Merry Christmas, baby

As is customary for this time of year, Illogiblog would like to extend a hearty "Happy Christmas" to its readers, all three of them (wait, that joke sounds painfully familiar). Unlike in years past, however, we aren't doing anything special, and for that you have Roberto merchant bankers to thank. Yep, for once it isn't all Big Bob's fault.

Never mind, though, because Christmas isn't about money, it's about kicking shopping arcade Santas in the 'nads and getting away with it. And watching that rubbish Arnold Schwarzenegger thing where he beats up a factory of Father Christmases.

Anyhow, I hope you all get what you want, though I know that this rarely ever happens. Turns out you can't buy a Bcbkye commemorative mantelpiece plate for love nor money at this time of year. *Sigh*. Looks like I'll have to settle for Does This Bus Go to Orpington? The Board Game again. Do not come to our house for Christmas tea or you'll regret it for the rest of your life.

2010: A Retrospective: Part Two

As another action-packed year draws to a close, Illogiblog concludes its two part rundown of 2010 through the eyes of an Illogicopedian.

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July saw a new challenger to Roberto's dominance in the form of Guru Meditation. He didn't make too many inroads, and eventually teamed up with Big Bob to form the League of Illogicopedian Evildoers, led by the Hickipedia Vandal. To this day, the battle between good and evil rages as ?pedians fight to repel the various attacks of the LIE and anon IPs, no doubt sockpuppets of Bob and the Guru. Plans to issue administrators with paintball guns may be the way forward, though reports suggest the swines stole lab goggles. Maybe they’re smarter than we think.

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. It remains to be seen how successful this will be, though unless Illogic is completely downed we'll chalk up pretty much anything as a victory for team ?pedia.

As with Illogicopedia, Illogiblog experienced seasonal fluctuations in activity. The aforementioned revival, which began around October, coincided with a burst in posts focusing on such familiar subjects as Oasisgate and spam – lots of it. Oh, and not to forget your friend and mine, the omniscient Roberto, even if his grip began to weaken in the winter months as he instead opted to stay in bed and watch Jeremy Kyle. Maybe he couldn’t afford the bus fare to Canada to wreck the servers again.

There were also a surprising number of articles (actually two, but that's a lot by ?blog standards) on nature boy Bear Grylls, who reportedly died in November. ?pedia Shop started selling steaks branded 'Bear Grills' in his honour, though to date we’ve only managed to sell a grand total of three – the rest of the stock remains in my freezer along with Grylls' severed head. Don’t tell anyone, though. About the steaks, that is.

And so we finish the year on a high, with more people than ever passing through the gates of Illogiland. To be honest, most of these got lost looking for Uncyclopedia or unwittingly wandered in whilst searching for the Holy Grail. Despite this, we have high hopes for 2011. Who knows? Maybe this will be the year Illogicopedia achieves total world domination.

I'll be happy with just the assassination of Roberto, however.

2010: A Retrospective: Part One

Wow, that time of year already? Won't be long before we're all celebrating Christmas - less than a week now, in fact. You know what this means? Of course, it's time for another cacky retrospective you probably won't read! Well, I've written it all now, so you'll have to suffer through it.

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After a relative spurt over the 2009 Christmas Holidays, the New Year started off pretty slowly as it began to dawn upon us all that we'd have to wait a whole twelve months for more presents and mince pies and fun things like that. It did kind of suck, but not as much as the server problems that would blight Illogicopedia towards the end of January just when activity was beginning to return.

But out of dire disappointment came gallows humour when the nefarious misdoings of Roberto, the bloke responsible for all Illogicopedia's problems, came to light. Cue months of posts off the back of the Roberto error screens which became so well known in 2010, and even an April Fools joke that actually worked on some people. Perhaps.

When Illogicopedia returned in mid-February, it took some time to for normal service to resume, to the extent the whole month was something of a write-off. It was around this time that the old Editthis Illogicopedia was closed very quietly and in dignified fashion, a decent send off for a piece of Illogicopedian history. One and a half people attended the funeral. (The .5 of a person was the left half of a recently dismembered ?pedian, in case you're interested.)

March saw renewed hope as people actually bothered to edit Illogicopedia again. Talk of Roberto, however, continued as Wikipedia experienced its own suspicious server outages, and Illogicopedia itself suffered the odd bout of man flu, no thanks to our mysterious friend.

The wiki is no stranger to daft arguments over small things, and 2010 was no exception but hey, when nothing else is happening, it's all you can do. There was plenty of reference to toilet humour, particularly in Membergate, but we shall skim over that like a merchant banker chucks his credit cards across the lake. Yes, the Credit Crunch, which later morphed into a full-on economic recession, affected us all.

Illogico was kept in operation throughout May by Testistocles, who almost single handedly ran the wiki during this period. After a bout of IP vandalism (yawn), exam season loomed large like a tailgating ogre.

Save the odd frontal lobe, Illogicopedia would see us all through to summer intact, but not without a relatively painless series of cuts. Thankfully, the £3.60 Illogicopedia required to get out of the red and into the black was found outside a pub one Sunday morning, keeping the site afloat for a bit longer.