--- Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
In the interests of adding to instruction creep :-), we ought to have some ground rules for April Fool's, maybe make a contest out of it, for instance the winner is the hoax that goes the longest without being detected. For instance:
This is the type of utter and complete nonsense that I'm talking about. How does this help us create the encyclopedia? How can you justify *encouraging* people to create bogus entries?
Wikipedia is NOT A PLAYTHING! This project is not here for your enjoyment - we are here to create an encyclopedia. If you happen to have fun while helping us toward *that goal*, then great. If not, then let others work and be free of this type of distracting nonsense.
-- mav
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On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:51:13 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
How does this help us create the encyclopedia? How can you justify *encouraging* people to create bogus entries?
To answer your rhetorical question: Sometimes allowing a small amount of playfulness can help motivate people to remain dedicated to the project. To put it another way, requiring 100% seriousness 100% of the time might push away editors and do more harm than good.
David Benbennick wrote:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:51:13 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
How does this help us create the encyclopedia? How can you justify *encouraging* people to create bogus entries?
To answer your rhetorical question: Sometimes allowing a small amount of playfulness can help motivate people to remain dedicated to the project. To put it another way, requiring 100% seriousness 100% of the time might push away editors and do more harm than good.
A sense of humour is always helps to take the air out of pomped-up balloons.
April Fool pranks have their place as long as they do no harm, and the subject of the joke is such that believing it will not affect people's lives or cause panic. (News of impending Martian invasions need to be kept secret even if they are true for this reason.)
Articles that have been used for this should perhaps retain, at the top of the article, a notice like, "This article was the featured article for April 1, 2005," withe "April 1" highlighted. Such articles remind people of the need to be critical.
Ec
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
In the interests of adding to instruction creep :-), we ought to have some ground rules for April Fool's, maybe make a contest out of it, for instance the winner is the hoax that goes the longest without being detected. For instance:
This is the type of utter and complete nonsense that I'm talking about. How does this help us create the encyclopedia? How can you justify *encouraging* people to create bogus entries?
We're not a bunch of text-creating machines. It's "community second", not "no community at all".
Wikipedia is NOT A PLAYTHING! This project is not here for your enjoyment - we are here to create an encyclopedia. If you happen to have fun while helping us toward *that goal*, then great. If not, then let others work and be free of this type of distracting nonsense.
Actually, I am here for my enjoyment - it just so happens that I enjoy making little-known information more visible by adding it to WP. If only unenjoyable stuff was left to do, or interactions with other editors made the daily experience unpleasant, I'd be gone in a second; I have plenty of other hobbies.
Now to be serious about April Fools. While it can't possibly be a tradition for print encyclopedias, it is a natural for news organizations and for companies, and is practised even when it "hurts productivity". For example, a big-company CEO's time is worth thousands of dollars per hour, so when the CEO's office is filled to the top with styrofoam peanuts, you can bet that's costing the company real money. However, the morale boost is worth far more than the loss of the CEO's time; employees get to talk about something fun instead of how their current tasks suck, etc. Silicon Valley companies do this the most of anybody, and I hear their success is the envy of the rest of the world.
WP desperately needs to be more of a fun place. We already know a lot of longtime contributors have been worn down to the point where a single run-in with a troll causes them to explode and quit; very much like what happens with longtime company employees when their jobs are no longer enjoyable. If WP were a company, HR would be all over Jimbo to do something about morale.
On April 1, there are going to be lots of articles fiddled with, whether we like it or not; I certainly wasn't looking forward to that aspect of the day (although since my watchlist hasn't worked all week, it looks it will be other people's problem this year).
So I suggested the contest as a way to make the day something for editors to anticipate rather than dread, and to channel some of the urge in a way that will be more fun for more of the community. I don't think it can possibly harm WP's reputation; people who have a low opinion won't change their minds because of what we or don't do on April 1, and people who have a high opinion will like that we're recognizing the potential problem and coming up with alternate ways to channel it.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote
Now to be serious about April Fools.
To do that, I suggest a [[Saturnalia]]. Just for a day we give admin powers to 400 anons. Real sysops can't use them. Inclusionists will be forced to vote to delete important pieces of fancruft. We all treat Jimbo like a newbie, the rest of us are God-Kings and God-Queens for a day. No one is allowed to edit their own User page. The Village Pump will flow with wine. All pages based on Larry's Text will be reverted to the originals ...
Need I go on? The AF suggestions so far have been quite modest.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote
Now to be serious about April Fools.
To do that, I suggest a [[Saturnalia]]. Just for a day we give admin powers to 400 anons. Real sysops can't use them. Inclusionists will be forced to vote to delete important pieces of fancruft. We all treat Jimbo like a newbie, the rest of us are God-Kings and God-Queens for a day. No one is allowed to edit their own User page. The Village Pump will flow with wine. All pages based on Larry's Text will be reverted to the originals ...
Need I go on? The AF suggestions so far have been quite modest.
Sounds a little like Boxing Day!
But stay on your toes anyway, I wouldn't put it past our developers to quietly create an alternate-reality fork of the database.
Stan
I think it would be fun to redirect people to the wrong languages. it would be both maddening and it would also promote Wikipedia's cross-language reach.
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:52:09 -0500, The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com wrote:
I think it would be fun to redirect people to the wrong languages. it would be both maddening and it would also promote Wikipedia's cross-language reach.
That's just plain evil! Yes it's funny, but unfortunately I don't think new visitors will appreciate that.
-- MacGyverMagic