→Sokal: I'd consider Sokal's paper more a hoax than a Nihilartikel |
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:::If you can remember any examples, I'd love to hear them - but I don't have the stamina to go digging through VfD. [[User:Shimgray|Shimgray]] 15:53, 29 August 2005 (UTC) |
:::If you can remember any examples, I'd love to hear them - but I don't have the stamina to go digging through VfD. [[User:Shimgray|Shimgray]] 15:53, 29 August 2005 (UTC) |
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::::I knew that the description came out of the Borges story. What I ''didn't'' know was that there was a real place called ''Uqbar''. -- [[User:Jmabel|Jmabel]] | [[User talk:Jmabel|Talk]] 05:41, August 30, 2005 (UTC) |
::::I knew that the description came out of the Borges story. What I ''didn't'' know was that there was a real place called ''Uqbar''. -- [[User:Jmabel|Jmabel]] | [[User talk:Jmabel|Talk]] 05:41, August 30, 2005 (UTC) |
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:I've put in 4 nihilartikels into Wikipedia so far, with 2 being found and subsequently deleted, yet leaving 2 undetected as of November 25 2005. These nihilartikels have begun to appear less bogus, as they have been "wikified" by some other users (including a sysop). So there's gotta be hundred of nihilartikels in here, statistically. --[[User:Wonderfool|Wonderfool]] [[User talk:Wonderfool|t]][[Special:Contributions/Wonderfool|(c)]] 15:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC) |
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== Toalettpapir == |
== Toalettpapir == |
Revision as of 15:45, 25 November 2005
Since this task is now complete, I've moved this here. -- Jmabel 01:01, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
- Article: de:Nihilartikel
- Corresponding English-language article: (none known)
- Worth doing because: Looks fascinating and highly relevant to people interested in encyclopedias as such
- Originally Requested by: Jmabel 07:55, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Status: I think this is now completed. Some content is not translated, but it's mostly voluminous and not obviously relevant notes and a few isolated sentences. The German article looks like it was extracted from an academic paper; ours is tighter. -- Jmabel 06:11, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Other notes: I'd do this one myself, but I think it is beyond my level of German. It has to do with apparently legitimate works containing invalid references. I don't think we have an English-language article on the topic. -- Jmabel 07:55, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Wow, I think it was beyond mine too, but I was excited enough about the concept that I tried anyway. I have written a semi-sad attempt at Nihilartikel, but had to stop halfway in (at a reasonable stopping place) because I realized I was in water that had gotten too deep. Hopefully someone is willing to do the rest? If not, we have I think a decent representation, except for the fact that I couldn't find a satisfactory translation for "Nihilartikel" -- any ideas? (User:Jwrosenzweig)
- I think there is nothing wrong with "borrowing" the German word "Nihilartikel" as long as we explain its etymology. Please, could one of the fluent German-speakers continue this translation, looks worthwhile. -- Jmabel 03:56, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- I think this is now complete. If no one else remarks here within a few days, I'm removing it from this list. -- Jmabel 06:11, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Other talk
Could we see some expansion here -- are there motives behind the Nihilartikels beyond simple personal amusement of the editor, such as to trap potential copyright violators (compare "trap streets")? --Daniel C. Boyer 19:17, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Description as "paradox" is a bit questionable IMO. Maybe Catch-22? --Daniel C. Boyer 19:18, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
As it stands, the section "Nihilartikels in scientific literature" is pretty incoherent. Probably still need thorough translation of the corresponding section from the German. -- Jmabel 22:37, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I think the issue is that the German article's section is pretty tough -- it's the section that stopped my translation in its tracks. I believe the section is trying to explain that hoaxes such as Piltdown man or the mid-1800s hoax about people from Edinburgh flying to the moon are given a lot of press, and are treated as a serious phenomenon by scientific journals, etc., but Nihilartikels (because they are only brief entries in encyclopedias) are simply seen as fanciful lies unworthy of such scrutiny. Do you think I'm close? Thanks for your work cleaning up after a recent well-meaning translator, Jmabel. And I do think DCB is right about a comparison to trap streets, but don't know how to bring it in. Any ideas? :-) Jwrosenzweig 22:45, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Ah damn, I missed the discussion here. I think I will move some stuff from the posts I made at the user-pages here, so some changes become clear.
- One problem of the ""Nihilartikels in scientific literature" is that it is really short in the german source - but then filled up with a lot of german reference articles from papers. I see no sense in putting them here, so I left them out. This is what makes the leftover sentence a bit arkward. Jwrosenzweig describes the meaning of this small chapter quite well - perhaps it would be better to take this explanation over to the article.--Thomas 09:48, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Stuff i wrote at Jmabels user page - it may clarify some edits:
- I tried to stay very close to the german orignal, but even the original isn't easy to read (typical for german science works).
- One thing: The word "dictionary" does not equal the german word "Lexikon". A "dictionary" as I understand it is a book where you would look up translations - or maybe how to write a word (called "Wörterbuch"). A "Lexikon" is a book where you look up meanings and facts about things - well like in the Wikipedia. So I think "encyclopedia" is closer - or even "Lexicon"(if this is a common used word in English). I let the choice up to you of course. I like your chapter about "Motivations for the creation...". Very interesting. I will take it to the german version I think. :-).
- By the way - I just realised that the "Classification"-chapter is out.
- The first sentence in the classification-chapter (in the german version) says nothing more than that Eco's work is a good help for classification. It does not go into specifics - and since I dont know what it really means, I just translated it word to word.
- The second part of that chapter begins with a confusing sentence. But it realy says "The definition of fakes is characteristic for Nihilartikels". Then the indeted part tells that the intention of these fakes are often more than jokes - they have a philosophical thought behind them (about the "communication process"). Was it too confusing in the translation. Should I try to take it in again?--Thomas 01:25, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Can anyone provide evidence that the word Nihilartikel is used in English? --Wik 18:58, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)
- I'm quite sure it isn't. As the article states, both the word and the concept are German. I don't believe we have an equivalent English-language term, but if we do, the article should move there. Lacking an English-language term, I think it is appropriate to borrow the German. -- Jmabel 22:51, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- It's not for us to borrow words like that. The article gives the impression that the word is used in English, i.e. that others have borrowed this word before. It should be clearly stated that it is a German word, not a German-derived English one. In fact, I think we should use a descriptive title like "Fictitious entries in encyclopaedias" rather than this non-English term. --Wik 23:02, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)
- I've now clarified that the term is German, not a common loan-word. As for the title: I don't believe there is any policy against foreign-language words in titles where no English-language word exists, but if you can show me one, I'll gladly defer to it. Quite a few of the foreign-language Wikipedias are chock-full of English-language borrowings in similar situations. -- Jmabel 23:39, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
on: Classification as a literary genre
The section ==Classification as a literary genre== is probably now clearer in the English than in the original German, but I still think it is nearly useless, and I'd be inclined to remove it from the article. In effect, the section says, "If you wanted to classify Nihilartikels as a literary genre, you could start from this essay by Eco (which doesn't mention the term) and could (in some unspecified manner) link it to this book by the (pseudonymous) Luther Blisset. What they (or someone, again unspecified) has to say about 'fakes' is mostly apropos of Nihilartikels, except [now comes the one maybe useful phrase, to my mind - JM] the intentions of Nihilartikels hardly transcend the level of (insider) jokes (among editors of lexica and a good part of the readers)." Then it goes on to a quote from Blisset that I don't find even to be necessarily apropos, more Blissets view on the effect of fakes in general than anything to do with Nihilartikels in particular.
To spare you flipping back and forth, I reproduce the section here:
- Umberto Eco's essay "Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare", originally published in 1967 and collected in Travels in Hyperreality (ISBN 0156913216) can serve as a starting point for a further classification of Nihilartikels in the category of Fakes. It could be linked to the Luther Blissett fakes (cf. Handbuch der Kommunikationsguerilla, Verlag Libertäre Assoziation Hamburg o. J. [1997], ISBN 3922611648).
- The definition of fakes is also characteristic of a Nihilartikel. However, the intentions of Nihilartikels hardly transcend the level of (insider) jokes (among editors of lexica and a good part of the readers):
- "A good fake gains its effectiveness from a productive mixture of imitation, invention, alienation, and exaggeration of prevailing modes of language. It imitates the voice of power possibly perfectly, to be able, in a restricted period of time, without being discovered, to speak in its name and with its authority... The goals is... to generate a communication process in which &ndash often exactly through the (intended) discovery of its falsehood &ndash the structure of the faked communicative situation itself becomes the issue. [...]" (Blisset, op.cit., p. 65)
Yes, I know this is in the German Wikipedia; I don't feel like fighting about it there, because the German Wikipedia has a lot more pretentious vacuous academy-speak than we do (and the French Wikipedia is worse). Anyone object to my removing it from the English-language article and leaving it just here in the talk page? Alternatively, anyone interested in tracking down these works and saying something substantive about how they are relevant, instead of simply asserting their relevance? -- Jmabel 00:10, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Hi Jmabel, I think it is meaningful to include the connection to Eco and Blissett as they are two of the most recent and most succesfull authors to exploit fakes and nihilarticles. In order to explain why they are deemed relevant to the topic, I cannot see how we could avoid a discussion of post-modernism in philosophy and literature, which would lead to more "pretentious vacuous academy-speak". The point in question, briefly, is the following: A fake (like a nihilarticle) is an intrinsic critique of the medium employed for communication, it is in fact meta-communication. It demostrates (in an ironic way), when used as a social-political tool, the strenght of marketing and propaganda. A good example would be so called "viral marketing". As a critical tool, it can be used in various disciplines. This has been argued in theory by Eco and demonstrated in practice by various Luther Blissetts (which is a collective personality, a pseudonym for different groups). I could elaborate on this, if you deem it relevant. I have some of the mentioned works. Greetings, Cat 09:40, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
- Carlo: If you will look at my remark above, you will see that I am already aware that Luther Blissetts is a pseudonym. As I said, sure, I'd be glad to see this material expanded rather than deleted. I agree that some digression into discussion of post-modernism (or at least of certain post-modernist ideas) is inevitable (and relevant). As this stands, it's more a piece of name-dropping than it is anything informative. Yes, by all means flesh it out. I know a lot of Eco's work, but not the "Semiological Guerrilla" article, and I know of the Luther Blissets material, but have not read it, so I am not the one to do this. -- Jmabel 03:04, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
Riegel/Ringel
I notice that 'Michael Riegel "Fehlerquelle" ("Sources of error"), in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin' in the article was recently changed to 'Michael Ringel...' Google searches lead me to think this is probably right, but it's hard to tell: the only hit on either name with "Fehlerquelle" looks irrelevant, and I can find both associated with the Süddeutsche Zeitung independently of copies of this article. Could someone with a login name, who has access to a German library, possibly confirm? (page numbers would be nice on an article citation, too.) -- Jmabel 04:30, Jul 10, 2004 (UTC)
Connections with honeytokens?
I'm wondering if there are connections between Nihilartikels and "honeytokens", which are not yet mentioned at Honeypot but probably should be. Honeytokens are records, inserted into databases that include sensitive information, which have no legitimate data and thus are extremely unlikely to ever be accessed legitimately. The article mentions the use of Nihilartikels to trap plagiarists, and honeytokens are to trap intruders, so there seems to be a connection... -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:10, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Fnord
Why the "see also" link to "Fnord"? The relevance escapes me. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:02, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Spoof article in Grove's Dict, of Music
I understand there is a spoof article in the edition of Grove before the current one. I will make enquiries Apwoolrich 11:38, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Joyce
Exchange moved from the respective user talk pages:
"Some would say" is not exactly a citation. Do you have evidence on this? It's not like Finnegans Wake is short on invented words. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:01, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)
No, I don't have a reference, and no, I am not a Joyce expert.
However, I CAN say that I was exposed to the idea that "quark" was a typo in a printed source before I'd even read Portrait of the Artist. But more importantly, some years later, I'd heard the idea agreed to by a student who wrote their Master's Thesis on Ulysses. Since that time, I had thought that this interpretation was considered, if not accepted, by the mainstream of Joycean scholars. While an internet search conducted in response to your objection found nothing that specifically calls the word a typo, plenty call it a nonsense word. I can understand why the interpretation that Joyce had composed intending that "K" has found adherents; it is the rhyme with bark and Mark. However, I don't think that the internal rhyme created is essential to a reading of the segment; it would read as well if "quark" were rendered "quart"; Gell-Man's beer hall interpretation to support his pronunciation is justified, I think. Further, it is quite established that Joyce was quite amenable to allowing the residue of accident to be preserved in his manuscript. And there I can reference the well-known occurence that during the dictation of Finnegans a visitor had knocked on Joyce's door, to which he had replied "come in." These words were immediately included by his stenographer; thereupon, he looked towards Joyce for approval of the words' immediate deletion. Joyce smirked and told the stenographer to let the words stand. Given that, and given that there is considerable doubt that Joyce was aware of the Middle English form at one time meaning "to caw," and given that the most common interpretation of "quark" is that it was merely a mispronunciation of "quart" by a drunken pubgoer, I don't think that my statement in what after all is not an article on Joyce, but rather on words, should be dismissed out of hand simply because I am not an expert on Joyce, and can't give you a scholarly citation off the top of my head. However, if you feel so strongly about it that you feel you must delete it, go ahead; I am not expert enough in Joyce write the persuasive paper necessary, nor do I in any event wish to participate in an edit war.
Rastro 01:05, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
- Given the lack of citation I am going to revert this. Probably a quarter of the words in Finnegans Wake are in some sense nonsense words. In "Three quarks for Muster Mark" I see no more reason to think "quark" is a typo than "Muster". -- Jmabel | Talk 01:17, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
<end moved comments>
If someone has citation for this, then it belongs somewhere in Wikipedia, although even then its relevance to this article is not obvious to me.
Nihilartikels in Wikipedia
It strikes me that in an environment such as Wikipedia, we ought to have lots of examples of good Nihilartikels to point to. Yes, I know a lot of them have been sent to BJAODN, but even those we can referenced (although we'd have to use external links to reference them, so they work when content is copied by other sites). I added the classic San Serriffe, including a link to an early version which contained no explicit clue that it was a hoax. What about User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder - would this one be a good one to add? I only hesitate because I'm not sure that will be its permanent location. Noel (talk) 14:10, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:No self-references. JFW | T@lk 17:59, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- "No self-references" isn't a problem here. Read it more closely: at most it means we'd need an external link. However, User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder is not a Nihilartikel, the joke is much too transparent. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:13, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
Eh, the closest I've found that is mistakeable for a valid Wikipedia article is Uncyclopedia. I get the feeling Uncyclopedia articles could be squeezed into Wiki articles without anyone noticing at first. It is clearly a parody, but because it is easy enough to link to, as if an article there were valid, I'm saying it might count. --samwaltz 15:01, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
- I've been thinking about this, following someone adding Esquivalience as a dicdef. I know we discourage self-references, but I do think it is possibly worth noting this; a lot of Wikipedia articles are added explicitly as "tests", to see if someone can get misinformation in. (I VfDed three two weeks back, all about blatantly fictional Aztec gods - but they'd been ignored for a couple of months.)
- As with those, almost all these articles get deleted; usually people try too hard, and make it obvious it's a fake. I think we can be reasonably sure there's a trivial number of fictional articles in here, mostly biographies, but it is likely that a lot will never be found except by random chance. I strongly suspect that other Wikipedia-like projects have the same problem - h2g2 has editorial oversight, but you could probably get someone "too obscure for the DNB" in.
- Would a section discussing the existence and recurrence of "breaching" Nihilartikels, like this, in online open-access reference works such as Wikipedia be sufficiently non-self-referential? It is an interesting topic, one that would complement the article quite well. The only major problem is that it'd have to by definition be mostly unreferenced; all the articles in question are either rewritten (which is less interesting, since it only covers a subset) or deleted when we find them. Shimgray 14:16, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
- We do already mention an old version of Uqbar that was a Nihilartikel. I don't think self-reference is a problem here; I am a little concerned about effectively encouraging people to create Nihilartikels in Wikipedia in hopes of getting mentioned. I think it probably is worth discussing the phenomenon of how this becomes especially tricky in a radically open work like a wiki. You might want to look for more examples of articles which, like the cited version of Uqbar, sat here for a significant period of time before being detected. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:15, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
- Uqbar lasted for ~3 weeks before you tagged it disputed, but then another three months before deletion. Did you know it was fictional when you tagged it, or just suspect? (Huh. San Serriffe lasted less than twelve hours!). And there was Jamie Kane recently... Teothuauci was the one I saw - deleted now, but IIRC a couple of months before being caught. Battle of Blenau, too.
- If you can remember any examples, I'd love to hear them - but I don't have the stamina to go digging through VfD. Shimgray 15:53, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
- I've put in 4 nihilartikels into Wikipedia so far, with 2 being found and subsequently deleted, yet leaving 2 undetected as of November 25 2005. These nihilartikels have begun to appear less bogus, as they have been "wikified" by some other users (including a sysop). So there's gotta be hundred of nihilartikels in here, statistically. --Wonderfool t(c) 15:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Toalettpapir
The article contains the hidden text "User talk:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder is NOT a good example. It's in user space, and it's more of a parody than a true Nihilartikel". As of now, the front page of Wikipedia has 'Today's featured Nihilartikel', with a link through to that very page.-Ashley Pomeroy 09:58, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Yes, and in fact I'm the person responsible both for the text here and for the suggestion that we use that labelling on the front page! "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson. Mostly my issue is that it's in user space, so it's not really part of the encyclopedia. And, paradoxical as it may seem, explicitly linking to it as a Nihilartikel made it less of one, since the stealth element was removed. I suppose now that it has been so prominently displayed, though, the case against mentioning it here is weaker. What would people think of having a link from the article to a 1 Apr 2005 version of the article and a remark about it having been an April Fool's Day feature on Wikipedia? -- Jmabel | Talk 21:17, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
Trap streets
Does the note on Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co. really belong here, or just in trap street? -- Jmabel | Talk 03:27, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
- A trap street may not be copyrighted but a Nihilartikel really can be copyrighted. I can create an article about Martian squirrels. If you reproduce it without my license, you're dead meat (at least on theory). I think Nihilartikels are a different story. -- Toytoy 05:35, May 20, 2005 (UTC)
U-Boot
We seem to keep going back and forth on the phrase "or U-Boot (German for submarine)". I really don't care if it is in the article or not, but a recent edit summary suggesting it is vandalism is certainly wrong. This is in the obviously well researched German article from which this was originally translated; it was put there by the primary author of that article.
Again, there is no "proper English" name for this phenomenon. What little literature I've been able to find in English uses the German Nihilartikel, so that is what I have entitled this. U-Boot seems to have an equally good German pedigree, but I've never seen it used with this meaning in English, so its inclusion here is not very important. But it is almost certainly not a hoax. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:48, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
- It's certainly in there. How very odd; I'd have assumed it was a rather odd joke as well. I suspect this'll pose problems, becuase it *looks* like vandalism... anyway, the link - [1] "Nihilartikel (auch: U-Boote)".
- Suggested solution - the name U-boot doesn't seem to be in use in English, probably because "Nihilartikel" just sounds so damn funky. If it's accurate, though, it is worth including as an alternate name. Perhaps if we phrase the initial section as:
- A Nihilartikel is a deliberately fictitious entry in an encyclopedia or dictionary, which is intended to be more or less quickly recognized as false by the reader. The term "Nihilartikel" is German and combines "nihil" (Latin for "nothing") and "Artikel" (German for "article"). There does not appear to be any commonly used English-language term for this phenomenon. The phenomenon is also known by the term "U-boot" in German, meaning submarine.
- ...it'll seem less silly. Also, this gives us a useful point to hang other manifestations of the term, if someone turns up and says "Hey, Russian has a great word for this exact concept, it's a popular sport amongst academics in Vladivostok...". Thoughts? Shimgray 14:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
George Psalmanazar
Why mention George Psalmanazar? That article is about a hoax, but as far as I can tell, it's not about a Nihilartikel. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:03, May 20, 2005 (UTC)
Alleged nihilartikel in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
I have the 1980 edition of the New Grove, all 20 volumes of it, and there is no entry for Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup, either under Esrum, Hellerup, Henrik or Dag. Have you perhaps spelled it incorrectly, or referenced the wrong edition? Antandrus (talk) 01:06, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
- Problem solved: turns out I have the 1995 reprint, which excised them. There were actually two nihilartikels in the 1980 edition, and they're written about succinctly (and hilariously) in the 2002 New Grove article "Spoof." I added all this info to the article. Antandrus (talk) 20:13, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Added Mountweazel information
In this New Yorker column from August 2005 http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050829ta_talk_alford comes information about an english name for this: Mountweazel. I didn't add a link to the article because I don't know how to do that or even if Wikipedia links to outside sources.
- I don't think they are using this as a common noun. I think they are using this the same way one would say, for example "He was a Bendict Arnold." I do not think this qualifies as an English-language word for this phenomenon. There are only 340 Google hits for "Mountweazel" (I guess there will be more as a result of this discussion!), and nearly all of the first 40 are simply discussions of that one 1975 Nihilartikel. "Nihilartikel" has 11,900 Google hits; roughly half of the first 40 are in English. This word "Nihilartikel" has passed into English. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:45, September 8, 2005 (UTC)
- I've added a redirect from Mountweazel. Shimgray 12:10, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
Sokal
Does the Sokal Affair qualify ? Ze miguel 13:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)