A Little Fun Goes A Long Way: Why do we work so hard to avoid having a sense of humor?
| “ | Accuracy, of course, can better be won by a committee armed with computers than by a single intelligence. But while accuracy binds the trust between reader and contributor, eccentricity and elegance and surprise are the singular qualities that make learning an inviting transaction. And they are not qualities we associate with committees. | ” |
| — Geoffrey Wolff, "Britannica 3, History Of", The Atlantic, 1974 | ||
Wikipedia is a place for learning. As an encyclopedia, we owe our readers accuracy, verifiability, and reliability. We pride ourselves on the fact that when people come here for knowledge, they usually come away with error-free, well-summarized, usable information. But we have forgotten one key element that makes Wikipedia successful – joy. It's not that our editors lack joy – like most of you, I'm here because I love doing this. There's true pleasure in making things a little bit better one edit at a time. But as soon as a smidgen of joy makes its way out from behind the curtain and into the gaze of our readers, it is expunged. We are not, collectively speaking, any fun at all.
I'll cite four examples, but there are others you may remember. For years, a number of editors have waged a battle to keep this simple joke off of Wikipedia – specifically, off of Guy Standing's page. Elsewhere, a dedicated corps of Wikipedians have diligently ensured that Will Smith's introductory biographical paragraph bears absolutely no resemblance to the lyrics of the Fresh Prince theme ("In West Philadelphia born and raised..."), even though he was, in fact, in West Philadelphia born and raised. A slow-moving fourteen-year-long skirmish on whether to put a hatnote linking to self-referential humor on the self-referential humor page has resulted in an unsatisfying compromise, relegating the hatnote to a subsection. And finally, ever since this tweet drew attention to the issue, the 'perfect Wikipedia caption' on Scottish National Antarctic Expedition has been guarded jealously against levity.
Why? In every case, the same reasons are given. Wikipedia is not here for humor. Allowing tidbits like this would lead to wave of vandalism and jokey edits. It would hurt our reputation as a serious place of knowledge. These are reasonable arguments. But they ignore history, and the nature of learning. Samuel Johnson famously included the following definition of 'dull' in his seminal dictionary: "Not exhilarating... not delightful: as in, to make dictionaries is dull work". We Wikipedians are "a committee armed with computers", as Geoffrey Wolff described the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1974. And we are becoming dull. We want to convert readers into learners and learners into editors. A sprinkle of eccentricity, the slightest element of surprise – these can make all the difference. It has been years since people treated Wikipedia as a punchline. Maybe we can now safely afford to make a joke or two ourselves – just a few, here and there, for the sake of learning.
Discuss this story
How does the author know that we are not already doing this, in our own, quiet way? – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:44, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe a Noticeboard for disputes over creative writing. -- GreenC 00:15, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bilorv: It doesn't really bother me if someone knee-jerk reverts an edit the first time, but I think there's a point at which the decision to rollback needs to be critically examined. The issue I have isn't with someone saying "oh, this isn't funny, I think it's vandalism, I'll revert". The issue I have is with extremely protracted and obtuse arguments in which people doggedly insist that anything funny must be bad content. On Talk:Guy Standing, for example, you can see gallons of ink being spilled over whether it's unencyclopedic to caption it "Guy Standing sitting". To me, this is about as silly as you can get -- just as "phrasing it this way is funny" isn't a good justification for an edit, neither is "phrasing it this way prevents it from being funny". Nobody would bat an eye if the caption was "Bob Smith sitting", but as soon as the slightest iota of humor is derived from a sentence, the apocalyptic event of someone chuckling must be avoided at all costs. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll present this as an example of a good post I made being removed on the grounds of alleged inappropriateness, even though "ape iron" is a totally plausible interpretation of "apeiron". But the rest of these seem quite harmless. Perhaps in 2005 it made sense to insist on going out of our way to avoid anything that could potentially be construed as unprofessional; at this point, the New York Times writes articles about how reliable we are on a regular basis. Who gives a damn if Category:Recursion includes itself? And, more importantly, is it really worth fully protecting the category for five entire years to avoid -- Heaven forfend! -- the possibility of someone adding it to itself? I wouldn't be opposed to a MoS supplement specifically to deprecate contorting an article to remove a joke, or a guideline saying that edit-warring to remove a joke is just as much a nuisance as edit-warring to keep one in. jp×g 03:03, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't change this for the world. Humor is possible, but within the constraints we impose on ourselves, and that often means it comes about unintentionally. If you really want to write joke versions of articles, go to Uncyclopedia. Daniel Case (talk) 20:42, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've just read this op-ed which is admittedly not the most recent one. So my comment comes a little later than most others. I'm happy about Ganesha811's approach and venture. Humor is such an integral component of good communication. Texts that lack any humor are failing to win the readers' good will. A won smile is not only an animation of face muscles but the building of ad hoc bridges. In an encyclopedia humor is a good thing as long it is subtle. Yes , there must be red lines and pragmatic rules to remove e.g. rude microaggressions masked as jokes. And I'm glad that Ganesha811 declares "sympathetic to the slippery slope argument. Whenever it becomes non-factual or genuinely confusing, it should be removed." All this is pricipally able to reach consensus among the majority of Wikipedians I'd guess. But there are also people in our community that don't cherish humor. And I not even presume them to be "evil". For example persons with Asperger's syndrome (just as an example) are sometimes very handicapped to perceive and to enjoy humor. They lack so to say tuned antenna for it and can't help it. Can we pragmatically develop rules that are also integrating those persons inside our community that lack humorous inclination to tolerate most forms of subtle humor in Wikipedia articles? -- Just N. (talk) 13:21, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]