Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Daniel Brandt’s Wikipedia Watch Victim of Hoax?

According to this Wikipedia talk page, Daniel Brandt – who put up a watch site title “Hive Mind v Brandt” to reveal the identity of anonymous Wikipedia users involved in the editing of an entry on him – fell for an elaborate hoax. A user by the (fake) name of Callum Derbyshire says he emailed Daniel giving him false information on a user found on the Watch page, and Daniel went along to include the false information Callum provided. Callum told Daniel the real name of the user nicknamed “Splash” was “Daniel Atta Benzona”... which is actually Hebrew for “Daniel you are ***.” Callum says his hoax “makes a mockery of [Daniel’s] attack on [Wikipedia] which comes down to the problem that any anonymous fraudster can get anything added in – it appears that the same applies to Brandt’s site.”

If this hoax did indeed happen as stated – I don’t have proof in either way – Daniel Brandt now reverted his Watch page, as user Splash is currently showing as “John Doe #6.” I’ll invite Daniel to post his view on things here.

Daniel Brandt’s Wikipedia ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (11)

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