what if anyone starts to delete and article or acts as abusive?

Question

what if anyone starts to delete and article or acts as abusive?

Answer 1

Hi,



every edit you make is logged. That means, by editing an article you create a new version of it, but the previous versions are still available for everyone. That also happens if you remove all content of an article. Some users patrol the recent changes on Wikipedia using several tools and check if the edit is ok or if the edit is bad in any way.

Since all versions are logged, the patrolling user can now edit the previous version and save it again - and so revert the edit. Therefor, most users use tools that make reverting even easier and faster. On the English language Wikipedia there is also an "anti-vandal" bot that checks new changes automatically and reverts them if it detects vandalism (if you empty a page for example, the bot would immediately revert that).

You see, there's no way for you to delete an article completely. Only the 1,200 administrators on the English Wikipedia are able to do so. But even their deletions are not ultimate. Other administrators can still view the deleted versions and, if they think it is necessary, can restore them. There are only some 30 users who can delete permanently so that only the server admins could restore.



I'm administrator on several Wikis myself, I hope I could help a bit.

Answer 2

No-one (except Administrators) can delete a page on Wikipedia. In some rare cases Admin accounts are compromised and then the person who has seized control of the account can delete pages but these pages can be "Undeleted" - there is always a copy of a page on the servers and some users copy the encoding of a page to their own computers to be able to preserve a page if they deem it necessary to return it to Wikipedia.



However, when people start adding rubbish (e.g "So and So is an idiot! Hahaha") users of Wikipedia use programmes that they can download onto their computer as well as the "Edit This Page" button at the top of every page to remove the vandalism.



Hope this has helped (I am a Wikipedian)



S.O.

Answer 3

As you'll find from using Wikipedia a lot, certain articles that have been vandalized or are suspected of vandalism can be "locked", which prevents anonymous or newly registered users from editing them. I think Wikipedia can also prevent certain users from editing. It collects the IP address of everyone who edits articles, so even unregistered users can be locked out if they try to use the same computer.

Answer 4

Here's an article referring to vandalism on Wikipedia:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism

Answer 5

You can always revert things back in wiki.

Just go to the history page.

Answer 6

there is no way you can recover it