Uncyclomedia policy

FACETIÆ PROSPERANT

« Humor prospers »



Uncyclomedia Policy 2012

Table of contents

Mind the difference between UnMeta and Uncyclomedia. UnMeta is the coordination wiki (the site you are reading right now). Uncyclomedia is the organisation, the covenant of allied websites. For the UnMeta policy, click this link.

Role

Uncyclomedia or the Uncyclomedia Foundation (abbr. UnMeta) is the collective name and an independent, non-profit umbrella organi[s/z]ation for all projects that were founded by or have close relationships with the UnMeta Wiki ( = this site). The Name "UncycloPedia" is the name of the English humour wiki-site, from which we have taken over its concept. We (Uncyclomedia) implement this concept in other language versions. Each humour language version do we call an Uncyclopedia or an uncyc, even when "an uncyc" may have nothing to do with the initial English Uncyclopedia wiki-site. The idea is similar to WikiMedia. As you can derive from the name of UncycloMedia, the organisation was chosen to be a parody on WikiMedia. The prefix "Uncyclo" was chosen, because the organisation was an initiative of users from the initial English Uncyclopedia. The "organisation" is fictional and does not have a central office. The organisation is run by the active group of representatives (or ambassadors) from different uncycs and maintained by the server host User:Carlb.

Uncyclomedia offers new uncyc languages and other projects for free. Not all uncycs are Uncyclomedia hosted. The English uncyc, for instance, is today hosted by the commercial company Wikia.com and has almost no relationships with Uncyclomedia anymore, unless its concept and interwiki. The English Uncyclopedia has an ambassador, who represents Uncyclopedia on UnMeta (see next chapter) for Uncyclomedia.

Please remember that not all Uncyclomedia projects are humorous! Here is a list of serious projects:

• Auctoris (Dutch)
• Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense
• ComplaintWiki (English)
• Mechelen Mapt (Dutch) - Flemish city encyclopædia

Also see Uncyclomedia policy#Other Uncyclomedia projects

Mission

The goal of Uncyclomedia is to create communities that want to propagate a kind of freedom of speech, represented in humorous content. We want people to laugh and we want to make their day. We want to stimulate people to write and develop their writing skills, something that they perform in a humorous way. Nowadays, in a world where social networking is becoming a central focus of people daily life, people rather prefer the easy and superficial watch-media like YouTube. The consequence of this is a backwarding internetting society that looses the point of written humour. There are even people who really do not know what humour is. Just meet a random teenager on the street and ask what he thinks is funny. We bet you'll get an answer like "things on YouTube etc...". Ask another question and try to find out if he does have any knowledge of irony, sarcasm, parody, satire, hyperboles, ... He does know? He'll be one of the few.

With Uncyclomedia we want to provide written humour in as many languages as we can provide. Humour with quality. Humour based on something. No run of the mills that won't last in the minds for a long time. Keep humour alive by signing in on your language and don't be afraid to make edits, we really appreciate your interest.

Concept

Wiki

Each Uncyclomedia site is a wiki. This signifies you can make changes on the site, you too. The most of the pages on our wikis are open for editing. Still, even if you're anonymous, your IP address and your changes are visible on a list of the most recent changes. IPs are easy to track, everyone can do this. If you do not want to be traceable for others, we recommend you to create an account. Accounts on every Uncyclomedia wiki are optional and free: you can choose your own username/nickname and you'll get more credits for your edits. Additionally, you can't upload pictures without an account. So actually, an account has more benefits than staying "anonymous".

Humour concept

The concept of every Uncyclomedia uncyc is to be catalogised as satire. We make fun of everyone and everything, even ourselves. Satire lays its focus on parody, but it also includes irony, sarcasm, and many other humour forms. Initially it began with creating articles about the Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense which appeared on Wikipedia. Later on the purpose of the uncyc concept had grown out to a larger perspective. Of course, we cannot allow every type of humour: bullies, spam, promotion, hatred, propaganda, pages about schools/work, school teachers, or other unfamous persons will be deleted. Uncycs generally don't try to make the whole thing silly: the humour has to be there for a reason. For insanity, we always have the Illogicopedias.

Rules

UnMeta cannot impose rules on the existing communities. Each uncyc actually lives its own life. However, everyone is free to follow some guidelines and recommendations. Read more about these in the chapter "Content".

Vision

We believe in democracy. There is no way that one single person decides on a whole community. Everyone should feel free and comfortable when contributing, so it's really logical that we listen to all people who want to take part in the community. Uncyclomedia holds votings, wants to talk openly about issues and - above all - is strongly focussed on international relationships. We want to be a point of trust for all Uncyclomedia communities and form an ally against any threat that can harm Uncyclomedia's communities. The band between many language uncycs is a precious thing to keep.

Relations with...

Uncyclomedia uncycs

Also read Uncyclopediathink

Each Uncyclomedia project may set up its own policy which only applies to that wiki. It is true that some basic values ​​should be included in that policy, in order to worthily operate under the umbrella of Uncyclomedia. These values ​​include democracy, decency and respect. There are, however, some - whose brains take a magical journey through time and space - who claim that our concept of humor automatically allow ​​to violate these values. If a community wants a wiki to strive for sustainable relationships between users, these values ​​are essential. Uncyclomedia therefore welcomes wikis where there is usually a good atmosphere as a result of these values. It is evident that the organisation strongly condemns elite formation, decadence and provocation. Each wiki in Uncyclomedia thus enjoys full sovereignty, but the international community does have an advisory role and may suggest improvements if needed.

The international community (UnMeta wiki) is friendly to every community with which it links. Consequently, in order to maintain these good relationships, UnMeta will always be as neutral as possible. A condemnation of the international community does not mean that UnMeta stands hostile against the wiki in question: UnMeta is obliged to express an opinion where an incident occurs. If internal unrest in a community repeatedly occurs and leads to a contaminating effect on other communities, there may be penalties for an indefinite time after ratification by vote of the international community. These consist of a suspension of control on UnMeta or at worst a blockade of members involved in the wiki(s) of question. Of course, we don't like to take it that far because this kind of measures are unnecessary. Why not resolve disagreements with humor?

Active members of a community may freely explain the situation on their own wiki at any time. Also, members of the international community may confront a community with questions at all times. The latter is well interpretable. This may involve question about activity of local sysops or a question of international cooperation. The task of UnMeta towards its communities is more or less similar to the task of the European Union, but less complicated, less costly and less bureaucratic.

Wikia uncycs

See also UnMeta:Relationship with Wikia

Wikis that are managed by the commercial company Wikia Inc. are in a more complicated relationship, because we are basically dealing with differences in management. The management of Wikia.com is opportunistic and everything fits in the business, including its content. The main income of the company are the advertisers whose ads appear on any Wikia site. Therefore, the Wikia service to its users is not a high priority, let alone they would maintain any partnerships with non-commercial wiki. The content and users are therefore in overall secondary. The big disadvantage for Uncyclopedia based wikis that use this hosting is the total dependence and subordination of the Wikia-staff, while Uncyclomedia wikis have a big sovereignty. One result of this subordination is such that users can not decide the appearance of their wiki (that is decisive for the parody-being) or that users of a wiki even be hindered in the governance of their wiki. It does mean that content can be removed by staff members when it fits them (or if it fits the advertisers). The subjection of a project to Wikia is further emphasised by the domain name [project].wikia.com. This, knowing that someone else's work is being earned.

Furthermore, ads on Wikia and general commercial nature of the wiki farm - totally incompatible with the Uncyclopedia-based concept... The concept lies mainly in the view (Wikipedia look-alike) and non-commercial nature which does not allow ads. Something that is hosted at Wikia (and especially humour!) would not seem professional because each of these natures are violated. The humour on an independent site is usually much more appreciated than humour which is camouflaged by ads that virtually have nothing to do with the humor of the site.

Soo ... How do we face a community on Wikia? All in all, certainly not hostile, but the bonds we make with them can only reach to an amicable understanding between each other. Communities on Wikia cannot rely on our service, because we cannot update their interwiki links, layout or installation of extensions, because we just differ in management. This also means that the decisive power of Wikia communities on Uncyclomedian communities will be limited, because we can hardly have control on their wikis. But again, Wikia communities are always welcome to contact us for setting up a partnership.

Independent uncycs

The list of these wikis is limited but not insignificant. Independent wikis (wikis that neither belong to Wikia nor to Uncyclomedia) must surely feel invited to keep in touch with Uncyclomedia wikis and with the international community on UnMeta. If independent wikis want to appear on sister sites as an inter-wiki, we expect that this independent wiki will fully adapt the latest updated list of all Uncyclopedias, so this interwiki update can be mutually arranged. Independent wikis retain their sovereignty at any time.

Content in Uncyclopedias

General

What is allowed and what not? We know, it's not fun to follow rules. However, for each language Uncyclopedia the following must haves are really necessary to make the concept of content complete:

• Parody humour, satire, ... ;
• All kind of humour BUT bullies;
• Content may kick sacred cows, but mustn't be penal;
• The thruth of your content is the ONLY thruth;
• Nonsens must be presented as credible (see also recommendations).

Recommendations

• An Uncyclopedia should preferably contain humour that is based on something. The more erudite reader won't laugh about an article about the Amercian president who was born on Jupiter and dislikes pineapples, because pineapples only grow on the hostile planet Venus. This kind of humour is so predictable that the reader looses his enthusiasm to read further...
• Self reference is not done. Readers don't care about you, simple as that. Incrowd humor is funny for 10 persons, but not for a bigger amount.
• Uncyclopedias preferably don't show their political colour. An uncyclopedia should put all items in the pillory and not only the items uncyclopedians don't like.
• Slight erotica is okay, pornography a no-no. We still remain civilised.

Non-Uncyclopedic projects

Some Uncyclomedia projects differ from the uncyc-concept. They don't focus on parody. An example of this is Illogicopedia: the wiki wants to confuse people by writing nonsense. Like Uncyclopedia, the wiki also has sister projects in other languages. As concepts and policies differ from each other, Uncyclomedia's international community on UnMeta can't have any influence in the affairs of these other projects, neither can members of these projects have influence on the international community, unless requesting technical support. These other projects only use our hosting, that's all.

Sometimes these projects are directly managed by administrators or members by a language Uncyclopedia. Administrators of the Dutch Oncyclopedia and Norwegian Ikkepedia directly manage the Illogociopedias in these languages and use them as a better place for "funny Uncyclopedia trash". That doesn't mean that other users who just want to edit on these Illogicopedias aren't welcome. This relationship Uncyc - Illogic is normal, because this kind of content creation invites other people to edit the site.

Please also mind that our serious projects, like Mechelen Mapt for instance, are in no way humorous or bound to our content policy (see heading above).

About using

Reading

There is nothing hidden from Uncyclomedia projects unless deleted revisions of pages and some offensive (privacy-violating) edits. If you were (one of) the author(s) of a deleted page, you have always the right to ask back your revision. If this applies to your wiki, request this locally through e-mail or ask an administrator to send it to your e-mail address.

In fact readers also "use" the content they read. They use it by reading it, but that does not mean readers are involved in what they read. In other words, there are no legal obligations for reading anything of the content on Uncyclomedia projects. You, as a reader, cannot be held responsible for what you read.

Using

We won't sue you because of a copy-paste from our wiki in your personal work, however, we don't appreciate it if you abuse our content by "stealing" it for your public work.

License

This policy and every Uncyclomedia wiki is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 and is protected against any use in commercial work.