geocities

Yahoo! has divested itself of Blo.gs and is shuttering GeoCities. Would this have happened in a good economy? No. Did it need to happen anyway? Yes. Yes. Yes. And for the love of god, yes.

Way back in 2003, ClassroomHelp.com published a story on whale watching in Lake Michigan. As it turns out, the info was based on content on a Geocities.com member page that suggests they book trips to see and swim with marine fauna in the Great Lakes. Unfortunately, ClassroomHelp.com later posted a retraction saying “we thought it was true …it looked so real. It looked like a legitimate Web site.” Jim Wenzloff notes

we asked some marine biologists in Michigan if they knew anything about whales in Lake Michigan. They didn’t know what we were talking about. Searches on the Internet were not very fruitful. Of all the information floating around cyber space, we found only three sites on freshwater whales in the Great Lakes.

Finally, he “contacted the [whale watch] company, and they told us that their web site was farcical (not real) and for entertainment.”

Thanks to Andrew Mutch for the pointer in a message to the Web4Lib group.