Forum:CT Archive/Fanon go Boom

I see fanon long, on user pages too. I see them boom, for you and you. And I think to myself...what a useless user...hmm, yes...I think to myself...let's ban the sucka.

Seriously though, let's get rid of Fanon wholsale. The rationale behind this harkens back to Jerry Seinfeld when he was developing the aptly named Seinfeld. He wanted all the episodes to start with "The", so the writers would have to come up with an easy simple name, and would spend more time on the actual episode than the title. Same goes here. We still have people tweaking their fanon more than they contribute. Tchah! What's the point? There's a whole Wiki full of flashing sigs and tripped out formatting that they could use. No one here actually reads it, do they? Get it out of here, I say, so as to get people to focus more on the task at hand, and less on their Gary Stus and their Mary Sues and their W. G. Graces.

Support

 * 1) I should think so. .  .  .  .  23:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2)  Redemption [[Image:Redemptionusersymbol.png|20px]] Talk 23:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) BE GONE! -- Ozzel 23:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4)  Stake black   msg 23:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Lord Hydronium 01:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Havac 02:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Die! >:-D-- Lord Oblivion Sith holocron[[Image:Oldsith.png|20px]] 02:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) Imp http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/e/e5/ATATatarismall.png 23:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) I think the limits on userpage edits meet our goals sufficiently at this time. If it turns out they don't, we can revisit this later. jSarek 23:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) DarthMRN 00:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) No! Don't we have a rule saying that you need a minimum number of article edits? Can we at least consider things case-by-case? Because while I do have a fanon bio, I only have about 150 edits on it, compared to 2500 article edits and 3000+ edits overall. Sorry if I sound whiny by the way. Chack Jadson 00:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Per jsarek. We don't want to become a funless, dead, empty husk of a Wiki.  Gonk  ( Gonk! ) 01:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) User page fan fiction is the most useless thing on this wiki next to image edit wars, ridiculously specific userboxes, and questions over whether Grand Admiral Thrawn could beat Boba Fett in backgammon (best two out of three). Having said that, an absolute ban on the practice is probably going too far. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 01:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) *Grand Admiral Thrawn would win, that's all I'm saying. :-P Sorry, couldn't resist! Atarumaster88  14:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) Per jSarek's and Gonk's comments above, and per DarthMRN's comment below. Adamwankenobi 01:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) I loathe the existence of any fanon and never read it. But it doesn't hurt anything. Even the things that we put limitations on didn't hurt anything, they just weren't constructive enough to the wiki to put up with the annoyance of people making 19000 edits and spamming recent changes. Enforce the current rules, but leave them alone unless this becomes a problem. Wildyoda 02:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) Ban is too far, but we need to make an example of a previous offender and post it in What Wookieepedia is Not. --  Riffsyphon  1024 05:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Jedimca0 (Do or Do Not, There is No Try) 08:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) Boo on instruction creep. We're not exactly being overrun with screaming fanonists, and the Super Happy Friendly Fun Userpage Project keeps this limited, imo. Have a Super Happy Friendly Fun Day! Atarumaster88  14:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) Unit 8311 14:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) I think users should be allowed to put a limited amount of fanon. Otherwise, I'm voting support.--Windu223 19:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) Already taken care of enough. QuentinGeorge 01:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) Jedipilot94 22:48, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) Strong support for a harsher user page policy, but this is pushing things a bit too far. Evir Daal 07:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 18) —Xwing328 (Talk) 01:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Compromise
I don't like the edit number rule, because percentages don't mean anything if you do 90% of something as one big edit, like I do. That said, I don't think fanon bios need to be be completely obliterated, so how about a total word limit? Say 600? CooperTFN 02:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

2000 Character limit

 * 1) CooperTFN 02:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) *What about, say, 2000 characters, a la WTS? .  .  .  .  02:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) *Why should regular users care if another user has a 600-word or a million-word fanon bio, if it only spams Recent Changes once? jSarek 02:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) **Well, exactly. If it's there, it's a distraction. .  .  .  .  03:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) ***It's not about spamming Recent Changes, it's about how much time the user spends on it instead of on actual improvements. They could spent an entire day on one edit just as easily as on hundreds of tiny ones. And 2000 characters sounds good - it's like an inverse WTS! CooperTFN 05:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) ****So they spend exactly as much time writing their fanfic for SWFanon instead. jSarek 08:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) *****If they're going to spend that much time, they're not contributing anyway. Best to have them not contribute somewhere else. - Lord Hydronium 08:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) ******How might one figure out how many characters are on a page? Chack Jadson 19:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) *******You'd have to put it into Word to check for sure, I believe, but it tends to be around 350 words, so it's more like a flexible word limit. CooperTFN 18:19, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments
While I'm not a userpage fanon writer myself, I can imagine how people who spend every friggin waking hour at this site would like some variation from the normal editing, and to make their personal domain a little more shiny. All work and no play doesn't work elsewhere. There is no reason to think that it will here. It's like having a signature and an avatar on a forum. And the Internet isn't running out of space. DarthMRN 00:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If you're not having fun editing, go to the Fanon Wiki. They love it over there. .  .  .  .  01:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * In fact they like big flashing signatures to the degree nearly everyone has one. --  Riffsyphon  1024 05:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If we had fanon banned, userpages would be VERY boring...Unit 8311 14:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Correction: If we had fanon banned, userpages would actually be useful. Havac 17:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Havac. People, no one reads your fanon bios!  Stake black   msg 18:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Just what could possibly be so bad about users putting a link on their page that says "Check out my fanfic at Fanon Wiki!"? That makes so much more sense than allowing fanon, but only one page, and only if they work on it this much in proportion to the rest of their editing, etc. Why not put it where it belongs and then not have to worry about it? -- Ozzel 19:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 'No one reads your fanon bios'? Sorry, but I read fanon bios, and I know that some people have read mine. And besides, what's wrong with a little bit of fanon here and there? I disagree with users commiting too much edits to it, but as far as I'm concerned it's just a bit of harmless fun. It's better than vandalism, anyway. Unit 8311 20:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Since contributing is voluntary, I expect that users who edit does so because they want to. Therefore I don't really see how limiting fanon is going to enforce more real editing. People who feel like improving their fanon isn't going to jump at some real work just because fanon is banned, they'll find something else to do. It's like saying that banning spare time activities will encourage people to work more. If anything, the lack of variation would serve as a deterrent to the actual work. I don't buy this argument at all. DarthMRN 20:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. Good point, DarthMRN. Unit 8311 20:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If they aren't going to contribute anyway, they can do it somewhere else. We just don't need to play host to it. - Lord Hydronium 20:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If a user does nothing but edit their fanon, then I agree: Ban them into little pieces and blast them to oblivion. But we aren't discussing those kinds of users, are we. If a modicum of improvement can be bought at the price of a buttload of fanon, I still don't see that as a bad bargain. AFAIK a fanon a billion words long isn't going to affect the rest of the pedia in the slightest, so I don't really see any good arguments for this proposal. DarthMRN 21:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Recent. Changes. Spam. -- Ozzel 21:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Elaborate? I'm no recent changes patroller, but from what I can see one page of recent changes don't last for more than a few minutes before being completely replaced anyway. Unless you can offer some insight to the contrary I'd call you delusional to think banning fanon will make any sort of meaningful difference. DarthMRN 23:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This thing is one of the most edited pages on Wookieepedia. .  .  .  .  23:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * IMHO, "Recent changes spamming" by and large, on the list of things wrong with the Wookiee, ranks pretty far down. You see a user working on some subpage, you ignore it. Unless it's totally out of control (and thereby falling under the domain of a very Super Friendly Happy group of people), it's not a huge deal. Atarumaster88  01:59, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should define "[e]xcessively large fanon projects" a little better, but that's all we need. Evir Daal 07:09, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm still failing to see why keeping fanon here is a positive thing. Forget, for a moment, that we allow this at all. Now, say someone starts a thread saying we should start allowing fanon. How would it go over? Not well, I would think. Is allowing fanon here really a better alternative than just having users link to their pages on Fanon Wiki? What positive things is fanon adding to Wookieepedia, and why are we better off having it than not? -- Ozzel 02:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * And what negative things does fanon add to Wookieepedia? Hmm? Unit 8311 11:40, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Pro: Motivational/recreative effect of sorts.

Con: "clutters up" Recent changes page.

Seems to be a pretty clear-cut case to me. And the problem with Ozzel's hypothetical question is that it doesn't factor in the positive effect fanon on userpages has for many users. If we didn't have it to begin with, we wouldn't have known how many people would enjoy it, so of course it wouldn't have been voted through. An argument dependent upon our collective ignorance doesn't do much good. DarthMRN 12:02, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Those who worry about "clogging recent changes" should note that when you check recent changes, you can select which namespace to check or ignore. Fanon in the "User:" namespace is easily ignored. I also don't think it's possible to stop it entirely: a large fraction of new users who intend to work on articles will start their profile not by saying "My name is Dave, and I'm a dental hygenist and Star Wars fan from Saskatoon", but by saying "I'm Darth Awesome, and I'm a bounty hunter turned Sith lord from the Unknown Regions." How much of that comes from the fact that several users are here just to write fan fiction on their userpages, I'm not sure, but even if our most fanon-enthusiastic users left this wiki, we'd always have someone new come in.  Maybe if there were a length limit, we'd have less people missing the point of this wiki, but I think banning it entirely won't work.  &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 15:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * "The positive effect fanon on userpages has for many users"? Who the heck gets a positive effect from it? It's obnoxious and juvenile and only clutters up the page with stuff no one reads but their friends, who could just as easily read it on the fanon wiki. Userpages are to convey important facts about yourself in the context of the Wookiee -- what you know about in the EU, why you like Star Wars, your editing philosophy, a list of contributions, whatever. It's not a social networking site and it's not for telling us about how you made up a character called Darth Haxxorz who is all awesome and evil and went to this one planet once and pwned on these Jedi. Why is that something that belongs on Wookieepedia and not the fanon wiki? I have yet to see that question answered with anything more than, "Hey, I like fanon!" Well, like it on the fanon wiki! Havac 18:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Who? The writers do. It gives them diversity from other editing tasks, that might after a while seem like chores. Chores they want to do, but chores nontheless. Obnoxious and juvenile? Maybe. But if it matters to their writers, and contributes to their continued happiness with staying and contributing further, why is it a problem? If only their friends ever see it, then what do you care? And FYI, Wookieepedia is, within certain boundaries, what the majority of its users want it to be. You have no place claiming what Wookieepedia is not, unless it is already featured in WP:NOT. In short, why are you bothered by something that according to your own words is noticed by no one? DarthMRN 19:16, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If anyone wants to take a "break from chores" then they can take their steaming pile of shit over to the Star Wars fanon wiki instead of clogging Recent changes and slowing down our browsers when we need to leave a message on said users talk page. -- Redemption [[Image:Redemptionusersymbol.png|20px]] Talk 19:34, 28 April 2007 (UTC)