On Friday 11 April 2008 some anonymous vandal here

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=204781776

Changes the introduction to the article about Chatham (Canada) to say “Known as the "looney bin" of Ontario, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent (2006 population 108,177) is a city-status single-tier municipal government in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.” It was not reverted until on Tuesday 15 April, i.e. 4 days later here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=205023035

Note the reversion was not by our heroic admin vandal fighters, but by another IP. An edit war ensued and (and time of writing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham-Kent

it is still there. Where is the brave Defender of the Wiki when we need him? (oops, or her).

That's why BLP can never solve the problems of Wikipedia. Clearly, this article would not be covered.

Not sure of the spelling, but isn't looney either the official bird of Vermont or Canada, as well as a nickname for Canadian currency?

As far as I know, one can't libel a Municipality. Which makes it less of an urgent concern, don't you think?

Yes, but the people living there may be aggrieved even if they're not legally libelled.

True. But the situation isn't nearly as threatening to the individual as a BLP violation.

Wasn't there a town in Canada that got a real roasting by Wikipedia last year? The story made the news if I recall.

Take a look at the revision history of the village of Denshaw.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history

So bad that too made the news today.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1770

These vandals need to watch more Monty Python sketches. Their material isn't funny enough.

Meanwhile the vandalistic edit is still there. Is it my imagination or is it (a) that the amount of actual work on articles (as opposed to tagging, linking, categorisation &c) has dropped off incredibly in recent months ( anti-vandal work is getting swamped by the tide of vandalism?

13 hours since the media picked up on it.

If this vandalism is reported in reliable media, shouldn't there be an article about it?

Not sure if it's the official bird, but there's a loon on the $1 coin, so it's called a "looney". They have a $2 coin, naturally enough called a "tooney".

Ergo, I'm not sure being called a "looney bin" is so much a slight as a doubloon entendre.

Jon

P.S. I should have specified that the loon is on the reverse side of the $1 coin.

I agree. Especially if that article gets vandalized and that gets reported in the media...its an infinite loop

You mean a loop like this?

Ah brilliant Kato. Part of the process of 'proper' peer review and article referencing and so on is precisely to eliminate circular references such as this. Very good.

Ah but according to the Jimbo/SlimVirgin school of encyclopedia writing "verifiability" trumps truth therefore, what is important is that Borat's Goldman Sachs career has been "verified" by "reliable sources". The fact that it's a wikipedia-created falsehood is beside the point.

The standard Canuck joke, of course, is that the loon is on BOTH sides of the coin.