Betsy Devine talks about “vandal waves,” usually precipitated by mainstream media attention on an article. She looks at how many of the edits are made by registered users and by anonymous users.

She talks about pgkbot, software that blocks inflammatory user names on IRC chats. How can that type of tech be used to block vandal waves, she asks? Not one person who edited Swiftboating on Nov. 29, 2005, not one went on to become a serious contributor (ten or more entries). Typical of a vandal wave: The time between edits by different users shrinks, and there’s a surge in the ratio of IPs to registered users.

She distinguishes vandal waves from spin waves. Spin waves are created by people trying to influence the media. These are harder to identify programmatically because they are paid, professional writers trying to disguise their work. (See paidToComment.com.)

She’d like to see Wikipedia’s anti-vandal tools made more user friendly. [Tags: wikimania2006 wikipediabetsy_devine]

Categories: Uncategorized dw