[WikiEN-l] The Counter Vandalism Unit? Whaa?

[Steve Bennett]

> -----Original Message-----
> >What most of the people on this thread fail to recognize is that 
> >creating anti-vandalism paramilitaries *encourages* vandalism.
> >
> That's just a ludicrous point of view - the vast majority of 
> vandals I deal with neither know nor care about WP internal 
> process. If they did, they would be able to introduce 
> vandalism in much more subtle ways, for instance by stacking 
> vandalistic edits behind legitimate changes by a sockpuppet, 
> mixing vandalism in with a good edit, using plausible 
> sounding edit summaries, etc. Instead, they tend to add the 
> first thing that comes to mind, usually scatological.

I agree with this assessment, made somewhat more clearly than my own
"rat vs mousetrap" analogy earlier. Once vandals realise they are being
thwarted, they pretty quickly stop being vandals. They either disappear,
become productive editors, or become something much worse.

Steve