On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:21:32 +0100 (BST), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport(a)bluebottle.com> wrote:
Daniel Mayer said:
Given the controversial nature of our
reliability, this stunt will likely harm us
more than it is worth.
Nonsense. The European toilet paper holder article proposed is a
transparent hoax and quite harmless. That Wikipedia cannot ever be more
reliable than its latest edit is intuitively understood by all readers, so
let's not foster the false impression that the situation is otherwise.
Aside from the fact that our most strenuous critics will be among
those getting a good laugh out of this -- John Dvorak famously inked
an April Fool's column of his own ten years ago about Congress banning
drinking while 'driving' on the information superhighway -- what Tony
is saying is also right. While Wikipedia *can* and will someday
become more reliable than that, it is vanity to imagine that any
negative results of such a harmless hoax would be even a drop in the
present bucket of inserted profanity, POV rants, and image vandalism
that plague WP.
SJ