Wikipedia:Rules for Fools

While April Fools' Day can be fun, there are several rules you need to follow to avoid disrupting the encyclopedia.

April Fools' Day has historically been a contentious day on Wikipedia, and the limits on how editors may play jokes and pranks on other users and the encyclopedia have been disputed for some time. While there is no consensus on a complete April Fools' Day joke ban, editors are advised to use common sense. To help settle the debate on what is and is not allowed on April Fools' Day, several rules have since been established based on this request for comment in 2013, this request for comment in 2016, and this request for comment in 2020 for users who choose to play jokes on April Fools'.

The rules

See also: Wikipedia:Disruptive editing § April Fools' Day

General

Wikipedia policies and guidelines still apply on April Fools' Day, especially the policies on edit warring, no personal attacks and biographies of living persons.

The Main Page is exempt from rules No. 1, and No. 2:

1. All jokes and pranks must be kept out of the "article", "help", "talk", and "help talk" namespaces. Jokes that affect articles, including files, categories and templates that are used in the article namespace, will be treated as vandalism. Depending on the nature, you risk having your account possibly blocked from editing.
2. All jokes must be tagged using {{Humor}} or similar templates, or the inline template {{April fools}}.
3. All jokes must be acceptable. Jokes that are hateful, discriminatory, and/or intended to make others feel unwelcome will not be tolerated. (This should go without saying: If you think that the joke you're about to publish might be taking it a bit too far, you should assume that it is, and do not publish it.)

Other rules

• Do not edit war or vandalize individual years' April Fools pages. These pages are meant to document pranks, not have pranks performed on them.
• There is a precedent for deleting COVID-19 joke pages. These pages have been described as bad taste due to the sensitive nature of the topic which falls under rule #3 above.

Joke deletion nominations

To minimize disruption of Wikipedia, please keep the following rules in mind if you consider creating an April Fools' Day joke deletion nomination:

1. You must immediately remove the line {{REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD}}. Otherwise, a bot will add a deletion notice to the mainspace article.
2. Do not use Twinkle to create the deletion nomination page because that adds a tag to the mainspace article.
3. The deletion log for 1 April will have a separate section for joke nominations. This is to avoid disrupting the regular business on AfD. Please do not create a joke nomination outside of this section.
4. Make sure the general formatting in deletion log pages is not changed, to prevent automated or semi-automated processes from breaking. In particular, the "<!-- Add new entries to the TOP of the following list -->" comment at the top of the deletion log must not be changed or removed.

Tips and advice

Conduct

• New editors who are unfamiliar with April Fools' Day on Wikipedia may see these jokes as vandalism, while other editors may find the jokes (no matter how innocent) unwanted if placed in areas such as their userpage. It is a good idea to find out whether the recipient of a joke is open to this type of humor before playing the prank. In general, editors should avoid reverting jokes that comply with the above rules and are made in the spirit of April Fools' Day.
• Editors who revert non-harmful jokes should be assumed to be acting in good faith, and should not be sanctioned.
• As Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons is still in effect, avoid jokes that are directed at or reference living persons. Think carefully before nominating a BLP article for deletion.
• Please do your best to make your joke visible towards others. Hey.... if you have a joke then share and tag it, don't change some obscure redirect page that isn't visible towards others and expect a happy response.
• Posting jokes on the Noticeboards is not advisable.

Material

• For the main page, there is a consensus for "Did you know" entries to include "clever puns rather than poop jokes and sexual innuendos".
• Please double-check the current time. April Fools' Day starts at 00:00 UTC April 1 and ends at 00:00 UTC April 2. Please do not play April Fools' jokes outside of this time, even if it is April Fools' Day in your own time zone.
• Since no April Fools' Day jokes may appear in the Talk: namespace, please do not create joke merge proposals, requested moves, or other proposals that would ordinarily appear in the article talk namespace.
• It is discouraged to repeat jokes from previous April Fools' Days, especially when they have been excessively reused.

See also

• How to celebrate April 1?
• Wikipedia:April Fools
• Uncyclopedia:How To Be Funny And Not Just Stupid
• {{AprilFoolsNotice}}
• {{Not April Fools}}