April Fool on WP: Funny, or incredibly tragic?, you decide Options Rating

[wikiwhistle]

What do you think of April fool on WP? Is it a load of saddos thinking they're hilarious? Cringe-making?

What do you think?

[The Wales Hunter]

Fake Aspie teenage geeks rarely make decent stand-up comics.

So I tend to agree with your observations made on ANI.

[Son of a Yeti]

What do you think of April fool on WP? Is it a load of saddos thinking they're hilarious? Cringe-making?

What do you think?

I believe they tried to put too many jokes on one page. It's too obvious.

[Obesity]

This thread would be more compelling if you actually posited a viewpoint.

(Disclaimer: I was not involved with the main page this year, despite aggressive recruitment from the usual suspects)

[The Wales Hunter]

It's all bollocks, though.

The idea of April Fool's Day is to make people believe something is true when it isn't. The front page is just full of double meanings and reads as though it has been written by a 13-year-old English student with a faulty thesaurus.

[wikiwhistle]

This thread would be more compelling if you actually posited a viewpoint.

I think it was implicit in the question; anyway the whole point of the thread is to discuss/share opinions.

[LaraLove]

I think a lot of the little things are funny, like a large number of people copying Pedro's sig. Obviously that's not fooling anyone into believing anything, but I found that talk page thread particularly funny. Of course, it might also help that Pedro and I have a sort of precarious friendship.

The main page article this year isn't funny, but last year was great. SandyGeorgia wrote last year's, which was Ima Hogg. It was brilliant.

Changing the images on the sockpuppet templates to lolcats is unfunny and ruined my joke, which had seriously gotten a few people in a short time, and now it's much less believable. So, I guess I'm going to have to reluctantly agree on the overall. The few people attempting to create some serious April Fools' jokes are seeing them killed by people that don't understand the concept of duping people, rather think it's a day for obvious sillies.

[Obesity]

SandyGeorgia wrote last year's, which was Ima Hogg. It was brilliant.

[correcting my post] It looks like Karanacs and Sandy co-wrote it. Sandy coordinated the whole thing; that was one of the rewarding collaborations I've participated in. Nice people.

This post has been edited by Obesity: Wed 1st April 2009, 2:23pm

[Tarc]

The quibble seems to be that it is too obvious of a fake, which just seems like silly nitpicking, honestly.

[LaraLove]

The quibble seems to be that it is too obvious of a fake, which just seems like silly nitpicking, honestly.

This is the sort of poor POV that perpetuates the unfunny!! >_>

[GlassBeadGame]

Gee, what awesome and witty people.

[Eva Destruction]

Words fail me. I don't know if this is supreme humorlessness or a piece of bizarre performance art – unless M.B. is even more cunning than we thought.

[Somey]

[correcting my post] It looks like Karanacs and Sandy co-wrote it. Sandy coordinated the whole thing; that was one of the rewarding collaborations I've participated in. Nice people.

Just to keep things in perspective, the feature article, Museum of Bad Art (T-H-L-K-D), was originally written by Sdedeo (T-C-L-K-R-D) - who left WP just over a year ago, in a rather disillusioned state I'd have to say:

...as much value as admins contribute in vandal fighting and dispute resolution, many lack the emotional maturity to handle power in a responsible, and responsive, fashion. ... I have contributed a great deal to the encyclopedia, both in the field I hold my doctorate in (physics), and in other fields I've had a hand in over the years. It's plenty of fun. But I can no longer contribute value to a work that I feel has in a fundamental sense abandoned the principles that led me to join in. I've protected this page, and will no longer contribute to wikipedia; I encourage others to do the same.

He's shown up a few times since then, and it was actually Od Mishehu (T-C-L-K-R-D) who protected the page, since Sdedeo wasn't an admin. (Apparently the last straw was the "admin/developer consensus fraud" over implementation of the rollback feature.)

[The Wales Hunter]

Related to this but also not.

Is this a suggestion that MB is up to his old tricks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=281098923

I would ask administrators to please avoid using blocking as part of any April Fools related festivities. In addition, although presumably not really apropos here, any genuine information concerning suspicion of any further Poetlister-related activity should be forwarded to the Arbitration Committee. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

[Newyorkbrad]

Related to this but also not.

Is this a suggestion that MB is up to his old tricks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=281098923

I would ask administrators to please avoid using blocking as part of any April Fools related festivities. In addition, although presumably not really apropos here, any genuine information concerning suspicion of any further Poetlister-related activity should be forwarded to the Arbitration Committee. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

No. Hence "presumably not really apropos here." Just a general reminder.

[lolwut]

Words fail me. I don't know if this is supreme humorlessness or a piece of bizarre performance art – unless M.B. is even more cunning than we thought.

That shit is not for real, is it? It'd be hilarious if LaraLove/Jennavecia was not a real person and was yet another Poetlister sock.

Nah, it is a joke.



That would have been lulzy.

Although Tiptoety and MBisanz may get a load of shit for this joke from the WP community as a whole, which will also be lulz. Presumably.

...

Also, ED is getting its fair share of drama today as well:

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index...&year=&month=-1

This post has been edited by lolwut: Wed 1st April 2009, 4:33pm

[quanta]

What do you think of April fool on WP? Is it a load of saddos thinking they're hilarious? Cringe-making?

What do you think?

A bit confusing

[Milton Roe]

What do you think of April fool on WP? Is it a load of saddos thinking they're hilarious? Cringe-making?

What do you think?

I believe they tried to put too many jokes on one page. It's too obvious.

I believe in the spirit of gentle fun, the Hotel toilet-paper folding article should be in today's Did You Know?

[Noroton]

What do you think of April fool on WP? Is it a load of saddos thinking they're hilarious? Cringe-making?

What do you think?

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES OF APRIL FOOL'S CRITICISM

1. The Purist Approach
April Fool's is traditionally about practical joking. If there isn't a practical joke involved, the humor is bad form.

2. The Humor-oriented Approach
Whatever happens, it had better be funny.

3. The "Seriously, Now" Approach
Pranks can be cruel, or they can cause significant disruption or other harm, which we should guard against.

4. The Let-Them-Blow-Off-Steam Approach (very compatible with #3)
All that matters is that people have some innocent fun. Silliness is fine and if the people having fun aren't amusing anyone else, so what?

All four archetypes are valid in their own way but, individually, don't cover all the potential defects. Taken as a group, I think these four describe just about all criticism of stuff done on April Fool's Day on Wikipedia or anywhere else.

My own [[Hotel toilet-paper folding]] article isn't really an April Fool's Day piece. I decided to finally do it on April Fool's Day (I've had the idea for a while) because I wanted it to get a lot of readers who like the idea of having it. I once saved [[List of bow tie wearers]] from deletion by expanding it, and the result has been that it gets assaulted by deletionists on a regular basis. I'm so sick of the assaults that I don't even look at the article any more (I'm grateful Orlady has adopted it). I like having some quirky article topics and it looks like most people do, so one way of protecting them from future AfDs is to make sure plenty of people know about them. That's why I put up a notice on Jimbo's talk page on April 1 (Greenwich Mean Time, or whatever time WP uses). There's a certain strain of Wikipedians who take the encyclopedia-building way too seriously. On April 1 that attitude is least welcome and more people are open to something fun. I saw my chance and I took it. I think the AfD is inevitable. But now, anyone who contributed to the article or has commented on it can be WP:CANVASSed, and no one can stop me. And my evil scheme of tamping down pompous, over-serious, humorless schoolmarmery on WP advances apace.

The Pedro sig thing is funny because a lot of people were doing it. Meets the #3,#4 standards and #2, although humor is always in the eye of the beholder.

It's interesting that few women seem to be involved in April Fool's business. I think it's mostly a guy thing and mostly a young-guy thing.

There's something about April Fool's Day on Wikipedia that has the "Authorized Day of Ruckus" about it. That's a very old human tradition. That tradition used to be associated with Christmas, which was a big day of clownish revelry with the people at the bottom of the social ladder doing a little lording over of people on the upper rungs for one day. By limiting it to one day of the year and allowing it, the Medieval lords let the peasants blow off steam, and that strengthened the social order. (Wasailing was all about demanding tribute from the lord of the manor, for instance.) The puritans stamped out Christmas celebrating because they didn't like the revelry, but it popped up again with Halloween celebrating (at least in the U.S.), which looks a lot like the old Christmas activity. (It even popped up again in Christmas revelry in the early 19th century, but the holiday was transformed again -- notice the gift giving to children and people like doormen and others lower down on the social ladder.)

And now on Wikipedia, we have a way for editors, often young men and boys without power in their real lives, and very often without it in their online lives, to stick it to those in authority, in a generally controlled way. The mock attacks on Jimbo are a huge part of that, I think.

Notice that all four potential criticisms above are tempered by the others and tempered by the idea that a tradition is being followed. Not the purist tradition, but a specific Wikipedia tradition that, maybe, has transformed it to fit what Wikipedians want, or maybe need.

[LaraLove]

Words fail me. I don't know if this is supreme humorlessness or a piece of bizarre performance art – unless M.B. is even more cunning than we thought.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW. This is the reaction I get from my foolery, which actually fooled a bunch of people. I think Raul's response was the best. What an unfunny hypocrite. I give it 2 hours before he imposes a COI indef block upon my account. It's what he does.