2008: A Retrospective - New Monacle

Mid-2007, Illogicopedia announced its partnership with Wikia, but not without plenty of persuading. In the infant stages of its life, Illogicopedia languished at Editthis and soon became ready to go independent. In fact, the move was days away from happening - the new wiki was set up and ready to go at a free web host. It was at the last minute, though, that Wikia changed their minds and (reluctantly) accepted the Illogicopedian community into their lion's den.

And lion's den it proved to be: the relationship between Illogic and Wikia was amicable. That is, until June 2008 when Wikia, without any regard for the community's opinion whatsoever, forced their Web 2.0 skin New Monaco upon the unsuspecting citizens of Wikialand. At the time of writing, Illogicopedia is currently on the Monobook skin by default but very soon it too shall be forced into the commercialised catastrophe that is New Monaco.

Of course we know Wikia is at the hands of evil advertising merchants who will stop at nothing to milk us for every penny, especially the case with the so called credit crunch of late '08. As such, we do not blame Wikia for this move, the staff are generally good-natured, if a little bit impersonal and robotic in their replies sometimes. In fact it is rumoured R2D2 works for Wikia....

But I digress.

Needless to say, the incident sparked outrage amongst the community with many users, including Asema, refusing to edit further until the matter was resolved. Compromise was sought by first asking Wikia if Illogicopedia could simply adopt the Uncyclopedia skin, to no avail. After the administrators repeatedly reiterated that New Monaco is not right for Illogicopedia, the discussion as to whether to go independent raised its head once more.

It was decided that Illogicopedia should move, but lack of funding and problems porting the wiki stalled it. Illogicopedia remained with Wikia until November, when alternative hosting was offered. Now, we are free.

BIASED, ME? NEVER....

2008: A Retrospective - Ten stupid vandal names of 2008

Ladies and bumbasquats, I wish each and every single one of you a Happy New Year. Crack out the potato pie, because it's time to slob around and watch the footy for a couple of days. After that it's back to the grind, but for now bask in the glory with this list of ten silly vandal names of 2008, many courtesy of our friend The Avril Troll. Enjoy.

1. Penguins with shotguns - Seppy in disguise?
2. On the internet no one knows you're a dog - Pretty self explanatory, Fido
3. Going Nucular - Ladies and gentlemen, George Bush was once an Illogicopedia vandal
4. Booger! - The American version of Dick and Dom's 'bogeys'?
5. Serious Stuff - Indeed it is.
6. Jimbo Welsh - Welsh Jimbo Wales?
7. The Big - The Big what, eh?
8. Pusey1 - Presumably couldn't spell Pussy
9. Dinos Go Rawr - yeah.
10. Here to help :) - Shock! The vandals discover irony

Source - more reliable than Wikipedia and Conservapedia melded together in a superglue accident.

2008: A Retrospective - Illogicopedian of the Month

In 2007, Illogicopedia administrator Testicles took it upon himself to bring some sort of quality and direction to the wiki. He continued this into the early part of 2008 with some suggestions to improve Illogicopedia in general. Not much of his suggestions would affect the wiki in a large way, but comments about Illogicopedia's user prize, Writer of the Month, would lead to a changing of the guard in the way the award was structured.

In a move to give greater prominence to the prize, it was rebranded Illogicopedian of the Month and users could now win the award more than once; HelloolleH would be the first person to do this in March 2008. Whilst some past winners have since been nominated, notably Testostereich in Yoon, for the monthly prize, no other user has yet to achieve this feat.

Serpeniver's contest was one of the closest for a while, with Some WHAT? triumphing by one measly vote. Rumblings over the voting system emerged as the "multiple votes for admins/Phantoms" rule was reinserted as a reminder for the Octodest competition with voters actively making use of this. However this seemed to highlight an archaic rule that needed to be changed, and subsequently it was - all users, regardless of rank, now had exactly one vote each.

A renewed vigour seemed to refresh IOTM voting until the year's end, with a string of competitive contests seeing a return for the good old fashioned Illogicopedian of the Month slug out, petering out in a tame December. What do you expect, though? It's Chrimbo.

• Past winners of IOTM
• Testicles's plan

2008: A Retrospective - Fun forum topics of 08!

Illogicopedia isn't just about the articles, you know. The forum topics are often more interesting than the featured articles, and the following topics are evidence of this...

• Type Your username WITH YOUR CHIN! and Type your username WITH YOUR EAR! - Warning, it'll make you look stupid so don't do it if the teacher's looking.
• What is indestructable? - A lot of things, actually not what you'd think of, necessarily.
• The albums game - an idea stolen from the Wikipedia albums game. Fun to try with Illogicopedia, too - do it yourself!
• Firefox taking over the world - aliens? Government conspiracies? Spoons? Science friction? Holey moley...
• Barack Obama: Levitator? - Who'd have thought that Obama could fly? Or maybe it's just a cardboard cutout he uses cos he can't be bothered to attend official functions.
• Crazy cats week 2 - Oh yes, the insane category week came back with a vengeance in Arche. Andrew Schlafly was not pleased!
• No no no! - Just no.
• The place for discussion about everything. Well, it never quite took off, but it was a nice thought.
• But I digress - Meh, this is a but off topic... the real conversation lies between the lines, so to speak.
• The Forum Replacement - Where you can say anything and actually get away with it. Maybe.
  

Most of these forum topics are actually still active: don't forget you can revisit these and add stuff at any point (unlike at Uncyclopedia, where you get banned for bringing up old topics).

2008: A Retrospective - Retro Week

For one week in January, Illogicopedia went back to its roots for a celebration of the wiki's first birthday. Retro week saw the reopening of the old Proboards forum and Editthis wiki as users were invited to contribute to both once more.

On the whole, the experiment was something of a success: a bunch of pages created at Editthis were so good they were ported to the main wiki whilst the rest went to create a super-article commemorating the grand day out.

The old forum was given a lick of mellow yellow paint and saw a few contributions from older users but was, according to Silent Penguin, largely a failure. However it was a cool experiment and brought back memories of a time when the community was everything, a time when the forum was more regularly contributed to than the wiki itself. Hard to think of it now, but in the early days of Illogicopedia most articles came out of discussions and general craziness in the Proboards forum. Remnants can be seen throughout the wiki forum, with 'Ask a silly question' continuing to thrive; it even garnered an Illogicopedia Classics post on this blog.

The subject of the old forum came into prominence twice more during 2008: once during passing conversation about how to revive the community spirit and again when one user, unaware of the old one, suggested we create a new forum external to the wiki.

Nowadays, the Editthis wiki has fallen into obscurity, languishing at the second-rate wikifarm. The Proboards forum is also inactive: both are currently locked with no plans to reopen them - that chapter in Illogicopedia's history is firmly closed.

• Illogicopedia:Retro Week
  
• Retro Week articles
• Retro Week Illogiblog announcement
  

2008: A Retrospective

Greetings from Illogic HQ!

Over the coming weeks the Illogiblog shall be taking an affectionate look back at the events of 2008. It's been a fun year, with Illogicopedia reaching a higher audience share than ever and the article count topping 5,000 and we're all a lot more insane for it.

Work on the retrospective began in Octodest as one whole document (yes, this is two months in the making) and is ready for publication here at the Illogiblog. At the end, we'll consider whacking it all into a Word document or something so you can print it out and sell it to homeless people. Keep checking back for more posts, which will include a look back at topics such as the best forum posts, collaborative projects and major events which shook Illogicopedia to the core.

Stay chooned, and in the meantime enjoy your Christmas.