User:Flammable/Letter to NZSTA

My name is *** ******* and I am administrator "Flammable" on uncyclopedia.wikia.com. It has recently come to our attention that your group has accused us of promoting the harrassment of students by intentionally allowing articles containing students' personal information to proliferate on our wiki. We would like to inform you that this is patently untrue, and as such, is a blatant misrepresentation of our intent as a parody wiki, and of us, as a community and website.

The Uncyclopedia's primary purpose is that of parody and misinformation with the ultimate goal of humor. While some of the humor we feature is certainly immature, much of it is also witty and intellectual. The topic of "vanity pages", articles about nonnotable schools, organizations, or groups, has been one of contention among our administrators. As to appeal to the lowest common denominator (i.e. the internet commuity as a whole) we have allowed them, but under stringent rules (See en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Uncyclopedia:Vanity Policies). In the past 6 months, Uncyclopedia has expanded exponentially, and the number of edits per day easily reaches ten thousand. Simply put, the issue at hand is not one of permission, but one of surveillance. When this site was small, our administrators could readily handle the number of edits and additions made to this site. Currently, our administrator count of about 40 is unable to handle this daily volume efficiently. As we are a young website, we have not yet found the most effective of ways to handle this load, and consequently, we did not immediately remove the posting of sensitive student information.

We apologize for failing to quickly remove the information that has culminated in the harrassment of students. As a result, we have taken the initiative to remove vanity pages in violation of our policies, with a "zero tolerance" policy regarding future violations. Our current modus operandi regarding future similar incidences will result in the deletion and locking of these pages, the permanent banning of usernames and IPs associated with these edits to prevent reposting of such information. Furthermore, attempts will be made to contact the institution of these actions. If necessary, specific revisions that contain this information will be removed from the page history. Unfortunately, this is the extent of our ability to regulate this matter; we cannot prohibit the initial posting of such information. As with Wikipedia*, monitoring a constant influx for content is simply not practical given that we operate with what is effectively a staff of volunteers.

We wish to make it clear that we do NOT condone harrassment of any kind, and we never have. While our original policy pages are an oversight on this issue, please bear in mind that omission does implies neither consent or promotion, and we would never have allowed for this to happen if we were readily aware it was occurring.

In the future, please bear in mind that the most effective way to effect change in an active website is to contact the webmaster. Furthermore, please inform your staff that in any wiki (including Wikipedia*), it is best to contact an administrator regarding issues of student privacy and safety. Simply removing the content of an article by means of simple editing is ineffective; because anonymity is the hallmark of much internet activity, we cannot discern staff from students. By contacting an administator (preferably through a school e-mail address), he or she is able to fix the error and take and inform the rest of the community, potentially instigating greater change in the current system. We strive to conserve humor, but certainly not at the cost of the safety of others. In order to do so, we sometimes need a little extra help from those who are logistically more capable of ensuring student safety than we can be. It is through this means that we can ensure the safety and well-being not only of students in your jurisiction, but everywhere.

If there are any future problems regarding this issue, or, if there is any advice you can give to improve our current methods, please feel free to contact me through the uncyclopedia website, or preferably at ********@******.***.

Again, we apologize for the problem, and we look forward to working together with you more effectively in the future.

-*** *******, Administrator: Flammable

*Please note that we are not directly affiliated with wikipedia, nor do we share the same "staff". For all intents and purposes, we are a distinct entity.

Personal notes (Thx Olipro)

Add "we take all forms of slander and libel on the name of our site very seriously"

Rephrase to "due to the volume of users, we are unable to remove objectionable content immediately, however, there are a variety of systems we make available to misrepresented individuals" and "we aim to remove such content in as timely a manner as possible"