All the cool kids have hyphens.

theatlantic:

How the Professor who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit

A woman opens an old steamer trunk and discovers tantalizing clues that a long-dead relative may actually have been a serial killer, stalking the streets of New York in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A beer enthusiast is presented by his neighbor with the original recipe for Brown’s Ale, salvaged decades before from the wreckage of the old brewery—the very building where the Star-Spangled Banner was sewn in 1813. A student buys a sandwich called the Last American Pirate and unearths the long-forgotten tale of Edward Owens, who terrorized the Chesapeake Bay in the 1870s.

These stories have two things in common. They are all tailor-made for viral success on the internet. And they are all lies.

Each tale was carefully fabricated by undergraduates at George Mason University who were enrolled in T. Mills Kelly’s course, Lying About the Past. Their escapades not only went unpunished, they were actually encouraged by their professor. Four years ago, students created a Wikipedia page detailing the exploits of Edward Owens, successfully fooling Wikipedia’s community of editors. This year, though, one group of students made the mistake of launching their hoax on Reddit. What they learned in the process provides a valuable lesson for anyone who turns to the Internet for information.

Read more. [Image: lisaquinn565/Wordpress]

Let the record show that I am fundamentally opposed to lies on the internet. I know Wikipedia isn’t a academically citable source, and I’m okay with that—access to journals has become easy enough as to allow for authentic, rigorous research online. But misleading people causes systemic damage to the internet’s ability to spark creativity and innovative research. Some of the best research ideas come from factual bits of mediocrity buried here-and-there on the vast plains of the interwebs.

Digital literacy is not yet at the place where this type of hoax is readily uncovered by the “everyuser.” Until we get there, this work should come with a disclaimer.

#endrant