On mer, 2002-04-17 at 18:02, Jimmy Wales wrote:
D Fisher wrote:
Having been involved with wikipedia for only a
few weeks, I have
just had my first "personal" experience of vandalism, ie. someone
deleted the bulk of an article I had written, leaving an
unintelligible stub. Fortunately I have been able to pick up the
original text and put it back. I know that there are set procedures
for dealing with this, but I would like to ask: How often does this
kind of thing happen? And can I assume that this is vandalism rather
than a simple error (bearing in mind that the perpetrator doesn't have
a proper ID?
It happens less often than I could have ever guessed -- I mean, it's
pretty insane to have a website up where people can freely edit the
pages, eh?
I think that it *might* be vandalism, or it *might* be an accident.
Or it might be a combination of the two. Maybe someone saw the link
saying they could edit the page, couldn't _believe_ that this was
true, and tried it by deleting the whole page, assuming that there
must be some "trick". Then, to their horror, they found that it
worked, and fled in terror.
Occasionally on the Esperanto wiki we've had new people visit and,
deciding to add an article, find the "How to edit a page" page (which
describes how easy it is to edit, just by clicking the "Edit this page!"
link). Naturally, they click the "edit this page" link... and replace
"How to edit a page" with their new article.
We have since made the documentation a little more explicit. :)
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)