[WikiEN-l] Simple vandalism occasionally being missed

[WereSpielChequers]

>   1. Simple vandalism being missed (Carcharoth)
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 14:52:56 +0100
> From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple vandalism being missed
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <AANLkTimFLiuM41Jcz0WnsDdI_Wl94mgqTRkEoquKnK28 at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> I was recently looking up which countries were in the Congo Basin, and
> the version of the article I found was this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congo_Basin&oldid=359085351
>
> The list of countries is clearly missing.
>
> It was removed with this edit:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congo_Basin&diff=357222409&oldid=353051579
>
> That was 20 April 2010 (I've now restored the list).
>
> Has anyone done a recent study to see how and why vandalism like that
> is missed and how common it is for such things to be missed?
>
> Carcharoth

I don't know about a formal study, but I'm finding ancient vandalism
more rarely which implies there is less of it now.

There is no single magic bullet for this. As I see it the hardest
vandalism to stop at present is the random removal of a small amount
of content via an IP that is only used for one vandalism.  IPs and
accounts that go on vandalism sprees usually get spotted quickly and
if the Hugglers miss them eventually they will vandalise something on
an active editor's watchlist. But vandals who show restraint are
harder to spot.

As for dealing with it, our edit filters have been improving, more
stuff is being bot reverted, Huggle, recent changes patrol and Newpage
patrol deal with the vast majority of vandalism almost in real time.
And we have other backstops available
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Uncategorized_and_unreferenced_biographies_of_living_people
has turned out to be quite useful at identifying recently vandalised
BLPs, and Poop patrol is now in alpha test.

Overall I think we are getting faster at dealing with vandalism,
though there is still stuff there, I recently deleted a BLP of someone
who had been "raised in the woods by bears". But that had only been up
for a few months, nowadays I very rarely find vandalism that has been
up for a whole year.

WereSpielChequers