Poster acknowledges overlooking indicia of a hoax...

December 17, 2005 5:34 PM

Poster acknowledges overlooking indicia of a hoax...
posted by rkent to MetaFilter-Related at 5:34 PM (36 comments total)

People who jest about someone's death are low. Except, perhaps on April Fool's day.
posted by ParisParamus at 5:36 PM on December 17, 2005

Come on. The Register article said Siegenthaler's wife stormed Wales's house during dinner and shot him.

How dumb do you have to be to believe that?
posted by xmutex at 5:38 PM on December 17, 2005

Yes. Yes, he does.
posted by Kwantsar at 5:40 PM on December 17, 2005

Candidly, I didn't even read the piece. My bad.
posted by ParisParamus at 5:42 PM on December 17, 2005

Well, kudos all around, then.
posted by LarryC at 6:03 PM on December 17, 2005

It wasn't so much a hoax as just a misreading of the article. I'm not accustomed to The Register pulling hoaxes either. But that was kind of the point to their whole lead: "according to the wikipedia."

We can't all be as smart as xmutex, and surely this is an emarassing moment for the poster. But the fact that the story itself was believed at face value and reposted does get to the core issue of the story itself: validity of internet sources, especially community-edited ones.
posted by scarabic at 6:23 PM on December 17, 2005

Yes, most emarassing. but some interesting comments and discussion
posted by hortense at 6:30 PM on December 17, 2005

The "murder" took place on Dec 12th, according to the Register. That should have been the first clue.
posted by Gyan at 6:31 PM on December 17, 2005

I'm starting to like PeePee. please tell Seigenthaler's wife to shoot me, too. then donate my remains to Wikipedia
posted by matteo at 6:45 PM on December 17, 2005

You are but a stain upon the common sense of the profession. I shall see to it personally with the means at my disposal that your name, and the name of poor (amateur) journalism, become synonyms. This will be no hard task.

Yeah.

That's you, each and every one of you, he's talking about!
posted by cedar at 6:53 PM on December 17, 2005

But the fact that the story itself was believed at face value and reposted does get to the core issue of the story itself: validity of internet sources, especially community-edited ones.

Only for those who missed that lesson in 1996.

The lesson here is that people are in too much of a goddamn hurry to post FPPs, and that NewsFilter exacerbates this problem by creating a "F1rst P0st!!" race for these schmucks. Here's a clue: If you can't be bothered to investigate your post because you're in a hurry to beat a thousand other people to the punch, it's probably not a story we need scrawled across the front page of MetaFilter.
posted by cribcage at 6:54 PM on December 17, 2005

I shall see to it personally with the means at my disposal that your name, and the name of poor (amateur) journalism, become synonyms. This will be no hard task.

Well, no, of course not. You just change the definition of "poor journalism" on the wiki page.
The hard part is keeping the two synonyms.
posted by Bugbread at 6:56 PM on December 17, 2005

I removed it, the story might make some interesting other sort of future post, nothing personal hortense.
posted by jessamyn at 7:27 PM on December 17, 2005

We can't all be as smart as xmutex,

But you can at least try.
posted by xmutex at 7:41 PM on December 17, 2005

So didn't the "hoax" tag count for anything? Can't we temporarily fool each other outside of April Fool's day? It seems to me that the temporary illusion of the hoax here was a large part of what made this interesting.
posted by scottreynen at 7:41 PM on December 17, 2005

I'm not sure that deletion was the best way to deal with this.
posted by R. Mutt at 7:47 PM on December 17, 2005

you have been hoped. xo, admin

hee hee.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 7:50 PM on December 17, 2005

matteo, check your e-mail.
posted by ParisParamus at 8:09 PM on December 17, 2005

that paris believed the story because it was posted at LGF is my favorite moment of the whole thing. outstanding.
posted by shmegegge at 8:34 PM on December 17, 2005

But you can at least try.

Nay, I pale before the challenge :)
posted by scarabic at 8:48 PM on December 17, 2005

it was posted by a poster. It just nevr occurred to me that someone would jest about someone's death. I find that utterly tasteless (except, of course, if the person is teh Evil).
posted by ParisParamus at 9:07 PM on December 17, 2005

and it was read by a reader. and promulgated by a promulgator, apparently.

but I betcha it wasn't mastered by a master -

no, I can't do it. sorry.
posted by yhbc at 9:42 PM on December 17, 2005

You missed the best part.

No, it was mentioned at LGF.com. So it's definitely true.
posted by ParisParamus
posted by puke & cry at 9:56 PM on December 17, 2005

(except, of course, if the person is teh Evil).

or teh Pale5t1n14n
posted by scarabic at 10:20 PM on December 17, 2005

Or teh fictional character. Or teh person who died over 100 years ago. Or teh person who's making the joke about the death in the first place.

Maybe we should make a taxonomy to keep track of stuff like this.
posted by Bugbread at 10:26 PM on December 17, 2005

it was posted by a poster. It just never occurred to me that someone would jest about someone's death. I find that utterly tasteless (except, of course, if the person is teh Evil).

Isn't that all they do over at LGF? And actually, I assumed that was supposed to be a bit of self-deprecating irony on your part. Oh well.
posted by delmoi at 11:00 PM on December 17, 2005

I just was stupid. I admitted it almost immediately. Forgive me.
posted by ParisParamus at 11:32 PM on December 17, 2005

I think it should be re-instated, with a typo correction (he used "News" instead of "Hoax," oopsy!) Because as "Best of the Web" goes, this is a pretty good bit of wit, using the geeky-news wiki spat as an excuse to prank the wiki by spoofing it in a fashion directly parallel to that that put the wiki in the news in the first place: potentially libelous accusations.

And you know what? I bet the wiki owners aren't going to turn around and sue the ass off the prankster; at worst, they'll append "This is a joke" and a link to the pages on the lawsuit. Shame certain other people aren't as dead-sensible in their approach to wiki content.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:58 PM on December 17, 2005

It just never occurred to me that someone would jest about someone's death.

It just never occurred to me that someone would support the assassination of a democratically elected, socially progressive leader. But some evil fucking slug of a user did. Huh.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:09 AM on December 18, 2005

Paris, FFF, you guys both need better imaginations if neither of those things ever occurred to you.
posted by Bugbread at 12:15 AM on December 18, 2005

[this is good]
posted by wakko at 2:54 AM on December 18, 2005

pwn3d
posted by NinjaPirate at 3:34 AM on December 18, 2005

Well, what can I say.
posted by googly at 7:44 AM on December 18, 2005

pp is trying to make it painfully obvious that you've all been taken it that he himself is a hoax.
posted by 3.2.3 at 8:34 AM on December 18, 2005

You know, I was the victim of an indica hoax one time. The dude told me I was buying sativa.
posted by scarabic at 1:28 PM on December 18, 2005

So didn't the "hoax" tag count for anything?

Oh, to be clear: it wasn't so tagged when I called it out with this MeTa thread. Probably wouldn'ta bothered if it was.
posted by rkent at 5:23 PM on December 18, 2005