Vandalism is usually caught in a few seconds, or not Options Rating

[thekohser]

Here's one about 7 months old:

She is also as the last name suggests the mother of Peter Matt. He is widely known as one of the biggest users in Australia.

Here's one about 2.5 years old:

Ioannis "Noucleous" Makris is a widelly known, controversial figure of the Greek society. He is a Doctor with a Phd in Genetics from King's College in London and subsequently a famous club owner in Athens, Greece. He is usually reffered to as "Noucleous" due to his extensive and concise knowledge in several fields. He has been a participant in several Greek TV shows and currently holds the Chair of the Committee of the "Knowledge Games and Answers" based in Vouliagmeni, Greece.

Here's one about 3.5 years old:

He is the founder and front man for the Jeremy Vogt Band. Vogt is also widely known in the Indianapolis music scene for being an ardent supporter of original music. Vogt's debut album, People in Strange Places, (2005) has received critical acclaim in Indianapolis and throughout central Indiana.

(As if central Indiana has a music scene!)


That's all I have for you today, loyal Wikipedians. Get to work! I'd help you, but I'm banned!

[Text]

Get to work!

Jimbo wants an encyclopedia, Jimbo can do it himself

[Obesity]

To be fair to WP apologists, did anyone ever claim that vandalism to obscure articles is caught "within seconds"?

Usually when someone explains WP to the uninitiated, they explain that vandalism to prominent subjects such as the President of the United States are promptly reversed.

[Eva Destruction]

(As if central Indiana has a music scene!)

FWIW, central Indiana has quite a significant music scene; the huge number of students in Bloomington, outside easy travelling distance of anywhere else, makes enough of a captive market to keep a very noisy indie scene afloat, and Indianapolis's location halfway between Nashville and Chicago means pretty much every touring show stops off there.

[Malleus]

To be fair to WP apologists, did anyone ever claim that vandalism to obscure articles is caught "within seconds"?

Usually when someone explains WP to the uninitiated, they explain that vandalism to prominent subjects such as the President of the United States are promptly reversed.

... or even at all. Perhaps an agument for not having articles that nobody except the author and maybe the subject give a flying fuck about.

[Eva Destruction]

... or even at all. Perhaps an agument for not having articles that nobody except the author and maybe the subject give a flying fuck about.

As opposed to vacuum-tube computers and sticking ferrets up your trousers? "Nobody gives a fuck" is subjective; as someone once pointed out, the strength of Wikipedia's model (and it does have strengths, despite the obvious weaknesses) is that it allows subjects that are important to the small group interested in them, but wouldn't be covered in a print book. Often the "nobody gives a fuck" articles are in better shape, as they don't attract the hordes of crackpots.

[maggot3]

It's usually either caught within a few seconds or not noticed for a long time, outside of very popular articles, due to most "vandalism patrollers" just checking Special:RecentChanges. I'd be curious if anybody has ever actually claimed that vandalism is "reversed in seconds" (outside of media statements), so I can laugh at them.

[thekohser]

To be fair to WP apologists, did anyone ever claim that vandalism to obscure articles is caught "within seconds"?

Usually when someone explains WP to the uninitiated, they explain that vandalism to prominent subjects such as the President of the United States are promptly reversed.

You mean articles like the 100 for the United States senators?

Deliberate errors on those articles are fixed, on average, in 24 hours, a study proved.

And, yes, I think I could find about a dozen different Wikipedia apologists who claim that vandalism to all Wikipedia articles is caught very quickly. You must not know the Yahoo! Answers community very well.

This post has been edited by thekohser: Wed 6th January 2010, 12:14am

[Eva Destruction]

You must not know the Yahoo! Answers community very well.

You say that like it's a bad thing

[Malleus]

... or even at all. Perhaps an agument for not having articles that nobody except the author and maybe the subject give a flying fuck about.

As opposed to vacuum-tube computers and sticking ferrets up your trousers? "Nobody gives a fuck" is subjective; as someone once pointed out, the strength of Wikipedia's model (and it does have strengths, despite the obvious weaknesses) is that it allows subjects that are important to the small group interested in them, but wouldn't be covered in a print book. Often the "nobody gives a fuck" articles are in better shape, as they don't attract the hordes of crackpots.

Early computers, witches, and sticking ferrets down your trousers are important topics, and I would notice vandalism.

... by which i meant that if someone cares about an article they will have it watclisted. The red flag articles are those that no active editor is watching, but of course which they are is secret. "Security by obscurity" has never worked.

This post has been edited by Malleus: Tue 5th January 2010, 10:18pm

[Trick cyclist]

Sometimes vandalism lasts a day or two. Here's a recent example that really should have been caught by a new change patroller:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=330998932

The red flag articles are those that no active editor is watching, but of course which they are is secret.

How on earth would anyone know which they are? Surely it would take a developer to find out exactly who is watching a given article then it would be laborious to find ot which of them are active. And even if an active editor has something on his watchlist what if he doesnt in fact care any more and has just not bothered to unwatch it?

[John Limey]

Sometimes vandalism lasts a day or two. Here's a recent example that really should have been caught by a new change patroller:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=330998932

The red flag articles are those that no active editor is watching, but of course which they are is secret.

How on earth would anyone know which they are? Surely it would take a developer to find out exactly who is watching a given article then it would be laborious to find ot which of them are active. And even if an active editor has something on his watchlist what if he doesnt in fact care any more and has just not bothered to unwatch it?

Umm, Special:UnwatchedPages. There's also http://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/watcher.py

[Juliancolton]

Umm, Special:UnwatchedPages. There's also http://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/watcher.py

Note, however, that the watcher tool only works for pages with more than 30 watchers (unless you have special access), which more-or-less eliminates most of the mainspace.

[Malleus]

Umm, Special:UnwatchedPages. There's also http://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/watcher.py

Note, however, that the watcher tool only works for pages with more than 30 watchers (unless you have special access), which more-or-less eliminates most of the mainspace.

Quite. The unwatched pages a'e a secret because if we knew what they were, we'd vandalise them, knowing that nobody would notice. As I said, security by obscurity just doesn't work.

[Eva Destruction]

Quite. The unwatched pages a'e a secret because if we knew what they were, we'd vandalise them, knowing that nobody would notice.

Or more accurately, the unwatched pages are a secret because Special/UnwatchedPages crashed in 2007 and Brion never got round to fixing it. (You can see the first 5000 entries just fine, but if you're interested in any article further down the alphabet than Adrenergic receptor you're shit out of luck.)

This post has been edited by Eva Destruction: Tue 5th January 2010, 11:59pm

[Push the button]

Note, however, that the watcher tool only works for pages with more than 30 watchers (unless you have special access), which more-or-less eliminates most of the mainspace.

I disagree - I think most mainspace pages have less watchers, or active watchers, than you think, or you would imagine they should have simply by virtue of being in the mainspace.

Not scientific, I know, but I just picked the contributiosn of an editor chosen at random from recent changes and looked at the number of watchers of the last ten articles they edited. 6 of the ten were BLP, and of those four had less than 30 watchers. The other 2 had 38 and 58, or thereabouts. Of the 4 non-BLP articles, 3 had less than 30 watchers, and the other 1 had around 32 watchers.

Clearly not a scientific thing, but going further I think the number of watchers an article has doesn't necessarily equate to the same number of people being aware of changes to it - either (i) they've got a load of articles on their watchlist - some people automatically add every article they edit to it - in which case they won't necessarily notice or care about a change to an article on their watchlist, or (ii) they simply don't look at their watchlist, perhaps because they no longer edit Wikipedia.

I guess what I'm saying that number of watchers of an article doesn't necessarily equate to number of people actually watching changes to an article.

This post has been edited by Push the button: Wed 6th January 2010, 12:03am

[Sarcasticidealist]

I disagree - I think most mainspace pages have less watchers, or active watchers, than you think, or you would imagine they should have simply by virtue of being in the mainspace.

I'm pretty sure you're actually agreeing with Julian there - his point was that most mainspace articles have fewer than thirty watchers.

[Push the button]

I disagree - I think most mainspace pages have less watchers, or active watchers, than you think, or you would imagine they should have simply by virtue of being in the mainspace.

I'm pretty sure you're actually agreeing with Julian there - his point was that most mainspace articles have fewer than thirty watchers.

Could be, working my way through the tautology of it, in which case I'm glad my non-scientific sampling could prove both his points and mine at the same time!

This post has been edited by Push the button: Wed 6th January 2010, 12:11am

[thekohser]

It's also interesting to note that absolutely no action has been taken on any of the three articles I pointed out. This is good. Hasten the day.

[Push the button]

It's also interesting to note that absolutely no action has been taken on any of the three articles I pointed out. This is good. Hasten the day.

It's not really going to hasten whilst you're talking about articles which have each received a grand total of 8 viewings this month (ignoring the one that Alison's just deleted), though, is it. It just proves that the speed of vandalism's capture is a factor of its impact...

This post has been edited by Push the button: Wed 6th January 2010, 12:29am