Anthony wrote: > Umm...you would count the number of instances of vandalism? > > Is the question how to objectively *define* "vandalism"?
On one hand, we have a perception, as expressed by media (and by CEO Sue Gardner, I believe), that vandalism (especially of biographies of living people, BLP) is an increasing problem. On the other hand, we have the habit of always asking for proofs and measurements: Citation needed! We can try to find out which edits are reverts, assuming that the previous edit was an act of vandalism. That way we can conclude which articles were vandalized and how long it took to revert them. Add to that: How many readers viewed the vandalized version? Vandalism is harmless if nobody watches it. It is mostly harmless if it is obvious and childish (e.g. Barack Obama was born on Mars, he's a space alien). When it does harm (and becomes a problem, allegedly an increasing problem) is when it is viewed and taken for the truth (e.g. a statement that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and thus would not be a legitimate president). Especially, it becomes a very real problem if the biographed living person takes offense and takes legal action against the WMF. Now, that's very easy to measure: How much money did WMF need to spend, month by month, to resolve such conflicts, including time to explain the process to media? That is money that could be used to buy servers instead. A more efficient BLP policy might render the WMF more money for servers. Very real. Now, we only need to insert real numbers into this equation. -- Lars Aronsson (l...@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l