Wikipedia talk:April Fool's Main Page

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A mock-up is presented on the adjacent project page. Please help complete it. See 2006 archive for last year's discussions.

This article describes the proposed presentation of the Main Page on April Fool's Day. The proposed components of the Main Page could be presented on 1 April 2007, and if deemed a success, can be a guideline for presenting the Main Page on future April Fool's Days.

The Main Page should be kept to the same high standard as for other days, but with a special caveat: that the Main Page be composed of facts and articles that are true, but either unusual or manipulated in a way as to sound unbelievable. While readers may sometimes come to Wikipedia expecting some joke article for April Fool's, the proposal is to make the Main Page so unusual or unbelievable that the reader will conclude that the Main Page is presenting jokes as fact, but the joke is actually on the reader: everything on the Main Page is as close to 100% factual as we can make it.

Traditionally, April Fool's Day (1 April) is a day of fun and practical jokes. While it is fine to follow in the spirit of good fun when editing Wikipedia, we must not forget that Wikipedia is above all an encyclopedia that people will read for information. At the same time, Wikipedia should not be so formal and humourless that it cannot show some whimsy in how it presents itself to its readers.

In this proposal "we" can refer to any group of Wikipedians interested in editing articles for April Fool's Day.

[edit] Featured article

In the past, various unusual articles have been improved to featured article status. These include exploding whale, heavy metal umlaut, Japanese toilet, spoo, and Joshua A. Norton. People seeing some of these articles listed on the Main Page sometimes believe that it is a joke, when in fact, these articles are well-written and quite deserving of featured article status.

An unusual article (such as exploding toad or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch) will be edited up to Featured article status and listed on the Main Page on 1 April 2007. The "recently featured" sentence could be changed to "other featured", and link to the above-mentioned unusual featured articles.

Given the amount of time it takes to bring an article up to Featured article status, an alternative solution would be to use an article that has already been made a Featured article, but has not yet been listed on the Main Page (such as Read my lips: no new taxes).

[edit] In the news

Since this describes current news, April Fool's activities, if any, are limited to finding unusual pieces of news and publishing them in this section. This section would be unchanged or largely unchanged from any other day, albeit with a couple of interesting or unusual events that may have occurred in the days leading up to 1 April 2007.

[edit] Selected anniversaries/On this day...

This section should focus on unusual, but factual events occurring on 1 April, mostly April Fool's jokes played by other people. This would serve the dual purpose of providing fact and reminding the reader that this is April Fool's Day, which may further convince them that the Wikipedia is presenting "joke facts". Selected anniversaries can include anything that happened as described in April Fool's Day#Well-known hoaxes.