Will, there are several areas within Wikipedia or at least the English language 
version where humour exists and is tolerated by most. 

Most obviously humour, especially of the self deprecating variety, is welcome 
on user pages and in usernames.

April fools day accounts for two more of them. The collaborative and 
premeditated one is that on that special day the main page of Wikipedia will be 
full of stories that look like spoofs but are as real as the museum of bad art. 
At this time of the year people are probably already discussing the possible 
featured article for that day. My hope is that some year it will be Heavy metal 
umlaut. One of the beauties of that process is it is the day you are most 
likely to have a featured article that is actually crowd sourced rather than 
largely the work of one individual.

Also on April fools day there are usually an assortment of humorous AFDs MFDs, 
RFAs and on one occasion even a request for signatureship. As long as people 
keep their antics out of article space there is a long tradition of this, and 
of criticising it for lack of originality. There are of course only so many 
ways in which one can argue for the article on the Earth to be deleted.

But while it is tolerated by most, there are people who don't like to see 
humour in the project. I suspect that some see it as a slippery slope to 
vandalism. Certainly there is the common excuse among vandals that they were 
only having a joke. Latitude is obviously cut for people who are primarily here 
to further the project, but editors who are solely or primarily involved in 
"humour" will soon find their humour at MFD.

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