A foolish request

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 Go Phightins! 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 Salvidrim 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.

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 Kilopi, "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.

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.

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• It's not enough to remove the AFD message from the article, as a bot will put it back again. You must also remove the line {{REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD}} from the AFD page. See this AN thread. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:47, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Great article - thanks for contributing this. Nick-D (talk) 08:57, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Thank you for clarifying the rules for all to see, clear guidelines are just what are needed at this time. Thanks, Matty.007 11:11, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• A link to Wikipedia:Rules for Fools would help (it's only linked indirectly). — Edokter (talk) — 12:36, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps someone knowledgeable could update the Wikipedia:Rules for Fools with some of the guidance here, specially on AFD practice. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:09, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Love that rhyme: Rules for Fools!--Mishae (talk) 14:41, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Does the guidance also apply to AFDay ridiculousness in the Main Page DYK section?--ukexpat (talk) 14:35, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • ukexpat: Per the RfC: "There is consensus for having April Fools DYKs be clever puns rather than poop jokes and sexual innuendos" and "There is consensus against banning April Fools DYK hooks". Sven Manguard Wha? 07:49, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I guess that's an improvement, in theory...--ukexpat (talk) 00:19, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• The "we're an encyclopaedia, so we hate jokes" attitude that's taken over Wikipedia in recent years is unfortunate. Nominating and re-nominating WP:BJAODN for deletion six times is one example, the repeated removal of jokes from articles specifically about an individual genre of jest (such as light bulb joke) is another. We have users who have nothing better to do than watchlist those articles just to revert all new contributions on sight, which is sad. We don't remove pictures of feces or of a penis from those respective articles, but heaven forbid that an article about jokes contain a joke. K7L (talk) 21:40, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  @K7L: The alternative (extreme) is incorporating all of [1] or [2]...
  Each of the articles in Category:Joke cycles (and related subcats) do (or should) include example(s) that are cited, to make the topic of the article clear, but do not go beyond that (or shouldn't) lest they turn into a joke-variant compilation.
  Eg. You have two cows lists 6 examples cited to an article in a 1944 linguistics journal; but if someone tried to copy all the variants into that article, it wouldn't be an "article" anymore. - I listed some more potential sources on the talkpage a few years ago, if you'd like to help improve the article. :) –Quiddity (talk) 20:11, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I could cite ten broadcast engineering textbooks as WP:RS that NTSC video has long been despised as "Never Twice the Same Colour" but it would still be reverted. These are taken to Talk:Backronym to die, not to be evaluated in good faith for sources or notability to our backronym article. That talk page and article history (and those of many similar articles) are full of other examples. Any requests for sources, notability or anything else are merely pretext. The same is likely true for most or all of the other joke types. It's notable, it's properly cited but if one user doesn't like jokes it's gone... even in articles specifically about those classes of joke. K7L (talk) 02:05, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Isn't it tradition by now to AfD Earth? Seriously though, thanks for this, it'll help me come Tuesday :D Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 01:49, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • As far as I know, all of the editors AfD'ing Earth are in blatant WP:COI, which is an abuse of the system. K7L (talk) 02:05, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• So has Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion been nominated for WP:FA more than once? -- llywrch (talk) 15:49, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Re: 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". Remember: Notability is Not Temporary. Carrite (talk) 19:02, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• And Wikivoyage is featuring on the main page, Wikipedia, as destination of the month. Did you guys ever wondered there's a country exist on this planet called Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.190.168.183 (talk) 01:03, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Maybe we could apply the advice about trying something new to the day after: How about this year we skip the very traditional post-event fight about whether April Fools' Day jokes should be banned? That's happened more times than Earth has been nominated for deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • WhatamIdoing: There was a rather clear consensus against that when it was suggested last year. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:22, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • There was a consensus against banning it. There wasn't a requirement that we do it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • WhatamIdoing: True, but practically speaking, banning the RfCs might be the only way to prevent them. A large part of the reason I created this op-ed was in the hopes that if everyone on both sides knew where to draw the line, the anger that April Fools' Day edits have caused in past years can be prevented. That being said, Jokes are the path to the Requests for Comment. Jokes lead to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. I sense many jokes in Wikipedia. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:58, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Ah, perhaps you can be lured to the dark side of the farce? K7L (talk) 00:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• In practice people will stick to the Wikipedia:April 1 guidelines (which was promoted as official policy by Jehochman yesterday for a while), the more restrictive the official guidelines become the more liberal the Wikipedia:April 1 guidelines will become. Therefore it's best to not impose too strict limitations on jokes/pranks. Count Iblis (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]