Comment by denton-scratch
3 years ago
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.