On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 1:38 AM, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Matthew Brown
<morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think that Wikipedia being constantly bombarded by genuine spam has
put us in an overly defensive mindset, which is also fed by the
free-software anti-commercial attitude of some contributors. Spam is
when an article is created to garner publicity or hits. It's not
documenting anything anyone cares about, it's instead trying to give
false respectability to something our readers don't want to see.
Yes, in the same way that "vandal fighters" start to see vandalism
everywhere, especially in well-meaning but in some way malformed
contributions.
This is a very good point. Maybe it's related to the phenomenon that
as soon as you get a new car you start seeing it everywhere...
Anyway, for the first few months it was this way for me too. One of
the biggest helps was watching current-event articles develop. I'd
see edits that I thought were vandalism but I'd wait and see what
happened. Most of the time someone else would come along and salvage
some content from the edit and incorporate it. Fascinating to watch,
especially in real-time. It really helps you see how important
AGF/BITE are.
--
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers