I should add that "1516171819" seems more like vandalism to me - 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, a very suspicious pattern.

--node

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:11:57 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

It's not impossible to check...

--node

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:15:41 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

...

When at Wikisources [[Pi to 1,000,000 places]] an anonymous user changes the first 10 digits of line 14320 from "0628419546" to "1516171819" how is anyone possible able to know which is correct? :-) :'(

Ec

---

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Tim Starling wrote:

Ray Saintonge wrote:

...

When at Wikisources [[Pi to 1,000,000 places]] an anonymous user changes the first 10 digits of line 14320 from "0628419546" to "1516171819" how is anyone possible able to know which is correct? :-) :'(

The obvious thing to do would be to revert it. The chances that the anonymous user knew pi to 1,000,000 decimal places and noticed the error are pretty small. The regularity of the sequence "1516171819" should be a giveaway, just like the sequence inserted in the same edit on the previous line "1234567890".

That said, a google search turned up a site apparently made for precisely this problem:

http://www.angio.net/pi/bigpi.cgi?UsrQuery=6014280388

Not that it matters, you only need tens of digits to solve any conceivable physical problem. What a waste of disk space.

Thanks to all of you who responded on this. The only useful value for the the article that comes to mind is as a convenient long list of pseudo-random numbers when somebody needs one. Beyond that, the love that some people have for this sort of thing gives a fantastic insight into their characters.

Thanks for catching the sequence; I should have noticed it myself.

I've reverted the vandalism and protected the page. That seemed the simpler option. I didn't really want to get into a fight about deleting this; I get enough fights already.

Ec

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 13:10:30 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:

I just thought I should add that the need to constantly clean up vandalism on pi pages is a waste of time. You should just protect the page or delete it.

The same was true of the list of prime numbers when it included 10,000 numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=List_of_prime_numbers&diff=22...

but there was no consensus to delete it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_prime_numbers#From_VfD

If such pages would need permanent protection, it only proves they are not suitable for a wiki, where pages are supposed to be edited.

Angela.

Stirling Newberry wrote:

On the contrary, it is merely that "neutral point of view" on such pages has a much narrower definition than on most pages.

In fact the definition is so narrow that one can easily get close enough to it for all practical purposes in the first edit, obviating the need for incremental improvement. When perfection has been attained, it's likely that further edits will have to be reverted.

It's true that you could make minor changes to formatting, but those changes do not provide enough benefit to counteract the waste of time and resources caused by vandalism.

-- Tim Starling

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

Tim Starling wrote:

...

It's true that you could make minor changes to formatting, but those changes do not provide enough benefit to counteract the waste of time and resources caused by vandalism.

I totally agree and I think what Angela said is valid here as well: this type of page isn't all that suited for a wiki, so we should have really no qualms about just protecting the page and being done with it.

That page was in fact protected soon after the issue was raised. Unlike in strictly textual pages it can be difficult to recognize the difference between corrections and subtle vandalism in a numerical page.

I'd say the same thing about a *lot* of things on wikisource. At some point fairly early in the development of a source article, protection is a wise option. Probably the protection message should make it very clear to people that if they have a real change to make, the article can easily be unprotected.

Thus far, vandalism at Wikisource (or even Wiktionary) has not been overwhelming. Perhaps the size of Wikipedia combined with the short attention span of most common vandals helps the smaller projects to stay below the radar. The texts in Wikisource have remained remarkably stable, but I would not hesitate to impose protection if there were a consistent trend to act silly. Once a text is in place most of the editing activity tends to relate to such secondary things as format, categories, introductory or other connective material. We would dream too that at some point we would be better able to handle annotations and translations through a system of closely associated pages.

Deferral of the issue of multiple domains, has already inspired some people to look for imaginative ways of treating multilingual access. It is much too early to tell which of these experiments will be successful, but the clutter of dead-end attempts seems a small price to pay. Those that are true failures can be easily removed when the passion for them has gone away. These experiments will develop more naturally in an easily editable context, but vigilance will need to continue.

To the extent that protection may be required, I will look into a developing a suitable protection message.

But it seems silly for anyone to have to pull their hair out fighting vandalism on a page that *could not possibly* be improved anyway, because it is already accurate.

Agreed.

Ec

Magnus Manske wrote:

Angela wrote:

...

If such pages would need permanent protection, it only proves they are not suitable for a wiki, where pages are supposed to be edited.

The point seems to be that pi is *not* supposed to be edited. An article *about* pi is. Wikisource should make it easy to add a data page, but then keep it stable, IMHO.

Agreed. I tend to look at Wikisource as a place where material is relatively much less editable than onWikipedia, but not completely uneditable. This mostly works. But that could be because some of the texts are so long that they discourage editing. There are features that I would love to have that would make translations and annotations more convenient, but I can be patient in waiting for them. 8-)

Ec

Magnus Manske ti 2004/10/21 ChS 03:31 sia-kong:

The point seems to be that pi is *not* supposed to be edited. An article *about* pi is. Wikisource should make it easy to add a data page, but then keep it stable, IMHO.

I've never tried this: I suppose one could put the value itself in a template (protected) but leave the page proper open for annotation.