April Fools' Day has historically been a contentious day on Wikipedia, and the limits on how editors may play jokes and pranks on other users and the encyclopedia have been disputed for some time.
To help settle the debate on what is and is not allowed on April Fools' Day, several rules have been established based on this request for comment in 2013 and this request for comment in 2016 for users who choose to play jokes on April Fools'.
The rules
Wikipedia policies and guidelines still apply on April Fools' Day, especially the policies on edit warring, no personal attacks and biographies of living persons.[1][2] With the exception of the Main Page:[3]
- All jokes and pranks must be kept out of the article namespace[4] and the help namespace.[5] Jokes that affect articles, including files, categories and templates that are used in the article namespace,[6] will be treated as vandalism.
- All jokes must be tagged using {{Humor}} or similar templates, or the inline template {{April fools}}.[7]
There is a rough consensus against a complete ban of jokes on April Fools', but the practice is controversial.[1][8][9]
Additional notes
- There is consensus for "Did you know" entries on the Main Page that are "clever puns rather than poop jokes and sexual innuendos".[10]
- Editors who revert non-harmful jokes should be assumed to be acting in good faith and should not be sanctioned[11] as such edits may appear to be vandalism. However, editors should generally avoid reverting jokes that comply with the above rules and are made in the spirit of April Fools' Day.
- Vandalism, including inappropriate joke edits in article space, should be treated in the usual manner as vandalism on other days of the year. A vandal should not be blocked immediately simply because the vandalism occurred on April Fools' Day.[12]
- Editors creating a joke AFD page must immediately remove the line "{{REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD}}". Otherwise a bot will add the deletion notice to the article.[13]
- Jokes must not be hateful, discriminatory, or intended to make others feel unwelcome.[14]
- The AfD log on April 1 is to be split into a section for joke nominations and a section for serious nominations.[15]
See also
References
- ^ a b Be aware that an arbcom case arose around an 2016 April Fool's Day piece in The Signpost, objections to it, and reactions to those objections: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others.
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools' 2#New section at Wikipedia:Disruptive editing (alternative text)
- ^ Affirmed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools' 2#Revoke the Main Page's exemption from the restriction on articlespace jokes (by Rhododendrites)
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools'#April Fools jokes should stay out of article space
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools' 2#Exclude the Help namespace from April Fools (by Rhododendrites)
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools' 2#Limit jokes to userspace and non-essential project space (by Ansh666)
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools'#Require all jokes other than the main page to be tagged
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools'#Ban all April Fools jokes
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools' 2#Just get rid of them - proposal (by AlasdairEdits)
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools'#More creative DYK hooks
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools'#Ban interference with non-harmful jokes
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools'#Automatic sanction for article-space vandalism
- ^ Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive247#How to keep AfDs off the actual articles
- ^ Wikipedia:Civility
- ^ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/April Fools' 2#Separate XfD log sections (by Ansh666)