The Zoe and NIU incident just a few months ago got me to thinking about what Wikipedia considers vandalism and the legal definition.

Zoe argued that Dr. Pierce's contributions constituted as vandalism and ordered the university to halt his activities. NIU took a different take on Zoe's vandalism definition by arguing that a site that allows anyone to edit and place anything on it could not be, by legal definition, vandalizing a site. When NIU's lawyers saw "vandalism", they likely thought of illegal hacking as opposed to a site's condemnation of edits.

Wikipedia's response to vandalism is typically blocking and if persistant vandalism continues, filing an abuse report to the vandal's ISP. The ISP can decide whether to discontinue the user's service due to their violation of their terms of service or ignore Wikipedia's request. The law does not force the ISP to stop the Wiki vandal unless it has done something blatantly criminal such as posting child pornography on the Wiki.

Now, I've also looked at Conserveapedia's (the crazy site that blocks people for writing the Queen's english and using Common Era (CE) as opposed to AD) rules that state that vandalism can be reported to the police and criminal charges pressed against the vandal:



I'm having a hard time seeing Wikipedia or any wiki going to court over editting or the police even getting involved. Will Jonny Cache be arrested for editting the Charles Peirce article? Would I be arrested for editting Conserveapedia's homosexuality article by providing evidence from moderate and liberal Christian groups that homosexuality may not be condemned by the Bible?

I would think judges and the police would have better things to do than deal with Wiki "vandals", even those that place the giant wangs on the main page.

Note: I personally don't believe in blatant vandalism such as adding giant wangs or purposely adding false information on the Wiki. But that's just me.