On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/8/20 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
I wouldn't suggest looking at the edit history at all, just the most recent revision as of whatever moment in time is chosen. If vandalism is found, then and only then would one look through the edit history to find out when it was added.
That only works if the article is very well referenced and you have all the references and are willing to fact-check everything. Otherwise you will miss subtle vandalism like changing the date of birth by a year.
It's not just facts. There are many ways to degrade the qualify of an article (such as removing entire sections) that would be invisible if one looks at only one revision.
Anthony seems to be talking about a question of article accuracy (unless I am misreading him). That is overlapping issue with addressing vandalism, but there are a significant number of ways to commit vandalism that nonetheless have nothing to do with impairing the resulting article's accuracy.
-Robert Rohde