Uncyclopedia:The Wikipedian's Guide to Uncyclopedia

Welcome to Uncyclopedia! Welcome to your stay at the world's finest content-free encyclopedia! This quick, paperless guide will help guide you to Uncyclopedia's inner workings. For the purposes of this guide, I, the Narrator, will assume that you are already somewhat familiar with Wikipedia's policies and systems.

Don't hesitate to use the table of contents situated here in order to jump between different sections of this guide!

Don't hesitate to reach out!

Practically all Most Some of Uncyclopedia's administrators are very welcoming. You may contact them primarily using one of two methods, but other methods exist too:

• User talk pages are the easiest way to contact Uncyclopedia admins, and is the only way all Uncyclopedia admins may be contacted. Admins should usually reply quite rapidly if they are active.
• Uncyclopedia has a Discord server available to its members. Asking questions there usually results in a relatively rapid administrative reply.
• Emailing a user: Seldom used nowadays, but still a possibility in case things go south. It is most often used to discuss privacy-sensitive things, which wouldn't be appropriate on a talk page.
• Internet Relay Chat: not many admins are still present there, but it's still a good option if you wish to avoid non-free software, such as Discord.

Uncyclopedia administrators should be able to answer practically all your questions surrounding Uncyclopedia itself, its inner workings and perhaps even interpret an article for you. Just don't start spamming everywhere and you'll be fine!

User groups

Uncyclopedia uses a user group system that parallels Wikipedia's in many ways, but is distinct from it in many others. As with Wikipedia, unregistered users and registered users form the * group, and all registered users (sysops included) form the user group.

Autoconfirmed users

Autoconfirmation is a form of automatic authentication given to user accounts four days old with at least ten edits, just as with Wikipedia. Accorded privileges are similar, including no CAPTCHA (when and if applicable), page moving, overwriting existing files, and editing semi-protected (gray lock) articles. Additionally, autoconfirmed users are no longer subject to many of the spam prevention and anti-abuse filters used on Uncyclopedia.

Autoconfirmed status can be revoked only by the abuse filter; in practice, this is never performed.

Manually confirmed users

Administrators may manually give the "confirmed" role to a user. This grants the exact same permissions as autoconfirmation would. Users may request the "confirmed" role from an admin, but this is basically never performed in practice.

Extended-confirmed users

Users become extended-confirmed when they have more than five hundred edits and an account at least thirty days old. This is more rigorous than the criteria for autoconfirmation, so the chance of vandalism or spam by an extended-confirmed user is practically zero.

Extended-confirmed protection is used when semi-protection fails to stop vandalism/spam but full protection would be too restrictive. Examples of extended-confirmed protected pages are AAAAAAAAA! and kitten huffing.

Manually assigned roles

Rollback

Rollback is a special role given to some Uncyclopedia users whom ask for it (and deserve it). It allows users to rollback consecutive edits by a same user; normally, on Wikipedia, Twinkle would replace this role, but Uncyclopedia's lack of features makes this role necessary.

Additionally, Rollback grants auto patrol rights, which automatically patrols your edit in Recent Changes, and patrol other edits.

Autopatrolled

An autopatrolled user will have their edits automatically patrolled in Recent Changes. Nothing else.

Thumbsucker

A user designated as a Thumbsucker may view deleted pages and scum their page history. This is effectively a rebrand of the Researcher user role in the English Wikipedia, except for the fact that you don't need to be manually selected by the Wikimedia Foundation to receive it, and you can't search for deleted pages.

Flood

On request, a user may ask for the Flood role. By doing so, the user will be treated as a bot, and will no longer appear in Recent Changes by default. That's it.

Abuse filter helper

Uncyclopedia hides all of its abuse filters and abuse logs by default. Users with the abuse filter helper right may view these filters (with the exception of a few "sysop only" filters), and can view and analyze the abuse log. Unlike Wikipedia's similarly-named role, this one is granted much more liberally.

Administrators

Uncyclopedia's system operators (sysops for short), also known as its administrators, are effectively subdivided into three distinct categories, unlike Wikipedia which features many more.

The three categories are: sysop/admin, bureaucrat and sysadmin.

Sysop/admin

Your standard administrative role. You can obtain sysop by being successfully elected in VFS (our replacement for RfA), but a successful nomination is very difficult to achieve.

Sysops have basically the same privileges as a Wikipedia administrator, but they also have access to CheckUser, which allows matching IPs with users. A list of active administrators can be found here: UN:AA

Bureaucrat

Bureaucrats have a few roles on top of administrators. Also elected at VFS, they can create new administrators, create new bureaucrats, rename users and make users vanish upon request. A list of active bureaucrats can be found at UN:AA.

Sysadmin

Sysadmins are the people hosting Uncyclopedia. They have a few additional rights over bureaucrats, such as being able to delete pages in a way that forbids even bureaucrats from being able to see it (the equivalent to Wikipedia's oversight process). They also control the server, and can make it crash upon request.

Miscellaneous roles

Bot

Administrators are capable of creating bots. Bots can carry out tedious tasks on Uncyclopedia, such as correcting spelling mistakes, or distributing mailing lists to users' talk pages. Bots are also invisible on Recent Changes, by default.

Interface ops

Uncyclopedia's equivalent to Wikipedia's interface administrator serves a completely different purpose here. A user with interface administrator status has the ability to edit all pages, with no exceptions (including interface pages), but aren't eligible to perform other administrative tasks. It is generally delegated to highly trusted non-admins who wish to tinker with the site's UI or protected pages. Currently, there is only one interface administrator on Uncyclopedia: JJPMaster.

Zombiebaron

Zombiebaron gets his own special user role. This role allows him to, among many other things, edit full-protected pages and protect pages himself.

Non-existent roles

The community is much smaller on Uncyclopedia than Wikipedia, so some roles may not exist or are taken care of by administrators. These include:

• Account creators (no replacement on Uncyclopedia)
• Edit filter managers (replaced by "Ask an Admin")
• Event coordinators (no replacement on Uncyclopedia)
• File movers (replaced by "Ask an Admin")
• Importers (replaced by "Ask an Admin")
• Mass message senders (replaced by "Ask an Admin")
• Oversight (replaced by sysadmins)
• Page movers (replaced by Rollback)
• Patrollers (replaced by Rollback)
• Pending changes reviewers (no replacement on Uncyclopedia)
• Researchers (replaced by Thumbsuckers)
• Stewards (replaced by sysadmins)
• Template editors (replaced by "Ask an Admin")

Discussion

Uncyclopedia has several replacements for common Wikipedia discussion boards, such as AfD, CSD, RfA, and plenty more. This guide will walk you through some of the most common ones.

Deletion

Whilst on Wikipedia, six distinct discussion boards, AfD, CfD, FfD, MfD, RfD and TfD, are used for general-purpose article (and thing) deletion, Uncyclopedia makes it much simpler by using a single board: VfD, short for Votes for deletion. You may nominate an article at the VFD page itself, and then by putting {{VFD}} on the article that you want deleted. It's that simple. Typically, if a consensual vote has been determined (after an indeterminate amount of time usually not exceeding thirty days), the article is either kept (with a template placed on it to state that the article was kept) or deleted. Deleted articles may be recreated in order to make them in a higher quality, or with a different breed of humor.

Speedy deletion

Wikipedia uses CSD for speedy deletion, using a bunch of relatively precise criteria. Uncyclopedia makes it much simpler, using a system called QVFD, short for QuickVFD. An article can either be manually added to QVFD on the QVFD page itself, or automatically tagged as such by using the QVFD gadget (enabled in your preferences) to nominate it.

Articles sent into QVFD are usually huffed (deleted) within 24 hours, but sometimes the deal is done within minutes. QVFD is usually used for unambiguously terrible articles, or downright spam; however, it may also be used for single-author articles where the user nominating the article for QVFD is the author.

Requesting punitive action against a user

Wikipedia does have forums to report users for misconduct, such as the Administrators' Noticeboard. Here on Uncyclopedia, there are three options available to you for reporting misconduct:

1. Reporting directly via an active administrator or bureaucrat's talk page. This is especially recommended for situations where it takes more than two lines to explain why you want the user blocked, or for suspected sock puppetry.
2. Reporting via Ban Patrol. Any users sent to Ban Patrol will be verified by an administrator, and then a restorative or punitive punishment will be instated.
3. Reporting via Discord. The Uncyclopedia Discord server is located in the "Contribute" section of the left sidebar.

Depending on the situation, if an offense reported to QVFD is so great that it may be worth blocking the page's owner, an administrator will usually automatically ban them.

Coronation

Wikipedia uses a process called RfA, Requests for Adminship, in order to allow users to become administrators (if approved). Uncyclopedia uses a similar democratic system, Vote for Sysop (VFS), which happens twice a year. During the duration of the event, if a user is nominated to either be promoted to admin, promoted to bureaucrat, demoted to admin, or demoted to regular user, a vote proceeds. A consensus (majority) vote is required for most things involving VFS, although sometimes a two-thirds vote is recommended, especially for de-op (admin demotion) votes.

Protection

Uncyclopedia does not have an equivalent to requesting page protection via a template. The easiest way to have a page protected is to ask an admin via their talk page, or by asking on Discord.

Protected article edits

Uncyclopedia does not have an equivalent to requesting a page edit via a template. Usually, the only pages given full protection are policy pages, very important/popular articles, and critical code files, so the vast majority of pages can be edited by an autoconfirmed user. The easiest way to request an edit on a protected page is, once again, to ask an admin via their talk page, or by asking on Discord.

Featured articles

Similarly to Wikipedia, featured articles make a return here, but under a rather different form.

Uncyclopedia has a democratic system under which articles may be nominated to be "featured", granting the page a temporary appearance (a "feature") on the main page. Oftentimes, features are given to the funniest or most well-written articles, although anything in any namespace is allowed.

Articles are nominated to be featured with a system called "Vote for Highlight", VFH for short (not to be confused with Vote for Huffing, another way to say VFD). If an article gets nominated with a sufficient majority and crosses a certain threshold in the number of votes (as determined by the admins), the article is crowned as a Featured Article. Featured Articles kind of work in the same way as Wikipedia's system, but the procedure is notably less bureaucratic.

Featured pictures

Pictures may also be featured on Uncyclopedia, but using a separate system, "Vote for Pictures", VFP for short. The principle is quite similar to VFH, in almost every single way.

Stubs

Unlike at Wikipedia, we here at Uncyclopedia tend to be somewhat less tolerant of stub articles, which are short articles that contain merely a summary about the information needed for the article. This is in part because of what Uncyclopedia is: not a wiki for information, but a parody of such a wiki, where longer articles are needed in order to properly deliver humor.

Several systems exist to categorize short articles:

ICU

Uncyclopedia's intensive care unit, ICU (formerly known as No Redeeming Value, NRV), is a spot where short articles, most often stubs, are sent in order to be expanded. Either the original author of the article should expand it up to a certain point where it can safely be considered "up to Uncyclopedian standards", or someone else may choose to pick up the torch instead; however, if no one chooses to expand the article within a week's time, it can be subsequently deleted by an administrator.

Generally speaking, articles are put into ICU by an admin, but may also be added by another user, if needed.

Construction

If you are writing an article and you know that it is incomplete or too short, you may add a {{Construction}} tag onto your article. Doing so will mark your article as "being built", and as long as you keep editing the article every seven days until the article is up to Uncyclopedian standards, it is immune to getting sent into ICU or QVFD, unless it's so terrible that it deserves to be deleted anyway.

QVFD

If all else fails, or an article is so short (one-liners) that it's more worthwhile to delete, feel free to send the article into QVFD (discussed above in the "Speedy deletion" section).

Wikipedia features not available here

Here is a summary of some other Wikipedia editing features that are unavailable on Uncyclopedia:

• Twinkle and many editing gadgets, although we do have RedWarn, Ultraviolet, and Huggle as alternatives.
• Some Wikipedia templates. Feel free to copy-paste the contents of a Wikipedia template into Uncyclopedia, as long as the template does not end up damaging other templates.
• Any form of arbitration or other external administration.
• (Partial) Wikipedia integration. It is easily possible to integrate with some international Uncyclopedias and the English Wikipedia; however, if there is no interwiki to the Wikipedia you want, I'm sorry, but you'll have to ask a crat.
• Staying logged in without clicking the "Keep me logged in" box every single time you log back in. It's just a minor inconvenience, but we're still sorry.
• Bureaucracy. Mostly.

Other stuff you probably want to see

• How to be funny and not just stupid
• Beginner's guide
• Rules
• The Uncyclopendium