Pff :P According to this -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:UuU -- it was a camelcase hack.

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 8:56 PM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:

...

Does anyone know what the first ever instance of vandalism was? Just curious.

Oh that would be the creation of article. "uUu". It was meant to look like a raised middle finger ;)

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2008/8/18 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:

Looks like it predates our ability to easily find it - would nostalgia.wp be worth looking at?

...which promptly takes us back to late November:

http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_W._Bush&diff=178...

Nostalgia doesn't seem to go back beyond c. Nov 20th.

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 6:32 AM, Sam Blacketer sam.blacketer@googlemail.com wrote:

On 8/18/08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:

...

2008/8/18 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:

...

Looks like it predates our ability to easily find it - would nostalgia.wp be worth looking at?

...which promptly takes us back to late November:

http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_W._Bush&diff=178...

Nostalgia doesn't seem to go back beyond c. Nov 20th.

If you look at the 'HomePage' on nostalgiawiki http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePage, it seems from the note on the bottom that vandalism was well known:

"Note: Unless you have the administrator password, you cannot currently edit this page. While this is unfortunate, it has turned out to be necessary to prevent vandalism of this page, which has occurred on several occasions." --

The first message I found about vandalism from Jimmy, apparently related to a discussion onwiki, was from Oct. 2001: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/000624.html

when the homepage was not yet locked. The very next message was the famous "temporary measures" one, when adminship was instituted: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/000625.html

Note that this was five months or so after the creation of other language Wikipedias, Wiktionary, and about four months after kpjas suggested a database infrastructure might be necessary: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-June/000185.html

There are several people from the beginning who are still active on this list who would have a better idea of when vandalism started, though. My guess would be with the first slashdotting.

( as a side note, most of my favorite messages ever to the list come from those early months, such as Larry asking the president to correct his own biography: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/000069.html and Jimmy asking "so what's this list for, anyway? http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-January/000011.html )

phoebe

phoebe ayers wrote:

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 9:40 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 6:32 AM, Sam Blacketer sam.blacketer@googlemail.com wrote:

...

On 8/18/08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:

...

2008/8/18 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:

...

Looks like it predates our ability to easily find it - would nostalgia.wp be worth looking at?

...which promptly takes us back to late November:

http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_W._Bush&diff=178...

Nostalgia doesn't seem to go back beyond c. Nov 20th.

If you look at the 'HomePage' on nostalgiawiki http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePage, it seems from the note on the bottom that vandalism was well known:

"Note: Unless you have the administrator password, you cannot currently edit this page. While this is unfortunate, it has turned out to be necessary to prevent vandalism of this page, which has occurred on several occasions." --

The first message I found about vandalism from Jimmy, apparently related to a discussion onwiki, was from Oct. 2001: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-October/000624.html

As a followup: The first message mentioning possible vandalism from Larry, however, was much earlier: March 2001. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/000025.html

The first copyvio was apparently in Feb. 2001: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-February/000020.html

-- phoebe

What I find most nostalgia-inducing about Larry's message is the request to "log in more frequently". This reminds me there was a time when one could follow each and every edit, by everybody, with relatively scarce expenditure of time.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

I may guess that it would be something considered today as a "test edit".

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:55 PM, Philippe Beaudette < philippebeaudette@gmail.com> wrote:

On Aug 19, 2008, at 1:10 PM, Phoebe wrote:

...

...

As a followup: The first message mentioning possible vandalism from Larry, however, was much earlier: March 2001. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/000025.html

The first copyvio was apparently in Feb. 2001:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-February/000020.html

...

...

-- phoebe

Frankly, I find this whole discussion fascinating. For those of us who missed "the early days" it's really interesting to read some of that early list-traffic.

Philippe _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l