[WikiEN-l] Rod Liddle, Spectator, on his Wikipedia article

[Andrew Turvey]

What do we do with vandalism now? 

1) Warned the user 
2) Repeat vandalism results in a block for the user / IP 
3) Persistent pattern of vandalism is escalated to WP:ABUSE which reports the matter to the IP owner concerned. 

People in the past have been sacked by their employers for abusing Wikipedia and school kids have been disciplined. 

Criminal sanctions takes it a step higher of course, but it's a tool open to us and I think we should consider using it when we can and when it's appropriate. You're probably right that this isn't exactly the right case - but I still think it's quite shocking and damaging to our reputation to hear a fairly mainstream British magazine bragging about vandalism in this way. 

We reality is we haven't managed. We have an appalling reputation for vandalism - rightly or wrongly - and worse, a reputation that we simply don't care about vandalism. Particularly for BLPs, I would say this is the number one issue we have to deal with to safeguard our future. We need to take it more seriously and we need to change what we do. Personally I think criminal sanctions should be part of this. 

There's also a broader reality here about the way the internet is changing. For years the internet was an anarchic place full of anonymous and untraceable users and zero policing. This has changed quite fundamentally in the last few years. Popular webpages use real names. People are sacked for writing things on facebook. Spammers and child porn users have been jailed. Bulletin board users have been sued for libels they've written. The "real world" and the "virtual world" are coming together in a way that was unimaginable five years ago. 

In that context, the idea of prosecuting persistent or high-profile Wikipedia vandals shouldn't be out of the question. 

Andrew 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Gray" <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> 
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
Sent: Friday, 17 April, 2009 11:36:28 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal 
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Rod Liddle, Spectator, on his Wikipedia article 

2009/4/17 Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com>: 

> I'm not sure why we're discussing legal options. Even if there were 
> legal avenues open to us, it would be silly to pursue them. 

I endorse this comment entirely. It seems a little surreal to read 
some of the discussion in this thread, which whilst no doubt 
interesting from an academic perspective, doesn't sit very comfortably 
with our normal practice! 

We've managed fine for eight years without suing people who do 
breaching experiments. Suddenly arguing we ought to change this in the 
case of someone who probably didn't do one as such anyway is a little 
uncharacteristic... 

-- 
- Andrew Gray 
andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk 

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