Feb
2010
Sachin’s Double Century and Wikipedia Vandalism
I was excited watching the master blaster scoring the double century and becoming the first person to do so in ODI cricket. I rushed to my system to share my joy with the nettisons. It was then I saw a post by Hiran in facebook saying:
Some one added 225* as sachins score in wikipedia!
I just went through the link, but it was not there. But to my astonishment, found something else interesting.
I wonder if this was right.
So, there is no chance for it to be correct; atleast for team India. I tried to undo that change and came upto this new word: Vandalism.
Lets look what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia.
Don’t know whether this is wiki specific meaning; but was a new word to me.
After a few seconds, here comes another change.
Its now Brazil... Do they have a cricket team? I head about them only in football
This was just a beginning. Then came a creative edit by some Indian fan.
A creative edit
Sachin in tri-color. Its nice creative idea, but not suitable for a place like Wikipedia
How did these people play so much ODI's?
Now its 400*
Sachin is now 200, but with an extra star. Its fine, but who the hell is Saeed Tamrel in Pakistan team?
What satisfaction does people get by seeing their name in a popular wiki page for just a few secs or may be minutes? Here is a sample of the revisions happening for the page at that time.
A sample of revisions page
Okay, now it seems fine.
This seems fine
But then came these…
Does any one know a Kumar Vijay in Sri Lankan team?
India is not in the list... May be someone was trying to fix the changes made earlier.
I am also an Indian fan. But this is not a place to show that.
By that, I was tired and left the job of undoing the changes to someone else who will find hapiness in doing so. I might have missed many other similar changes due to my slow connection too(It tooks about more than a minute for me to reload the page). But, my question is why? A non profitable organization helping us to get all the information for free, who should people tamper with it?
The page normally had 3 to 4 edits per day, but at this particular 2 hour duration; from 4PM to 6PM IST, there were more than 300 changes made. Does anyone gets the benefit of these edits? The only thing I knew would have happened was the lose of time of people like me who love Wikipedia. I was eager to check the details of the edits and from where they came, but its exam time and I didn’t perform well in the one that was over today. So, going back to studies…
The page I was mentioning till now was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_One_Day_International_cricket_records If you are eager to know, just go and check out.