Unfortunately it is more common than we realise. From
nonsensical 'factoids' that are made up to completely
ridiculous articles. I came across one page recently
on a prominent early 20th century politician. It was
twelve lines of paranoid, POV garbage. It had been
sitting there for months. If anyone thinking about
joining Wikipedia had stumbled across the article as
their first experience of the site I wouldn't have
blamed them for saying "if this is what this so-called
encyclopædia publishes, it is obviously a heap of
crap" and left Wikipedia. Even when I rewrote it the
vandal kept coming back to reinsert his garbage. When
I left for a few weeks he came back again, put back
the rubbish and it survived unnoticed until I came
back and saw it on my watchlist.
A solution might be to create alongside recent changes
and a watchlist a topiclist, whereby if people are
interested in, and knowledgeable about, a topic, all
edits on that topic would show up. That way they could
keep an eye on articles that they have not edited (or
even knew existed) but which they know about and so
could spot vandalism or garbage edits. In my case I
would then easily spot dodgy edits on Irish history,
politics, constitutional law, etc. Others could do
sport, of television, or whatever. It might help catch
dodgy edits in obscure article quickly.
--- Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Tony
Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com>
Show me some old vandalism.
Are you suggesting it doesn't exist? I've come
across week-old vandalism
on
little-watched articles on my watchlist.
I'm suggesting that it's not around in significant
amounts. I find
some now and again. I find instances of poor
quality writing and bad
organization more often. A few articles are prone
to link-spamming,
others get POV-pushing. Compared to that, old
vandalism is rather
rare.
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