Wikipedia talk:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia/Balboa Creole French

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Is this even a real language? The article has no citations and when I googled the language to find more information on it, the articles I found basically use the same wording as Wikipedia. I am highly knowledgeable in the history of Southern California and have a friend who's dating a native speaker of Haitian Creole (which this article says Balboa Creole is very similar to). That friend of mine is also currently studying that language and LOVES Balboa Island. However, I have never heard of this language before, at least not until I did some Wikipedia browsing today and came upon this article. My conclusion: this article is a HOAX. Go to www.balboa-island.com. The person saying over there that this article is a hoax, who is a Newport Beach local, also tried to add that to the article last week, but the computer marked it as vandalism so that message was immediately removed. Well, OP, this was a great Wikipedia prank. You had me laughing very hard for a long time. If this is not a hoax and this language does indeed exist, my apologies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.171.105.228 (talk) 06:54, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the above comment; I also very strongly suspect this is a hoax.

I ran across this page because I have an amateur interest in American endangered languages; being from California, I was curious and tried to find out more. I also googled the language, and was also only able to find articles that were clearly lifted from Wikipedia by bots, or articles that cited Wikipedia - including one blog article ([1]), "Seven Languages That Are About To Die," which has likely been widely read. I then googled "balboa creole" and "balboa french" on all sites with a .gov domain, and found no results. I then checked the spreadsheet "Detailed Language Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Older by States: 2006-2008 (ACS)" ([2]), from the U.S. Census Bureau, which as far as I can tell lists **every** language spoken in the United States (325 languages are listed, several of which have fewer than 20 speakers); Balboa Creole is not listed.

Looking at the edit history of this article:

• The first paragraph is almost completely unchanged from when the article was created by Jahc'ezclaude. From my limited French, I think that there are mistakes in the French quote which is translated into "Balboa Creole" in the article ("Il a pensait que l'hôtel était très bel, quand soudain Sabine a dit "Que-ce que c'est?" de la salle de bains.").
• Later, User 71.138.88.131 changed this to the phrase "Someone told me that she can not speak French very well" in French, "Balboa Creole," and English - which was also written incorrectly (and 174.91.233.236 later corrected these mistakes).
• Then, 80.70.44.82 (whose only other edits have been vandalism/jokes), changed this phrase to the much simpler "I think Anne is beautiful, but not as beautiful as Simone" (again, in all three languages); however, the French version was still wrong, and 12.34.246.79 later corrected it.
• Later, 71.138.116.97 (who, like 71.138.88.131, has made a bunch of weird edits to Top Model pages from various countries) changed the translated quotes to the French and "Balboa Creole" versions of "Hail Mary."
• Then, 76.213.157.14 (who has made no other Wikipedia edits) added "This PAGE IS 100% FALSE - There is NO SUCH THING as Balboa Creole French and we on Balboa Island have no idea why the person who created this page did so. I will also cite this on my website: www.balboa-island.com because we have had instances of people coming to our beautiful Balboa Island to study this imaginary language." to the page. An experienced editor then deleted it (presumably thinking it was vandalism). The same user added a similar disclaimer back to the page a day later, which was then deleted by a bot.
• Finally, 108.215.62.12 (who has also made some weird edits about TV shows, as well as at least one edit that seems to be correct, but at least one other that seems to be fake) totally rewrote the second paragraph as well as the translated quotes (changing the quotes to the song "Douce France" by French singer Charles Trenet. This was the most recent edit (in July, after the above comment was posted).
• I then added the Hoax tag (sorry - I wasn't logged in when I added it).

Looking at the Wikipedia article on Balboa Island, there is, interestingly, no mention of Balboa Creole. Looking at this article's edit history:

• Lamariedatsamarinya (who has also made several "Top Model" edits) made an uncited edit mentioning different languages spoken on the island, including that "a 1/18 of the population also speaks Creole"; this edit was promptly removed.
• Elroty2 (who, once again, has made several "Top Model" edits) made another uncited edit mentioning different languages spoken on the island; this edit was also promptly removed.
• 71.138.90.30 added an uncited section on "Balboan French", and 71.130.204.154 (who, once again, has a ton of "Top Model" edits) edited & extended this section repeatedly. 76.170.210.42 later deleted this section. Us441 (who seems to be a legit editor) then re-added the section, and CCarrComm later deleted it again.

More concretely: according to the Balboa Island article, Balboa Island apparently was not being used at all until the 1860's, and doesn't really seem to have had substantial settlement until the modern island was created by dredging in 1908-9. It seems highly unlikely to me that a French-English-Spanish-German patois would have developed in the 100 years since then.

It seems to me that, at the very least, this page should be deleted; also, there's a number of editors whose other edits should perhaps be reviewed & viewed with suspicion. (I put a lot of work into this - do I get a Super Wiki Medal or something? :)CircleAdrian (talk) 02:11, 3 September 2012 (UTC)