Talk:Something Awful Forums

message: For those of you who have just joined us, this article was originally much longer and more detailed, but after much discussion, a Wikipedia entry on an Internet message board was deemed somewhat unencyclopaedic, recommended for deletion by a user (recommendation was overturned by a majority consensus) and later trimmed by the same user.
However, in comparison to the original writeup here, the new one feels boring (the user who trimmed the article wanted it deleted) and uninformed (the user who trimmed the article is not a Something Awful Forums member). It gives us a price list for changing someone's user title, but doesn't tell us why that's significant. It lists FYAD but not its negative post count quirk, it lists ADTRW but not its offshoots Studio ADTRW or 4chan, and the (admittedly extinct as of 2005) file forums are omitted from the list. Goonmeets are entirely stricken from the article despite the significance of large groups of people meeting at a convention for an internet forum, and there's no mention of the general subculture that arises from a relatively exclusive web forum; nor how unusual it is that not only are people willing to pay to join a vBulletin board (given that there are countless free vBulletin boards on the Internet), but enough people are willing to pay that Richard Kyanka is making a living from it. Things like the P-P-P-Powerbook scam have been omitted in favour of making a shorter (and hence less informative) article.
Although I've been a non-"goon" until now, someone bought me an SA forums account for Christmas. Now that I'm able to see what the fuss is all about, I find that it's not entirely amazing, but it does have some interesting aspects to it. This writeup at Wikipedia should reflect the most interesting aspects of the Something Awful Forums, and as the forums are paid subscription only, I would suggest that a responsible, well-informed and long-standing Forums member is the only person qualified to determine what should fill this Wikipedia entry. --Jonathan Drain 22:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updates and improvements to this article required! 

message: 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)
thread_title:  P-P-P-Powerbook! 

message: 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)
thread_title:  4chan 

message: I added a section documenting some of the charitible work the forums have performed. These are not all of them, and without the website's own SAclopedia I don't have many dates or details, so any more knowledgable people can fix this section up. Ipsenaut 18:53, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Charity Activities

message: Right now, half of the article is taken up with a list and specific descriptions of the dozens of individual forums and subforums in Something Awful. Really, I think that spending this much space on them is rather redundant- any reader who wants to see this list only has to go to the main forums page to see the official listing of all these forums and their purposes. Since that information is so readily available, perhaps it should be removed from the article? The exception I can see to this is FYAD, whch is not viewable by the public but which is perhaps the most unique part of the forums.
I won't make the changes myself until there's some consensus on the issue. Molimo 23:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oppose. Wiki is not paper . The forum descriptions are relevant to the topic and terse enough so that they do not make the article unweildy. Besides, if the aim of the article is to describe the SA forums, listing the forums and what they are for is pretty much required to be a complete and useful description. In general, the argument that "interested readers can simply visit [an external link, in this case the forums themselves]" is opposed to the Wikipedia No Original Research policy: if summarizing information available from the sources referenced is redundant and gratuitious, what are we supposed to have in an article that isn't original research? -- Tyler 01:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing the specific information about sub-forums 

message: This article has a serious continuity error. The acronym FYAD appears several times but is never explained. I don't know what FYAD is other than an SA Forum, but someone should really add in a description (at least as much as what there is for the other forums) since there isn't another article here on it.
:Re-added the FYAD section, which was deleted by an anon a few days ago. Twinxor t 10:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  There's no FYAD! 

message: He should be in here. Despite the vote to remove the happycat entry, there should be a reference to him here, particularly re: internet phenomenons that SA forums have started (such as "all your base") Poodlemcmuffin 19:48, 01 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where the hell is Happycat? 

message: I think I mentioned a while ago that I didn't really like the way this article is written. The interest in the SA forums is on what they have done, rather than descriptions of each individual forum. Wouldn't the article be far more appealing if it contained the creations of the forums, trends they started or were taken in by, etc? I'm really thinking stuff like: P-p-p-powerbook, AYB, photoshops, gimmicks (skrewloose, hakan), honeypot threads, worst admin ever/umero mumba, E/N threads, judohobo, pizza matrix, chuck norris facts (if we must), the infamous permabanned users, the projects setup: gbstv, tviv, gooncon, waffleimages, etc. Trampled - talk 11:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, there should probably be a section with some of the more notable forums creations like ayb, p-p-powerbook, and that happycat thing people on this talk page seem so adamant about --Rubber cat 03:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The layout of this article 

message: ??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.202.28 (talk • contribs) 
: Bring your own BYOB. --Liface 22:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't stand for anything duh!!!! --Rubber cat 22:49, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does BYOB stand for? 

message: I read that it's a video of a cat being burned alive. Does this happycat have anything to do with it? --BLuToRsE 02:04, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Happycat is a picture of a cat found on a russian cat food package or something. YTMND then used that image to refer to "NEDM" or the burning cat video. --Liface 02:39, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is happycat? 

message: Should there be a section on which internet memes started on somethingawful?
:Sure. Reliable sources? Ashibaka tock 04:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internet Memes 

message: ???????-71.199.163.158 02:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  what is helltank?