[WikiEN-l] Colbert Report heads-up

[Oldak Quill]

On 03/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/3/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> > People who follow such a call are often not very patient. We could have
> > proected the whole site until the idiot-storm is over. With a big banner
> > saying so.
>
> That kind of reaction seems like going the wrong way. At the end of
> the day, Wikipedia wants to be open, and it wants to grow and develop.

Not to mention that it would show a po-faced lack of sense of humour.
I always feel that an organisation has become too large when they
react terribly to jokes.

> We should look at these "idiot storms" as opportunities to attract new
> contributors. It would be cool if we could replace the {{test}}
> template with something like "Hey, thanks for the test - we've undone
> it now, use the sandbox if you need to test anything else. You
> wouldn't happen to know anything about <insert item from requests for
> expansion> or <another item> would you? We're short on information on
> them!"
>
> You know, obsequiously assuming good faith even when presented with
> evidence to the contrary can have an amazing effect on basically
> good-hearted people.


I agree, although we don't have to wait for concensus to change
{{test}}. A better solution would be to just make an alternate
template (perhaps in the userspace). Hopefully this template will
become popular through its use and effects.
-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)