Forum:The Problem With Illogicopedia

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Lets tackle the problem head on rather than leaving it in the backwaters page of hindleyites talk page --Silent PenguinLeave Me Alone 12:19, 5 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Hindleyite, I was talkin' with some peeps on IRC. And they expressed the, in my opinion, correct view that Illogicopedia, despite the effort that goes into it looks juvenile and not-very well put together. Which they said was off putting to new users. We came to several conclusions, and decided you're a good man to oversee or help us with the task of renovating the site and taking us into a new age. Mainly because you're always there, and you've seen Uncyclopedia grow up into the highly editable site that is, and also how it went wrong. Which gives you life experience, well, wikia experience.

Anyway, here are the realisations we found:

• We could perhaps redesign the main page, perhaps only slightly to make it look better done/funnier etc. Do it professionally. Bear in mind there are some good photoshoppers/puns to be used out there.
• Personally I think the mission statement and guidelines are outdated and untrue. We're not really about nonsense and one liners anymore. It seems to me that we're going for anything that seems funny, or occasionally clever. Generally if there is some sort of point, like a conclusion, a thread of plot, or even an instance of funny in an article it seems tosay. "the goal is not necessarily "nonsensical one-liners" as much as "anything funny" whereas Uncyclopedia tries for "satire", you guys try for "funny." Not that I'm saying we should do an uncyclopedia and become solely funny or anything, but maybe emphasising that our site is made for the articles we so often praise and reward users for: the well-written/funny and clever. Our mission statement and commandments should reflect this.
• Maybe a slight revamp of the rules and guidlines, not to change the status quo, but to encourage users with the intelligence and maturity that should at least double that of an EDer.
• We must tackle the Did you know section too, it just lies there dead, stinking up the wiki. Could we replace it with something.
• Another point raised was the advertising and vanity (guilty as charged) that one finds in "What's Gwa'nin." I'm not sure what to do with it, set out guidelines? Try and make things look like they're news regardless of the article they link too (like on the news section in logicopedia [the brief wikiskin])

So yeah. If we tackle the root cause, as opposed to the articles we'll kill the weeds dead improve our image and attract more users. I think we can win with this one. --Testostereich • (ballsack) 18:34, 4 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Some good points. The front page: I like the fact people can edit bits but I think the news thing should refer to articles and not mention users unless totally necessary. A good idea would be to check every so often (not really that hard to do) and modify it slightly to fit in with the idea. DYKs: same goes for this. I like to add a few things every now and then but we do need some more content. I'll comment a bit more on this later, I think. -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 18:42, 4 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Cheers for the support du' . 'll set about implementing these steps. Nice work with the blog once again, and just well done in general. Tell me if \i go wrong, give me a lollipop and send me on my way :P --Testostereich • (ballsack) 18:50, 4 Aym 2008 (UTC)

I wanna help! For rizzle.-Ljlego 18:59, 4 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Front page redesign. For all its bad points, one area where I think Uncyc excels is on its front page. It seems there's something new there every day - it would be nice to try and emulate this a bit more. I'm not saying we should restrict users' own content, just modify it slightly. We always have the vandalism section for all-out madness. As for a redesign, it might be worth having a fresh look... might need to discuss with Fluffalizer - an almost direct port of WP would be nice. It took ages for us to get to the current design but if we work together we could do it fairly quickly.

I also wonder if there is any way we can move/get rid of the Google ads like Uncyclopedia? I dunno if it's site specific css or something. Maybe we could get Fluffalizer (again) on it...

Rules: always been a bit of a sticky area because there aren't really any rules as such, only guidelines. I wouldn't be against a slight tweak though.

Finally, the site's mission statement. I agree that one-liners aren't the stock articles any more and whilst they are still accepted, a change of intro text might be in order. Hm, I remember Nerd being a bit touchy about that - we need to pick a slogan between us.

Ljlego: know much about css? -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 19:06, 4 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Not really, though I am excellent at pretending I know things and using Google to write code. I learned parser functions in this way, and oddly enough I'm actually quite good at them now.-Ljlego 20:31, 4 Aym 2008 (UTC)

So main points:

• Sort out mainpage
• Sortout, better advertise the forum
• Create activity ourselves on various topics forum etc.
• Tidy up in general, mission statement etc? --Testostereich • (ballsack) 19:37, 4 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Sounds about right. Forum topic for this?

LJ: Pretending to know things = my mantra. -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 10:28, 5 Aym 2008 (UTC)

As for the site focus, I can agree with expanding our official "mission". Not moving it, though – while we need not strictly be limited to it, sheer nonsense remains the unique part of our niche. Without it, we are just a poor copy of the humor wikis. Also, we could do well to encourage creating more one-liners and random nonsense – let's then use said content! A little bit of true nonsensical creativity is valuable; far too much of our content has become a mechanical repetition of stale comedy routines. I suggest to encourage the nonsensification of our content, where users work to make it stranger and funny as in the smell. The focus on quality has been a bit one-sided: it has replaced the focus on the bizarre and random more than it has complemented it. I say they need not be mutually exclusive; let those (the "old school") who want to write some random nonsense here and there do so, and encourage it, and those of the newer style do their thing as well at the same time. Also, reward not only polished humor, but the truly bizarre and unshaven as well!

As for redesign, I guess I can help given some concrete ideas. So discuss it; how about starting a forum topic to collect some more input on just how to improve things? Let anyone add any minor suggestions and/or complaints, and all that is feasible and doesn't make things worse can be done, bit by bit. As for the wiki ads at the side, that's something you'll have to speak with Wikia about.

Also, as for the site being juvenile, is this mainly a form or content issue? I've noticed that there are quite a few {{q|Bla bla bla.|Page redirecting to user| on whatever}} added to pages. I think this could do with a staunch chopping and/or replacement. I for one would like to see less categories and quotes about users. And less of all those mostly-unused templates with images; those are often unfunny and non-strange, as well as slightly or even significantly "juvenile". Could do with a cleaning there, I think. Also, dropping in mentions of nasty things and people without a point in our content looks very much juvenile; unlike Nerd42, I don't mind seeing it where it makes a point, but where it doesn't (which is quite often) I must say I'd like to see him come around and prude up our pages for a bit. Not because I find it nasty, but because I find it stale. --Fluffalizer 11:39, 5 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, forum topic needed I reckon. Don't want to become all Cabalish like Uncyc....

User vanity is, in places, becoming a bit MySpace-ish and over the top but I think we've got this largely under control - as soon as I find some vanity I try and modify it. Some other stuff can't really be retrieved but we don't have much complaints on the vanity deletions.

Something I noticed: the Google ads aren't on the web archive versions of the site... -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 11:57, 5 Aym 2008 (UTC)

I Agree with TDF here, i think our mission, statement maybe needs to be cleared up, but is still relevant today because good randomness in its bestial form is still entertaining. We should pasty more msn convos, those are always classic. For me, the direction of good content has been "would i link it to someone else". which i do sometimes do with things like melvin, and whatnot.

As for a redesign, I think we need to give more focus to the fact that our main page elements are actually editable, while not making it so obvious to vandals that would just hack the page to bits. Another thing to do would be to make the colours and styling a bit less drab, the grey box at the top, it must be said, is the least depressing part of the page, i mean, it looks like the page is stuck in the 1980's world of blocky teletext style graphics.

Finally, juvenile site, the quoting thing is driving me mad. It makes the site very inaccessible to newbies who haven't a clue who any of our users are, of course, it introduces users to readers, but they do not understand the placement of the quote. I always said we should actually go against the flow of places like ED and Uncyc and actually use real quotes in our articles. Wikiquote and google being a good source of that kind of content. The Paint-Shops add to the effect, though they arn't so bad, in a way I like them, but nothing beats a well placed, well made picture. Maybe we should place relevant cartoons and like Triech does on his articles sometimes. Problem is. the juvenile persona is something we have developed, directing content, as you all know, is a hard job. Epics helped to reverse this juvenile effect but more can still be done. Maybe we should go out to take the piss out of other sites too, like we do with [[Citration needed]] whenever anyone states anything that remotely looks like an opinion or uses phrasing like "it is believed that...".

sequelly, I think we need to do things like tidy up our forum a bit, give definite placement to the topics, because some of them are a bit jumbled up.

There's my thoughts.--Silent PenguinLeave Me Alone 12:19, 5 Aym 2008 (UTC)

I say weed out all articles that are one sentence and then I will be happy!--|Fonchezzz| Quacking| 10:53, 6 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Nerd42 weighs in

I have several points I'd like to make.

1. Seperate issues

Main page redesigns and changes in content policies are seperate issues and should be treated and discussed seperately. I have no comment on the main page redesign idea except that it needs to look nice neat tidy and non-offensive and also I'd still like to see a little box for people to just type random stuff and vandalize and so on because that's fun - so long as it changes often.

1a. what i mean by "tidy"

It needs to clearly state the name of the site and what we're about in one sentence that's clearly visible

And we need the site notices to be VERY SHORT with no graphics.

2. Juvenile writing isn't bad

I want literally anybody to be able to just throw some random crap together and be able to put it up on the site without having to endure a long argument about whether it's "good enough". There should be no "good enough" - it just needs to be something, not something evil and not total crap. (like just a link to a youtube video or whatever) Single sentences and/or one-liners are not automatically total crap.

3. Yes some kind of change is probably needed in content policy

We have got a lot of crap that probably needs some cleaning up. But I don't want a fundamental change to the vision.

3a. "Funny" should not be the main objective - "Interesting cool and/or awesome" should be

yeah

4. I'm always gone so my opinions don't count for much

Just wanted to make it clear that I realize that. --Nerd42eMailTalkUnMetaWPediah2g2 21:06, 14 Aym 2008 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with Nerd here, by juvenile I meant the main appearance fo the site, not the content. But one other thing, why no graphic in site messages? Them ones get the best responses (i.e the VFF free beer one) --Testostereich • (ballsack) 21:13, 14 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Its mainly their being at the top of the screen they're a nusience but if one clicks the "dismiss" button, one's afraid of missing important stuff. I don't like Wikipedia's asking for money in the site notice either. Putting that at the bottom of the page, or as content on the Main Page would be better in my opinion. --Nerd42eMailTalkUnMetaWPediah2g2 21:18, 14 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I thought I was gonna disagree with Nerd (as usual... :p) but I agree with everything, especially #2.
If we have to have graphics in the sitenotice, let's make sure they are no bigger than about 75px in height. -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 18:06, 18 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat's statement

No, I'm not an admin. Yes, I am editing a forum in the administrator's league. No, I don't know whether normal users allowed to do that or not. But here goes...

• I don't think humor should be the main goal. Insanity + humor = random humor, and that is a good thing to have on the site. Plain randomness may not be good, but plain humor with no randomness is what Uncyclopedia already does.
• It's good that a person can throw anything together, but at the same time this is not an anything-goes wiki. It is more free than other wikis (you can't go Whee! on Uncyclopedia or Wikipedia) but is not anything-goes. I'm pretty much agreeing with Nerd42 here.

ilogicopedias unique the whole point of ilogicopedia was to be silly and random i think it has a good format and if we change stuff itl just be enother uncyclopedia <-- unsigned comment added by Chip2007

Yes, you are correct! -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 18:06, 18 Aym 2008 (UTC)

In response to the forum topic title

Not much actually is wrong with Illogic. We're creating problems cos we've nothing to talk about :p -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 12:41, 18 Aym 2008 (UTC)

True. Some kind of placebo site improvement will subdue me. --Testostereich • (ballsack) 12:50, 18 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Saying that, even though we have these hguge discussions, we never do anything --Testostereich • (ballsack) 14:05, 18 Aym 2008 (UTC)

Well, we've improved the Illogicopedia: pages, brushed up the main page a bit (though that new news caption look doesn't look like the rest and not too good, IMO), and a whole ton of editing has taken place. --Fluffalizer 21:49, 18 Aym 2008 (UTC)

And now, as for that design bit

Please list and discuss what doesn't look as well as it should and what could reasonably be changed.

• The Moon? It's not had any actual purpose for ages, so should we keep it? if scrapped, it would free up space for links a la Uncyc and WP. --Fluffalizer 21:49, 18 Aym 2008 (UTC)
• I'm all for it, though it has became part of Illogicopedia. What does everyone else think, also the colour scheme is a little drab don't you think?
• But the moon thing has been part of Illogic since it was just a little baby! I wouldn't be against placing it somewhere less intrusive though. As fert colour, yes it sucks but we're trying to mirror Wikipedia which is drab anyway. A front page redesign might be nice. -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 20:20, 20 Yoon 2008 (UTC)
• The moon phase doesn't seem to have any purpose, including being illogical, but it's part of the site culture now, sort of. I agree with Hindleyite that moving it away from the spotlight a bit would be nice. Some WHAT!? (talk) (contribs) (edit count) 17:26, 21 Yoon 2008 (UTC)