[WikiEN-l] The benefits of vandalism

Sun Apr 13 21:34:52 UTC 2003

Recently I've found that some vandals have been putting silly sentences into 
empty subjects that could potentially make good articles. For instance, last 
week we had someone write some crap under Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass 
suicide (don't remember the name of the article). While it was being blanked 
(repeatedly, I might add), I googled and added a few sentences with content, 
and we had a short article, while the vandal left. Today the same thing 
happened with Israeli tree frog. Admittedly the article is just a sentence, 
but it is a start. Maybe this can be a good way to deal with some of the 
vandals: fill in some information, instead of just deleting. 

In a similar vein, someone wrote an article called "Separate but equal." 
Agreed, it wasn't written very well, but a few quick edits turned it into a 
stub that can be built up into an important article. My sense is that the 
article was written by a kid (no offense, LittleDan), but it still had some 
valuable material and this important topic was not covered at all. Now, at 
least, we have a stub on which we can build. 

I know it won't work in all cases, but I suggest this in some cases as a way 
of countering vandalism and actually benefitting from it. 

Danny
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