Why does the german version of uncyclopedia not work?
- The sidebar link is wrong, but I don't know how to fix that. The proper address () is in the Languages template at the bottom of the main page. —rc (t) 15:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I raised the issue of our inability to update the interwiki table nearly a month ago bug:324. I've been pointedly ignored with every enquiry I've made on Wikia about this issue (which goes well beyond de: or fi: as we're missing links to at least half of the languages - including ar: da: hu: ja: no: pt: sv: zh: and zh-tw:). The interwiki link addresses are pulled from a database table which hasn't been updated since March. Also, de: is still missing many of its images [1]. --Carlb 18:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
- (Um, I think that the Taiwanese Chinese language code is zh-hant:...) —Sir Major Hinoa [TALK] [KUN] 18:43, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
All possible combinations to inter-language link from any Wikia-hosted Uncyclopædia project directly to any of the Chinese-language Uncyclopædias fail, regardless of prefix: zh-cn: zh-sg: zh-hans: zh-hant:. --Carlb 20:08, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Just say no:?
- We are not ignoring you, but there is a lot to do, and not enough people to do it. We've got two new techs starting shortly (next week iirc) and that should help. The list you gave, Carlb, needs looking at - there are some wikis on there that are competing with Wikia versions. I see no reason for us to add those to the interlaguage list. I will look at this next week and try to get it sorted. I'm really sorry for the delay. -- sannse (talk) 22:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Understood. Thanks for looking into this!
If the old uncyc .de domain currently parks to a "parking" page (ie: linkspam), we might not want to be linking there. The missing images in .de were also making Uncyclopedia a laughingstock on other wikis (specifically Kamelopedia, a somewhat-similar German-language wiki).
As for duplicate or "competing" wiki projects? I don't think I have any Kamelopedias or Ardkorpedias on that list (as neither are Uncyclomedia projects) and so far no sign of separate East German and West German nations.
Fi: is utter chaos (I did not include it in that list at all - maybe the issue of where to point fi: links in Uncyclopedia should be opened for discussion here if anyone has a better idea of what's going on? Szoferka and I had tried leaving messages on fi:user_talk:Baskabommi when it came back up a few weeks ago, but received no reply.).
The rest of these only seem to have one active project per language. Zh: and zh-tw: are different in language (China and Taiwan are not even using the same character set), therefore not a duplicate. The others that may duplicate externally-hosted Uncyclopedia projects are no: and sv: - but the corresponding Wikia are empty (eight and two pages respectively) as the original community behind each has moved elsewhere. (The active projects for these have no: already over 100 pages, sv: is about seventy pages IIRC.)
At the moment, though, it's more a question of not being able to link to most languages at all. --Carlb 23:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
- I know no. and sv. forked (although I don't know why), but I would much rather support and build the wikia versions than push people towards the forks. In the long-term, I think that will give a better result for the whole Uncyclopedia family.
- The de. image issue is a real shame. From what I understand, there was a problem with the image transfer, and then the originals were deleted from the old server before they could be re-transfered. Maybe en. could help out by sharing images. There must be plenty that work for both languages, and it that would quickly give a boost to their image collection -- sannse (talk) 22:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Ouch!
If the matching images had the same name (some do, some don't) there'd probably be an easy way to do this - either by using a commons:-style setup (now that both are on the same server) or by running a search for same-name images on Uncyclopedia and on the various Wikipædia projects. That would only fix part of the problem, but a commons:-style setup would only require a few extra lines in LocalSettings.php
Images which are original, or which have the names translated to German, would be somewhat more of a problem.
This approach was already tried with fi: (re-uploading en.uncyc or wikipedia stuff) - it's better than nothing, but still leaves a badly-incomplete project.
And then there's the whole Scandanavian mess... every country up there has duplicate and triplicate Uncyclopædia projects if you include empty or unstable sites? The inactive versions which duplicate other projects really should be closed, unless they're needed because the original server is no longer stable.
I doubt that pushing people to the empty versions of no: and sv: will help the Uncyclopedia family. Au contraire. There's nothing there to which to link, even if they duplicate active external projects. Worse, we're dealing with languages spoken only in small individual Scandinavian countries. The respective communities just aren't large enough to be able to sustain multiple copies of the same project.
The end result is that Uncyclopedia is being fragmented, one language at a time.
The pattern of fragmentation of the Uncyclopedia project (where any new languages do not use uncyclopedia.org subdomains or Uncyclopedia-compatible license terms, do not use uncyclopedia.org's userlist but someone else's, cannot make interlanguage links in both directions to all other Uncyclopedias and do not fall back to a commons:-style repository for images which can't be found on the local wiki) exists and will continue as languages split from the main English-language wiki. This holds true regardless of whether they're affiliated with other sites in their own country (hehu.se), are independent (ikkepedia.net) or are hiding elsewhere at Wikia. Pointing all links for a language to an empty wiki instead of an active project that has moved elsewhere only increases the fragmentation.
A mess like fi: is a little more awkward. The Hikipedia name and identity rightfully belong to the peelonet site, which is now unstable.
The situation with Finland is that the original site turned out to be an ADSL modem on a dynamic IP; the site has been down/back up/back down repeatedly. Text but not images from the original project have been recovered. The content itself is often a mess for want of active admins able to understand the language; some is good but many pages are a mess of substubs, vandalism and insults. At best, there might be one admin on each fi: site. Even the original logo (a rude one-finger gesture) appears to have been created because Hikipedia's first logo was virtually a copy of Wikipedia and there were some objections. You are aware of no: and the status of Ikkepedia.wikia.com already; they moved to a regular commercial host (secureserver.net) a month or so ago under their own independent (ikkepedia.net) domain, citing unspecified "performance issues". They're already above a hundred pages and doing reasonably well at last glance.
Sweden? I think that sv: moved twice and ultimately ended up as part of another site (hehu.se) dedicated to comics/games after briefly operating as a (now-defunct) elwiki site. Not sure what the motivations were - perhaps they always wanted to be part of the hehu site (a community in their own language) but set up the elwiki when they weren't certain that hehu could accommodate them? At the moment, psyklopedin.elwiki.com does not even resolve in DNS (and was empty before it went completely down), but psyklopedin.hehu.se is active (70+ pages and growing).
The whole mess (including sites which are down, empty or duplicate active projects elsewhere, but excluding redirects and multiple domains pointing to the same place) looks something like:
Outbound inter-language links are currently missing on all Wikia-hosted Uncyclopedias except en: es: fr: he: pl: ru:. This issue has been raised before by at least one user on el: on June 1 (they can't outbound interlanguage-link to anything) but it's out of my hands.
The languages listed above as existing only within uncyclopedia.org's Babel: namespace are typically those with very few articles (one to ten pages at the most) and therefore too small to be viable as separate wikis at the current time. If a language exists as a separate wiki, I've listed the wiki and not the Babel: pages here on en: el And no, I never did learn a foreign language; that does leave me at somewhat of a disadvantage when trying to untangle this fine mess. --Carlb 23:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with Carlb. I can see how pushing people towards abandoned wikias can serve wikia, but it seems clear that for the uncyc family the best option is to embrace the big active wikis, rather than the small abandoned ones. Could the coders just find a way to make "fake" interwikis?---Asteroid B612
(aka Rataube) - Ñ 20:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
- Well surely, pushing people towards abandoned wikis will make them populated again - which seems a good way to bring all the versions closer together. I don't think that supporting the forks is necessarily the right way to go. But for the whole question of which we should link to, and how we should set them up, I'll find out more -- sannse (talk) 20:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Pushing people towards abandoned wikis
Beidipædia is content-free
Wikia traditionally has taken the approach of accepting nearly any creation request which doesn't overlap existing wikimedia projects or existing wikia, doesn't limit itself to one small group and doesn't offend the advertisers. The question of whether actual content exists or is likely to be created somehow seems to take a back seat, leading to some bizarre results. In uncyclopedia's case, this lead to some active projects being given a rather hard time in response to Wikia creation requests (Taiwan is currently living in exile as there is already a China uncyclopedia on Wikia) and some empty projects being created no-questions-asked (the Arabic uncyclopedia Beidipedia being a prime example). The first Uncyclopedia babel project to request its own Wikia was fr:Désencyclopédie - they were originally turned down outright simply for asking to use a free, non-commercial license.
If the original community moves elsewhere, Wikia owns the original domain name, owns the user list and keeps the old (but often empty) wiki with its original name online in direct competition with the new site. That only hurts the original group who were once active here.
While an approach of accepting most creation requests (or rejecting on political grounds, not on whether content exists) and ignoring requests to delete wikia which are empty or wiki projects which have long since moved elsewhere lets Wikia claim to "host more than a thousand wikis", it does leave far too many empty Wikia online. At this point, it's almost not worth the average viewer of the site clicking to the list of wikia in (whatever language) and viewing individual projects, as most contain little or nothing. A few projects are active and thriving, but many are abandoned with no content and no editors.
Starting a successful wiki (whether new or by restarting an existing but currently empty project) requires a certain amount of "seed content". The wiki needs to be started by a community with some pages (maybe ten to fifty good pages of actual content) already written. If it's started empty, prospective users look, see nothing and move on. The wiki which starts as an empty page often remains an empty page.
Merely hosting (or linking to) an empty wiki with the same name as an active external project won't magically bring a dead entity back to life. Perhaps the entire process of opening (or closing) Wikia need to be rethought, not just in Uncyclopedia but Wikia-wide:
The existing Wikia 'scratchpad' should be replaced with a series of individual wikia on each broad general topic category (all top-level encyclopædia categories like 'art', 'science', 'religion', 'society' and the most-used second-level categories such as 'science fiction' or 'television' and 'cinema'). When one topic gets enough activity (content + active users), it should then split off as a separate project. For Uncyclopedia projects, individual Babel: sections should become namespaces if more than a few pages and full wikis as soon as they're active enough to be viable.
The existing Wikia creation criteria (it doesn't overlap anything, it doesn't offend Google and someone wants to be administrator) make no sense if the more important questions - whether there is content and community to sustain a project as an independent wiki - are utterly ignored.
The practice of keeping dead projects even if there is no community or the original community has moved their project elsewhere should be reconsidered. An empty wiki which merely duplicates an active (but external) project benefits no one. --Carlb 18:11, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
- As a little child once said: "The wiki is naked"---Asteroid B612
(aka Rataube) - Ñ 18:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
- "Perhaps the entire process of opening (or closing) Wikia need to be rethought, not just in Uncyclopedia but Wikia-wide" - it is being, very actively. We don't like the empty wikis any more than you do :) Something that has amazed me since I've started revewing requests is how many people ask for a wiki on a great subject, and never make a single edit. I'm as keen as anyone to weed these out. But some good topics are better put up for adoption than closed - some wikia have really revived that way. There are a few options... just got to work out what's best -- sannse (talk) 09:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Pick a Hikipedia, any Hikipedia
The worst-case in this appears to be fi: where we have three possible link destinations:
- is the original project, over 2000 pages, but uptime is roughly first ten days of each month?
- is the current location of whatever peelonet content was dumped to an external server after peelonet became unstable; the current text (but not images) of all peelonet content was reposted to here the last time peelonet came back up.
- is a fork created by user:sannse a couple days after the mess currently on hiki.pedia.ws was posted; it is based on starting over (currently 105 pages) instead of attempting to recover any of the peelonet content.
It is possible to link to any of them from uncyclopedia.info (but not from here). It gets messy:
- fi:Etusivu, if used from info:, reaches hiki.pedia.ws this week
- fi:peelo:Etusivu attempts to reach the original site, but by using a local interwiki table entry on hiki.pedia.ws
- fi:hikia:Etusivu reaches Wikia's Hikipedia fork, but by using a local interwiki table entry on hiki.pedia.ws which points hikia: to
All three do appear in the sidebar as 'Suomi' for the interlanguage link. One ends up in Omaha, one in Florida, one (times out) in Finland.
This would almost certainly break any pywikibot interwiki.py processing for that language (not an issue on info: as info is not one of the individual-language wikis and therefore not somewhere where we would automatically robot-generate interlanguage links). It's a kludge. It's ugly. It's the sort of mess made when the primary site for a language is neither consistently up nor officially permanently shut down.
The search box on the Babel main page is also kludged to deal with fi: - it's listed as if it were three languages (Suomi, Suomi (Peelonet) and Suomi (Wikia)) and uses fi.uncyclopedia.info, peelo.uncyclopedia.info and hikia.uncyclopedia.info to redirect to three different Hikipedia wikis on three different sites.
From here, however, the situation for interlanguage links is worse - if fi: links to a site which is down, it is not possible to redirect through that site to somewhere else. If we can't update the interwiki table on any of the Wikia-hosted Uncyclopædias, we can't fix this anywhere. Inter-language fi: links end up finnished at a dead end. --Carlb 22:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
So, why not start with the easy bit
If I've got it right, these are the non-controversial and straightforward ones. That is, ones hosted by wikia, without duplication elsewhere (plus meta and babel). CarlB, can you check this please? -- sannse (talk) 17:52, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
ar ca da de el en es fr he it la pl ru zh meta cs et ko lt ro simple th vi
Meta has now been moved to
Otherwise, these appear to be valid (14 of the 22 language wikis) as far as they go and mostly harmless. Of the eight languages removed there are only three (the Scandinavian countries) which duplicate any language prefix across more than one wiki - and these are most often empty (community has moved) with the exception of fi:'s unstable server issues. --Carlb 18:40, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd be curious to know why you think Uncyclopædia should deliberately omit interlanguage links to eight of the twenty-two languages which comprise the project? This does seem to be rather many? --Carlb 00:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
- I don't think we should, but I'm not sure of the best way to handle these at the moment, so it seems sensible to push for the simple ones to be done now and worry about the others after that. -- sannse (talk) 11:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
With the exception of the Scandanavian mess (fi: specifically) there isn't more than one way to handle these. Tossing the question out for discussion here in Uncyclopedia.en would make sense if there were multiple valid destinations, but for most of these there are not.
What were you considering proposing to us as the alternate destinations for these eight (most of which only have one wiki each)? --Carlb 16:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
So what do we do with the not-so-easy bit?
We have two active fi: wikis, not counting the (unstable) original site at peelonet.zapto.org/hikipedia
They have different content and logos and supposedly have different admins. At one point, featured article was returning Hitler on one and Stalin on the other.
There's also a language barrier in that there's no babelfish translation and a shortage of people who understand Finnish (Suomi), so how would we even ask on the respective project:Kahsivuone pages what they would want done with these?
Anyone can put together a Scandinavian wiki with simple parts and instructions from IKEA... if there aren't any pieces missing. At least it looked simple until you get them home and take them out of the box, piece by piece. There are few or no illustrations. --Carlb 16:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Peelonet is still down :(
And what of the projects that can't inter-language link back out?
That'd be every Wikia-hosted Uncyclopædia except en: es: fr: he: pl: ru: - will these be fixed? --Carlb 17:26, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, Jason has the whole list and I've asked for the links to be set up in both directions. Maybe after the upgrade on Monday, he will be able to get to this (I hope) -- sannse (talk) 19:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)