Wikipedia fights off cyber vandals

[T_i_B]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1800273,00.html

What links George W Bush, Christina Aguilera, Adolf Hitler, sex - and, from last Friday, Tony Blair?
The answer is that the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has deemed that they are part of a growing number of subjects in need of protection from cyber vandals.

The giant internet database, which boasts an 'anyone can edit' policy, decided that the 11-page entry on the Prime Minister needed to be shielded after a wave of online assaults from contributors wishing to embellish his biography - many in highly imaginary, not to mention damaging, ways. Wikipedia aims to offer free knowledge to everybody on the planet. But its strength - that anyone, anywhere, can fiddle with the prose - is, according to some sceptics, becoming a weakness.

Along with massive expansion - it is now the web's third most popular news and information source and contains almost 4 million entries - there have been increased opportunities for vandalism and growing disputes over what should be said, forcing those behind the project to protect more and more subjects.

Alison Wheeler, an editor and chief executive of Wikimedia UK, a division of the Wikipedia holding company, said the restriction was a necessary tool for quality control. 'We've had an increase in the level of vandalism on entry. It's mostly quite offensive stuff, such as someone adding in as fact that Tony Blair is a liar. Others are simply stupid - mildly amusing, perhaps - such as that Tony Blair spilt popcorn down his pyjamas last night.' Wheeler said more people seemed to be vandalising Blair's entry since a restriction was recently placed on George Bush's site.

[nolabels]

1. Why would anyone want to vandalize the persona of Bush and Blair?

Shouldn't it seem obvious that the truth is much more devastating to them than some slight of a passer by :shrug:

[Tesha]

8. You can't post the truth; the Bush Defense League will edit it out.

Wiki is worthless when it comes to any topic that's politically
hot. The artcile will either whip-saw between multiple, radically
different points of view or it will settle on the point of view of
the "loudest" participants.

Articles about George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Margaret
Thatcher, etc. are purely the bailiwick of the Right Wingers;
criticism of those characters is basically non-existent.

Articles about left-wing heroes, meanwhile, are under
constant attack as the wingers constantly attempt to
include every bit of inuendo under the sun.

The same is true for hot "topic" articles such as Abortion,
Same-sex marriage, Global warming, Evolution, and the
like.

Wiki's safe for non-controversial topics such as Mold or
Mildew. but don't trust it on anything even remotely
controversial. And look at the article histories to see
if even Mildew has been edited back-and-forth.

Tesha

[Jim Lane]

12. Criticism of Bush, et al.

There are definitely right-wingers who participate in Wikipedia solely to press their point of view. You greatly overstate the degree of their success, though. The article on Bush -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush -- currently includes these topics:

• the negative aspects about Bush's service in the National Guard, including how he got in and how he failed to meet his obligations;
  
• his history of alcohol abuse and the allegations about drug use;
  
• his record budget deficits; and
  
• criticisms over Iraq, Katrina, Plamegate, NSA spying, etc.
  

Of course, many of these subjects are mentioned only in passing, with hyperlinks to the articles that detail them more fully.

I agree that there's a constant struggle to preserve the information like this and to keep out the RW propaganda. It's not nearly so hopeless as you imply, though. There are quite a few contributors who act in good faith, regardless of their own political beliefs. Even some conservatives recognize that the National Guard controversy deserves mentioning in Bush's bio.

It would be a big help if more DUers would take some of the information they post here and add it (in neutral wording) to the appropriate Wikipedia article(s).

By the way, the Freepers agree with you that Wikipedia is hopelessly biased, although of course they consider a leftist tool.

[Flanker]

13. In Wikipedia is harder to keep FA status

I did considerable work on the Hugo Chavez article since it is a topic I am very familiar with and it made FA status and many considered it an exemplary "controversial article" for its NPOV and heavy referencing etc. Recently a few editors heavily disagreed with the NPOV and argued that it needed to be removed as FA, well it finally happened recently and now it has become a hodgepodge of "for and against" that litters every controversial topic.

[T_i_B]

17. I think that both left and right

are equally guilty of amending Wikipedia to fit their own ideologies. It is interesting to look at the list of protected articles. It almost looks like it's only Freepers and DUer's indugling in Wikipedia vandalism.

Protected articles

Cannot be edited:

· 2004 United States voting controversies, Ohio

· Cuba

· Islamophobia

· Elitism

· Kosovo

· George W Bush

· Christina Aguilera

· Human rights in the People's Republic of China

· Military budget of the People's Republic of China

· Messianic Judaism

· Islam and anti-Semitism

Semi-protected articles

Users can edit only if they have been registered with the site for at least four days:

· Tony Blair

· Michael Jackson

· God

· Emo

· Shakespeare

· John Wayne

· Ku Klux Klan

· Christianity

· 11 September, 2001

· Anarchism

· Sex

· Food

· Comfort women

· Mahatma Gandhi

· PlayStation 3

· Boston, Massachusetts

[nolabels]

14. That is weird, I did do that exact thing the other day

Studying up just mostly about the mold part though.
That molecular biology stuff is a trip to read up on

[Odin2005]

2. One has to be very careful about looking for bias in a article.

Untill recently the article on the Minoans was full of BS about them being matriarchal (they wern't, despite what certain ideolouges want people to beleive). The crap was finally taken out a few weaks ago.

[Lars39]

3. That's funny; MNSU website disagrees with you.

Might want to inform the Britannica Encyclopedia also.
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:o8PKazgmsM4J:www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/aegean/pre-greece/minoan/minoan.html+Matriarchal+Minoans&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3

[Odin2005]

7. A matriarchal relgion does not equal a matriarchal society.

[Posteritatis]

4. Aww, poor widdle Wikipedians finally discovering some downsides? (n/t)

[w4rma]

5. This BS that some folks are pulling is juvenile and a waste of time. (nt)

[jjrjsa]

6. So true...

Most of the vandals simply delete the entry and type curse words over and over again or post some crazy BS like saying Tony Blair is an alien.

[0rganism]

9. Why is this news? Wikipedia has locked down vandal bait for a long time

The current crop doesn't seem new or surprising, either. During the 2004 elections, the bush and Kerry pages were edit-locked for a while to prevent vandalism. Why is this newsworthy?

[Jim Lane]

10. It's an internal Wikipedia administrative thing, no big deal

Full page protections, such as those intermittently applied to the Bush and Kerry articles during the campaign, prevented editing by anyone except admins. They were short-term solutions, generally not kept in place for a long time.

More recently, Wikipedia has introduced "semi-protection". This category allows editing by most people. It blocks only those users who haven't registered an account or registered one only within the last few days. The hope is that semi-protection will discourage the vandals but will still allow editing that's almost completely open, instead of editing that's limited to the admins. Semi-protection can therefore be left in place indefinitely without significantly infringing the principle of open editing.

You're right that this tweaking of the anti-vandalism tools isn't really newsworthy. It's just that media can list the odd hodgepodge of articles that happen to have been semi-protected, and the juxtaposition can be amusing. It's easier than, say, doing a thoughtful investigative report about a serious public issue.

[Zhade]

11. Wikipedia is weird.

My best friend is a fan of the Protomen (video-game based rock group that is pretty good), and the mods wouldn't accept an article even though it met all the standards required for inclusion.

When all the sources were linked, and anyone could clearly see that all claims were backed up, one of the mods said THERE WAS NO PROOF, even though the links were right there on the page!

I like wiki for convenience, but anyone who thinks it's the bastion of unbiased truth should think again.

[Posteritatis]

15. The definition of "relevance" is arbitrary

In practice, from all the talk pages I've seen (a large number thereof; I got curious and spent awhile plumbing Wikipedia lately), people seem to define "relevant" as "this is something I find interesting." Some of the things that get deluged with deletion attempts are silly, and that's not even counting vandalism.

[skids]

16. Personally I think it's still its greatest strength...

...it's not just an encyclopedia, it's a living history (through the change tracking) of public attitudes, ideologies, misimpressions, etc.

So years from now not only will you be able to look up a topic, but also see any struggle/controversy surrounding it.