User:Wingchild

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I'm an old Wiki user, but a new hand at patrolling Recent Changes. Please bear with me if I am making mistakes. If you feel a revert was out of line, leave a message for me here. Thanks! Wingchild 19:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why does Wing patrol the Recent Changes?

Good question - I'm in the process of answering it myself. I'd like to inflate my ego here by talking about serving the idea of an accurate and reliable encyclopedia, and I'd like to present myself as being ideologically committed to helping this work retain its basic integrity, but these are false motives - they are not me.

The truth is that I enjoy the sociological aspects of RC patrolling. I wonder why it is that people choose to vandalize a free and public resource. Is the driver rooted in the feeling of power they get from altering something so open and visible? Is the process made possible because of the protection that relative anonymity affords us? What goes on in someone's head when they opt to destroy, rather than create? For that matter, what leads to their choice of any particular article for their alterations?

[edit] Thoughts thus far...

I've no unified theory as to why people do what they do. I'm still observing, still trying to learn from what I'm seeing. I have been quite surprised by the types of vandalism that come through Wikipedia.

Many of the edits I see are simple vulgarities - the page for vagina, for instance, seems to pick up the names of individuals whom the vandal feels are well-represented by that bit of anatomy.

Some edits are to espouse a particular point of view, or to push a political agenda; the American Civil Liberties Union page routinely suffers at the hands of people who disagree with their viewpoints. Much the same for any organization of sufficient size - It seems you can't have allies without also having enemies.

Some pages are ripped apart by children playing at school - I watched as the article on Urban Sprawl became a back-and-forth vandalism tennis match for two kids working off the same high school's IP address. It could have been two teachers, too - it isn't fair of me to judge - but despite the inherent stereotyping, I'm confident in my original assessment.

And then there are changes I simply can't fathom. The entry for incandescent light bulbs was altered to include the phrase 'F LIGHT BULBS AND BANANAS' several times. The disambiguation page for nip fell prey to a vanity editor, who felt it the appropriate venue to talk about DJ Nip Nip and all the members of his Crew. The page for eye gouging gained an entire paragraph, apparently written by a college student, who suggested the technique as a way to alleviate the boredom suffered in his or her lecture hall. One fellow went through the article for the Great Wall of China, editing all the dates so that the mongol hordes invaded in the year 27341.

While I concede that there may be alternate realities, and that chaos theory's butterfly effect postulates an inevitable impact on future events (along with the resulting inpredictability), I can't accept that Wikipedia is able to cause the future. At least, not yet.

So, why?

[edit] Why do they do these things?

That question is why I patrol the Recent Changes. That I also revert people's bad edits is a side-effect. I prefer being helpful to being harmful. My motive may be unusual, but at least the effect is generally beneficial.