This thread brings to mind the notion of "intent" when considering this behavior. Does anyone know the authoritative sources for studies of this subject. J. Mark Bell <typewritermark@gmail.com> wrote: Since I am working on my lit review for my thesis on wikpedia, I have only seen one academic paper on vandalism. Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations by Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, and Kushal Dave. http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/papers/history_flow.pdf It includes a simple categorization of vandalism: "The variety of vandalism found in Wikipedia can be astounding; five common types are listed below: 1. Mass deletion deletion of all contents on a page. 2. Offensive copy: insertion of vulgarities or slurs. 3. Phony copy: insertion of text unrelated to the page topic. E.g. on the Chemistry page, a user inserted the full text from the "Windows 98 readme" file." It also has insights of how vandalism is shown visually in an aplication called history flow. M On 2/19/07, Barry Wellman wrote:
Is there any scholarship on why people vandalize Wikipedia and other public sites?
I've been doing Wikip. entries and edits for about 6 months, and I amazed/dismayed at what I see.
Really childish stuff about actress B having big breasts (less respectable word being used) and Actress S being "pie-faced". Plus a lot of people writing F--k on entries at random sites. (No, I am not being squeamish, but I thought that you or your filter might be.)
Why this, especially when the Wiki police are so efficient on taking it down. But what social or psychological gratification does it serve?
Naively, Barry Wellman _____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________
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-- Mark Bell MA student in Ball State University's Digital Storytelling program ( http://www.bsu.edu/cim/storytelling/) http://www.storygeek.com http://www.digital-ethos.com/ "The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ --------------------------------- No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.