[WikiEN-l] Re: April Fool's Day

Fri Apr 1 20:24:01 UTC 2005

Anthere wrote:

> Rick a écrit:
>
>> OK, it's out of control now.  Changing all of the edit
>> button titles and making people think they have new
>> messages when they don't are just confusing people. And now people 
>> are changing the counts of articles on
>> minor language Wikipedias.  We're getting lots of
>> people totally confused and thinking that we've been
>> hacked, and I'm worried that we're not going to be
>> able to put things back to the way they were.
>
> One thing I am noticing is...
>
> This is the first year we see such an explosion of april fool jokes.
> The article I saw this morning just a paragraph 
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bad_jokes_and_other_deleted_nonsense/Wikipedia:April_1%2C_2005/2005_Britannica_takeover_of_Wikimedia) 
> has become a huge pile of .... euh, how to call this ?
>
> I think such days are precisely meant for people to relieve their 
> daily stress; just as Cesar organised circus games to have people 
> forget how tough their lives where. And I would dare to say : is the 
> over reaction a sign that the current project has become too 
> "restricting" in editors freedom that they feel they need to get so 
> wild the one day this is permitted ?
>
>> Page move vandalism is vandalism, I don't care what
>> you call it.
>>
>> And some "apparent" vandal changed the Main Page to
>> say that Terri Schiavo died from autofellatio.  How do
>> we tell them not to vandalize Wikipedia if everybody
>> else is doing it, too?
>
> ROFLLLLLL 

What some people don't seem to realize is that making a fuss over 
something like April Fools articles only encourages more of them.  
Instead of a handful of subtle hoaxes that harmlessly fool the brightest 
among us we end up with a stream of endless silliness and 
auto-felching.  Humour is in a sad shape when people have to be told 
that what they just heard is an obvious joke.

Of course there are facts that are stranger than humour.  Alarmed by the 
length of the list of people waiting for srgery, our provincial is 
taking steps to reduce these lists by removing names that don't belong 
there.  This includes women who have been waiting more than a year for a 
Caesarean delivery.

Ec