Uncyclopedia:Intensive Care Unit
Every day hundreds of articles are created on Uncyclopedia. Many of these are vandalism, utter nonsense, one or two sentences, or someone's coming out message — (or going back in for a sweater) they are deleted shot Burninated on sight. A few are high quality articles that make this place great.
Most of them fall somewhere in the middle. They have some value to them, like a good concept or a funny joke or two, but they just don't have enough work put into them to really conform to the standards we try to keep around here. That means that either (1) people have to keep working on them, or (2) they will get deleted. To help our administrators find and process these pages, our users mark these pages with {{ICU}}, meaning "Intensive Care Unit." (The more humourously insulting {{NRV}}—"No Redeeming Value"—is depreciated (which is a less intelligent way of saying 'deprecated') and should not be used.)
If you are reading this, it is probably because you created one of those articles and now find yourself with a large pink template on it. But don't lose hope! Though your article hasn't reached the finish line of full article-dom yet, you can redeem it! You have the technology! (Unless you are Amish, in which case you do not have the technology.)
The Rules
How the Tags Work
When a page is tagged with ICU, a clock is set to T-Minus one week. If that clock runs down to zero, one of our administrators looks at the page and makes a judgment call: if the tag was properly placed and there has been no real progress on the page, the administrator will probably delete the page; if the article has improved to the point where it is worth keeping as-is, the administrator will remove the tag.
Removing the Tags
If you revise an article that has been tagged with ICU enough that it becomes a full article, you may remove the tag yourself. As long as you make a good-faith effort at really improving the page, you don't need permission from anyone to remove the tag. If you are unsure about a page, or want to contest the fact that a tag was put on in the first place, leave a message on the talk page of the person who added the tag. Most of the time they will be impressed just at the fact that you took an interest in the matter and will let you remove it. If you are unhappy with the response you get from the user who tagged the page, talk to one of our friendly administrators. (At the time of this writing, the admins recommended for this are Alula, MrX, Sapplerx, and [insert gratuitous use of USERNAME template here].)
Hint: Sometimes pages that are in the process of being worked on get tagged accidentally by users who don't see that the page is still under construction. If this happens to you, just remove the tag with the edit summary "Still Under Construction". To avoid having this happen to you, we recommend placing the {{Construction}} tag on pages that are still being written. Alternately you can write pages in a subpage of your userpage (i.e. User:JohnDoe/MyPageUnderConstruction). Any tag added to a user subpage will become inactive.
Adding the Tag
Ideally only experienced users should add ICU tags to a page. If you do decide to perform this task, make sure you read and understand both our deletion policy and the Ten Commandments of tagging.
Note: If an ICU tag is added by an Anonymous IP User, you may simply remove the tag, since only registered and trusted users should place this tag on pages. Place the following text in the edit summary when you remove the tag: "-ICU: tag added by anon ip. removed as per [[UN:ICU]]"
Why we add ICU and other tags
Now I see you sitting there and asking, "Well, what's so bad about submitting a stub? Sure it needs work before it is worth reading, but I submit stubs all the time at Wikipedia and it's never a problem there." Well, you see, that is the difference between Uncyclopedia and Wikipedia. At Wikipedia, they can take that stub, place it under their pillow, and during the night, the magical fact-fairy will come and turn it into a real article. That doesn't happen here. Currently, Uncyclopedia has around 38,343 articles (just a rough guesstimate, mind you). That's a lot. That means that the chances of someone else stumbling across your article randomly and deciding to make a big improvement to it are very very small.
Because so many articles are submitted to Uncyclopedia in a state that they cannot remain in for the long term, our solution is to hold a gun up to those pages and say, "get better or else." Well, not literally; the authorities took away our collection of firearms after the sheriff walked into our Montana shack to find us pointing a gun at our computer.
How does this work? Every day, our admins (and a few other trusted users) go through the new pages and mark the pages that need to improve before they can stay around for the long term. If any of these pages remains unedited for a week or more, an admin will look at it to determine whether it should stay or go. If a page was properly marked with ICU and it hasn't been edited since, it will nearly always go.
The problem with humor is that it is harder to do it well with many cooks than it is to write a factual article collaboratively. The ideas in your incomplete entry might make for a great article, but it is probably the case that only you can write that article. So despite that potential, if you aren't going to make that full article, the idea does us no good. What this means is that you need to improve the article so that it achieves its full potential.
What makes a good article
A page that is suitable for keeping will usually have the following things:
- An encyclopedic tone. This especially matters in the introduction, which should provide a basic definition and an overview of the article's subject. It should not read something like this:
- The studmuffin was originally thought to have originated in the upper Amazon. This was before the Great Muffin Cleansing of 1337
ADCE. Some are blueberry, which was explained by the kid down the hall from me. He's a fag.
- The studmuffin was originally thought to have originated in the upper Amazon. This was before the Great Muffin Cleansing of 1337
- A unique idea. Over the course of various Uncyclopedia articles, every person, place and thing in both the known and imaginable universe has been roundhouse kicked by Chuck Norris. Oscar Wilde has already had said something inane about your subject and probably had sex with it too. Don't even get into the various ways it figures into Oprah's plot for world domination. Trust us, we know about that already. We've already seen anachronistic birth and death dates before; it isn't funny the second time.
- Coherent English. Even the most hardcore grammar nazis sometimes make spelling and grammar mistakes, but your article should always be readable. People won't laugh at your work if they have to work hard just to make any sense out of it. Yes, there are a few subjects for which not making sense is appropriate, but you still need to quickly convey to the reader why this is so they can find it funny and not just stupid.
- Proper formatting. This means several things. First, the article should be long enough to even have formatting. (Four topic headings with a sentence or two in each of them is not good enough. One large paragraph with a topic header that is identical to the article title is also not correct formatting.) Second, the formatting should be done according to the guidelines so it looks like other pages. Third, it should be pretty. Unless you are including code snippets, do not put a space before a line, otherwise the text will be rendered in a codebox.
- Wikilinks. Appropriate words should link to other articles. Use the internal link format for links to other Uncyclopedia articles. Use interwiki links for Wikipedia articles. There shouldn't be an arrow next to your links unless you are going to an off-site page. Don't have too many red links either. A few are fine, but an article covered in red looks unprofessional.
- A funny picture. Not every article lends itself to a picture, but many do, so if you can make an image for your page you should. You can also request a picture at UN:PIC if you have an idea for a picture but not the ability to make it.
- Humor value. A page doesn't have to be funny to everyone. I am never going to find your WoW page funny. The non-Americans are never going to find America-centric pages funny. That's okay. The key is just that some significant and appropriate group of people needs to find a page funny.
See also: UN:HTBFANJS, our user-edited, often mocking, guide to humor (and sometimes humour).