Howdy all,
One thing I've noticed in my short time as an active part of our
community is that the more welcoming and likable aspects of our
individual personalities aren't reflect in our most public
conversations. For example, if a new editor went by this forum alone,
we might come off as taking ourselves too seriously to leave room for
the fun and satisfaction that usually comes along with volunteering.
Moreover, we might be missing out on some of that fun and satisfaction
ourselves. ;)
I'm wondering if there is place where the lighter side of individual
Wikimedians and our movement can be shown front and center. What I'm
talking about would leave the controversial issues for wikimedia-l and
other fora, instead presenting stuff like funny stats about our
wikiprojects surfaced through clever metrics, the weirdest of the
weird factoids that we uncover in the process of documenting our
universe, interviews of Wikipedians on stuff they do beyond editing
wikis, and humorous essays that might venture in to good natured
lampooning of the movement. I'm already writing an article about the
next software feature to be enabled: Project Fish Bicycle. It will add
such features as full vertical reflections pioneered by Apple 10 years
ago under all articles, taking up only half the final rendered page
while compromising on a few minor existing article features, like
vowels. Think The Onion or your alma mater's humor publication:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_humor_magazines. With a lot of
poor attempts at humor, and the occasional viral grand slam.
So. . . is there something like this already? If so, could someone
please point me in the direction of the nearest editor, so I can start
contributing myself? If not, would anyone be interested in helping me
line up a first issue?
Feel free to contact me directly or reply to the list. Whatever floats boats.
Toodles.
,Wil