Effective Vandalism -- Experimentation Results Options

[karmafist]

While I don't think it's a good long term strategy, vandalism is a good way to chip away at the credibility of Wikipedia, thus chipping away at the power of the corrupt people who control it.

I did some experiments with another sock, Broad Street, and here's what I found( the contribs are at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...s/Broad_Street)



-Make It Fake, and Plausible: Remember Seigenthaler? While that wasn't true, there it wasn't inplausible -- looking at it, you wouldn't say at first glance "this is fake"

-Don't use cultural memes: Everything went swimmingly until I started to use the Colbert Elephant Meme.
People know that's false, so the plausibility goes out the window.

-Make edits slowly: Two days I had three edits, and nobody noticed. The next day I had five, and they caught on.

-Don't have edit summaries: They tend to draw attention, but that's not a hard and fast rule.

-Press the random button and go for lesser known articles: The reversion will be alot faster at say, George W. Bush, than some count from the 18th Century or some long lost theory.

-Remember the IP you're using: They can check that.


Best case scenario -- several new Siegenthaler Crises are made, thus destroying the credibility of Wikipedia, and its funding, forcing it to either become a corporate shill or charging users for an account(thus removing any pretense of being a "free and unbiased encyclopedia") or forcing them to reform.

Worst case scenario -- the majority of articles on Wikipedia are either protected or abandoned(again, removing the "free" pretense), and all new users are seen as potential suspects, creating an atmosphere where they are unlikely to become wiki-addicts and possibly spread the word of the poor behavior of the Cabalists.

[IronDuke]

I agree with Somey. In my view there are two problems with WP: the idiot teenage editors, and the bad admins (these groups overlap). Dealing with the idiot teenage editors will take a big structural change to WP, but one can torture the bad admins more effectively by wikilawyer them to death, subtly altering policy pages, gaming ANI/I, keeping careful records of their unprosecuted misdeeds, and by actualling trying to NPOV their pet articles.

To test this, go find a supported fact (with citations) and try adding it to PETA or Hamas, or virtually any page that SlimVirgin and Jayjg edit (or pick your favorite jackbooted demi-facist admin). If they 3RR, report them, otherwise just make the same edit every 24 hours until they ban the particular sock you're using. Make arguments on the talk page that sound like someone who's been causing trouble lately. Find someone who's been bitching to the admin about being harassed, and poke them a few times.

The admins will quickly escalate into verbal violence, and waste countless hours tracking down everything you've done, and then blame whomever is their favorite puppet-master at the moment. I confess to some pangs of guilt because they are almost always wrong and some bystander gets banned or warned, but it all contributes to making the worst admins miserable, and doesn't affect the good ones much.

This can all be done more-or-less within the WP rules, doesn't hurt what information integrity exists within the "encyclopedic" pages (and anyone who would consider WP encyclopedic on a topic like Hamas should have their head examined), doesn't overly disrupt most well-intentioned editors, but drives the cabal nuts.

[karmafist]

In response to what Everyking said above,


To me, the encyclopedia is a nice bonus, but making sure it does not harm people or is used as a propaganda tool by the wrong hands is a necessity.


I'll do whatever is in my power to stop that while keeping that promise to my friend.

I don't mean this as a value judgement, but another way to look at it might be that vandalism gives would-be "cabalists" an easy, and highly visible, means of demonstrating their loyalty to the cause. Fixing "ur so ghey" insertions and page-blankings doesn't require the fixer to know anything, other than how to revert.

So in a way, this ultimately contributes to further insularity and mean-spirited elitism among the admins, especially the newer ones, because they're encouraged to take on an "us vs. them" attitude. Whereas, if there were never any vandalism whatsoever, it would be much more difficult to get noticed -- and thereby promoted.

This is all somewhat theoretical, of course...

If there are no new ones, what about the old ones?