Talk:Zero stroke

A fact from Zero stroke appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 January 2010. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that during the period of hyperinflation in Germany of 1921–1923, there were reports of people suffering from zero stroke, a disorder where they had the desire to write endless rows of zeros?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Did you know archive/2010/January.

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Interesting article

Latest comment: 5 years ago11 comments9 people in discussion

I have a hard time figuring out whether this is a tongue-and-cheek thing or not, seeing that none of the sources are medical in focus. bibliomaniac 1 5 06:47, 19 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Me too. Seems like an obvious joke. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

"A mental disorder [...] characterized by the patient's desire to write endless rows of zeroes". LOL. I should probably agree that it's poorly sourced, since checking all the sources I can access, only reveals two very dubious 'articles', but it's pretty well written - better than many articles that are more believably sourced. I cannot resist the temptation to just let it be. Andreas Willow (talk) 09:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

It was discussed at the DYK suggestions page here. The author said that while he also doubted the veracity of the "disorder", he was unable to find any reference that clearly debunked it. Ucucha 12:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

One might argue that a criterion for putting things on Wikipedia is that those things are properly sourced, instead of hard-to-debunk. I'd say the evidence is pretty thin in this case, but I don't have the cited books at hand so I have no idea whether they contain strong evidence. Andreas Willow (talk) 12:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I looked a little better and to my own surprise came across a pretty believeable reference. Apparently this page here (search for 'cipher') suggests that there was an article in the December 1923 New York Times that mentioned 'Cipher Stroke'. So it seems to be indeed the case that at least popular news media mentioned it at the time. Fascinating. Pity I cannot read the actual article... Andreas Willow (talk) 12:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I am the editor that put this article together. While I do think that this may have been a condition hyped by the media and possibly did not really exist (except for a complusion by a few individuals), it does appear that the popular media reported on its existence and therefore I have tried to gather all that is known about it. Any help to make this article better is appreciated. Remember (talk) 13:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

It is suspicious that there appears to be no record of a German name for this disorder, if it truly was discovered by German physicians. Encyclopedia Blipvertica (talk) 20:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

True that – google reveals not a single German translation of this "zero stroke", neither does any German translation site. This "story" exists only in English, it seems. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.159.196.147 (talk) 23:43, 22 January 2015 (UTC)Reply

I was wondering the same thing as a professional translator. A "stroke" is a "Schlaganfall", but it's not something you could combine with "Null" (the German word for "zero"). In other words, I can't think of a single German construction that could result in this English translation "zero stroke". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.132.232.238 (talk) 19:46, 25 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

I would slap a Template:Better source needed at every paragraph. Mateussf (talk) 14:18, 15 April 2021 (UTC)Reply