Cannabis Ruderalis

Former good articleUncyclopedia was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 24, 2006Articles for deletionKept
July 23, 2006Articles for deletionKept
January 19, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
January 21, 2007Articles for deletionKept
January 22, 2007Articles for deletionKept
March 22, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed
March 26, 2007Articles for deletionKept
April 7, 2007Articles for deletionKept
November 27, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
November 27, 2007Articles for deletionSpeedily kept
November 29, 2007Good article nomineeListed
March 30, 2008Featured article candidateNot promoted
May 18, 2008Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Drafting an Rfc

The edit warring is continuing. Per the edit notice I will block any editor who again changes the URL without first gaining consensus here. An RfC is required for a long-term decision regarding what URL or URLs should be used in the article. The purpose of an RfC is to attract other editors who would probably not be aware of the background. Accordingly, would anyone interested please edit the appropriate subsection below and add a brief and neutral statement giving the history and a reason for your preferrred outcome. By "neutral", I mean without flamboyant language or talk about the evils of the other side. Take care to comment on article content only. You must not use this page to comment on other editors. Some information is at the edit warring permalink but it should be condensed and paraphrased here. Johnuniq (talk) 10:01, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Background

  • Uncyclopedia has existed since 2005, but both .co and .ca were founded at different times, both having been forked from uncyclopedia.wikia.com. Uncyclopedia.co was forked from it in January 2013, and Uncyclopedia.ca was forked from it in May 2019.
  • Within the .co community, Uncyclopedia.co is simply known as ".co", and Uncyclopedia.ca is known as ".ca". Within the .ca community, although that applies too, some users call Uncyclopedia.ca the "spoon", and Uncyclopedia.co the "fork", suggesting that .ca is the "legitimate Uncyclopedia". Sometimes, Uncyclopedia.co is known as "English", and Uncyclopedia.ca is known as "British English". KevTYD (talk) 17:27, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Uncyclopedia is a humour wiki that was founded in 2005, and the founders of the wiki sold it to Wikia in 2006. After years of Wikia reneging on agreements made when they first began hosting Uncyclopedia, the vast majority of the community organized over IRC in 2012 and moved the contents of the wiki to en.uncyclopedia.co in January 2013. Wikia refused to stop hosting a copy of Uncyclopedia, which meant that a small portion of the pre-2013 community stayed behind to maintain the Wikia copy of Uncyclopedia. In 2019 Wikia decided that because of the amount of content on Uncyclopedia that was not suitable for their service (specifically the racist content), they would no longer be hosting Uncyclopedia. Historically the Uncyclopedia project has been governed by direct democracy, and the Uncyclopedian Wikia community held a vote as to what to do with their project after Wikia stopped hosting it. It was agreed that the project would move to the same hosting as en.uncyclopedia.co, however a group of admins acting independently of the community created and now host uncyclopedia.ca. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 16:41, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reasons to use en.uncyclopedia.co and not others

  • Many Uncyclopedia projects are in existence, spanning many languages under many different names. Most of these projects are held together under the "Uncyclomedia Foundation" umbrella, including related wikis like Illogicopedia, Encyclopædia Dæmonica, Zombiepedia, and others. en.uncyclopedia.co is referenced as the English-language Uncyclopedia project on all of these wikis, and interlanguage links point to the site using [[en:]]. It has been recognized as the English Uncyclopedia since 2013, when it took the place of the former Wikia url. When uncyclopedia.ca was founded in 2019 as a fork of the post-2013 Wikia site, it was categorized as the British English ([[en-gb:]]) Uncyclopedia to distinguish it from the existing English wiki, and all of the above websites refer to it as such.
The main subject of this article is about the English-language Uncyclopedia first and foremost, so I would suggest using en.uncyclopedia.co as the primary link in the infobox and gearing the opening paragraphs and the "History" section toward it. Specifically the creation of Uncyclopedia in 2005, the acquisition by Fandom in 2006, moving to the .co domain in 2013, the closure of the Fandom copy in 2019, and the remaining Fandom community's vote to rejoin the English project the same year. A previous revision more or less reflected this before it was lost to vandalism and edit warring.
As with the other languages and related projects, the history of the British English wiki should definitely be included where necessary, but documented on its own, either within the "History" section or under "Uncyclopedia in other languages." Supergeeky1 (talk) 07:26, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this is a very elegant solution for how to display the history of both URLs in this article. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 10:17, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reasons to use uncyclopedia.ca and not others

  • Uncyclopedia moved to Wikia and then when it was closed down, it moved to Uncyclopedia.ca. This is the official Uncyclopedia as far as I am concerned and should be the sole URL in use. Forks are made of websites all the time; it does not mean they are noteworthy. 220.123.235.96 (talk) 18:24, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • uncyclopedia.ca is a continuation of the project which has its roots in uncyclopedia.org which was purchased by Wikia and then hosted on their servers. This is the same project which existed from the very beginning and still exists today, just under a different URL. There are multiple forks of this version, such as mirror.uncyc.org, uncyc2.miraheze.org and of course uncyclopedia.co. I do not see how any one of these forks is more notable than the other and do not think they should be in the infobox at all. Romartus Imperator (talk) 23:20, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reasons to use more than one URL

  • I think both URLs have a place in a page about the history of the project, but they should be described in a factual way: a small team maintains uncyclopedia.ca against the wishes of the Wikia Uncyclopedia community, while en.uncyclopedia.co has thrived for years. I know this comment is under the section for using more than one URL, but maybe we should use neither as the "official" URL and instead just present the history of each URL. There is no way that uncyclopedia.ca, a website created in 2019, is the "official" URL, but likewise its hard to make the claim that en.uncyclopedia.co is "official" because it has always existed alongside at least one other Uncyclopedia. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 16:41, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Personally, I believe that while uncyclopedia.co definitely has more significance than uncyclopedia.ca, both URLs and how they came to be should be explained within the "History" section of the article, because there is a possibility that someone who is uninvolved within the Uncyclopedia edit-war and who is reading this article here might want to know about why there are several Uncyclopedias that can be found on search engines. There is absolutely no justification to why uncyclopedia.ca can be considered the "official" URL, but the claim that uncyclopedia.co is the "official" URL is weak, because (as Zombiebaron explained) for the history of .co, either uncyclopedia.wikia.com or uncyclopedia.ca has existed along it: while the interwiki for Uncyclopedia on a default MediaWiki installation (with the Interwiki extension) points to .co, the first search result for Uncyclopedia on various search engines (Google, Bing, Duckduckgo) points to .co, and .co has more active users, these points by themselves cannot designate .co as the "official" URL for Uncyclopedia. Therefore, both domains should be explained within History. By extent, the infobox URL, seemingly the prime target for these edit-wars, should be either left blank (See History) or point to whichever Uncyclopedia the community determines is most significant. KevTYD (talk) 17:37, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    To clarify, I presume by 'community' as used here refers to wikipedia? Is that correct??--Gepid (talk) 10:01, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, I'm refering to Wikipedia. The precise wording used and the URL could be determined here, so we can have this settled once and for all. KevTYD (wake up) 11:17, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • History/disputes aside, the Uncyclopedia page should reflect the current reality of two uncyclopedias as they exist as of this time of commenting. The info box should also either show both active sites or just have the links in the main copy. Once this is agreed and monitored, any user coming here to remove links to either site or favour one over the other should be reverted. I am registered as Romartus on both Uncyclopedias. --Gepid (talk) 08:54, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • This would be the ideal solution. I did add the ".ca" domain over a year ago when UncycloWikia got shut down (it got reverted), and now no one can decide which URL is the good URL. Because of that, I think (for the time being until we can come to a consensus) we need either a filter and/or a spam blacklist entry until we can come to a consensus as to what domain should be used. Johnuniq do you want to do that for now? Aasim 02:13, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • (didn't see the header carefully, so here is my reason) Both domains are of importance to readers. There is no competition. Both URLs are important in the history of Uncyclopedia. Aasim 02:15, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think a filter is needed as consensus appears to be that both URLs should be mentioned. See discussion below. Johnuniq (talk) 05:04, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

@KevTYD, Zombiebaron, Gepid, and Awesome Aasim: (and anyone else watching this page). Given the responses above, no RfC appears to be necessary at the moment—both URLs should be mentioned. Have any reliable sources commented on Uncyclopedia and mentioned a particular non-wikia URL? Is there any source for the description above that uncyclopedia.co has thrived for years and uncyclopedia.ca was created in 2019? I assume such sources would be hard to find which will make writing about the URLs difficult per Wikipedia's procedures. The trick will be to devise some text that mentions both URLs, preferably using wording that is sourced or which can scrape by as potentially verifiable. That would probably mean not using much detail (unless a source for the detail is available). The article is currently protected to allow editing only by accounts with 500 edits and 30 days age. I propose changing that to require only 10 edits and 4 days (EdJohnston: do you have a view on that?). If any disruption occurs, I would either restore the protection or block problematic users after a warning. The aim would be to allow editing for a week or so until there is some reasonably stable text about the URLs. Then I think there should be an RfC with a question like "Should [this version] of the article be accepted as the consensus description of the URLs used by Uncyclopedia?". In the future, attempts to significantly change the description could be reverted per the consensus of the RfC (assuming it passed). Please do not edit war. If disruption breaks out, just leave it after a single revert and ping me. Any thoughts about this process? If there is agreement, I will alter the protection although anyone with 500/30 edits/days is welcome to start slowly editing now as far as I am concerned. Johnuniq (talk) 05:03, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ok done. I listed them in the order created (older fork first, newer fork second). Hopefully no one deletes or changes either of the links. Aasim 05:19, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Awesome Aasim. Regards protection of the uncyclopedia page and infobox, I would suggest the current limited lockdown should deter people creating accounts deliberately to cause drama here. --Gepid (talk) 11:08, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I do fear that diminishing the level of protection on the Uncyclopedia article will definitely aid any sockpuppets, if any are found (two sockmasters have been touching this article throughout the past twelve months). I think finding a consensus on a "good version" via draft versions and an eventual vote would be a better idea. This would allow less drama to happen now, and any drafts created with malicious intent could be disqualified later on during the RfC. The lack of sources on Uncyclopedia, especially on or after 2013, is definitely discouraging - we'll need to use the Wikipedia community's judgement then. For now, I'll be working on a draft at User:KevTYD/Uncyclopedia, with the intent of maintaining the neutrality of the article. KevTYD (wake up) 13:15, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The second paragraph of History now ends with the decision by Fandom to cease hosting the site. This incorrectly suggests that this version is defunct. A year ago, there was an additional sentence:
Remaining users moved its content to uncyclopedia.ca, now the "British English" Uncyclopedia.
This sentence should be re-added to the end of the paragraph. Spike-from-NH (talk) 22:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Any opinions on that? If done, wouldn't "British" need an explanation? Is that like UK English compared with US English? An explanation of that, particularly if unsourced, might be unnecessary and the British part could be omitted? Johnuniq (talk) 00:58, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the edit proposed by Spike-from-NH contains a heavily biased version of events. As seen in this discussion page hosted on uncyclopedia.ca the remaining users of the Wikia Uncyclopedia project voted to share hosting with en.uncyclopedia.co and a lone administrator moved the contents of the wiki to uncyclopedia.ca unilateraly. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 10:31, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea about the background or really anything in connection with this topic, other than I have undertaken to be an uninvolved administrator monitoring this to see if an RfC is warranted, and, if so, how it might be run. However, in the interests of getting a resolution that might stick, I will ask for clarification. Is the suggestion that uncyclopedia.ca only has a tiny number of active users, much fewer than those at uncyclopedia.co? How about number of pages and page views? I'm assuming there are no independent reliable sources that address the overall issue so this article has to tread a fine line between stating encyclopedic and reasonable information and original research. Since the two sites definitely exist, it seems reasonable that .ca must have come from somewhere and that could and should be explained somehow. A sentence could be devised which does not mention how the shift occurred, merely that it did. Johnuniq (talk) 00:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, even a cursory glance at the publicly available Special:ActiveUser pages shows that en.uncyclopedica.co has more than triple the active userbase of uncyclopedia.ca. My proposal for a sentence explaining where .ca came from is: A mirror of the Fandom Uncyclopedia was created at uncyclopedia.ca by a former site administrator. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 10:48, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Fine, please make an edit. If the protection is a problem, let me know. However, surely some other more generic wording can be devised because the more detail that is included ("former" + "site" + "administrator") the more the sentence requires a reliable source. Would there be anything wrong with "Fandom later ceased hosting its version of Uncyclopedia[ref] on May 14, 2019, and a mirror of the site was created at uncyclopedia.ca."? Johnuniq (talk) 00:05, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately I only have around 350 edits so I'm not eligible to edit the article. I agree that your suggested edit is much more concise than mine and definitely support it. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 01:45, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Zombiebaron: I changed the protection. Johnuniq (talk) 03:31, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I made the edit you suggested. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 09:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
How is the definition of a 'mirror site' be relevant here? The wikia hosted site is now gone so uncyclopedia.ca cannot be a mirror of that?? Just a general point of clarification required on the meaning of a mirror site as it is generally understood. --Gepid (talk) 13:32, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gepid: As you can see above, the word "mirror" was chosen as the most concise way to describe how uncyclopedia.ca came to be. I do not know what definition of "mirror site" you believe is generally understood, but Wikipedia defines them as "replicas of other websites...often located in a different geographic region...[to] ensure availability of the original site for political reasons". As is documented in this discussion page hosted on uncyclopedia.ca, Fandom ceased hosting their copy of Uncyclopedia because of how much hate speech it contained. And as seen in this discussion page hosted on uncyclopedia.ca that I linked already above, a lone administrator copied the wiki to a server in Canada in order to maintain a public facing copy of the wiki and its racist content while the community moved to the en.uncyclopedia.co servers per the vote. It really seems to me that uncyclopedia.ca is a textbook example of a mirror site. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 14:51, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, I suspect "mirror" is the correct term for what would have happened (bearing in mind that I have no idea what actually happened—I'm just reporting some technical background). Wikia made database backups available, and someone would have had to get such a backup, then restore it on another server running MediaWiki. That is called mirroring. However, the point that mirror implies ongoing activity, where changes occuring on Wikia are copied to uncyclopedia.ca is also correct. How about replacing "mirror" with "copy" which probably better describes the situation? I'm hoping to find wording that is reasonably accurate, not wildly original research, and that (almost) everyone can live with. Johnuniq (talk) 23:58, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean about ongoing activity on an original being copied to a mirror. In that case, I suggest replacing "mirror" with "archive". -- Zombiebaron (shout) 00:44, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the three suggestions so far:

  • Fandom later ceased hosting its version of Uncyclopedia[ref] on May 14, 2019, and a mirror of the site was created at uncyclopedia.ca.
  • Fandom later ceased hosting its version of Uncyclopedia[ref] on May 14, 2019, and an archive of the site was created at uncyclopedia.ca.
  • Fandom later ceased hosting its version of Uncyclopedia[ref] on May 14, 2019, and a copy of the site was created at uncyclopedia.ca.

Problems:

  • Mirror implies an ongoing activity of updating the copy with changes from the original (see mirror site).
  • Archive is a bit of a techo word with an unclear meaning. Technically, an archive would be the single compressed file that Wikia would have created as a backup of their existing website. Restoring that archive on another server is not really an archive. Also, per Archive, an archive is a snapshot which does not change.

Is copy inaccurate? Johnuniq (talk) 02:50, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I do think that "copy" accurately describes what uncyclopedia.ca is now, but I think that when describing where uncyclopedia.ca came from the word "copy" fails to describe the nuances of the situation in quite the same way as the other two options. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 04:21, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, you should be able to briefly explain some nuance of mirror and archive which are missing from copy. I can't see any difference except for the technicalities explained at mirror site and archive—technicalities which do not apply to uncyclopedia.ca. Also, what do you mean by "is now"? I thought there was no Uncyclopedia at Wikia any more, and that uncyclopedia.ca is different from the original copy. On both counts, "is now" doesn't apply. What am I missing? Johnuniq (talk) 05:30, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As I've described above uncyclopedia.ca was created at the same time that the uncyclopedia.wikia.com community was moving to un.uncyclopedia.co. After un.uncyclopedia.co was sabotaged anybody wishing to edit the content formerly hosted at uncyclopedia.wikia.com was forced to edit uncyclopedia.ca. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 06:15, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What was 'sabotaged' exactly? Writers have always been free to share their work on either uncyclopedia, as long as they were either the sole editor or had the agreement of other writers involved in a particular article. Uncyclopedia.ca has carried on since May 2019 with its copy of the original database and has subsequently added new articles there since that date. The original uncyclopedia.wikia has disappeared off the internet except as dead links. --Gepid (talk) 12:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gepid: Do you disagree with me that uncyclopedia.ca was created as an archive of the content of uncyclopedia.wikia.com while the community of uncyclopedia.wikia.com worked to move to un.uncyclopedia.co? I chose the word "sabotaged" to describe what happened to un.uncyclopedia.co because I felt it described the way that project eventually failed without assigning blame. As you say, writers have always been free to share their work on either Uncyclopedia, but does my ability to edit mirror.uncyc.org change where it came from? -- Zombiebaron (shout) 15:43, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
By definition, if you can edit something, it is not a mirror. Johnuniq (talk) 03:32, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
After we resolve this issue we will need to resolve how mirror.uncyc.org is described in the article then, because you can most certainly edit it. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 11:04, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here's my take on it: "copy" is a very general-purpose word that could be used to describe .ca (when compared to UnWikia). The word "archive" would make more sense, as it is somewhat more precise. 'Mirror' would be inaccurate in this situation. Also, personally I believe that mirror.uncyc.org isn't of high significance either, and also can't exactly be described as a mirror because it can still be edited, albeit almost solely by IPs and quite infrequently. So.... "archive" could make sense for both .ca and mirror.uncyc.KevTYD (wake up) 22:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
'Sabotage' is usually meant to mean that something is deliberately damaged for a particular purpose or an act of resistance. I guess it depends on where you stand. It sounds emotive which isn't the wikipedian way? So we're back to understanding what 'mirror' means here Johnuniq. Can you have an active mirror or archive?--Gepid (talk) 09:17, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I infer that there is tribal conflict that I don't understand which makes some prefer incorrect terms like mirror and archive whereas copy is plain-English and correct. I wondered about the earlier sentence with "sabotage" which I couldn't understand—I don't see how a wiki could be sabotaged because any actions by admins/editors can be reversed, and changes by the site owner would not qualify for that term. At any rate, that does not appear relevant for this article. Re the question, no, any wiki that can be edited is not a mirror or archive. I was hoping article wording could be sorted out in a reasonable way but an RfC with outsiders might be necessary. Johnuniq (talk) 09:55, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If, as Johnuniq says, "mirror" and "archive" are both incorrect, then we should not use them. I disagree, however, that "copy" is correct. The word "copy" implies something made identical to another, which is not what uncyclopedia.ca is. The first time uncyclopedia.ca was ever mentioned it was called a "backup", and right now in the Infobox it is referred to as a "fork", can we discuss using either of those words? It is described in the link I gave but I'll quickly summarize how un.uncyclopedia.co was sabotaged: when un.uncyclopedia.co was first set up it had a lot of errors because Fandom uses janky old MediaWiki and upgrading several versions at once broke a lot of things, the bugs were never reported, the bugs were never fixed, and so the entire project was deliberately destroyed by inaction. -- Zombiebaron (shout) 14:55, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 29 May 2020

It is really confusing to findout if uncyclopedia is owned by Wikipedia Foundation or not. This could easily mislead people. I had to google and read few articles to clear this confusion. Please update the first sentence of the lede

  • from
"Uncyclopedia is a website that parodies Wikipedia." 
  • to
"Uncyclopedia is a website that parodies Wikipedia, otherwise unrelated to wikipedia and it is not owned by the Wikimedia Foundation."

Rationale: This will appear in the "cursor hoover preview" (when someone hoovers the cursor on the pipelink within wikipedia) as well the "google search result summary" page. This will leave no scope for confusion, doubt, misrepresentation, scans, etc.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.182.176.169 (talk) 09:06, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Rather than changing the lead, I've added the {{Not WMF}} hatnote template to the top of the article, which brings it into line with other sites like Fandom (website). Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 09:21, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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