Hoaxes on Wikipedia Options

[tarantino]

I've recently come across the fictional biography of Sean MacLeod (T-H-L-K-D), presented as fact by Wikipedia for 2 years and 4 months. The article has remained intact, save for a handful of edits by users or bots that fixed typos or tags, or removed images (including edits by a couple of friendly faces that post here, heh ). While it is fairly well written, it is over the top. and no one has ever attempted to verify the 'facts' that are presented.

I've archived it at MWB because it will inevitably be deleted.

[A User]

The biggest hoax of all is wikipedia itself.

[Moulton]

The biggest hoax of all is Wikipedia itself.

The issue is one of Truth in Advertising. I think the project had sincere objectives when it was started, but over the years, it gradually morphed into something that departed substantially from what the founders had originally envisioned.

(IMG:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Bface1.jpg)

"Be ye not bamboozled." —The Big Bamboozler

[HRIP7]

Hannibal Fogg was a nice hoax, perpetrated by writer Tahir Shah (T-H-L-K-D). I did a write-up of it at the time.

I noticed later that the author had registered a trademark for Hannibal Fogg, for

Production and distribution of motion pictures, ongoing television programs; entertainment services in the nature of providing information regarding motion pictures, television programs, and characters therein via a website; fan club services, blogs and chat rooms for discussing motion pictures, television programs and characters thereon; entertainment services, namely, providing online computer games; multimedia publishing of books, magazines, journals, software, games, music, and electronic pu. [sic]