Talk:Misdialed call

This article was nominated for deletion on 20 August 2009 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

What could go in this article?[edit]

This is a brainstorm of ideas, based on what I wrote in the AfD discussion:

Etiquette - plenty of RS document the correct etiquette for dealing with wrong numbers, including with answering machines (currently not included in the article): try [1] and [2] for instance. Does etiquette differ between countries? [3] covers differences in telephone etiquette between Britain and Greece (does anybody have JSTOR access to view this?)
Types of misdial - I would be surprised if no research has been done on which kind of misdial are most common (compare to ISBN: they have a base 11 check digit to validate the number against the two most common ways of misreading an ISBN). There are more ways to misdial than you might think: keying errors (transposed digits, digits off by one, extra repeated digits) immediately spring to mind. But there are other sources of wrong number as well, for instance a number now assigned to a new customer. One you might not have thought of is the fact that the letters Q and Z moved key about 10 years ago (so quoting the number "1-800 QUALITY" is likely to produce misdials for customers with old handsets and the Q on the wrong button). This is a commercial website and not something I'd claim as a RS, but take a look at [4].
Commercial value and cost of misdials - the same link affirms some business practices related to misdials (I can't find an obvious RS; my guess would be a book about business communication). Misdials to a company cost money (time to answer non-valuable calls). There are some ways to screen them out (e.g. screening out-of-area calls) but that may result in lost sales (AT&T took out a patent on this, see [5]). On the other hand, traffic to numbers that are likely misdials may have commercial value. A company may seek to acquire numbers that are likely misdials of its own, or to steal traffic from competitors. There are communications companies that sell "misdial solutions" such as [6]. (Is "wrong number marketing" - deliberately phoning random numbers and pretending to be a wrong number call - illegal or a discussed phenomenon? I found some non-RS detailing it.)
Prank calls - there is a genre of "wrong number" prank calls. This is a common product of prank call companies (I won't give a link here, but stick "wrong number prank call" into your search engine of choice and you'll get enough hits to indicate this) - not certain how to find reliable sources for that fact (am guessing a news or magazine article about pranks calls) but it is is basically uncontentious. The flip side are acts like Touch-Tone Terrorists who purchased likely common misdials to particular services (e.g. a psychic line) and took incoming calls to them, in a kind of reverse prank call. There are CDs published that are devoted to the genre. It may be worth investigating celebrity prank callers on radio, to see if either kind of wrong number prank has been widely reported in their repertory. (Tommy & Rumble perhaps?)
Trends - have cellphones changed the incidence of misdialed numbers? [7] gives some technological factors that may have increased the number of missed number calls and their potential costs e.g. to privacy. Also, see pocket dialing.
Dramatic device - Google turned up a Japanese comic series in which a wrong number call leads to the protagonist becoming involved with the caller, but I am unable to ascertain the notability of that series. I would be astonished if that is the only incidence of missed numbers in fiction. A wrong number is used as a plot device in an episode of Rescue 911 and another of Side Order of Life. I'm not certain if the film Sorry, Wrong Number counts (it seems that the caller listens in to another conversation, rather than reaches a mysterious stranger - not sure if anybody who knows the film better could comment.
Research device in e.g. social psychology - fake "wrong number" calls are in the so-called wrong-number technique. See [8]. A fairly typical-looking research paper using the technique is [9].
Scam to drive up e.g. share prices - see [10], [11]
Miscellaneous - Do major phone companies issue advice to their subscribers about what to do when you receive a wrong number call? (I suspect so, would have to look about.) Are wrong number calls a common plot device in literature and drama? There are also presumably some notable instances of misdialed numbers in real life: e.g. Caryl Chessman's stay of execution was telephoned in, but allegedly it was initially misdialed so the execution took place anyway. (I didn't spot a RS for the misdial claim in our article on Chessman, but it seems to commonly made). There are plenty of news articles that deal with wrong numbers ([12], [13]) but it's hard to pick out clearly significant examples. Internet lists of "weird laws" often give as an example "In Milan, Italy, when an operator dialed a wrong number, the phone company fined the operator" or similar (e.g. [14]) but I can't find any RS for it.

Any other suggestions? TheGrappler (talk) 18:21, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, how about getting rid of this asinine, superfluous page?? Give me a break. An entry on what a wrong number is???? And you people wonder why Wikipedia is a global joke. 108.49.91.78 (talk) 00:57, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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