Wake7: How does wikipedia not get flooded indefinitely with spam and random crap?
It seems like if chat rooms, craigslist, and basically the entire internet was flooded with spam that wikipedia would be too. They can ban the IP address but isn’t it pretty easy to make a new one?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Martyr2
Well the one thing that other chat rooms and such don’t have, that Wikipedia does, is the ability to reverse changes. In a chat room someone can throw up spam that everyone sees and its too late to react to it. On Wikipedia, any changes made can be automatically reversed.
Does Wikipedia get attacked and spammed a lot? It sure does! But due to the way you can reverse changes in combination with millions of viewers daily, a lot of those spam attacks and such can be reversed.
Now of course some crap does get through from time to time and inaccurate information is posted and can be there for days, weeks or even months. This is why it is important to make sure that you evaluate Wikipedia content for yourself before using.
More popular pages that get defaced a lot are actually locked by Wikipedia from time to time too. For instance, the recent Ted Kennedy page has been locked shortly after his death so to prevent malicious defacement.
With a combination of a lot of viewers reviewing and editing content, the ability to instantly “undo” vandalism and spam, Wikipedia can get around many problems that plague other mediums.
Hope that answered the question. 🙂
Answer by KevinI’m going to type a lot. If you want an in depth explanation, you can read the lengthy piece I’ve wrote below. If you want a quick explanation, you can just read my summary:
Wikipedia is constantly being monitored by volunteer users almost 24/7, who have access to all the recent changes that take place. Using tools to help them, these users can quickly catch and revert vandalism. While some spam slips through, most of it is reverted. Also, most IP editors, when they realize that their edits are being almost instantly reverted, stop spamming, as they realize it does no harm (usually).
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Now for the lengthy piece:
Wikipedia is flooded with spam many times per minute, probably more than some of the other sites you’ve mentioned. The reason you don’t see it often, however, is that all of the changes that occur every second on Wikipedia are being monitored almost 24/7. Another reason why it isn’t as visible is that, while on most sites only moderators and admins can remove spam, on Wikipedia, almost anyone can revert spam.
A list of all the recent changes that occur on Wikipedia are here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges
As you can see, many changes occur every second. At the same time, there are many users watching every edit made. If an edit is unconstructive, vandalism, etc. it is usually quickly reverted. Of course, bad edits often do make it through and can stay in articles for long periods of time.
To help monitor edits, users have also created their own tools that help make finding vandalism and reverting it easier and faster. These include Huggle, Twinkle, and Lupin’s Anti Vandal Tool. There are more, but those are the ones I mainly use.
Also, another reason why you don’t see spam and vandalism that much is that you are probably looking at popular pages. The vandals probably are, too, and with all the people viewing a single page, it is usually reverted quickly.
As for banning users and IPs, yes, people can just keep coming back to create more spam. However, most vandals vandalize just for pure enjoyment, thinking that their unconstructive edits stay in an article. When they realize that most of their edits are reverted and they are warned, they usually stop. It’s sort of like a bully. If a bully tries to hurt someone, and the victim shows that they are hurt, they keep on bullying. But when the victim take proper actions, such as showing that they are not bothered, the bully stops.
Hope that helped out and answered your questions =)
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