[Foundation-l] Semi-protection on April Fools

[Erik Moeller]

Do I think that April Fools will in any way irreversibly damage the
Wikimedia project family? Of course not - we've dealt with it last
year, we'll survive it this year. Do I believe that the combination of
admins, regular users and anons hammering away on different pranks
will make our site look amateurish and unprofessional in the eyes of
some visitors? Most definitely. Do I consider the extent to which
vandalism was dealt with using admin rollback last year over a period
of a few days following April 1 a particularly useful metric in
estimating the extent of the _actual problem_ this year? Not really.

It also seems to me that a radical solution like the one I propose has
certain side benefits -- it emphasizes the nature of the project (in
the case of Wikipedia) as an encyclopedia rather than a community
where everyone is free to do whatever they want; it gives a serious
undertone to any appeals to the community of registered users to
behave; it gives us one day of the year to focus on cleaning up all
the mess everyone else makes during the rest of the year. ;-)

On the other hand, I'll already be happy with _some_ regulations. For
example, admins last year changed the user interface all over the
place, including parts of it which are visible to regular users. That,
in my opinion, goes way too far as it impairs normal access to
information.

Erik