On 8/23/06, Christopher Larberg christopherlarberg@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 00:39 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
There are a lot of drive-by commentless date changes. Much (but not all of them) are vandalism. They are often difficult to fact check, and these days with so much vandalism reverted by bots, I'm worried that even more date changes are being missed.
I can't necessarily speak for anyone else, but my instinct would be to revert edits that consist solely or almost solely of uncited date changes on sight and ask the editor responsible to provide a reference in the article if he or she wants to re-add . As editors, we should have a high standard of verifiability for such basic and easily researched facts as dates.
Thanks for raising this issue, it's something that had bothered me. I see a lot of these little changes (frequently population changes, number of career wins of some sportsperson etc...) and am torn between assuming good faith (and respecting the wiki model that people are making small improvements), and suspecting vandalism.
Could we replace the linked "Edit summary" text next to the edit summary box with something more explanatory, like "Please explain this change"? Maybe just for anons? I don't want to revert good changes, but without a description or anything, it's really tough!
Steve