[Wikipedia-l] Probably faked article in 57(!) languages

[Michael Holzt]

In the german Wikipedia we came accross the article
[[de:The_Flowers_Of_Romance]]. 

While there was a band of this name in the seventies, the article is being
used to promote a newly founded band from Estonia which does not seem to 
have any relation to the original band. Most edits of the article are from 
an IP in Estonia.

Interestingly enough the article has been (more or less) translated into
57 languages:

11:55, 26. Jul 2005 Palica K (interwiki Ergänze: tl, lv, ro, th, rm, pl, no,
nn, nl, la, pt, lb, ru, tr, gd, io, ar, ga, ee, gl, id, cs, eo, el, es, eu,
an, ca, it, iu, vi, bn, sh, ur, ast, ks, sl, ku, ms, chr, yi, se, nah, sr,
oc, hi, hu, bs, bg, sk, fi, ang, br, uk, hr, ht)

This seems very fishy and i believe someone is playing a bad game with
Wikipedia and most language version have fallen for it (until now).

At least in the german wikipedia there is also an article about the alleged
front man of the band: [[de:Tony Blackplait]]. It seems that all the facts
mentioned in the article (like films) are fabricated, and when searching for
that name in google all that came up are other Wikis (where the name has for
example been included into an article about Sid Vicious) and mostly wikipedia
copies. You might want to check for similiar fake articles in other
languages.

So i would like to make you aware of this. You might want to check the facts
for yourself and maybe delete the article from the various languages. 

As it seems this article has been classified as a hoax (and deleted)
earlier in the englisch wikipedia, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/The_Flowers_Of_Romance

In the meanwhile the article has been recreated in the english wikipedia,
see [[en:The Flowers of Romance (band 2)]].


Regards
Michael

-- 
      It's an insane world, but i'm proud to be a part of it. -- Bill Hicks