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&oldid=298662328.
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 > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
