William Beutler on Wikipedia

Posts Tagged ‘April Fools’ Day’

WikiFoolery

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on January 15, 2013 at 7:59 pm

April Fools’ Day is still about 2 1/2 months off, but Wikipedians are already planning for the big day. Every year, editors who maintain the front page arrange for silly, sometimes misleading, and even mildly offensive articles to run during the 24-hour period covering April 1st. But as we noted in April 2011, not everyone is happy that such a serious project as Wikipedia, one focused on curating the world’s knowledge, spends one day per year kind of, sort of, doing the opposite. And as of today, there’s a thread on Jimbo Wales’ Talk page hosting a debate on the practice. This time in the mix: whether the juvenile pranks contribute to Wikipedia’s noted gender imbalance. Best comments so far: from female editors standing up for “women’s ability to both use and appreciate dirty or giggle-inducing language”.

April Fools! …or Not?

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on April 1, 2009 at 8:35 am

Today is April Fools’ Day, and among those getting in on the act are the Wikipedians who update the “In the news” section of the English Wikipedia‘s front page:

wikipedia-aprilfools

Ireland’s PM, naked? Diamonds in the sky? Hartford and New Orleans collide? Actually… yes, yes and yes. Where most April Fools jokes are invented from whole cloth — TechCrunch has a guide to many of the Internet’s more prominent hoaxes today — all of these stories are 100% true. They’ve just been couched in dubious language.

Click through the image today, or try here after April 1, to see the real stories for yourself.