And here I was, wondering aloud if anyone had thought of something like this before. :D As it turns out, Wikipedia has a rich history of not taking itself too seriously.
Adding your link to some others efforts linked to by the Department of Fun I've got:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Llama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Department_of_Fun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiFun_Police, which inspired https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Grey_Knight/Wikipedia_Fun_Police, not to be confused with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kausill/Anti-Fun_Police (splitters!) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Apathetic_Wikipedians https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Wikipedians_Who_Dislike_Makin..., or AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDAYBCADSPBATDMTAD for short https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Motto_of_the_day
Unfortunately, most of them are either completely inactive or significantly less active than they have been in years past.
I think this is a tradition worth bringing back in a big way. To kick things off, I'll reach out on the defunct projects' talk pages to see if there are stragglers who might be interested in helping out with a new or renewed attempt at humor; if appropriate, I'll help clean up behind myself by archiving inactive pages. I'd prefer to kickstart things by becoming part of a larger effort like Signpost, so I'll approach the editors of the Signpost to see if they'd have any interest in what would be the Wikipedian equivalent of a funnies page.
Lastly, this is getting down to specifics that are better taken elsewhere. If you'd like to follow along or take part mail me offlist at wllm@wllm.com, and I'll let you know once the effort has found an onwiki home. As always, suggestions and ridicule welcome, but please help me to continue the discussion offlist by mailing me directly about matters that aren't of general interest to this audience.
Thanks. ,Wil
On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 6:19 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Wil Sinclair wrote:
I'm wondering if there is place where the lighter side of individual Wikimedians and our movement can be shown front and center. What I'm talking about would leave the controversial issues for wikimedia-l and other fora, instead presenting stuff like funny stats about our wikiprojects surfaced through clever metrics, the weirdest of the weird factoids that we uncover in the process of documenting our universe, interviews of Wikipedians on stuff they do beyond editing wikis, and humorous essays that might venture in to good natured lampooning of the movement. I'm already writing an article about the next software feature to be enabled: Project Fish Bicycle. It will add such features as full vertical reflections pioneered by Apple 10 years ago under all articles, taking up only half the final rendered page while compromising on a few minor existing article features, like vowels. Think The Onion or your alma mater's humor publication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_humor_magazines. With a lot of poor attempts at humor, and the occasional viral grand slam.
So. . . is there something like this already? If so, could someone please point me in the direction of the nearest editor, so I can start contributing myself? If not, would anyone be interested in helping me line up a first issue?
Well, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Llama. I feel like The Signpost used to include more humor(ous) content as well. There was a recurring cartoon called WikiWorld for a while, anyway.
Newsletters are typically delivered via MassMessage (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MassMessage) these days. Anyone can start one!
MZMcBride
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