Why are April Fools jokes still on the front page? On April 1st, you expect to see April Fools’ posts and know you have to be extra cautious when reading strange things online. However, April 1st was 13 days ago and there are still twoposts that are April Fools posts on the front page. I think it should be clarified that they are April Fools jokes so people can differentiate EA weird stuff from EA weird stuff that’s a joke more easily. Sure, if you check the details you’ll see that things don’t add up, but we all know most people just read the title or first few paragraphs.
Thanks for raising this! For now we (mods) have marked this year’s posts as “personal blog”, so they shouldn’t be on the frontpage anymore for most users.
I think, for next year, editing the titles after a day or having a separate section could be good ideas
Thanks! Has there been any consideration of somehow “de-aging” posts from March 30 or March 31, or serious posts from April 1, in the future? I felt that some of those got short shrift because of the influx of / activity on all the April Fools’ posts.
It is vaguely analogous to there being a server shutdown for 1-2 days, which the system doesn’t account for when deciding what posts to show on the homepage. I understand hesitancy to mess with what the algorithm puts on the homepage, but with this being an annual occurrence adjustments could be done in an open and transparent manner.
Dissenting view: like everywhere else on the internet, when you encounter something really crazy you sometimes have to look at the publication date. I trust readers can do that.
Why are April Fools jokes still on the front page? On April 1st, you expect to see April Fools’ posts and know you have to be extra cautious when reading strange things online. However, April 1st was 13 days ago and there are still two posts that are April Fools posts on the front page. I think it should be clarified that they are April Fools jokes so people can differentiate EA weird stuff from EA weird stuff that’s a joke more easily. Sure, if you check the details you’ll see that things don’t add up, but we all know most people just read the title or first few paragraphs.
Thanks for raising this! For now we (mods) have marked this year’s posts as “personal blog”, so they shouldn’t be on the frontpage anymore for most users.
I think, for next year, editing the titles after a day or having a separate section could be good ideas
Thanks! Has there been any consideration of somehow “de-aging” posts from March 30 or March 31, or serious posts from April 1, in the future? I felt that some of those got short shrift because of the influx of / activity on all the April Fools’ posts.
It is vaguely analogous to there being a server shutdown for 1-2 days, which the system doesn’t account for when deciding what posts to show on the homepage. I understand hesitancy to mess with what the algorithm puts on the homepage, but with this being an annual occurrence adjustments could be done in an open and transparent manner.
It seems the forum team already did it for at least one post , and I agree it’s worth considering for all posts next year
I suggested showing the April Fools’ Day tag next to posts on the frontpage, like so:
Dissenting view: like everywhere else on the internet, when you encounter something really crazy you sometimes have to look at the publication date. I trust readers can do that.
The posts do have the “April Fool’s Day” tag right at the beginning?
I think [April Fools] added to the title might be a good addition since the tag is hard to see.