OK, I am shocked!

[pokemon_master]

Whilst surfing Wikipedia this morning I decided to look up the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode list (Don't ask me why: I was bored..)

Anyway, when I did find the episode lists, I found the new episode lists which are going to premier soon to the UK and something which really shocked me.

The thing I was shocked about was that people not only put FAKE episodes on there, they made the plot of these FAKE episodes "Adult" themed if you catch my drift.. (I Won't quote it; it's very inapproiate for the boards)

I am shocked that Wikipedia allowed this! I mean, this online encyclopedia is free, and Kids do go on it too. Why didn't Wikipedia enforce this? The most that anyone did was say "This space is for Actual episodes. Please don't post fake episodes". That is it.

I just had to deleted the horrible and inappropriate things they said on there! It's not right that they can get away with that.

 

[bicker]

Wikipedia didn't specifically "allow" this to be done. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser. There aren't any paid staff who review submissions; that's up to you and me. What you did is precisely how these situations are supposed to be handled: One of us notices the "e-vandalism", and then we fix it.

Wikipedia has implemented a self-protection policy, whereby volunteers can prevent unregistered users and users with accounts newer than about four days from editing a specific page that has been vandalized. If you feel that the kind of changes you've seen are likely to happen again, then you, as a registered member of the site, can employ the self-protection. This won't keep users from creating new pages, but can keep the existing pages relatively clear of vandalism.

The open nature of Wikipedia is what it is all about. Even the self-protection policy was very controversial, and is anticipated to have some significant negative impact on the website (but presumably less negative impact then positive impact). If we cannot have a constructive, open Wikipedia, then there's not much sense in having any Wikipedia at all... folks might as well just use Encarta.