I remember "edited mercilessly" as well... The current message is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Editpage-head-copy-warn and dates from 2012. I wonder if this was changed when the ToU came in? An unscientific hint is that posters to the Wikimedia mailing lists more or less stopped using "mercilessly" in 2009 ;-) Andrew. On 3 December 2014 at 13:11, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> wrote: -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

The "merciless" was used in the standardised messages decided by referendum in 2009: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update#Proposed_terms_of_use It got lost in the implementation in 2009: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation#Terms_for_e… And then the message was removed without many ceremonies in 2012: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T44491 That said, many wikis (and sometimes even the WMF) edit or replace the global messaging (wikimedia-copyrightwarning and formerly also wikimedia-editpage-tos-summary) in ways which don't comply with global consensus. Nemo

Lane Rasberry wrote: Nice find. For the curious, the phrase was added to the "Five pillars" page in May 2005, seemingly copied from the user interface: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=14525251&oldid=14496130>. The phrase was introduced to the user interface of the (later to be known as MediaWiki) software in July 2002, it seems: <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/618>. MZMcBride

Thanks Nemo and James. In case you haven't guessed already, I am wondering whether having this message is a good idea or a bad idea. I don't really know and I can only make some guesses. I knew what a wiki was when I first encountered Wikipedia in 2004. Because of this, the "edited mercilessly" part made sense to me, but I was still happy to see that message - it helped me know that I indeed understand what "wiki" means. I presume that a lot of other people didn't know what a wiki is back then, because Wikipedia was the first wiki that became so popular, and that's probably why the message was put there. In 2014, Wikipedia is still more popular than any other wiki, by far. I (further) presume that lot of people today don't know what a wiki actually is, and just think that it's the shorter name of that website that keeps popping up when they google for stuff. If this is true, then when new users try to join, they are likely not to fully understand that their contributions will be edited mercilessly. So what I'm wondering about is: Should that message be put back there to set the right expectations? Should it be put back only on article creation, to make sure that people don't think that they own the articles they are creating? Should it not be put back there because people just need to be smart enough to figure out for themselves that if they can edit an article, everybody else can, too? Should it not be put back there because it would create clutter? Should it not be put back there because the word "mercilessly" is quite unpleasant? Should any other message be put instead? I honestly don't know; I'm just throwing ideas around, and your input is welcome. As always, I'd be especially happy to hear opinions not just from the English Wikipedia. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬ 2014-12-03 19:01 GMT+02:00 James Forrester &lt;jforrester(a)wikimedia.org&gt;rg>: