Wiki Wednesday #0 - Introduction

What is Wiki Wednesday? Who will be featured on Wiki Wednesday? 

Wiki Wednesday #0 - Introduction

Hi there! Recently, I realized that there is a finite number of UTAUs that can be recovered. If someone uploaded their UTAU once to MegaUpload and then threw their computer into the river behind their house, finding a copy of it would be like finding a hen's tooth. There are UTAU banks out there that have never been downloaded, not even a single time.

That means that if I want this blog to have content, I need to expand past the "rescuing" part of "Search and Rescue". I am already doing that with "Forgotten Friday", but only one post a week feels a little underwhelming. For that reason, I am committing to adding a new feature. 

What is Wiki Wednesday?

Wiki Wednesday is the opposite of Forgotten Friday in its criteria. In Forgotten Friday, it does not matter how many views an UTAU's videos have gotten as long as the UTAU has not been used by a Western audience within the last five or so years. For Wiki Wednesday, it does not matter how many times an UTAU has been used nor time frame of those usages as long as all of the works have a small number of views. I will of course adjust the criteria on the fly. I always end up doing so!

How does a bank end up on Wiki Wednesday?

I get the majority of the banks I use for Wiki Wednesday from the UTAU Wiki Dot. I'm nostalgic for the original UTAU Wikia, but it's just easier for me to use the Wiki Dot. Besides, the domain change from Wikia to Fandom made it not exactly a Wiki. (Joking, joking. The domain change still has me shook, though.)

The first criteria is low view counts on all videos. I only check NicoVideo and YouTube. For YouTube, I work with the quality of the bank and design to decide the cutoff point. I will do my best to keep the view count for the most viewed video under 300, but I will make exceptions for videos that are flukes based off of things like being a duet with Teto. As far as NicoVideo goes, anything under 1,000 is worth consideration. I just feel like it's easier to get eyeballs on NicoVideo, so I'm not as strict on that. 

The second criteria is that the voice provider must not have a more popular UTAU. The UTAU that inspired me to start this feature was Elias. I was so shocked that such a high quality UTAU was so unknown until I did research into who GeorgiaSonic was. Her current UTAU, Pankune Kinzoku, is sitting pretty with her most viewed video at nearly two thousand views. This feature is meant to bring up newer users who are virtually unknown, not draw attention to users who already have attention. If the voice provider has multiple, equally unknown UTAUs, they then qualify for an Investigation, not Wiki Wednesday. 

The third criteria is subscriber count on YouTube. If a user has a subscriber count of one thousand, they don't need my help getting eyeballs. The subscriber count is a way to equalize out view counts on videos that may be a fluke. If an account with 19 subscribers posts a duet with Teto and gets 500 views, I would still consider featuring them. The people came for Teto and left the person in the dust. If someone with 1,000 subscribers had posted the same video and it got 500 views, I would disqualify them immediately. 

In less words, I will feature a bank if no one really knows it exists. I wanted this series to focus more on Western UTAUs to begin with, but I started my research with pages created in January of 2018 so that there was plenty of time for the UTAUs involved to accrue views before declaring them as "having low views". The issue was that some kind soul came in and added a giant amount of pages for Japanese UTAUs. I really like Japanese UTAUs, so I end up seeing if they meet the criteria and downloading them if they do anyway. 

I do reserve the right to randomly not write about banks that fit all of the criteria. There was an UTAU that fit the criteria perfectly, but sounded just like me. I was really creeped out and didn't want to touch it because I felt really, really creeped out. (And the voice provider was a dude from Germany from what my little research showed. I'm a girl from America! How does that happen?!)

When is Wiki Wednesday Posted?

I may rearrange the schedule in the future, but for now Wiki Wednesday is posted once every other week, or semimonthly. On the weeks Wiki Wednesday is not posted, there will be a Monday article. Monday articles range from recovered UTAUs to investigations. Recovered UTAUs are easy to write for but rare, and investigations take hours to write. That's part of the reason I added Wiki Wednesday - to give me a small break from my research heavy investigations! 

The posting schedule will ideally be Monday and Friday articles one week, Wednesday and Friday articles the next, and then back to Monday and Friday. Depending on how much time I am able to dedicate to this blog, I may expand to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday articles every week. However, I find that slightly unlikely!

I hope that I can introduce people to new UTAUs using this feature! Check back every other week for a new Wiki Wednesday 😃

Forgotten Friday #0 - Introduction

What is Forgotten Friday? Why is this an article series? Where can I find old UTAUs?

Forgotten Friday #0 - Introduction

There are a lot of UTAUs. When ruto dot yu stopped keeping track in 2013, there were over five thousand UTAUs in existence. Of those, the modern user only knows a fraction. Users often say that they want to find new banks, so this feels natural. Showing the fandom banks that feel brand new despite being nearly a decade old seems like something that would help benefit UTAU as a whole.

What are the rules?

The first requirement for being in Forgotten Friday is that all links must be easily accessible and live. If the links were difficult to find or get to, the bank would qualify as a "found" bank and not as a forgotten bank. 

The second requirement is the time since the last video. My rules are a bit flexible. I have every right to break them in the future if it feels right to, but I'll try to stick to them. For banks that are meh, the time requirement is five years of non-use. This is because regardless of how unlikely it is the bank will be used because of the article, being unused for nearly half of UTAU's existence is quite an achievement. For banks that are either really good or have a really awesome design, the time requirement is three years. For banks that I love and I want to scream loudly about, the time limit is just one year.

I will write a lot of these articles at once and then schedule them to come out over a period of time so that anyone who follows this blog doesn't get twenty articles thrown at them at once. That means that there is a chance that right before my article on a forgotten UTAU goes live someone will post a video with that forgotten UTAU. I won't pull down the article in light of that, but part of me doubts that will happen often.

The third requirement is just that there are no novelty banks. 巣派娘無墨命値根子出不子輪意音ス hasn't been used in about eight years because I literally went out of my way to make it impossible to use her. When I say novelty banks, I don't mean UTAUs where the designs are jokes. I mean banks that are impossible to use for normal songs. These also include banks that are only meant to make animal noises. My litmus for if a bank belongs on Forgotten Friday or not is if you can understand it when it reads the hiragana chart. (note, you can make beautiful music with Donka Fjord. But you can't make him sing Romeo and Cinderella.)

The rule that will get the most complaints is how I determine the time between the last usage of an UTAU. This blog is aimed at Westerners specifically. Where have Western UTAU users always posted their finished products? YouTube. At some point, I may write about an UTAU that is still being used to this day on Nico Video. That feels irrelevant to the people this blog is intended for, though. This means I'm ignoring SoundCloud, Twitter, and whatever else people are using these days. I'm only using YouTube because, well, that's what feels right with my history in the fandom. 

Where are these banks coming from?

I'm using this. And once that is done, I'll move to '10, then '11 . . . and I have five thousand banks to check doing that alone!

If your UTAU hasn't been used by yourself or anyone else for five years, you can write to me in the comments or @ me on Twitter. If all of your download links are valid, I will actually write about your UTAU. Having nothing posted for your UTAU for five years is pretty impressive considering that's almost 50% of UTAU's lifespan. Again, Nico, SoundCloud, Twitter, DeviantART, and whatever else posts don't count towards the usage. Only YouTube videos count.

When do these articles come out?

Hopefully, every Friday! I'm looking forward to showing everyone cool UTAUs they probably don't remember.

What is UTAUSNR?

What is UTAUSNR? Why isn't it UTAUSaR? What will be on this blog?

What is UTAUSNR?

UTAU Search and Rescue is a blog dedicated to bringing dead UTAUs back to life, along with short stories about the efforts taken to find them.

Why SNR? The "N" stands for "And" and reminds me much less of a deadly disease.

Redistribution bad!

I don't personally fully subscribe to the idea that redistribution of banks is wrong at all times. If a bank has no rules attached to it, there is no solid proof that the bank is prohibited from being redistributed. (The counter-argument is that unless the bank included a licence that allowed redistribution, there is no proof redistribution is allowed.) 

My personal thoughts on the subject is that the main reason to follow rules is to not get in legal trouble. Uploading and sharing an old copy of a Yoko Itone bank won't get me in legal trouble because Yoko Itone's creator and voice provider has been missing for a number of years. 

If a bank is explicitly prohibited from distribution, I won't post links to it. Period. However, if my networking skills allow it, I will hopefully be able to find people willing to privately share the banks in question. That will require privately contacting the people with the bank and getting a private link that isn't posted anywhere public. Matsudappoiyo is my biggest example of why I believe this isn't patently illegal. That guy was loved and the fandom was heartbroken when his links passed on. However, people shuffling downloads between themselves kept him alive.

And what's wrong with that?

But some UTAUs be 100% Dead by Choice, not by time

There are some UTAUs that have been taken off of the internet were taken off for reasons that make even private distribution iffy. If I can find proof that the creator legitimately wants their UTAU to never be used again, I won't go to the effort of trying to even find links. Matsudappoiyo, again, is the exception that proves the rule. His creator allowed private redistribution and even reuploaded the banks briefly at one point. Other than in cases of Rubies and Namidas (i.e., taking down the banks for legal reasons) I can't think of many UTAUs that fall into the category of the creators violently disavowing them. 

I may be too caught up in hunting down links and Mediafires to find information pointing to why the UTAU was taken out of circulation. If it is brought to my attention why, I will follow the creator's wishes ASAP.

How can I get you to find an UTAU?!

At me on Twitter or leave a comment with the name of the UTAU and as much information as you can come up with. I'll get to it as soon as I have the free time!

This blog might never pick up, but I'll have fun sharing what I learn and how I learned it.