Forum:Proposal to close the mirror Uncyclopedias

On Uncyclopedia and on UnMeta in the past there has been some discussion regarding the mirror Uncyclopedia(s), how they're useful/problematic/what have you. While I appreciate that technically as a community there is nothing, exactly, that we can do about this, I am hoping that the wider Uncyclopedia/Uncyclomedia community may be able to come to a consensus regarding this matter, and that carlb will abide by that consensus, whatever it may be. As such, I would like to formally propose that the mirror Uncyclopedia(s) [en] [others?] be closed and taken down for the following reasons:

• Not useful as a mirror
  • No longer updated since early 2010
  • It's editable both by users and IPs - this makes it prone to vandalism and spamming
• No active admin presence
  • Vandalism does not get reverted
  • Spam does not get removed
  • Takedown requests regarding copyrighted material, slander, and other potentially sensitive material go ignored
  • Pages deleted from the main wiki for reasons of copyright, slander, etc also remain
• Copyright concerns
  • Per above, there is no oversight of content
  • Plagiarised and uncited content can be copied over with impunity
• Attribution concerns
  • Due to the nature of exporting/importing mediawiki pages, usernames that don't necessarily match the same users on the other database are retained; this does not meet the attribution requirement of the CC licensing.

I am posting this concurrent with the same proposal on UnMeta in the hopes of achieving a winder consensus, as this should concern all of us. If any of you are active on other languages/projects to whom you think this might also have some relevance, I encourage you to bring them into the discussion as well. 1234 ~ 07:58, 22 January 2012

Vote: Close the mirror Uncyclopedias?

• Per proposal. 1234 ~ 07:58, 22 January 2012
• For -- The Zombiebaron 08:03, January 22, 2012 (UTC)
• Keep. For now, until a way is found to keep the articles and pictures which are removed from here stored so they are still retrievable. There has been a wholesale purge of articles this past year, and, after anyone slaps a Fix or ICU tag on a page, hundreds of more pages are routinely huffed (just go to any article, even features, and look at the amount of red links). If this passes, once a page or a photo is huffed by an admin, it's gone for good. Socky or MadMax or someone will not be able to go into the stockpile and get it back. So, until such a plan is put into place, I'd have to vote keep. Aleister 8:45 22-1-'12

  The mirror site is unrelated to the deletion process here. Deleted pages will remain in the database and will still be available for undeletion by any admin here. 1234 ~ 17:59, 22 January 2012

• Oh FUCK NO! You idiots had been purging articles wholesale for too long! The mirror Uncyclopedia pages are there so that we can retrive the articles and refurbish them. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Giratina CUN|IC Kill | 08:50, January 22, 2012 (UTC)
• Abstain. The mirror site has no active sysops and I think 2 on the total list. Spam goes unchecked and it gets heavily vandalized, I think this was originally meant to be used as a backup to the site yes? Unless we can find a band of dedicated individuals to maintain it (i.e banning spammers and vandals aggressively (because if it nothing more than a backup, then the only changes made should reflect the current site.)) then it's pointless having it. However if a group of people would volunteer to take on the role of maintaining the site as a backup then keep it, as Joe said it would be good for grabbing copies of deleted articles to improve them here. ~Sir Frosty (Talk to me!) 09:49, January 22, 2012 (UTC)

  People have offered, mon, but Carlb has indicated that he does not have the time or perhaps the will to actually do that. This is a solution that would require much less work on all our parts, however, and seems like a potentially reasonable compromise, as the thing isn't even updated anymore anyway. 1234 ~ 17:59, 22 January 2012

• For Although I would like to have a methodology of having active users be able to see the pages/images that have been deleted. Of course, this would mean a major screw-around with user rights and other technical thingies (ie. too hard basket). Alternatively, if the mirror site updated on a daily basis, then I would have no issue with it being there, but I can't see that happening either. Pup 11:51 22 Jan '12

  Even if it were updated on a daily basis, someone would still have to sort through all the deletions here and perform the same ones there when they relate to copyright issues/cyberbullying/sensitive information; there is good reason regular users cannot see deleted pages. 1234 ~ 17:59, 22 January 2012

  I was thinking more along the lines of update via script rather than manually. It would mean that something on there would last up to 24 hours longer than it would here, but given we don't have the manpower to deal with copyright issues/cyberbullying/sensitive information within 24 hours here, because that's a logistical impossibility, then I see no harm in that. Given how clunky the mirror site actually is though, I doubt that this is likely to happen.

  As for regular users viewing deleted info - they already can, to an extent, through google cache. Having a user with revert capacity also able to view deleted pages is slightly different to allowing all users to view them. The capacity to implement this change would be something outside of what wikia currently allows though, I'm assuming. Pup 07:54 22 Jan '12

•  FUCK NO--WELCOME TO UNCYCLOPEDIA HELL!!!! 12:14, January 22, 2012 (UTC)
•  Keep around. I like the concept of a mirror wiki where things are never deleted. Also, Carlb does occasionally drop by to delete some of the crap. Someone should ban AIicia Keyes, though. She keeps vandalizing all kinds of stuff. —Sir Socky (talk) (stalk) GUN SotM UotM PMotM UotY PotM WotM 14:07, 22 January 2012

  You're right - 'concept'. Such a thing would never work in practice. We don't even have enough active users here to maintain this wiki. 1234 ~ 01:43, 23 January 2012

•  Eh, leave it. It would be useful as a database of deleted/old articles, as long as it would be made clear that it's more of that -- a database -- than an active community, so maybe editors over there should just be told to go over here or something. Or, alternately, this. EpicAwesomeness (talk) 16:23, January 22, 2012 (UTC)
•  Fuck it up --EMC ^[TALK] 18:10 Jan 22 2012
•  For. I have absolutely no problem with us having a mirror site whatsoever, but it should be a mirror site in more than just name. As it stands this is less of a mirror and more of a defunct fork that lacks the balls to call itself one. -- Prof. Olipro KUN (W)Anchor Op Bur. (Harass) 18:29, January 22, 2012 (UTC)

  Were it a true mirror, it would also not retain deleted content. Not that that wouldn't also have its uses, but since the loss of said content is what a lot of people are objecting to... well, you know. 1234 ~ 18:31, 22 January 2012

•  Against. While fixing it up would be a rather cumbersome process, deleting it outright is a rather extreme course of action. At most, someone might want to look into those "blatant copyright violations" but other than that, there really is no harm keeping the mirror site running in the occasional case it does prove useful. --Scofield & 1337 18:35, January 22, 2012 (UTC)

  I'm with Joe9320 on this one now. --Scofield & 1337 08:56, January 29, 2012 (UTC)

  No harm? The copyright violations are in of themselves harm, and nevermind any cyberbullying or personal information that may have wound up there; folks have requested in the past that we try to get it taken down, and to no avail. Add to that that it also messes with our search engine optimisation and makes Uncyclopedia look even worse than it is (and that's saying something), how is that no harm? 1234 ~ 18:51, 22 January 2012

  I seriously doubt that anything even from the mirror site itself would pop up in the top results from a search engine, let alone any blatant vandalism from there. Maybe all the cyberbullying and personal information might be there on the mirror site, but I for one doubt there would be anything incriminating enough to ruin anybody's life. Even in the worst case scenario there is something that bad, people would actually have to look for that kind of stuff in order to find it, and we all know what the chances of that happening are. Most vandalism is just childish nonsense, and that's why I think outright deleting the mirror sites is an overzealous proposition at best. --Scofield & 1337 20:35, January 22, 2012 (UTC)

  We have already received numerous complaints over the years that would indicate that such things indeed do pop up. And as you yourself have been banned for posting sensitive information about other users on this wiki, please try to appreciate that there most certainly is harm in that not being deleted. 1234 ~ 22:11, 22 January 2012

  Correction- I was banned for posting sensitive information about one other user on this wiki. And by that user's own admission, the information could be found out anyway if anyone tried to look for it themselves. --Scofield & 1337 20:06, January 23, 2012 (UTC)

  And the entire point was don't do that. That is exactly the sort of thing that does not belong here nor on the other site, no matter how easy it may be for someone to put it there. It is also surprisingly easy for a random person to pick up a dropped cell phone, copy off some images that may just happen to be on it, and upload those, too, and that is the sort of thing that can ruin a person's life if not handled with the utmost care. 1234 ~ 05:52, 27 January 2012

  Or to put it another way, I have a professional profile that I keep very separate from my PuppyOnTheRadio profile. Over the years though the two have overlapped, and I have said enough about my RL personality that it's not impossible to put the two together. If you did publish personal identifiers about me it could go through my professional relationships like curry through a toddler. And it would have similarly messy results. It doesn't matter what the reasoning is, you never put identifiers online for anyone but yourself. Pup 09:00 27 Jan '12

• Keep the mirror site. I see it as a more inclusionist version of our site, and I'd be happy to volunteer to delete spam, dox, copyright takedowns and cyberbullying if carlb made me an admin on that site. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 21:20, January 22, 2012 (UTC)

  He won't. He won't do anything because he never does anything and I don't know why I even bother. 1234 ~ 01:43, 23 January 2012

  Then how do you know if he'll be around to even take down the site? That means it would be left up by default since he is the only admin and bureaucrat on the site. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 08:08, January 25, 2012 (UTC)

• Narrow against. I'm glad that site is up, because then I can get my huffed articles from there and transfer them here to my userspace so I can raise their quality. ~Pleb the magic! 21:43, 01/22/2012

  Ask an admin - we would be more than happy to do that for you. 1234 ~ 01:43, 23 January 2012

  Happy... Hahaha Uncyclopedians happy... This is a very hard and rude work, so stop smiling and back to work work wokr! OMG!!! It`s Cat the Colourful, Jesus Christ!!! 15:31 23 January 2012

•  For. Too easily confusable with the real deal. And don't tell me people are smarter than that. They aren't. They trust whatever shows up on a search engine first. Also, completely unmanageable and slander on it can give us a bad name, if people think that the real Uncyclopedia is hosting the rubbish on there. – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 17:02 Jan 23, 2012
•  Very VERY strong against In response to the above, what kind of moron would believe the "real deal" to be mirror.uncyc.org? I can see what you're saying, but I disagree and believe that it should be open, but only dox/spam/slander/cybertrollying should be deleted with articles and other namespace stuff removed from the proper uncyclopedia being available to anyone who cares enough to view them. - ENTER CITADEL T)alk C)untributions B)an 19:42, January 23, 2012 (UTC)
• For. -- T​K​F​​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​UU​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​CK 10:03, January 24, 2012 (UTC)
•  For.. The mirror of the German Uncyclopedia is complete crap and only visited by spammers and bots, or so it seems. It has no practical value except scaring people off the real thing when they stumble upon it. NaturalBornKieler (talk) 15:28, January 24, 2012 (UTC)
•  On second thoughts, we really don't need it. If you guys wanna close it give us advance notice though. Some people might wanna move older stuff to their userspaces. – Preceding unsigned comment added by EpicAwesomeness (talk • contribs)
• If this gets huffed please move a copy to my userpage. Thanks. Aleister 00:19 25-1-'12
•  Destroy! Destroy everything! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAH! 2K12_DAN.VRS 00:54, January 25, 2012 (UTC)
•  For. For all the reasons outlined by Lyrithya. Even if Carlb was willing to get involved we would end up with two versions of Uncyclopedia. It will be 1054 all over again. --RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 07:22, January 25, 2012 (UTC)
•  For. -- Village Idiot♠KUN Free Speech 07:52, January 25, 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I did a google search for 'uncyclomedia' and the sixth thing down was the english mirror site, Uncyclopedia: TODAY IS ALICIA KEYS BIRTHDAY!!!!! Keys.jpg. UU UU UU UU UU UU nn nnnn ccccccyy yy cccccc oooooo ak fsm gggggggg UU UU nnnn nn cc yy yy cc oo oo ... 1234 ~ 20:25, 25 January 2012

  I did a Google search to see if I could duplicate your results, and the sixth thing down on my google search for uncyclomedia was commons.uncyclomedia.org not the mirror/fork site. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 06:50, January 26, 2012 (UTC)

  Bah, the search results were probably trying to be intelligent and 'relevant', then. Funny how that winds up not being what is actually relevant. 1234 ~ 09:18, 26 January 2012

• For. As per what Lyrithya, Skully and others have said. I have stumbled upon it mistakenly myself a few times through Google. --Black Flamingo 21:49, January 26, 2012 (UTC)
• For Per Olipro. --ChiefjusticeDS 09:05, January 27, 2012 (UTC)

Alternative vote: Protect the site, clean it up, and establish an admin presense from among the active admins here?

This would require considerable work on several folks' parts, especially carlb's:

• carlb would have to actually update the pages there, and put in a new process to maintain the updates
• carlb would have to protect the site
• carlb would need to do something to resolve the attribution discrepencies, perhaps by adding a hack/extension to link user contributions to the actual users here and deleting the existing user database there
• Someone would have to go through 40,000-some pages and delete all the spam, vandalism, copyright violations, slander/cyberbullying (because otherwise, deleting the lot and starting a fresh mirror, all the other old stuff would be lost)
• Admins there would need to remain active, pay attention to what is deleted here and why, and do the same there for matters of clear copyright violations, cyberbullying, and sensitive/personal information
• Admins would also need to be familiar with Canada's laws regarding copyrights and the like, as it is not hosted in the same country as the main Uncyclopedia

There may be other things as well. 1234 ~ 17:59, 22 January 2012

•  Against. Not only would this be simply infeasible since carlb barely has the time to perform much more minor server-side maintenance and our own admins would be unlikely to be able to/want to keep up with the deletions on both, there would also be little reason to do so. Any user may ask an admin to restore a deleted page they would like to see to their userspace, unless it was deleted for copyright or cyberbullying, in which case it shouldn't be on the mirror site, either. 1234 ~ 17:59, 22 January 2012
•  Against. If it has to be manually maintained like that, then it's not a true mirror and as such is meaningless, distracting, and could potentially cause us issues here. Pup 07:58 22 Jan '12

  Well, that's what the people voting to keep it are voting for. A true mirror wouldn't keep the deleted stuff any more than this site does, because a true mirror would mirror the content. 1234 ~ 22:05, 22 January 2012

  A slight change to my above vote. If this is to go ahead, which is really not a community consensus as much as it relies on Carlb letting new admins go to town in it, it would be a good training for potential admins here. Pup 03:06 23 Jan '12

•  For. Cleaning up the spam isn't going to be as hard as you might think...just search the new pages log and fix the link to IP contributions so that it reflects IP contributions on the mirror site. A bot could go in and clean up the spam that has digits after the title, :for example "bla bla i'm so stupid 96" is a typical spam title...they have two digit numbers after most of the spam titles, then once you find the contributor of the article, you go in and kill their other contributions which are also spam. I've already been going into the mirror site, deleting the random first part of spam articles and removing external spam links. As to Vanity/cyberbullying, a user named "Alicia Keys" has been going in and putting the template AKDK (Alicia Keys doesnt know you) on most of those, so it would be simple to use the tool of what links to that template and kill all of those. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 21:32, January 22, 2012 (UTC)

  Going back years? And the entire deletion log here would have to be continuously checked as well to remove anything that is deleted for the above reasons... as for that user you mention is just a vandal doing that to most anything it doesn't like. >.< 1234 ~ 22:05, 22 January 2012

•  For. If there are people willing to give it a shot (like Simsilikesims), I see no harm in letting 'em. —Sir Socky (talk) (stalk) GUN SotM UotM PMotM UotY PotM WotM 22:21, 22 January 2012
•  For. Some people want to do things, so why not? And when was it decided that the site had to be cleaned up, I thought it was just a mirror repository and I don't even know how to find the site. And this Alicia Keys character seems to be much of the problem, so an Alicia Keys anti-bot sounds better than killing an entire website backup file. Aleister 15:48 23-1-'12
• Against -- The Zombiebaron 15:54, January 23, 2012 (UTC)
•  For. --Scofield & 1337 16:19, January 23, 2012 (UTC)
•  Against. carlb is not around to administrate his own site - ?pedia - and he certainly won't be able to take care of the mirrors. Also, we're stretched thin on this site as it is. It's hopeless to even attempt what is described here. – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 17:05 Jan 23, 2012

  Do you think we need more admins here then? Pup 09:04 23 Jan '12

  GOD NO! Skully was probably talking about users in general in the second sentence, though. —Sir Socky (talk) (stalk) GUN SotM UotM PMotM UotY PotM WotM 21:06, 23 January 2012

• For. Why? Because at least we can rename the mirror site as "Ye Olde Uncyclopedia Repository". |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Giratina CUN|IC Kill | 12:08, January 24, 2012 (UTC)
•  Against. --RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 00:02, January 25, 2012 (UTC)
• Against. Simsilikesims' keenness to help is really admirable, but I would rather it was spent on this site to be honest. --Black Flamingo 21:57, January 26, 2012 (UTC)

Alternative Alternative Vote: Put me in charge of the mirror site.

Or Puppy. Or SOAUU. Anybody! Anybody but me! |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Giratina CUN|IC Kill | 12:07, January 24, 2012 (UTC)

• AGAINST! Well - on the bit about me anyway. Pup 12:57 25 Jan '12

Are you sure you don't want to make a bot that would do a good bit of the work? And by a good bit I mean 99.99%. I'm not good at making bots, but perhaps you are. However, once tax season ends, I have a lot of spare time. One good admin could protect old pages so that they are uneditable except by sysops, and delete spam pages. The Alicia Keys vandal however, is deeply entrenched. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 07:32, January 25, 2012 (UTC)

I made a js script browser end bot once. It was designed to spam talkpages - not intentionally, but effectively. It wasn't that good. I don't do bots. Pup 08:54 25 Jan '12

Counterproposal: Create NEW mirror, but more secure

•  For. I would like to see the old one deleted and replaced with an new repository that is ten times more secure, and less prone to vandals and cyberbullying, etc. I see that the current mirror as a piece of shit. Better to create a new mirror and start all over again than to keep the old one. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Giratina CUN|IC Kill | 11:48, January 27, 2012 (UTC)
•  Against. Other than the I want to restore my article stuff, the idea of a mirror is pointless. As we're currently trying to amend the way articles are deleted, and any deletion can be restored by an admin, mirror is becoming even more pointless. Also the anyone can edit thing would also be significant. It would also be a redundancy - why do we need a mirror when we have uncyc? And it would be a logistical nightmare to set it up. It would be better to have a bit go through and delete every page on the mirror that we already have than start another one, and easier to do. We would also have to consider the costs of hosting and domain registration. And in the long run what we would have is something similar to what we have at the moment but with less point. Need any more reasoning? Pup 12:02 27 Jan '12
• Comment. Shouldn't the mirror be a mirror? Just make it read-only. Everything from the database should be replicated there on a regular basis (say, daily or weekly or bi-millenially) but the wiki itself should be read-only until/unless needed so there's no vandalism/spam/etc and cleaned up by virtue of replacement. » Brig Sir Dawg | t | v | c » 2012.01.29.02:16

  Aye, like what Olipro said, that would have its uses and even be maintainable. The problem is that the current so-called 'mirror' ain't that at all... 1234 ~ 02:41, 29 January 2012

•  I strongly support Joe9320's proposal. And yeah, make it read-only and update it only when this site is updated. That way, we can have a proper mirror site at long last. --Scofield & 1337 08:59, January 29, 2012 (UTC)

  Okay. Who is going to pay to buy the domain and what servers is it being hosted on? Have you put together a proposal that covers the cost and what systems will be put in place to copy over the material on a regular basis. And have you done a projection of what the benefit would be of having a mirror site versus the cost of establishing one? Pup 10:28 29 Jan '12

  Simple. Keep the current domain and have a bot wipe out all the content. Then replace the website with a protected version of the site as it is today, you know, like a "copy and paste"? Or is that not how things work? --Scofield & 1337 12:21, January 29, 2012 (UTC)

  So, in short, not create a new mirror but clean-up the old mirror. Which I believe is the vote above this one. Pup 10:55 30 Jan '12

• A mirror is a mirror. If we are going to have a mirror site, then we must delete the old one and replace it with a new mirror where admins move the VFD articles here to the mirror site. All pages must be permanently locked to prevent vandals. And I will have to be the one cleaning it up. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Giratina CUN|IC Kill | 01:14, January 30, 2012 (UTC)

  That wouldn't be a mirror. 1234 ~ 05:03, 30 January 2012

  Then let's make a proper mirror. Wipe out every single thing the old mirror has, and replace it with a copy-paste job of this site. Screw all the stuff that may get lost in the process, we don't need to waste any effort preserving useless artifacts. All pages that are added, featured or deleted from this site could contribute to the changes and updates made to the site on a regular basis (daily, monthly, whatever), and the mirror should be protected at all times. --Scofield & 1337 13:38, January 30, 2012 (UTC)

 For.--WELCOME TO UNCYCLOPEDIA HELL!!!! 15:29, January 30, 2012 (UTC)

Hey! Wait a minute....

Has the mirror site been removed already? So this was all a farce, a smokescreen! Screw you Lyrithya!!!!!!! --Scofield & 1337 12:44, January 29, 2012 (UTC)

If the fellow took the thing down, then that probably just means he listened to what the communities had to say. Wikia could do well to follow suit with the neglected mirrors they host, though that is a somewhat stranger issue. 1234 ~ 16:47, 29 January 2012

Oh, the surprise, this was so unexpected. Anyway, I had requested a copy of the mirror site on my user page, please. Thank you. Or at least Olsen Twins ("If you can't have a mirror site then you must settle for the Olsen Twins" -- an old Bohemian proverb). Aleister 1:28 30-1-'12

Well... I can give you this dead fish? 1234 ~ 05:02, 30 January 2012

Just the Olson Twins please. My memory of the page is it wasn't bad at all, or at least had good pics and is a vital article. Thanks. Aleister 10:11 30-1-'12

False alarm

Mirror site is still there; someone just redirected the mainpage to unmeta, and since forwarding is on, it acts as a hard redirect. Personally I'm inclined to leave it like that, although it indeed does not actually solve many of the problems of the site as a whole. 1234 ~ 05:02, 30 January 2012

And if anyone wants to see what the difference is in content, I just copied over a feature from 2009 to the mirror. The difference between them is here. Pup 01:13 05 Feb '12

Wow, that's, uh, quite a difference. -- 03:15, February 5, 2012 (UTC)