6 ms·
What's strange is the real hoaxer is never identified beyond his fist name.
by paleotrope 4y ago
What's strange is the real hoaxer is never identified beyond his fist name.
- europeanguy 4y agoGood. Let's not idolize vandals.
- Nihilartikel 4y agoVandal maybe, but another perspective would be that they are playing the role of an Epistemological Chaos Monkey, providing fitness tests to the worldwide bullshit filter.
- Joker_vD 4y agoWhat about that one editor of Scots Wikipedia?
- sebzim4500 4y agoThat guy didn't really do any damage though, IIRC he basically wrote the entire Scots wikipedia himself so its not like he made anything worse.
- teddyh 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_disrupt_Wikip...
- RugnirViking 4y agoThey are though? They have the name Alan MacMasters, same as the fake inventor > "Alan MacMasters, 30, is an aerospace engineer from London "and not the inventor of the toaster", he assures me with a giggle. "You shouldn't just believe everything you read on the internet." > I feel nervous about the possibility of falling prey to another prank. So I ask Alan to send me a photo of his passport, which he does. He is not lying: even if he lacks the voluminous quiff of his namesake, he really is Alan MacMasters
- bombcar 4y agoThe "hoaxer" was Alan's friend Alex.
- xbmcuser 4y agoNo Alex just changed the name it was Alan that embellished and perpetuated for it years after that
- tedunangst 4y agoWhich article did you read? > Alex felt mischievous, and wondered how far his prank could go. He asked himself what would happen if he created a Wikipedia article entirely devoted to the supposed inventor of the toaster. > To illustrate it, Alex grabbed a photo of himself and edited it to look like an image from the 1800s - this was the very same photo that, years later, would catch Adam's eye.
- stavros 4y agoHis full name is Alex Jackson, it says so on Wikipedia.
- monkpit 4y agoConfusingly, the people in this story are named Adam, Alan, and Alex. Alex did the first actual edit.
- bombcar 4y agoThe temptation to correctly identify them as the founding members of what later was backronymed to the American Automobile Association (AAA) is rising ....
- jt2190 4y agoI think the above comment is referring to the true identity of “Maddy Kennedy”: > On 6 February 2012, Alan was at a university lecture, when the class was warned against using Wikipedia as a source. To hammer the point home, the lecturer said that a friend of his - one "Maddy Kennedy" - had named himself on the site as the inventor of the toaster.