Talk:Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. presidential election

They fixed it in case there is still interest in this topic —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.234.11.178 (talk) 08:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

"Some speculate that Google placed this ad itself" ??! No realy, who would think that.

You have a point there. I will fix it up.60.229.148.32 12:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

The text itself seems to be a carbon-copy of the BBCs article on this. Is that a problem? - Drrngrvy 03:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Origin
I thought it came from "It's a Wonderful Life." Mr. Potter says, "I suppose it should give [my money] to miserable failures like you and that idiot brother of yours to spend for me." ________________________________________________________

I'm guessing Dick Gephardt wasn't the first ever person to use the phrase "miserable failure". But the use by him is the origin of the Internet phenomenon: "These are important issues. This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy ... and on the economy. And he's got to be replaced" is what he said in the debate. Georgeslegloupier 09:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I would like to call into question the "fact" that Mr. Adam Mathes is the "inventor" of google (political) bombing. I am quite certain that it began long before Mr. Adam Mathes ever wrote about the subject.
 * Search engine spamming has been around as long as search engines have, which is well before Google. RunedChozo 22:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Almost expected a wiki redirect
I typed in "Miserable Failure" to Wikipedia, and half expected there to be a redirect page to George W. Bush :) Would have been kind-of amusing. EuroSong 18:39, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally, I'm surprised that none of the vandals have tried that yet. 71.236.33.191 01:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that has been vandalized before, it's just that it gets reverted within 10-minutes after the vandalism. 24.129.99.96 22:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Someone's fully protected the page now, so even that doesn't work. Not that there was much point beforehand anyway.

Yoda921 08:42, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Yoda

"retaliation"?
Why is it assumed that:

1) The other bombs were retaliation?

2) Why assume Bush supporters?

Hillary Clinton doesn't fit too well in that mold considering that it takes a good long time to get a googlebomb working, and she's only recently been speculated to be a candidate for the upcoming election. I'd suggest retitling it as "other political googlebombs" or something similar.


 * It's retaliation because why else would Democrats become the target after the news showing the president was considered the miserable failure? Logic would just dictate this.  Michael Moore and the rest only climbed the list after the news story, so Occam's Razor would point to this being retaliation of course.


 * Inner City Blues 19:41, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Favoured by Google?
Just an idea if anyone wants to look into it. I remember once searching for "go to hell" brought up Microsoft as the first result, it made a few headlines. A few days later it was gone. No idea if those results were doctored by Google but I wonder if Google decided to doctor one set of results but not another?

Worst president ever article
I've been trying to keep the article on the phrase "Worst president ever" NPOV, but it looks like it's going to be deleted anyway. Does anyone have any objection if I merge the (admittedly little) information from that article into this one in a few days? Rizzleboffin 06:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Great President & Waffles (John Kerry) merger to this artcle
This article needs to be merged into this master one. The other is redundant. rootology (T) 18:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Why is 'miserable failure' a "master one?"   I can see merging it into notable google bombs or just google bombs but I would argue that 'miserable failure' should be merged as well.  'miserable failure' is a POV term.  I don't think anyone would argue that we merge 'miserable failure' into the 'great president' page.  --Tbeatty 19:05, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * "miserable failure" is descriptive of the parent article itself and the originator of everything on this article. rootology (T) 19:06, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Google bomb is also a seperate article, this is specific to Bush and Bush-derivative google bombs. As Great President is a one-off reference with substantially less quanity of content as this article, it should be merged into this article. This article can then be reviewed if it should be renamed as a seperate action. And its nothing to do with POV, simply fact. rootology (T) 19:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC) Waffles (John Kerry) really should be merged here too. This has nothing to do with balance, but simple how Wikipedia is done--they don't merit seperate articles as the content is covered here. Wikipedia is NOT a platform for politics or political expression, it's to report cited notable facts of relevant nature. rootology (T) 19:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Rename it first so that the articles correctly describes "political google bombs" so that it can encompass all of them. It makes no sense to have just a single google bomb be the name of all of them.  Or delete miserable failure and move it into the google bombs sections.--Tbeatty 19:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. Everything relevant to this has been converted over and the talk pages copied. rootology (T) 19:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I've started the process of rewriting to encompass the general political google bombs. My goal is to reorganize it a little bit without removing information pertinent to politics. I think deleting some of the fluff that is generally related to google bombs should be deleted and redirected to the "google bomb" page. Also, there is some OR stuff such as the screen capture of a google search or references that are searches generated by the editors that need to be deleted. There is enough external references that I think most of the claims are valid. THis is still WIP and I haven't edited anything below the Kerry bomb. I also left a pargraph at the top about Gore that needs to be moved. Since I didn't get to that section yet, I left it at the top so I wouldn't lose it. It should go into either a "Notable Other section" or somewhere else. There is no reason to have the Gore "miserable loser" bomb at the top. --Tbeatty 06:34, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Google Maps
The link on the page now links to the Democratic national campaign... should this be updated? Cmcl14 23:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism
Between October 16 and October 25, this article named "Winston Smith" (the character from Nineteen Eighty-Four) as Google Director of Consumer Web Products. This edit was inserted by America jones. I have inserted the correct name, Marissa Mayer, and posted a warning to his/her User Talk page (where a previous  warning had been removed and replaced with nonsense text.) &mdash; IslandGyrl 17:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

POV
My edits were to remove POV descriptions ("by leftists", "Democratic operatives and wonks", etc) and to make sure that other text meets WP:V tests (specifically the info on Gephardt - none of the refs given indicates that he called for "association" of the term with Bush; the refs do agree that he mentioned it in a speech Sept 3rd (over a month before the Google-bombing started), and other sources indicate he used it "commonly" in reference to the Administration during that fall. Also, the refs all validate that the initial suggestion came from the blogger's site, not as User:RunedChozo inidicates "Democratic operatives".  I invite other editors (and RunedChozo) to check the refs and either give references for the current text, or switch it to a more WP:NPOV and verifiable version as I tried to.  Thanks.  jesup 22:41, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


 * So you're asserting it was a bunch of right-wingers and libertarians who googlebombed that phrase? Please. Pull the other one. RunedChozo 22:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I'm saying that the terms used (which you inserted) strongly imply a POV. If it were rephrased in a non-POV manner (instead of "by leftists" by "critics of the Administration", as a random possibility) that would be ok.  The terms used violate WP:NPOV and WP:V (operatives - where's the reference for that?).  The Gephardt issues are that the current claims are not supported by the references (see my comment above).  Also, I changed shortly after to a month after, which is supported by the various references (Sept 3rd to sometime in October).  jesup 23:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Informal tone..
I have added this tag because words like "wonk" and "bio" apprar. An encyclopedia, shouldn't use these terms. -- Selmo  (talk) 00:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Translation / International use
The link from Tyhmä lehmä (to "Tyhmä lehmä Karpela") seems wrong, mainly in that it includes her old surname, but also because "Tyhmä lehmä" now finds www.tanjakarpela.net, all three words now don't. User:81.174.241.81 22 November 2006.

Unsourced statement
Is there any proof that the sentence:
 * In October of 2003 Democrat partisan supporters launched an effort to create links of "miserable failure" to the official White House biography of President Bush. In about 6 weeks the link to George W.

is correct. That is, is it confirmed that the effort launched by Democrat partisans rather than Greens supporters or even apolitical pranksters? Ashmoo 23:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Miserable failure google bomb doesn't work any more
See: --Steven X 11:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

And:. We should include this in the article.--Steven X 11:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah but if you just type "failure" in it will work :) :) :)Yoda921 09:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)Yoda
 * Not anymore it doesn't.--Steven X 07:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Well it leads to this page; so I suppose it's close enough. Not really. That's partly because the page contains the word "failure."

Yoda921 14:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Yoda


 * Ironically, both "failure" and "Miserable failure" now all link to Wikipedia. :D lol -- Hdt 83     Chat 08:28, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

But they go to the article "Political google bombs," rather than the main page. So in theory, it doesn't really count.

DarthSidious 12:53, 15 October 2007 (UTC)DarthSidious

John Key (New Zealand)
It might be worth mentioning on the article Google bombs from other countries, a good example is on google nz (www.google.co.nz) and searching "clueless", it comes up with the main site/ blog of the opposition leader John Key.

heres the link if you want to have a look

Rename to "Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election"
This article isn't so much about Political Google bombs themselves (which are actually described in more detail at Google bomb, but more about the particular Bush & Kerry bombs. As such, i propose this article be renamed to Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election and simply linked to from Google bomb. -- Zim Zala Bim talk  13:55, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Moving now... -- Zim Zala Bim talk  14:14, 15 August 2007 (UTC)