How does the community feel about deleting the April Fools' question?

Question

The question, though you'll need deleted-viewing rep to see it: https://serverfault.com/questions/679847/is-there-an-alternative-to-windows-server-since-it-is-being-discontinued

For those that can't read it, it was a April Fools' Day post asking for alternatives to Windows Server now that MS has announced that it wasn't going to be supported anymore. The top comment to the question pointed it out as an AFD joke, as well.

There has been a bit of offline discussion about the value of keeping these questions around. It was an obvious April Fools' Day joke, but do those kind of things deserve to stay around?

Here's a summary of where I think it's ended up

Reasons to keep but lock

• Lighthearted holiday fun is encouraged on SE sites (hats, StackEgg, contests, etc)
• Poking fun at rival OS/platforms is part of the SysAdmin culture
• Locking the question puts a large notice that it is not considered a normally appropriate question and that it is maintained for hysterical raisins.
• Locking the question already removes any ability for further comments/votes/answers

Reasons to delete altogether

• It was the top Google result for "windows discontinued", leading people to believe it if they didn't read the comments/answers
• It allowed participating users to receive upvotes for a topic that didn't actually solve a problem
• It makes the site look unprofessional
• Users would still point to it as a reason to post similar questions.
• Shopping list questions are off-topic

At the behest of a friend, I posted this because I think there is value in learning the community's thoughts on posts like this, and what value (if any) they bring to ServerFault.

Answer 1

April Fools only lasts till 12:00 midday in $localTimeZone and everything beyond that makes you the fool. We're well past 12:00 midday on 1^st April (in any time zone) so just like mid winter festival hats it should all be put away in it's box till next year.

I would vote for closing and deletion.

---

It also creates a precedent. This year we had one, it gained some popularity and a few people gained some useless internet points. Next year there will be more especially if it's left to stand. The power of UIPs is huge.

Answer 2

It would be useful if that kind of questions would be saved/stored in Wayback Machine before they get removed, so they can be easily accessed for future reference, as not all of us have high enough reputation to see it and I'm finding that kind of posts interesting.

So before removing it, just go to: http://web.archive.org/https://serverfault.com/questions/... (copy&paste url) and click on 'Save this url in the Wayback Machine' and it'll save the URL immediately. It just takes few seconds. Maybe there is some way of automating it for all sites, but I don't know what you think about it.

For example I did the backup of the current page (just before posting these images):

And copy of it was done and available immediately at the following url:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150402225720/https://meta.serverfault.com/questions/8033/how-does-the-community-feel-about-deleting-the-april-fools-question.

---

UPDATE:

To archive the page manually, just go to:

http://web.archive.org/save/http://full_url

or just the curl:

curl -s http://web.archive.org/save/http://full_url | tail

Answer 3

Looking around at most of the stack exchange sites, it looks like ServerFault has the least humorous examples. Superuser has a toaster question (clearly upvoted for comedic value), stats has a comic page, stackoverflow has a joke page.
And these are just the ones I already knew about, I'm sure there are plenty out there.

But I couldn't really find much on ServerFault (nor have I come across any despite being pretty much solely active on ServerFault).

I'd prefer locking it, and creating a disclaimer at the top that it was in fact an April fools joke. (to prevent confusion)
Personally I don't think rep is that important to delete one of the few humorous questions on our otherwise somewhat over serious site.
However, if this would end up the main reasoning for closing it, perhaps the question could find a home on Meta?

Answer 4

If we want to keep it--I'm not saying we do, I'm just saying if--I think it needs to be clearly labeled as "April Fools." With a tag, perhaps. (The rule being that you have to come back and retag your question on April 2nd, or get bahleeted, maybe.) But only if we decide that we really do want April Fools questions.

I thought it was cute, but I wouldn't want anyone to actually be led astray by it.

Answer 5

On superuser we tended to delete April fools day questions right after april fools day. We did it for two years (we forgot this year :/).

Last year we decided the questions had historic value, if nothing else for when its referenced on chat. I ended up creating a meta question, similar to the many memes of meta, and added a screenshot from firefox to the question

There should be no expectation of survival for a AFD gag, but really there's no reason it should be consigned to the dungheap of history.

Answer 6

I can certainly see the value of such posts - and the arguments for deleting them or locking them.

Personally, I think that one of the main reasons for deleting the posts altogether is the associated rep - in my case as one of the participants on that thread, and a lower-rep user than most of the others, the rep gained was a noticeable proportion of my total rep, which would be unfair to leave as such - that is to say, it makes sense to me that there should be no reputation credit (or penalty) for such posts.

The other major point in my opinion is that of Google results - without having a banner similar to those present at the top of Canonical questions to clarify that it is tongue-in-cheek, I think it's reasonable to remove the post.

That said, I definitely think that there is an argument to be made for keeping a record of the post - perhaps a screenshot of the thread or similar to keep for posterity's sake, somewhere like here on the meta site? That way the community could still enjoy the thread without any of the negatives mentioned above.