Re: [Foundation-l] Semi-protection on April Fools - Wikimedia-l

29 Mar 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:

...
 The problem
is mostly with users who will insert nonsense into articles as a joke,
but have no idea (and will not care enough) to remove it later. I'm
also quite sure that many people will find things funny which we would
normally consider to be cases of aggressive vandalism. People have
very different senses of humor. For some, April 1 is the one day of
the year where they feel they have an obligation to do something
funny, while they really aren't. Funny. At all.

 Part of the reason they're not funny is that most of the time, they're 
also not very original. As Wikipedia has now been through a few April 
Fool's Days, I've seen quite a variety of jokes, pranks, and hoaxes, and 
I'm sure those with more experience and longer memories know of even 
more. I would be hard-pressed to come up with something truly original 
and funny, but if someone could I'd enjoy it and have no objection. 
Perhaps simply declaring off-limits the stuff that's been done already 
would go a long ways toward cutting down on unfunny April Fools.

--Michael Snow