On Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Andrew Gray wrote:

I'm wanting to expand the [[Nihilartikel]] article, by discussing the occurence of nihilartikels - deliberately fictional articles - in open publications like Wikipedia. We mention a couple, which were articles about famous hoaxes themselves presented as real ([[Uqbar]] and [[San Serriffe]]) before being fixed. And, of course, there was [[Jamie Kane]] recently. Things like [[Battle of Blenau]] Does anyone remember any cases?

(Myself, I found three fictional Aztec gods. First reference here June 10, deleted mid August.)

However, what I'm looking for are cases of purely false information, not particularly intended for humorous effect or linked to popular culture - which if memory serves do get caught and hauled onto VfD every now and again. This is a developing role of the nihilartikel - rather than being inserted "from high", they get added from below, almost as part of a [[breaching experiment]] ("let's see if this lasts")

For some reason, Ethiopian topics seem to attract more than its share -- or maybe it's because I've been focussing my attention there lately. (But I don't remember seeing a similar proportion of fictional articles related to Ancient Egypt.)

And the type of fictional material that gets added isn't necessarily a nihilartikel -- although that is one form. Two other ways that I've seen are:

* Fictional material into articles on otherwise real subjects. The Date & Year pages seem to be a good example of this, where a contributor might add an event that seems true to all but an expert. (If you were to see an edit to [[100 BC]] that read "Construction completed on the Aqua Fabia", would you know at a glance whether this was true or false?) I had a similar problem with an article about the Falls of the Blue Nile, where someone had stated that these falls had been covered by a lake created by a modern dam; it took me months to find a source that proved the falls are not beneath several feet of water. (This was from a Tour guide to Ethiopia; & with my luck, I probably misread that section.)

* Real subject, content entirely fictional. I encountered this problem with [[Shilavo]]: an anon editor added a lengthy, fairly detailed article about how this had grown into a modern Ethiopian city. Someone (I don't remember at the moment) marked it for Cleanup. I was suspicious about the article, but only after a determined search on Google did I finally learn that the real Shilavo was a village of about 700 people in the middle of the Ogaden, & which is important only because it is the home of the only airport (unpaved) in the region.

And then there is the case of what ought to be a nihilartikel -- but is actually true. Like Wanker's Corner, Oregon, an otherwise unremarkable intersection SW of Lake Oswego. When I wrote that article, my primary concern was to prove that it *did* exist; so I located & mentioned every bit of evidence for its existence. (I ought to drive down there & take a picture of the feed store that displays the name proudly.) Sadly, the name came into use after the US government consolidated the countless tiny post offices into a more centralized system. (Sorry, Stan -- any Wanker's Corner cancels you might find would all be forgeries.)

My problem with a lot of these cases for me is that unless the fiction is so obvious that it sets off my BS detector, I have to put it on my list of things to do. After all, there is a lot of information of WP that has been drawn from a faulty memory, & only upon review & continuing research is the good-faith error found & fixed. That is perhaps the most important reason why I try to provide sources for everything I can in my recent edits -- & that some of the sources I have for Ethiopian history are suspicious, but they are all I have to work with.

Geoff