Zorrothecorrector

Interesting user page

Hello again, Doctor. I just saw the post at your user page and I have to agree with several of the things written on it.

First off, I cannot argue with this one:

Vandalism. There is no excuse. But what is vandalism anyway? Again, we have a tragedy of the commons. If you respond out of gut instinct, please step away. If you actually know what you are talking about, please feel free to edit. In any case, be prepared to defend yourself.

That is my exact position. There is absolutely no excuse for vandalism, and every user, administrator or not, should be on the lookout for it. As for vandals, there is an endless supply of them, and their tactics vary widely, from replacing a page with an expletive to doing something as sneaky as replacing 1990 with 1991. These are the hardest types of edits to identify, since sometimes they are indeed good-faith edits. Personally, I think it all would be easier if every user, registered or not, provided a source when editing. I've adopted that as a policy for myself, and that would have avoided this entire problem.

As for the actual incident, there were another two factors that influenced my thinking: First, thanks to WikiProject Mathematics, the discipline has become the most accurate and broad (but by no means complete) area of knowledge in Wikipedia, partly thanks to its resident faculty. I assumed, incorrectly, that the WikiProject had reviewed that content beforehand, and had, in a way, certified its accuracy. Since you didn't have a source, and the edit was substantially different from the original edit, as I said before, I gave the benefit of the doubt to the previous content, instead of the correction you submitted.

As for your other comments, I also agree with many of them, especially about anonymity. Nowhere in Wikipedia is my real name written, because I want to contribute to making an encyclopedia, not to make myself famous. Sadly, the only thing I do some days is reverting vandalism, instead of researching and editing articles. I’d prefer to help articles to the point where they become Featured Articles, but I’m unable to do so because I'm chasing middle-school students with nothing better to do than to deface our articles.

From my experience, the vast majority of vandalism comes from IP addresses, and many administrators have had similar experiences; however, when I see an anonymous editor making a useful contribution to our encyclopedia, I am the first one to welcome him or her. While my first encounter with you was a little rocky, let me thank you for your correction.

There's one thing I don't agree, though: I don't hold any veto power over you. An administrator is a regular editor with just a few extra tools, and you could very easily have undone my edit, since this is a wiki after all. In practice, I don't hold any real "power", I just received extra security permissions because I earned the community's trust, and Wikipedia is a community, as well as an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a democracy, an anarchy, an aristocracy or any other form of government. It is an experiment in building the world's most comprehensive encyclopedia.

In hindsight, I made a mistake. I presumed the previous content was correct, and it wasn't. Again, I apologize for that reversion. After all, I'm human. I have to recognize when I made a mistake, since I am bound to make them every once in a while, no matter how much I try to minimize their occurrences. However, I've learned something myself from this incident. Welcome to Wikipedia, and please feel free to ask me any more questions you may have. Titoxd^(?!?) 02:35, 4 November 2005 (UTC)