[Wikinews-l] Wikinews-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 2

[Nicholas Moreau]

> We need to have a load of people on RC Patrol that day. Especially admins,
> so they can easily revert.

Yes, having a ton of RC Patrollers is good. But the thing is that,
without a formal agreement that tolerance for breaking the rules on
April 1 is no different than it is on April 2, many admins simply
support and help the cause by reverting revertions. It's happened on
WP.

> From: "Oldak Quill" <oldakquill at gmail.com>
> Which logos are you talking about? The project logos are copyrighted by the WMF.

Agreed. While changing logos can be interesting and humourous (I'm a
big fan of the "Google Doodle"), WMF's content is fully protected by
law.

> From: "Robin Shannon" <robin at shannon.id.au>
> But they do help to form a sense of wikimedian community which is good
> for the wikimedia projects and helps further its goals.

Some fun is good, but too much fun leads to distraction, like in Esperanza.

> From: "David Speakman" <david at speakman.com>
> I honestly cannot imagine the depth of the flame wars when someone attempts
> to spoof such news stories as Iraq, Bush, same-sex marriage, Christianity,
> Islam, the execution of Saddam Hussein, sex crimes, tsunamis, 9/11, fake
> obituaries, illegal immigration, female circumcision...

On Meta, there's an article called "How to deal with Poles".

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_deal_with_Poles

While it supposedly is an article written be Polish contributors to
represent the attitudes expressed towards them by non-Polish
contributors, it just reads as racist to me. I've never seen any
examples of editors dealing in such manners, so I personally have
never seen the humor in it.

It's recently been compared to the style of humor used in "Borat", but
it's just stupid. Until recently, it even read "Note: this is intended
to be [[w:satire|satirical]]. If you do not recognize it as such,
consult a doctor or professional comedian."

> I think we need to remind ourselves that as Wikinewsies and Wikipedians we
> are making something to be used by other people more so than by ourselves.
>
> Are people really coming to Wiki* to read original fiction by amateur
> humorists? I wouldn't bet money on it.

Great point.

Nick