The question is what to do about it. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has talked about flagging "stable" articles.

Wales said Wikipedia will soon introduce a "time delay" mode for articles caught in revert wars, where revisions won't become effective for 10 minutes. In that brief period, volunteers would presumably quash inappropriate changes.

In the near future Wikipedia plans to introduce stable versions of each entry when the quality has reached a certain threshold.

Wales says his team is also working on ways to reduce the number of these incidents in part by giving Wikipedians better tools to deal with these incidents.

"I think the thing that's foremost is the forthcoming feature of the software, what we called stable versions which will allow the community to flag particular versions of articles as being non-vandalised," he says.

Mr Wales also anticipated updates to the software behind Wikipedia. In the new version, to be launched soon, the community will be able to tag "stable versions" of encyclopedia pages, which will help protect against vandalism.

Among the projects which will be supported with the Sloan grant: a software feature called Flagged Revisions, which will let experienced editors assign public grades to postings -- which Wikimedia likens to “nutrition labeling” for Wikipedia content.

To help smooth the process and ensure quality, the foundation is exploring a feature on the English-language Wikipedia called "flagged revisions," which allows trusted editors to affix quality labels to articles that are true and vandalism free.