User:Anton199/Retrospective

1. What is your username?

Anton199, but you can call me Anton.

2. Who you are beyond the site? You can answer this with as much or as little detail as you want.

I'm still doing my studies, I'm Russian and my aspiration and also the greatest ambition is to become a writer.

3. How long had you been on Uncyclopedia? When did you join, and what drew you to stay once you discovered it?

I've been on Uncyclopedia for two years and several months. Back in 2013, a friend of mine showed me an article on Russia and this is how the site first caught my attention. The reason I registered on the Wikia site, was because it came up in Google search and back then I did not know there were two uncys. If I knew about it, I probably would have been so confused that I wouldn't have registered at all.

The reason I joined Uncyclopedia at all was because it just appeared simpler to edit if you had an account than if you didn't. The reason I wanted to edit is that the first articles I've read were so mediocre, that with my poor prose I thought I could do a job as good as those writers, if not better. If I stayed, it was because I realized that Uncyclopedians were a lot more serious about humour writing than I first thought, which might seem a paradox, but it at the time it actually wasn't. I just saw how many skills I was being offered if I continued to take part in the project, all the great writers I could meet and all the comedy projects I could participate in.

4. Did you get welcomed/adopted? By whom?

All in all, I was welcomed by many users and never officially adopted, because that system was already in a state of hibernation when I joined. Yet, Spike assisted me so much in the process of editing and article creation, that I consider him my unofficial adopter (despite what many other new users may say about him). I have great memories of the moment when I just registered: I was almost immediately taken care of, by Spike first, who taught me the basics but also much more and even gave me grammar lessons (which were a lot more interesting than the ones you get at school). But I also got introduced to the community of the Wikia site pretty quickly. I met another new user, ScottPat, who's writing his retrospective at the same time as I am doing mine, and I think we've been friends (if you can ever call a person you've never met in real life a friend) for the next two years.

I haven't touched on this, when answering the previous question, but this continuous assistance and the fact that I knew whom to ask, if I had any difficulty, was the reason I first stayed. That's why I feel like many of critiques of Spike have been misplaced - I agree with some, but it's necessary to remember that he's been a tutor to many users, who later turned themselves into great Uncyclopedians (such as, if you've been following the uncyclowikia news, ScottPat, Macboswell or, lately, EStop, all prominent featured authors).

5. Who were your favorite members in the community when you joined, and why? Least favorite?

I wouldn't say I had any favorite members. I know I've admired many people for their writing talents, for their sense of humour... There were Uncyclopedians whose example I would try to follow. And there were people with whom it was very nice to talk and collaborate. I know I admired a lot of them, and I still do.

Least favorite were, generally speaking, either users assumed their superiority while talking to you without using their experience and knowledge to help, or those who cared enough about the site to spend hours there, but too little to do anything others could ask them to do. There are different ways to help and merely allowing others to have a nice moment talking to you is one way of bringing up the social aspect, which is something I quite miss with less and less people being active on uncy.

6. What was your first edit?

They say you shouldn't be ashamed of your origins, so I'll be honest. I started by contributing to an article of a friend of mine, which was technically vanity, as we were writing about a small "chatroom" that we had created. I don't know how I did not get banned and why the article is still where it is (in my friend's userspace, kindly moved there by Spike), but this is how I really started. But I guess I redeemed myself with my first article, which I started writing almost at the same time.

7. What was your first article about?

My own first article was on probability theory.

8. Fondest memory? Strangest memory? Lowest moments-- both for the wiki, and as a user?

• Fondest memory: I have many. For a year or so, Uncyclopedia was an important part of my life, teaching me how to write, how to write so that others would laugh, how to code on wikis, how to review what others have written, how to take part in a community consisting of people with very different interests, how to communicate, in general, etc., etc.

I have very fond memories about my first two articles being "published" in main space (as it was the first time people I did not know could read something I wrote) and getting positive comments... But there are many more, for instance: getting my first features; arriving the third in the inter-wiki Happy Monkey; receiving the answers to the first emails I sent to Uncyclopedians; collaborating with you on the smartphone article (I'm honest, I had great time!), etc.

• I couldn't find any really strange memories. Although you do feel really strange if you spend a day on Uncyclopedia and then decide to go out. Which I really don't advise.

• My lowest moment was probably when I decided to leave enuncyco (only, I came back after). I had a conflict with a user whom I once defended after he was blocked by Spike at uncyclowikia, and now he was "shouting" at me for having insisted he should edit his signature, ignoring all of my attempts to end the dispute. It all seems very silly now, but I was very touched by it back at the time, and maybe even more by the fact that nobody, not even the administrators, seemed to care enough to tell the guy he was being rude (or tell me I was being rude, in case I was), because he wouldn't listen to me.

9. A lot of drama has struck the community in its time, at some points completely defining it for better or worse (usually worse). What was the most notable, and which had most affected you, if any?

I haven't been there for the periods that have been really characterized by drama, but I do remember some "deop" forums as well as a few rage-quits (quite a dozen, actually). Not counting the usual debates, sometimes developing into virtual fights. The most notable were the "deop Spike forum" on the wikia site and "deop Llwy-ar-lawr" at enuncyco, in my opinion.

It all affected me, because I soon learnt that when drama strikes, people can make valid points, but nobody really listens to anyone anymore. Everyone is pushing his own point of view and unwilling to acknowledge that anyone else might be right, too. The funniest thing is that all the different perspectives are very rarely self-exclusive, but rather complementary. Which makes me think that labeling a forum as "drama", locking it up and banning all the participants should be the last resort, as many of the points of view forged during an argument can be extremely insightful for those trying to find out how to reform the project.

10. Do you still write? (On the site or off the site.)

I try to. In real life, I've written some small things here and there, but I am planning on starting something bigger, because I am sick of having thousands of ideas inside my head and being unable to express them.

On uncy, I write less than I wish I could, but I still force myself to do it, from time to time. However it's quite demotivating to see how many old articles of yours you have to rewrite, because you want to throw up whenever you look at them. You feel like you have to assume the responsibility for your old work, despite having no motivation to do so, but you also feel like you should write something new, which could be of some interest to others.

11. Do you still edit the site at all? And if not, why?

I've been slowly moving away from Uncyclopedia the past year, not just because of time constraints, but because the general lack of activity on both sites isn't very motivating. Before editing, it's been my habit to always check my mailbox (instead of watchlist) to see what edits have been made to the pages you're following and it's a pretty entertaining activity to advance like that, mail by mail, to get a general picture of what's been happening in your absence, when you reach the last one. Then, if you're done, you check the recent changes to get an even greater perspective. I remember doing it when I just joined, and what a thrill it'd be to discover edits to your new articles or maybe even the orange bar announcing a message on your talkpage from another, experienced Uncyclopedian!

So when you've been absent for a week and you don't have a single new mail and what fills the recent changes is just the huff and block logs, I wouldn't say it's discouraging, but you just don't feel the urge or the necessity to propose new ideas, new projects, new articles... I think that in a community like ours, where a single person's contributions can galvanize the site (we saw many examples of that on both sites, with return of the veterans, especially), it's terribly important that contributors feel part of it, feel included and feel the need for their contributions to exist, which can easily be achieved through private messages.

12. Uncyclopedia.wikia.com or Uncyclopedia.co? Why?

Technically, both. Uncyclowikia is the first website I really committed myself to for a quite prolonged period and there I first met people willing to waste time with me, for no pay or any other retribution apart from a thanks. Enuncyco was the place a lot of cool people went to and even though they didn't always get much written, you could still appreciate the freedom of comedy about the site. I once left enuncyco (as I mentioned above), but was too interested in what would happen to it in order not to return. So yeah, both.

13. Would you say Uncy has been going downhill? If so, when did that "downhill"ness start?

Yeah, most certainly. I haven't witnessed the rise of the project, nor the beginning of the downhillness, even though carbon datings did tell me a fair bit about it, but I can say the latter was some time before the forking (maybe when uncyclopedia first changed its domain name). The split was just the proof that something wasn't working out and not the cause of the downhillness. And don't get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with the creation of enuncyco, but with the split - the fact that the Uncyclopedia community did not leave or stay, but split in two, over two different sites, practically unable to collaborate, ever since then.

Right now each site has its set of problem that makes it hard for any to move significantly forward. Uncyclowikia seems to be very dependent on a single concept (a satire encyclopedia), as well as a single company (Wikia). On the contrary, enuncyco is all free and open, but has no idea how to attract the target audience (or even determine a target audience), recruit or retain new users. Which makes a lot of us apathetic about the future of any of the projects, which - in turn - is the main danger here, as this is what stops us from writing or trying out new stuff that could really help us. Fortunately, we are not all pessimistic - or at least not all the time.

14. Cool Story Bro Time: Tell me a cool story, bro. (i.e. like the time RAHB ran into NXWave at a Dairy Queen).

Not really what you'd call a cool story, but I guessed Peasewhizz was a twin, not knowing anything about him - I actually thought he was someone I met in real life and that guy was a twin, too. It turned out that no.

15. Would you say that Uncyc has "changed" you?

Definitely. In a lot of ways, actually. I have started seeing humour everywhere, as well as wiki-formatting. As much as the former is fun, the latter is disturbing.

One of the most important lessons I have learnt is that you can joke about anything, even though it's not certain everyone will laugh at your jokes. I also learnt that humour is like a parasite, which changes the contents of anything it gets its way into and also something you can't ignore.

Also, I don't think I'll be able to write anything fully serious from now on, which is a good thing.

Not even mentioning the countless skills I have learnt, a lot of them linked with communication. Talking to people you don't know the least thing about and don't even see in real life is something to experience.

16. Got anything else you wanna say?

First of all, I'd like to thank you for making this questionnaire and running this project in general.

And now, a million-dollar idea. I've recently opened a forum meant to ask others what they thought could be reformed about Uncyclopedia, which didn't receive a lot of attention, probably because I was too serious and verbose. Still, I'd like to give my vision how to electrocute galvanize the entire site.

So first, we need to get rid of the content that is duplicate of Wikia's and that doesn't get us many views. Which is, to be very optimistic, is probably at least 90% of all our articles. I don't see what use there is to keep so much old stuff that nobody looks for and that sinks us at google rankings, apart from giving us an excuse not to write. I know many have been trying to do this already, but I feel the approach should be the opposite to what has always been done. Instead of nominating articles for deletion (at VFD or a Forest Fire), I propose that we choose those we want to keep (based on the criteria we determine), while deleting the rest.

Once this is done, we can remove the superficial encyclopedia constraint, allowing every writer to write whatever he wants without thinking about namespaces. I know this is basically a straight road to anarchy, but there are ways to organize content even in that case. We can move away from obligatory wiki format towards more of a blog kind of format (or at least, make the wiki less pervasive for new editors, who aren't interested in it). A new author can have a choice to start a "blog", where he'll write comedy that others will be able to review, comment upon or "upvote" or something. Once an article gets a lot of support from others, it can enter the main space, which will be a wiki only experienced writers will edit (so we can avoid spambots and vandals). Simply saying, any author who gets an established level of experience will get a special right to edit the main wiki, whose articles' standard will correspond to the current feature system. These articles will be organized into sub-projects (UnBooks, encyclopedia, etc.)

And actual features will be pages chosen from the ones in the mainspace by the established editors and will be featured on the main page.

I know that what I am proposing is a very singular perspective, but I wouldn't like to enforce a single idea to be accepted or rejected, but rather a bunch of ideas, which anyone might get inspiration from.