Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page/Featured Article

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Please use this page for discussions surrounding the creation of a Featured Article for April Fool's day 2009

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] Mission

In the past, various unusual articles have been improved to featured article status. These include exploding whale, heavy metal umlaut, Japanese toilet, spoo, Joshua A. Norton, George Washington (inventor), and Ima Hogg. 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 2009. 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.

[edit] Requirements

Raul is willing to consider any article for April fools day, as long as it meets three requirements:

  • It must be a featured article by April 1, 2009
  • It must not have already been used as the main page featured article.
  • It is not too risqué (more so than any other article that would be used on the front page)

[edit] Action items

  1. What are we going to write/promote? We need to pick either a new topic or an existing article to nominate for FA. I think we need half a dozen nominees - then we vote/get consensus on which one is most suitable.
  2. We have to work hard to get it up to featured status. This may be very difficult and might take several attempts.
  3. We have to usher it through all of the phases leading up to FA.
  4. We need to make sure it's on the front page on April 1st. This means starting in on it fairly soon.

[edit] Suggestions

  • Uncyclopedia. Oh, the irony! It's a good article so it shouldn't take real much work to improve it. Idea carried from 2008 discussion. Royalbroil 16:13, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Museum of Bad Art - it's a relatively small article now, but their website has an extensive list of articles about the museum, which could be mined for additional content. And I think I could help get some photos of the pictures in the museum released as free content, if that would help. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • U.S. Route 491 -- If the U.S. Roads Wikiproject could ever have an FA worthy of TFA on April 1st, this would be it. (This is former US-666 with plenty of myths, urban legends and goat sacrifices, plus a number spray painted into every bathroom stall that could be mentioned) The article is at GAC now. We might have to search for some temporary pictures to go with it. Dave (talk) 03:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Sacred Cod of Massachusetts. If not a featured article, perhaps an expansion for DYK. "In Cod We Trust" needs to be on the Main Page on April 1. —Kevin Myers 13:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)