[WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

Wed Mar 30 07:54:08 UTC 2005

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > Equally, if there is a consensus that the hoax should go ahead, it will be
> > restored.
> 
> I will not let any mob of people subvert our goal of creating an encyclopedia
> just because it it is popular in part of the community. 

Grrr. Please stop declaring "how things will be" unilaterally, it's not very
Wikipedia-like. (Jimbo is the only person for which that would be appropriate.)
Imagine if I responded with "Well, I will not let one user impose his personal
whims on the project" -- where would we be? Impasse.

Moreover, I don't really think an April Fool's hoax on the main page is quite
"subverting the goal of creating an encyclopedia". It's certainly tangential,
but what harm are you seeing here? It's a minor diversion, not a major
subversion.

> The community exists to create the encyclopedia. When the community starts to
> pull pranks on our readers for nothing more than some type of thrill, then
> the community needs to be reminded of our goals.

Don't be so patronising! I'm sure everyone is quite as aware of the goals of
this project as you are. I just think it's quite unfortunate if Wikipedia takes
itself so seriously that it fears to do what institutions like, say, the BBC
are quite happy to do.

Please excuse the ill-temperedness of this email, and I'd really rather not
engage in acrimony. I'll try to just go and forget about it, but I find such
humourlessness to be disproportionately frustrating for some reason. Is this
the kind of community we want to be? (More "Grrs" etc),

Regards,

-- Matt
[[User:Matt Crypto]]

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