 | This is a humorous essay on humorous essays. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously. |
The Department of Fun is a WikiProject with the goal of lightening up Wikipedia, however, its purpose has been challenged on six entirely different occasions. In all of these MfDs, the result of the discussion was some form of "keep". In particular, one of the people in favor of keeping (User:Ronbo76), gave a great analysis of the situation:
...As a Department member, I consider myself and other members as ambassadors to Wikipedia. Our Department seeks to make Wikipedia an entertaining experience for other users. While we have not hit our niche yet, this Department could become a more important factor in the days ahead to the Wikipedian experience.
I agree with this quote, and the point of this essay is to prove that fact: the Department's members are ambassadors to Wikipedia, but for a different reason: they give us amazing advice. Here are a few Department of Fun pages that give great advice:
- Wikipedia:Assume that everyone's assuming good faith, assuming that you are assuming good faith. Assume both good faith and the assumption of good faith.
- Wikipedia:Avoid using preview button. This page accidentally gives a great message against editcountitis.
- Wikipedia:Avoid using wikilinks. This page is an ironic commentary that actually shows that using wikilinks too much can be a bad idea.
- Wikipedia:LTTAUTMAOK or Wikipedia:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!. TPSTPOSTOSCBABI.[1]
- Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man. This page serves the purpose of cryptically saying "don't take content disputes too seriously", by presenting the metaphor of
This is intended to stop content disputes from escalating to the extent of scaling public buildings dressed as popular comic book characters.
- Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass. This essay is a slightly more humorous version of Wikipedia:Let it go, and therefore serves the purpose of saying "if a debate is clearly going nowhere, just let it go."
- Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose. Every oversighter's favorite essay. "Don't say 'don't do bad', say 'do good.'"
- Wikipedia:Don't-give-a-fuckism. Pretty simple: don't care about any particular thing too much. And finally:
- Wikipedia:Don't delete the main page. Sometimes, jokes can get a bit out of hand, so sometimes, the Department of Fun doesn't matter.
- ^ These pages serve the purpose of showing that overusing shortcuts can be a bad idea.