Illogicopedia:History

A detailed site chronology can be found here, and a somewhat less serious history page can be found here.

This section is Logical; it is meant to be so. Prepare to get bored!

Sensible Section

Some people ask how the Illogicopedia came into being. Well, it all starts with a male Illogia and a female Illogia...

2006

The Scratchy Beginning (Novelniver-Ditzimber)

The idea of a wiki which houses random content, and basically just anything interesting that doesn't have a home elsewhere, was the brain child of Silent Penguin and Nerd42. In a "wouldn't it be cool to..." moment during an IRC conversation, the idea was requested at Wikia, but was rejected on the premise that it was "too similar to Uncyclopedia" and "would not be able to attract enough users".

Wikia did however suggest a Scratchpad be set up, and waited to see if the Illogicopedia, as it were, would garner any contributors. This, however, did not take off. Hindleyite, who had previous history of establishing wikis with his own 'punchbag' free-for-all vandalism experiment, agreed that Scratchpads indeed get you nowhere. After prompting from Hindleyite, ?pedia was moved to ********.info, a wikifarm which was fairly reliable but prone to long periods of downtime.

2007

The Wikifarm Ages (Jeremy–Farbleum)

Contrary to Wikia's misgivings, the Illogicopedia thrived in its early months. By Farbleum, Silent Penguin and Hindleyite had built a basic but very finite structure - gradually refined with input from the small but committed membership - establishing a firm grounding with a clear set of rules and guidelines (largely written by Nerd42) on which the wiki still largely relies.

As with most wikis in their infant stages, Illogicopedia's small adminship was pushed the limits with increasing instances of vandalism. However, this was to be the Golden Age of ?pedia; for some time, the wiki kept expanding, the membership gradually increased and the first admins outside the founding trio were appointed.

The Period of Torment (Arche–Arply)

The subject of hosting once again became an issue. As Illogicopedia grew, it began to place a strain on the servers, making for ever-increasing loading times. With downtime becoming commonplace it was decided the ?pedia would have to move.

Two options were open: going independent or waiting for Wikia to make a final decision on a second request. Wikia still had their doubts, so admins underwent an investigative period in which MediaWiki was installed on numerous free hosting services. However, many lacked the support required to run even an older version of MediaWiki to its full potential. The closest the Illogicopedia came to following through with this was with a free host that proved suitable, demanding no adverts and having a good spec.

After much wrangling, Wikia offered Illogicopedia free hosting just after contingency plans had been set up. Silent Penguin and certain members of the community were reluctant at first but it was decided that, due to benefits in gaining traffic and shifting of technical workload to dedicated, paid employees, Illogicopedia be moved to Wikia.

The Era of Epics (Arply–Octodest)

The site entered a new phase at Wikia. Since moving there, it continued to grow with the community and by Octodest 2007 the article count had reached 2,000. Rules where fleshed out and made more concise than before, but some users continued to push the envelope. It was this that prompted the creation of more clear cut rules of rights and wrongs, resulting in a diverse collection of policy pages which could be described as the site's bible. However it isn't, so we won't.

This is the era that epics also appeared. First, they began as a simple term given to massive articles, but later gained a more official role. The Illogic Pickle, a new writing competition crediting creative writing prowess also emerged, with the first contest a resounding success. The Pickle contests would remain a staple of Illogicopedia for years to come.

Surrendependence Day (Arply 4)

The era of epics is the reason Surrendependence Day has started.

Stagnation (Novelniver–Ditzimber)

Admins began to notice a decline in user and article numbers and it was feared that Illogicopedia had hit a ceiling in a similar way to Uncyclopedia. Both seemed to be deteriorating slowly, with uncreative content becoming more widespread. In addition, a number of regular editors began to slide away from the project, and the site began to gain a slightly younger, less diverse user base. Other areas of the site were also hit hard, with IRC seeing an average of less than two visitors in a whole day and new forum posts on just a fortnightly basis. Admins understood something needed to be done, but were not sure about what to do and how to do it. Discussions raged for weeks, but it was finally decided that an article drive was needed to improve the site. This would endeavour to improve existing content rather than place focus on creation of new articles.

2008

Winterval (Jeremy 8th - 15th 2008) Retro festival, 1st full week of Jeremy

For a week starting the eighth of Jeremy, the entirety of ?pedia switched to its old forum and wiki in an homage to the days of yore spent at the old wiki, a tasteful reminder than Wikia isn't as bad as we thought.

The Recovery Period (Jeremy–Farbleum)

As of 10th Jeremy 2008, the Illogicopedia had more than sextupled, reaching the 3000 article mark.

Some restructuring of the rules to improve article content were made and the peer review was set up. Some failures still loitered on the site remaining somewhat inactive; Illogimail never made it off the ground, mainly due to a lack of any reply from anyone posted to, and the forum in general saw a stagnation of updates. Some aspects did however improve: articles became bulkier in size, rate of growth improved and the IRC channel now began to see between 5-12 people a night. This actually included many who did not frequent Illogicopedia, and the community, which remains to this day an integral part of the site, began to thrive once more.

Many users noticed a continued decline in certain areas of sister site Uncyclopedia, with increasingly specialised 'humour policing' subtly being put into action. Illogicopedia, by contrast, seemed to have stabilised, and whilst quality of articles remained much the same, Illogicopedia had managed to fight its way out of the toilet bowl of inactivity and shake itself off.

The Boom and Bust Months (Farbleum–Arply)

Having dusted itself down and brushed aside the toilet paper, Illogicopedia saw steady growth during the following months. An influx of new users and numerous high quality articles were beginning to grace the pages of Illogicopedia, a trend continued throughout the third Illogic Pickle Competition, which saw the highest entry rate yet.

Despite the wide-reaching attractions held by The Pickle, once it was over, activity on the site experienced a major lull. All of the fringe users who had joined ?pedia leading up to or during The Pickle simply left, and many more experienced users began to take less notice of the site. After a couple of weeks stagnation, Illogicopedia was once again ready to pick herself up off of the floor with growth gradually beginning to once again take place, albeit at a painfully slow rate.

Progression period (Aym–Jumbly)

The spring months brought an influx of new articles and users to the site. As the article count shot towards 5,000, many areas of the site including the front page and the logo underwent graphical redesigns. The era saw an explosion in VFF's size and feature updates began to take place more regularly, sometimes up to three times a week.

All was not well, however, as a discontent over Wikia's site skin changes rumbled. As Wikia's advertising became more intrusive, a number of users expressed their dislike of the forced change from Monobook, a vital part of the site's visual connection with Wikipedia. Discussion on going independent once again became relevant but the site stuck with Wikia as compromise was sought.

Dark ages (Jumbly–Novelniver) Independence day, 7th of Novelniver

After weeks of anger over the situation brewing at Wikia, the shackles had grown too tight and it was time to cut the strings. With Wikia trying to force skins out across the board and (some say, unscrupulously and deviously) buying out domains of its larger wikis, Illogicopedia decided that it had gone too far with its actions. Most people at ?pedia realised Wikia was two-faced from the start, but others doubted they had the audacity to actually go through with their nefarious re-skinning and domain-hogging plans. With Wikia on the rocks, and ?pedia's situation having been in the toilet too many times before, it was not worth the risk to continue being hosted by Wikia.

Many options were discussed, including taking up private hosting and using an alternative wiki farm. The main issue was money and it was reasoned that wikifarms are generally worse than Wikia, even if less intrusive. It was decided to join with Uncyclopedia, who had recently had its domain and host taken away by the cash-strapped Wikia. This led to Carlb (of Uncyclopedia Babel fame) offering to host the site, which the community are asskissingly grateful for.

Nerd42, resident American Capitalist Running Dog Lackey, long a supporter of Wikia, shifted his long-held stance of opposing the move to supporting Illogicopedia's Declaration of Independence from Wikia in a concessionary blog post on July 8th, 2008.

2009

Illogicopedia is free (Ditzimber–Aym)

After a protracted battle -- many remnants of which are still in evidence today -- Illogicopedia completely shook free from the grip of Wikia and readied itself for a new chapter in life. Though it took a good few months for all the bugs to be ironed out and for the site to settle in to its new home, common consensus was that it was, with hindsight, indeed the correct move for the wiki. Illogicopedia had jumped ship at just the right time.

Stalwart Silent Penguin having already had the foresight to buy up the Illogicopedia.org domain name before Wikia; had they done so, Illogico would have been in a right pickle. Sister site Uncyclopedia was not so lucky: it fell foul of Wikia's domain shifting cost-cutting measures, a general move away from community-based decisions and towards financially-determined rule.

Illogicopedia, on the other hand, had a new lease of life. It was free to decide its own future, and set about laying down plans to rebuild and take another shot at the big guys. Not all was well behind the scenes, however. A small band of users (admittedly very small) was not in favour of the greater downtimes and server blips the wiki's new home brought with it, felt unable to adjust to the changes and would ultimately descend into retirement. For the most part, though, there were relatively few casualties in the transition - in fact, the move brought about a renewed vigour, even if new users seemed to be in short supply.

The Summer of Love (Yoon–Ergust)

Mid-2009 saw another activity lull, and though the community resolved to remedy this with a long overdue Pickle competition, it only seemed to have the adverse effect (mainly due to the laziness of particular judges, but we shall let that one slide...). Nonetheless, activity would pick up around the summer holidays, which also saw an influx of newbies and general enthusiasm for Illogicopedia once more. The end of the holidays didn't have as much effect as was originally thought, as September saw the welcome return of some old hands to keep the project rolling along nicely.

More rumblings were afoot, though, at the usefulness of Illogicopedian of the Month. It was the considered opinion of a select few established figures that the award was no longer functioning as it should, plagued as it was by block voting and a general apathy towards voting. This culminated in the first non-user to win the award, a hugely controversial incident which kick started the whole 'is IOTM still relevant?' argument.

The 11th September saw freak tragedy strike Illogicopedia. Following a week of hard work by the administrators and users alike, a server hiccup saw all data from the past seven days almost completely wiped, causing a brief outburst of annoyance amongst the populace. Nevertheless, activity continued apace and most, if not all of the damage was repaired in the weeks following. As the nights began to draw in, another unexpected burst in activity saw Illogicopedia finish summer 2009 on a high, the Illogiblog, amongst other projects, seeing traffic growth as Autumn began.

The Autumn of Cold Indifference (Serpeniver–Ditzimber)

Autumn brought with it many things for Illogicopedia; rain, Halloween, and the start of the school year. This was a time of extended inactivity where users flew the nest for bigger and better things in the real world, and those left were forced to sustain themselves on features well past their sell-by dates. These were dark times for the site, dark times indeed. Just as Illogic had crawled up in a cave, ready to die activity started to pick up again. The article reps on its heart monitor began to increase as a fresh dose of cake-related forum posts were injected deep within its blood stream, saving its life.

2010

The Ascent of Roberto (January–March)

The Autumn of Cold Indifference was soon replaced by a harsh Winter of Inactivity during which users had to huddle together in wardrobes to fend off the cold. Any remaining hope that missing admins Asema and the Divine Fluffalizer might still be somewhere out there alive were immediately extinguished as temperatures plummeted. As January met its end and the Recent Changes page prepared to bloom with February edits, a mysterious man by the name of Roberto emerged on the scene. Grabbing the site by the short and curlies, Illogicopedia was immediately plunged into darkness. Admins groped around on the blog for answers, but not even the usually dependable stead of Carlb could yield the solution Illogicopedia so desperately sought.

After a full two weeks Roberto relinquished his grip and the site reappeared, thinner than before, but otherwise OK. Weeks passed and users began to re-emerge as once again when it seemed safe to edit. As February ended, ushering in March, the site went from strength to strength. Unlikely as it was, new users began to find the site and once again activity began to rise. The longheld hope that Illogicopedia may one day achieve world domination seemed more real than it had done in months.

And then Roberto came back.

After biding his time for over a month he pounced, knocking Illogicopedia clean into the dust. This time however, the attack was not exclusive, with Wikipedia too feeling the effects of Roberto's wrath. This, another week out, coupled with the previous attempt on its life, reduced Illogicopedia right down to its core userbase.

Penisgate (Arply)

For a long time a silent battle had raged on Illogicopedia over decency, with controversial images being deleted and uploaded every so often in sporadic bouts of ethical conflict. This had remained largely behind the scenes on the site, a few crude images being uploaded here and there and the biggest event passing quietly 6 months earlier with the creation of the cockbeast article. However, near the start of April this bizarre spectacle was pushed suddenly to the very forefront of activity. On the 3rd of April, around 3:38 in the morning, admin Testostereich replaced the site logo with a depiction of a penis.

Though the logo was restored to its former glory, and its attacker banned by mid-afternoon the following day, the wheels of controversy had already been set in motion. Deciding he'd learned his lesson, and that the site had taken it in good stead, Testostereich reverted his ban. While initially met with apathy, one editor took great offence to this perceived abuse of power. The user, enraged, turned vandal and the site defences had to be activated. After cooling down the user returned to the site, announcing his indignation. At long last the decency debate had been brought to the surface.

Seeking the right to depict the male genitalia freely a rights group, the Penis Coalition, was set up by Testostereich. A few members joined, but not before flared opinions broke the air. The atmosphere was thicker than cold custard as Pro-penis users took their stance on one side, while mainly Nerd42 and Hindleyite set up camp on the other. A tense few days looked set to unfold.

Luckily, as with all Illogicopedia arguments, initially heated exchanges quickly rescinded as everyone began to mellow out, and eventually a few jokes were cracked. Three days after the battle had begun it had ended: Apathy the clear winner.

The Scandalous Events of June 8th, 2010

The events of this day were so shocking they can only be contained on a separate article.

Uncyclopedia Finally Hits the Toilet Water, Illogicopedian Autumn Revival (July–January)

Over at Wikia, things were starting to bubble under once more. Talk of a new skin was rife, and Uncyclopedia continued to feel the pinch as Jumbo Whales and Co. went into damage limitation mode. We wouldn't see Oasis, the eventual successor to New Monaco, until October, but concessions had to be made at Uncyclopedia as early as May, when the Almighty Overlords inflicted forced MySpace-esque social network and Web 2.0 nonsense upon poor Uncle Pete.

Illogicopedia saw a real revival during autumn, with a wave of new and returning users revitalising Recent Changes in the continued absence of the old guard. Those in question cite 'real life' as the reason, though as we all know this is no excuse as there is no such thing as real life. It's all been a lie, I tell you! To combat the overarching apathy, two new admins, the first for over a year, were appointed in December.

2011

Rise and fall of the humour wiki in miniature (February–April)

Illogicopedia continued apace through the first part of 2011, with a particularly keen eye on new features. A steady stream of users trickled in from the usual sources, with disaffected Uncyclopedians forming the vast part of a new wave of 'Neo-Illogicans' which would find the site via other humour wikis. Some of these jumped ship from Encyclopedia Dramatica, which had unfortunately hit a wall and emerged requiring extensive plastic surgery. ED as we knew it was dead, replaced by a somewhat sanitised version of Know Your Meme known as 'OhInternet'. Illogicopedia braced itself for a seemingly inevitable mass influx of Dramaticans... though we shall never know if they arrived or not, as someone we are all too familiar with (or rather his daughter, or perhaps his clones) had once again worked their magic over the Illogicopedia servers. Not only that, but Uncyclopedia seemed to be experiencing serious downtime, meaning that for some, Illogico, Uncyc and ED were inaccessible for at least a couple of days.

Workin' for a Gherkin (June–November)

New-found activity at Illogicopedia prompted the long-awaited return of an old favourite, the Illogic Pickle. Not only did a fresh generation of users get to experience the thrill of a well-placed pickle poking, but the variety of decent entries provided front page content for months to come. As many suspected, it was indeed an elaborate plan to further increase activity, a fact revealed in centre-left tabloid the Illogicopedian Times some months later.

Talk of Reptilian invasions and Illogicopedia's latest spammer influx lasted until late summer, as the Illogicopedian membership drive continued apace with a steady stream of ten spambots per month providing juicy content for the recently revived Nose Collection. Ah, where would we be without those guys? The block log would only be half as interesting if it weren't for the likes of Hellsmasher83 and Pablo, who truly are the real heroes of Illogicopedia. They may be mindless automatons, but at least they care enough about the site to actually post on it, unlike certain slackers.

In the latter part of the year, the once-popular Illogicopedian Times experienced a comeback in an all-new, fancy wikified form. This editorial, the latest in a long line of Illogicomedia projects, provided a competent competitor to Uncle Pete's own newspaper-style thing, and built up quite a readership before going on hiatus. Shortly after, The Illogicomedia Foundation unveiled its brand new website, a blatant ripoff of that Wikimedia thing, but who the heck cares? Well, Jimbo, actually. Under control of Pickle Winner and Mr Uncle Pete 'The' Bard, the site immediately made a huge impression on wikisphere politics with intense debates on such topics as who should put the micro pizza in the microwave. Much like Commons discussions, then.

2011-2012

Anniversary (December 2011-January 2012)

To commemorate the fact that Illogicopedia had been around in various shapes & forms for half a decade, an official month of merrymaking was declared. Ideas were thrown around in a typically Illogicopedian fashion in the run-up to the occasion, and eventually a number of things ended up happening, including a super special logo, the Illogicopedian's Choice Awards (that never concluded) and the return of the 'Big Brrother' wikigame. All in all, it was rather nice, and there was much toasting & clinking of wine glasses.

Despite an undisputed consensus that "SOPA sucks" which greeted each site visitor, Illogicopedia remained accessible during the Internet-wide protest blackouts on January 18th so as to provide the deranged denizens of the Internets with something to do while the whole rest of the entire world, including Amish communities, ground to a total halt.

Illogicopedia unrevived (May-December 2012)

Throughout 2012 there were various attempts to get things to pick up again, including an announcement of some things by Athyria and a tribute to those no longer with us.

2013-present

Looking to move again (February–Octodest 2013)

In what is possibly a sign of it's age, the wiki appeared to lull itself in what can be most accurately described as a light sleep. As the old guard of users became more infrequent visitors, the flag of Illogicopedia was carried instead by a sustainable stream of new ones. Things still happened, but instead of them occurring in the space of a day, they developed over weeks and months. Alongside this, a disease most commonly known as Spambotitis infected the servers (and does to this day), with scores of new, not-so-subtly disguised users signing up and proceeding to leave garbled messages about various internet products and the like. There was much tutting and shaking of heads in response to this.

In early 2013, Ben & RMS headed an attempt to get the show back on the road. This was met with lukewarm success, with the creation of an article improvement drive and the return of some familiar faces for a brief period. Perhaps the most notable thing to come from this rumbling was the proposal to move Illogicopedia to new servers, with outage problems and spambotting being cited as motives for the yet-to-happen relocation of wiki data.

The moving was set to be Aym or Yoon, But it was pushed to Octodest. And according to Athyria, She said it's happening. The day after that, It happened!

Zombie Illogicopedia (Octodest 2013-Arche 2017)

in Octodest of 2013, Illogicopedia cured Spambotitis by moving the website to new servers. And has it turns out, The new servers a day keep Spambotitis away. We're nearing to its 10,000th article and... That's it. The end.

And now...

The illogicopedia zombie will now proceed to eat your flesh. :)

The New Horizon (Arply 2017 ~)

New people joined, it seems this site gained its thing once again. (re)REVIVE!

Also, we reached 10k articles. Weare aiming for ED's article count. Can we reach it?

We are active. We have, like 2000 edits a week now.

With some H Y P E R A C T I V E users.

Also, Illogicopedia has a diverse and inclusive fanbase now. Seriously.

And So On

As of today, Illogicopedia continues to rumble on, and looks set to occasionally entertain 0.00000000000002% of the population for some time to come.

In 2016, we succumbed to meme culture.

In the Future (Febtober 5789)

Sensebibble Sonk While the rest of this article makes sense, this part is insane. Phrubub to be fnurdled.

In the future, things will be different. We will be free.

Also, more awesome stuff will happen at Illogicopedia. But that can only happen with your money. So send us some now or else DIE LIKE THE HEATHEN YOU AREEE!!!!!!!11

Our ultimate goal is to get the site stable to a point where there is no need to write anything on this page, but that would be boring, so Stuff is bound to happen - but only if You make it happen. So do stuff!

HEY, THINGS! HAPPEN!

See also

• Illogicopedia site logo chronology
• Illogicopedia:History/The Events of June 8th, 2010