-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Arromdee [mailto:arromdee@rahul.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 3, 2007 11:16 AM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: IDG press enquiry regarding the HD-DVD controversy
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 $B!= (B 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.
It is foolish for anyone with assets that could be levied on to display the number.
Fred