One of my favorite early Wikipedia articles (nerdy as that is) was a page called "Slashdot trolling phenomena" which described all the most common styles of Slashdot trolls. Of course, it was later nuked as original research with insufficient sourcing, and is preserved only in user-space:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kadin2048/Slashdot_Trolling_Phenomena
I thought about this page today because of Slashdot's story about Steve Jobs' early death:
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/06/000211/steve-jobs-dead-at-56
The story text is, of course, a verbatim copy of the original Slashdot troll about Stephen King's death. You can see it more closely by comparing the original submission:
http://apple.slashdot.org/submission/1808868/sad-news--steve-jobs-dead-at-56
"I just heard some sad news on talk radio — Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead in his Cupertino home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him — even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."
vs.
"I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."
I doubt that the responsible Slashdot editor was aware that they were falling for a troll. Is there a lesson here somewhere? If so, it's perhaps that documentation of subcultures in Wikipedia is very much worth doing.
(And, RIP Steve.)
Erik
The same thing happened after Michael Jackson's death; IIRC there was a website in which people could insert a celebrity's name, and a "death article" would spew out. I recalled somebody did that with Kevin Spacey back in 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Spacey&diff=298662379&am....
http://kevin.spacey.mediafetcher.com/news/top_stories/actor_st_tropez.php http://justin.bieber.mediafetcher.com/news/top_stories/actor_st_tropez.php http://david.guetta.mediafetcher.com/news/top_stories/actor_st_tropez.php
-MuZemike
On 10/6/2011 1:07 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:
One of my favorite early Wikipedia articles (nerdy as that is) was a page called "Slashdot trolling phenomena" which described all the most common styles of Slashdot trolls. Of course, it was later nuked as original research with insufficient sourcing, and is preserved only in user-space:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kadin2048/Slashdot_Trolling_Phenomena
I thought about this page today because of Slashdot's story about Steve Jobs' early death:
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/06/000211/steve-jobs-dead-at-56
The story text is, of course, a verbatim copy of the original Slashdot troll about Stephen King's death. You can see it more closely by comparing the original submission:
http://apple.slashdot.org/submission/1808868/sad-news--steve-jobs-dead-at-56
"I just heard some sad news on talk radio — Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead in his Cupertino home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him — even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."
vs.
"I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."
I doubt that the responsible Slashdot editor was aware that they were falling for a troll. Is there a lesson here somewhere? If so, it's perhaps that documentation of subcultures in Wikipedia is very much worth doing.
(And, RIP Steve.)
Erik
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On Wed, 5 Oct 2011, Erik Moeller wrote:
I doubt that the responsible Slashdot editor was aware that they were falling for a troll. Is there a lesson here somewhere? If so, it's perhaps that documentation of subcultures in Wikipedia is very much worth doing.
Wikipiedia has a general problem with sourcing anything that mainly appears on the Internet, because anything that is written in a personal website, blog, etc. is not considered professionally published and fails the reliable sources and self-published tests.
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 5 Oct 2011, Erik Moeller wrote:
I doubt that the responsible Slashdot editor was aware that they were falling for a troll. Is there a lesson here somewhere? If so, it's perhaps that documentation of subcultures in Wikipedia is very much worth doing.
Wikipiedia has a general problem with sourcing anything that mainly appears on the Internet, because anything that is written in a personal website, blog, etc. is not considered professionally published and fails the reliable sources and self-published tests.
Or rather, the tests consistently fail the laugh test, but we as a community are too tight-sphinctered about our respectability to mind we fail big time in the comprehensivity department... /dour-sarcasm