

Tell HN: Flag PR "April fools pranks" - unimpressive

Fellow lusers,<p>I would like to appeal that you flag all uninspired april fools pranks until april second. 
The truth of the matter is that april fools (Which I think some have called the "hackers holiday") has been ruined by oversaturation
and PR departments. Instead of being a funny unexpected string of pranks and absurdism, the experience has become a droning hum
 of buzzing marketers and disrupted services.<p>By keeping the front page pure, it may be possible for a few <i>good</i> pranks to actually surprise and entertain.<p>Thank you.
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tokenadult
Hear. Hear. I promised myself today that I would upvote the general thread
this year that reminds the community not to let the front page of HN get
filled with April Fools jokes. (There has been a thread for the same purpose
each of the last three years.) I like a good joke as much as anyone, but we
can keep links to the good stuff in this thread, and let the front page go on
being mostly about the year-round core topics of HN.

Just in case someone here hasn't seen it, there is a link to a listing of the
top 100 April Fools hoaxes of all time

<http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/>

from the Museum of Hoaxes, of which my favorite is the 1957 BBC story about
the spaghetti harvest in Switzerland.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/new...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm)

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brudgers
In my opinion, the HN community is always best served when posts and comments
rise and fall on their merit, not because of flagging rings and ideology.

~~~
sharkweek
Exactly -- I happen to enjoy a lot of these April Fools pranks, and can
especially appreciate that the HN crowd filters the best on their own. Who
cares if it's a PR effort if the community likes it?

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mscarborough
Or, you know, lighten up. If it bothers you so much, I'm not sure what to say.
Other sites will have plenty of these too.

"Keeping the front page pure", really? It's only ever as "pure" as we as a
community want it to be. It's not your own personal RSS.

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kyro
Agreed. The worry here is that eventually in the coming centuries as more and
more days are assigned various meanings that the HN frontpage will decline
dramatically in quality. We must nip this in the bud.

~~~
Draco6slayer
Rather! Just think of it- we've already lost Christmas, April Fools, New
Years, and probably a few others to the unstoppable force of PR departments.
The nerve of these people! Just find any decent day of the year and pollute it
by pretending to be real people with a sense of humour and personalities. I
can imagine a future where they've turned every day into a holiday and spoiled
the whole year acting like humans, when they should be doing the same day to
day job they have to do for the rest of the time. It sickens me.

~~~
Draco6slayer
Erm, I seem to be getting a negative response. This is, I hope you are aware,
a joke that carries on the joke of the post above it. I do not actually agree
with the sentiments I have given, they were to be imagined with sarcasm.

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kingkawn
I downvoted your apology because you gotta own it, no apologies!

~~~
Draco6slayer
You know, I completely accept that. \grin.

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schrodinger
How about what people likes gets voted up? And what people don't like doesn't?
If people are voting on things, why shouldn't they hit the front page?

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obilgic
Ok, there is no more April fools pranks on front page, but now we have this
'Tell HN: Flag PR "April fools pranks"' ...

How did you contribute to the pureness of front page?

~~~
unimpressive
While I wouldn't claim this to necessarily be the case, if my post were
working you wouldn't see the pranks on the front page at first glance because
the silly obvious ones would be downvoted.[0]

Ideally the front page would look normal, until you took a look at some of the
stories and realize you've been had.

[0]: In other words, theres no distinguishable difference between my post
helping or being unnecessary unless it doesn't work.

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iamdave
I'm _somewhat_ with you here; April Fools has turned into a big advertising
campaign, but I don't think we ought to go as far as flagging every April 1st
link, as I have seen some rather neat side projects come from April Fools
pranks on the web.

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mindcrime
Yes, please, flag any b.s. "april fools day" garbage right into the freaking
abyss. There's a great site that you can visit on AFD that will helpfully
collect any and all such links for you and display them prominently for your
enjoyment: It's called Slashdot.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are tired of the same recycled, derivative, boring,
inspid gags and so-called "pranks" and would really rather not be bothered
with that crap.

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8ig8
I kinda look forward to them. It's not a big deal. I basically assume that all
posts are April Fools' jokes for this 48 hour period. It's a nice change of
pace. It'll be over soon.

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minimaxir
What would be considered a non-PR April Fool's prank?

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unimpressive
I think you may be thinking about this the wrong way. Instead of identifying
stuff that we all agree is good, lets start with stuff we can almost
universally agree is bad (Sieve of Eratosthenes style.):

 __* Articles on sites like techcrunch _about_ the prank.

 __* Really obvious stuff like "youtube shutting down".

EDIT: __* Duplicates.

 __* Anything that announces it's a "prank" in the title.

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niggler
Can we generally agree that forbes.com and techcrunch should not be upvoted?
Both seem toxic.

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nickporter
Yeah, I'm starting to feel like I'm not part of techcrunch's target audience.

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jjsz
Their constant rss spamming is a drag. I realized that tc is just one level
above engadget and lifehacker I would opt in for weekly summaries or another
aggregator, ya know any?

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aaron695
April fools was really a pre internet event.

36 hours of the world doing mostly lame pranks wears a bit thin every year for
me anyway.

Pre internet it was lame jokes from friends or really complicated pranks that
filtered through the noise. It seemed more community based and thought out.

~~~
mkmkmmmmm
Maybe those of us that think this way should have an annual IRC chat so we can
continue to learn things while others act like monkeys. Actually I have got a
lot of papers I can get caught up on reading today.

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marknutter
April 1st is national "do not surf the internet" day.

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niggler
What do you consider a "good" prank?

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unimpressive
This is decent.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470812>

I think it could be a bit more subtle, but it's better than "Google changed a
few lines on their expensive web properties to obvious bullshit."

~~~
graue
It's a shame that one got flagged, it's a well done hoax with some amusing yet
highly plausible examples:

<http://www.intercaloninterstates.org/examples.html>

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siong1987
How about creating a thread just for April Fool's pranks? link:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5471242>

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dkural
How about we just let people vote up and down on stuff they like? Why do you
think it is important to control this democratic process? If you haven't
noticed there is some commercial aspect to pretty much every post on HN. Let
the people decide.

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andymoe
I, for one, am going to flag everyone who complains about April fools posts.
It's tradition at this point so lighten up.

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lopatin
Just let them be downvoted

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andrewflnr
Stories can't be downvoted, only flagged, as the OP suggests.

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HunterV
So, is this a prank?

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loceng
I think so. Let the downvoting commence!

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itsybaev
I got it! This post is a prank itself! LOL

