Illogicopedia:Article Improvement Drive

You've probably heard it all before, but: Over a long period of time the general quality of articles here has gradually slid downwards like a fat kid scraping his arse on a helter skelter. The general consensus that has come across is the need fot an article improvement drive - i.e. this. The general aim is to locate all articles in need of improvement, group them all together and set about improving them. This is to improve the content of the wiki on the whole and set the precedent for the site where quality becomes more important again (not as extreme as Uncyclopedia though.) --Testostereich • (ballsack) 17:07, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC) Here goes:

How it'll work

1. We advertise this purge pubicly before the event. Give the users some notice.
2. Basicly during a predetermined period of time (probably a week) all the poor articles will be weeded out and have a specific template put on them which points out tothe reader that the article has been selected for AIDS (Article Improvement Drive Subject). Once the page has been marked as AIDS it will be protected. The AIDS template isn't to be removed unless by an admin. Report to an admin in the case of any deviance of the this rule. If this idea goes down well I'll make that template for the articles, aswell as a category for the event.
3. After the initial purge a longer period of time (probably a month), the articles in AIDS will be unprotected and open for editing. Once an article is improved it can be removed from the AIDS back in to the mainspace. Any articles left unimproved by then will either be trashed/VFD'd or deleted. Hopefully by VFDing an article it will inspire the creator to improve it.
4. All of this will be heavily advertised on the news/sitenotice/forum/etc/etc.
5. VFH is suspended during the initial week of the purge.

Exempt Pages

Pages exempt from AIDS are:

Featured and Pickle winning articles

Queued for feature articles

Sensible Pages (e.g. forum and project pages)

Maybe IRC and MSN quote articles?

Spam Pages

You can mark them as AIDS but I generally delete spam on site.

So what do you guys think?

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As said, Extreme admin smash for. --Sir Asema ^Politics _{Complaint Inbox or Outbox} 17:15, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan. The more projects to improve the site, the better.--MathPoet 17:39, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Very well, as long as any worthwhile content in marked articles is preserved. (ie. no collateral damage!) I suppose articles in need of AID that don't make it could have their essential stuff integrated into another, similar page or have a page of a similar theme written around it to take their place. (either of which I think anyone should be able to do at any time, noting on the talk page of the AIDed page that a replacement has been written) --Fluffalizer 18:17, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

A valid point that I hope we incorporate --Testostereich • (ballsack) 18:19, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

How the hell do you define "quality" on this site? It's supposed to be random stuff. And the quality hasn't gone down over time, originally the site was totally full of one-liners and such, now we've still got the old one liners, but the overall quality has improved over time, I'd say. I think this is all rather unnecessary. Illogicopedia isn't supposed to be about deleting "bad quality" articles, it's supposed to be a place where you can write wherever you want as long as it isn't blatant vanity or excessive obscenity. If a writer wants to get their work deleted, they can always go to Uncyclopedia. Okay, my ranting is over. I suppose I could put up with this, but I might start whining if y'all get too crazy with the template tagging. Remember the free-spiritedness of our site. If we start looking for "quality," where does it end? --THE 21:49, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

After thinking about it for a while

I don't think the quality of articles has gone down. It has in fact gone up since we started. I have come across two articles with the AIDS tag so far and none of them, in my opinion, needed it. -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 21:55, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it hasn't. What people perceive as such is the simple fact that once you've seen enough of something, it gets old. And many articles are very similar, making them, once you've read some of them, less interesting to look at and read to you.

So what would make for subjective "improvement" is breaking away from the old memes and doing new things with the content. Some want to chop away the old and tired, and I think simply doing so would go against the basic goals of the wiki. I want to see the ways of editing expand with forking and merging and otherwise meta-editing the content to create new things.

A lot of people are tiring of the way things are, and some freshness seems to be badly needed so as to not have the community decay. Hence my suggestions, which I hope will minimize the destructiveness of changing our ways, preserving as much creative effort as possible.

I haven't put it all together before; nice to get a clear view of things. --Fluffalizer 22:27, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Alot of people on Uncyclopedia seem to think that Uncyclopedia has been getting worse as well, but it too has gone up in quality since its early days. I think the Divine Fluffalizer's reasoning is very wise here, and can be applied to Uncyclopedia as well.

The more I think about this idea, the more it repels me. I came to this site because I loved the totally unregulated creative atmosphere. But now pages like Gills, which have absolutely nothing wrong with them aside from being a little strange, are being tagged. Why? I won't go on too long, as I already ranted about this in the above section. But let's not let this go too far. Remember that illogicopedia is not Uncyclopedia. There's a practically endless array of articles just like Gills floating around on the site, including many of mine. Are we going to tag them all because their random nonsense doesn't match our newfound high standards for random nonsense? This is a dangerous road to embark on. And look at me, I said I wouldn't rant again, but then I did. Oh well. I think I've made my opinion perfectly clear now. Also, FU Divine Fluffalizer, you edit conflicted me! :) --THE 22:31, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

I believe you are taking our thoughts a bit too far. We're not asking for this to be Uncyclopedia, we're asking for articles to be interesting to look at or possibly even read. The point is not to delete everything in sight, the point is to make there some sort of new content. Because, as I see it, there is little in the way of that.

As for it being a dangerous road to embark on, it is -- and there is, you are saying, a way to avoid danger in the life of any flourishing website? If things go badly, they go badly. They can be fixed, and nothing is permanent (except oversight, and we don't have that).

Now, if everyone understands, I'm asking for merging, forking, editting, and the like -- not creating new articles, nor deleting old articles (unless, of course, they are neglected. And that's strictly why.) --Sir Asema ^Politics _{Complaint Inbox or Outbox} 23:20, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

--Sir Asema ^Politics _{Complaint Inbox or Outbox} 23:20, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

I agree with everything THE has said and am against this. That is all. --~~~~ 23:27, 29 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Just in case it wasn't clear enough:

THIS IS NOT A DELETIONIST PROPOSAL.

What is proposed is meta-editing (merging, improving, forking), and only if an article receives no love from th e community for a long time is it deleted.

frankly, the Against votes are upsetting considering the reasons they are based on. I do not mean to offend, but WE ARE NOT TRYING TO DELETE EVERYTHING.

--Sir Asema ^Politics _{Complaint Inbox or Outbox} 01:07, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Look, I never meant for a huge deletionism spree. What I meant is as a wiki to improve or merge what content we have. Is there anything wrong with that? I never mentioned new high standards of nonsense on illogicopedia I just think it's time for a longoverdue tidy up of the content. Most of the content thats been marked as AIDS is mine, and I did that to set a precedent. I'm not trying to make us uncyclopedia. --Testostereich • (ballsack) 07:48, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

WAIT! i disagree with your plan. DONT protect the pages, if you do, i will be bored. My plan was to mark them, then just go crazy on them. WE CANNOT PROTECT THEM PLEASE IT WILL TAKE LONGER. I have already started on likle 5 articles. So i am begging you. dont protect the pages.--|Fonchezzz| Quacking| 11:36, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

WOahmygod. Gills? IT HAS NO AIDS! who put that there thats it an above par article. I only fixed ones that were one liners!--|Fonchezzz| Quacking| 11:40, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Fonchezzz, calm down. I'm tooo laxy to protect pages :P --Testostereich • (ballsack) 16:17, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

my graph shows the true extent of the problem, good articles have genrally been improving, while bad articles have genrally been getting more and more in bulk and their quality has stagnated, some people remain a bit dilusional over the good articles, and dont see the bad ones, some peoples expectations have risen and the bad articles nolonger meet their standards, and some people want to strive for better articles. I thought we discussed this in detzem and everyone was fine with article improvement, the idea of deleting something is only if an article cannot be improved, which would be proved by the article not being improved, then it could be considered for redeeming value and maybe archived or something or dictionaried if suitable, or something. One thing is for certain article improvement works, we have been running it since the start as "trashy pages" which i periodically add articles to, and they never build up. Nobody can argue with the graph, NOBODY! --Silent PenguinLeave Me Alone 17:20, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

OK, sorry 'bout that

Wow, Seppy's gone all Dave Gorman on us! NOW, is this the much awaited, long put-off article improvement drive? We can make it so. Also, my comment waaaaay up there was made last night when I was pissed off that Wigan had just lost. I kind of missed the point and apologise for any chaos it started. The AIDS template thing makes it sound as though the article sucks and will be deleted soon - not necessarily true. Someone could tag a good article because it has potential and they would like to see it expanded/worked on by the community. Just cos an article is tagged it won't be deleted. Lots of valid points though - mainly down with deletionism - which I agree with. No unnecessary deletions. Bleh. -- Hindleyak  Converse • ?blog • Click here! 19:43, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

I'm kinda sorry I didn't explain it very well initially. Maybe I should change the AIDS template? --Testostereich • (ballsack) 19:48, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

and the moral of the story, never edit when wigan lose, or support wigan, one of the two. ;D --Silent PenguinLeave Me Alone 21:07, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

I suppose I overreacted a tad. Probably a result of misunderstanding where the emphasis here would be. I just want to make sure that our desire for quality doesn't override our sense of writers being free to do absolutely whatever they want. I probably won't participate much, because the concept of "Good nonsense vs. bad nonsense" highly puzzles me. But as long as nobody goes deletion crazy, then I won't whine anymore. --THE 22:18, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

my thoughts on the AIDS virus idea

I think first we should go around finding all the article that belong in Category:Random mashing of the keyboard and add them to that category. Then, merge the vast majority of them. That, by itself, would probably improve quality. We want a site that is interesting to look at and possibly even read. --Nerd42eMailTalkUnMetaWPediah2g2 22:01, 30 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Its all Glum round here...

And I don't blame you. We are getting less and less articles and more and more wonnabe projects. No arrogance here, but I think they are trying to rival me. I have had a think about this and have decided there will be NO MORE Reality TV shows after this, only possibly a BB next year. I think i've begun to hate my own creation. Back 2 improvement, i believe it is a matter of time before we have a downfall.

Ben ^Blade 17:02, 31 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

Im not sure where to go with this, but the project things are getting out of hand ill agree with that, but NO more reality things is a tad too harsh, just rid the wiki of those making exssesive ones. The article quality is not something i can talk about, seen as i have not been here from the beginning, but its alright. I say that this is not super-nessercery, but is still a good thing, and could be useful.----||Jojo Randomise^{Im just plain Quackers!}| 17:35, 31 Jeremy 2008 (UTC)

It seems this is a slippery slope. Some of the articles might not be intended to be lengthy. If so, perhaps they could be collected into their own category. This would be in the interests of improving the readability of the wiki. It might even be interesting as a collection. I would wonder, in each case, the intention of the author - is the article intended to be only a "one-liner" or was it started and never finished? I think that no one intends fascism here. We just want to clean things up a bit. Some of the proposed AID articles are interesting, but I gather that no one really knows how they are to be developed but the authors themselves. I would be interested in the authors clarifying which ones are intended for development and which ones are not. I agree that we don't want to destroy the article genre of "random and tiny" and perhaps their status could be clarified since so far this seems to constitute the bulk of the AID articles.--MathPoet 23:10, 10 Farbleum 2008 (UTC)

One last thing...

Can someone put an Includeonly on the AIDs template so that it gets added into the Trashy pages category? That way we can reach the articles from the sidebar. --~~~~ 03:30, 11 Farbleum 2008 (UTC)