Note: "AFD" is the shortened version of "April fools day".
My thoughts on AFD on the forums
On the forums, it has been a tradition that joke topics and posts can be made on April 1st, April fools day, and even from starting in 2020, allowing posts through most of March 31st since it would be April fools day in a timezone (although in 2022, this was ignored entirely as joke posts were started at midnight EST, a time where it was nowhere in the world AFD). However, should this old tradition be kept, and does the community deserve to have this privilege?
Rolling back the years - What has gone wrong in previous AFD editions?
For the past few AFDs on the forums, there has been one prevalent issue: people get carried away, and post way too many topics. These topics normally have little effort put into them (usually with repeated, short jokes like "make me Scratch Team!") or are just plain spam (eg putting the bee movie text script). This is what led to the first posts from the Scratch Team in 2022, saying that AFD may not happen since in 2021, there was so much spam, the new topic button had to be removed in suggestions.
AFD 2022 - The first guidelines in an AFD edition, and how they weren't followed
However, after promises from the community that spam would not happen in 2022, AFD on the forums stayed, this time with some advice, like "quality over quantity" and "try and only do 1 AFD post!", along with banning AFD topics in important forums, like Questions about Scratch. It was good advice. Unfortunately, it wasn't followed, as spam still happened - not as bad as AFD 2021, but still to an unnacceptable degree.
The last AFD day - why I wasn't a fan.
Then, AFD 2023 rolls around, looking more uncertain than ever if joke topics will be allowed, from people highlighting the spam and misbehavings in the last 2 years, from also Scratch Team members advocating how the large volume of topics created could lead to lag.
However, the Scratch Team decided to implement a new AFD forum for joke topics to go in. This was a move that didn't benefit the Scratch Team at all, or improve any of the core values/piorities on the site that the Scratch Team strive for (eg accesibility, moderation etc). This was a change done for us, for the community.
Unfortunately, spam again happened. Promises, had again, been broke. over 40 pages filled up the AFD forum over the days it was public to use, mainly from the same repeated "jokes" - from "ban me" to "delete Scratch" to "make me Scratch Team", and a few other obvious jokes that come up each year, which just buried high effort posts. People also were making serious replies and posts, which I thought ruined the "banter" mood aswell and another action I wasn't a fan off. Overall, 2023 AFD was an event of broken promises where the humour dried up and the spam took over.
Does the community even deserve AFD?
After AFD 2023, where the Scratch Team went out of their way to implement a new forum, just to keep the forum community happy, in the aftermath many forum users complained about the AFD forum and how "making joke topics in 1 forum, which is designated for jokes makes the jokes unfunny".
Firstly, in all previous AFD, most AFD posts were made in 1 forum aswell: Suggestions, with in 2022 literally all AFD posts being in suggestions, since people were not allowed to make joke topics in Questions about Scratch.
Secondly, like I said, this was a move from the Scratch Team done for us. Not them, or any long-lasting benefit for the site, for us. For me, I saw this as the Scratch Team trying one last tactic to save an old foruming tradition, yet users afterwards seemed to act rather ungrateful, echoing this tiny con (which I personally don't see as a con from my reasoning in the first point) when everyone echoing this point would rather joke posts being allowed on AFD rather than joke posts being banned on AFD.
So overall, do the community deserve April Fools Day? No. And it is not just because the community was ungrateful - it is also because the Scratch Team don't need to give anything back to the community who are volunteers - more on that below.
No, the foruming community don't need an award in AFD
In the past, I always thought that AFD was an award for the foruming community's hard work in the forums - I made quite a few forum posts on this and I also agreed with other people who made similiar posts - some of these are even cited on the April Fools Day wiki page and the "list of controversial topics on Scratch" wiki page [1][2]
However, I now disagree with my former thoughts - helping out on the forums is an voluntary action. You can forum when you want and the Scratch Team is not stopping you for not foruming. I used to think that forumers were like slaves to the Scratch Team, always helping out, and that from that, the foruming community deserve something back. But like I said, foruming is a voluntary process, you forum when you want since you are kindly giving others a useful service. And from being a volunteer, your joy of using the forums should come from the fact that you're helping others, and not that you are expecting something in return.
AFD is a privilege, not an expectation.
Whilst I have affirmed that AFD is a tradition on the forums, it is not a tradition that the Scratch Team needs, or has to keep. Just because AFD has been repeatedly done on the forums, it does not mean the Scratch Team has to keep AFD on the forums forever. All implementations on AFD from the Scratch Team, from allowing joke topics to adding joke features (eg cat blocks) are not necessary, long lasting helpful implementations and are again, for us. Any feature, from the forums to the main site, on AFD are privileges. The expectation should really be for the Scratch Team to do nothing and keep Scratch running as normal, as no privileges should be expected.
Overall, AFD on the forums, and Scratch as a whole, has been a repeated privilege, and is not an expectation.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, I think past moves from the Scratch Team on the forums regarding AFD have been extremely kind and forgiving to the community, as they try to preserve this privileged tradition on the forums. However, after 3 years of spam, I honestly don't think the community deserve AFD on the forums. And if that does happen, then I would recommend making an AFD project, or making jokes in a studio. And I know people think that making a joke project isn't as fun as making a joke AFD post - and I used to think that to, until I created an AFD project in 2023 and had a blast making it. So to the people who say its not fun to make a joke project on AFD as a replacement to joke forum posts - have you ever actually made a joke AFD project before? If not, try it out.
