Talk:April 1, 2006

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[edit] Nonsense

What is going on with the entry on the Economist? It makes absolutely no sense. Can someone who knows what the prank was supposed to be please edit and correct?69.251.216.37Sapph

[edit] Organization

Eventually, we'll want to organize each section alphabetically. Leaving it as it is for now, since the list is fairly short. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vivekk (talk • contribs).--Oneiros 01:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be some sort of heading or introduction explaining that these are April Fool's hoaxes? It seems obvious to most, but there should be some sort of context, since this is an article on a date. --Mesulliv 17:56, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
What exactly is the Web2.0 category for? A website is a website, no need to use that buzzword here.
/me agrees --Ear1grey 21:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
The list is starting to get VERY long... I think it's time to categorize Zebov 20:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
One thing I wondered about earlier was categorising as 1st party and 3rd party hoaxes, so those "about someone or something other than the hoaxer" could be split apart from more insular hoaxes (e.g. BMW) that are really focussed on the self. Perhaps this is not possible because from an encyclopedia's point of view, all parties must be considered; so with the BMW ads (which imply the involvement of a government), the government could be considered a 1st and 3rd party as could BMW - I'm sure someone with more encyclopedic experience will catch my drift. --Ear1grey 21:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Should we even be including all these pranks/hoaxes/color-changes in this article. It seems to me that the more notable ones are the only ones that anyone is going to care about in 2 days. Zebov 22:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

For now, try to put them in chronological order, newest ones at the bottom, not the top. --Ultramancool 03:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

The thing that bothers me is that this is turning into a complete mess. There is no organization to the article at all. And the list of hoaxes keeps growing. Somebody help me out here... what can we do to make this list orderly? Zebov 22:56, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I'll create a "fake news and announcements" subsection, and work on moving things into it a few at a time. Actually, I already did, but some IP-only bozo immediately deleted it. --Dhartung | Talk 23:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Dhartung... I don't have much time right now to look through everything, but I'll try to help out later on. Zebov 01:11, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apple

The Apple iPod is not an April Fools joke... it's a water treatment or waste treatment plant. It wasn't released even as a fake press release by Apple... should be removed. I would do it, but I always ask on WP first :) Mehargp 06:28, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I say axe the Apple iPod thing. Adamblang 7:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I say list it as an "event that was misindentified as a hoax". Pikawil 07:25, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Whatever we say, its going to keep coming back... as it is back again now :-( Thing is the link points to a site that is dated 25/26 of March 2006... April Fools jokes are really supposed to be played on April 1st. But I agree a "misidentified" section might be a good idea. Mehargp 07:37, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
The original Apple story was circulated one week prior to Apple's 30th Anniversary (2006-04-01). It was conceived and written as an april fools day joke. The truth that it was a hoax was revealed on April 1. It seems like an April Fool to me. To say anything else would be to require beard-stroking philosophy.
Who revealed it as a hoax on April 1st? Mehargp 09:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
The site that started the rumour. [1] See also: InternetNews
I still have a problem with stories being circulated BEFORE Aprils Fools Day - the point is that they are supposed to occur on the day. Mehargp 09:16, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Also... I just read that InternetNews site, and it was revealed as a hoax on the 28th of March... so how can it be a April Fools joke? Mehargp 09:16, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi (just caught this in my referrer logs) - I wrote the article as an AF Joke that needed time before AFD in order to spread to my friends and family - it grew very big very quickly, and a reporter asked me about it. I told it straight, but rather than waiting, he reported it immediately (duh?). Happily few people seem to have read the story so the majority of people only discovered today, on Apple's anniversary, that it was an AFDay joke, when I switched the Google Earth placemark to be the one with the AF message. AFAIAC it's an AF joke cause that's what I wrote. Rgds, Ear1Grey 10:29, 1 April 2006 (UTC).
Well, a large number of people would have found out about it via Digg.com when it was reported there around the 25th... And it was revealed as a joke on the 28th... At best it could be described as a failed AF joke (blame the reporter)... Mehargp 10:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
... er... you just concurred that it is an AF joke, so whether or not you found it funny or consider it "successful" seems irrelevant to it's inclusion in the on-the-internet section.
I've just had a go at re-writing it's entry in the past tense sicne I think the original version wasn't particularly encyclopaedic and may have (did?) cause uncertainty. --Ear1grey 17:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
This is quite clearly a fake, there are at least 3 other similar (though not quite as big) structures on the same page on the google map image. Peter
I'm lost in ambiguity here sorry Peter. Are you suggesting that the image is a fake, or that the story is a fake and is an AFJ (i.e. my opinion, see above), or that the whole story was a fake, and that the april fool was in fact, that the story never existed (which I wish I'd thought of now)? Also, I notice that in the massive revert to the uncategorized version of the page (described below) the more objective description that I wrote has been lost; you might want to read that version, because it talks about the joke rather than repeating it. --Ear1grey 08:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to remove anything. Be bold. =/ Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:40, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changing a website design to pink is funny, haha

I hope someone with more imagination is responsible for the April's joke next year.

[edit] Daily Mail apples

I seriously doubt on the barcode apple story as it is possible to put barcodes on apples by putting a black sticker on the apples as they are turing red on the tree. A similar thing was tried to put a sticker on a apples with a picture of a halloween pumpkin.

The story over the door couldn't happen as 10 Downing Street is a Grade II* listed building. The picture is probably a mock-up using a set that is common in many British studios. 159753 15:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Headings

What's with the tiny headings?

== should be used for the top-most headings, and then ===, and so on. ==== shouldn't be first.

--Gary King 20:17, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] April Fools vs Real

I notice there are a huge amount of anon editors on this page - should be we enforcing references, and deleting ones without? -- Chuq 05:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

The Bob Ross games aren't a joke. The developer is still looking for a publisher, though

nUbuntu does not have banner mentioned on the page.

Updated nUbuntu description to add in information about new post containing email address as.proof.ill@nubuntu.com to show it as an april fool's joke. Still couldn't see the OMG ponies banner, possible mixup with slashdot? Uzusan 11:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Somebody is really hacking at the page... Damn vandals.... :-( Mehargp 09:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I have now had to remove the Ogrish baby twice and someone else has removed it as well, but it keeps getting readded. It is not a hoax and was reported several days ago on a real news site. The name of the condition is anencephaly. 68.64.56.200 09:37, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just noticed the new "Unverifiable or Misinterpreted" section had it and I added the above information to it. That should hopefully put an end to it. 68.64.56.200 09:45, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

"AOL the public to apply to be operated on goes to April Fools hoax on Google." is not a sentence and probably wouldn't be rational even if it were.

Yes, I just fixed that.

Whats with the external link? completed? how can it be complete? april fools is not even over. and how can it claim to know them all? --Boshaus 11:39, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

The second entry, about foul Swedish fish, does not seem like an April Fool's joke to me. The Swedish Surströmming Academy does in fact exist (Google it!), the cans of fermented herring are indeed pressurized and extremely pungent, and there is nothing in the linked article to suggest that it is a joke. Why is it included here?--Nasorenga 15:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Is that baby really real??????? It is scary and looks fake.

Come on... there's much worse in life.What do you mean the baby?

I'm a newb at this, but someone could add this link with multiple stories about the EFF including "Google Brain" and a plant that fights against copyright infringement... http://www.eff.org/effector/19/11a.php

Done, thanks Vivek

Just like to mention that the story about finding the new source of the Nile, as reported in the Times, was also in the Daily Mail. I can't imagine two rival papers corroborating on an April Fools. There was also a story in the Mail about investigating the powers of prayer for healing (£1.5mil funding). That's gotta be a joke. Hellfire83 10:15, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this was a news prank or a real prank - Fox 5 in NY claimed that somewhere in the midwest someone put up Mario "question-mark boxes" all over town and the bomb squad was called out. I can't find a reference to corroborate this story so I don't kno if it was a news hoax or a real prank.

For real [2], but the kids themselves were probably making a joke, but the response was for real. --Ctrl build 20:32, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

This probably needs a new section.. And I don't have a wiki account.. But the article says: "New York rock band Morningwood advertised an interactive game in which users would participate in a virtual wet t-shirt contest, only to discover the game does not exist and the player is identified as a "pervert" in a mocking manner." But they had that up before April Fool's.. I know because I played it :P

[edit] Put some order in there

Someone needs to put some order in this article. Who cares that this or that message board went postal on April 1st? Place the funniest hoaxes at the top of the list, along with the well-known Internet websites.

Response: The pranks are divided into sections. However, some people are not sticking to such categorization, and some idiot deleted the portion at the top which made it easy for the reader to go to each category. (Update: Now it is back, thank God.)
Somebody put in a NOTOC, NOEDITSECTION command (it was at the very end of the article). It was probably intended to force everyone to see the "we're gonna delete your non-notable crap additions, so don't bother" message (okay, it was more polite, but that was the gist at the very top. It probably wasn't the most helpful approach, because at least with sections we could organize and look at the items being furiously added. That was more like waving a white flag, saying "add what you want, have a party, we'll clean up later". --Dhartung | Talk 13:04, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

--> Shouldn't there be a certain order in these categories as well?

Alphabetical perhaps? BooooooooB 10:09, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I don't know if this should be the final solution, but for the time being, I have moved the complete list of Internet hoaxes to April 1, 2006 (Complete List). Thoughts? Zebov 04:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

FYI, April 1, 2006 (Complete List) is already up for deletion. Go to the article to support or reject the deletion. Zebov 04:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requests for addition

What about Wizards.com pink ponies RPG?

Wizards.com would be noteworthy. But not a random person's blog lying about Wizards.com Zebov 04:52, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I generally agree, but... The internet is a publishing medium, and one man's joke may be better and more noteworthy than that of a corporation; for example, very few people noticed this year's subtle use of anagrams of "april fool" and "april fools day" instead of journalists real names on one fairly well known media corporation, and this is (rightly) excluded from the list because it's not noteable: but if this "wizards" thing (et.al.) was noteable (by whatever definition noteable is) then excluding it because it's not by a corporation or because it was published via a weblog perhaps misses the point of the encyclopaedia, which is surely just to record what the noteworthy April Fool Jokes were.

Video Lan Client announced to today that they sold their whole project to Microsoft, yet another of the popular open source projects announcing such a sale. Adult Swim has strategically added fart noises to all of their episodes for the night. CritCol 05:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Adult swim is noteworthy and already added. The other is not. "videolan.org" is not a well-known website. Even though Microsoft is a well-known company, the list of sites claiming to have changed their name to Microsoft-something or claiming to be bought out by Microsoft is enormous. A good guideline is that if you can't find a wikipedia article on the website in question, it's probably not noteworthy. Zebov 05:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with www.wincustomize.com, but it does have a wikipedia article. Thoughts?

  • WinCustomize announces Yahoo's acquisition of WindowBlinds (to be rebranded as "Yahoo Skins")
Add it, WinCustomize is no small potato. Their Alexa ranking is 3716... not shabby at all.68.1.59.30 05:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

How about ytmnd.. they had a spoof up that said they were bought by their rivals, ebaumsworld.. haha.

Gamedev.net issued a fake press release stating that the site had been acquired by Electronic Arts, and changed the copyright information at the end of the page, and the main forums page changed theme to that of the now-closed flipCode, another game development site. (screenshots: [3] [4])

Is it just me, or does the Gorillaz part seem... badly phrased? I wouldn't know what to change it to though is the problem. KLF Fitton 09:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Didn't Deviantart claim that it was being brought out by myspace? I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly. Ryubread 12:11, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The Live.com one seems a bit off. I had the search text edit actually run away from my mouse, all the way down the page before popping the dialog.

[edit] UKNova

See the article in question - includes a mirror of the spoof. ◄ИΞШSΜΛЯΞ► 18:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


Tucker Max www.tuckermax.com wrote a spoof story about having relations with a pig, to much discussion on the messageboards.


--- Don't know if this could qualify for inclusion under "Fake news, articles and announcements:" http://satireinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2006/03/komtar-to-become-swiftlet-housing.html In summary, a 65-storey under-utilized, government office tower was reported [in a faked news article] to be converted to house swiftlets to produce bird nest (for chinese bird nest soup), to fund state government finance. This article has been cited in at least http://www.ipenang.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=2583#2583 and http://www.malvu.org/index.php/articles/2638

[edit] Grammar

Someone with macro, or otherwise, the ability, time etc.: please, convert all "it's"s to "its"s. WHAT THE HELL IS SO DIFFICULT IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR?! Thank you in advance. :) --84.249.252.211 10:55, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chirac

At the risk of bringing grumpy politics into a light-hearted exercise, at the moment Chirac's signing of the French labor law is listed as an event mistaken for a hoax, which is an obvious political statement that I'm about to remove. - DavidWBrooks 13:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I would appreciate to get more feedback from other people before my post is deleted. Josie Dethiers 13:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I see you didn't wait to delete my post. As shown in your discussion page, it seems that quick deletion is one of your favorite activity on Wikipedia. Josie Dethiers 13:57, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
This sort of thing almost requires a major media citation. --Dhartung | Talk 17:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
What is a "major media citation"? Is it another punishment for my silly joke? Josie Dethiers 19:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks April 1st Prank

In case you missed it, on the front page of en.wikibooks featured the next collaborative effort for the Wikijunior collaboration of the Quarter (what the Wikijunior participants are going to be working on for the next three months as a new project): Quantum field theory! (Written for 8-12 year olds)

It has since been changed to Wikijunior Languages, but for most of April 1st this was the book that was linked for young children to read.

The historical link to the template that is on the front page of Wikibooks is here --Robert Horning 16:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Destroyed categorization

  • Ok, somebody (anon-IP) destroyed the categorization of this article. The last good version was this one. Then this one changed everything to being unorganized. This whole article is a mess and I've spent far too much time trying to get it into something wikipedia-worthy. I don't think I'll be able to assist anymore, but the wikipedia community needs to almost completely rework this page and April 1, 2006 (Complete List) (or merge them, or whatever is decided to be done). I just can't take it anymore... I'll be back in a couple weeks, but I need a hiatus from this article. Zebov 01:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
The page was becoming useful and navigable for a while there - good job we're back to the old indecypherable mush. not. +1 for rollback.
Gah! The page is horrible again, and it keeps losing my edit again and again.. why did someone do that? We have way too many non-notables again, too. -- Mithent 12:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Defining 'notable'

  • While not everyone can know how popular a certain site or community is, wouldn't a simple Google search suffice to determine whether something is noteworthy or not? Like if a site isn't pulling up 100 results, etc. EntChickie 02:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
A nice enough idea, but, what do you search for? The domain itself? A specific page from the domain? References to the domain that also contain the words "april fool" and/or "hoax". It's a difficult (perhaps impossible) metric.
I think it's safe to say that if a domain has say, 10 hits on Google, as a lot of the personal blogs that people have tried to add/advertise on this page have, it's okay to delete it. While it's not possible to know every site out there, common sense should be used in determining whether people actually cared or took notice of the hoax. EntChickie 02:52, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NBC The More You Know

These were not really April Fools unless April Fools now includes any parody in the entire week before 4/1. They were on TV on 3/30, two days earlier than April Fools.


[edit] Free energy News

Maybe it should be underlined that even when it's not April, 1. this site continuously shows some kind of April Fools. Like "the second principle of thermodynamics is false" and so on...


[edit] Attempted to recategorise

I've created the categories again, and merged the page from before it was reverted to the no-category version. However, there's a lot of stuff in there which is probably non-notable, but I'm out of energy now! A few of the most recent edits might have been lost in the process. -- Mithent 14:30, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Metalunderground.com renamed

Metalunderground.com changed its logo and claimed to be renaming itself to numetalunderground.com, covering only the NEARLY DECEASED GENRE OF NU-METAL, much to the dismay of its readers.

I'm not a big fan of nu-metal but claiming that this genre is deceased is ridiculous. Actually most of metal music played on radio and TV stations are nu-metal (Korn, Slipknot, P.O.D, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit ...). It was renamed to nu-metal because often hardcore metal fans think that nu-metal doesn't belong to metal at all, so this proclamation made them angry.

[edit] Magic

How come the fact that the radio station 'Magic' played Christmas songs all morning is notable enough for the main list, but the fact that the TV station did the same is relegated to the 'complete list'? BillyH 23:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Large-scale removals from this article

In this edit back in may, an anonymous user deleted a rather large number of entries from this list without providing a rationale. While a lot of them look non-notable to me, this was a wholesale deletion of an entire section of the page, and I can't see any discussion of it or consensus on this page for the change. Any idea what happened? Was it just vandalism, or was there a rationale behind it? Should we be bringing the deleted content back, or what? JulesH 22:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World of Starcraft?

Why does world of starcraft redirect to here?

Yeah....Why?--64.121.1.55 06:40, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

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