Usenet Psychic Wars With Wikipedia

rlandmann writes "John Patrick Ennis, whose nutty predictions as Sollog (Son of Light, Light of God) are familiar to many usenetters, may have bitten off more than he could chew when he picked Wikipedia as his latest vehicle for spamvertising." Click through for the rest of rlandmann's story.

Early last week an anonymous editor with a posting style remarkably like the one widely believed to be that of Sollog himself contributed this article to the encyclopedia, boasting of Sollog's prophesizing prowess and mathematical genius. Less than twenty-four hours later, the article was looking a little more balanced and encyclopedic. Along with Sollog's claims, it now carried the revelation that not everyone is as convinced of the accuracy of Sollog's power of prediction as he himself is, along with links to some rather unflattering appraisals of his work.

A week of spectacular net.kookery has since transpired, replete with vandalism of the article, bizarre legal threats, long semi-coherent rants with LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS, a rich bounty of links to Ennis-run sites, and a legion of anonymous posters with exactly the same writing style as one another all strenuously affirming that they are individual and distinct "fans" of Sollog and not the man himself. Unable to accept that Wikipedia's policy of presenting a Neutral Point of View means that an article on Sollog would have to include both pro- and anti-Sollog material, and unable to force other Wikipedia editors to accept his version of reality, Ennis has taken instead to making hostile phone calls to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales at his home, and setting up his very own Wikipedia and Wales hate site.

Whether or not Sollog really did predict Princess Diana's death, the Oklahoma bombing, 9/11, the crash of TWA flight 800, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and most of the natural disasters in the US over the last few years, he doesn't seem to have foreseen his inability to control the picture that Wikipedia presents of him to the world.

See here for the current revision of the article, which may or may not be currently in a vandalized state.

Comments

I AM THE ALLMIGHTY SOLLOG

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict that wikipediasucks.com is about to be slashdotted.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[slavemowgli]

Maybe we could make and distribute a "make love not sollog" screensaver that DDOSes that site. ^_~

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[cornjones]

He has a lower UID than you, I would guess that he didn't "just make that account"

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Ilgaz]

looks like guy an his followers dos'ed their own brains long before.

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[raju1kabir]

Here's one of his sites [babes.bomis.com]. You decide whether or not to call it "pornography".

That's a little disingenuous. Bomis (which goes way back, wow, I haven't thought about it in years) is a web-ring operator. They provide the infrastructure for similar-themed sites to find each other and provide links that help with mutual traffic generation. Click around bomis.com and you'll see rings for various types of aircraft, turkey recipes, stuffed animals, tips for pregnant mothers, woodworking, and everything else under the sun. One of the many subject categories is fan sites for nude models (and, I'm sure, the "fan" sites are largely dominated by pay porn operators). I could give you a link in google or yahoo that would do the same thing. Is Yahoo a pornographer?