April Fool!

by

Murky

On the 1st of April 2000, I decided to play a little April Fools gag on the dear subscribers to afpdip.

It was a spur of the moment thing, it took a matter of minutes to prepare and execute, but it seemed quite successful - perhaps because of the rushed nature.

I started my preparing a terse message for the website as follows:

To all afpdip members. For legal reasons I have to close this site, hopefully temporarily.

If more information is required, please ask on the mailing list.

The mailing list may not be used for games until further notice.

I was quite pleased with this, as it was sufficiently vague to allow imaginations to work - 'legal reasons' could be anything.

This message replaced the real homepage, I also deleted each page which had an icon referring to it from the site of a remote GM. By doing this it would look like the whole site had been deleted without my having to spend lots of time reuploading it.

I then wanted to be sure that people saw the website - and so I sent the following hasty message, which could have been worded better - but it was a rush job!

Date sent:     Sat, 1 Apr 2000 07:45:56 +0000
Priority:      urgent
Subject:       [DIP-Chat]IMPORTANT Announcement

I was woken this morning in order to sign for a
document which contained some disturbing news - the
upshot of which is that the website must close,
hopefully temporarily.

Text of announcement:

To all afpdip members. For legal reasons I have to
close this site, hopefully temporarily.

If more information is required, please ask on the
mailing list.

The mailing list may not be used for games until
further notice.

End of announcement
--------

Mark

I then left the house (I had to go and collect Poppy and Skimble, our new cats, from the RSPCA rescue centre). When I checked email later I found a set of replies, and was mildly pleased - I then put people out of their misery.....

The reactions to this little jape are shown below. I've tried to indicate threading using indentations and to give posting times explicitly (allowing for timezones).

Posted BEFORE the April Fool was revealed.

Sent direct to me:
Hosun Lee (15:30)

Sent to mailing list:
Craig Dutton (11:16)
  Hosun Lee (15:31)
    Mikey (16:33)
  Bjorn Fridgeir Bjornsson (17:59)
    Piers Forrest (20:16)
Aellath (16:50)

The email revealing the April Fool.
Murky (21:12)

Posted AFTER the April Fool was revealed (all dated 2nd April)
  Hosun Lee (05:43)
    Murky (06:25)
Suzi (10:39)
Mikey (11:03)
Aellath (14:55)

Note that email has been slightly reformatted
and some quoted text has been trimmed in order
to suit the web. Where people have used emphasis
in the email I have tended to substitute
a best guess at a formatted equivalent.

I do not intend to repeat the performance next year, as people will be on their guard - this was very much a one off, and I hope the diplomats on afpdip enjoyed it, I did feel that an April Fool gag was in the spirit of the game!

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