Unfortunately it is more common than we realise. From nonsensical 'factoids' that are made up to completely ridiculous articles. I came across one page recently on a prominent early 20th century politician. It was twelve lines of paranoid, POV garbage. It had been sitting there for months. If anyone thinking about joining Wikipedia had stumbled across the article as their first experience of the site I wouldn't have blamed them for saying "if this is what this so-called encyclopædia publishes, it is obviously a heap of crap" and left Wikipedia. Even when I rewrote it the vandal kept coming back to reinsert his garbage. When I left for a few weeks he came back again, put back the rubbish and it survived unnoticed until I came back and saw it on my watchlist.
A solution might be to create alongside recent changes and a watchlist a topiclist, whereby if people are interested in, and knowledgeable about, a topic, all edits on that topic would show up. That way they could keep an eye on articles that they have not edited (or even knew existed) but which they know about and so could spot vandalism or garbage edits. In my case I would then easily spot dodgy edits on Irish history, politics, constitutional law, etc. Others could do sport, of television, or whatever. It might help catch dodgy edits in obscure article quickly.
--- Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/20/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com
Show me some old vandalism.
Are you suggesting it doesn't exist? I've come
across week-old vandalism on
little-watched articles on my watchlist.
I'm suggesting that it's not around in significant amounts. I find some now and again. I find instances of poor quality writing and bad organization more often. A few articles are prone to link-spamming, others get POV-pushing. Compared to that, old vandalism is rather rare. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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