On 7 June 2012 20:08, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote: After my experience on Saturday, when my daughter went to the featured article of the day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II) and was greeted by large pornographic images injected into the article through unprotected templates, if I were were in charge of a library or a school I would be very hesitant about linking to Wikipedia from my institute's main page. I know that episodes like this are an unavoidable consequence of the Wikipedia editing model, and that you can never entirely eliminate the possibility of offensive vandalism reaching high profile pages, but it always makes me feel a little uneasy that we are so keen to promote Wikipedia that we sometimes forget that Wikipedia is a potentially risky site. Of the 200,000+ visitors to the Elizabeth II page on Saturday, when it was targetted with pornographic template vandalism multiple times, I wonder how many of those were accessing the site from public computers in libraries, and what the librarians thought about Wikipedia when library users notified them of the porn on the Elizabeth II page. And if this had happened on a schoolday, I wonder how many schools (those which don't already block Wikipedia) would rethink their policy on allowing access to Wikipedia. I'm not sure that there is anything that WMUK can do to make Wikipedia a safer and more trustworthy place, but we should bear in mind that promoting or even linking to Wikipedia may not be an acceptable risk for some institutions. Andrew [[User:BabelStone]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 7 June 2012 20:08, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote: After my experience on Saturday, when my daughter went to the featured article of the day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II) and was greeted by large pornographic images injected into the article through unprotected templates, if I were were in charge of a library or a school I would be very hesitant about linking to Wikipedia from my institute's main page.

That must have been very unpleasant for both of you. However, I would counter with the observation that it's also possible for someone to slip an image cut from a pornographic magazine between the pages of a library book; if that were to happen, we would neither expect nor encourage librarians to stop recommending books.

On 7 June 2012 20:08, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote: I wonder how many of those were accessing the site from public computers in libraries, and what the librarians thought about Wikipedia when library users notified them of the porn on the Elizabeth II page.

All I know is that it's from the 188. range, which is used by a few people with a grudge against Wikipedia. I really need to know what template was vandalised to be able to give the checkusers the info they need to track it all down.

Well if you've got the patience, you could go through the recent changes, isolate it to the template namespace, and look for recent reverts and protections. But tracking it down the day after it's happened strikes as a bit like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

After my experience on Saturday, when my daughter went to the featured article of the day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II) and was greeted by large pornographic images injected into the article through unprotected templates, if I were were in charge of a library or a school I would be very hesitant about linking to Wikipedia from my institute's main page.  I know that episodes like this are an unavoidable consequence of the Wikipedia editing model, and that you can never entirely eliminate the possibility of offensive vandalism reaching high profile pages, but it always makes me feel a little uneasy that we are so keen to promote Wikipedia that we sometimes forget that Wikipedia is a potentially risky site.