<p>I deleted a sentence that I thought offensive toward my community and it stayed deleted. What is to keep teenagers from deleting and editing sentences at will?</p>
<p>Yes, but my friends and I have tried messing around with some stuff and it gets changed back pretty quickly, depending on how much traffic it gets. My english teacher shares a name with an olympic athlete, so we edited that page to include our teacher, but it changed several times. Then our chem teacher has a name similar to a chem law, so we changed that page several times to say it was founded by our teacher. Changed immediately again (I think I got NIH blocked from editing wikipedia ;)). They keep track of this stuff, but I have heard that some people try to edit pages about themselves to be more accurate, and those changes are rejected.</p>
<p>Yeah, large amounts of traffic make wikipedia pretty accurate. Especially with die-hard editors around.</p>
<p>Articles on small town, USA probably don’t get moderated/checked/regulated very much. Articles on big things are practically impossible to edit permanently unless you add credible, cited, true information. They’ll often be reverted to normal within seconds or minutes, or you won’t be able to edit them at all.</p>
<p>I know that if a page gets enough editing (or it’s about a touchy subject-- political leaders, celebrities in trouble, etc.), they restrict who can edit the page to long-time members.</p>
<p>They monitor it pretty closely - although one time I was looking up an article for AP Bio, and found the sentence, “Your Mom is a chloroplast.”</p>
<p>That’s a perfect example of vandalism, don’t do it!</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you see something that needs fixing/is incorrect/could be improved, be bold! edit and fix it. :)</p>
<p>(in answer to your question, there are a number of bots that patrol all edits and revert the obvious ones, (blank a page and the like) while quite a few editors have pages on their watchlists that they can see changes to. There are of course semiprotected pages that can only be edited by members due to immense amounts of vandalism.</p>
<p>Your mom is a chloroplast. </p>
<p>I love that.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, AP Bio has lead to many funny Wikipedia discoveries. It wasn’t an article specifically for “photosynthesis”, but I also came across the sentence:</p>
<p>“George Bush is capable of photosynthesis.”</p>
<p>while doing some short answers.</p>
<p>Well, not everyone is allowed; repeat vandals aren’t. Our school’s various shared IPs are blocked due to people typing in crap like:</p>
<p>“Satan loves ham!”</p>
<p>“WE LOVE SATAN! HAIL THE DARK LORD!”</p>
<p>“i think ur gay”</p>
<p>“are you kidding me ? i can edit??”</p>
<p>“and you sukkkk”</p>
<p>“Hi my name is llama monkey aka billy goat”</p>
<p>My favorite is this gem from “Strophe” - " It is also the name of a green glow worm that infiltrates time space in its never ending war with the necronomicon."</p>
<p>But this a decent runner-up - “ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo”</p>
<p>And of course, what I believe is my APUSH teacher’s comment…</p>
<p>“Marshall was the exact opposite of a stirct constructionist. As a Federalist, he espoused a broader reading of federal power. Marshall’s narrow definition of treason was not a product of his judicial philosophy; he wanted to thwart his political enemy Jefferson”</p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>All removed, of course, save for the teacher’s, which was better incorporated by a fellow student.</p>