Vandalism still sticks around, Not much improvement Options

[Kato]

Despite all those claims of improved standards at Wikipedia, I spotted some vandalism on a BLP, then checked the history and found the same old garbage staying in an article for hours and days

This is the first time I've checked history on a BLP for a long time and it doesn't look good.

John Obi Mikel (T-H-L-K-D) is a leading footballer (aged 23), yet for 4 days now his bio has stated that he has a son who also plays for another team.

And this edit containing a load of nonsense (including claims that Mikel rapes Ivory Coast women!) stuck around for the best part of a day.

[Milton Roe]

Despite all those claims of improved standards at Wikipedia, I spotted some vandalism on a BLP, then checked the history and found the same old garbage staying in an article for hours and days

This is the first time I've checked history on a BLP for a long time and it doesn't look good.

John Obi Mikel (T-H-L-K-D) is a leading footballer (aged 23), yet for 4 days now his bio has stated that he has a son who also plays for another team.

And this edit containing a load of nonsense (including claims that Mikel rapes Ivory Coast women!) stuck around for the best part of a day.

More IP vandalism. In BLPs that are indef sprotected, like Jimbo's, there's the usual lot of high-sounding nonsense about why the sprotection is done: "This article is semiprotected to promote compliance with the policies on biographies of living people" (pass your cursor over the silver padlock). What it legalistically doesn't add is the rest of the story-- "unlike the vandalized biographies of living people you've never heard of, like Jane Fonda."

Hypocrits. Wankers. Hypocritical wankers.

[Kevin]

Sometimes it remains for months.

He was born with both male and female parts. After much discussion his parents decided they wanted a boy. With the help of steroids chris's Peter pecker grew.... Larger and larger.

[Text]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=392033151

It could have been much worse.

[Kato]

The nonsense about Mikel having a son who plays for Aston Villa is still in the biography, so that's 5 days now?

The 'fact' has been replicated onto Mikel's facebook fans page already, and google is beginning to propagate it round the internet.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mikel-John-Obi/107844129238697

[thekohser]

The nonsense about Mikel having a son who plays for Aston Villa is still in the biography, so that's 5 days now?

The 'fact' has been replicated onto Mikel's facebook fans page already, and google is beginning to propagate it round the internet.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mikel-John-Obi/107844129238697

Newyorkbrad finally took care of that, after 5 days of notice, about non-factual content. My wholly factual article about Christine Moellenberndt has been up for about half a day, and there are calls for me to take it down.

[powercorrupts]

I spot vandalism all the time - usually intentionally false but otherwise relatively convincing little sentences. They don't get properly checked and they just stay in, no-doubt often assumed to be properly verified - until an editor with the right knowledge finally notices and corrects them.

Not so long ago I noticed someone had put in a "winner" of a popular tv competition a day before its live final. I left it for a few hours to see how long it would last, but my need for the swamp of WP to harbour correct information got the better of me. As long as I'm contributing to WP I don't see the point of leaving vandalism. It's not entirely logical I know, as a number of articles I'm aware of are full of things I could correct, but I suppose the difference with simply reverting vandalism is that you don't get stalked by fruitcakes, or any of the other really debilitating hassles that come with article editing.

Reverting vandalism is easy to do when its spotted, but time and time again it doesn't get done. The staccato manner in which articles are built up makes it easy for people to insert all manner of things: Theft, synthesis and plain bullshit are all too closely related - there is nothing cohesive about Wikipedia articles at all. In a multi-collaborative wiki as popular as Wikipedia, there simply has to be tighter and more restricting style guides. The ones Wikipedia uses are almost designed for people to endlessly copy over existing information. Wikimedia (as Wikipedia) seems perfectly happy with this, and to call in 'cabal' consensus when it suits them, and the "Featured Article" machine when they have an article they want to effectively control (and - laughably - claim is properly encyclopedic).

[jayvdb]

The nonsense about Mikel having a son who plays for Aston Villa is still in the biography, so that's 5 days now?

The 'fact' has been replicated onto Mikel's facebook fans page already, and google is beginning to propagate it round the internet.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mikel-John-Obi/107844129238697

Newyorkbrad finally took care of that, after 5 days of notice, about non-factual content. My wholly factual article about Christine Moellenberndt has been up for about half a day, and there are calls for me to take it down.

You could interpret that to mean that your friends care about your credibility more than they care about the accuracy of information about Mikel John Obi.?

[thekohser]

You could interpret that to mean that your friends care about your credibility more than they care about the accuracy of information about Mikel John Obi.?

Too bad Wikipedia's platform served up Obi's page 3,100 times with false information, while Examiner served up Moellenberndt's page 130 times (so far) with correct information.

I can see how that makes me less credible than Wikipedia. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wacko.gif)

This post has been edited by thekohser:

[MZMcBride]

I can see how that makes me less credible than Wikipedia. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wacko.gif)

Moral credibility, dear.

[occono]

I caught a good one looking through random pages. Vandalism lasted more than 3 days, I don't know how bad that is in comparison. I fixed it because I can't help myself.

This post has been edited by occono:

[Alison]

I caught a good one looking through random pages. Vandalism lasted more than 3 days, I don't know how bad that is in comparison. I fixed it because I can't help myself.

You're a gay Irish Humanist ... from Ballybunion? Godz - you poor thing! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif) Not much good pizza around there! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

Welcome to Wikipedia Review (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[occono]

I caught a good one looking through random pages. Vandalism lasted more than 3 days, I don't know how bad that is in comparison. I fixed it because I can't help myself.

You're a gay Irish Humanist ... from Ballybunion? Godz - you poor thing! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif) Not much good pizza around there! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

Welcome to Wikipedia Review (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Limerick, actually. I took that picture of the statue on holiday.

We have a decent amount of Pizzarieas. I wouldn't brag to Italy....

Thank you for the warm welcome. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by occono:

[thekohser]

We have a decent amount of Pizzarieas. I wouldn't brag to Italy....

Not to be confused with the Pizzareolas. (NSFWBSFWMF)

[Alison]

We have a decent amount of Pizzarieas. I wouldn't brag to Italy....

Not to be confused with the Pizzareolas. (NSFWBSFWMF)

"Wolf's nipples! Get 'em while they're hot."

[occono]

I knew that was misspelled when I wrote it. I could have taken five seconds to check it in Google but I didn't bother.

Lesson learned.

[wikieyeay]

Here's a high-profile example, Linda McMahon (T-H-L-K-D).

Numerous instances of vandalism in her history, but nobody cared to protect her, because she's a Republican, and (or therefore) a hate figure.

Her page was fairly comprehensively vandalised shortly after her election defeat, on 3 November 2010:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=394544013

Despite being tagged '(Tag: references removed)', the next user to edit just tidied up the vandalism a bit.

Despite incessant tedious arguments over the page content, and several fixes to it since it was put in place, some of the vandalism still remains in situ as of now.

64 watchers obviously isn't enough....

[Tarc]

Numerous instances of vandalism in her history, but nobody cared to protect her, because she's a Republican, and (or therefore) a hate figure.

This sort of conspiracy hysteria just gets you laughed at and ignored, really.

[thekohser]

Numerous instances of vandalism in her history, but nobody cared to protect her, because she's a Republican, and (or therefore) a hate figure.

This sort of conspiracy hysteria just gets you laughed at and ignored, really.

Agreed... it could be as likely (or probably more) that nobody cares to protect her because of her affiliation with professional wrestling.

[jayvdb]

Numerous instances of vandalism in her history, but nobody cared to protect her, because she's a Republican, and (or therefore) a hate figure.

This sort of conspiracy hysteria just gets you laughed at and ignored, really.

Proper scholarly research into the development & vandalism of Dem vs Rep articles might be a very interesting vector to better understand the en.WP community. Many of us expect it would show a liberal bias; I suspect that this bias is diminishing, with savvy media agents and lobbyists happy to work for either side.