A year of independence: The Wikia debacle revisited

It's been one whole year since Illogicopedia moved from Wikia's servers, and it's verily shot by. Seems like only yesterday I was ranting my ass off at Wikia and their uncanny ability to cheese people off royally.

But for all that bad blood, I really don't think Wikia are that evil. The extreme views expressed within the pages of this weblog are all in good humour, you understand (or perhaps not: looks like we managed to fool one or two people with our Wikia-bashing along the way).

That's not to say I actually like Wikia: in fact, it's doubtful whether I ever did, even when Illogicopedia was with them. There's something about it that makes it all incompatible with everything Illogico, and by proxy I, stand for. Perhaps its the whole corporate image, or the fact it promotes profiting from volunteer spirit.

Yes, we were grateful when they took us on, but it was a means to an end. As has been mooted numerous times, it was always an idea for Illogicopedia to go it alone, so to speak, and moving to Wikia was simply a stepping stone.

It's still the ultimate goal for Illogicopedia to be self-funding, and maybe one day when I get a job that actually pays more than peanuts we may actually get to the point where we become the commercialised ones, with Illogico mugs and T-Shirts and the like. Oh, how the boot will be on the other foot then!

That's all in the future though. To mark Illogicopedia's first whole year of independence, I've posted a bit of an analysis over at one of those free-to-host places on the interwebs. It's a bit dry, but will hopefully bring to the attention of the general public the plight of small wikis such as ourselves. It's one of the bigger user-generated content sites, so who knows, maybe somebody from the mainstream media may read it.

The biiiig Wackypedia clearout

This is an announcement from your friendly neighbourhood yak. This week I shall be trawling the Illogicopedia in cleanup mode, taking a hammer to both the Trash bin and Mexicans categories.

Just to let you know that I will be checking the articles for quality first, before I trash, stubbify or (on rare occasion) delete a selection of the very worst 'Wackypedia fodder', as I like to call it.

Such fodder is stuff left over from the Wikia days that was just about acceptable at the time, but is now not really the kind of content we want to be looking to promote.

If I delete anything you wish to improve or keep (for some strange reason) you can find it in its pre-2009 form over at Wackypedia. I'm not linking to it here -- I don't want to give them the satisfaction of a backlink, which they have refused to give us -- do a quick Google search for it if you must.

I've already cleaned out about 40 articles and, with a bit of help from you helpful Illogicopedians armed with the Random Page link, I hope to clear out some more old stuff in the near future. Cheers all.

Oh yeah, and vote on the VFD articles, lest ye be devoured by a Halloween monster or something.

I'll Ask The Questions Here is back!

Illogicopedia's very own game show, I'll Ask The Questions Here, is back and currently taking reservations for its second season.

For those of you that haven't managed to pick up the first season on DVD yet, I'll spoil it for you: everyone's favourite Testicular ballbag TReich McNutsack won out, narrowly beating T3 to the title of IATQH Champ 2008... ish.

There are still loads of spaces left for this season, so check out the appropriate page int' forum if you want to join. As for me, well I'm too busy ushering Halloween ghosties away from my doorstep to be answering questions. I get enough of that when I'm standing in the House of Commons, so as you can imagine, I'm going to sit this one out, peasants.

This has been a guest post by Tory Party leader David Cameron.

(Fear) Arousing Halloween Fables 2009

Are you scared of things that go bump in the night? Well, if it's some drunk from the local beerfest then you really should be. However, you need not be afraid of entering Illogicopedia's second annual (Fear) Arousing Halloween Fables which, after the roaring success of last year, is making a triumphant return to the fold.

Find out more at the appropriate forum page, and look out for ominous floating orbs and mysterious faces appearing on the telly. Ooooh.

Oh, and sorry, that was the best picture of a 'scary banana' I could find via Google images. 'Evil' and 'banana' generally don't go hand in hand, though this particular one looks pretty nasty.

Who wants to come to my party

Hey, the cool guys at microsoft have come up with a HILLARIOUS advert.

Just watch this video:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyas7BrbUFY

And to think this is 100% serious microsoft stuff.



Well actually, I did THREE launch party tasks!

Grey DayZ #8

Just to let you know, the latest instalment in the Grey DayZ series has been released. Click the pic below to view it or just get on down to the cartoons page for any more you might have missed.

Thanks as ever to Huge Bob.

The media takes this crap too seriously

To Germany this morning, where it's being reported that some footballer with an unfathomable surname fell victim to internet vandals earlier this year. On the 11th February, it was announced on his club's official website that Schalke striker Kevin Kuranyi had been made redundant due to certain disagreements between him and the club.

However, it was in fact a load of old codsbollocks, and some hacker had managed to break into the official website and put the article there out of mischief. The story was taken down soon after, but not before the media had got hold of the so-called 'revelation', resulting in red faces all round (they stayed in the sauna too long).

You may ask what on earth this has to do with Illogicopedia, and that's a very good question. The answer to that is nothing much. What is interesting is the fact that ESPN decided to embellish their article on the above incident with a selection of football-related Wikipedia vandalisms, described in boring and meticulous detail.

What's more, the article attempts to explain some of the inner workings of the free encyclopedia. When will they learn? Wikipedia has no formal rules and procedures so cannot be regulated in the way a prisoner or performing bear can. The fools!

Illogiblog hereby announces that whoever can persuade Wikipedia that the moon is actually cheddar cheese will be made King of all Wikipedia.

Additionally, forget the image in the top corner of this post. It has almost nothing to do with this article, but then that's probably what you'd come to expect from this blog by now.

Wikipedia Beta

For what it's worth -- and even though not a single person asked me for it -- my opinion is that Wikipedia's new Beta skin is... not that bad, really. There are no drastic New Monaco-esque changes - only the colour scheme and sidebar have really been altered.

Probably best of all, though, is that the search box is now in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This does require some getting used to, but on the whole I think it lets the sidebar breathe a bit better. As you might know, I'm a bit of a fan of the old grey-and-black colour scheme, so I suppose this was always gonna sucker me in.

In all, it looks a bit cleaner and, save the funny gradient colours behind the page tabs ('edit this page' etc.) -- I'm not sure what the general Internet obsession with those is all about -- is probably a slight improvement on the classic Monobook.

Wikia, take a good hard look. This is what good practice is all about - not rushing out half completed skins and using the public as unannounced beta testers, rather taking time to get opinions, and most importantly, leaving it up to the users to decide.

Think I more than made my point there. Anyhow, I'd love to hear your opinions on the new beta skin. Just log into your Wikipedia account and select the 'try beta' option next to your user control panel at the head of the screen.

More Grey DayZ

This stuff is classic Huge. Click below for the latest instalment, or get a load of the strip page for more of the same.