Tim Powers: Wikipedia troll?

[prog]

(Ha har Slashdot-style subject line.)

Speaking of procrastination, I mean Wikipedia, here's an edit I made a couple of weeks ago to the French and Indian War article. As noted, I appreciated the vandal's creativity, which went above and beyond the usual vandal behavior of replacing the entire article with "LOL PENUS" or whatever, but still.

What's extra-great is that the modified text lived in the article for about two hours, managing to survive several (probably bot-driven) reverts, including the removal of another WP user's rather reasonable commentary on the matter.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this is a permanent feature of Wikipedia or if eventually we'll run out of people who say "gee, can I really make it say whatever I want?"

[prog.livejournal.com]

I think so long as there is a fifth grader with the ability to say "Ha ha look Trevor the Wikipedia says you're a dork! So it must be trOW MOM TREVOR'S HITTING ME" then the vandals will always be with us.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Vandalism and other trollish behaviour is the result of a disconnect between modern living circumstances and human biological imperatives. Human social structures, in common with those of other social primates like chimpanzees, are governed by the focus of the troop's attention.

The monkey that can most effectively hold the troop's attention is the alpha monkey. This was realized back in the 60's, when observed noticed that the alpha chimpanzee maintained his position long after he could be physically defeated by younger males.

This explains a lot about humans, particularly the role of celebrity, which has existed for as long as we have records.

In the case of being a jerk on the 'Net, perpetrators get the vicarious feeling of being the focus of attention because their work is up there in public for all to see. This is a nice hot jolt to one of the most fundamental monkey psycho-social reward systems, and they do not suffer any of the negative consequences that such behaviour would bring down upon them in meatspace.

Ergo, vandalism, like Paris Hilton, will always be with us, and for much the same reason.