A certain user has been making edits to tag wikis all over. Not surprising enough, the suggested changes:

Robo reviewers continue to oblige by approving the suggestions. (... had 540 561 577 edit suggestions approved, and 57 58 edit suggestions rejected.)

I have two questions:

  1. Is this appropriate? Making mass edits using copied content and rather unhelpful tag wikis.

  2. Could it be stopped, please?

Looks like the user has already hit the maximum reputation that can be earned from suggesting edits so might take a pause. Nevertheless, it's inconclusive.

UPDATE: Ran into this suggested edit. The editing spree has started again!

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_array

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_text

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysics

Edit ban him, rollback, and review ban the robots? –  bjb568 Apr 18 at 4:20
I see request after request which could so easily be fixed by just adding more difficult audits (and banning / auto-flagging in the case of too many failed suggestions). –  Dukeling Apr 19 at 6:53
@Dukeling It would help only if there were failed suggestions. Robos approve everything. Look at the stats in the question. –  devnull Apr 19 at 7:47
More difficult audits imply that robo reviewers get review banned (or learn to review properly), so these types of things are more likely to end up rejected. –  Dukeling Apr 19 at 8:28

2 Answers 2

I can't blame the robo reviewers for signing off on this mass update as they see each edit individually. If the content has passed a large enough audience to be deemed acceptable to Wikipedia then chances stand SO's audience (assuming there is a lot of overlap between these forums) would like it as well.

If you really want to stop people from doing a mass edit like you're describing then perhaps we need to change how we assign the badge he was after from "edit 50 tag wikis" to something with more limited scope (a la the reputation badges requiring X number of answers so as to not come from a single answer.)

How does:

  1. Edit 50 tag wikis, no more than 10 in a single month
  2. Edit 50 tag wikis, none of which are rolled back

The first solves the direct issue. The second promotes "better" content but may not solve the problem you've identified with future people.

Oh, you mean to say that it's ok to approve a suggested edit even if it doesn't meet the site standards? Moreover, there's something called plagiarism that you seem to be ignoring. –  devnull Apr 18 at 18:15
@devnull The problem is how am I, the lowly reviewer, to know that the content was taken from another website? –  wheaties Apr 18 at 18:18
As a reviewer, one needs to be aware of tag wiki guidelines too. –  devnull Apr 18 at 18:21
@wheaties often that is pretty obvious. Reasonably well written large chunks of content don't appear out of thin air. Often a quick check of one or two sentences reveals the source. And if you can't be bothered to check that as a reviewer, perhaps just skip. –  Bart Apr 19 at 10:23
"I can't blame the robo reviewers for signing off on this mass update as they see each edit individually." - No. I have seen more than once a significant number of similar minorish edits in a row, all proposed by the same user. So that statement is at least partially wrong and the robo reviewers need to get coached. –  JensG Jun 4 at 19:53

I think the cases should be considered separately. Here are some thoughts:

I see these cases described:

  1. Using wikipedia content with reference: Sounds fine, especially if the tag wiki was empty
  2. Using wikipedia content without reference: probably illegal and should not happen
  3. Making wikis that do not follow the guideline: This one is not clear to me, would it be worse to have a tag wiki that does not meet the specs, or no tag wiki at all?

Of course it goes without saying having a tag wiki that does meet the specs would be best. But to me it looks like this user is just trying to 'fill the gap', which he is doing quite efficiently via point 1, and perhaps reasonably via point 3.

'fill the gap' -- You are kidding, aren't you? –  devnull Apr 18 at 9:39
All it does is fill our tag wikis with seemingly decent content and hide the fact that those wikis actually could use some work to make them appropriate for our site and for the goals our tag wikis have. The issue here is not really copying Wikipedia content, but the fact that we don't end up with good tag wikis. –  Bart Apr 18 at 9:45
@Bart In other words, the copied content isn't only banned due to copyright reasons, it's also discouraged because often it simply doesn't do the job it's supposed to do. The latter is a matter of some concern :) –  Kuba Ober Jul 30 at 20:19

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