Forum:A fairly large VFD request

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Note: This topic has been unedited for 4400 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over. Do not add to unless it really needs a response.

The background

Anybody who has been watching QVFD or my talk page knows that I don't want to have any of the articles where I was the main contributor to be hosted on this site. In fact I'd like to have my name removed from this site as much as possible.

From a publishing rights standpoint, the community here has te right to publish - in full - all content previously hosted at uncyclopedia.org, or uncyclopedia.wikia.com. Both of these sites ran under NC-BY-CC-SA rules. By the same token, the material published at illogicopedia (sp?), ED, Wikipedia, Alpha one, etc. can also be ported over here in full as long as attribution to the original author is included, and as long as this site runs on a non-commercial basis.

In the past Uncyclopedia admins have honoured the request by an author on QVFD to delete content that they have predominantly created. The ownership of the content remains with the contributor, but by publishing here - or on any other NC-BY-CC-SA site - the rights to publish and republish are given away.

With the importing of content from the Wikia site there was no community discussion on how it would be done, and no discussion - except for after the announcement that the new site was being created - on how the new site was being structured. Or, more accurately, no discussion that was open to the community.

As an individual I dislike the way that this site has been created. My reasoning for that has been discussed elsewhere, in detail, on my talk page. But the rationale for the request is unimportant. The basic reality is that - at this stage and as the site is currently running - I don't want to have my intellectual property being reproduced here without my consent.

The main issues with deletion of content however is that content being deleted can "harm" the community. This is two-fold: it discourages editors from producing content from the site - á la "why did you delete my article" - and the creation of redlinks.

On the first issue, this request is coming from an editor who has stated he doesn't wish to be involved in the site on this server, and has said so vehemently various times.

On the second issue, the same author ha also created a template that helps to eliminate redlinks in a creative way. RL was designed to allow text from redlinks to show as plain text, while still creating a "hidden" redlink that allows for the link to be shown on missing pages reports. This encourages the creation of content at the same time as minimising the visual impact of a redlink, and giving te indication that the Wiki is in some way dysfunctional. For the articles that are to be deleted I'm hapy to minimise the impact of their deletion by changing the redlinks into pseudo-redlinks in this manner.

This is an isolated request, and shouldn't be seen as opening up a number of requests like this in the future. It is purely related to articles that have had me as the primary author - which leaves out articles created through collaboration, such as any IC project, or one-off articles such as counting to potato or India. While some of the articles have been edited after the event, the edits are predominantly minor changes such as proof-reading or one-liners. It is not a wholesale destruction of content, and is limited to only the content that was brought over from the Wikia hosted site - initially created for the Wikia hosted site. Some of the articles are rewrites of previous content on site, but as a general rule the rewrite retains less than 10% of the content prior to rewrite. Love, Stereotype and Street fighter are three examples of this - Lateral thinking puzzle is an exception. I'm happy for these to be reverted back to pre-rewrite status, but I'd point out generally the rewrites are from articles that were sub-par to begin with. (Twitter is not included in this request as much of the content - albeit not the structure - was here previously, and the associated templates are available for use on other similar projects.)

The advantage for the community - all of these articles could be done differently, and creating a different style. This creates an opportunity for talented editors to create their own content on some of the higher importance pages - such as Love and Stereotype. It also shows that the administrative side of the site is acting with the interest of the individual author in mind, while still balancing the needs of the community. While no individual is more important than the community as a whole, the community is made up of individuals worthy of respect.

It also signifies that the administration of the site is not going to be the autocratic entity that Wikia apparently is. Rather than dismissing an editor with no discussion and a lol no as a rationale, they actually are open to listening to the editors of the site.

And the other aspect of all this is that if it's shown that individual editors are respected then you encourage individual editors to either come to the new server or remain on the site. This will hopefully grow the community through showing respect.

As you can tell from the above, this is not a knee jerk reaction, or a tantrum. It is a thought out request from an author who - while not wanting to be part of this site at this stage - honestly hopes that the site becomes successful, for the good of the community that moved here. Nominally Humane! 03:31 13 Jan

The problem with deleting such a large quantity of featured articles isn't so much that it harms the community, but rather that it damages the project (which indirectly harms the community, because the better the project, the stronger the community). Now you might argue that compared to the total amount of featured articles, this is only a tiny portion, and you're right about that, but most of these features are top-notch (even if they weren't voted into the top 10 of a year, which is only a popularity contest, really). While keeping these articles against the main contributor's wish may not be the most morally justifiable thing to do, if we consider the morality of the issue from an Uncyclopedian standpoint, where writing good articles is virtue and vandalising/blanking/deleting them is sin, then at least it should be understandable how what you suggest seems very counter-intuitive to the larger part of the community.
Yes, creating and sustaining an environment in which author requests are generally honoured would create a positive atmosphere for the community to grow and thrive in, but I don't think it'd be unreasonable to add one caveat to that: such requests may not be contrary to the project in significant ways. If Uncyclopedia doesn't even respect itself, then how can we expect it to ever have a respectable reputation?
And really, Puppy, we're still the same community. A community that holds votes on almost every forum that's created, no less. A lot more democratic than a lot of other internet communities out there. The only reason the move from Wikia went about mostly in secret was because of fears that Wikia might intervene and stop the whole thing from happening (and the secrecy was mostly just on-site). If you'd gotten on IRC and asked around a bit, the whole thing could've been explained to you in PMs and you could've involved yourself in the process, if you'd have liked. The regrettable fact that many people weren't aware of the move until it was announced is more due to them not going on IRC a lot, than it is because there was an evil cabal that insisted that everything had to happen in utmost secrecy. —Sir Socky Sexy girls.jpg Mermaid with dolphin.jpg Tired Marilyn Monroe.jpg (talk) (stalk) Magnemite.gif Icons-flag-be.png GUN SotM UotM PMotM UotY  PotM WotM 19:59, 13 January 2013

The articles in question

The vote

Score: -7
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