Comments on: Did last year's wiki fiasco spoil April Fools frontpages for good? (2005)

Did last year's wiki fiasco spoil April Fools frontpages for good? (2005)

Peter H — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 11:42:27 -0800

Did last year's wiki fiasco spoil April Fools frontpages for good, or did I miss the party this year?

By: iconomy

iconomy — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 11:58:05 -0800

We had the party but forgot to invite you. Sorry.

By: sciurus

sciurus — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 11:59:48 -0800

Someone posted a MetaTalk thread that got deleted.

By: Peter H

Peter H — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:00:43 -0800

We had the party but forgot to invite you. Sorry.

Ha, well, um ...

(felt silly for posting the question but Matt's stunt was very entertaining last year)

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:03:32 -0800

You can still join in the fun! The current domain for the wiki is still going strong.

By: Peter H

Peter H — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:14:20 -0800

Ha, ha, I clicked it, I clicked it.

I blame 08/01 for this change in April Follies. Good night folks!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:41:31 -0800

I was too tired this year and couldn't think of anything to trump past years. I've done a wiki, a gopher server, sold it to Google and Kuro5hin.

What else is left?

(seems the same lack of funny is a problem this year everywhere -- I'd rate this year's april fools online overall at about 1% funny, 99% dumb, and usually the ratio is more like 25-75)

By: mischief

mischief — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:53:20 -0800

Like everything, April Fools Day runs in cycles. Give it a few years and the good stuff will be back.

(We believe one of the problems is that many pranksters simply don't plan far enough ahead, but we admit that that speculation is open to argument.)

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:56:25 -0800

What else is left?

Ideas for next year: Turn MeFi into a photos-only blog (except you'd probably have a goat problem), Name Steve@ as guest editor for the day; Name Quonsar as guest editor for the day; confuse the hell out of everyone by turning the main page green and the AskMe page blue; announce a $1000 yearly membership fee; put up a big "closed for rennovations" page...

....

... c'mon, I know some of the other members are far more creative than I am.

I missed the Wiki thing, sadly. I wish there was an archive/mirror of its early, mid, and final state somewhere...

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 12:57:20 -0800

By the way, the MeTa post that got deleted was a joke. Right? Matt? Right?

Looks over shoulder...

By: riffola

riffola — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 13:04:50 -0800

MetaFilter could always pull a Jorn, and run off to the dessert for a year and then come back without any reason, and just pick up where it left off. No questions answered.

By: Arch Stanton

Arch Stanton — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 13:23:06 -0800

Just put gigantic, blinking ads all over the front page and then put a post in MetaTalk, "so, uh... yeah... gigantic blinking ads."

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 13:28:36 -0800

Sorry, mathowie, I thought you were making a self-referential April Fool's joke, and I was trying to play along.

By: TedW

TedW — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 13:56:31 -0800

You mean the 502-bad gateway error I kept getting earlier wasn't a joke?

By: DrJohnEvans

DrJohnEvans — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:07:58 -0800

I've done a wiki, a gopher server, sold it to Google and Kuro5hin.

Some of these were appreciated more than others. For instance, the K5 buyout was what introduced me to MeFi; I'd never heard of this place before seeing this article. It took me a while to warm up to this place. I remember hating the blue colour scheme and using the Met4filter.org style until it broke.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 15:03:36 -0800

anastasiav writes " Ideas for next year: "

Change the "posted by" attribution to a different user name for each comment.

All users have a number, and I assume comment authors are identified in the database by that number.

Say that Mefi has 23028 users, and assume that the comment table is called "comments" and the structure of the comments table is something like:
comment_id, post_id, user_id, comment_text, whatever

Run this sql:

1. Rename the comments table
alter table comments rename to comments_base

2. Create a view to replace the table
create view comments as
select comment_id, post_id, cast( random() * 100000 as int ) % 23028 +1 as user_id, comment_text, whatever
from comments_base

3. Then recompile any other views and stored procedures so they see the new comments view rather than the old table.

Each comment then gets a randomly assigned user name, which changes on each page view.

Another way to do this would be to make the changes constant, so that Mefi readers could try to figure out who the comments belonged to. To do that, you'd do the same as before, but you'd generate the random number only once. We'll pick the number 15678. Only the view has to change:

create view comments as
select comment_id, post_id, ( user_id + 15678 ) % 23028 +1 as user_id, comment_text, whatever
from comments_base

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 15:20:16 -0800

Well, you've ruined that one.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 16:19:10 -0800

Here's an idea...if anyone has a funny concept: EMAIL IT TO MATT FOR GDS SAKE!

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 16:25:40 -0800

(seems the same lack of funny is a problem this year everywhere -- I'd rate this year's april fools online overall at about 1% funny, 99% dumb, and usually the ratio is more like 25-75)

I think it's because these are pretty grim times.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 16:47:17 -0800

"Change the 'posted by' attribution to a different user name for each comment."

Man, that would so confuse and piss everyone off. It'd be a great April Fool's prank.

By: graventy

graventy — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:01:47 -0800

Just put gigantic, blinking ads all over the front page and then put a post in MetaTalk, "so, uh... yeah... gigantic blinking ads."
Awesome. Just awesome.

Or, you could just put up a JRun error page.....

too close to home?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:46:00 -0800

but grim times usually lead to good art (just not this year)

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:46:31 -0800

guh, I should have done a joke site about JRun. If I would have thought of it earlier this week I could have done something great with that.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:53:14 -0800

This is Dr. Flugenhuffer. The man you know as jonmc drowned in a beer stein at 3:45 this afternoon.

By: graventy

graventy — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 19:37:47 -0800

I am the real Dr. Flugenhuffer! This man is a fake! And he still refuses to admit that the moon landing was faked!

By: dg

dg — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 19:41:08 -0800

Just wipe the DNS for the day - scare the crap out of 20,000 people AND get a day off from babysitting them into the bargain.

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 03:10:42 -0800

I was hoping Matt would put up a deliberately awful rendition of the new design for a day: lots of overlapping text, a pre-teen colour scheme and a few well-chosen animated GIFs.

There should probably be a punchline here.

By: taz

taz — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 04:51:22 -0800

^ insert above ^

Do you really think I wished for a 12-inch pianist?

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 04:54:16 -0800

eyeballkid writes "Well, you've ruined that one."

Not at all.

The beauty of my proposal is that it would "sneak up" on users, few would notice it until they saw a controversial post apparently signed by a Mefite they'd previously taken notice of: "Whaaaa? Ethereal Bligh just wrote 'George W. Bush is our greatest Prezidint EVAR!'"

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 10:54:19 -0800

(seems the same lack of funny is a problem this year everywhere -- I'd rate this year's april fools online overall at about 1% funny, 99% dumb, and usually the ratio is more like 25-75)
I think it's because these are pretty grim times.
Since the day was at the end of the work week it would be well known which would make it harder pulling the joke off. Especially looking at the fact it fell on many employees' pay day by being the month's first day and Friday.