PWoT Article Request Line
As some of you have noticed from my author page, when we turned off the PWoT server last week, not every article got saved.
I have 37 articles listed there, maybe 10 of them Cracked originals. Because I didn’t have the time or staff to import all 105 articles from PWoT (as they have to be laboriously reformatted by hand) I basically picked the top 15 or so most popular, which represented more than 99% of the traffic PWoT was getting. Then after that I just started working through the movie reviews at random.
Some day I’d like to have the entire library restored for posterity (and it would be for posterity only, I saw the traffic those things were getting) but it will have to be done on an article-by-article basis.
If there is an article that you particularly miss, comment below. If I get three votes to restore it, I’ll make time some weekend and upload it instead of riding my jet ski.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I miss all your Matrix articles, because that was what got me reading PWoT back in 2003 when people still liked that film franchise. The 30 Reasons, the fan predictions that never came true, etc. I seem to remember you had at least one fake interview related to that film…hell, I miss the fake interviews in general. Wasn’t there a Saddam & JKR one, or did my mind just make that up?
Also, the LOTR one where David and John had Jay convinced that Orlando Bloom was a chick.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Yes, the entire PWoT Matrix Info Center would be amazing, as would the Star Wars Info Center. And the Urban Legends Database, the Starcraft Review, the NBA Live Review, the one you wrote about the Matrix and September 11th, the Iraq War Fraud, and the Choose Your Own Adventure Series.
And also the recipes.
More requests will be forthcoming as I think of them.
Thank you for doing this.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Shitdick beat me to it, so I’m seconding the NBA Live article. Would the Time Gremlin be possible with the Cracked format?
May 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
If I had to pick for myself, the Time Gremlin and the other choose-your-own-adventure stories would be first, because they’re special to me. However, as you suspected, it would require a custom template since simply uploading each page as a separate article would be impossible (since the CMS auto-generates the URL’s for each page, going back and working out the links would be a freaking nightmare).
Same thing for the fake Matrix fan site; the whole thing that made that awesome was the formatting made it look like some dedicated fan’s Matrix site. Port all that stuff over into the standard Cracked article template and it becomes boring, stripped of its context.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I’m going to second the Saddam/Durst interview, as well as the JK Rowling interview. Those were hysterical. Also, the NBA Live article was a masterpiece. So was the Dr. Oxford one about Eminem.
Also, although it was simple and retarded, the movie review of Battlefield Earth was also quite simple and retarded. That is to say, it needs a home on Cracked.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
The first article I ever read was the Starcraft Review. It’s still my favorite article ever, so I throw out my vote for that. I’d also love to see the NBA Live Review, the JK Rowling interview, and the Star Wars: Galaxies Review.
And of course, Battlefield Earth.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I like the same ones Citizen Snips is saying. I’d love to see your review of Star Wars Galaxies up here.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I totally support the Starcraft Review.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
The Matrix article, the JK Rowling interview, the Starcraft 2 review, and those summer movie writeup things you did with Jay. Heck, there was so much great stuff on the old site it’s like trying to pick a favorite pornstar.
The reason I liked old-school PWOT more than Cracked was that it had a suspension-of-disbelief thing going for it. On Cracked, you’re told that the articles are jokes, you’re told that they’re not to be taken seriously, and you’re practically told which lines to laugh at. But on PWOT, everything was written with deadly seriousness. A new viewer who clicked through to one of the pages could spend a long time reading before he/she realised that it was a joke. The Dr Oxford reviews and the Hacker guide were classic examples of this.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
This isn’t necessarily for Cracked, but I think JDATE fans would get a kick out of reading ‘The Centaur Scenario.’ I know that I liked it a lot.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
The review of all techno music ever.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I also vote for the choose your own adventure.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
The NBA videogame review and, above all, “Halo 2 and the criminal mind”.
I guess the Techno thread doesn’t belong here since it was (I believe) written by John Cheese.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
“Halo 2 and the Criminal Mind” was the first PWoT article I’ve ever read and It’d be sad to see it gone for good.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:50 am
I must second the NBA game review, Halo 2 and the Criminal Mind, and the interviews. I would actually like to see all of the PWoT material online myself somewhere, in part because I didn’t get a chance to read it all. I was slowly working my way through the archives and I might have tried to download the whole site if I had known it would be taken down. No need for reformatting on all of them, especially if some weren’t bringing a lot of traffic. Maybe the articles could be dumped on Cracked as they are in some out of the way place with their old formatting, just for simplicity? Some of my personal favorites might not be the biggest hits, but I hope to read them again someday.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:57 am
There were actually quite a few PWOT articles that weren’t listed anywhere on the main site (at least in the time I visited). There was a FAQ page and a ridiculously fake bio for David Wong and quite a few other things. You could find them by viewing the old pages and then clicking on the old, outdated menus. It was good fun hunting for all of those “hidden articles”…
May 7th, 2008 at 3:35 am
My first choice would be the Spam Subject Line Museum. And Definitely Halo 2 and the Criminal Mind. I would also like to see the PWOT Beer-Off. And the Urban Legends database. And it would probably be a hassle, but would it be possible to get the Adventures of John and Dave comic archives up? Oh man, so many good articles to choose from…
May 7th, 2008 at 4:30 am
I’d like to see the professional wrestling debate article. And I’d like to second the beer-off.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:34 am
The Art of Revenge was my favourite article on PWoT. Can you please bring it to Cracked?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I’ve always loved the the Starcraft Review, the NBA Live Review, and the Halo 2 review.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Whilst I’ll also express interest in the wrestling debate, Fred Durst/Saddam interview & Halo 2 & the criminal mind, I’d particularly like to see the beer-off carried over.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I would also like to see the Fred Durst Saddam interview. As for the urban legends database I’m pretty sure that’s still up on JayPinkerton.com, if it’s the same one I’m thinking of.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
And the Second American Civil War! That and the Monkeysphere made me realize that you are the main dogg of thoughtful comedy.
May 7th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I’d like to through my vote(s) behind Halo 2, the Beer-off, and the Wrestling debate. Also, I seem to remember one article that I think was about Star Wars Galaxy, wherein John Cheese gains control of the entire game. It might have been a different online game but it was hilarious.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
The Beer-off is quite possibly the funniest thing I have read in my entire life.
Possibly excepting only everything else from the old Pointless Waste of Time.
Goodnight, sweet prince of websites, and may flights of gratuitously naked angels forming a massive homoerotic angelic triangle in the sky bring thee to thy rest.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Beer Off! I miss that thing so much…both sides of it seem to be dead now. Also, the George Lucas review was the first thing I ever read on PWOT, and still one of the funniest. “You tell anyone about this and you’re as dead as Alec Guinness!” “How about we play a game. You use a preposition, and I’ll make you drink pain.” Also the Steven King interview is a classic that never loses its charm. I joke with those of my friends familiar with it about my evil elf.
And though this may not be the place for it, I think someone could do a world of good by getting the CFAQ back up.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I’d like to see the choose-your-own adventure stories too and Star Wars Episode 3 in pictures as that was the first thing I read on PWoT.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
The spam subject line museum and the George Lucas interview get my vote.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I would like to see the Art of Revenge article again and the Halo 2 article.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
ACTIVATE ACTIVATE
anyway PVOT was much funnier than cracked and shall be missed
May 9th, 2008 at 1:03 am
The Spam Subject Line Museum is on the schedule to come back, that’s just been a matter of me making the time. It would be up already but a lot of the subject lines are too wide for the article template and are difficult to read when squished down.
It’s a simple matter to fix but still time-consuming, considering there’s like hundreds of them.
The stuff that was co-written by Mack, I’m hesitant to use that stuff because I wanted to give him the chance to use as much of that material at juvenilecomedy as he wanted. But it seems like he did the same thing over there, he really just tried to prioritize the best and most popular articles and kind of put the rest on the back burner.
It’s hard to devote tons of time and tedious effort to restoring something you know nobody will read. Both Mack and I got burned in the past by what we thought was popular demand for some article or other, then when we did it absolutely nobody read it. So that’s why I’m demanding a certain level of clamor before I sacrifice a sunny Saturday to farting around with article templates.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:44 am
+1 for Choose Your Own Adventure
Also Mirth Canal, as the Cracked Pipeline content and ratings seem random and useless. Mirth Canal had built lists of some of the funniest content of the web, refined over months of voting, and even if the same functionality can’t be replicated, the list of the highly-rated content was really valuable.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Max Roboto. My life is an empty shell without it.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:54 am
I believe the Star Wars Galaxies article and the Wrestling debate are in Cheese’s book, some of the others mentioned might be there as well. I’d check, but the book is in the bookshelf all the way across the room, and I can’t reach it from the computer.
I’ll second Max Roboto, futile though it may be. That was one of my favourites.
Also, three words (and one number): Summer. Movie. Review. 2004.
One of the funniest things I ever read, though it may be a bit dated, I still want to read it again.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Another one for the Spam Subject Line Museum - love that dearly.
And, of course, the Battlefield Earth review, and also the SE7EN Special Edition DVD never fails to make me laugh.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:20 am
The entire archives of “The Adventures of John and Dave” and Spam subject line museum
May 11th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
How am I supposed to move up in life without the Star Wars: Galaxies review? My chin makes me weak!
May 12th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
“Also, the LOTR one where David and John had Jay convinced that Orlando Bloom was a chick.”
I’m seconding this one, as it’s probably my favorite of the less popular articles.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:07 am
I don’t care how futile it is, I’ve always loved the choose your own adventures and hope you can return them to their glory.
The interviews were always my favourite. The Marilyn Manson one is what I always remember; “If evil were nickles, I’d be a quarter”. A good friend of mine’s e-mail address was evilmcdeathmonster@…
May 15th, 2008 at 12:05 am
The entire archives of “The Adventures of John and Dave” and Spam subject line museum, the LOTR one where David and John had Jay convinced that Orlando Bloom was a chick, and the NBA game review. And if you have to choose just one, the last. It was always my favorite.
May 18th, 2008 at 2:57 am
I miss the LOTR one, with Jay and the… *ahem* bestiality at the end. Also, I love 5 reasons Jack Thompson is Right (or something to that effect, unless Cracked is saving those list format ones for a rainy day for whatever reason). I have to second or third the Halo 2 article, and the other one… the one with the prank that want horribly wrong (it was WoW related), though I have a vague recollection that was John/Mack’s article so maybe that’ll just be donated that to JuvenileComedy to do with what they will? And the Galaxies reviews.
Hmm… maybe I listed too many, whatever.
(Also, to the couple of people asking for the Rowling Interview you can find it here http://www.juvenilecomedy.com/jk.htm)
May 18th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Oh man, where to begin?
The Halo 2 review, the NBA Live 2k3 review, the GTA Vice City review (all three of these had me in hysterics, literally rofling. “I’s just as black as I can be, massa!’)
The interview with George Lucas prior to episode 3, as well as your analysis of the episode 3 released images would be aweosme too. There were some definate outbursts during those too.
And where can we find JDatE 2? Will that ever get published? Will there be a third? Will PWoT ever come back?
May 18th, 2008 at 4:08 am
The Star Wars Galaxies review. Man, I just keep remembering more of them. All classics, IMO.
And make the PWoT Insider articles public
May 19th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Halo 2 and the Criminal Mind was always one of my favorites, and i’d like to see the Starcraft/Star Wars reviews as well.
It would be nice to see all of the articles from PWOT up again, but i understand how much of a pain in the ass it would be with Cracked’s custom templates.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
5 Reasons Why Jack Thompson is Right…
May 20th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I just want to thank you, Dave, for doing this. After I read this forum thread http://www.cracked.com/forums/topic/33556/is-old-pwot-gone , I really got the sense you were fed up, and the old, unpopular stuff was going to be gone forever, and I’d been cursing you left and right over it. Sorry about that.
I know HTML/XHTML (also, javascript, though I don’t recall you having any of that on the site) fairly well, and would be more than happy to provide my services to take any effort for this off your shoulders.
I think articles that don’t fit Cracked’s format could easily just be transferred to a free Tripod site, and left with the current format.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:42 am
Putting the old articles on a tripod site, or on my JDATE server, or having Mack put them on his site, doesn’t address the problem because there will be no way for PWoT fans to know they’re there. I can post the new address in this blog space but there’s no reason for people to think to look there.
If you’re offering to do the reformatting for me, like if you’re offering to do it for very little reward as a fan, I may take you up on that. But it’s actually not just pasting it into the Cracked template that’s a pain, it’s re-sizing the images because the PWoT template used to give me 700 pixels or so to work with, the Cracked template is only 480 wide. So it’s also an issue of re-sizing the images, and then if you find out that the images don’t work when re-sized (as is the case with the spam museum) then you have an actual editorial decision to make about how to work around it.
But if you’re serious about helping, I’ll probably accept.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I am serious, and I’d be willing to offer my services for the reward of simply being able to read it any time I want to. I can’t guarantee I’ll get it done fast, but I’ll do it. I feel like I should be putting on a hair shirt anyway, for me being an ass when I thought you were going to keep some of the PWoT stuff offline permanently.
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 am
Bring back Name John’s Baby and Reader Poetry.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Aww, it’s a shame that the grossly inaccurate movie reviews are now named “Grossly Inaccurate Review”, kinda takes the magic out of it. Stop looking down on us Wong! We know you’re joking! We are Legion!
Also, I’m like sixthing the NBA review, in fact all game reviews, the Star Wars Galaxies and starcraft ones were excellent
May 25th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Battlefield Earth review.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I wanted to reference the John Dies at the End comic on The Secret, but I couldn’t find it.
Make my day?
June 6th, 2008 at 4:43 am
I want to see the Star Wars episode 3 spoiler pictures, and the article on file sharing.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:47 am
The Art of Revenge was my personal favorite, and I’d love to see it back if you had nothing better to do some day
June 10th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Hey Dave,
Long time fan and member of the forums. I’d love to see some new Adventures of John and Dave (greatest webcomic of our time).
Also, would love to see all the old movie reviews back up. They rocked. Dr.Oxford was always a favorite too.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Lyrics Archive, please.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:15 am
I loved your george lucas interview, along with the immortal Beer-off with John. please resurrect these.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Why PWOT doesn’t show on archive.org?
June 20th, 2008 at 2:50 am
I’m not sure if this was off PWOT or Pimp Bus (or both), but I’d like to see the article(s) where Dave and JC tried to out-not-drink eachother.
June 24th, 2008 at 1:14 am
The beer-off, and Art of Revenge are both classics. Mostly, though, I just miss the occasional seemingly pointless article that would crop up if you dug around the site enough. I took these for granted at the time, and now that they are gone its all quite sad…
While I’m at it- does anyone remember an article where John challenges an office worker to a battle-of-the-bands?
Wong seems to think it never existed, and now I’m not sure if I’m crazy or not.