But it sounds so plausible...

[orichalcum]

I'm looking up good examples of fraudulent websites to present to my students as examples of "why you should not blindly trust the Net for all your historical research, especially if it involves Cleopatra and/or gladiators."

Some of my favorites so far, useful for academics, librarians, and everyone else:

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

The History of Boilerplate, a Victorian Mechanical Man

A Study of Feorran Grammar

The Emily Chesley Reading Circle

Comments

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

Well, of course, there's this:
http://www.dhmo.org/
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Also, the "Mars is Boring" Letter of Annoyance on the Emily Chesley site is fantastic.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know that one, of course, but for this paper I was trying to stick to more humanities-based ones. :) And I figured everyone else already knew about the threat of dihydrogen monoxide.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, the threat of dihydrogen monoxide, while known to the point of banality to many of *us*, is actually quite poorly understood generally. Just a couple months ago I showed the website to two office mates who had never seen it or heard of the potential danger. The university actually keeps a whole tub of the stuff right outside the main office. Nothing's been done about that, but at least everyone knows to be more careful about it now.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Really? Well, it still seemed pointless to LJ about it in this case, but I'll definitely mention the urgent crisis to my students. Why aren't we at Threat Level Red?

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

This is great. I am totally saving this list for the next time I assign a research paper to a class.

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

AWESOME. I am absolutely going to steal some of these. And properly credit you for bringing them to my attention, of course :)

[lisa-bee.livejournal.com]

This one is also great, though I may have heard about it from you or someone on our mutual LJ friends list:

http://allaboutexplorers.com/explorers/

[xse99.livejournal.com]

I'm filing these away for potential future use. Had encountered Pacific Tree Octopus site at work, didn't end up using.