Wikipedia talk:Rules for Fools: Difference between revisions
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Some users at [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard |
Some users at [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Classic All Fools, outrageously poor taste, or somewhere in between]] suggested a blanket ban on joke Articles for Deletion and Miscellany for Deletion because it was disruptive to actual efforts to conduct real AfD/MfD. [[Special:Contributions/107.77.173.1|107.77.173.1]] ([[User talk:107.77.173.1|talk]]) 20:14, 1 April 2020 (UTC) |
Revision as of 20:15, 1 April 2020
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Rules for Fools page. |
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Use of WP:Twinkle on April Fools' Day
It's been suggested at WP:AN that Twinkle not be used for nominating things for deletion as a joke, the main reason being that it automatically adds the AfD notice to the article, in violation of rule #1 (even if immediately removed, it's still in the mainspace history). Should this be added to the page in either the rules or notes section? ansh666 07:10, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
- It would certainly help. Twinkle wasn't designed for these non-serious deletion discussions and I think we can agree it blurs the line between real editing and joking. I'd say using Twinkle in this manner violates both the letter and spirit of the rules. Chris Troutman (talk) 07:15, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
- Support The article creators also don't need to get notifications of these lame jokes. --NeilN talk to me 15:40, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
- Regarding this edit: I don't think option 2 is a good approach to recommend. There isn't a need to optimize the process of creating a humour page, so automated tools aren't needed. isaacl (talk) 16:15, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
- I agree with you here but we need a consensus to remove something like that. Option 2 has been the traditional way of doing AfD jokes, but I have seen since a new less disruptive way of doing things. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:23, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
- No, they should not be performing step 1 at all, nor using tools that do so as mentioned in the AfD general instructions. I've reverted for now, since the instructions are confusiong in any case. Let's figure something out here first. ansh666 17:09, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
- I agree with you here but we need a consensus to remove something like that. Option 2 has been the traditional way of doing AfD jokes, but I have seen since a new less disruptive way of doing things. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:23, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Done Mz7 (talk) 09:29, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
Edit summary rule on April Fools' (Joke edit summaries)
There may have been multiple incidents that patrollers misunderstood some user edit summaries in the mainspace and other namespaces that affect the mainspace, then interpreted as April Fools' joke edits and treated them as vandalism.
We need a rule for edit summaries on April Fools'. For example: "April Fools" as a greeting should not appear on any serious edit summary, like this revision in the template namespace (This joke edit summary was made to make fun of T-Series being surpassed by PewDiePie on April Fools'). —Wei4Green | 唯绿远大 (talk) 16:35, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
- We don't need a rule for that, per WP:CREEP. Common sense should be enough. ansh666 17:22, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
Added note about time of April Fools Day
I added a note explaining when April Fools Day starts and ends, and warned fools not to pull April Fools Day pranks when it is not in fact April Fools Day. This has been a minor problem in past April Fools Day celebrations, so I thought it appropriate to add this tip since it reflects long-standing community practices.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 18:08, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
But, April Fools Day happens in different times for people in different time zones. April fools day for you and me could be twelve hours different. The time is relative to location. Shrekxy64. 18:58, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- The note addresses this. April Fools day goes by Coordinated Universal Time (aka Greenwich Mean time/ Wikipedia time/ the time listed after your signature). UTC is always the same regardless of location, so we won't have the issue of April Fools Day lasting longer than 24 hours. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 20:36, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
Bold edit
I made a bold edit that said to keep jokes out of policy pages. It has since been reverted. Should my edit be added back on? InvalidOS (talk) 15:26, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
- I did propose this at the last RfC, but it was decided there that such an addition was unneeded. I wouldn't add it back without gaining consensus first. ansh666 23:10, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
Preventing April Fools 2020 from getting out of hand.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The WP:GAFDEW was fun and all, but I doubt it happening twice would be a good thing (Could result in sanctions or restrictions, as it wouldn't be unlikely for it to get way out of hand very quickly). Maybe a fixed name for that section should be decided? --MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 17:12, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
- Paging @InvalidOS, Spirit of Eagle, 7 qz, and One Blue Hat: as major participants. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 17:14, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
- Yeah, I agree. It was fun and all, but seeing as how quickly that spiraled out of hand, I think a fixed title would be a good idea. It was also quite distracting for me. April Fools' shouldn't go that far. I'd suggest "Miscellaneous Jokes" as a section title.
(With a very noticeable notice from the cabal saying "DON'T EDIT WAR OVER THIS SECTION'S TITLE AGAIN OR FACE SEVERE PUNISHMENT AND POSSIBLE ERASURE FROM EXISTANCE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.")InvalidOS (talk) 17:20, 6 November 2019 (UTC)- InvalidOS, Waiting on input from the others I paged, but I will probably elevate this to a RfC. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 17:29, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
- Yeah, I agree. It was fun and all, but seeing as how quickly that spiraled out of hand, I think a fixed title would be a good idea. It was also quite distracting for me. April Fools' shouldn't go that far. I'd suggest "Miscellaneous Jokes" as a section title.
Initial comments by Spirit of Eagle and responses to those comments
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Was it really that bad? I remember some of the admins commenting that 2019 was pretty mild compared to past years, and I suspect the was because a lot of the chaos was concentrated on the Great Edit War. Yes, the 2019 page was pretty chaotic, but it was quite literally a page for documenting pranks played on the community; I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect protection from chaos on a page dedicated to stirring up chaos (especially when that chaos would have been directed against the wider community but for the Great Edit War). Spirit of Eagle (talk) 17:41, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
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- Comment
The 2019 edit war got out of hand and required intervention by an admin; I predict 2020 will be even more chaotic. While I enjoy April Fools Day on Wikipedia, we do need to respect the rights of editors not to participate and avoid creating needless work for others. To this end, I believe it is appropriate to lock down the section title. Edit of Nov. 9: I'm honestly starting to waver a bit on restricting the section title. As Knowledgekid points out, most of the participants followed Rules for Fools and this is feeling more and more like punishing the many for the actions of the few. I support trying out less drastic measures (specifically the things I suggest in the paragraph below); move locking the page would prevent the bad stuff seen in 2019 while the clean-up day and notice would hammer in the need to respect the wider community. I understand that this position is riskier than just outright banning follow up edit-wars. However, at the end of the day I have faith in my fellow Wikipedians and firmly believe that we are capable of making good decisions even on our day of fun (particularly when provided with good information and a proper nudge or two). We can always revisit this if this faith turns out to be misplaced, but until then I am not prepared to outright ban the edit war.
I do have some other suggestions. First, we should probably prohibit moving the "Wikipedia:April Fools/April Fools' Day 20XX" page since ever move creates a new page that has to be deleted by an admin. Second, we should place a notice at the top of the Wikipedia:April Fools/April Fools' Day 2020 page explaining that the miscellaneous joke section is locked. The note should also advise editors to respect the rights of non-participants, avoid being a nuisance, and to clean up after themselves and others once April Fools Day is over. The third idea is one I have been toying with for some time: April Fools days celebrations are divisive, and it does cause annoyance to non-participants. To address this, we could make April 2nd a maintenance day: participants in the April 1st festivities are encouraged to fix spelling errors, add wikilinks to articles, , and do all of the other minor tasks needed to keep Wikipedia functional. The third suggestion won't prevent chaos, but it will build up some good will with the rest of the community. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 21:33, 6 November 2019 (UTC)- Meh After thinking this over some more, I'm editing my comment some more. I do not support blocking future edit wars; things were relatively under control and I have no desire to restrict the many for the acts of the few. I do support locking down the page title. If we see an edit war over the page title like we saw over the section title, we would end up with dozens of redirects an admin would have to delete. It would also be incredibly difficult to find where exactly the April Fools Day page was located. Granted, I expect an admin would lock the page down before this becomes an issue, so perhaps this rule isn't even encessary. The one thing I do still strongly support is the APril 2nd CLean Up Day. Someone could basically create a page that direct editors to areas suffering from backlog and that also allows them to log their contributions in a causal setting. Basically, we could channel the fun of April Fools Day into something very productive. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 23:14, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
- Support as nom and per above. I strongly agree with User:Spirit of Eagle's stance, especially on the idea that April 2nd could be made into a cleanup/makeup day. Could possibly call it "April Fixup", or similar. --MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 13:24, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
- Note: I posted a notice about this RFC at the Department of Fun talk page. All April Fools Day pages fall under this project, so I felt notice was appropriate. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:43, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
- I also posted a notice to the talk page of WP:April Fools. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 03:32, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
Oppose - This is making a mountain out of a molehill, one move protection AFTER April Fools day had ended hardly screams "out of hand". I think the move protection after the 2nd was actually to end the day (which should have happened before the 3rd).My recommendation is to lock the page after April Fools Day has ended (-12:00 UTC on April 2nd). I have no opinion on making a April 2nd a maintenance day for those who aren't interested in joking around. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:49, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
- Just to disclose... I am a proud participant of the great edit war of 2019. There were no issues of sanctions or blocks as the rules for fools were respected. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:51, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
- Knowledgekid87, The move protection was applied on april fools day, not after. And it was done after several moves MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 16:52, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
- Support proposal for move protection - this will make sure that the title is locked in as "Wikipedia:April Fools/April Fools' Day 20XX". - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:02, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
- Mu. [1] — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:50, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
- Lock the section name via page deletion. Most effective means to lock the name. Alsee (talk) 14:22, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
- This doesn’t need an RfC. Don’t be an idiot. If you act like one, you’ll get blocked even on the worst wikiday of the year. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:54, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
References
- Mildly Oppose I don't think that this was a problem. People were staying within the rules, nobody got hurt. I feel like this edit war was out of pure jest. It sort of went from "this is what this section title needs to be called," to "how many silly things can we name this section?" People were following all the rules for the most part, excluding the time someone blanked the entire page (I plead guilty). As long as there is cleanup and people don't absolute lose their minds, I'm fine with letting the Great April Fools Day Edit War of 2020. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, so I don't know how the server internals work. If a massive edit war would put too much strain on the technical side of things, then we probably should block or at least slow down the edits. One Blue Hat❯❯❯ (talk) 20:46, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
- Oppose It's good fun. There's nothing wrong with editors doing this on April Fools. Although it should end at midnight on April Fools.HAL333 00:55, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
Post at AN
Liz mentioned that some people might not the thread I started, so notifying here as I think more people who care about this may see this on their watchlist :) TonyBallioni (talk) 03:34, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
RfC: Edit warring and vandalism on individual years' April Fools page
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It was funny when 'General Tomfoolery' got changed to 'General Jerryfoolery'. But when users are edit warring over section titles as happened in the past four years, moving the page randomly to other titles, as happened in 2017, unnecessarily duplicating the page as happened in 2020, blanking entire sections as happened in 2019 and 2020, messing with the text font, orientation, or size, or the css as happened in 2018, 2019, and 2020, linking to random external links, and performing other such examples of vandalism on the yearly April Fools documentation page, it becomes too excessive and out of hand, and the Wikipedia administrators should crack down upon these violations of Wikipedia policy. 107.77.173.61 (talk) 10:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Comment On Wikipedia:April Fools/April Fools' Day 2020/The Great April Fools' Day Edit War of 2020 there is a statement that says 'Please do not play pranks here; this is meant to be an archive.' This statement should be on the main Wikipedia:April Fools/April Fools' Day 2020 page and that page shouldn't exist in the first place. 107.77.173.61 (talk) 10:59, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Comment - I actually with this person. They have a good point. I couldn't even understand what was happening during April Fools because of the vandalism happening. Koridas (Speak) 15:10, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Comment. I also agree with the above. Vandalism humour is cheap and unfunny. @InvalidOS: We discussed this in private, so you might want to weigh in on it. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 16:29, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Comment Minor things, such as adding a {{troutme}} onto the page, a COVID-19 infection banner, or a non-article category addition are fine, but redirections, article copies, blanking, song lyrics, 135° rotations of the entire page, and 10K+ byte additions should be prohibited. HotdogPi 16:38, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I agree with this, except that
we should be socially distancing ourselves from all coronavirus-related humorcoronavirus jokes should be avoided at all costs. To add to the okay/not okay lists, I would say adding tasteful external links or reasonably sized images is fine; reversing the text, adding overly large images, or adding fair use images in violation of WP:NFCC are not. The standard should probably be, is it possible to constructively add pranks per the page's original purpose? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 17:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I agree with this, except that
- Agreed I believe we can play pranks, but there is a limit. The main problem with vandalism and edit warring is (1) it stops consensus from occurring, (2) it unnecessarily fills up the page history and (3) it becomes difficult to patrol in recent changes patrol. Other users can play pranks on user pages, but only if they have a notice that says that they are willing to be subject to April Fool's pranks. In the future, we need to make sure that emphasis on policies are all over the place. Maybe at Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:April Fools. Aasim 16:42, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- On another note, how about let's stay away from politics in the future to avoid this from happening. We do not want to talk about our opinions on Donald Trump or Boris Johnson or anyone else political on April Fools day. Aasim 17:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Awesome Aasim: In general, those are against the rules per the facts of this arbitration decision. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 18:35, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- On another note, how about let's stay away from politics in the future to avoid this from happening. We do not want to talk about our opinions on Donald Trump or Boris Johnson or anyone else political on April Fools day. Aasim 17:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Comment - (edit conflict) Yes, I agree, vandalism isn't funny. Even if it is, it's usually disruptive. Though it might be able to be allowed to a limited extent, for example, the bird section on the 2020 page that was present earlier, as that wasn't disruptive since it didn't effect any other parts of the page. Though, I think a total stopping of vandalism of the page would be an easy solution, and it would mean that admins wouldn't have to use more resources on managing April Fools. Admin resources should be directed towards more serious activities, but fun on Wikipedia is still great for just winding down and taking a break. We need to keep April Fools. Maybe we could do something like having an event involving comedy articles as well. So we all don't go too crazy. InvalidOStalk 16:45, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
RfC: Rules regarding joke AfDs should apply to Requested moves as well
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I've noticed some joke Wikipedia:Requested moves like the ones on Milton Keynes Dons F.C., Nine Inch Nails, and Wikipedia:April Fools have templates on the main article placed there by the User:RMCD bot. So I would suggest to create similar rules for requested moves, mergers, splits, and redirects for discussion as is current for articles for deletion to prevent disruption on the article itself. 107.77.173.61 (talk) 10:49, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Question. Aren't these Move Requests against the rules? I thought April Fools was limited to Projectspace. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 16:30, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- From what I understand, talk space is allowed as long as the article itself is unaffected. HotdogPi 16:38, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- I think that's correct. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 16:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- To clarify: that’s what it was when I read WP:FOOLS a few days ago, but since then, someone added the two talk namespaces to the ban. I reverted this edit because the change had been made without consensus. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:02, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Rule 1 says
All jokes and pranks must be kept out of the "article", "article talk", "help", and "help talk" namespace.
isaacl (talk) 17:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)- I wrote that comment at 10:49 am UTC time and it seems that User:Interstellarity edited the page to add the talk pages clarification to rule one on 11:41 am UTC. 107.77.173.1 (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- User:Interstellarity's edit was reverted for lack of consensus in the community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.173.1 (talk) 17:39, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- I think that's correct. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 16:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- From what I understand, talk space is allowed as long as the article itself is unaffected. HotdogPi 16:38, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
RfC:No pranks on mainspace and help talk pages or Wikiproject pages
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This is for @Interstellarity: who suggested that pranks should be banned from mainspace talk and help talk pages. I would propose even further that pranks be banned from WikiProject pages. 107.77.173.1 (talk) 17:35, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Agreed. Interstellarity (talk) 19:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Yes please. For WikiProjects, disallow by default, but allow individual WikiProjects to form consensus to allow (within reason, of course). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:09, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- I think this'll be fine. While the jokes and hoaxes can be fun, they've frequently gotten out of hand recently. InvalidOStalk 19:32, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
"Rules for Fools" listed at Redirects for discussion
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/28/Information.svg/30px-Information.svg.png)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Rules for Fools. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Steel1943 (talk) 20:07, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
RfC: Blanket ban on joke AfD/MfD
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Some users at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Classic All Fools, outrageously poor taste, or somewhere in between suggested a blanket ban on joke Articles for Deletion and Miscellany for Deletion because it was disruptive to actual efforts to conduct real AfD/MfD. 107.77.173.1 (talk) 20:14, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Project-Class Comedy articles
- Low-importance Comedy articles
- WikiProject Comedy articles
- WikiProject templates with unknown parameters
- Project-Class Department of Fun articles
- Bottom-importance Department of Fun articles
- WikiProject Department of Fun
- Project-Class Wikipedia articles
- NA-importance Wikipedia articles
- WikiProject Wikipedia articles
- Wikipedia requested images
- Wikipedia requests for comment