thekohser wrote:Last week, I embarked on a vandalism experiment -- using a different IP address each day, I make one edit to one Wikipedia article, inserting some bit of false, but roughly plausible information. Then I check back to see if anyone has reverted me.
So far, not a single reversion.
This is the breaching experiment that Karmafist did, to which Jimbo viscerally reacted, "went meatspace" by complaining to his employers in a conscious effort to damage his career prospects.
Karmafist went wrong I think in that he got a bit cocky in some of those edits and put in humorous or absurd information. And that got noticed.
I think as well that if one tried this in heavily-trafficked articles, like current celebrities or landmarks like Taj Mahal or the Queen of England or something like that, one would get busted pretty quickly.
However in medium-relevant or obscure articles that aren't actively developed, one could probably do this a long time, maybe indefinitely if one has access to unconnectable IPS and maybe foils checkuser with a browser/OS impersonation browser add-on.
One could also use the old trick of putting in a misspelling or grammatical error that Wikipedia mindless human drones would notice and correct. When they correct that and click "save" your edit is on its way to being buried and hidden in the article history. It's probably also possible to exploit some article-crawling Wikipedia bot to do this, but one would have to sort all that out technically.
I'm not saying you should be doing this, it's obviously vandalism most foul, but it's a fascinating experiment so I hope you update us on it.