Ray Saintonge wrote:
This is really just a difference in perspective. Whereas I was approaching this from the perspective of the article, it appears that you are appraoching it from the perspective of the contributing vandal.
That's right. Different cases may differ. In this particular case, this is a known person who has repeatedly threatened to vandalize wikipedia by making subtle edits over a long period of time. This is a person who caused several people to work overnight to revert a series of edits from a series of different ip numbers and login ids.
If the comment that women are more prone to anorexia were added to an article where it at least has a modicum of relevance, a person watching this article who otherwise might not have crossed paths with our vandal could easily see the unexplained removal of that comment as being itself vandalism.
That's right. We should probably annotate such removals.
Also, it's important to realize that some vandalism may be driven by a lack of balance in an article in the first place. In other words, as unfortunate as it may be, sometimes some vandals may have "a point" and choose to react to it by going bonkers.
In such cases, the article should be improved, even if by accident the improvements make the vandal happy! :-)
--Jimbo