Recently I have seen a lot of forum posts about vandalism – that there’s too much of it or that it’s not being handled well. It seems that there are many different opinions about this, but it is my observation (and correct me if I’m wrong) that the people most bothered by the vandalism have been on wikiHow for less than a year. So, I’m wondering what bothers people the most about vandalism. Is it annoying to deal with? Is it the fact that people who are non-admins would like to block these vandals and can’t? Is it the perception that vandalism makes wikiHow look bad? Do people feel that vandalism means that wikiHow is unsafe? I feel that any answers people can give about this would help me better understand the problem. Thanks!
system
2
To me, it’s deciding whether to write a custom message, do {{warning}}, or do {{test}}…
To me, I just find it annoying to see the same vandal vandalizing various articles rapidly.
What bothers me, is that people abuse the powers of teamwork. It makes me sad to think that someone potentially ruins an article, just because they think it would be, “Funny.”
To me I just find it annoying. I mean seriously who wants to do that.
@AndrewG1999
: That’s the beauty of wikiHow- an article is never “ruined” because you can take those edits away with the click of a button.
system
7
For me, there’s a clear difference whether to use the test or warning templates. If there’s wiki markup like [[Image:Example.jpg]], that I see all the time, I’ll probably understand from their point of view that they might not know what the little icons mean at the top, and with that, is appropriate to give the test template to. But if there’s an individual who makes 4-5 edits in a consecutive time to wipe out the information from an article, has taken their time to replace every other major word with profanity, or something else really “meaningful” to purposely hurt the site, then yes, a warning can be valid. What bothers me the most? When an anonymous person contributes vandalism to the site, gets warned, and then takes the time out to create an account & purposely act the exact same way as they have done as an anon. Or… someone gets blocked for some odd time, and the same exact day that the ban is expired, comes back & attempts to get revenge on those whom were “behind” the block. In the latter case above, that’s kind of why I appreciate the whole concept of having administrators perform the blocks and not just “anyone”. Administrators are editors that show a well-balanced and level-headed amount of maturity when it comes to heated situations. They know how to handle them and can perform in that mature way of how to respond, etc. In cases of “oops” patrolling, I’d like to add notes to said people that marked patrolled vandalism can be left on the site for days, months, or even years. There are many cases where well known articles, such as How to Be a Tomboy, has been vandalized, overlooked, and the entire list of steps would be missing for at least 1 year. I don’t know how people can “view” wikiHow as being ‘unsafe’ due to vandalism - I love the concept of open editable websites. This is what makes wikis a lot different than other websites, such as eHow.
I suppose, but sometimes it can be annoying and somewhat heartbreaking to see vandalism.
KommaH
9
I find patrolling and vandalism reverting entertaining. Sometimes the jokes that people put in articles are interesting and/or funny. What bothers me is when someone vandalizes, gets blocked, then creates an alternative account just to vandalize some more.
There are many things that bug me when I see vandalism. First of all, Why would someone want to edit an article just to make it look bad? I guess it’s because they are bored and they think it’s funny, and THAT really bugs me. Another thing that bugs me is the things that some people put into articles. I don’t like the sexual content they put in articles the most. Bottom line: Vandalism is just plain annoying.
I met someone who make joke edits to Wikipedia and the reason he did it wasn’t because he thought it was funny, but because he wanted to see how people would respond to it. Sometimes, I think people are just genuinely curious about how wikis work so they make nonsense errors. It’s hard to believe (at least at first) that anyone can just press edit and save on a large site like wikiHow or Wikipedia and have something published for the whole Internet to see.
The thing that annoys me most is that people would even vandalise a world-wide website:P
system
13
The thing that bugs me is that these vandals put complete *nonsense* (yeah, let’s go with that word) in articles a few times, get blocked, get unblocked, they do it again, get blocked, unblocked, and they just keep going. It’s funny to them to see us get all fired up when they know they can just do it again. They don’t care so much about the site that they care. I mean, if you’re going to put THAT much effort in, at least make it good!
The most annoying thing? Eh, the immaturity of it all. I mean, you’ve seen what the vandalism usually looks like. It’s never anything remotely clever, just a lot of profanity, potty humor, and lame sex jokes. Pretty juvenile…
Haha, this is just me, but if I was going to go to all the trouble to vandalize and therefore risk being blocked from wikiHow, I’d at least be clever about it. x] When I see the same stupid, childish vandalism over and over again in RC Patrol, it’s entirely obvious that the vandal is incredibly immature and most likely under the age of 13. C’mon now, they’re just giving us teenagers a bad name. -__-
system
15
And we don’t need any more of that!
I’ve stumbled across some clever vandalism. Not all vandals are kids/teens though. There are some adult vandals too.
Vandalism, on its own, doesn’t bother me much. My worry is that if it stays for a significant amount of time potential quality contributors might think, “Why write something good if it’ll quickly turn to crap and stay that way.” or readers might see it and not trust other articles that are trustworthy. I mean, if someone writes some insightful commentary like “your all fags lol” on an article, its value is obvious to all who see it and it can be readily undone. I don’t see that as harming readers or editors beyond the seconds of time wasted looking for a clean version to revert to, and frankly, I’d rather see that here where it’s easily undone than on the walls of the parking garage. It’s only when vandalism remains live for weeks that it says something about our ability to detect it and impacts the credibility of the site as a whole.
I have to agree with @KatyBliss
. I saw vandalism once. Someone put the word, “Bum,” in as an additional step. I obviously rolled that edit back. Childish nonsense, really.
system
19
Vandalism demeans the quality of this website. I was stunned one day when an anonymous contributor started the article How to Be A Social Worker Psychologist (something in the requests lists) and filled up the page with the n-word. Most vandals are immature, potty-mouthed individuals with a single, sociopathic idea: destroying our hard work is fun. Most of the vandalisms are crude references to human anatomy, strong profanity, racism, and the like. I have only seen one vandal who was in any way clever, but this person was a bit hateful as well! Wiki vandals represent the lowest common denominator of internet denizens; they abuse what they can (a volunteer system) because they know that it has no consequences, and they do it all for fun. This is why I will hunt them down, reverting every edit that they make, anywhere that they make it. They cannot win this!
system
20
What bothers me most? is the fact that editors in this thread are experienced enough to contribute constructively… yet we’re spending our time hand wringing over vandals instead of editing. If you’re bothered by vandalism? Then get busy in RC Patrol, and stop wasting time fussing about vandals here!<shakes head="" bemusedly=""></shakes>
