Talk:User Friendly

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I have merged in the content from the articles for Dust Puppy and Erwin in preparation of a redirect of those two pages to this page. This main article still has lots of room for character descriptions. If/when the article grows too large, those pages can be resplit out. Rossami 15:21, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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Has anyone asked Illiad yet for permission to publish pictures of Dust Puppy/ Erwin/ etc? Maybe he'll even draw an extra wikipedia edition... --Rubik-wuerfel 14:40, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Illiad knows and approves 2 Suggested improvements 3 Compacted TOC? 4 Character Images 5 Blatant comment board ego-masturbation 6 Character descriptions are redundant 7 UF down? 8 Example is not representative 9 Cleanup

[edit] Illiad knows and approves

I (Kickstart, head moderator, sysadmin and community coordinator for UF (am I worthy of my own wiki page yet? :) )) talked it over with him while I was adding a link to the bio page stub for him. No problem there. :)

[edit] Suggested improvements

OK... some nice things to have in the article (but no time to write about them):

• Ufie Comment board community, importance/effect in UF populariry, Illiways (is this the right spelling?), etc.
• LOTD and Slashdot effect

Kio 03:54, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)

OK, as noboby else did it, and I managed to return home "early" from work today, I have included the first paragraphs. Please check and expand! Kio 02:10, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

[edit] Compacted TOC?

I don't like the current TOC. Having a non-standard table of contents messes quite a few things up. Normal TOCs have the capability to be hidden, are distinctive from the rest of the text, and are automatically updated. I would change it back, but someone who made that change was already reverted. « alerante ✆ ✉ » 22:36, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you ask me, I also like best the standard TOC. I say wait a couple of days and if nobody has another opinion, change it. Kio 05:31, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

I was the guy who made that change. The main problem with the standard TOC is because there are so many parts and sections to this article the TOC is huge. I reduced the number of sections a little to make it cleaner. Not everybody agreed with me ;). I'd also like to see the standard TOC, but we'd have to come to consensus on how to fix this problem first. The main problem is for some reason we have a section for every regular character, which we don't really need as such. --huwr 11:58, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC), edited --huwr 12:07, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In fact, if no one minds, I'd like to remake those changes. Voice suggestions here and if no one disagrees in 7 days then I'll go ahead and make the changes. --huwr 11:30, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think, like so many other webcomics, the cast page should be split off and replaced with a condensed summary of the core cast. See: Sluggy Freelance, Megatokyo, Bob and George, etc. Nifboy 01:51, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Perhaps we can have a User Friendly characters page? --huwr 04:36, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Putting the characters in a separate page makes much more sense to me. Kio 05:47, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)

Okay, so in four days I will move all characters to a separate page, replacing them with summaries of just the main characters, then putting back the plain old TOC. (unless anyone has any better ideas or does it before I do) --huwr 10:01, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've made the changes, but there are a few other annoyances that I want to fix up, which I will do now, also. --huwr 01:08, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can see the changes you've made. It's perhaps a pity that I didn't notice that the discussion had been updated, as it would be fair to say that I've had a large part in making the page look the way it did, and I certainly preferred the compacted TOC.

Having said that, the article was getting a little too long, and I was considering the best way to split it. I'm happy to accept all the minor changes (including the change of funny to popular), but I feel that the changes made by Huwr are certainly not 'minor' (as he appears to) - and I'm not convinced it's the best way to do it. The new "User Friendly Characters" page will very quickly become unwieldy as well, as the only difference between it and the old page is that it is missing a small description at the top, and the bibliography at the bottom. The TOC did not need updating often, and certainly was less distracting than the "new" one.

I will listen to this discussion before making any further changes, but I don't think the ones made work.

Epideme 08:22, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure as to why you preferred the compacted TOC the way it was. Cosmetically I found it undesirable (not colapsable, not standard, so forth) and it certainly didn't make the editor's job any easier, even if it didn't make it much harder. I'm sorry about neglecting to untick the 'minor edit' tag. That was my own mistake and I did spend some small time worrying if I'd get in trouble for not unticking it. ;)

User Friendly characters was not supposed to be permanently like it is. I was expecting it to be the subject of much discussion and improvement, considering that it by itself is quite messy. Now that it's there User Friendly is nearly empty, too; I was hoping this would leave room for more emphasis of the other things that make up User Friendly (the community, some history, et cetera).

I'd also appreciate that if you were to make up your mind about changing User Friendly back to the way it was, that you'd go through the same process as above before doing it (7 days of cooling-off before making the changes, and so on). Cheers --huwr 11:54, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the compacted TOC because as well as taking up less space, it allows links to other wiki pages to be part of the contents - those contents may well be very different to the way they were, including links to individual character pages or a comprehensive list. As you can appreciate, I've put a lot of time into editing User Friendly, but I'm not going to try to prevent others from editing, indeed I would actively encourage it.

I would suggest that since these changes have been made, User Friendly characters become a list of no more than one line per character, with appropriate off page links. Initially those would be to the main site, where the full main characters would be, but hopefully each of the main characters would eventually have their own page. The regular characters are more difficult to deal with, as they won't ever merit a page each, but might merit a page to themselves - in fact as I think about it, what I suggest is that the User Friendly Characters list become Main character Links, Regular characters (with their descriptions), and links to an occasional characters page and a guest characters page. This would allow more expansion, and would be a logical way to split them up.

I still think we would be better served by a compacted TOC, and accept that huwr and I are unlikely to agree on that. Epideme 09:35, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the splitting up of User Friendly characters. However, I believe that it'd be a more logical approach to splitting off Main Characters and Everyone Else, rather than guest characters, occasional characters and regular characters all on their own page. --huwr 04:31, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Personally I would kill off the occassional and/or guest character lists as trivial, but that's just the side of me that wants only concise, relevant information. Nifboy 05:29, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I actually suggested keeping the regular characters on the User Friendly characters page, with a link to each of the main characters, and a page each of the occasional and guest characters. The reason for this is that they are only going to grow larger. I would certainly oppose killing them off, but this way they wouldn't be on the character list - you'd click to another page which would list them - I prefer this for completeness sake, and this is a list which doesn't exist elsewhere - why should an encylopedia not be encylopedic? Epideme 07:25, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Additionally, it strikes me that it's the wrong way round - User Friendly characters is redirected to by User Friendly Characters. I'm sure we could change that round the other way without any difficulty. Epideme 07:29, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

User Friendly characters is the correct non-redirect page - use lowercase for all words that are not proper nouns. I just did this move. DJ Clayworth 17:35, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I found this: Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Keeping headings out of the Table of Contents. This is what we need, right? Kio 21:47, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

That's actually quite neat. I'm sure we can use it in some place in User Friendly. However, I'm not sure if it counts them as new sections with section numbers, or just changes the font. --huwr 04:31, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Character Images

Are we sure that we want these here? This article is only supposed to contain a summary of User Friendly characters after all. --huwr 01:50, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Removed, although I must thank whoever put them there for showing me how to reduce the size of those mega-huge headshots on the characters page. Nifboy 05:53, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blatant comment board ego-masturbation

Surely the section on the trends of the comment board has no more enclyopaedic merit than blog entires on what people had for lunch; yet people keep adding to it. I suggest that this section is removed entirely to prevent its cancerous effects on the article. (For those saying "do it yourself", I suggest contemplation of the phrase "revert vandalism" and its general misapplication.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.86.106.14 (talk • contribs)

I agree with the basic tenents of anonymous's complaint: The comment board is barely worth a footnote in the article, much less its own section. Nifboy 17:51, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

For me (I added that section) the basic idea is that an important part of User Friendly is its community (which lives and evolves around the comment board). If you think of another way to put that idea in the article (and give a glimpse of the community culture) avoiding the problems you see with the current version, it's OK with me. Kio 18:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I submit that the community is, in fact, not important to User Friendly. Illiways and its ilk have virtually nothing to do with UF. It simply exists in the same space. When considered on its own, the UF community is no different from the tens of thousands of communities on the internet and hence, not encyclopediac. Nifboy 23:48, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, however since I'm the head moderator and community coordinator over at UF, I have to admit my bias. The UF community is unusually close knit and community-oriented. From get-togethers to dating to marriages, the community is not what you would find from a board like Slashdot, Fark or even MetaFilter. Certainly there are other more personal and communicative boards out there, but to say that it's not different from the other communities on the net is disingenuous.

That being said, I don't think it's encyclopediac or deserves inclusion in Wikipedia on its own or even any more than the barest of mentions on this page, if that. I personally won't fight for its inclusion nor exclusion. Kickstart70 06:20, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I think there's something appropriate about excessive Wikipeeing about the comment board. SnappingTurtle 19:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Character descriptions are redundant

The characters are all described in a separate page. Either the character section in this page or the separate page should be removed. Opine. SnappingTurtle 21:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be better to delete the section in the main article and leave the User Friendly characters page with all the information. --Kio 01:50, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UF down?

I know PlasmaDragon reverted my edit about UF being down, but I can't access it at all, on either of 2 computers. But maybe PD's right, it always times out instead of telling me it's down right off the bat. Is anyone else having trouble accessing it? --DJ Wings- Freestyle here 14:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Mr. Bene October 25th, 2006 - userfriendly.org seems to have been down for a couple days - I have been unable to connect from two different ISPs. No outright error, just timeout.

I can't get there either. The bellman 01:10, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Nor can I Stuart Steedman 13:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

It just loaded OK for me.

Atlant 14:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

It appears to be down now, haven't been able to get through for 3 or 4 days now 02 June 2007

Once again, it would appear, 16 December 2007, userfriendly.org is denying all requests. Last hop is reporting "Destination Host Unreachable". They had server issues.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.255.205.12 (talk) 15:22, 16 December 2007 (UTC) Its doing it again for me, anyone else having issues reaching the site? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.103.66.134 (talk) 16:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Example is not representative

The example gives no indication of the artist's standard style nor the usual appearance of the comic. Perhaps someone can find a better one. --Fastfission 16:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

It's still down for me.

I replaced the example with a more representative strip. We had a discussion on the board about this topic and the strip I chose seemed the be the most popular and best candidate. SnappingTurtle 15:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

This article does not cite any independent sources. In addition, parts are not written in the proper formal tone. The recurring themes section should be integrated as appropriate. See the article on Red vs. Blue for a good example of a Featured Article on a primarily web-distributed comedy work with similarly goofy characters. This comic deserves to have a FA quality article!--Drat (Talk) 06:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)