Wikipedia:April Fools/April Fools' Day 2006/Intentional Prank Unit

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Announcements
We have implemented a new system of intentionally adding pranks and other good-natured jokes to the Wikipedia pages. We have called this revolutionary new technique "editing". It's very simple - go to any article where humor is needed, click "edit this page" at the top, and then insert the requisite humor into the page. It will show up instantaneously!

The Intentional Prank Unit
The Intentional Prank Unit aims to help add BJAODN on Wikipedia by producing tools to assist in the creation of humor, provide advice on how to be funny without stretching it, and to share information with other wikipedians dealing with the same issues. Adding pranks and jokes is a task open to all members of the Wikipedia community, and IPU aims to make that task easier.

You can associate with IPU by adding one of the following userboxes to your userpage.

 By adding to your user page, or   By adding to your user page. 

If you prefer not to use userboxes, you can add yourself to the Category Intentional Prank Unit Member/wikipedia/en.

Resources

 * Wikipedia talk:Intentional Prank Unit
 * BJAODN (if you don't know what that stands for you shouldn't be here)
 * Wikipedia:Intentional Prank Unit (our homepage, continually updated with news, tools, and resources!)

What IPU is not

 * Identifying with the IPU's role by one of the methods above does not grant you any special rights or privileges on Wikipedia. We wish this were true, but unfortunately it is not. You do have the distinction of being able to say "I'm part of the IPU!", which, when pronounced by letters (I-P-U), sounds slightly funny.
 * The Intentional Prank Unit is not, and has not requested to be, sanctioned as an official project of the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a joke, a parody, a gag, hijink, prank, etc.
 * The unit is merely a collection of individuals dedicated to the distribution of humor around Wikipedia, and does not seek to represent itself as anything more. ("Unit" is shorter and snappier than "WikiProject", and sounds funny to some people.)

Current issues
We seem to be experiencing a bad lack of jokes right now. Being April Fools day, it is required that we have a higher effeciency than normal in the creation and distribution of humor throughout Wikipedia. Please, hurry up and make some pranks! Remember, this is all in good-natured fun - don't vandalize!

Persistent pranksters
Persistent pranksters will be rewarded by a personal e-mail by the member who created the IPU. It will read as follows:

 Congratulations! You are now considered a persistent prankster! This is a congratulatory letter, only seen by those priveleged few who are PP's.

Before you can proceed forward, however, there are some things you need to know. Just for example, imagine if there were no jokes in the world. And now imagine that the only people good at humor become too over-confident and stop being good at making with the funny. Only you can help prevent this horrible tragedy from occuring! Destroy all thoughts of non-funny and over-confidence, and then you will remain forever a good humor-creator and valued member of the IPU. Never regret what you are doing, as it brings laughter to the world and smiles to the faces of millions (well, maybe not millions, but at least a few hundred who recognize what you're creating as a joke)!

So, once again, congratulations!

Signed,

T-81 

Determining what is a prank
The Wiktionary definition of pranks is "A practical joke or mischievous trick. "

On Wikipedia, pranks are exemplified in WP:BJ. It is imperative to understand that not every funny thought is classified as a prank, in particular age-old jokes and potty humor (or kid-like humor. We're responsible adults here, don't you know?). There is a procedure to be followed in dealing with the creation classifiable as humor. Note that different-language versions of Wikipedia language have their own rules, but these rules tend not to differ widely since a smile is spelled the same in every language.

The key is to assume a funny mind. First time humor-creators should try to think back to when they laughed the hardest in their life. What was it regarding? How did the funny situation come about? Then, take the "punchline" or whatever "set off" the laughter in that situation and apply it to the article you're editing. Voila! Funny! Humor! Joke! Prank!

Please do not bite the newcomers. Most of the content classifiable as potty humor or kid-like jokes are just newbie mistakes. Proper procedure is a simple message on their talk page explaining why what they did is, simply, not funny (also, the standard whoopie cushion gag is reputed to have good results in getting an entire room into a "laughter" state of mind). Another way to think of this is that if you "bark" at someone never to do something, they are more than likely to at least try it or to do it just to annoy you — a simple rule of crowd management. Let them do their thing and then help to guide their unfunny content into content worth posting on an article.

Dealing with bad jokes
Not all kinds of bad jokes are "bad", and not all jokes are equal. The following remedies have been found to work well when trying to resolve bad jokes into good pranks.

Severe cases of bad-joke-itis
If you see a user coming down with a severe case of bad-joke-itis, please let them and the community know that their content is expected to be lame for the next few days. They should pull out of their slump and be back to writing funny content in no time!

Repeated cases of bad joke creation
If a user continually creates bad jokes and other deletable nonsense, it's possible that his/her intentions are malignant. In fact, some people might go so far as to say that completely unrelated content is called "vandalism", but it's a phenomenon rarely encountered here on Wikipedia. In this case, simply delete their contributions, stop talking to them, take them off your buddy list, do not attend their parties anymore, shun them from society, leave flaming bags of poo (hehe, I said poo), and certainly stop setting them up with your coworker's sister's neighbor's best friend's mother's hot son/daughter. (It's also possible to simply report them to a Wikipedia administrator, but it's so much more fun our way!)

Conclusion
This unit is an important asset to Wikipedia. Corraled together on the eve of the beginning of April every year (starting in 2006), its members never fail to continually amaze the Wikipedia community by its responsiveness in the creation of humor content all across Wikipedia for one day of the year (certain, more devoted members [we like to think of them as "special", not confused] submit content all year long, but, honestly, who sits in front of a computer for more than four hours a day? Some of us have important meetings to attend to, possibly with executives who hold many three-letter-acronym titles, so you know it's gotta be good!). And at the end of that day, the content gets retired and archived into a special section (we'll leave that to you to figure out where it is - it's been alluded to many times on this page). We're feeling extra generous this year, so we've extended our invitation to anyone who creates humor this year on April 1st. Yup, that's right - anyone who makes a practical joke, funny content, prank, etc. on this year will automagically become a member of the IPU! Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?