--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Matt R matt_crypto@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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