April Fool's

Some people claim that April Fool's Day is the only holiday Wikipedia deserves. Last year's April Fool's shenanigans got out of hand and several administrators lost their bits for being silly, so let's take a cue from people who organize the main page and have the fun sensibly.

The basic theme to WP main page on April Fool's Day is to present material that's actually legitimate but that seems like it ought to be an April Fool's prank. Ima Hogg was last year's article for the day: a completely serious biography of a philanthropist who had an unusual name. So in a very small imitation of that spirit I've started Mafia Island National Park. Fortunately no one speedy deleted it before it got two genuine external links to the government of Tanzania and the World Wildlife Fund. It's surprising how many redlinks like that there are, if an editor only takes a moment to look for them.

Up above at the top of this post is a caricature of Idi Amin, who was all too real, as drawn by Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist Edmund S. Valtman, who generously donated a portion of his work to the public domain.

Mostly today has been serious stuff correcting systemic bias on African topics (also restored a photochrom of Tunis, Tunisia), but this also seemed like a good time to restore an old circus poster. As a reminder to fellow Wikipedians: please keep the clowning constructive and good fun.