Uncyclopedia: criticism
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Uncyclopedia has come under criticism for insulting and degrading content, a bias towards deletionism, its propensity for controversy over the nature of humor and for tolerance of racism, sexism, ableism and hatred.
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Insulting content
Some content on uncyclopedia is degrading to certain individuals or certain groups of people. Although a good sense of humor is a good thing, it is important to distinguish between what is funny and what is degrading or insulting. Unfortuneately, some content on Uncyclopedia crosses the line of being insulting.
One example of insulting content is an article titled How to Get Down's Syndrome that ridicules and dehumanizes persons with Down syndrome.
Deletionism
Uncyclopedia deletes some content which they don't think is very funny. However, just because some people find it unfunny doesn't mean that others will not find it funny. Humor is subjective. When they delete something they could be deleting someone's valuable work. Uncyclopedia even has content that is pure nonsense.
Vanity controversy
Uncyclopedia has recently faced some opposition in the New Zealand Herald, where it was stated to be a "cyber bullying menace."[1]"Roy Kelly, principal of King's College, said the uncyclopedia website was "nasty", putting it on a par with text bullying and playground violence."Since then, Uncyclopedia has considered a no vanity policy, whereas vanity has traditionally been allowed for schools and online communities (against the wishes of the community, as most see it as lacking in quality and now troublesome as well). Any pages created for the purposes of personal attack or bullying are removed as soon as they are noticed, as always; however, it is very difficult for administrators to monitor each page. As of July 2006, vanity pages which are questionable are either deleted or put under the care of one or more administrators.
Controversies
Unlike Wikipedia, where conflict over article content tends to reflect real-world conflict, if not genuine hatreds between rival groups, internal conflict on Uncyclopedia tends to reflect disagreement over the nature of humor itself, and what constitutes a "funny" or otherwise worthy article.
One of the most divisive issues is the "so bad it's good" problem, which relates directly to the question of how to fairly apply and maintain quality standards. Most articles on Uncyclopedia tend to be fairly lengthy and well-developed, and contain at least one illustration or photograph. Two of the best-known cases where these standards were disregarded, ostensibly for the humor value inherent in doing so, are Euroipods, a one-sentence stub originally posted as spam which grew into an intense year-long internecine conflict over which several users were banned, in some cases for significant periods of time, and Fisher Price, which began as an obscene four-word vandalism posting, but went on to generate an unusually lengthy discussion and an even lengthier retrospective. Both of these articles were featured on the site's main page, over the strenuous objections of a highly vocal group of users. The site's administrators were later accused of misconduct for using the content of the "Euroipods" article in an attempt to psychologically punish one of the users who objected, over an 11-month period. This has only recently led to an effort to impose new rules against "cyber-bullying."
Another problematic issue for Uncyclopedia is the degree to which the site tolerates racism, sexism, religious bigotry, and so on. Uncyclopedia is often targeted by hate groups looking for a cheap way to advance their agenda in the guise of satire. At the time of this writing, for example, the article on Black People is the target of an organized and highly determined effort to use Uncyclopedia to portray people of African descent as "ape-like." Unfortunately, Uncyclopedia is ill-equipped to deal with organized hate campaigns.
Additional conflicts have occurred over articles on Tourette's Syndrome and Asperger's Syndrome, when sufferers of these conditions objected to the tone and content of the articles in question, and were unsatisfied with the users' attempts to deal with the situation while ostensibly trying to maintain Uncyclopedia's integrity as a humor site.
