Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page/In The News

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Please use this page for discussions surrounding the creation of "In The News" items for April Fool's day 2007

Areas of work needed to complete the front page are:

Ground rules for this activity along with a list or participants may be found on the Main talk page.

Contents

[edit] The Mission

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] Action Items

  1. It seems like we should try to get one weird/funny item into the ITN list.
  2. This will have to be done just a day or two before April 1st - so we should make sure that we are all set up to scour the news around the world for weird/funny stuff. I'd like to see everyone on the 'team' working hard on this from about March 28th or so.

[edit] Comments

I like the idea, but I feel that this particular part of the plan (the ITN) has been done so many times by so many sites. I mean, the idea is to basically do what Fark.com does every day. I love the concept of using an unusual article that is actually of Featured quality to be the article of the day, and using an odd Featured Picture. Thus, if everything else is going to be April Fools-y, ITN might as well be, too. There's just something about it that doesn't sit right with me. -- Kicking222 02:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A note on In the news

What happens if something quite noteworthy happens on March 31 or April 1? The example that seems to come to mind easiest is, what happens if Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, etc. dies? If ITN ignores it completely, it's putting jokes before news. If ITN includes it with jokes or relatively funny news, it makes readers question whether the death is true or not. If ITN reverts to full news, it clashes with the humor throughout the rest of the page. Of the three, I'd prefer the last option, but this is something that might be worth discussing, in case such an event does occur. Ral315 (talk) 06:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes - I mentioned that before. It's a huge concern. In fact, even if nothing earth-shattering happens, people come to the front page (in part) in order to find more depth to current news. Just look at today's ITN: If you are interested in the Serbian elections - it would be hard to reach the article about Vojislav Sesel if you'd just heard him mentioned on the radio (how do you spell that?) - but on the front page there are no less than seven links to relevent articles. That's a valuable service even on "slow news days". All of the other things on the front page are more or less random trivia as far as most of the general public are concerned - and replacing them with silly trivia is no more or less of a service to them. Nobody really cares what the featured article is - or the featured photo - and the DYK and OTD stuff is also pretty much random trivia. But replacing ITN is different - putting almost anything up there replaces something of importance to people. I think we should strive to put ONE item into ITN that is current - but silly or hard to believe. We should try to make it blend in so it's more of a joke when people actually click on it - but we shouldn't bump any recent news items in order to do that. The trick will be to find something quickly enough...that's going to be tough. SteveBaker 13:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
If we can't, we can't. I agree with your proposed strategy. —David Levy 14:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
There are various places that specialise in such things, such as Ananova. Glancing at that page, I think there are at the moment at least a couple of things that all of newsworthy, improbable and recent. Hopefully when it comes to the day there will be something that stands out. TSP 16:19, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Hey! I want fartypants! Huh? What were we saying? Oh, yes, good idea, Ananova will work well. :-) | AndonicO Talk · Sign Here 21:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Why not prepare an April Fools ITN and a real ITN, and just have a link at the bottom of the section to "Today's news" - it'll give the joke away, but the real news will remain just a click away for those who still need it. In fact, a link to a 'serious' page for everything might be a good idea. You set up the page under a neutral title (April 1 2007 Main Page) or something. Assemble the April Fools stuff there, and then switch the two around. This has the advantage that if things go seriously pear-shaped, someone can step in and switch everything back to a 'serious' page with minimal hassle. I'd seriously recommend having this back-up plan. Carcharoth 18:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I like that idea; the joke news in the template, but not on the rest of the news page. | AndonicO Talk · Sign Here 21:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

A lot of news websites have an "Odd News" section which are usually pretty amusing - I'm sure it'll be easy to make a few quick articles on March 31st on a couple of these articles: Example from Yahoo! Canada. - Ozzykhan 16:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Because Daylight_saving_time in past years in the US started on the first sunday of April, and this year it has been changed, perhaps there will be some interesting item regarding DST on this day that will sound far-fetched enough for April Fools also. Jrbart 20:21, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another idea entirely

It's been commented that "unusual headlines" have been done to death by other websites, which I think has some validity. So what if we try something else? How about "headlines" from 1907, 1007 or even 2007 BC, worded in such a way that at first glance they look like modern headlines.--Pharos 01:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] It's approaching

I found an article on [[1]] about a man who was found sharing his house with 80 sheep. Could someone create this article? I'll have a shot if I find time, but if someone's more experienced at creating news articles than me, it would be more appropriate for the Main Page. Possibly some mention of "It is unknown whether the man is a New Zealander at this stage, but authorities have not ruled out the possibility". Technically it's true, although no mention is made anywhere. Bensmith53 06:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

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