[WikiEN-l] Final April Fools wrap up

Sun Apr 3 02:38:20 UTC 2005

>
> In a message dated 4/2/2005 10:10:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> erik_moeller at gmx.de writes:
>
> As such,  I propose two simple rules for next year:
>
> 1) There will be one  well-coordinated joke for the *outside* world,
> Whether it's a featured  article, a press release, or anything else can
> be decided by the cabal on  the to-be-created fools-l at wikimedia.org
> mailing list ;-).
>
> 2) Jokes  *within* the community are limited to the Wikipedia:, User:
> and *Talk:  namespaces. MediaWiki:, Template:, Image: and articles are
> off limits.  Jokes should not be overly disruptive.
>
>
>
>
> I second this.
>
> Danny

I'm not sure about this. Setting hard rules for April Fool's Day isn't good.
I think the experienced Wikipedians should simply come to some sort of
agreement on behaviour - this year, for example, one or two members used it
as an excuse to vandalise current articles, whereas others made more
'understandable' changes.

The Britannica stuff was fine, maybe it got out of hand, but it was well
co-ordinated and didn't cause too much disruption. Putting ETPH on the front
page wasn't given permission, but it did no harm. Adding articles such as
[[Susej]] and putting good users up for arbitration/bad users up for
adminship, and so on, is understandable also.

I think that the problem is with the events on articles such as, for
example, [[Evolution]] (Michael Jackson-related changes) and [[Ashlee
Simpson]] (childs drawing added as a 'self-portrait') is where it goes too
far. Thats where you'd be driving away newbies, and ultimately thats where
you go from fun to vandalism.

I think, to conclude, it should just be said - And not hard-coded - That fun
and pranks and jokes is one thing, whereas vandalism is another. A lot of
the stuff below the first twenty images on [[User:Hedley/April Fool's Day,
2005]] is probably vandalism and really took it over the mark a little.

Not to say it wasn't funny, but encyclopaedias aren't meant to indicate with
Raul654 is a smooth newt, or whatever the users who made the changes were
trying to imply.

- D. Hedley