FortuneCookie

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It's a Unix thing, I think. /usr/games/fortune (or wherever) is a program that spits out a "fortune cookie." Actually, it's more of a quote. Usually the quotation is meant to be humourous.

fortune resides in .profiles and what not. However, this classic can be found on such places as ZWiki:AnnoyingQuote and the bottom of SlashDot generated pages. SlashDot also has a small joke at the top of the page too, "This page was generated by..."

I like ZWiki:AnnoyingQuote. It's not annoying. It's cute, and it seems to elicit community spirit. The nice thing about Zwiki's system is that it's entirely done in the WikiWay. Users just edit the ZWiki:AnnoyingQuote page and the bottommost paragraph becomes the quote. A CommunitySolution.

Even better. The quotes create discussion. They are small randomness in the overall space of things, but they are tight. Full of meaning.

An elegant hack. -- SunirShah

Beautifully put, and thank you! --SimonMichael

I have a patch for UseMod 092 that provides this idea - ie the idea of using a Wiki page to list the quotes. My patch works slightly differently to what has been suggested, as it grabs the text when the user saves the page, putting it in a motd file in the wiki database. This is then inserted into any page that includes a :MOTD: tag. I use it on my home page (for example). I have described it more fully on UseMod:AnnoyingQuote -- KevinTaylor

[CategoryWikiTechnology] [CategoryUncommonWikiTechnology]

FortuneCookie

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