User talk:Ashley Pomeroy/Archive/Archive 10 Jan 2008

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[edit] Some ancient history, but made me go "huh"?

Through a roundabout series of jumps while cleaning up the Brabazon article, I came across the flame war from the Comet article. A few more clicks and I came across this edit. I realize I live on the wrong side of the pond to catch the references, but just what is the story with the "That..." in the first line? Maury (talk) 02:39, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Michael Shrimpton is, or was, famous as a metric martyr - the BBC mentions him here. In brief, the EU imposed a rule whereby British shopkeepers had to label their goods in metric, or face prosecution; the metric martyrs disagreed. It seemed odd that a person I had once very tangentally worked with should appear on Wikipedia, in such an odd context. He must be a contrary fellow. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 03:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

In fact he's doubly interesting as an example of Wikipedia's theoretically level playing field. In the real world Michael Shrimpton is a learned man with a certain amount of influence, he is the kind of person you would want to countersign your shotgun licence application, for example. But on Wikipedia he is just like any other editor, and in this case I think his approach was dead wrong, and rightly it didn't work. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 19:01, 30 December 2007 (UTC)