Talk:Something Awful Forums

For an October 2004 deletion debate over this page see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Something Awful Forums

Christ, People

Firstly, let me make clear to you that I am a faggot.

It's clear this wiki has dedicated people watching it, always ready at a moment's notice to revert changes that might in any way detract from their chosen opinion of the Something Awful Forums, a commercial venture. I've seen this happen many times, often within a minute of an edit. Not only do some of you folks have too much time on your hands, but I regret to say that perhaps your priorities are a bit out of whack. The Something Awful Forums is a commercial website. You pay to use it and post on it. Let the guy you're paying take care of protecting his own image. Go worry about your own.

Wikipedia is about information, not thinly-veiled advertisements for internet businesses. Those of you who constantly censor this entry with the aim of protecting Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka and the Something Awful forums are perverting the purpose of wikipedia in the first place and should be ashamed of yourselves.

Also, I am a faggot.

P-P-P-Powerbook!

Since it became something of an internet phenomenon (after being linked on slashdot, fark, etc.), I think the P-P-P-Powerbook should receive some mention.--Wasabe3543 07:50, 25 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

- Then mention it yourself!--81.153.165.114 22:59, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

4chan

The recent edit on the 4chan origins footnote was hardly a clarification. I realise that I have a certain degree of bias with regards to the origins of 4chan, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that one of the major reasons for its creation was not, in fact, to host pedophilic material. Its Japanese counterpart, 2chan, at least has a number of general image posting boards in addition to the porn-centric ones, whereas 4chan has hardly any. And though you could argue that not all materials posted can be moderated for age (a task that can sometimes, admittedly, be cumbersome), the Guro board was removed outright for its content, whereas the similarly fetish-themed Rorikon board was not. Furthermore, it's somewhat silly to insist on writing Moot's name in lowercase, and detracts from the overall professionalism of the article.

-- All of the 4chan admins I know of are opposed to lolikon and try to keep it in its board; the reason for the board's existence is to prevent its visitors from going to dedicated websites and acquiring an even more distorted worldview

-- I'll bite. To suggest that 4chan was created primarily to host child pornography is grossly inaccurate at best and an attack on the website's creators at worst. 4chan was created as an English-language version of the Japanese 2chan; 2chan blocks non-Japanese IPs from posting. However, with the boards' audience being primarily male teens and young adults (mostly goons, friends of goons and IRC junkies who found the site by clicking a link posted), it's not surprising that pornography was 4chan's main focus. The lolikon section (which outright bans any photographs of real people, just to be on the safe side of the law) turned out to be popular enough to warrant its own board. At least it keeps such content out of the other boards. --Jonathan Drain 19:53, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Registration gross

"Lowtax has likely grossed well in excess of 250,000 dollars in registrations alone, although this figure has not been confirmed."

"the 30,000 member mark was reached mid-April, 2004"

I'm guessing the second statement was added after the first. At $10 per registration he has obviously now grossed over 300,000.

The forums were initially free until roughly the 6000 member mark, so you're wrong. It would be 270k, but this is still rough.

42,543 members now, and still growing. Plus think of all the bans removed and other additions people have paid for. Lowtax isn't 'grossing' this money. It goes towards the servers too, as the site generates very large amount of traffic.

You obviously do not know what "grossing" means. A gross profit is all of the money made before expenses. His net profit on the site is probably relatively low, but he seems to live comfortably regardless. Also, I said "registrations alone" because I meant just that. The number of reregisters and archive and platinum accounts is unknown, so you can't very well figure that amount in.

The Comedy Lolocaust

I think there should be something mentioning furries, and/or the Comedy Lolocaust, on this page. Whether this would go under information about FYAD, or about bannable offenses (or both), I don't know. Also, I don't think I have most of the story correct, as I'm going completely off of memory and didn't visit FYAD or the SA Forums at all for a long period in between. Here's what I can remember.

Long ago, the posting of "furrie" porn, or cartoon depictions of animals committing sexual acts, was not illegal in FYAD. It was even seen in the pornography forum, DPPH, on rare occasion. When this happened, the poster was usually rebuked if they did not include a warning in the thread's subject text, and perhaps made fun of for their preference in pornography.

As time progressed, furry threads continued to be posted, mostly if not solely in FYAD. As FYAD is not intended to have any rules, the posters were not stopped, though they were taunted endlessly by the other members of FYAD. Lowtax one day decided, however, that furry porn would no longer be allowed in FYAD, setting in motion a chain of events later to be known as the "Comedy Lolocaust."

As the first step of the Lolocaust, Lowtax created a subforum in FYAD dedicated to the posting of furrie porn, called "The Furrie Concentration Camp." This kept all furrie threads out of FYAD and in one central location. The denizens of this subforum, along with any others proven to have furrie tendencies, were then given custom titles of a large yellow star with the title "Yiff" on top, a reference to a slang term for those who like furrie porn. Once all of the forum's furries were identified, they were then permanently relegated to the Furrie Concentration Camp, and finally banned, effectively ending the mass proliferation of furrie porn in FYAD.

- Sounds like a great story. So why don't you post it yourself? That's what wikipedia is all about! (There's nothing to fear: if your story is incomplete, most likely someone will complete it, or if it is irrelevant, somebody will move it to a better place).--81.153.165.114 22:59, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What is FYAD and why do you thing "furry porn" or any porn in and of itself should be "illegal"???

 The Person above meant "against the forum rules," not "illegal." FYAD is one of the forums of Something Awful.

In reference to "Killdozer"

"However, it became overused and even with the failed conception of the Killdozer video game, it has become overused and retarded."

Someone should really change that... - Yossarian

victoly ^_^ Golbez 18:34, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

That doesn't do much to get rid of the impression that a huge flood of SA members came to vote -_- Clearly you saw it as a war. --Etaonish 23:39, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

Nah, I saw it as a good chance to say "victoly". Though at times, it resembled a war - and in my case, I wasn't an SA member who flooded to come to vote. --Golbez 02:26, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

So, following the VfD consensus

I'm going to go ahead later and heavily prune the article instead of deleting it. Any major objections? My plan:

General Forums (heavily condense/rewrite) Specific Topi Forums (condense into a list) Special Forums (condense into list) Culture (remove) Bannable offenses (rewrite) IRC (remove) --Etaonish 14:57, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

I Don't think that was the VFD consensus. Kim Bruning 14:59, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That was certainly not VfD consensus; as far as we should be concerned, VfD never happened. Now we discuss here about what to do. VfD cannot vote to prune, therefore there is no consensus to prune as of yet. I am not hostile to pruning - I am hostile to pruning without consensus, and that is lacking at the moment. Not to say it won't be lacking at a later moment. --Golbez 15:50, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I meant informally, it seemed even some of the Keeps wanted to prune. So that's why I put up this little notice. So, do you agree?--Etaonish 17:49, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

No. Kim Bruning 19:04, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ah. As soon as I ask for input on pruning, nobody responds, because SA is such a wonderful site that can do no wrong and therefore should be the primary thought of every person in the universe. The article is too short: it needs a lengthy biography of every forum member who has ever registered for the glory that is SA. Etaonish must be a SA-hating 12yearold AOL user, let us laugh at him with our brilliant sarcasm and Photoshop. -_- Is that your position? I've gone ahead and edited it: I've preserved all the important information, especially the infromation that someone might wish to know before they pay the ten dollars. --Etaonish 19:08, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

Uh huh. My input is that your consensus is imaginary and I've reverted the article. --Twinxor 21:35, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The VfD consensus is irrelevant: a significant number of people seemed to want a rewrite. That's not the main point: I still believe the article is needlessly long, going into excruciating details. I don't even go into as much detail about myself on my own page. --Etaonish 07:04, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

You've made your point very clear. It's wildly unpopular. Stop attacking the article. --Twinxor 03:42, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Attacking? I didn't remove anything of any importance. Besides, you're the only one who's making objections: I would like to hear some other points of view. And is there any way we can compromise? --Etaonish 03:49, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

The article has been reverted to it's original form. Vandalizing an article under the premise of 'rewriting' after failing a VfD is not a mature way to handle affairs. --Anon 04:40, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Because, of course, anonymous users are very reliable. If you're going to participate, at least have the decency to register, or if you already are registered, log in and comment. Besides, I didn't vandalize it. Vandalizing would be something akin to blanking the page. I *did* rewrite it, so the question isn't one of vandalism, but of the edits that I made. If anything, reverting my edits with no reason is vandalism. --Etaonish 18:31, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Etoanish, I believe you are well-intentioned here, that the article as it stands has issues, and that your large edit did improve the overall article quality. But your finger was perhaps a tad heavy on the delete key, and attempting to remove so much material so soon after your VfD failed just isn't likely to go over well. Why not start small, and clean up some of the worst sections for now, rather than continue trying to push through the full slash and burn all at once? Keep some perspective -- this is an article about some Internet forum, not United States or chemistry. In your situation I typically move on to work on other articles, intending to come back in a month or so and see how things are going. Saucepan 23:43, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've given this article breaks already. I ask you to actually COMMENT on my new version instead of saying OMG IT SUXOR YOU FAG DIE as one goon told me in an IM. Keep in mind the Wiki notice you see when you edit a page: If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it. Work from this version: don't jump to the revert. If there's something that you feel deserves to be in the article, kindly post it here and we can discuss. Similarly, if there's something clearly wrong with it, describe it. I don't feel there's anything missing, however, because I've tried to be as fair and NPOV as possible. --Etaonish 03:53, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

It feels really empty after all these edits. Kinda like a large bush that's been pruned down to half its size and with almost none of the leaves. The article was too large though, and did need the trim. At some time during the next few weeks I will look up the version from before VfD and see if there's anything that was removed that could do with being put back into the article, or any aspect of "the Forums" that isn't sufficiently covered. (I'm a non-Goon, so I only know of what I've heard of SA from goons and from word of mouth, and since I only mainly hear/remember SA things which are relevant and/or interesting to non-goons, it ought to help keep the article encyclopaedic.) --Jonathan Drain 02:56, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I RESCUED THIS VANDALISM BECAUSE I FOUND IT FUNNY

The Christian Savior Congregation

This forum is used by posters to help spread the word of Christianty to the rest of the world. People post links to offensive and non-christian sites along with email addresses and other message boards. This is not the only use though, many people use this forum to ask for prayer for their loved ones and post the transcript of their preachers sermon every Sunday. BonzoESC 06:37, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

fyad fyad lol Twinxor 07:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Split this article

According to the edit page[1], this article is 38k long, and it recommends moving detail to other articles. I think maybe we should split off FYAD(Fuck You and Die (Something Awful Forum)), the culture (Culture of Something Awful Forums), and Bannable Offenses (Bannable Offenses of Something Awful Forums) into separate articles, with brief summaries here. In addition, IRC channels should be moved into another article (IRC Channels of Something Awful), with a "see also" link here. What do you guys think?

...I can't believe this. Split it? It's too big because it's TOO BIG, not because there's so much stuff that needs to be inserted in the article. No other forum in the world even has a Wiki article this big, much less multiple articles. Keep in mind Wikipedia is not supposed be the repository of all human knowledge ever created. There are server limits. --Etaonish 05:04, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Server limits are unlikely ever to become an issue for human-created text content. Astonishing as it seems the first time one notices that there are ie. hundreds of Pokemon articles, they are all encyclopedic and their existence turns out not to hurt anything. It looks like Wikipedia is going to end up reflecting the interests of its contributors regardless of what prescriptivists might prefer.

Back on topic, I agree with the proposed split. The current article is getting too long for an overview article. Saucepan 19:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Pokemon is different though. The article is about an international phenomenon that has spread across the globe for several years now. SA forums isn't. I bring up server limits because otherwise it opens the door to a massive glut of hyperdetailed fancruft. I can write 10 articles on any forum, going into meticulous detail about every subforum that was ever created and every fad that ever existed. I can go into a lot of detail about Edward Fu, describing my life down to what I ate for lunch today. It's encyclopedic, sure, but useless crap all the same. In fact, I'm not even sure how SA forums are encyclopedic. The forums are no different that any other popular internet forum like IGN, GameFAQs, FaceTheJury, GaiaOnline, AnandTech, Gamespy, etc. which are constantly being pruned down. So there's really no reason why SA forums deserves to be singled out and treated with such insane detail while others are not allowed to do so. --Etaonish 21:03, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

You could, but you apparently haven't. If there are no contributors sufficiently interested in something to write articles about it then there's no point debating whether said nonexistent articles should be included. Saucepan 23:30, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I could, but I don't. I certainly have the capacity to write about myself, so I don't understand where you're coming from. SA is not being singled out as a target: it's simply being treated the same way as any other forum. We don't need every bit of human knowledge contained at Wikipedia. Who gives a **** about FYAD 2.0 10 years from now? Could you even conceive of a person heading to Wikipedia to ask, "I need to know about this FYAD 2.0 and Wikipedia is where I should get it"? --Etaonish 01:10, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Yes. For example, a newbie on the SA forums might hear a passing reference to FYAD 2.0, and might want to know what that meant. And while we may not need every single bit of human knowledge on Wikipedia...well, we don't need Wikipedia at all if you think about it. I'm sure we'll still be able to continue our life processes without Wikipedia. But we ("we" meaning a group of people not including you) want stuff on Wikipedia. It would certainly be nice to record everything ever, wouldn't it? It's impossible to do that of course, but we can still try to get as close as possible.

And what's the harm in having more information? There are some things (vanity pages, adverts, etc.) that do not belong on Wikipedia, but a couple extra kilobytes (or even megabytes) here and there isn't going to crash the server or something.

Finally, if you really don't care about FYAD 2.0, then why don't you just leave it alone?

Vanitys, adverts are all deleted at VfD speedily. Thank you for proving my point. Besides, if you were a newb would you ask for help at the forums, or here? Jeez.--Etaonish 02:10, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

I might use here, to avoid being mocked for being a newb. And to get a clear, coherent, NPOV summary of events.

Article split, problem solved.

Personally, I would have supported condensing the page more than splitting it, but I've been abstaining mostly. Etaonish seems to have a holy war against this article and he's welcome to it, for now. --Golbez 17:49, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

It's a holy war only in the sense that this is first up and most obviously bad on my list of Forum FAQ's to remove.--Etaonish 19:49, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Condensing considered harmful?

I'm following a discussion in edit summaries where Etaonish and Anon contributor seem to disagree about this.

When the page size becomes reduced it might easily look like vandalism.

Hmmm, If condensing involves removing information, it seems a bit strange to me too actually. How about just splitting the page? I'll get out of the way and let you folks discuss :-)

Note that you don't need to log in to discuss on talk pages. I used to discuss a lot when I first started using wikipedia. Kim Bruning 20:05, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The whole idea is that there's a lot of crap in the old article that I summarized/cut down. Splitting isn't a solution.--Etaonish 20:35, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

Why not? If you ask me, "condensing" is not a solution. --(anon, unsigned)

Sign your comments with ~~~~. Hmmm, could you both explain to each other why the alternative is "not a solution", and why you think your preferred solution would work better? Kim Bruning 22:56, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Splitting doesn't solve the problem, which is the fact that there is too much useless information. Splitting just moves the useless information to another article. --Etaonish 00:01, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

I see, could you give me an example of such a piece of useless information? Kim Bruning 00:17, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"There is much pleasure to be gained in useless information."--Bertrand Russel

Here we go:

"It has a huge userbase (the 30,000 member mark was reached mid-April, 2004, and membership passed 43,500 by the end of August)" - A demonstration of POV: 43.5K is NOT huge.

Well it's certainly large. so s/huge/large/ Kim Bruning

"These fees help pay for the costs of the servers which are naturally under large amounts of strain and transfer massive amounts of data, with anywhere from one to three thousand people logged onto the forums at any given time." - A misleading quote: the fees are Lowtax's salary. Server fees are max 2,000. He gets far more than that from registrations and ads and donation links splattered all over the site

Ok, so state that instead :-) Kim Bruning

"Many of the Photoshops that circulate the web are created by members of this forum, and many of the Internet fads such as All Your Base are accelerated and given an exponentially larger audience by goons. These often get old at the SAF before they hit the 'mainstream' and are looked down upon thereafter." - POV, uncertifiable, and in fact blatant arrogance.

s/photoshops/photoshop edits/

And I'll believe AYBABTU. Though okay, so rephrase as "many Internet fads such as ...." (leave out "of the" to make it much less arrogant). Kim Bruning

Sections like "The only time FYAD was down for an extended period of time came about after a flame war erupted between www.flame4cash.com members Redeye, Ruthless1, and Dvlos and the site administration. After it was brought back - months later - flaming was demphasized and it morphed into its current form."

Section 4 and 5. All useless. INDIVIDUAL USERS on a forum? Arcane phrases?

Which phrases in the above are arcane? flame war is probably an article. :-) Kim Bruning

IRC channels.

"The avatars of some particularly notable FYAD users become famous within the community through the copying of their style. FYAD regular Nefarious, known for his avatar featuring an animated skull wearing a tophat, and the words "I'm MAD about hats!" has been honored repeatedly through such plagiarism. Similar avatars include an animated Jesus character, and a Star Wars character who is "MAD about droids!" Even more famous, the avatar of the poster Vector, a relatively plain depiction of a cartoon face, has been morphed into various other faces for the use as the avatar of other posters, including clowns, ninjas, and monocle-wearing Victorian gentlemen. Though similar acts of honoring other posters in this fashion are not limited to FYAD, they occur particularly often in its often exclusive, back-patting atmosphere."

"1.3 FYAD V2.0

A sub-forum of FYAD that lasted only a day, this is notable as this was the only listed forum to have HTML enabled (there have been unlisted, hidden forums with HTML enabled before). This led to many threads being filled with gigantic pictures and scrolling text. The forum was closed for good after someone managed to steal 200 passwords using Javascript.

1.4 The Situation

A short-lived forum (5th - 10th May 2004), it was invented by the relatively unknown moderators, Crème Lift and Brej, to be the antidote to the supposedly suffering levels of comedy in GBS and FYAD, and to mock all the negative tendencies of the other forums. Some users in The Situation set their signatures to different black-and-white pictures which didn't relate to anything, but were usually interesting. Many of the pictures had words in them, saying such profound things as 'this is situation', and 'the situation is'. This trend caught on quickly. Not surprisingly, FYAD labelled it a 'poor man's FYAD', and the regular posters of GBS continued posting threads regarding various inanities."

Do we really need all this blather? Does anyone outside the community give a rat's ass?--Etaonish 00:23, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

The bits I haven't commented on I'm not so sure about, the ones I did comment on might be rescuable. :-) Maybe some other folks would care to comment? Kim Bruning 00:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Still, my revision has managed to reference a lot of this information and yet still be NPOV and objective.--Etaonish 01:14, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Would you guys quit having an edit war and talk here first? Thanks! Kim Bruning 22:28, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've told him repeatedly to do so but he still refuses.--Etaonish 23:54, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I really don't believe in try to negotitate when the enemy is already attacking me in the "war", but here I am. So, tell me Etaonish, why do you insist on removing content? And I expect a better reason than your arbitrary hatred of people who are fans of notable things.

Has it ever crossed your mind that I *don't* hate SA? I used to be a lurker several years back in 2000, in fact. My reason for removing content is because it is unencyclopedic. Just as we do not need Bush's article describing when he cuts his fingernails, we do not need the information I removed. In fact, the information degrades the quality of the article and lowers the standards of Wikipedia as a whole.--Etaonish 20:27, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

owned