Microsoft Open Directory Project Spoof Part 2

[Brett_Tabke]

Continued from part 1 [webmasterworld.com]

---

Is there anything anywhere official by the ODP that talks about the ODP's actions today?

[europeforvisitors]

One thing I noticed was a blurb on an ODP travel page that said something like (and this is a paraphrase):

"Travel editors, please process URL submissions so we can catch up on our backlog."

That blurb is gone now. Was it the work of a hacker?

[Jill]

Brett:

So far I haven't seen anything official. When I looked ealier there wasn't even much talk about it on the boards. Speculation from editors and no one in the hierarchy was saying anything. Anyone else find a definitive explanation?

Although it was a very well thought out trick I'm not sure why MS would not be very pissed at the pot shots ODP/AOL took at them. Yes, I know it was supposed to be a joke, but this was pretty extreme even for April Fool. I tend to agree with Brett that this was a real lack of judgement on the part of AOL - that is IF this was their doing.

[Brett_Tabke]

When you consider that both AOL AND Netscape have recently filed suits against Microsoft, it's not funny - it's in bad taste.

[MarkHutch]

AOL has had their share of legal problems, too. I just can't believe that they were behind this type of stunt. I still think that someone from the outside, maybe a former employee was behind this action. Maybe there will be more info tomorrow. With all the problems in the middle east today, something like this isn't going to make many headlines.

[Beachboy]

I thought it was funny, however I have never been known for good taste.

;)

[mivox]

I'm with you there, Beachboy. I thought it was funny as heck.

[skibum]

News.com [news.com.com] picked it up. Apparently F****d comany had a spoof going as well.

[Key_Master]

"A fake press release that in no way represents anyone or anything real."

HTML source from this press release [microsoft.com].

Yeah, right!

Microsoft provided much of the bandwidth for the gag. Well, not anymore since they have blocked the image and script requests. I'm guessing they were not that amused.

I'm not a Microsoft fan (I know, hard to believe) but I didn't find the prank to be funny or even slightly amusing. One day it might be our reality.

[Jill]

I don't want to beat this into the ground, but has anyone heard anything officialy as to who pulled the stunt? I'm sure it was a joke pulled by AOL/ODP as nothing was said to the editors, and I'm pretty sure they would have made a statement had it been a hack. Seems like there's an awful lot of talk all over the web about it and not all of it is in favor of what was done. I was sure they'd say something today, like funny - ha ha or anything... just curious.

[EliteWeb]

This was not a 'hack'. ODP just had a few people working on the design and features for the April fools joke. Stunts like this have been done before and it is nothing new. Why would a hacker do this on April fools, most of the time hackers who deface (as this would be called ;) web pages just change one file and make sure their name is to be seen noting that there was a security issue.

Not a hack - Just my opinion.

[hasbeen]

ZDNet had a mention of it in an article on April Fool's:

[zdnet.com.com...]

Not much by way of explanation...

[Jill]

EliteWeb:

As I said, I do not believe it was a hack. Just seems a bit hush hush on the part of ODP since there are so many questions being pointed in their direction. We all have our own opinions on whether or not it was funny. Doesn't bother me one way or the other. I am just curious to see if anyone owns up to it. I guess we're just supposed to assume, as I do, that it was something they planned. IMO, it wasn't a real smart move, though I doubt anything will come from it.

[Liane]

I doubt anything will come of it and I doubt anyone will own up to it ... for obvious reasons. The "thrill" was in the "gag itself" not "owning" the gag. Ownership could be costly and I found no humour in it at all.

[MarkHutch]

From this news report, it does look like it could have been an inside
job.

yahoo story [story.news.yahoo.com]

Kind of bad timing really, when AOL was trying to float billions in bonds
today to improve it's cash flow.

http://webcenter.newssearch.netscape.com/aolns_display.adp ?key=200204021034000235884_aolns.src

<edit>shortened url</edit>
(edited by: Brett_Tabke)

[Brett_Tabke]

The cnet, zdnet, and yahoo stories are all the same story.

[ettore]

I won't claim ownership for the prank, but I claim that I was one of the first pointing you in the right direction with my early post, even though it was sort of inline with the ongoing joke.

Lots of people were amused and laughed, lots of people found no humour in it. The very existance of this thread, as well as other threads and articles around the Web, proves that it was in any case something that made several people jumping off their chair, which is the purpose of any well-planned April's fool. :)

I don't think anyone will own up to it (but who knows ?), and no, it wasn't a hack.

[jordancpeterson]

Hmm... I still can’t believe you guys don’t really know what happened (unless you guys are still playing your April fools jokes). :) There is only two staff at the ODP. They did something like this last year but not as public and not very big. This year for the past several weeks all of us editors have been speculating what they were going to do. This kind of blew our minds (or at least mine).

Anyway I liked the whole day yesterday. Now I’m not sure how staff is going to top that next year. With their bold move don’t be to surprised if things get real interesting next year (and I don’t just mean the ODP). It’ll be a ton of fun! :)

By the way didn’t I see some news article today about Netscape and Microsoft joining up together to sue some guy or something?

[Brett_Tabke]

Last I heard, there were 26 paid staff at the odp. 7 techs. (how accurate that is, I'm not sure).

[ettore]

FTR, staff has now been reduced to 2 (one tech), who report directly to Skrenta.

Most people with root access you see in the [http://dmoz.org/edoc/editall.html]meta list[/url] are not to be considered staff.

OTOH, you can notice an increased number of meta editors, catmods, and editalls...

[Brett_Tabke]

Thanks Ettore - I didn't know this.

[Mike_Mackin]

>staff has now been reduced to 2

Didn't that happen in early September of last year?
Is Chris Tolles still there?

[Laisha]

Didn't that happen in early September of last year?

It happened a few days after this article [traffick.com] was published. Or at least Mr. Keating surprised even the most knowledgeable editors by announcing it to be so days after the article.

[Brett_Tabke]

Well this whole thing makes a great deal more sense now. I sure couldn't see something like this getting by that many people.

[adamxcl]

DMOZ is a goner as it stands now....staff almost nothing. People can't become editors from what I read in many places... it's very corrupt. Just looking at it today, one company has three different related sites placed all over different directories (deep linking) while other quality sites are nowhere to be found.

In another search, almost every engine has one good free authorative source at the top. ODP doesn't have the website at all, just a bunch of junk. Are they just trying to list stuff that no one else does or what is placed by corrupt editors?

[Skunkeh]

I'm having trouble believing the complete lack of sense of humour being displayed on this thread. I'm from the UK, and I knew that the US had a problem with an overly litigious culture but this is ridiculous!

It was April FOOLS day - the idea is to FOOL people. The internet community has had a tradition of running pranks like this for years, so why on earth would something like this be the result of a hack? It was a joke plain and simple, and an obvious one at that (if MS had bought the ODP would they REALLY put "monopolise do it better!" in the site footer? Could a hacker REALLY change every page on the site and have them stay like that all day?)

OK it was a bit risky getting the paperclip to swear (not that I saw it swearing myself) but other than that I can't spot a single unfunny element of the prank. There's no chance of Microsoft taking legal action because the PR hit they took would be way too bad (even big corporations should be able to take a joke on April the first).

I'm sorry my first post on here ended up being a rant - I've been following these forums for a while and they are a fantastic resource, but the attitude in this thread really surprised me!

[Quadrille]

All very strange; in the UK, the Queen Mum popped her aged clogs, so few of the newspapers dared do an April Fool's joke.

So I depended on the Internet to do it for me this year - Sad to see people who claim to understand the Internet showing a complete lack of sense of humour.

I suppose people are just scared of upsetting the money men these days. Sad, very sad.

Who exactly suffered from the trick? Er, no-one, except a few facial muscles.

[GetTheJoke]

Anyone else noticing here that the "membership level" of people on this forum is inversely proportional to having anything that could remotely be called a sense of humor?

I'm at a conference where a representative of MSN is also attending. We discussed the April Fool's gag during the lunch break. He says the people he works with (though not quite Bill Gates level, still MSN employees) had a good laugh over it.

Now come on, if people working for the company known for its lack of humor can even take this joke, what the hell is wrong with you so-called web experts?

I'm guessing you missed the joke where Linus Torvalds purchased Microsoft and replaced all the employees with monkeys. They could program a better OS.

[NFFC]

>inversely proportional to having anything that could remotely be called a sense of humor?

lol, I think it shows that the US and [at least] the UK have different ideas of what is funny, I thought it was the tops.

BTW humor is spelt humour, just a FYI.

[Brad]

I thought it was very funny. Excellent parody. After 2001 we could use a few more laughs.

And nobody got hurt. :)