Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/Comment


 * Sven Manguard has been editing Wikipedia since 2010 and is an administrator on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. He had a "Did you know?" on the April Fools' Day main page in 2013 and put forth a candidate for the April Fools' Day Featured Picture this year, but is opposed to joke edits outside of the Main Page and user pages. The author would like to thank for copyediting this piece.


 * The views expressed are those of the author only. Responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds. If you have one in mind, please leave a message at the opinion desk.

April Fools' Day is rapidly approaching. Every year, members of the community pull pranks and make (or attempt to make) humorous edits to pages across the project. Every year, the community follows April Fools' Day with a contentious debate about what whether or not it is necessary to impose limits on April Fools' Day jokes for future years. It is a polarizing issue. On one side, people view the levity that April Fools' Day edits bring as a key component to community building and editor retention. Others view April Fools' Day edits as an embarrassment that undermines Wikipedia's professionalism and thus its credibility. While most people fall somewhere between those two extremes, April Fools-related discussions have a propensity to become heated.

Last year a request for comment was held on the issue, which and I closed. The result was a fair compromise; those that wish to partake in April Fools' Day festivities are free to do so, however restrictions are in place that address most of the concerns of those opposed to April Fools' Day edits. In the interest of making April Fools' Day as fun as possible for participants, while also preserving community sanity, I would ask that those interested in pulling pranks on April 1 follow the consensus of that RfC. I have summarized the key points of the RfC below, and also provided some guidance of my own. Being a responsible fool is the best way to ensure that the tradition is allowed to continue in future years.

Guidelines from the RfC
April Fools jokes must stay out of article space

Of all of the proposals in the RfC, this had the largest margin of support. To quote, "First rule of April foolery: Do no harm. Pranks interfering with readers ability to use this site as an encyclopedia aren't funny." The main page is specifically excluded from this prohibition, but all other pages in the article namespace are off limits. While there was a proposal at the RfC to treat April Fools' Day jokes harshly, it was unsuccessful. Instead, joke edits in the article space will be treated as they are treated on all other days; they will be reverted as disruption, a talk page warning will be issued, and after four such warnings, the offending editor will be blocked.

It's worth noting that this does not prohibit filing fake Articles for Deletion (AfD) requests, but it does require that you remove the red box announcing the AfD from the top of the article. For editors that are not familiar with the navigating Articles for Deletion pages and want to view the festivities, all AfDs filed on April Fools' Day will be listed on this page. While not addressed by the RfC, it is also a good idea to remove the deletion notice from the talk page of the article's original creator. If you're using Twinkle, you can uncheck the "Notify page creator if possible" box to prevent a message from being sent in the first place.

You must tag your jokes with a humor template

While it should be obvious that putting Earth up for deletion is a joke, not every joke that is made is immediately obvious as such. The use of the Humor or April fools templates makes jokers' intentions clear. While this may seem like unnecessary bureaucracy, it's what the community wants. Since all of the processes that serve as forums for jokes do still have serve their intended functions on April Fools' Day (there are legitimate AfDs filed that day, for example), drawing a clear line as to what is and is not a joke saves everyone time comes April 2, when all the jokes have to be cleaned up.

Additional recommendations
Be lighthearted and original

Please do not nominate Earth for deletion. It's been done eight times already, and the sixth was the last time that anyone even bothered joining in on the "debate". Additionally, the community has shown that it has run out of patience for poop jokes and similar low-brow humor. Misdirection, cleverness, and wit will get you much more acclaim and appreciation than rehashing old jokes, be they AfD traditions or jokes of the scatological variety.

Additionally, it should go without saying that April Fools' Day is not an excuse to attack other people or their beliefs. Nominating Russia or Barack Obama or Christianity for deletion and then claiming that it was only a joke isn't going to go over well, especially if the deletion rationale carries political or social undertones. If it would be insulting on March 31, it's still going to be insulting on April 1. Likewise, vandalizing another user's user page and then claiming that it was a prank is also not going to be viewed kindly. If you're leaving silly messages for friends, no one is going to bat an eye. If, however, a reasonable person would view your edits as malicious, the date on the calendar isn't going to save you from a block. In short, the user conduct guidelines don't go away just because it's April Fools.

Tolerate the madness

Not everyone that pulls April Fools' Day pranks on Wikipedia is going to be a regular editor. Not every regular editor is going to abide by the resolution of the RfC or heed my advice above. There will be non-constructive edits (jokes to some, vandalism to others) in the article space, and some of those edits will come from longtime editors. Historically, some vandalism fighters have viewed April Fools' Day jokes by established editors as tantamount to a betrayal, and have responded with vitriol. Conversely, some longtime editors have responded poorly to having their jokes reverted or deleted by other users. In short, for a day of levity, April 1 can often be stressful for those involved.

To those making jokes: First, please keep in mind that if your jokes are removed, it's not meant to be a personal affront against you. You are not editing in a vacuum; most of the people that will be reverting edits on April Fools' Day will be reverting a lot of edits, the vast majority from throwaway accounts and IPs. Alternatively, it could just be that the joke you thought was hilarious ... wasn't, and someone else cleared it out to make room for other attempts. Either way, take it in stride; there's always next year. Secondly, please clean up after yourself. One of the major issues that opponents of April Fools' Day jokes complain about is the amount of time that the community has to waste cleaning up after said jokes. While closing a few dozen joke deletion nominations and a half dozen fake requests for adminiship isn't a terrible burden, especially now that the cleanup no longer involves removing deletion notices from articles, removing your jokes once April Fools' Day is over is still the responsible thing to do. Finally, if an editor expresses a desire to be left out of the festivities, or to have their user and user talk pages left out of the festivities, respect that choice.

To those reverting jokes: First, please keep in mind that many of the people that are making joke edits on April 1 aren't doing it out of malice. If you see an established editor making non-constructive edits in the article space, drop them a polite talk page message linking to the section on the RfC that addresses this. Secondly, as tempting as it might be to do so, don't rush off to shut down all of the jokes the moment that the clock strikes 00:00, April 2, 2014 (UTC). It will still be April Fools' Day for a substantial number of editors for several hours after the day changes over in UTC. On that note, dropping the hammer on someone that makes a joke edit an hour or two into April 2 UTC isn't constructive. Finally, if an editor wants to have their fun on April 1, don't give them a hard time about it, or hold it against them in the future, unless they are truly disruptive. Ultimately, comes April 2 these are people that you will have to go back to working with, and this is not something worth burning bridges over.