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Easily one of the most important activities at Wikipedia is the constant maintenance of articles and other pages. This website, as a very high profile Wiki, is far more vulnerable than almost any other to vandalism, since almost anyone with an Internet connection is allowed to edit it in any way they choose. Activities like recent change patrol are a reaction to the large number of detrimental edits we see here. However, since the job of taking on the vandalism that various bots miss falls to the human editors of Wikipedia, there are always issues with the process.
Mindspillage's essay on vandal-fighting is, I believe, an absolutely invaluable piece of reading. It boils down to the fact that all editors should be treated as humans, because they are. The anonymous IP that replaces featured articles with F-bombs should be treated as kindly as the one that fixes spelling errors in good faith.
It's probably fair to say that most vandals are simply testing the waters at Wikipedia: bored school kids and unfamiliar users. They should not be blocked or warned exclusively as a punishment: the aim of vandal-fighting is to prevent future vandalism, not to punish individuals. With that in mind, it's absolutely crucial that vandal-fighting be done carefully:
“ | What does it cost you? A few minutes of refreshing someone's contributions page to see if they're still at it. If they've stopped vandalizing before you have to block, great! The aim was to stop damage to the wiki, not to punish the "offender". If they've gotten a clue after {{ test3}}—or simply gotten bored—then the effect is the same as if you'd blocked. Blocking someone who's already stopped vandalizing, as a punitive measure, creates animosity: "hey, I stopped 15 minutes ago after I was warned and now I'm getting blocked!" | ” |
New page patrol, as the name implies, involves trawling through a rolling list of newly-created pages in order to ensure that they meet a certain standard for inclusion. Unfortunately, while the instructions there go into excellent detail on how to handle unsuitable articles, it pays far too little attention to users' interactions. Such neglect to newbies' feelings has a decidedly negative affect on new users, which many users are aware of but nobody warns against. This was nicely demonstrated at my own RfA, which failed as a result.
So, what needs to be done?
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Easily one of the most important activities at Wikipedia is the constant maintenance of articles and other pages. This website, as a very high profile Wiki, is far more vulnerable than almost any other to vandalism, since almost anyone with an Internet connection is allowed to edit it in any way they choose. Activities like recent change patrol are a reaction to the large number of detrimental edits we see here. However, since the job of taking on the vandalism that various bots miss falls to the human editors of Wikipedia, there are always issues with the process.
Mindspillage's essay on vandal-fighting is, I believe, an absolutely invaluable piece of reading. It boils down to the fact that all editors should be treated as humans, because they are. The anonymous IP that replaces featured articles with F-bombs should be treated as kindly as the one that fixes spelling errors in good faith.
It's probably fair to say that most vandals are simply testing the waters at Wikipedia: bored school kids and unfamiliar users. They should not be blocked or warned exclusively as a punishment: the aim of vandal-fighting is to prevent future vandalism, not to punish individuals. With that in mind, it's absolutely crucial that vandal-fighting be done carefully:
“ | What does it cost you? A few minutes of refreshing someone's contributions page to see if they're still at it. If they've stopped vandalizing before you have to block, great! The aim was to stop damage to the wiki, not to punish the "offender". If they've gotten a clue after {{ test3}}—or simply gotten bored—then the effect is the same as if you'd blocked. Blocking someone who's already stopped vandalizing, as a punitive measure, creates animosity: "hey, I stopped 15 minutes ago after I was warned and now I'm getting blocked!" | ” |
New page patrol, as the name implies, involves trawling through a rolling list of newly-created pages in order to ensure that they meet a certain standard for inclusion. Unfortunately, while the instructions there go into excellent detail on how to handle unsuitable articles, it pays far too little attention to users' interactions. Such neglect to newbies' feelings has a decidedly negative affect on new users, which many users are aware of but nobody warns against. This was nicely demonstrated at my own RfA, which failed as a result.
So, what needs to be done?