The Mike Handel Story Options

[John Limey]

BLP hoax accusing fake Oxford professor of murder makes it into the DYK section and draws 4300 page views. Read all about it at On Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by John Limey:

[John Limey]

BLP hoax accusing fake Oxford professor of murder makes it into the DYK section and draws 4300 page views. Read all about it at On Wikipedia.

OK, but nearly everyone here already knows Wikipedia is broken, particularly regarding BLPs. For those who don't, will this extra proof turn them? Probably not.

How can this be leveraged to actually make a change?

We thought it might serve as a wakeup call. Judging by the reaction on Wikipedia, it did nothing like that, which is really, truly disappointing. I've said before, and I come to believe it more every day, that only major stories in the mainstream press have the potential to influence Wikipedia at all, and even then the impact is uncertain.

I suppose I'm a bit more idealistic than many of the people here, but we did expect more, and I honestly feel like just shutting the blog down. It turns out that people just don't care about facts after all. What's the point? The evidence is out there from Seigenthaler to Taner Akcam to Mike Handel and many more, but there are too many &%^$* on Wikipedia who won't change a darn thing to actually protect people. The willful blindness to the truth is simply shocking.

Good work on documenting each step of the process - some folks might not have bothered to do that, probably because it makes the whole task less fun. Not that shooting ducks in a barrel is supposed to be fun, but it does make the whole thing much more citable.

How can we turn this into a top-line blurb, then? "Burning Mike Handel at both ends"? "Existence isn't all it's cracked up to be"...?

I liked Zoloft's idea: "Wikipedia can't Handel the truth".

[A Horse With No Name]

We thought it might serve as a wakeup call. Judging by the reaction on Wikipedia, it did nothing like that, which is really, truly disappointing.

That is no surprise. The only time there is any stirring is if some lunatic is yelling his head off. Content is not king -- it's all about slapstick and melodrama.

BLP disasters and fake DYKs are as old as Wikipedia, but this one was particularly bad. I think, in retrospect, that we might have done better at attracting media attention if we had found some reporter and tipped him off before we announced the hoax on the blog, thus allowing the reporter to have the exclusive scoop.

Seigenthaler was worse because it was a real person. A phony BLP that wins a worthless award is not news, sorry.