[WikiEN-l] A user seems to have spent the day reverting articles which appeared to be legitamite edits

Fri Nov 26 00:43:03 UTC 2004

Hi,

I am concerned. I don't often do this, but I had a look at the change
logs earlier this evening, just to get an idea of the kind of activity
that was going on. I noticed that a user, RickK, had reverted an article
without giving a reason. When I looked at the diff, it was not obvious
vandalism, and from what I could tell, it didn't look like something
that should have been reverted, especially as it was by a registered user.

As I wanted to understand better the policy being user, I asked the user
on their talk page if they would be willing to explain.

As I was waiting for a reply, I continued through the change log, and
noticed many other reverts by the same person, all with no reasons
given. A lot of these reverts were things such as reverting formatting
improvements, and I started to get quite shocked how out of control it
appeared to be.

When I went back to the users talk page, I noticed that they had deleted
their talk page, along with the recent discussion on the reverts, but
thanks to Wikipedia history, I managed to capture the URL of a version
where the discussion was still there. It is here below:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&oldid=7859165#Articles_reverted_but_no_reason_given

I am quite concerned about this, as putting myself in the shoes of the
people who are having their work reverted, I can imagine it is enough to
put anyone off wanting to revisit Wikipedia, or continue providing any
useful input.

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Many thanks,
Ed Broadley