Retro Yakking

Greetings, fellow miscreants! I humbly welcome you to this, the Retro Yakking Wikipedia Week Reader Special. During the next (looks at watch) half an hour or so… [People leave auditorium] …I shall be highlighting my very favourite reader comments from the past seven days. It appears that inside all of us, there’s a raging Wikipedia vandal screaming to get out. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but it most likely boils downto the fact that humans love to muck things up, and royally to boot.

“Where am I going with this?”, you may ask. Well, the answer is “the toilet”, so here’s my good friend Mr. Harry Yack to bring you this edition of Reader Comments.

Small but deadly

Thank you, Dave. On Sunday, I posed the question: “what would be the most creative way to vandalise Wikipedia?” Well, I’m pleased to say that hundreds of people phoned our exclusive hotline to suggest their own revert proof vandal edits to Wikipedia.

• If I were to change something it would probably be subtle…like adding a Jackalope to the endangered species list or something. — VE
• For me this is easy. I would change the name Wikipedia to Wikipedea. Very subtle change, but enough to make people wonder what’s going on. It would be interesting to see how many mails and comments they received wondering about the spelling change. — Red Raider, Beyond Left Field

I am in agreement that the best method of vandalism is the subtle change, one that is very small but makes a huge difference to the meaning of the sentence. The smaller edits are also less likely to be detected by the thousands of vandalism patrollers.

All out brazen craziness

Of course, the opposite to the subtle minor adjustment is the full-on stupidity angle. This is the method chosen by so many wannabe vandals, but is rarely seen to be applied in a creative manner.

• I would replace the Pope’s page with images of Chris Hansen from NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” screwing Emmanuel Lewis. Again. — Moooooog35, Mental Poo
• For pages about people, I’d add mentions of crazy secret societies that they “belonged” to. You know, like Michael Douglas was a free mason, or Ben Franklin was in some S&M clan. — Unfortunate Names
• I would like to tie random entries to unlikely famous persons. Like peta protesting chicken slaughter linked to Camila Parker Bowles planning a festive dinner party or Americans landing on the moon linked with Mother Theresa simultaneously walking in lockstep through a Mumbai landfill. – David

Harry Yack: Wikipedia vandalism is an artform that takes time to craft, but with a bit of effort, you too can create a Wikipedia edit that you’re proud to display in your contribution history. “I’m a Wikipedia vandal and I don’t care what anyone says.” The best edits, the ones you can tell your grandchildren about, really stand out.

The reliable encyclopedia

• I luv Wiki - I believe every word - I use it everyday - but I had a reality check late last year, when Jimmy Wales posted a plea for funds to keep Wiki in the black. I’d almost forgotten that this is the web! You know - you don’t really believe the stuff I/we/they post - do you? — Kate Rawlins, Kate’s Window

Harry Yack: Of course, much like television, everything you read on the Internet is true. It stands to reason, and everyone who ever posts here on the interwebs should know they have a duty to be sincere, honest and true. (If you noticed, I didn’t say anything about lying)

• I haven’t done anything, but I knew someone who did, back at my college. His creative edit was to the article on Java–the computer language, not the country. Slipped in a sentence near the end of one of the paragraphs about how the language offended people by contributing to the objectification of women. To someone not familiar with the language, this would just seem random, but it comes out a lot funnier when you consider the fact that Java treats everything fed into it as an object. Needless to say, the edit didn’t last too long. — Ravyn, Exchange of Realities

HY: Ah, geek humour - the staple of Wikipedia vandals worldwide. It’s like an encyclopedia made by geeks, for geeks.

Everyone featured in this post gets a place on my recommended links page.

Image by Sammy0716 on Flickr.

“Wikpedia” is one of the most searched for words on the Internet. “Yet it does not exist!” I hear you scream, and you’d be correct. This is an example of a search term that’s based on a mistype, from which there’s huge rewards to be had for webmasters.

OK, I’ll come clean. This post is a Search Engine Optimisation article in disguise, and a case study of how I managed to get my crummy Geocities website to the top of a Google result page using Wikipedia and a deliberate spelling error.

The boring-ish background

A few years ago I created a research website for a college project. It was meant to be a low-maintenance site, one that I uploaded and left as an archive of my work on the internet. It has not been updated for three years and yet it still gets at least eight hits per day. This may perplex you somewhat, but read on and learn why this happens.

First of all, my site contained excerpts of text, otherwise undocumented on the internet, from a number of publications. When I came across Wikipedia in 2005, I thought I would help out by adding a sentence or two to the page on my website’s subject, using the secondary sources on my website. Of course, Wikipedia requires the addition of a reference for each piece of information added, so I included a link to my website in the appropriate section of the article.

Expand the knowledge base and get noticed at the same time

If you have a highly niche blog, then it is likely you might be the original reporter of certain news stories. Whilst Wikipedia frowns upon original research, if the references you add are embellished with genuine links to reputable news sites, it adds an element of respectability to the article.

Wikipedia is full of niche articles, maintained by hardcore fans and armchair experts. If you notice that a particular article is missing or currently unmonitored, then you may choose to create, adopt or expand it with your knowledge of the subject. If you are canny, you can use your blog as reference and gain an extra top ten Alexa linkback.

Don’t tell Jimmy Wales I said that…

Quick tip: put links to your blog on your own Wikipedia userpage. In fact, you could do pretty much anything to promote your content here, as long as it is vaguely related to you and your interests.

Making an ‘impresion’

Remember, I did tell you that my website’s relative success was twofold… and I haven’t yet told you about my most successful method of traffic generation. Well, I kind of did earlier. I made a spelling error in the title of one of the pages, shooting it to the top of the Google rankings of any search for the term, which was a common mis-spelling.

The mistake was semi-intentional, as it was a genuine error that stayed on the site for a few months. I only noticed it when I was looking through my traffic statistics and spotted that my glorious error was almost overloading my Geocities free site bandwidth with page requests. Not bad for a little website, eh?

Fancy lawnmover racing? Image by Fir0002 at Wikipedia.

Rather than shape it, Wikipedia serves to only reflect the world around it. Well, that’s kind of the point of encyclopedias, you see. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Wikipedia is completely serious about itself all the time (that task is more than covered by the administrators) - their Silly Things and Unusual Articles pages are evidence of this.

“But Yak, this is just a complete sell out compilation article, isn’t it?”

Yes, you could call it that. But so what? And anyway, I have a big bumper post coming up this weekend explaining how I bent the rules… er, I mean, expanded the knowledge base of the wiki by adding references which just so happened to be at my website. More on that soon, but for now, here’s a list of some of my personal favourite pages on the whole of Wikipedia.

• Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 was the intended name of a child born in Sweden in 1991. Because the parents never legally named the child before its fifth birthday, they were fined 5,000 kronor (US$600). In protest, the parents attempted to register this 43-character name, but it was subsequently rejected for obvious reasons.
• Foreign accent syndrome, a condition whereby the sufferer’s linguistic capabilities are impaired to such a level that it sounds as if they are speaking in a foreign accent. Also, a quick mention here for alien hand syndrome, where the sufferer’s hand seems to be controlled by an mysterious ‘alien’ force. It would be useful to somehow be diagnosed with this just in case you accidentally shoot someone: “it wasn’t me, it was my alien hand!”
• Nazi UFOs, Hitler’s secret weapon. According to the theory, Germany was running a top secret army base to develop new technology in Antartctica. I also heard a weird, slightly related conspiracy theory that claimed UFOs were coming from the centre of the Earth, but I think the people who propagated that have since been executed for the sake of world sanity.
• Mountweazels are deliberately incorrect pieces of information inserted into maps, directories and (paper based) encyclopedias. These can range from obvious hoaxes to copyright traps which provide a reference point to detect copyright infringement, and famous examples include; Goblu and Beatosu, fictional place names on the 1978-79 official map of Michigan; Zzxjoanw, a completely made up musical term that “fooled logologists for years” and the Stone louse, an invented animal that appeared in a German medical dictionary.
• Hamster racing, Lawn mower racing and of course Yak racing. The latter is apparently a “common sport in Tibet and Mongolia, among other places” and something I wouldn’t mind trying myself.

All of these articles and more can be found at Wikipedia’s Unusual Articles page. If you ever read anything on Wikipedia, make sure it’s this.

A parting note

Remember a couple of weeks ago I featured a post about AOL disk disposal methods? Well, if Wikipedia is anything to go by, it seems some people do the exact opposite and collect them. People will collect anything these days. Fnurdletoot.

Image by sutefani in orlando.

Most of these were found on Wikipedia by entering fabricated words that just about sound real into the search box… and what do you know? Some are legitimate dictionary entries in their own right. I would not be surprised, however, if some of these were deleted before much longer. (Spot the subtle disclaimer!)

• Alabum - not an Italian music compilation CD, but a Roman fort
• Beghilos - spelling on calculators, a word game often played in Mr. Bolton’s Maths class
• Blofib - Guinea-Bissauan football club, but sounds as if it should be an exasperating white lie
• Bloop - ultra-low frequency sound made underwater, or maybe the noise made by a fart in the bath?
• Conchiglie - a type of pasta. What else could it have been?
• Crambo - nothing to do with Sly Stallone, but a rhyming game popular in the 14th Century
• Cringle - a device surrounding a hole in a textile
• Fnurdle - microscopic dust bug that breeds in computer towers
• Flong - sounds like it might be quite rude, but is actually term used in printing
• Hing - Hindi name for a plant of the order Asafoetida, but sounds like the noise made just after ingesting a full tumbler of Scotch
• Klonk - not the sound a key makes in a lock, but a location just south of Prague, Czech Republic
• Knork - item of cutlery combining the functions of both a knife and fork, similar to a spork, but not at all like a spooforkife (spoon, fork and a knife all in one)
• Plodge - informal name given to Chryslers, portmanteau of Plymouth and Dodge
• Pronk - a gazelle behaviour
• Spongle - British slang word for someone high on drugs
• Undecimber - fake thirteenth month used in Java coding
• Zingo - a Swedish soft drink. I suppose that doesn’t really count as a name, but I thought it sounded pretty cool anyway

*The more observant amongst you may have noticed that somewhere in this list I have slipped in a false entry. First person to spot it wins a can of Coke!

Further reading

• Wikipedia: Unusual Articles
• Silly words list. Not real ones, but fun to read nonetheless

One of the most vandalised articles on Wikipedia is the entry for Microsoft mogul William Gates III. Most people know him for being one of the world’s richest men, earning billions in the personal computer industry.

But did you know that, according to Wikipedia, he was also once a pancake snorter and founder of the television show John Colbert Farts on a fat duck? Well, it was on Wikipedia, so it must be true, mustn’t it? Here’s some more stuff I’ll bet you never knew about everyone’s favourite geek.

• Bill Gates worked for BBC Weather and was the head of British Meteorologists from 1993-2000.  He was supposedly taught how to present the weather by Michael Fish, and started a “widely spread” joke about ‘bluescreens of death’. Really.
• Bill Gates is a butcher from Bury St. Edmunds. According to that edit, he was also born in 1902, presumably making him the oldest computer expert in the world.
• Bill Gates is the “smartest man on earth” and “has been able to amass an unimaginable fortune”, despite the fact he has never created a single product that actually worked properly.
• Bill Gates is made up, and in actual fact is an “imaginary friend to some kid in Russia”. Apparently, that’s all there is to it.
• Bill Gates developed an email tracking system in conjunction with Disney. Though this was widely reported to be a hoax, he genuinely distributed over eight million dollars in cash and trips to Walt Disney World using the program.
• Bill Gates won a very prestigious award in 2007, specifically “the London Prize of the most annoying man last night when I was dreaming.”

DVD Bonus material! More fun revisions

Bill Gates…

• …”hates puppies“, and was born in a place called ‘Pittsburb’
• … “owns the goddamn world“
• … was “born on Mars” to a poor family, or maybe it was the moon?
• … seems to be Harry Potter
• …smells funny and runs like a girl
• … is “taking over the world one computer at a time“
• … “enjoys a daily walk in the park with his alligator buddies” (?!)

Well, there we have it. All facts that have been present on Wikipedia at some point in time. I’ll leave you with an edit on the great man by some time miscreant Glenners.

Bill Gates, the hero of our time, *clears throat* I think not…