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Stop adding content about the spinoff until third-party coverage is found. If this continues, this page will likely be fully protected, and the uncyclopedia.co link being added to the WP:BLACKLIST.--Otterathome (talk) 07:48, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Per WP:N, notability applies to the article, not the content. Weight may be given to content according to coverage, but though very little about Uncyclopedia has been covered in reliable sources at all for years now, that doesn't mean the article shouldn't be kept up to date. -— Isarra༆18:34, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
In relationship to notability - the site uncyclopedia.org/Uncyclopedia.wikia.com has been referenced in several publications in the past, and as such meets notability criterion. The site at uncyclopedia.co is a significant aspect of the history of that site. While I am in agreement that the independently hosted site may not - at this stage - merit an article of its own accord, it is significant in relationship to this page. (In the same way the child of a celebrity may not be notable enough to merit an article of it's own, deleting the mention of the child from said celebrities article would be counter-productive.) PuppyOnTheRadiotalk21:55, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
The editors of this article including SPIKE have worked hard to keep the content fair, reliable and objective considering the lack of third party sources available. These squabbles are also a waste of all of our time. Having NO content about the fork does no one any good...especially wikipedia's readers. --Shabidoo | Talk03:45, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree with the two posts above that references to the Fork would be useful. I think it is useful to note that the Wikia site uses Misplaced Pages as a standard for whether a new article constitutes cyberbullying, and it would be useful to note that the Wikia site doesn't share usernames with the rest of Wikia. Famously, Misplaced Pages does not exist merely to hold useful information, and the issue raised was not utility but notability, on which the right answer is not as clear. Shabidoo, regarding wasting time, this article had reached a state of balance acceptable to all until young editors at the Fork began debating emergency measures that might be taken to goose their site traffic. ToFor others to debate by bringing me up on conflict-of-interest charges might be viewed as a time-waster too. Spike-from-NH (talk) 12:05,22:02 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Why would "not sharing usernames" be notable? The various projects are so incompatible that any attempt to take an article from the English-language version and repost it in Spanish or Polish would violate the author's copyright, as the licences don't match. As for Spike and COI, take a look at this user's edits on Wikia's version of Uncyclopedia. This is not an uninvolved editor; this is an admin over there who has come here to do some Wiki-PR. WP:COI anyone? K7L (talk) 05:31, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
I think everyone here has a conflict of interest to some degree, and Spike seems to be editing in good faith. In my opinion, anyone trying to remove all mention of the fact that Uncyclopedia is currently hosted at two sites is editing in bad faith; and anyone trying to steer traffic in a way that favors one site over the other is editing in bad faith. Spike is doing neither. As far as I know, there are no fully disinterested Wikipedians editing this article who have not spent a significant amount of time editing Uncyclopedia, because nobody else cares about Uncyclopedia. KarakasaObake (talk) 22:33, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
There are. The information is not notable - you can not provide reliable, independent references that show that either of the sites is representing Uncyclopedia or whether either of them are (still) notable. The past before Wikia is notable, after that is questionable as no-one outside of the editors of Uncyclopedia cared. --Dirk Beetstra10:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
I've reverted Otterathome
Because he or she is edit-warring reflexively at this point. But let me just make three points:
The article was full of out-of-date information sourced by dead links that I quite properly removed;
While certainly we can't write about anything that isn't reliably sourced, external links aren't sourced at all, and there is no more justification for "blacklisting" the en.uncyclopedia.co link than there is for "blacklisting" the uncyclopedia.wikia.com link.
It is inaccurate to call en.uncyclopedia.co "the fork." There is no "official" version of Uncyclopedia. The articles are copyrighted under Creative Commons, and Wikia no more owns Uncyclopedia than do any of the editors. Any site that hosts Uncyclopedia articles is Uncyclopedia. It is accurate to say that the wiki forked; it is inaccurate to say that either "tine" of the fork is official in any capacity.
By the way, Otterathome, it is not .no but .co, I have no idea why you are saying it is .no. And KarakasaObake do you consider it better or worse to include the now-deleted (by Otterathome) material on the fork? The current version is inconsistent as it says 'several URLs, see text' and includes an external link to en.uncyclopedia.co, but provides no explanation. We should settle on either removing all information about the fork or including a sensible explanation of it. Cathfolant (talk) 00:19, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
I think it would be useful to include one or two sentences saying that the English-language project forked in 2013. I think the sections that were being edit-warred over in January were badly excessive. In my opinion, the fork represents a significant but minor event in a nearly-dead project. It's worth mentioning. Briefly. No one wants or needs to read any discussion of restrictions and constraints and controversy. KarakasaObake (talk) 00:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Infobox claims that there are several urls and directs the reader to see the text, and en.uncyclopedia.co is in the external links section, but there is no explanation of why there are 'several' urls or why this 'independent Uncyclopedia' suddenly popped out of nowhere. Cathfolant (talk) 22:20, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
It is not there because there is no independent sourcing for it (there is apparently not even independent sourcing for the move to Wikia). I think that none of that is notable and does not merit mentioning. --Dirk Beetstra10:45, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Proposed explanation of the fork
There seems to be some consensus (and some disagreement) that there should be at least a sentence or two on the fork, and the infobox still directs the reader to see something that isn't there rather than explaining the situation properly, but I won't change it myself for obvious reasons, so here is some text I think may be suitable:
On 5 January 2013, several users set up an independently hosted fork of Uncyclopedia at en.uncyclopedia.co, stating their reasons for doing so in a 'press release'. As of 19 March 2014, this fork has 29,389 articles.
Is this acceptable? I've tried to include only the verifiable/obvious facts here and avoid going into details that may or may not consist of advocacy. I believe those pages to be a reliable enough source for the fork and the # of articles, as the former has been protected and hence is not your average open wiki page and the latter is an uneditable special page, and (though this may fall under WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS or something similar) I notice that the article WikiWikiWeb uses pages on WikiWikiWeb, an open wiki, to source some of its information, and I'm in doubt as to whether protection exists there, so using an (otherwise) open wiki as a source does not seem to be totally out of the question.
Thoughts anyone? I won't go in and edit the page unless you say I should, don't worry - in fact I'm not sure I should be involved in this at all and this may be the last comment I make here, but the inconsistency I've described has been bothering me and I'd like to see an end put to it. If you don't want to include any text on the fork, I also think it would be best if the web address field on the infobox were changed to http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com and the en.uncyclopedia.co link removed from the external links. Cathfolant (talk) 22:55, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
I again ask for the obvious: why is this notable? No independent source has independently published about it (there are some quite independent sources that have published information, but the authors were not independent). That they moved to Wikia is already hardly noticed in outside, independent, media, and the article already relies on many primary sources. --Dirk Beetstra06:00, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Cathfolant, a notorious editor at the Fork who recently helped pay its server fees, wants the Misplaced Pages article to link to the Fork, and preferably also to link to the Forkers' 95 Theses against Wikia, Inc. issued last year, a strategy she has also pursued by changing links on a variety of Wikia websites. She is here to get the article to tell her story. My edits, in contrast, did not spin the article in favor of the Wikia website. Placing me on the conflict-of-interest noticeboard was a tactical use of Misplaced Pages by people whose selectivity shows an equally strong bias. Spike-from-NH (talk)
SPIKE, Cathfolant doesn't deserve to be treated like this. Cathfolant...the editors know about the fork and its history and they've made their decision. All uncyclopedians...let's not disrupt the editors anymore and let's leave them do their work. --Shabidoo | Talk16:56, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Let's be clear about something. There is no website called "The Fork." Uncyclopedia is a collection of Creative Commons articles. Specifically because of that copyright structure, nobody owns anything called "Uncyclopedia." Wikia owns a domain called uncyclopedia.wikia.com, and some individuals own a domain called en.uncyclopedia.co, and I-don't-know-who owns a domain called mirror.uncyc.org. All of these domains link to servers that contain Uncyclopedia. These domain names are neither notable nor non-notable; they simply point to content. The domain that ends in .wikia.com is no more or less notable than the domain that ends in .uncyclopedia.co. To make an analogy, a building may be notable; its mailing address almost never is. KarakasaObake (talk) 22:52, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
In response to those who are questioning the notability of the fork or my intentions in this discussion, you have missed the point of what I said. I am trying to address the fact that the article in its current state directs the reader to an explanation that is not there, and I am asking either for there to be an explanation or for the 'see text' text and the en.uncyclopedia.co link in external links to be removed in favour of mentioning only the definitely notable uncyclopedia.wikia.com rather than what I believe is confusing to the reader. Beetstra and Spike-from-NH seem to have read the first part of what I said and skipped my proposed alternative before jumping into a reply. Cathfolant (talk) 04:43, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
@Shabidoo: the current state of the article was not 'decided on'. Otterathome removed the material on the fork while neglecting to address the fact that the text of the infobox referred to it. There was nothing more to it than that. Cathfolant (talk) 04:47, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Finally, @Spike-from-NH: I included what I believe you are referring to as 'the Forkers' 95 Theses against Wikia' only as a reference to support the existence of the fork, as it is the only source I know of and sourcing for this was disputed so I saw fit to point out a source, and if it isn't an acceptable source I have no problem with not using it, but referring to it as you do is simply not necessary. @KarakasaObake: I don't agree with that interpretation of the situation, as these sites may all be called 'Uncyclopedia' but they are most certainly not the same site and notability is not inherited, and I believe we are discussing the notability of the sites here as that is what is attached to the domain names. Furthermore, if it is suitable to include different domain names but not details of how they came to pass, we may as well just include the urls right in the infobox rather than waving our hands and saying 'See text'; though as I have said I believe this approach to be confusing to the reader as there is no explanation of how/why there are different domains. I welcome comments on which approach is best but statements to the effect that 'there is no fork' or details of what exactly I do on the 'fork' do nothing to address this. Cathfolant (talk) 05:05, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Cathfolant, you say the sites are not the same site, but there is a large body of content that the sites as they now exist still share, although the contents of each site has forked, adding material and subtracting material from one, and adding different material and subtracting different material from the other. The body of content that both sites still share is licensed on a CC-by-SA license, meaning that neither site can claim to own it, nor be the exclusive provider of such content. Moreover, the name "Uncyclopedia" is neither trademarked nor copyrighted, so neither site can claim to own that either, nor even the potato logo. As someone who is for inclusion over notability, I would prefer that the site's entire history including both sites be included, but if I take the devil's advocate position and argue the reverse, it could be argued that only the history that can be backed up in the press be included, which stops the clock before the split, and includes Wikia only to the extent to which it is mentioned in the press in connection to Uncyclopedia. I think there is precedent in Misplaced Pages policy that a site can be a source of information about itself, but should not be relied upon for the basis of the article's existence. Also, similar articles about internet sites do indeed link to the site itself, without said links being challenged. When it comes to links within articles, it would seem to me they are an important piece of information, provided that they are not presented in a promotional nor disparaging manner. Userafw (talk) 10:06, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes I suppose that's true. (Relevant policy is here btw; you seem to understand it well enough but thought I'd provide a link.) It seems what this all boils down to is just how notable material has to be before it can be included here, and what determines that notability - i.e. what sources we will accept and how far we are willing to go before we consider ourselves to have wandered into original research land. So...let's see.
There is a point I didn't think to mention in my analogy with WikiWikiWeb, which is that Uncyclopedia is primarily an encyclopedia of misinformation ('content-free') whereas WikiWikiWeb is more a collection of ideas, iirc. The page I provided as a source for the fork's existence is a project page, and while these have a higher likelihood than mainspace pages of containing at least an attempt at true information, many of them still are not serious. Assuming all this can be verified to our satisfaction, WikiWikiWeb could be considered a better self-published source than Uncyclopedia; on the other hand, assuming either it can't be verified or the distinctions between serious and non-serious pages are considered sufficiently verifiable, that Uncyclopedia page could potentially be used as a source. Considering the fact that the policy subsection I linked states that 'Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves', I'm inclined to go with the latter, as Uncyclopedia would fall under 'questionable'. The question then is if any of the 5 criteria named there apply, which I believe there is some disagreement on. I would say that the page is acceptable enough and directly supports the existence and creation of the fork, but that's just me. I think I'd also leave out what I said in my proposed text about how the press release stated the reasons for forking, as that's not necessarily relevant, though I mainly pointed that out because there was some argument over how notable the reasons for forking were, I think.
Another site that forked, a possible basis for comparison, is WoWWiki. The existence of Wowpedia does appear to be backed up in the press, and as such it is acceptable to include material on it in the article, even going so far as to include a separate infobox on it. Uncyclopedia's forking, however, has not had such coverage, so it is not immediately clear from that if it should be included here unless we decide that Uncyclopedia itself is a reliable source in this context - which brings us back to the previous point.
As for whether the sites are the same or the fork is a fork, two things. uncyclopedia.co and uncyclopedia.wikia.com clearly share a good deal of content to anyone who looks at them, but if this is to be a deciding factor in the content of this article we should decide how essential it is that it be verifiable - because, at least I think, it isn't really, and saying so basically constitutes original research. No source says that the content is the same and whatnot - well, except for that press release page, which I think is the closest we've got for a source for any of this. Which all leads back to the question of whether it's acceptable.
A final point we may want to consider is WP:IAR: 'If a rule prevents you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore it.' The challenge here is determining what constitutes improving the encyclopedia, then. As I understand it Misplaced Pages exists to provide information that people are likely to find interesting or useful, and notability is a method of determining what is interesting or useful. If, then, something may not exactly be notable but could be interesting or useful to readers, could it by that logic be suitable for inclusion? I fear I am going nowhere particularly useful with this, but I believe the forking is of interest to readers, and as such we should at least consider the possibility that this could be a criterion for including it. That is of course just my opinion and I am open to others.Cathfolant (talk) 22:03, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
I think our problem is that we're looking at uncyclopedia.wikia.com and en.uncyclopedia.co as two "websites," each of which claim to be Uncyclopedia. Uncyclopedia is not a website. Uncyclopedia is a collection of articles - of Creative Commons articles that nobody owns. Any website can host them. Uncyclopedia.wikia.com has the legal right to host articles written and posted to en.uncyclopedia.co, and vice versa. And the hosts themselves simply aren't notable or even the point. We're seriously sitting here fighting over whether a URL is notable enough compared to another URL?? It's just an address!! KarakasaObake (talk) 22:32, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
That's another way of looking at it. The main point bothering me about such an approach is how the article should be written if we are to write it as if uncyclopedia.co and uncyclopedia.wikia.com are just two different names for the same thing. How does one refer to the two websites in relation to each other? Or is this not necessary, do you think? Should we only have the two urls, and say that they both point to 'Uncyclopedia'? What I worry is that this will not make any sense and that if we try to explain it in any sensible way it won't be quite right, and that we simply can't explain it without resorting to calling the fork a fork. And if we don't explain it - well, infoboxes are (I think) supposed to be a sort of summary of the article, rather like the lead section, and at least as the article stands now, it is summarising things that aren't in the article anywhere. That was the main problem I initially wanted to address and I'm unsure as to whether including en.uncyclopedia.co as just 'another url' will have the same effect.
We may also have to decide which url should be used where or come first; deciding this is why there should be at least some evidence that one is more notable than the other. It seems to have been settled on that the references to policies and such should be to uncyclopedia.wikia.com as that is the 'primary' url. On the other hand, TV Tropes' article on Uncyclopedia - which may just qualify as some kind of source even though it is a LoginToEdit wiki and may have been edited by Uncyclopedia editors - appears to treat en.uncyclopedia.co as the primary url while mentioning that Uncyclopedia is 'available in two places', and the Babel page (uncyclopedia.info) that lists the different Uncyclopedias and is referenced in the external links for this article refers only to en.uncyclopedia.co, and many of the foreign-language Uncyclopedias' interwiki links point to en.uncyclopedia.co as K7L has noted. Example.WikiIndex's entry on Uncyclopedia may also be of interest though that is an open wiki page that has been edited by several fork editors. This appears to me to suggest that en.uncyclopedia.co considered purely as a domain name may in some sense take precedence over uncyclopedia.wikia.com, especially as it has been noted earlier that the fact of Uncyclopedia's being hosted on Wikia is not notable and has not had much coverage.
What I think is that since there are two separate websites called Uncyclopedia, it makes more sense to me to treat them as such and to put more emphasis on the one that is definitely notable. However we may want to reconsider exactly what this article is about - if the details of hosting are truly not notable, and this article is simply about 'Uncyclopedia', perhaps the notability of the different Uncyclopedias in relation to each other is moot... Cathfolant (talk) 23:18, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
The fact that TV Tropes, in its description of memes that first appeared at one URL, lists another URL first, clearly reflects editing by the Forkers. And in citing the fact that cy.uncyclopedia.org.uk's interwiki favors the Fork, Cathfolant is certainly pointing to work of her own as "independent" proof. Indeed, the Forkers have used interwikis as a battleground in the fight for notability, as they have used this article as a battleground. Spike-from-NH (talk) 01:54, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Please, show us independent reliable sources talking about the split/fork/copy or whatever of the move of a part of the editors from the Wikia to another place. And while you are at it, please show also independent reliable sources talking about the takeover by Wikia. I already question even that fact's notability - and if it is not notable, it does not have a place in this article. --Dirk Beetstra05:54, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, you've identified the problem. There is no independent source saying that Uncyclopedia is hosted at uncyclopedia.wikia.com. There is no independent source saying that Uncyclopedia is hosted at en.uncyclopedia.co. There is no indepedent source saying Uncyclopedia is hosted at uncyclopedia.org. There is no independent source saying that Uncyclopedia is hosted at mirror.uncyc.org. There are sources that include links to all these sites, sure, but links are not assertions and they are not facts. And the real truth is: Uncyclopedia is not hosted in any one particular place. Uncyclopedia is a collection of Creative Commons articles, not a website. So then the question becomes: how do we address that problem? It would be totally inappropriate to talk about the drama involved in Wikia's hosting or en.uncyclopedia.co's re-hosting. But is it inappropriate to simply mention that different versions of Uncyclopedia exist in at least two places? I think that's necessary information and, if nothing else, should be included per WP:IAR. KarakasaObake (talk) 18:25, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Good, we agree. So why do we list them as official sites? If something does not have an official website (or websites), then they should not be listed at all. --Dirk Beetstra08:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Hm, hadn't thought of that. That's another option. Could just take out all mention of urls, then...but then I suppose maybe we'd have to refrain from sourcing anything directly to uncyclopedia, though I'm not sure how solid the arguments are for that but doing so would constitute some sort of endorsement of one url over the other...something to think about, definitely.
As for sourcing, I'm afraid I've given you all I've been able to find so far. I may do some more digging though and will let you know if I run across anything sensible looking. (And just to clarify matters, I haven't presented any of my own work here.) Cathfolant (talk) 18:40, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Lets face that as well - it is fine to have primary sources or sources on typically unreliable sites (wikis), but I do find it worrisome that of the first 19 references in the article currently 16 references are on wikis (note that the 2 references to The Hindu are essentially the same, except reformatting and another image; so 16 out of 18 is a better number). Now, those sources to the Hindu (three of them) - the first one (a1) is not a full attribution (it talks about the potato, not the hollow potato), the second one is absolutely not attributable to The Hindu (the two nicks are NOT mentioned in the article), and the third one is also skewed (the The Hindu article says that most articles start with one specific quote of Oscar Wilde, not that they are invention of quotes attributed to Oscar Wilde). And the real fun is yet to start - the version of 10 October 2006) already states the information published in the 10 October 2006 article in The Hindu - I wonder where the writer of the The Hindu article got their information. And the other reference (from .net) - for me it redirects to another page and I do not see any information on Uncyclopedia (maybe someone can find me an archived version?). Thin. Very thin. --Dirk Beetstra11:13, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Hm, not good. Fwiw I've copied the article to my sandbox and deleted all the info sourced to either wikis or nowhere, I think, though there may be more as I haven't checked the sources carefully. I noticed as I was doing that that a lot of the statements sourced to wikis didn't seem to be 'sourced' at all but were really original research. This definitely needs some cleanup though I'm obviously not going to tackle it myself. I did notice however that there are still about 42 sources that aren't wikis, which means this probably shouldn't go to afd as I thought perhaps it might. Cathfolant (talk) 20:57, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
From the Sandbox, I've cut out more (peacock parts ('Oh look, the New York Times has used information from one of our articles!'), the TheHindu reference which is circular and the .net that does not work). There is now one section below that is heavily referenced and there should be enough there to give notability, maybe some of the references are suitable to be used in the lede on a new sentence. --Dirk Beetstra06:01, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the help - do you think the infobox should have stayed, or is that just too full of non-notable information as well? What about the external links? You seem to think uncyclopedia.wikia.com is superior to en.uncyclopedia.co and therefore should be the only url included, but I thought you also said there wasn't proof that the hosting of uncyclopedia is notable any which way, so I'm not sure what we should do about this. Cathfolant (talk) 04:20, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
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