lines, which is nowhere near good enough to allow people to convey rich ideas. Over-long forum pages also tend to discourage people from posting, so, if possible, try and find a way to allow a thread to split automatically into serveral pages when it reaches a certain size.

That pretty much all I want to say about this forum. I am not nagging you into implementing the plan. But, if you so wish, I can even volunteer to stick around and fluff about things whenever possible, but ultimately you are the ones with the ability to steer the community in a certain way. I am done here, so the rest is up to you now. -- The Colonel (talk) 04:49, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia is the worst!

Therefore, Uncyclopedia must be reconstructed! With myself as Supreme Ruler! MUAHAHAHA! I am the Supreme Ruler of Reality, kneel before my presence!

Good idea, maybe having noobs as admins would get rid of our "drunken lemur" problem. --Mnbvcxz 17:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I AM NO N00B!

—I am the Supreme Ruler of Reality, kneel before my presence! 17:56, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Account under 24 hours old = noob. The only other options are that your a sockpuppet or a new id of some retired user. --Mnbvcxz 18:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

You don't make the rules! I am the Supreme Ruler of Reality, kneel before my presence! 18:28, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

NO JOHN YOU ARE THE DRUNKEN LEMURS --Flammable 06:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

AND THEN THE DRUNKEN LEMURS WAS A ZOMBIE. - T.L.B. WotM, UotM, FPrize, AotM, ANotM, PLS, UN:HS, GUN 14:46, Jan 2

Uncyclopedia is the wurst!

Therefore, let's reconstruct Uncyclopedia under the guidance of BENSON! - Admiral Enzo Aquarius-Dial the Gate 17:22, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Did you know that "worst" is Dutch for sausage? I am the Supreme Ruler of Reality, kneel before my presence! 17:35, 1 January 2009

And it's cheesy, too! Mmmmm. . . Wurst with cheese! And there's also no lack of whine to go with it.  Sir Tooltroll, Esq. CUN • Eh? • Oh! • UnTunes! •• I my cat! 22:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC)