[Wikinews-l] Date-specific vandalism

[Jimmy Wales]

Oldak Quill wrote:
> On 03/01/07, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think there should be a policy immediately adopted for all language
>> Wikipedias, against non-legitimate articles on any day of the year,
>> including so called "April Fools Days". While I'm not against humour, they
>> stand to serve no purpose to the project.
> 
> April Fools Jokes do serve a purpose: they make Wikipedia seem like a
> more friendly environment to work in. It demonstrates that users can
> have fun while working on Wikipedia and develops a sense of community.

What I always propose for Wikipedia, but we have never actually done it, 
is this:

Let's have an absolutely 100% true front page, but filled for the day 
with things that SEEM impossible or outrageous.  We get extra points if 
we manage to fool any journalists into thinking that we were running an 
April Fool's day joke front page.

What I love about this:
1. It stays true to our commitment to sharing knowledge and being NPOV 
and truthful with the world
2. It can be really interesting and quirky
3. It is a meta-joke of far more intelligence than what most outlets 
would do... I mean, any moronic publication can make up fake stories for 
a day to try to fool people... only the absurdly clever wikimedians 
could add a new twist on top of it.

Perhaps something like this could be planned for wikinews?  Or perhaps, 
given that wikinews is NEWS, it would be inappropriate as compared to 
Wikipedia.  What I mean is: at Wikipedia, the front page is mostly 
varied each day anyway... the featured article *could be* just about 
anything.

--Jimbo