User:Paul Pigman/Thoughts on Vandalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A few days of monitoring the recent changes with various vandal fighting tools is enough to make me depressed about the state of Wikipedia. It is bad for the mental health to dwell too much in the shadow of evil, particularly the stupid, slack evil embodied by Wikipedia vandals.

This is not intended to be about me but, rather, about the energy the vandals steal from the project. It's one thing to contribute editorially to Wikipedia, knowing that other people can (and probably will) change your words; it's another to realize that your edits might be thrown away in reverts or by vandals trying to slip past the guardians.

The vandals are a neverending waterfall. I can dip into the stream for hours at a time and come away wondering what good I've done. I realize this time spent on vandalwatch has stolen energy from what I enjoy doing on Wikipedia: actual editing and writing. This is a bad thing. --Pigman (talk • contribs) 04:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)