One of my favorite early Wikipedia articles (nerdy as that is) was a page called "Slashdot trolling phenomena" which described all the most common styles of Slashdot trolls. Of course, it was later nuked as original research with insufficient sourcing, and is preserved only in user-space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kadin2048/Slashdot_Trolling_Phenomena I thought about this page today because of Slashdot's story about Steve Jobs' early death: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/06/000211/steve-jobs-dead-at-56 The story text is, of course, a verbatim copy of the original Slashdot troll about Stephen King's death. You can see it more closely by comparing the original submission: http://apple.slashdot.org/submission/1808868/sad-news--steve-jobs-dead-at-56 "I just heard some sad news on talk radio — Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead in his Cupertino home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him — even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon." vs. "I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon." I doubt that the responsible Slashdot editor was aware that they were falling for a troll. Is there a lesson here somewhere? If so, it's perhaps that documentation of subcultures in Wikipedia is very much worth doing. (And, RIP Steve.) Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l