If you look in
RecentChanges, computing-technology.derby.ac.uk has been reverting lots of edits (some years old), changing punctuation, and introducing spelling errors. Is this some bot that is out of control? Is there a way to ban that domain from editing?
Surely this isn't the same
GrammarVandal from years past, the one that effectively destroyed the original C2 community?
(Answering my own question: It is
SharkBot, the
GrammarVandal countermeasure. Oh, well. I figured there would have been a technological solution to this bot-war by now. I guess I'll come back in another five years to see how this battleground has reshaped.
I am reminded of the famous ending to Wiki Farm: "Twelve IPs were editing in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the
RecentChanges of
SharkBot. The readers outside looked from
GrammarVandal to
SharkBot, and from
SharkBot to
GrammarVandal, and from
GrammarVandal to
SharkBot again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." --
IanOsgood)
SharkBot sometimes smells blood in the water and gets a little... eager.
{Yes. Computing-technology.derby.ac.uk is one of several domains on which I run the
SharkBot tools. Recently,
GrammarVandal has been digging up old posts edited under a
UserName cookie and doing his/her usual thing.
SharkBot, predictably, reverts them. That sometimes results in the
UserName being regarded as, shall we say, particularly tasty. If you turn off your
UserName cookie, the
SharkBot will no longer regard your legitimate edits as such a tasty morsel. --
DaveVoorhis}
[I don't see the point of grammar vandal continually fighting with a bot, if he knows the bot will just change his edits back.. it's like an endless loop.. why would he continue to fight a bot? Does he have some kind of aspergers that makes him enjoy this sort of thing (obsessively editing things)? Just wondering if he gets some kind of satisfaction out of it that we don't understand as humans. Maybe he really enjoys analysis of grammar or english syntax, whereas other humans don't get that satisfaction.]