In a message dated 4/2/2005 10:10:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
erik_moeller(a)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(a)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