On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: Oh, lighten up! People are just having a little fun, no one takes it seriously, and no one is "breaking the rules". People are just having a laugh! It's a small bit of satire at the culture at AfD, and an opportunity for people to make Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (our spiritual ancestor) jokes. --Oskar

So far each april fools thread I've seen has had at least one buzzkiller in it. On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I like April Fools, but there is so much unfunny stuff around... Man, whoever takes the cleanup job at the end of today has my condolences. - Chris On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Sam Korn <smoddy(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 13:08, Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml(a)gmail.com> wrote: Unfortunately, that was not my experience with the FOSS article [[MojoMojo]]. I am one of the project contributors and have first-hand knowledge of the subject. After submitting outside references from reliable specialized sources, and disclosing the fact that I am a contributor, I was accused of COI throughout the AfD and on IRC. -- Dan [[User:Dandv]]

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 14:06, Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml(a)gmail.com> wrote: Here is dmoz.org's policy on insider editors: "The ODP exists as a non-commercial, end-user resource created by Web users for Web users.  We do not bar editors with business affiliations, since those editors with their own sites usually know their competition and related sites better than anyone.  This knowledge can be ideal for helping build an authoritative directory." Does Wikipedia have something similar? This idea sounds great. Is there a policy or rule for it? I'm asking because in the same [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MojoMojo]], users of this FOSS pitched in with various arguments, and were flagged as: "[[User:foo]] has made few or no other edits outside this topic." I find this detrimental to Wikipedia because it means that only established Wikipedia users should edit a specialized article (or talk about its deletion). But in the vast majority of cases, FOSS developers are focused on development and don't even have a Wikipedia account. The above flag then effectively muzzles the voices of those who know, in favor of those who have made many edits but have little particular experience in the subject matter.

On Thu, 2 Apr 2009, Casey Brown wrote: Doesn't work. Any rule which says to use common sense will lose out against a more conventional rule. The reason is that rules really become necessary when you need to force someone else to follow them. If the rule gives a specific, detailed, description of what is and isn't allowed, with no room for human judgment, you can force someone else to follow it. If the rule is based on human judgment, you can't. "If everyone agrees, this is what you can do" always loses to "if everyone doesn't agree, this is what you must do". After all, having a dispute means that not everyone agrees.

If only more admins had any common sense... I mean no [[WP:ATTACK]] of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/F… Dan

Carcharoth wrote: Explaining why someone is wrong presupposes that he is in fact wrong, and that you are right. More often than not he feels the same way from the opposite perspective, and we have a POV battle. It is unfortunate that some people aren't smart enough to live without rules to the point that mere guidelines become inviolable rules. This creates a culture of winners and losers. Keeping rules to an absolute minimum promotes innovation, and establishes more fertile ground for new ways of doing things. Most new ideas get nowhere for their own reasons. It's important to allow them a natural death through disuse; killing off these humble ideas quickly just gives something for people to argue about. Ec