Comment by Blikkentrekker
3 years ago
> Writing such a plausible pseudo-account and convincing so many for so long is impressive.
I find that in practice, the scary part is that it is not so impressive and that the thousand eyes are largely a lie.
All too often have I seen such things go on for a long time without anyone noticing, or perhaps many noticing, but not being motivated to investigate and call out, or perhaps many even calling out, but their calls going unanswered.
And perhaps scarier: Wikipedia is one of the better policed places.
If you work in a commercial publisher, there's less oversight.
Well they don't have the same threat model. Teenagers and grifters can't edit as easily in the case of a commercial publisher. That's not to say that they don't have their flaws, or that they are superior to Wikipedia. Just that the analysis is off the mark.
I routinely find spam, vandalism and heavy POV-pushing in English WP. In general, I check the sources, and if they are absent or fail to support the article text, I correct them[0], or challenge them on the talk page.
Do you? When you say you see such things going on without anybody noticing, presumably you noticed?
[0] I don't generally edit articles on politically-sensitive topics. They are wargrounds, patrolled by tough gatekeepers. I take any information in WP about current affairs with a bushel of salt. But it's still better than, for example, mainstream media.
I often notice after the fact when it blows up.
Consider the situation with XScreenLock in Debian when it was found that the code had a timer in it that bugged people to update when using an unsupported version. Once the timer reached this point and many received this update, Debian immediately patched it to remove it as many found it annoying and it was a controversial move, but to me the most interesting part was that it was in the code, publically; it was added at one point,and no one at Debian knew.
This timer that merely annoyed users into updating could just as easily been serious malware that no one would have noticed that lay dormant to awaken at a set date.