Currently, CZ has some joke entries in the madlibs. For example, the month “Smarch” in @month (from the Simpsons), “competitive eating” as a @team_sport, and the ever-popular @school_lesson, “radioactive waste would kill a turtle before it would have a chance to turn into a ninja”.

These joke entries can mess up submissions worse than unintelligencer imo. And they can’t be easily toggled on or off, like unintelligencer eventually will be*. The only way to do it is for JB to go through the entries and manually remove them. That’s a lot of work.

Hence this poll. If there’s enough of a “Yes, get rid of them!” outcry, JB is willing to remove them — if we point them out to him.

*for variable values of “eventually”

ChilePepino Posted:

they only appear eventually together with the more serious entries so I don’t see the problem.

I don’t understand. You’re saying that because they show up randomly, they’re okay? That you’re okay with entries like “User was banned on Smarch 31 for <not being in line with whatever this forum’s about>”?

MC Banhammer Posted:

I don’t understand. You’re saying that because they show up randomly, they’re okay? That you’re okay with entries like “User was banned on Smarch 31 for <not being in line with whatever this forum’s about>”?

yes that was what i was saying, it doesn’t happen everytime.

I actually have seen this a bit too much. Currently, a few of my entries have a probable cause of sucking because of joke entries (also because they aren’t that funny). I’d give examples, but… voting is still happening.

So, I do believe there shouldn’t be joke submissions in the mix.

I find an occasional Smarch refreshing.

While we’re requesting madlib changes, one thing that would solve both this and another problem is being able to block certain madlib entries from being selected.

Even if they aren’t joke ones, sometimes the theme of a madlib is what you want, but it’s got more in it than makes sense in your sentence. Like “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all @time_unit” will give you “all year”, “all week”, “all day” etc. but also “all nanosecond”, “all eon” etc.

An even more general ‘fix’ would be adding some syntax for something like @{day, month, year} for on-the-fly madlib creation. That’s probably a lot more work than just removing a few jokes from the madlibs though… so I guess it’s one for the “nice to have, but you won’t see it this year” pile.

naw i think they’re great. keep them. it makes forumbuildr more hilarious. Log in to see images!

Ricket Posted:

Voted no, but how about a ::nojokes modifier?

MC Banhammer Posted:

they can’t be easily toggled on or off

I enjoy the occasional joke madlib, but perhaps a well defined ratio should be in order.

A lot of the humor is derived from how insanely random some of the posts on the internet can be. And madlibs with joke entries only add even more to the randomness.

I guess you can have a serious madlib bit for serious entries (i.e. @month would just include all 12 months) and have ones for joke entries included, or even make a variable to add/omit joke entries. I’m just throwing that idea out there.