Well, good one. I was convinced it was a
joke, until some well meaning fellow noders, many of whom were
probably in on the joke, started getting me to doubt. Actually, the most doubt came from wondering if even the
gods would stoop so low as to deface
E2 like this. It was a bit questionable, I feel bad for the
newbie noders who we may never see again.
But alas, hindsight is 20/20 and there was much reason to doubt.
- It all started as the E2 clock hit April 1. Coincidence?
- Many of the "hackers" had names that were plays on respected noders. A hacker probably wouldn't take the time to get to know the community and figure out what high profile noders would make the best names to parody.
- There was an unusual lack of gods around. Coincidence?
- dannye was not the least bit concerned, making rather humorous comments such as "borg does not end with an e, I'm afraid we cannot fulfill your request until your properly spell it." (I'm going from memory here). dannye does not strike me as the type of guy to joke around during a troll invasion...
- The editor powers were disabled when it all started. Coincidence? I figured they were either in on the joke and lying about it, or the gods were pulling one over the editors. Either way, it seemed way too much of a coincidence.
- There was no real damage done. All that really happened were stupid writeups and catbox comments. If the site had really been hacked, my guess is they would have done much more damaging things, such as cursing people, hacking the front page, mass deleting of writeups, etc.
My final thought on this prank was to wonder what would have happened if a group of users had gotten together and planned this prank. Would the editors and gods have laughed and let it go on, or would they have started nuking and killing accounts? I'm willing to bet it's the latter.