Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Help desk/Archive 1 (section)

== What stops abuse of free editing? ==

If some idiot wanted to come into an article and delete information or change information so that it is inaccurate, what is to stop them from doing that?

See [[Wikipedia:replies to common objections]]. [[User:Kosebamse|Kosebamse]] 09:14, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

:Peer review. Watch [[Special:Recentchanges]], build up a watchlist, use "related changes" to watch for changes in your field of interest. If someone writes something that is incorrect, fix it or [[Wikipedia:How to revert a page|revert]] them. Simple vandalism, such as deletion of sections, is usually cleaned up within minutes. It's not perfect. For it to work, we need lots of people helping out. But wikis show that people are generally good. Good users always far outnumber malicious users. See also [[Wikipedia:Replies to common objections]]. (via EC) -- [[User:Tim Starling|Tim Starling]] 09:22, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, IBM did a study, which found that the average time that vandalism persisted was less than 5 minutes. I can't remember the link, but someone could supply it if asked. Yours, [[User:Meelar|Meelar]] 22:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

:See [http://web.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/papers/history_flow.pdf history flow] ([[Portable Document Format|PDF]]). [[User:Angela|Angela]][[user talk:Angela|.]] 16:10, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)