Jakarta –
A user of the question-and-answer site Zhihu, in China, stumbled across hoax is more than 10 years old. That person is Yifan, a fantasy novel writer who is browsing Wikipedia for inspiration. Turns out, the hoax makers were peat mothers.
Originally according to Yifan’s story in Zhihu, he came across an inscription about ‘Kashen Silver Mine’ which is said to have 40 thousand workers. This mine is said to have been discovered in Russia. He was immediately interested in exploring the issue further.
“After finding this information, I wanted to share it with a number of friends, then I found a problem,” he said as reported by IFL Science, Friday (1/7/2022).
After his friends did some research, they concluded that this Kashen silver mine didn’t really exist. They started investigating the user who created the page, and found that the Chinese version of this Russian history tends to be much longer and more detailed than the Russian one.
“There are characters that are not on the Anglo-Russian Wiki on the Chinese Wiki, and these characters are even included in historical figures,” Yifan wrote.
These now-deleted pages are made as detailed as a novel. Zhemao, that’s the name of the culprit, was caught using multiple accounts to create this fake page. Editing lasted for more than a decade, at least since January 17, 2010. Despite concerted efforts by the editors Wikipedia In order to clean up the mess left by the scammer, they worry that the false information has spread to other pages.
For the background of this hoax maker, Zhemao is a full-time housewife who started translating content from Russian to Chinese. Zhemao is said to be citing non-existent books, and page numbers from original books that do not support his claims.
“As the saying goes, to lie, you have to lie more. I was reluctant to erase the hundreds of thousands of words I wrote, but as a result, I ended up losing millions of words, and a circle of academic friends,” Zhemao wrote in English in an apology letter to Wikipedia.
“The trouble I caused is hard to make up for, so maybe a permanent ban is the only option. My current knowledge isn’t enough to make a living, so in the future I’ll learn the craft, work honestly, and not do stupid things like again,” he said.
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