Talk:Siskiwit Lake (Isle Royale)

Is the rant on largest island in largest lake on largest island, etc really relevant information? Especially considering that it is debatable weather Lake Superior is the largest lake. 195.67.88.222 (talk) 08:50, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

It does sort of ramble, and ventures into areas of somewhat dubious relevance to this article, but it is really hilarious! It seems anodyne enough to stay to me. 2601:644:400:ABC4:0:0:0:91CB (talk) 00:39, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Moose Flats and Moose Boulder

Are these even real? An editor, User:Rogerdickey, messaged me this:

Hi Herostratus, I wanted to further explore your "island within a lake within an island" assertion, so I bought the book you referenced, "Superior Wilderness" by Napier Shelton, 1997. On page 103, where there is supposed to be some reference to Moose Flats or Moose Boulder, I didn't see anything of the sort. Are you sure you found the reference there? Every reference to Moose Flats on the internet seems to point back to your Wikipedia edit. Does Moose Flats really exist? :)

I put in the ref, but I don't have access to the book "Superior Wilderness" now -- I never had access to a hard copy, but I must have had access online at one time, or I wouldn't have put in the ref, I'm pretty sure. So this's a head-scratcher... I guess I just made a mistake? Before I remove the content (the entire paragraph depends on the existence of Moose Boulder), let me see... the passage referenced is

Ryan Island contains Moose Flats, a seasonal pond, which contains Moose Boulder. When Moose Flats is flooded, Moose Boulder becomes the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world by surface area.

and the ref is: Shelton, Napier (1997). Superior Wilderness: Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale Natural History Association. p. 103. ISBN 0-935289-09-7.

User:Rogerdickey, what does page 103 say? Does it touch on any of this at all? Does it somehow ref the latter part of the passage but not the existence of Moose Boulder or something? Going to keep looking.

Here is something from Atlas Obscura, which seems to be a legit operation which probably doesn't flat make stuff up. It's not a Wikipedia mirror. It says "Usually, Moose Boulder overlooks a patch of often wet, soggy earth. As the floodwaters seep in and a pond forms around it, the boulder becomes one of the most fascinating islands in the world. This flooding of Moose Flats transforms Moose Boulder into..." This is point in favor of Moose Boulder existing. Where they got their info I don't know. If they took it from Wikipedia and changed the prose around and made up the "often wet, soggy" part etc, that'd be journalistic malpractice and also poor long-term business practice, I think, considering their target audience and market positioning. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, tho; overzealous writers do stuff like that all the time, and editors and fact-checkers can't catch everything.

There's also a photo of (what is purported to be) Moose Boulder, in what is presumably Moose Flats in flood state, in that article (you have to scroll). The photo is credited to the "Seafloor Samples Laboratory". None of this proves anything.

Hmnh, this is odd, I created this article in 2014, but this 2009 newspaper article mirrors it. I can't explain that.

So, hmmm. To be continued. Herostratus (talk) 07:25, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Herostratus, page 103 is part of a chapter on Isle Royale's inland lakes, but it mostly talks about the fish and water nutrients present in Lake Siskiwit. If you have an Amazon account you may be able to see the page here - https://www.amazon.com/reader/0935289097?_encoding=UTF8&query=%26%2334%3Bechoes%20ricocheting%26%2334%3B. I read the whole chapter this page is in, as well as the next chapter, and couldn't find any reference to Moose Boulder or Moose Flats. Ryan Island is not even discussed in much detail in the book. I think it is only referenced once in passing.

The picture on Atlas Obscura is not of Moose Boulder, it's a random rock off the coast of Isle Royale. It was taken on Chris Reddy's expedition to Isle Royale to take lake floor core samples in 1998. This appears to be the page where it used to be hosted online - https://web.archive.org/web/20081122120453/http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/corelab/voyages/siskiwit_s29.html. According to the text, the group never even reached Ryan Island, which is the island where Moose Flats (and Moose Boulder) are said to be. I reached out to Chris Reddy and he had no memory of going to Ryan Island.

The only listed reference on Atlas Obscura is your Wikipedia article, but I reached out to AO to see if they will put me in touch with the author. The post was written by a staff writer, not contributed by a user.

It is bizarrely anachronistic that an article in 2009 references your originally written 2014 article?? How is that possible? The plot thickens.

Please let me know if you can remember what your reference was. I'll share what I hear from AO when they get back to me.

Rogerdickey (talk) 05:04, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Then there is this —N·M—^talk 18:57, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

It's an admitted hoax perpetrated by Atlas Obscura and spread via citeogenesis. I've deleted it. Let's not put it back unless you can find some truly independent source. Our primary goal should be not to include dubious information and at present at best, this is dubious. TJRC (talk) 02:45, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@TJRC I've added my analysis of this story to Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia#Extant_for_10+_years_2. Feel free to correct any errors, and I note AO blames Wikipedia for being the originator of this hoax, so if their dates are correct, then they were "infected" by us, not the other way around. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:13, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

@Piotrus: OK, but that material includes "While the claim has been removed from Wikipedia's entry for Isle Royale shortly after the publication of the Atlas Obscura story...", but I can't find evidence that it was ever in the Isle Royale article, using Wikiblame. Is there a diff?

So let's see... the Atlas Obscura page does reference the Wikipedia as its sole source, but it has material that wasn't in the Wikipedia... for instance it says "Usually, Moose Boulder overlooks a patch of often wet, soggy earth" and a bunch of other stuff that the Wikipedia article never said. That is the (undated) article "Moose Boulder -- Houghton, Michigan: A micro island in a pond on an island in a lake on an island in a lake. This also has a photo of (supposedly, but not actually) Moose Island, which was never on the Wikipedia. So it looks pretty clear that the Atlas Obscura writer was perpetrating and spreading the hoax on purpose, altho apparently not starting it.

Matthew Taub traces the info back to "The page for Isle Royale had pointed readers to Moose Boulder, and had been doing so since 2009. It was put there by a different user... The identity of that first Wikipedia user to write about it—with those completely unrelated sources—remains a mystery". But Isle Royale (which actually redirects to Isle Royale National Park) had nothing about Moose Boulder or Moose Flats at the beginning of 2009, at the end of 2009, or any time in between, nor does Wikiblame find that the Isle Royale State Park article ever contained the strings "moose boulder" or "moose flats". So it seems Taub is wrong here, as far as I can tell; if he wasn't, the identity of the editor would not be a mystery; if the edit exists, the name of the editor would be right there. Taub may just have the date wrong (I only checked 2009), but I'm pretty sure I'm using Wikiblame correctly. So that's odd.

So I'm still in the dark about where "Shelton, Napier (1997). Superior Wilderness: Isle Royale National Park. Houghton, MI: Isle Royale Natural History Association. p. 103. ISBN 0-935289-09-7" comes from and remain curious. The Internet Library has the book and I can confirm there's nothing about any moose flats or boulder on page 103 or anywhere in the book.

I know I didn't make it up. I must have copied it from somewhere without checking (which is a big no-no and I'm always super careful about that, but it must be the case), but I can't even find anywhere on the internet where it would have come from. It's just perplexing.

Taub says that User:Rogerdickey also found "online forums that had hosted discussions about Moose Boulder over the years", but we don't know what years, or when the first mention was. Here is the original source of the hoaxy picture... it's from 2008, but it's just an odd page in that some anoydyne text has this weird picture with the yellow arrow attached to it for no reason, the picture doesn't fit in or expain itself and there's no accompanying text that says it's Moose Boulder, or anything. Still looking for the ur-document. Herostratus (talk) 13:03, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Nice follow up analysis. Feel free to correct my analysis at HOAXLIST; right now my main concern (related to the talk discussions there about the need to verify whether many things called Wikipedia hoaxes are actually hoaxes) is whether it can be called a hoax (i.e. was this introduced to Wikipedia as an obvious attempt to mislead) or whether it is just some sort of an error (adding problematic information to Wikipedia but in good faith). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:52, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how I can go further without talking to those two guys, Taub and especially Dickey. I contacted Atlas Obscura but haven't heard back yet. Herostratus (talk) 10:52, 31 October 2021 (UTC)