Forum:How to bring Illogicopedia out of stagnation, in theory

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The big problem with Illogicopedia? The writing is too fragmented, too disconnected into little pieces of text unrelated to any other. After a while, this makes most of it all seem the same, and it becomes boring.

There are various places on the web which sustain momentum longer and where people keep working on creating and elaborating imaginary worlds. A main thing missing on Illogicopedia, by contrast, is themes to group things together – beyond the occasional article series template, I mean.

I think it could all become more interesting and active over time again if one or a few began to put effort into dreaming up larger things under the umbrella of which smaller things can be related, in some vaguely seemingly coherent way. For inspiration, consider for example how a "unified conspiracy theory" can bring many things together and claim to be thoroughly logical and the only sane and good way of viewing the world.

What kind of larger things can be invented, which relate other things and try to "make sense" of seeming illogical discrepancies that Illogicopedia are full of? These larger things may of course be rather nonsensical, but the entire point is that higher-order illogic is needed because lower-order illogic is already explored pretty much completely. Higher-order illogic can be more interesting, original, and artful, but it requires more and bigger bananas to be put together, over and over again, until Donkey Kong's whole banana hoard is stored on Illogicopedia's server and the reptilian conspiracy to steal them is managed competently. (OK, that last part wasn't very original. But still...)

This is something I've been mulling over for a time. I think if others find it interesting to try working towards, then beginning to list and discuss possible themes and potential new articles on wacky larger topics relating smaller ones could lead forwards. Can Illogicopedia be built upwards, rather than sidewards, after all this time, until it becomes a great flying cathedral? --Fluffalizer 05:14, 26 Jeremy 2022 (UTC)

I think what kept this site going for a lot of its run would probably have been new people joining and having different styles of illogic. Then we would get content that's somewhat novel and the community might be engaging. But things seemed to have gone wrong in 2020: I think we got a few new users that year, but most of them left after creating a couple of articles, one wasn't very interested in creating content, and another one ended up being a vandalizing puppetmaster.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this site could be engaging if you were active on it, but it depended on other people being active on it as well, and now we're not getting many active users. Maybe having a central theme could inject more life into the site, but we'll probably have to get commitment from existing users. CG098 (talk ☼‎ contribs) 17:17, 8 Farbleum 2022 (UTC)

Maybe in the short term, others being active enough is enough for people to be active enough. I was thinking more of why I and other old-timers gradually lost or lose interest. Change of priorities in life over years explains part of it, but not all, I think.

Seppy once pointed out more than a decade ago how just like on Uncyclopedia, the intuitive judgment of "quality" gradually changed, so that what was great at first became "low quality" in the minds of the community, even though the new stuff was objectively not worse. But unlike on Uncyclopedia (which evolved its contents according to its changing tastes, becoming more "deletionist"), the new stuff continued to be much the same on Illogicopedia (because it deliberately kept a lax "inclusionist" standard, and didn't invent some new way of doing things), and that's why, I'm convinced, many grew bored and the wiki became permanently fairly low-activity after some years (with a greater lull after 2020, perhaps).

Some inventions were tried fairly early to inject some novelty, like the "political parties", but it was kind of a flop. It made for some fun at first, but was then ignored afterwards. Old stuff like that remains, curiosities which aren't organized into the clearly alive and the clearly dead (archived) but rather remain zombie-like. How to change that, if such change were to happen? Ideas could emerge with fresh discussion. It would have to begin with the pouring of more crazy inspiration onto the forum.

Maybe instead of simply keeping or deleting what's been flowing in over the years, there can be more in the way of developing a third way of spooning up old stubby content without much value of its own and replacing it with compilations that are less trashy, preserve the gist of it all, and maybe even elaborate on a common theme in some way. Currently, I wonder if the old build-up of really stubby trashy things repel newcomers who want to do something other than shitpost too much.

But I'm not sure what matters most. On further possible ideas, what potential for absurdism in wiki form has been overlooked, thinking of the modern world and all it contains? --Fluffalizer 13:11, 9 Farbleum 2022 (UTC)