How come wikipedia is not overrun by spammers?

[edprush]

I figured that site would be spammer heaven.

 

[Epic Fail]

The new hobby for professors worldwide is to sit in front of their computers and monitor wikipedia pages.

 

[chrisms]

I dunno but I spent a bunch of time updating a wikitravel site with really useful info and then it said some code I used in the page wasn't acceptable. Thing is I didn't do anything but type in words and the code the error referred to was already on the page before I touched it. Not wanting to put in too much effort I just closed the window and haven't contributed since.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

because there are self-appointed vigilante watchmen who stand guard upon the borders of such pages.

That, and vandalism will get you banned. Any effort to spam the page would last only a few minutes at most. Not worth their time or effort.

- JaAG

 

[Bootprint]

Try looking at the history of some of the pages.

 

[BigSmooth]

There are plenty of spammers, but it's very easy to remove it with the right tools.

 

[mugs]

They actually have bots that revert obvious vandalism.

I did have to turn off anonymous editing on at-wiki.com due to spambots.

 

[Heifetz]

I'm not even sure how people update wiki pages and remember all the formatting tags. It's not wysiwyg, so it's worse than html. Or is there some wiki editor that I'm not aware of?

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Heifetz
I'm not even sure how people update wiki pages and remember all the formatting tags. It's not wysiwyg, so it's worse than html. Or is there some wiki editor that I'm not aware of?

I think most users probably don't do any formatting other than links and headers, both of which are easy to do. There are clickable buttons in the editor that will insert the formatting for you, but it's not WYSIWYG. The only complicated formatting is table formatting.

 

[thesurge]

VandalProof

 

[edprush]

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
because there are self-appointed vigilante watchmen who stand guard upon the borders of such pages.

That, and vandalism will get you banned. Any effort to spam the page would last only a few minutes at most. Not worth their time or effort.

- JaAG

The site seems way too big to be fully monitored. Who's monitoring the page about "thug"?

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: edprush

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
because there are self-appointed vigilante watchmen who stand guard upon the borders of such pages.

That, and vandalism will get you banned. Any effort to spam the page would last only a few minutes at most. Not worth their time or effort.

- JaAG

The site seems way too big to be fully monitored. Who's monitoring the page about "thug"?

They have ways to know what pages are being edited. They only monitor edits, not the whole site. My best vandalism effort lasted 3 hours, on "satanism" topic.

 

[JujuFish]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
My best vandalism effort lasted 3 hours, on "satanism" topic.

I'll bet that was an interesting vandalism.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: edprush

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
because there are self-appointed vigilante watchmen who stand guard upon the borders of such pages.

That, and vandalism will get you banned. Any effort to spam the page would last only a few minutes at most. Not worth their time or effort.

- JaAG

The site seems way too big to be fully monitored. Who's monitoring the page about "thug"?

They have ways to know what pages are being edited. They only monitor edits, not the whole site. My best vandalism effort lasted 3 hours, on "satanism" topic.

A while back one of my friends started discussing prices in terms of how many packages of Ramen noodles you could buy for the same price. We found a weird looking symbol resembling an R that we used as the symbol for our new currency (named Ramen of course). We edited the Ramen disambiguation page to include the currency, but did not actually create a page for it. That edit lasted 4 months.

 

[postmortemIA]

I can't promote vandalism, it is wrong. It is much better idea to contribute if it is possible.

But rule is, they don't like edits and contributions on popular topics made by newbies.

 

[chuckywang]

Cause wikipedia gets mad respect.

It's like how priests can walk through the worst parts of town without anybody harassing him. People respect the collar.

 

[chuckywang]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: edprush

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
because there are self-appointed vigilante watchmen who stand guard upon the borders of such pages.

That, and vandalism will get you banned. Any effort to spam the page would last only a few minutes at most. Not worth their time or effort.

- JaAG

The site seems way too big to be fully monitored. Who's monitoring the page about "thug"?

They have ways to know what pages are being edited. They only monitor edits, not the whole site. My best vandalism effort lasted 3 hours, on "satanism" topic.

A while back one of my friends started discussing prices in terms of how many packages of Ramen noodles you could buy for the same price. We found a weird looking symbol resembling an R that we used as the symbol for our new currency (named Ramen of course). We edited the Ramen disambiguation page to include the currency, but did not actually create a page for it. That edit lasted 4 months.

What's the point of the weird R if you didn't put it into wikipedia?

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: chuckywang

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: edprush

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
because there are self-appointed vigilante watchmen who stand guard upon the borders of such pages.

That, and vandalism will get you banned. Any effort to spam the page would last only a few minutes at most. Not worth their time or effort.

- JaAG

The site seems way too big to be fully monitored. Who's monitoring the page about "thug"?

They have ways to know what pages are being edited. They only monitor edits, not the whole site. My best vandalism effort lasted 3 hours, on "satanism" topic.

A while back one of my friends started discussing prices in terms of how many packages of Ramen noodles you could buy for the same price. We found a weird looking symbol resembling an R that we used as the symbol for our new currency (named Ramen of course). We edited the Ramen disambiguation page to include the currency, but did not actually create a page for it. That edit lasted 4 months.

What's the point of the weird R if you didn't put it into wikipedia?

It was mostly just a joke amongst ourselves via e-mail (these are friends from college who all live hundreds of miles away from me now)

 

[Mo0o]

didn't some professor do a test where he made really small inucuous errors on a couple of pages to see how long it would last and both were gone within 2 days

 

[rnmcd]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: edprush

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
because there are self-appointed vigilante watchmen who stand guard upon the borders of such pages.

That, and vandalism will get you banned. Any effort to spam the page would last only a few minutes at most. Not worth their time or effort.

- JaAG

The site seems way too big to be fully monitored. Who's monitoring the page about "thug"?

They have ways to know what pages are being edited. They only monitor edits, not the whole site. My best vandalism effort lasted 3 hours, on "satanism" topic.

I live in Iowa too.

 

[thesurge]

VandalProof
VandalSniper
Anti-Vandal Tool
CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter
ShadowTool
NPWatcher
AIV'er
WikiGuard
VP2
VANDAL-III
VandalFighter

so yeah...

 

[chambersc]

Originally posted by: yamadakun
The new hobby for professors worldwide is to sit in front of their computers and monitor wikipedia pages.

Do elaborate.

 

[Xyclone]

My "vandalism" on Turkish History linking to the Armenian Genocide lasted only 30 seconds. That was fast. :Q

 

[Xyclone]

Originally posted by: chambersc

Originally posted by: yamadakun
The new hobby for professors worldwide is to sit in front of their computers and monitor wikipedia pages.

Do elaborate.

They just sit at the "Recent changes to Wikipedia articles" page and spam the refresh button while checking all the articles for vandalism?

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Xyclone

Originally posted by: chambersc

Originally posted by: yamadakun
The new hobby for professors worldwide is to sit in front of their computers and monitor wikipedia pages.

Do elaborate.

They just sit at the "Recent changes to Wikipedia articles" page and spam the refresh button while checking all the articles for vandalism?

I think it is much more sophisticated than that. Anti-vandal units have parts of site that they are responsible for. The edit feature on Wiki automatically provides comments of edits, for example "Replaced whole article with "poop"", so they can quickly figure out what is changed. Seems to be pretty good system. Of course, there's abuse for everything, so you can see that interest groups will ensure that controversial information against their interests is being deliberately removed. For example, Turkish history that Xyclone mentioned. Another one is Norton Antivirus where it is hard to put more criticisms (such as NAV being system hog) because they get removed quickly.