Two stories today I thought were spoofs but turned out to be true. One the Independent story about 28m Americans being on food stamps by end of 2008. The other, today's featured article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima_Hogg

which seemed utterly implausible, but may in fact be genuine. Best wishes everybody.

Articles were vandalized by otherwise respectable contributors for this purpose.

And that's unusual?

Well, yes, that's very unusual. It would normally be deemed a grave offense if an established user engaged in vandalism of articles.

Well, yes, that's very unusual. It would normally be deemed a grave offense if an established user engaged in vandalism of articles.

I think it's inappropriate to put an article like this on the main page as some kind of nod towards April Fools' Day. The summary has been deliberately written to focus on a few striking and unusual minor details in order to make her life sound impossibly absurd. Sure, it's not a hoax, but there should be no form of April Fools' recognition in the mainspace; it's the last thing an information resource should be doing. People will look at that, like you did, and think, "Wait, is that for real?" It's worth remembering, though, that a few years ago a fair number of people were campaigning hard for making the encyclopedia a playground of pranks on April 1. "It's only one day of the year!" Articles were vandalized by otherwise respectable contributors for this purpose.

Actually I thought the main page, by putting up fake-sounding but actually true items, was brilliant, and far more inventive and creative than changing Mediawiki to read "Wikipedia the pokemon encyclopedia" or "Wikipedia, almost as accurate as a real encyclopedia" or whatever it was they wrote.

Why should an encyclopedia be engaged in such foolishness in the first place?

Oh don't be a Puritan! Even serious British newspapers have April Fool's jokes. Even the Jewish Chronicle (except it has them earlier, to coincide with Purim).

7. Do you have at least 17,000 edits in RfA space? If not, why have you not glued your eyeballs directly to the computer screen to more accurately monitor these discussions? Would you use ethyl cyanoacrylate or polyvinyl acetate to achieve this bond? Do you believe that people who breathe are wasting time that they could be working on the project?

A. I do believe that duct tape would perform the required bonding more efficiently. And yes, if you're not helping the project at every moment of your existence, then you are wasting our time and that of the project. After all, we have to make sure we meet the deadline.

Elmer's Support Stockings At its heart, RFA's and B's are requests for the community to opine on the judgment of the requester, and whether or not the community trusts the user to exercise that judgment in the most flagrantly annoying method possible, disregarding every guideline and policy the project has hammered out, in a overt and overarching attempt to dig a new Chunnel wearing nothing but cargo shorts and SCUBA gear and armed with 4 boxes of toothpicks and a backscratcher. The community requires its 'crats to have egos the size of baleen whales, attention spans measured in femtoseconds, and the tolerance of a four-week old baby with third-degree diaper rash. By this user's blatant disregard for the types of adhesives listed in my question, and his demonstration of a level of idiocy so awesome and overwhelming as to conflate duct tape with crazy glue, I am certain that this user has done nothing but sniff said glue for the past three years, rendering him the finest candidate for 'cratship the project has seen since Raul and Taxman kidnapped the third-string clown from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus, dressed him in a pink tutu, and installed him as the crat we know and love as WJBscribe! Good Luck! -- Avi (talk) 21:43, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Bravo, bravo. Sean William @ 23:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh don't be a Puritan! Even serious British newspapers have April Fool's jokes. Even the Jewish Chronicle (except it has them earlier, to coincide with Purim).

It's still foolishness that undermines the mission of informing people, no matter who does it.

Yes, but Ima Hogg did indeed exist. It's a real article and the lady really lived.

I know that. As I pointed out above, the summary was written in such a way as to take minor details out of context and present them as the defining moments of her life, making her life seem impossibly absurd with the intent of confusing and confounding people. That is not compatible with the mission of informing people, not as I interpret it.

Two stories today I thought were spoofs but turned out to be true. One the Independent story about 28m Americans being on food stamps by end of 2008. The other, today's featured article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima_Hogg

which seemed utterly implausible, but may in fact be genuine. Best wishes everybody.