New subject: Deliberate vandalism of earlier versions of articles to stop reverting

16 Jan 2003

Hi Zoe,

I've a serious allegation to make about a fellow Wiki. I wrote a page on the 
Irish Potato famine which became rather controversial with two people. One 
of them threatened to revert any changes I made, and make sure I could not 
revert his changes back.

He rewrote one section of the page in a decidedly POV, dodgy historical way. 
When I tried to revert, I found that many of the earlier versions had been 
vandalised, by him, so as to ensure that either I could not revert to them 
or that if I did, the page would be so littered with POVs (his 
interpretations of what he thinks my POVs are!) as to be pulled off.

Here's an example of one of the paragraphs vandalised. The changes he made 
are in capitals.

One issue which divides the perspective of Ireland on the history of the 
Famine from some BOGUS attitudes among the FAKE Irish - living abroad, is 
the claim, made by some of the latter, that the Famine amounted to genocide 
by the British against the Irish. Few Irish historians accept such a 
PATENTLY FALSE definition, which would imply a deliberate policy of 
extermination. While all are agreed that the British policies during the 
Famine, particularly those applied by the ministry of [[Lord John Russell]], 
were somewhat misguided, perhaps ill-informed and frequently 
counter-productive, with Professor Joe Lee calling what happened a 
'holocaust', [9] Irish, British and American historians of the cailbre of 
Professors [[F.S.L. Lyons]], John A. Murphy, Joe Lee, Roy Foster, and James 
S. Donnelly, Jr, as well as historians Cecil Woodham-Smith, Peter Gray, Ruth 
Dudley Edwards and many others have long dismissed claims of A DELIBERATE 
POLICY OF genocide. PERHAPS MORE THAN A STRONG BELIEF.

I spotted this paragraph by chance. I saw other dodgy add ons as well. I had 
to go back to the version before he began his first of a series of 
(seemingly innocent) changes (announcing how he was correcting a spelling or 
a grammatical mistake,  etc) to find a version that had not been vandalised.

The person responsible is Stevertigo.

What should we do about this? It is one thing to row over interpretation, 
but to deliberately vandalise earlier versions so that they cannot be used 
or would get pulled as being POV, is astonishing. I know how annoyed many of 
us are with 172, but at least (as far as I know) all he does is revert 
versions, not vandalise earlier versions as well so that no one can revert 
his revertions. I don't fancy having to stand guard over an article most 
people are happy with, all because some twat is determined to find some way 
of screwing it up

If this is the standard of behaviour that Stevertigo is bringing to Wiki, 
then he should be banned.

JT

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