Wikipedia Vandalism Study - Revision history

MyWikiBiz at 02:11, 4 October 2021

2021-10-04T02:11:05Z

MyWikiBiz: /* External links */

2021-10-04T02:10:39Z

External links

MyWikiBiz: This wasn't a Wikipedia Review effort, as no ownership of Wikipedia Review participated, along with one staff member, and then the owner of Wikipedia Review disparaged the research.

2009-08-20T17:39:56Z

This wasn't a Wikipedia Review effort, as no ownership of Wikipedia Review participated, along with one staff member, and then the owner of Wikipedia Review disparaged the research.

MyWikiBiz: /* External links */ Plug Akahele

2009-07-10T04:19:05Z

External links: Plug Akahele

MyWikiBiz: Moving "Other cases" to discussion page.

2009-02-17T15:30:23Z

Moving "Other cases" to discussion page.

MyWikiBiz: Reformat layout

2009-01-24T03:05:56Z

Reformat layout

MyWikiBiz: Protected "Wikipedia Vandalism Study": Huffington Post traffic [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 06:27, January 13, 2009 (UTC))

2009-01-10T06:27:00Z

Protected "Wikipedia Vandalism Study": Huffington Post traffic [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 06:27, January 13, 2009 (UTC))

MyWikiBiz: copyedit

2008-12-28T05:32:21Z

copyedit

MyWikiBiz: Jimbo's protection.

2008-12-17T16:10:20Z

Jimbo's protection.

MyWikiBiz: Adding examples

2008-12-17T16:06:17Z

Adding examples

← Older revision		Revision as of 02:11, 4 October 2021
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−	Throughout mid-2008, a number of people interested in analysis of Wikipedia joined [[Directory:Gregory J. Kohs\|Gregory Kohs]] in a project to methodically enumerate one calendar quarter’s worth (4Q 2007) of edit data underlying the 100 Wikipedia articles about the (then) current [[Directory:United States\|United States]] Senators. [~~http~~://~~spreadsheets~~.google.com/~~pub~~?~~key~~=~~psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw~~ What they found] was alarming at times. While most vandalized edits were brief in duration and clearly juvenile in content, a substantial portion of edits were plainly intended to be hurtful and defamatory against the Senators — and they lasted for not just minutes, but hours, days, even weeks at a time.	+	Throughout mid-2008, a number of people interested in analysis of Wikipedia joined [[Directory:Gregory J. Kohs\|Gregory Kohs]] in a project to methodically enumerate one calendar quarter’s worth (4Q 2007) of edit data underlying the 100 Wikipedia articles about the (then) current [[Directory:United States\|United States]] Senators. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nsxv8JhN55Szk0pyWT2Tda-0yvbT_hSfGGu4v9xy0nQ/edit?usp=sharing What they found] was alarming at times. While most vandalized edits were brief in duration and clearly juvenile in content, a substantial portion of edits were plainly intended to be hurtful and defamatory against the Senators — and they lasted for not just minutes, but hours, days, even weeks at a time.

	==Topline findings==		==Topline findings==

@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 == External links ==
-* [http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw Spreadsheet database]
+* [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nsxv8JhN55Szk0pyWT2Tda-0yvbT_hSfGGu4v9xy0nQ/edit?usp=sharing Spreadsheet database]
 * [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=20565&hl=senators Discussion on ''Wikipedia Review'']
 * [http://chance.dartmouth.edu/chancewiki/index.php/Chance_News_40#Wikipedia_vandalism_to_U.S._Senators Article within ''Chance News'']

← Older revision		Revision as of 17:39, 20 August 2009
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−	Throughout mid-2008, a number of [[Wikipedia ~~Review]] members~~ joined [[Directory:Gregory J. Kohs\|Gregory Kohs]] in a project to methodically enumerate one calendar quarter’s worth (4Q 2007) of edit data underlying the 100 Wikipedia articles about the (then) current [[Directory:United States\|United States]] Senators. [http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw What they found] was alarming at times. While most vandalized edits were brief in duration and clearly juvenile in content, a substantial portion of edits were plainly intended to be hurtful and defamatory against the Senators — and they lasted for not just minutes, but hours, days, even weeks at a time.	+	Throughout mid-2008, a number of people interested in analysis of Wikipedia joined [[Directory:Gregory J. Kohs\|Gregory Kohs]] in a project to methodically enumerate one calendar quarter’s worth (4Q 2007) of edit data underlying the 100 Wikipedia articles about the (then) current [[Directory:United States\|United States]] Senators. [http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw What they found] was alarming at times. While most vandalized edits were brief in duration and clearly juvenile in content, a substantial portion of edits were plainly intended to be hurtful and defamatory against the Senators — and they lasted for not just minutes, but hours, days, even weeks at a time.

	==Topline findings==		==Topline findings==

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 * [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=20565&hl=senators Discussion on ''Wikipedia Review'']
 * [http://chance.dartmouth.edu/chancewiki/index.php/Chance_News_40#Wikipedia_vandalism_to_U.S._Senators Article within ''Chance News'']
 == Notes ==
 {{reflist}}

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:30, 17 February 2009
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	More than 700 instances of vandalism were found and recorded into a database. All of the data is available for analysis in a '''[http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw Google spreadsheet]''' that is open to the public.		More than 700 instances of vandalism were found and recorded into a database. All of the data is available for analysis in a '''[http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw Google spreadsheet]''' that is open to the public.

−	~~== Other cases of vandalism ==~~
−
−	* The article on British journalist Tom Utley was vandalised by an edit (since [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Utley&diff=143953179&oldid=143597498 deleted entirely] from the Wiki database) claiming "He is the proud father of 4 sons. One of them is propa belta at smokin tac. The other is currently havin an affair with Mylene "Sideboob" funbags Klass. Raker. One other is MDMAzin. and the other i dont have any scoop on but there are rumours he was caught fornicating with a dead brown bear that was actually black<ref>'tac' is British underclass slang for cannabis, 'belta' is a term of approval meaning great, terrific, brilliant</ref>. " made on 11 July 2007 and which was not spotted until 23 July 2007. Utley [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-558786/Abortion-boy-fiddled-Wikipedia-entry-Ive-feared-sinister-power-internet.html wrote about this] commenting "I notice that Wikipedia's article on itself is marked with a padlock, meaning it's protected from interference by you or me - which doesn't say much for its managers' faith in the emergence of truth through absolute freedom".

	== External links ==		== External links ==

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 Throughout mid-2008, a number of [[Wikipedia Review]] members joined [[Directory:Gregory J. Kohs|Gregory Kohs]] in a project to methodically enumerate one calendar quarter’s worth (4Q 2007) of edit data underlying the 100 Wikipedia articles about the (then) current [[Directory:United States|United States]] Senators.  [http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=psAWteTSyixEB98YcV-5VEw What they found] was alarming at times. While most vandalized edits were brief in duration and clearly juvenile in content, a substantial portion of edits were plainly intended to be hurtful and defamatory against the Senators — and they lasted for not just minutes, but hours, days, even weeks at a time.
 Using the Wikipedia page [http://stats.grok.se/ traffic tool], the team attempted to interpolate the number of “page views” that each Senator’s article likely witnessed during the damaged edit. The damaged edit that saw the greatest number of page views before correction regarded Senator John McCain: "McCain was born in Florida in the then American-controlled Panama Canal Zone", which lasted for over 3 days, under about 93,000 views where nobody noticed or bothered to correct this obvious error.
@@ Line 24: / Line 26: @@
 * For nearly 11 hours, the Wikipedia article about Senator Joe Lieberman of [[Directory:Connecticut|Connecticut]] described him as "[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joe_Lieberman&diff=next&oldid=169107698 a hideous, coffee-drinking Jew]". The page was viewed about 446 times in this condition before it was corrected.
 == Other cases of vandalism ==

← Older revision	Revision as of 06:27, 10 January 2009
(No difference)

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 In all, the ''median'' duration of a damaged edit was 6 minutes, but the ''mean'' duration was 1,440 minutes (exactly 24 hours). These 100 articles were viewed approximately 12.8 million times in the fourth quarter of 2007. Over 378,000 of those views could be considered “damaged”, yielding a 2.96% rate of damaged views. There were about 13.2 million article-minutes during the quarter, and over 901,000 of those article-minutes were in a damaged state — 6.80%.
-This is not an issue of “damaged” versus “acceptable” rates. Rather, it is an issue that the [[Directory:Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia Foundation]] allows anonymous editors to append the article about [[Directory:Hillary Clinton|Hillary Clinton]] with “'''hillary needs to die and chop of her penis'''”; or to modify the article about Bob Menendez to say “'''Menendez and Jacobsen have since divorced because he was cheating on her'''”; all without any meaningful effort to change the parameters of editing to disallow this kind of drive-by hatred and libel.
+This is not an issue of “damaged” versus “acceptable” rates. Rather, it is an issue that the [[Directory:Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia Foundation]] allows anonymous editors to append the article about [[Directory:Hillary Clinton|Hillary Clinton]] with “'''hillary needs to die and chop of her penis'''”; or to modify the article about Bob Menendez to say “'''Menendez and Jacobsen have since divorced because he was cheating on her'''”; all without any meaningful effort to change the parameters of editing to disallow this kind of drive-by hatred and libel.  We note that the Wikipedia article about its co-founder, [[Directory:Jimmy Wales|Jimmy Wales]] is kept in a state of "semi-protection", which wards off easily 95% of this sort of vandalism.  Why is this level of protection not extended to all biographies of living persons on Wikipedia?
 == Notorious examples ==

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 This is not an issue of “damaged” versus “acceptable” rates. Rather, it is an issue that the [[Directory:Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia Foundation]] allows anonymous editors to append the article about [[Directory:Hillary Clinton|Hillary Clinton]] with “'''hillary needs to die and chop of her penis'''”; or to modify the article about Bob Menendez to say “'''Menendez and Jacobsen have since divorced because he was cheating on her'''”; all without any meaningful effort to change the parameters of editing to disallow this kind of drive-by hatred and libel.
-== Other examples ==
+== Notorious examples ==
 * The article on British journalist Tom Utley was vandalised by an edit (since [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Utley&diff=143953179&oldid=143597498 deleted entirely] from the Wiki database) claiming "He is the proud father of 4 sons. One of them is propa belta at smokin tac. The other is currently havin an affair with Mylene "Sideboob" funbags Klass. Raker. One other is MDMAzin. and the other i dont have any scoop on but there are rumours he was caught fornicating with a dead brown bear that was actually black<ref>'tac' is British underclass slang for cannabis, 'belta' is a term of approval meaning great, terrific, brilliant</ref>. " made on 11 July 2007 and which was not spotted until 23 July 2007. Utley [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-558786/Abortion-boy-fiddled-Wikipedia-entry-Ive-feared-sinister-power-internet.html wrote about this] commenting "I notice that Wikipedia's article on itself is marked with a padlock, meaning it's protected from interference by you or me - which doesn't say much for its managers' faith in the emergence of truth through absolute freedom".