Wikipedia:Teachers_can_be_vandals_too
Wikipedia:Teachers can be vandals too
Wikipedia welcomes all the bright folks having dreamt up an innovative way to show the world how unreliable it is. They differ from other witty types (students, friends of gays, men with enormous equipment, and asdfghjklms), because they are armed with the iron-clad excuse that they are teachers, not vandals.
 | This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. (But the examples presented did happen.) |
 | This page in a nutshell: Sorry, but the method of demonstrating Wikipedia's flaws you just dreamt up during coffee break isn't new or helpful. |
2010
In 2010 a French teacher set out to edit the French Wikipedia as part of a broader campaign about a poem by Charles de Vion d'Alibray (including online mock commentaries). He intended to demonstrate that pupils depend on the Internet to do their homework and that many websites are unreliable. The "fun little experiment" was related on his blog in 2012,[1] and received media coverage.[2]
Article timeline
August 2010: signs up as "Doleros"
- 18 August
September 2010: new account under the name "Justin Delapierre"I created an account to become a Wikipedia contributor and, to show my credentials, contributed usefully to a few literary articles. I then edited the very succinct Wikipedia biography of Charles de Vion d'Alibray by inserting this little addition: « His renowned and tragic love for Mademoiselle de Beaunais gave from 1636 onward a more lyrical and somber twist to his poetry. »
—Loys, Comment j'ai pourri le web (How i rotted the web)[1]
- 4 September
- Addition of erroneous material by Justin Delapierre
- 18 September
- Self-revert by Justin Delapierre
- 19 September
- Re-instated by anonymous editor
March 2012
- 21 March
- Reverted (deletion of unsourced passage meant to deceive)
- Indef-blocking of Justin Delapierre (account created to vandalize)
- 23 March
- Addition of a new unsourced paragraph by anonymous editor
- 24 March
- Reverted (Our dear vandal teacher has got followers… apparently one teaches best through showing an example…)
- Re-instated by anonymous editor
- Reverted
- Page protected (Voluntary 'pedagogic' vandalism by a teacher on this article…)
- 26 March
- Indef-blocking of Doleros (talk • contribs) (account created to vandalize then boast about it in the media)
April 2012
- 9 April
- Re-instated by anonymous editor
- Reverted
Wangenra
In October 2015, user Wangenra, claiming to be a teacher at Aloha High School, repeatedly edited the school's article to show "how easily entries can be changed". They were issued a "ludicrous" block which led to a horse-caressing discussion at AN/I.
The case shows some excuses that you can use to prevent edits from being reverted, such as:
- Doing this as a class exercise on source citation/evaluation.
- This is an exercise on why your site is not allowed as a research option for my writing students...
- This is me demonstrating to my class how easily entries can be changed.
- One last time this semester showing my students why I don't want them citing Wikipedia.
Aysedune
The former article Themes and analysis of No Country for Old Men (film) was tagged with {{subst:copyvio | url=insert URL here}}, and listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems for review. User Aysedune deleted the template (which states it should not be removed), and was dismayed when an admin restored it:
"That was a good compilation and I always advise my students to read that page. When I realised it wasn't there any more and after learning I could take it back, I did it."
Some brilliant lesson plans similar to vandalizing Wikipedia to demonstrate its unreliability include:
- teaching racial equality by addressing minority students only with ethnic slurs,
- discouraging sexual harassment by having everyone in the class spank each other,
- teaching healthy dieting by having students take the cinnamon challenge or even the Tide Pod challenge,
- discouraging gang violence by joining a gang,
- teaching the importance of fire safety by playing with matches at a gas station.
Because clearly, vandalizing Wikipedia is a much better option than explaining that:
- Wikipedia is not a stable source,
- Wikipedia is written by volunteers (not accredited scholars),
- Wikipedia avoids original research,
- Wikipedia only summarizes academic and journalistic sources (which are good sources for research papers).
- Wikipedia:The motivation of a vandal
- The Inspect element, a much better way to "show" that Wikipedia is easy to insert incorrect information on without actually editing the article
- Loys Bonod (March 21, 2012). "Comment j'ai pourri le web". la vie moderne.net (in French).
Petite expérience amusante sur l'usage du numérique en lettres…
- On Agence France-Presse, then France TV, Rue 89, Le Temps.ch, 20 Minutes, etc.