Forum:Something else on huffing
I've started going through UN:FIX recently to try and salvage articles, and a few things have popped up that are of a concern:
- Vital articles: They're still being tagged, and then huffed.
- Web traffic generating articles: This is the big one. If we have managed to get to #1 on a google search for something, we should try and hold that spot. Cloud gazing was recently in this list. When I started working on cleaning bits if it up today (it needs work, but it's not bad) I decided to google to find if there was anything that I could steal from online for inspiration. This article was at number one in google search. Maybe we should try and keep pages that will bring people here, rather than destroy them.
- Articles being huffed: For Friggs sake, there are some okay (not fantastic, but okay) articles that are being tagged or added to VFD. Many of these can be salvaged with a little re-jigging and polishing, like Vincent Valentine or The Really Big Button That Doesn't Do Anything (which I just did a little of that to.) Now it may be that these articles will never be good enough to feature, but with 30,000+ articles, and only 2,000 odd features, a minority of our articles will ever be featurable.
Admins, could you check the first two items before huffing a page. Users, could you check the first two items before tagging a page, as well as looking in a pages history, and working out what you can do to improve it. And if you are not tagging articles, could you spend a bit of time saving them? Remember, Sophia wants us to flourish and multiply, so everytime an article gets huffed, Sophia dies a little inside. Pup 12:46 20 Feb '12
Responses below this line
words words words from a newbie
- {{Fix}} and {{VFD}} are stirring things up, no? That's GOOD. We're actually improving the site for once, instead of sitting around and watching it suck, or having a massive indiscriminate forest fire. Decent articles might get killed, sure, but I bet the ratio of complete-shit:decent is probably 10:1 or better.
OK, some huffed articles are #1 in the Google results. So what? Maybe those articles draw a lot of IPs...for vandalism. Would you prefer that your average schmuck trips over a pile of CHUCK NORRIS OVER 9000 LOLCAT 4CHAN RULES that is ranked #1 on Google, or a really good (or half-way decent) article that's ranked 10th...or lower?
I've seen IP comments on article talk pages like "This page is a pile of shit," "This site is pathetic," or "There is no way that people so smart could be so sexist" Great. Fantastic. We draw visitors because we've got articles ranked #1 on Google. You know where a lot of those visitors are going after clicking that top Google link? Judging by those comments...somewhere else.
Several users, Zombiebaron and Dr. Skullthumper for two, believe we should kill shitty pages NO MATTER HOW SIGNIFICANT they are. I somewhat agree, and I agree more every day, especially when I look at, let's say, Iceland. That page was IP flypaper for years. We deleted it...twice (?), but its current version, by a fella name of Rei, was FEATURED. Shoulda been top 10 of '11, in my opinion. I like that result, man.
In conclusion: OK, perhaps we should take into consideration a page's rank on Google, and definitely its significance as a topic (and those two things are prolly directly related). Should page rank or significance save a shit page? I say "no." Keep tagging, and keep salvaging and rewriting. Some day, Uncyclopedia might still give you farts, but it won't be the wurst. ~ BB ~ (T)
~ Mon, Feb 20 '12 17:32 (UTC)
That's not strictly speaking true - major topics are magnets for new contributers, by the same token we all looked them when we started. More to the point - even if they are a little shit, some of these articles being deleted are funny and that is the main purpose of the site. Lastly they link into many of our articles (including the ones you believe are better) thus when they are arbitrarily deleted many red links are created - in the abstact hope that they will be rewritten in the near future. By the same token, what right do two or three contributers have to make such policies? These arguments are however academic and I would put forward that these stances will not bring new contributers, because they take the angle of defeat as opposed to embracing an oppurtunity to re-write, collaborate and write new articles for the site. Uncyclopedia was founded on can-do not shrink down.--Sycamore (Talk) 19:24, February 20, 2012 (UTC)
- But...but are you really saying "deleting pages discourages new contributors", or "all our pages could be funny to somebody, somewhere, so we should keep even the poopy ones"? If it's the second, I disagree with you entirely. If it's the first, why? Are you saying red links discourage decent writers and attract idiot IPs? Because that's true for poopy pages, too. Maybe more so. ~ BB ~ (T) ~ Tue, Feb 21 '12 12:10 (UTC)
- Sycamore is encouraging a more constructive attitude towards mediochre articles. And in my opinion, its not a bad one. We have no clue what really brings new users to this site, nor how to retain them nor what really scares them away. Just total speculation. No one has ever done any analysis of how many people visit this site compared the the article count, deletion count etc... cause we don't have any clue how many visitors we have. If we could compare visitor statistics before or after forest fire week, or if we could compare statistics after an increase of total articles, or compare statistics after NOT slapping a "your article sucks, make it better or we will delete it" on all noob articles, then we would know these answers. Until we can see visitor statistics, this is all pure speculation. --ShabiDOO 23:34, February 21, 2012 (UTC)
- I may have said this earlier, but the point seems to go astray, so I'll say it again in bold. Many of these can be salvaged with a little re-jigging and polishing... Nowhere amI proposing to keep bad articles, but between bad and featured there is a huge gap. A significant, vital, popular or search engine optimal article should be kept, and if it is bad then worked on to okay or good status.
- The examples I've been giving have been reclaimed to okay status. Vincent Valentine is nowhere near featurable status. But it's popular enough to warrant keeping, and has been cut down (which took 10 minutes or so) so that it's okay. Cloud gazing was probably only two or three paragraph redaction away from okay. I've spent more time on it as I want it to be good and hopefully will work on it (post pee review) to be feature status, or at the least quasi-feature. If someone googles "cloud gazing" now, they will most likely click the first link (which was ours) and find an article which is good and decide to stay, or at least keep playing here for a while. If that had been deleted we wouldn't have ranked at all, or possibly taken someone to a huffed page for a little while until google's analytical tools took us down.
- Or the short version:-
FIX IT, DON'T {{FIX}} IT! - Pup 12:48 22 Feb '12
- Sycamore is encouraging a more constructive attitude towards mediochre articles. And in my opinion, its not a bad one. We have no clue what really brings new users to this site, nor how to retain them nor what really scares them away. Just total speculation. No one has ever done any analysis of how many people visit this site compared the the article count, deletion count etc... cause we don't have any clue how many visitors we have. If we could compare visitor statistics before or after forest fire week, or if we could compare statistics after an increase of total articles, or compare statistics after NOT slapping a "your article sucks, make it better or we will delete it" on all noob articles, then we would know these answers. Until we can see visitor statistics, this is all pure speculation. --ShabiDOO 23:34, February 21, 2012 (UTC)