Panini

So my infinitely clever username 'Tedder2" was blocked yesterday so I had to come up with a new one (toelick). Today's Wikiprank was suggested by Jeff. If you have something you'd like to see pranked leave your suggestion in the comments. 

Article HERE

The first panino may have been known as early as 600 BC however was not discovered until the 16th century when the recipe was discovered in the spine of the original book of Aesop’s Fables. The small scroll hidden in the spine of Aesop’s original work was titled Aesop’s Fabulous Cookbook, and featured unusual recipes such as The Tortoise and the Hare, The Fox and the Grapes, and The Ant and the Grasshopper. While most of Aesop’s recipes were unusual and not suited for the tastes of modern society, his recipe titled The Boy Who Cried Panini was an instant success. It called for two entire loaves of bread, an entire wheel of cheese, and entire side of roast pig to be assembled and placed between two heated stones to cook. It is believed that panini were originally intended to be only used for ancient eating competitions; however it was found to be so tasty that sandwich makers eventually adapted it to its present form of single serving portions.

Ebonics

No suggestions were left for today so I chose the first letter on the list I haven't done yet. If you'd like to see something pranked on Wikipedia leave your suggestion in the comments.

Article HERE

The term Ebonics is a portmanteau of the words ebb and phonics. Ebb is defined as a gradual decline and phonics is defined as of or relating to speech; therefore Ebonics literally stands for a gradual decline in speech. Derived from English, Ebonics draws heavily from the phonetic pronunciation of words spoken by one who is extremely inebriated. Ebonics is said to have gotten its start from young, white male fraternity brothers at Harvard University who would frequently leave nearly incoherent drunken voice messages on young females’ answering machines. When approached about the offensive messages, the young white men would blame their singular Black friend for their transgressions, thereby associating the incoherent speech (Ebonics) forever with Black people.

UPDATE: Prank was reverted after 36 minutes. Oh, also, my new account got blocked after only three pranks. My last account got as far as 8 pranks before it was blocked :(

M*A*S*H

Today's article was recommended by Anonymous in the comments of my other blog. If you'd like to see something Wikipranked, leave your suggestions in the comments (of this blog).

Article HERE


After the series ended, a number of the M*A*S*H cast suffered serious post-traumatic stress (PTS) from the numerous and horrific wounds they witnessed in the hospital. Because PTS was little understood at the time, these cast members went untreated and soon began losing their minds. In the early 1980s, a band of delusional M*A*S*H cast members befriended an African American man living in a van down by the river who went only by the name of Mr. T. They explained to Mr. T that they were ex-Army and that they were on a mission of justice and convinced him to join. The intellectually disabled group terrorized southern California in their conversion van for five long years, evading capture by using ingenious plots and automatic weapons. The local authorities referred to the group as “a bunch of assholes,” however the media censored the name and shortened it to the “A-Team”. The group’s antics ended when Mr. T fell asleep at the wheel after smoking copious amounts of marijuana and crashed the van into a gas station, causing an entire city block to explode in a ball of flame. No bodies were ever recovered from the wreckage, opening the door to numerous conspiracy theories that the group is still alive.


UPDATE: Prank was reverted after only 2 minutes! They said that my edit was "unsourced" and "controversial".

Sirius Satellite Radio

So I thought long and hard about what tedder had told me about redeeming myself in the Wikipedia community, and I had to make a choice between trying to salvage respect for my username by legitimately editing a serious article, or just ignoring the advice and starting a new username to continue pranking. So I decided to do a little bit of both. I created a new username that gives a shoutout to tedder, the guy who blocked me originally. Without further ado, I give you Wikipranks by the newest member, tedder2! My new Wikipedia profile states, "tedder2: twice as good as tedder1." And to fulfill my obligation to edit a serious article, I decided to edit Sirius Satellite Radio. As always, if you'd like to see something Wikipranked, leave your suggestions in the comments.

Article HERE

David Margolese came up with the idea for satellite radio when he was travelling in the car with his wife, Hilda, while listening to FM radio. Margolese’s favorite group, Dave Matthews Band, was playing their new song Satellite when the radio station prematurely ended the song to cut to a commercial break for maxi pads. Margolese became so enraged, that he slammed the car’s dashboard with his fist, accidentally causing the airbags to deploy. The impact from the passenger airbag caused irreparable damage to Hilda’s larynx, which was replaced with a donor canine sphincter as the only means to save her. For six weeks after the surgery, Hilda’s breath smelled like dog flatulence which caused David to pick up many of his obscure hobbies in an attempt to avoid contact with his wife as much as possible. His three favorite pastimes included astronomy, model rocketry, and HAM radio, and in a flash of brilliance he came up with the idea to combine all three to create satellite radio.

UPDATE: Prank was reverted after 7 hours and 7 minutes without comment.

Still Blocked :(

So while I have been enjoying my time off from editing Wikipedia, I thought I'd make an attempt to apologize for my transgressions in an attempt to regain my editing power from the Administrators (or Asspoundistrators as I like to call them, but not to their faces). Basically the way it works is that you have to kiss an administrator's ass hard enough that they decide to unblock you. Here is my first attempt:

To whom it may concern: I profusely apologize for making vandalicious edits to Wikipedia. My edits were intended to be good faith edits and were not meant as jokes. I received my associate degree in Anthropological Synthesis from DeVry Online University last spring and was hoping to use my newfound skill set to educate others. Unfortunately, my mother was a single parent who never had much schooling and would teach my younger brother and I facts that she made up to make herself sound intelligent. Sometimes I forget my mother was an alcoholic psychopath and erroneously recall her lies to us as factual evidence. If unblocked, I will promise to verify my facts with the Wikipedia community before publishing them in articles where they will be mistaken for vandalism. Your understanding is greatly appreciated. Respectfully, Mike.

Unfortunately, my convincing argument fell on idiot ears and my request to be unblock was denied with the response:
 
Although it includes an apology, I find that this request does not make me confident that unblocking this account will be good for the encyclopedia. 
 
Well whooptie-effin-doo! Apparently I don't kiss ass with enough tongue. So I tried again, but with more emotion. And that emotion was sarcasm:
 
I promise I know lots of stuff real good. If you just give me another chance I will become a shining bacon in the Wikipedia community. As the great Gary Marshall once wrote, "It's always helpful to learn from your mistakes because then your mistakes seem worthwhile." Basically what he's saying is, don't block me from editing, because that would be a huge mistake. I sincerely ask you to reconsider unblocking me, and I promise I will make it up to you one thousand-fold.
 
To my surprise, my good friend tedder responded personally to my second request:
 
This request for unblocking has been declined due to your history of vandalism and/or disruption to this encyclopedia. However, we are willing to give you another chance provided that you can earn back the trust of the Wikipedia community. To be unblocked you need to demonstrate that you are willing and able to contribute positively to Wikipedia.
 
Tedder then goes on to describe how I can make up for my history of vandalism by finding an article in need of legitimate editing and sending him a legitimately revised version. If it sufficiently tickles his fancy, then maybe he'll consider unblocking me. So what do you, dear reader, think I should do? Should I bend over and let tedder stick his strap-on of authority deep into the bowels of my conscience by trying to do a legitimate edit? OR, do I just get another user name and continue pranking at my own free will? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

I finally got blocked from Wikipedia!

Well, it finally happened. I tried to put it off as long as possible, I really did. As a matter of fact, other Wikipedia users would leave warnings on my user talk page and I was re-editing their warnings to sound like compliments. For example, John wrote:

Thank you for your contribution, but we are trying to write an encyclopedia here, so please keep your edits factual and neutral. Our readers are looking for serious articles and will not find joke edits amusing. Remember that Wikipedia is a widely-used reference tool, so we have to take what we do here seriously. If you'd like to experiment with editing, use the sandbox to get started. Thank you.

Which I revised to say:

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! We appreciate your edits to our online encyclopedia. You have an incredible knowledge base and we can all learn a lot from listening to you. In fact, we'd like to offer you administration privileges to edit articles willy nilly as you see fit. Many of our current administrators are assholes and we need someone like you to show them how Wikipedia should be run. After all, we don't want it turning into Prickipedia here. So keep up the good work and we look forward to seeing your future contributions.

Another user, tedder, wrote:

Please stop introducing jokes into articles, such as those you created at Road rage. Wikipedia is a serious encyclopedia, and contributions of this type are considered vandalism. Continuing to add jokes and other disruptive content into articles may lead to your being blocked from editing.

Which I revised to say:

I find your arguments compelling, well worded, and downright fantastical. Your every word spews joy from my heart like the froth from a Mentos dropped into a two-liter bottle of Coke. If I were more self-assured, I'd ask you to have my child. Alas, I will just settle for writing you mild compliments on your user talk page. Humbly yours, Mike.

But that only fooled those clever Wikipedia police for so long. On January 29th, Fastily wrote:

This is the only warning you will receive for your disruptive edits. If you vandalize Wikipedia again, you will be blocked from editing.

But I simply deleted that threat. Then on February 4th, Ridernyc threatened:

This is the only warning you will receive for your disruptive edits. If you vandalize Wikipedia again, as you did to Darth Vader, you will be blocked from editing.

Strange, that sounds oddly familiar (?). Then three minutes later, my good friend tedder wrote:

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing because your account is being used only for vandalism. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest this block by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} below, but you should read our guide to appealing blocks first.

Party poopers...

Well, on to the next account I suppose.

Darth Vader

 Today's prank was suggested by Paul. If you'd like to see a topic get pranked on Wikipedia, leave your suggestion in the comments. Also, I added a Digg button at the bottom of each post, so if you like what you read, Digg away!

Article HERE

After the success of Star Wars, many of its actors, including: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher, went on to illustrious careers, garnering numerous academy awards. Darth Vader, on the other hand, struggled to make a name for himself as a legitimate actor. He was hindered by being typecast as an evil villain, but more importantly he faced excessive discrimination for being a cyborg in a mostly human society. In fact, automatonophobia (or the fear of humanoid robots) was so prevalent in the early 1980s, that James Cameron went so far as to cast an actual human (Arnold Schwarzenegger) for the role of a cyborg over Darth Vader in the box office hit The Terminator. It wasn’t until 1987 that Darth Vader was able to land the lead role of Officer Alexander James Murphy in the RoboCop trilogy. Following the limited success of the RoboCop trilogy, Vader retired from acting to pursue a career in the music industry. His most notable accomplishment was his creation of Auto-Tune, which was developed as a byproduct of tinkering with his own voice modulation unit, and which he sold to T-Pain in 2005 for an undisclosed amount.