Uncyclopedia is a satirical online encyclopedia that parodies

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

. Its logo, a hollow "puzzle potato", parodies Wikipedia's globe puzzle logo, and it styles itself "the content-free

encyclopedia An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

", parodying Wikipedia's slogan of "the free encyclopedia". Founded in 2005 as an

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the i ...

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

, the project spans more than 75 languages as well as several subprojects parodying other wikis. The English version has approximately 37,000 pages of content, second only to the Portuguese. Uncyclopedia's name is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words Various styles of

humor Humour (Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in ...

are used as a vehicle for parody, from pointed satire to light sarcasm, along with structured in-jokes and frequent non sequiturs. The site has attracted media attention for its articles on controversial subjects including

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

, prominent people, places,

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

, and

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...

. Many Uncyclopedia articles contain graphics with a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article. A typical caption reads, "For those ''without'' comedic tastes, the so-called experts at Wikipedia have an article about ubject in question" Some also have a link to the corresponding

Conservapedia Conservapedia ( ) is an English-language, wiki-based, online encyclopedia written from a self-described American conservative and fundamentalist Christian point of view. The website was established in 2006 by American homeschool teacher and a ...

article. A typical caption for one of these is "The faux patriot snake handlers at Conservapedia have an even funnier article about ubject in question" Some even have a link to the corresponding RationalWiki article. A typical caption for these is "The truth-debunking doctors at RationalWiki have an even funnier article about ubject in question"

History

Uncyclopedia was launched on January 5, 2005, by Jonathan Huang, known online as "Chronarion", and a partner known online as "Stillwaters". It was originally situated at uncyclopedia.org. In July 2006 it was acquired by

Fandom A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant ...

, then known as Wikia. In January 2013, some Uncyclopedia editors and administrators set up a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...

of Uncyclopedia at en.uncyclopedia.co, in response to Wikia's censorship, insertion of advertising, and the imposition of content warnings. Fandom ceased hosting its version of Uncyclopedia on May 14, 2019, and the Fandom site (colloquially known as the "spoon", a play on "fork") moved to uncyclopedia.ca, and in September 2021 to uncyclopedia.com. The Fandom version of the site now shows only a "Not a valid community" landing page. A third site, at mirror.uncyc.org, functions only as a

mirror website Mirror sites or mirrors are replicas of other websites or any network node. The concept of mirroring applies to network services accessible through any protocol, such as HTTP or FTP. Such sites have different URLs than the original site, but hos ...

with backup copies of some Uncyclopedia pages.

Structure

Uncyclopedia is built on the same

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for Media ...

software that Wikipedia uses. However, during Fandom's (Wikia's) hosting of Uncyclopedia, Fandom extensively modified its version of MediaWiki version 1.19, making the Fandom Uncyclopedia site incompatible with later MediaWiki versions. In May 2018, Fandom dropped support for the Monobook

skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different ...

that its Uncyclopedia site had used to mimic Wikipedia, claiming this was necessary to achieve GDPR compliance, and warned that local work-arounds could not be extended to new visitors and editors by default. Since all Uncyclopedias split off or were removed from Fandom, they mostly switched to using Vector instead (with MinervaNeue on mobile), in order to continue parodying Wikipedia. Foreign-language Uncyclopedia-like projects are described

below Below may refer to: *Earth * Ground (disambiguation) *Soil *Floor * Bottom (disambiguation) *Less than *Temperatures below freezing *Hell or underworld People with the surname *Ernst von Below (1863–1955), German World War I general *Fred Below ...

. Some of these are independent domains: In 2007, 58.8% (or 20 out of 34) of the Uncyclopedia collection was hosted by Wikia. Six dedicated non-Wikia servers host "Uncyclopedia Babel" content in various languages. To coordinate these projects (collectively, the "Uncyclomedia Babel Project") an Un-Meta wiki was created in 2006. Uncyclopedia projects are run independently by their own members, though some users have accounts on multiple Uncyclopedias. They contain interlanguage links to each other, but there is no global governing organization comparable to the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

that oversees Wikipedia as well as its sister projects.

Content

Uncyclopedia's content is

license A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

d under the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license, although some content, notably images, is copyrighted. Different Uncyclopedias sometimes have different licenses; for example, dÉsencyclopédie (French Uncyclopedia) is dual-licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and the

GFDL The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers th ...

. As of March 2022, the English-language Uncyclopedia contains approximately 36,800 articles.

Articles

Uncyclopedia encourages satire that is close to or resembles the truth. However, many articles employ absurdist humor and little, if any,

fact A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scie ...

ual accuracy remains. For example, Uncyclopedia's article about Wikipedia claims that Wikipedia is a parody of Uncyclopedia, not the reverse. Many articles on the site contradict each other, even articles on the same subject. Like Wikipedia's "Five pillars", Uncyclopedia has "Five pliers", including "Satirical point of view". Its code of conduct follows from three main rules: "Be funny and not just stupid", "Don't be a dick", and "Dance like you've never danced before!" Parodying Wikipedia's article review service

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

, Uncyclopedia has a "Pee Review" where authors seek review by other Uncyclopedians on humor, grammar, spelling, use of images, and overall presentation. Users can post to other wiki pages to solicit coding help and review or request user-edited images. Like Wikipedia, Uncyclopedia features articles and images on its front page. A system of user voting decides which articles and images to feature, usually deciding based on humour and writing quality. The site also welcomes audio contributions such as narration of articles. Uncyclopedia's articles often begin with quotations, usually misquoted, fictitiously attributed or entirely fabricated. Among the most recurrent themes is the invention of quotes attributed to

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

, prompted by an article stating that inventing Wilde quotes was the "national sport of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

", and themes such as "kitten huffing" (the inhalation of the souls of cats as a form of

drug abuse Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, is the use of a drug in amounts or by methods which are harmful to the individual or others. It is a form of substance-related disorder. Differing definitions of drug abuse are used in public health, ...

). Much like Wikipedia, Uncyclopedia has policies concerning vanity articles, which are articles written by an individual associated with the subject of the page. Vanity articles were disallowed after many of them produced

flame war Flaming or roasting is the act of posting insults, often including profanity or other offensive language, on the internet. This term should not be confused with the term trolling, which is the act of someone going online, or in person, and causi ...

s. Uncyclopedia does not police

conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations i ...

but may delete submissions as non-notable on a case-by-case basis, using an AfD-like system called "Votes for deletion" (VfD) and a CSD-like system called "QuickVFD". One of Uncyclopedia's most popular articles, AAAAAAAAA, is a nonsensical page, with its content completely consisting of the upper case letter A with images and some punctuation marks.

Site-wide pranks

Some jokes involve the entire website, sometimes including a re-skin of the main page, such as with holiday themes. In 2012, as a parody of Wikipedia's black-out protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) ''et al.,'' Uncyclopedia blocked all content for a day with a notice claiming to support the bills. A tradition of

April Fool's Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...

front page pranks occurs on the wiki, including a "blood donation" plea banner to spoof wiki donation banners on April 1, 2014. For one week in 2013, the Wikia fork interrupted viewing with a claim that the site was unavailable, spoofing a notice on the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

website during the United States federal government shutdown of 2013.

Traditions

Each year, Uncyclopedia writers create a list of ''100worst reflections'' of that year, marking website milestones or simply news. Most years, the creators of the list reveal that they have once again put off the list until the last second, and simply skip a large chunk to get to a hundred in time. Other Uncyclopedia traditions include creating a "top10" list of articles for each year, chosen by popular vote.

Subprojects

As well as housing many articles designed to satirize Wikipedia-style content, Uncyclopedia contains several secondary projects (known as "UnProjects"). As of 2017, there were sixteen such subprojects, each of which specializes in parody of a different information style. Many of these are directly analogous to Wikipedia's sister projects, while others such as UnTunes and HowTo parody projects completely unrelated to Wikipedia.

Press coverage

Uncyclopedia has been referenced in several well-known news publications from around the world, in addition to numerous local and regional newspapers and periodicals. In 2005 the Flying Spaghetti Monster entry from Uncyclopedia was mentioned in a ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' column reporting the spread of " Pastafarianism", the

that worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The column was then reprinted in other newspapers, including the ''

Taipei Times The ''Taipei Times'' is the only printed daily English-language newspaper in Taiwan, and the third established there. Online competitors include the state-owned '' Focus Taiwan'' and '' Taiwan News''; '' The China Post'' was formerly a compet ...

''. The magazine '' .net'' featured an interview with Huang about Uncyclopedia in May 2007. A number of other articles have been centred on specific entries on Uncyclopediamost notably the article in the ''

Arizona Daily Star The ''Arizona Daily Star'' is the major morning daily newspaper that serves Tucson and surrounding districts of southern Arizona in the United States. History L. C. Hughes was the Arizona Territory governor and founder of the ''Arizona Star' ...

'', which focused on the

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

parody, and the article in the ''

Cyprus Mail The ''Cyprus Mail'' is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. Established in 1945, it is published every day except Monday, and most of the local articles are available on its website. History With the demise of the '' ...

'', which focused on the

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ...

article. In addition to articles about specific entries on the wiki, several papers speak of the website in generalusually in a section devoted to

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

or the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

. This was the case when Uncyclopedia was referenced in the ''

Boston Herald The ''Boston Herald'' is an American daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston, Massachusetts, and its surrounding area. It was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States. It has been awarded eight Puli ...

'' and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

''. Although most articles mentioning Uncyclopedia are specific to the site, there are other articles about Wikia or Wikipedia that just mention its name briefly. These include the editorial in ''

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information tec ...

'' discussing the

Seigenthaler incident In May 2005, an unregistered editor posted a hoax article onto Wikipedia about journalist John Seigenthaler. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Attor ...

, in which Uncyclopedia was named only once. It has also been listed as one of the "Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites" in ''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the presen ...

'', as well as among the "101 most useful websites" on the internet by ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner and tabloid ...

''. ''

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The newspaper was fo ...

'' considers Uncyclopedia to be the wiki site equivalent of '' The Onion''.

Criticism and controversy

At various times, articles on Uncyclopedia have been subject to criticism from King's College (School, Auckland) the '' North-West Evening Mail'', Northern Irish politician James McCarry, civic leaders of Telford,

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

, UK, the ''

Sioux City Journal The ''Sioux City Journal'' is the daily newspaper and website of Sioux City, Iowa. Founded in 1864, the publication now covers northwestern Iowa and portions of Nebraska and South Dakota. The Journal has won numerous state, regional and nation ...

'', ''

Hawke's Bay Today ''Hawke's Bay Today'' is a daily compact newspaper published in Hastings, New Zealand and serving Hastings, Napier and the Hawke's Bay region. It is owned by APN News & Media. The ''Hawke's Bay Today'' is New Zealand's youngest newspaper, fo ...

'', and ''Lochaber News''. In January 2008 the

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...

n Internal Security Ministry issued a directive alerting newspaper editors not to trust Uncyclopedia. It said the article concerning Malaysia contained "untruths, insults and ridicule" and was demeaning to the country. The site uses a layout that looks similar to

's, which may confuse inexperienced users who misinterpret the content as factual. In November 2012 the page "HowTo:Commit suicide" on the Russian-language Uncyclopedia: Absurdopedia; was legally prohibited by the Russian

Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare The Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (russian: Федеральная служба по надзору в сфере защиты прав потребителей и благополучия ч� ...

(Rospotrebnadzor). Absurdopedia administrator Edward Chernenko unsuccessfully sued them under his right to science and culture guaranteed by the Russian Constitution. During the proceedings, the Russian government and its experts claimed that Absurdopedia is intentionally trying to increase the number of child suicides in Russia by providing children with instructions for killing themselves.How we went to court against Rospotrebnadzor
abrahabr, April 3, 2013. , the case is currently in the ECHR. In 2014 the page "HowTo:Make a bomb at home" on Absurdopedia was included in the Russian list of extremist materials. In 2017 two pages of Absurdopedia were banned in Russia: "HowTo:Bathe a cat" for "calls to violence against animals" and "HowTo:Make a nuclear bomb" for "information on manufacturing weapons". In August 2014 the logo displayed for

Greggs Greggs plc is a British bakery chain. It specialises in savoury products such as bakes, sausage rolls, sandwiches and sweet items including doughnuts and vanilla slices. It is headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is listed on ...

on its

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

profile was mistakenly temporarily switched to the logo used on Uncyclopedia's article on the subject at the Wikia site due to a caching issue, causing a PR crisis for the company.

In other languages

The Uncyclopedia concept has been adapted to wikis in more than fifty other languages. The UnNews project has similarly been replicated, under various localised names, in eighteen other languages. The websites also invoke various

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...

languages such as "

Portuñol Portuñol (Spanish spelling) or Portunhol (Portuguese spelling) () is a portmanteau of the words portugués/português ("Portuguese") and español/espanhol ("Spanish"), and is the name often given to any non-systematic mixture of Portuguese an ...

" and "English But Louder". The first Uncyclopedias in languages other than English were created in June 2005, beginning with a

French-language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in No ...

version. On February 20, 2008, the 50th language,

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...

, was added to the Uncyclopedia series. Each language wiki is free to establish its own unique community identity, but most of the logos and names in use retain some semblance to those of the English-language version. For instance, as an "un-" encyclopedia, the encyclopedia is named "Uncyclopedia" in both

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

. Some of the largest Uncyclopedias available in other languages are listed below.

Danish – Spademanns Leksikon

Spademanns Leksikon was established in 2006 by the user Lhademmor. The name lacks the "pedia" of most Uncyclopedias, and the website does not use the jigsaw-potato logo but resembles the logo of the largest newspaper in

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...

, '' Ekstrabladet.'' In 2012 the website contained more than six thousand articles. Together with the Norwegian Ikkepedia, it accuses Swedes of having no sense of humor because of their poor Uncyclopedia. Website memes include use of

Chuck Norris Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris (born March 10, 1940) is an American martial artist and actor. He is a black belt in Tang Soo Do, Brazilian jiu jitsu and judo. After serving in the United States Air Force, Norris won many martial arts championshi ...

as a cult hero; writing in the style of

Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fairy tales, consist ...

, here claimed to be

homosexual Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to pe ...

; and fictitious characters Omboo Hankvald, Hermod Spademann, Gubernichte Hankvald (Omboo's mother) and Troels Hartmann. Their image of God is very close to Barry White.

Dutch – Oncyclopedia

The Dutch version started in June 2006. Within half a year the number of articles grew to about 350. Though the number of pages in March 2007 was around 500, 150 short articles moved to the new daughter project, the "OnWoordenboek der Nederlandse Taal" (literally, "UnDictionary of the Dutch Language"), almost doubling the number of new contributions. In February 2007, a second project started: OnNieuws (UnNews), a newspaper full of nonsense. This can be either fictional news or real news told in a funny way. Around March 15, 2007, the decision was made to change the name. The Onziclopedie was renamed to Oncyclopedia (Neerlandica). Later more projects started: OnZinnen (Unquotable), OnBoeken (UnBooks) and the Oncycloversiteit (Uncycloversity). Oncyclopedia also has its own fictional

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...

station (OnRadio), which is available only on the weblog of Oncyclopedia. The Oncy has become well known mostly because of the articles about

emo Emo is a rock music genre characterized by emotional, often confessional lyrics. It emerged as a style of and hardcore punk from the Washington D.C. hardcore punk scene, where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore and pioneered b ...

Tokio Hotel Tokio Hotel is a German pop rock band, founded in 2001 by singer Bill Kaulitz, guitarist Tom Kaulitz, drummer Gustav Schäfer, and bassist Georg Listing. Their sound encompasses multiple genres, including pop rock, alternative rock, and electro ...

, and

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...

. These articles have gotten a lot of criticism in the past, but the admins mostly did not do anything with it, because as they say, it is mostly destructive commentary. Sometimes blocks follow, although this happens only in the case of swearing. At the end of May 2011, the Oncyclopedia had more than 2,150 articles. Finally there is the "Oncyclopolis Project". This gives the Oncyclopedia a fictional

city-state A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of the world since the dawn of history, including cities such as ...

, Oncyclopolis and its own ranking system (based on number of articles, user rights and user duty) comparable with the system of the Uncyclopedia.

Finnish – Hikipedia

Hikipedia (from Finnish ''hiki'' "sweat" and encyclo''pedia'', a parody of the name "Wikipedia") is a

Finnish-language Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedi ...

nonsense wiki founded in April 2005. Hikipedia was originally intended as an independent nonsense wiki and was added to the Uncyclopedia project only later. In 2011 Hikipedia had more than seven thousand articles and over thirty-eight thousand pages.

French – Désencyclopédie

The Désencyclopédie was set up on June 30, 2005, by

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirte ...

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

gers. The administration gradually abandoned the site before it was taken over by French-speaking volunteers around 2007. On April 20, 2019, Fandom (ex-Wikia) closed access to the Désencyclopédie in French. The articles which are not in opposition to the conditions of use of Fandom can, however, always be consulted on another site where they are lodged and can still be edited.

German – Stupidedia

Stupidedia (from ''stupid'' and encyclop''edia'') is an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

featuring satirically themed articles. It was created on December 17, 2004, by David Sowka, making it the first known humor wiki. In 2010 it joined the Uncyclopedia family, becoming one of the site's German-language wikis. Stupidedia is the largest German-language wiki of this kind with more than 22,412 articles . Its slogan is "Wissen Sie Bescheid? Nein? Wir auch nicht!" (English: Do you know the score? No? Neither do we!)

Greek – Frikipaideia

Frikipaideia (from φρίκη + εγκυκλοπαίδεια, read Frikipedia) is the Greek version of Uncyclopedia. It was created on 28 February 2006 with the title Ανεγκυκλοπαίδεια (the Greek variant of the name Uncyclopedia) from a proposal by Greek Wikipedians led by the user Dada, who is still an admin of the Greek Wikipedia. After a proposal it was renamed on 20 September 2006 to Frikipaideia. Today it has more than 3,200 articles and 2,083 registered users (as of 26 December 2021), while in the past it was stating more than eleven million registered users, although it was hundred times larger than in reality. It was most active in the period 2006 to 2010, although it retained significant activity until 2019, when the transfer of Uncyclopedia wikis to independent sites took place. After 2019 there was a period of large inactivity that lasted for some months, but since 2020 Frikipaideia is fairly active, thanks to a new generation of contributors. It has subprojects as well, including the Frikivivlia and Frikinea (the Greek counterparts to UnBooks and UnNews).

Italian – Nonciclopedia

Nonciclopedia, the Italian-language version, was founded on November 3, 2005, and features more than 14,000 articles. Like Uncyclopedia, it has many secondary projects, like ''Manuali'', a collection of fake or humorous tutorials about strange arguments (like ''How to conquer England in 4 steps''), the ''Horroscopo'', a fake

horoscope A horoscope (or other commonly used names for the horoscope in English include natal chart, astrological chart, astro-chart, celestial map, sky-map, star-chart, cosmogram, vitasphere, radical chart, radix, chart wheel or simply chart) is an as ...

, ''NonNotizie'', a parody of

Wikinews Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be ...

, and the ''Walk of Shame'', a parody of the "Walk of Fame", which collects the best articles. Like most of the other languages' editions, there is a space for the ''Article of the Week'', and some pages have related audio files containing a vocal narration of the page's content. Typical subjects of humour are Wikipedia,

Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, filmmaker, writer and intellectual who also distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, translator, playwright, visual artist and actor. He is considered one of ...

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies f ...

, emo subculture,

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his car ...

Germano Mosconi Germano Mosconi (11 November 1932 – 1 March 2012) was an Italian sportswriter, news presenter and a television personality. Biography Mosconi, who was born in San Bonifacio, was a well-known television personality in northern Italy due ...

, the fictional state of ''Svervegia'' (literally Swederway), and people who vandalize Nonciclopedia in response to being offended by an article. Since Chuck Norris, ''Svervegia'', and emo topics were abused, especially by

newbie Newbie, newb, noob, noobie, n00b or nub is a slang term for a novice or newcomer, or somebody inexperienced in a profession or activity. Contemporary use can particularly refer to a beginner or new user of computers, often concerning Internet ...

writers, they are not used anymore, if not on very rare occasions. In October 2011 Nonciclopedia was closed for a short while by the administrators after legal threats were issued by Vasco Rossi. This has generated a strong protest movement on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

and other social networks.

Japanese – Ansaikuropedia

Uncyclopedia (, ), fourth-largest with just over ten thousand pages, takes its name from the

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

of the word ''Uncyclopedia''. It was founded in December 2005. Its "UnNews" section is known for posting stories that closely resemble real news stories, which has caused rumors and angry reactions on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Polish – Nonsensopedia

Nonsensopedia is a Polish project that was initially just a Polish version of Uncyclopedia, but has since diverged from other projects in the family. It was founded on September 14, 2005 and has since grown to over 17,000 pages. It was hosted on Wikicities (later Wikia), but has since moved to an independent host o
nonsa.pl
in March 2019. Contrary to other Uncyclopedias, it puts a larger focus on following copyright law and actively encourages users to upload only free content.

Portuguese – Desciclopédia

Desciclopédia, the Portuguese-language version with more than 60,000 pages, is the largest Uncyclopedia. Founded in August 2005, it purports to be the brainchild of the largely fictional Doutor Roberto (Portuguese for "Doctor Robert") a satire upon the late powerful owner of TV Globo,

Roberto Marinho Roberto Pisani Marinho (December 3, 1904 – August 6, 2003) was a Brazilian businessman who was the owner of media conglomerate Grupo Globo from 1925 to 2003, and during this period expanded the company from newspapers to radio and television. ...

. This humour routinely targets regional

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian notables such as centenarian comedy actress

Dercy Gonçalves Dolores Gonçalves Costa (23 June 1905 – 19 July 2008), known by her stage name Dercy Gonçalves, was a Brazilian actress, comedian and singer. In her 86-year-long career, she worked in the theater, revues, film, radio and television, becoming ...

, depicted as a cover model posed for a

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...

-like magazine ''Playold''. Actress

Cláudia Raia Maria Cláudia Motta Raia (born 23 December 1966) is a Brazilian actress, singer, dancer, and stage producer. Biography Raia was born in Campinas and was married to Edson Celulari from 1993 until 2010. They had two children: Enzo Celulari and So ...

is portrayed as a

stingray Stingrays are a group of sea rays, which are cartilaginous fish related to sharks. They are classified in the suborder Myliobatoidei of the order Myliobatiformes and consist of eight families: Hexatrygonidae (sixgill stingray), Plesiobatidae ...

(). Political leaders such as

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (; born Luiz Inácio da Silva; 27 October 1945), known mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician, trade unionist, and former metalworker who is the president-elect of Brazil. A member of the Workers' Party ...

("squid") also often fall victim to Desciclopédia's parodies, along with singers, athletes and other public figures. Desciclopédia uses various domain hacks for individual secondary projects, which include Desnotícias ("notícias" is "news"), Descionário (with "dicionário" meaning "dictionary"), Deslivros (for books, "biblioteca" means "library"), and Desentrevistas ("entrevistas" meaning "interviews"). In English these would correspond to "UnNews", "UnDictionary", "UnBooks", and the exclusive-to-Desciclopédia "UnInterviews".

Russian – Absurdopedia

The Russian-language Uncyclopedia, Absurdopedia, was originally hosted by Wikia at ''absurdopedia.wikia.com'' on February 24, 2006. In October 2010 a fork site was established at ''absurdopedia.net'' In March 2019 the original Absurdopedia moved to the address ''absurdopedia.wiki'' as the " Olbanian" version of the project.

Spanish – Inciclopedia

The

Spanish-language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Am ...

Inciclopedia was established in February 2006 to accommodate content displaced by the closure of Spanish humour wiki Frikipedia. Frikipedia was shut down after being sued by the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, a Spanish organization for copyright who were angered by Frikipedia's entry on them. Frikipedia was eventually relaunched. Notables such as Chilean folk singer El Monteaguilino and Senator Pedro Muñoz have expressed their discontent with Inciclopedia and the site's mockery of the Chilean flag and other national symbols. Noche Hache, a

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

program on Spain's TV Cuatro, also mentioned Inciclopedia among supporters of Eva Hache's joke candidacy to the presidency of

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

Czech – Necyklopedie

In January 2005 an article in Czech, dedicated to Ross Hedvíček, was published on Uncyclopedia. Necyklopedie by itself was launched a few months later in August. It experienced a huge growth as it reached fourteen thousand articles the very next month, and more than twenty-three thousand by August 2007. In September 2015 Necyklopedie consisted of more than thirty thousand, making it the second-largest Uncyclopedia at the time. However, that number greatly decreased during 2016 as the admins deleted all the poorly written articles. Necyklopedie claims to be founded by

Jára Cimrman Jára Cimrman or Jára da Cimrman (officially Jaroslav Cimrman) (), also known as "the Master", is a fictional Czech polymath, created by Ladislav Smoljak, Jiří Šebánek and Zdeněk Svěrák. The fictional personality is presented as a unive ...

Other

*Chinese: **

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays ...

: 偽基百科; Zhuyin: ㄨㄟˇ　ㄐㄧ　ㄅㄞˇ　ㄎㄜ. **

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions ...

: 伪基百科;

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

: weǐ jī baǐ kē. *

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communic ...

: Neciklopedio. *

: Kamelopedia. *

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

: Інциклопедія. *

Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Taga ...

: Pekepedia. * Indonesian: Tolololpedia. * Malaysian: Bodohpedia. * Swedish: Psyklopedin. * Thai: Uncyclopedia is translated into Thai as ไร้สาระนุกรม, a play on the words encyclopedia (สารานุกรม) and nonsense (ไร้สาระ). It refers to Wikipedia as Wigrianpedia, which is a play on Wikipedia (วิกิพีเดีย) and trolling (เกรียน). () * Korean: 백괴사전 * Norwegian: Ikkepedia. * Turkish: Yansiklopedi.

References

External links

Uncyclopedia "Fork"Uncyclopedia "Spoon"Uncyclopedia "Mirror"
{{Authority control American comedy websites Internet properties established in 2005 Parodies of Wikipedia Satirical websites Wiki communities Wikis