[Foundation-l] Semi-protection on April Fools

[Erik Moeller]

I'd like to put in the open the notion of semi-protecting all
Wikimedia projects [*] during April Fool's Day, that is, making them
editable only to registered users with accounts more than a few days
old. I have little hope that such an option will be seriously
considered for this year (at least not without an emergency decree
from above right about, well, now), but I think in a few days, after
you will all see the damage we'll have to deal with again this year,
you might be more inclined to agree with me. We could phrase it
positively by declaring April 1 "Wikimedia Spring Cleaning Day" (and
it would not preclude us from having a few jokes on each project). The
site notice could be used to highlight maintenance pages like Cleanup
or the Wikiwork Brigade (sorry for being en.wp-centric).

I'd also like to highlight a policy draft I worked on last year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Rules_for_Fools&oldid=11835505

Yes, I know, it's all awfully unfunny, but when everyone tries to be
funny, it starts becoming a problem. Wikis are built on the model of
assuming good faith; the wiki model breaks down when everyone starts
acting like a jerk. April 1 is really unique in this way. 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.

I think not descending into complete anarchy once a year is a
desirable outcome. A yearly 24 hour timeout might also be a good idea
for entirely different reasons.

And no, this is not a joke. :)

Erik

[*] At least in those languages which are predominantly accessed from
countries where April Fool's Day is a recognized cultural concept.