Talk:Horse ebooks

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A fact from Horse ebooks appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 May 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Horse ebooks is a Twitter spam account best known for the amusing non sequiturs it tweets to evade spam detection?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Horse ebooks.

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Desert Track by Wojtek Kwiatkowski

The image used is Desert Track by Wojtek Kwiatkowski. I've created a Photo.net account to see if I can get him to release it under CC-BY-SA. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 20:48, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Automated?

Horse Ebooks is not automated. It has not been since September 14th, when a hacker began writing or curating the tweets. This has been covered and is well-known [1]. All tweets used to appear "via horse ebooks", some sort of API tool for which the link went to the ebook affiliate website [2]. The first tweet after this period ended came "via web," as most users who log in at a browser on a computer would tweet, and was phrased quite ominously, [3] and other tweets after have appeared via iPhone. [4]. Horse Ebooks no longer goes along the old pattern of the other ebooks, which still tweet via their respective "Ebooks" API/affiliates [5].

I'm sure this article was put up by the "I want to believe" types who are currently fans of Horse Ebooks but if this article is really considered notable it should be written accurately and explain that it only used to be automated, and is no longer. Imgettingoffmyseatnow (talk) 23:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A fair point, I think, that its automation is in question. I'm familiar with the September 2011 switch, but I wasn't quite sure how to deal with it. Perhaps it's worth including, although I do think Gawker and Splitsider would be slightly better sources for it. For now, I've simply changed "automated" to "spam" in the introduction, as that much does not seem to be disputed. Cheers, WWB (talk) 14:09, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The account is most likely still automated at least some of the time, judging by the posting pattern. It would be pretty difficult to do all manually since the tweets are still all sentence fragments from ebooks. Byuusetsu (talk) 07:55, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Illustration/Picture?

I am delighted to see that everyone's favorite spambot has a Wikipedia page! However, is there any way to add the ubiquitous Horse image that it uses? Alternately, maybe one of the artistic representations of it, if the original image doesn't fall under fair use? The company that makes Horse Ebook t-shirts (http://whatsay.co/assets/shirt-8.png) would probably allow us to use one of their images if we asked. I've never dealt with this type of editing before so I wanted to ask before I made any big changes.

ThisCatHasClaws (talk) 18:39, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. -- Trevj (talk) 09:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC) (non-admin closure)[reply]

It was proposed in this section that Horse ebooks be renamed and moved to Bear Stearns Bravo.

The discussion has been closed, and the result will be found in the closer's comment.

Links: current log • target log

Horse ebooks → Bear Stearns Bravo – Since this account is part of a larger ARG, I suggest we move this one and add information about PronounciationBook to the ARG's name Bear Stearns Bravo. Relisted. BDD (talk) 18:11, 7 October 2013 (UTC) --w^L^{<speak·check>} 02:12, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What? What is Bear Stearns Bravo? It's not even mentioned on the page. --BDD (talk) 18:59, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/horse-ebooks-and-pronunciation-book-revealed.html is an RS which explains Horse_ebook's role in the ARG. --w^L^{<speak·check>} 02:45, 26 September 2013 (UTC)`[reply]

I get it, but BSB is an unsuitable title if it isn't mentioned on the page. I suppose there's no connection to Bear Stearns or that the name is some sort of an artistic statement. Regardless, this is an article on a Twitter account called Horse_ebooks, not an art project called Bear Stearns Bravo. I'm not opposed to a rename prior to the change in scope, but I don't want the name change to happen just to have the article sit around without any mention of BSB. See WP:ASTONISH. --BDD (talk) 21:47, 2 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Horses?

To me regret - maybe this meme didn't reach the European continent in time - I didn't know Horse_ebooks when it was still active. But looking at it, it is immediately apparent that none of the most recent spam links actually lead to e-books about horses. Has this always been the case, and if no, when did the change occur? Perhaps after its 2011 purchase? Steinbach (talk) 17:02, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]