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I once made a PHP page which fetches a random wikipedia article, but changes the title to "What the fuck is [TOPIC]?". It was incredibly funny, until I started
by omershapira 6y ago
I once made a PHP page which fetches a random wikipedia article, but changes the title to "What the fuck is [TOPIC]?". It was incredibly funny, until I started getting angry emails from people, mostly threatening a form of libel lawsuit.
Turns out, since it was a front for all of wikipedia[1], google was agressively indexing it, but the results rarely made it to the first search page. And since this isn't exactly an important site, old results would stick around.
Hence a pattern:
1. Some Rando creates a page about themselves
2. Wikipedia editors, being holy and good, extinguish that nonsense
1.5. GOOGLE INDEXES IT
3. Rando, by nature of being a rando, googles themselves, doesn't find their wikipedia page anymore (that's gone), but does find a link to my site in the first page of google results with their name.
4. Lawyers get involved, somehow
Details:
http://omershapira.com/blog/2013/03/randomfax-net/ http://omershapira.com/blog/2013/03/randomfax-net/
[1] Hebrew wikipedia. I can't imagine what would've happened on the English version.
- smileybarry 6y agoI understand why people got angry, though. The title was rougly "What is this '<article name>' shit?"[1], with "shit" in this Hebrew context also able to be interpreted as calling the subject "shit". Saying "מה זה לעזאזל X?"[2] is closer to "what the fuck is X?" (except it's more "what the hell" than "what the fuck"). [1] I wasn't sure how to portray this to non-Hebrew speakers but, surprisingly, Google Translate actually nailed it: https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=%D7%9E%D7%94%20%D7%96%D7%94%20%D7%94%D7%97%D7%A8%D7%90%20%D7%94%D7%96%D7%94%20%22%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%9C%22%3F https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto... [2] Google Translate got this example right, too: https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=%D7%9E%D7%94%20%D7%96%D7%94%20%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%96%D7%90%D7%96%D7%9C%20%22%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%9C%22%3F https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...