I've said precisely this in the past, but now I'm starting to second-guess myself. Sure, if we're worried about basilisk-as-memetic-hazard then deletion was an obvious mistake... but are any of you having nightmares yet? I'm guessing "no", in which case we're left with basilisk-as-publicity-stunt, which might actually be beneficial.

I wouldn't personally have advocated recruiting rationalists via a tactic like "Get a bunch of places to report on how crazy you are, then anyone who doesn't believe everything they read will be pleasantly surprised", but I'm probably the last person to ask about publicity strategy. I also would have disapproved of "Write Harry Potter fan fiction and see who wants to dig through the footnotes", without benefit of hindsight.