On Thu, 3 May 2007, David Gerard wrote:
As I said on the blog:
A flashmob of fight-the-power morons are still spamming an allegedly illegal number into every input box on the web. The Wikipedia admins collectively declared "FUCK OFF YOU SPAMMERS." (Some have gone rabid "ZOMG LAWSUIT" and we were getting a pile of oversight requests as well ― I didn't zap, Fred did, until Erik told us not to. Mind you, it nicely short-circuited the idiotic deletion review.) Eventually it was put into the spam filter, because distributed spam is spam.
I entirely agree the number shouldn't be put in a zillion places in Wikipedia. But I get the impression that the loudest objections are about use of the number *at all* and that getting rid of number spamming is merely a more publically acceptable first step towards getting rid of it period.
The proper response is to allow the number on Wikipedia, but ban its use as spam, not to completely ban it in any form whatsoever.