Wikipedia:Pranking: Difference between revisions

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The following is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption.

Wikipedia has traditionally been the centre of many pranks pulled on April 1st of every year. Unfortunately, while some jokes are harmless fun, others are more serious and some users, including some admins may take things too far in their joking. Example: changing system messages, both ones that appear to the "public", and ones that only admins see; nominating various pages for deletion that would never have a chance of being deleted; nominating the nomination pages; reporting Jimbo as a vandal; joke requests for various power, and many many others. Some of these "jokes" affect Wikipedia's appearance to the public view and seriously damage Wikipedia's reputation in the process. What is being proposed:

If your April Fool's Day prank affects the reader, don't do it

However, the community still has found the need to keep the mood light in honor of the holiday. Coordinated, simple changes that have been planned in advance (Example: Main page quirky-but-true) can be executed in a tasteful manner as determined by consensus.

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 Wikipedia has traditionally been the centre of many pranks pulled on April 1st of every year. Unfortunately, while some jokes are harmless fun, others are more serious and some users, including some admins may take things too far in their joking. Example: changing system messages, both ones that appear to the "public", and ones that only admins see; nominating various pages for deletion that would never have a chance of being deleted; nominating the nomination pages; reporting [[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo]] as a vandal; joke requests for various power, and many many others. Some of these "jokes" affect Wikipedia's appearance to the public view and seriously damage Wikipedia's reputation in the process. What is being proposed:
+::''If your April Fool's Day prank affects the reader, don't do it''
-*April Fools' Day is a day that users, both admin and otherwise are going to pull pranks. This should be accepted by everyone, whether they wish to take part in these pranks is their choice.
-*The pranks pulled should be limited. Ones that effectively vandalise millions of pages by editing the tagline can be damaging and should be avoided. Any admin that edits the MediaWiki space in such a way should expect to be sanctioned in a similar way to the way they would be if it was any other day.
-*The pranks should be kept away from the article space, the space that our readers will view. This ensures that Wikipedia's reputation is not damaged as the result of a prank.
+However, the community still has found the need to keep the mood light in honor of the holiday. Coordinated, simple changes that have been planned in advance (Example: [[Main page]] quirky-but-true) can be executed in a tasteful manner as determined by consensus.
-What needs to be considered:
-*Is blocking admins the way to solve issues like vandalism?
-*Does seriously "bad" vandalism involve a temporary desysop?
-*Should editing of the MediaWiki space in any way other than productive be counted as vandalism (e.g. is adding "per IRC" to the block reason list vandalism, or just a harmless joke that only admins will see?)
-Please discuss on the talk page.