On 7/30/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
It's called sarcasm. I know it's hard to convey over the Internet, but I did honestly expect the Gratuitous Capitalization, not to mention the juxtaposition of the words "userbox" and "war", would in this case have made it clear enough. If you have any suggestions for making it even more over-the-top, please do tell.
In the fact of it, you are, of course, right. It's not a war, and calling it such is particularly ironic given that we do have actual real-world armed conflicts (the Israel/Lebanon one comes to mind, as well as the situation in Kosovo) spilling over to Wikipedia. It's a rather chilling thought that some of the people involved in those edit wars might actually be fighting the same battles off-wiki with real guns and bombs.
I can imagine the headlines:
"OSAMA BIN LADEN CAPTURED WHILE EDITING WIKIPEDIA FROM INTERNET CAFE"
There's no such thing as bad publicity, right?