Talk:San Serriffe
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Very funny! This is totally fictional - the part about ocean islands moving(!) is a giveaway. I suspect there's a good story behind the The Guardian reporting this as if it were real - somebody lost a bet? Say the name out loud, comes out as sans serif... Stan 14:29, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I submit that this is actually worth of an article. The original hoax is a very famous one. I'll make a stub and see what people think. DJ Clayworth 19:03, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Your word "hoax" seems to admirably indicate where it should be located.Moriori 19:16, Dec 2, 2003 (UTC)
Actually, I think my original version does rather better than the current purely factual stub: it (a) makes it perfectly clear that it is a hoax (b) gives proper references to the source (and to some of the secondary literature that has developed around it) (c) gives some idea of the flavour of the original (d) is funny. So I'm going to revert to it. seglea 21:12, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
We're on dangerous ground here. Actually I quite like the idea of having a little April Fool article in Wikipedia, but I'm concerned that if we leave it everybody and his dog will use it as an excuse to add anything to WP claiming "it's an April Fool". What's the criterian for adding stuff here? Does it have to be stuff that the Guardian published in the original, or does anything go? What do others think? DJ Clayworth 21:49, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- There's certainly a place for famous April Fool's jokes (no list of hoaxes that includes kremvax, Piltdown Man, etc?), but being fundamentally a dry factual source that sucks the humor out of everything, Wikipedia mustn't present any hoax as if it were real; people not familiar with English, geography, etc, could easily take this as real, tell friends about it, then get humiliated and hate Wikipedia for being misleading. I think a good compromise would be to lead with "is a hoax", then have the body describe in detail. Many of the Tolkien articles do this; see Thangorodrim for instance, which first says "is fictional", then describes it as if it were real, but also shifts to meta-comments to talk about how it was composed. For San Serriffe, non-English speakers will appreciate explanations of what the names are making fun of ("Lower Caise" -> "lower case", etc). In general, the bar should be pretty high for "famous" hoaxes, but size of audience seems like a useful guide - say, at least 10,000 people must have seen it or heard about it. Stan 22:22, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
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- I'll make a start on it Dysprosia 22:27, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Sorry to be a downer, but I don't think this (well-written, funny) article actually belongs in the encyclopedia. Considering that 1) the place is fictional, 2) it's not a particularly famous fictional place (only referenced in one hoax article), and 3) it's flirting with copyright violation (not much commentary, mostly a recapitulation of the article content), I'd think it should probably be moved to the San Serriffe hoax, and reduced to maybe one paragraph (describe the hoax, give some highlights, describe reaction, link to article). There's not much information on how the hoax was accepted, either. I guess I'm just thinking: the original was funny, and this article is mostly worthwhile because it rips off the original. Why, then, should we have this article? --ESP 22:38, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Recent revision now makes this an article about the hoax, which includes a description of the fictional nation as a sidebar. I vote to keep this article, as a prime example of "how to incorporate" stuff like thise. --Uncle Ed 14:48, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
As the resident party pooper, I have to point out that the material needs to be better integrated. "Fictional material follows" is not an acceptable solution.—Eloquence 21:01, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
- I'm inclined to disagree — I think this article should stay. The hoax is reprised to some extent in most April Fool's Day editions of The Guardian and is somewhat renowned amongst regular readers. — OwenBlacker 00:15, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)
