Halfbakery
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The Halfbakery is a communal web site that caters to people who wish to propose and develop novel, if not always serious, half-baked inventions. Among many similar such sites (e.g., ShouldExist, whynot.net, globalideasbank.org, idea-a-day.com), it has distinguished itself by minimalism, irreverence, and a cast of regulars whose takes on suggested inventions are often funnier than the original submission.
The Halfbakery can be read by anyone but only logged in people can contribute to the site itself.
Users who have an account, for which you only need to supply a unique name and a password, are able to submit new ideas (the inventions) and add links and annotations to ideas. An account is gained by e-mailing the "bakesperson" (Jutta Degener) who provides his e-mail address on the site.
Logged in users can also declare themselves to be for or against particular idea by voting. The results of the voting is summarised by a numerical score and icons of croissants (for ideas people have liked) or fish bones (for ideas people dislike) shown against each idea. The maximum endorsement an idea can get is two and a half croissants, and the most disliked ideas get two and a half fish bones.
Users are able to edit and delete their ideas, links, annotations, votes, and even their whole account, if they like.
It is run as a dictatorship by the bakesperson Jutta Degener and a small group of volunteer moderators who can contribute ideas themselves and have rights to delete ideas, annotations and links provided by other users. Moderators, however, must adhere to guidelines and are generally forbidden from deleting the links or annotations of other users. Moderators are unable to see who cast votes or alter votes other than their own.
Halfbakery Jargon:
- baked - someone believes that the idea has already been built
- half-baked - someone believes that the idea already exists in fiction.
- WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR - "Wasn't that cool, that thing I saw in the movie? Wouldn't it be neat if it were real?" (And several analogous formations.) A complaint about lacking originality.
- WIBNI - Wouldn't it be nice if. Used if something is impossible.
- autoboner - a mythical user who votes against everything ("bone" is short for fishbone, the icon for a negative vote).
- mfd - [marked-for-deletion], a search tag that can lead to idea deletion after moderator review.
- bone - A vote against an idea
- bun - same as croissant
- The symbols + and - used in an annotation to indicate if a user voted for or against an idea
- HB, 1/2B, .5B - Acronyms or Abbreviations for Halfbakery
External links
- The Halfbakery (http://www.halfbakery.com)
- ShouldExist (http://www.shouldexist.org)
- whynot.net (http://www.whynot.net)
- Global Ideas Bank (http://www.globalideasbank.org)
- Idea-A-Day (http://www.idea-a-day.com)
- Halfbakery Illustrations (http://www.bz.pair.com)