[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia:Vandal bots

Wed Nov 6 19:11:54 UTC 2002

Neil Harris wrote:
> This looks like something nasty waiting to happen (see the enclosed
> HTML page).
>
> Note the apparently bogus user name, and the fact that the article
> title text does not match the link. In addition, recent changes says
> that this was created from IP 194.117.133.196

That's just what you get when you try to look at the history of a
nonexistent page; it was deleted after you loaded Recentchanges but
before you loaded the page.

For the curious, the text of [[Wikipedia:Vandal bots]] was:

(-------------
Vandal bots are malicous programs which deliberatley vandalise wiki
based websites, these bots can wreck websites at an amazing rate. To
imfamous vandal bots include

Ram-Man Bot, This bot autogenerated 50,000+ articles about EVERY
settlement in the united states, using us census data. The articles are
nothing but complete nonsence, and it DDOSed Wikipedia for several
weeks.

Sciplius, this bot automaticly deletes articles at random..

Vandal bots are very malicous, but blocking them is almost impossible,
it is up to the community to keep the wikipedia free from vandal bots,
there could be new attacks in the future. 
-------------)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)