Early Monday morning, the Wikipedia pages for a slew of celebrities, writers, and political figures were replaced by full-page spreads of black and white swastikas on a bright red background. The vandalism was reversed within minutes of being noticed by users. Gizmodo reports: Wikipedia is certainly no stranger to vandalism on some of its more controversial pages, but this incident highlighted one of the lesser-known weaknesses in the platform’s airtight content moderation policies. Instead of targeting the content on any particular Wikipedia page, the vandal behind this blitz targeted a particular article template used by more than 50,000 different Wikipedia pages, including those for Jennifer Lopez, Joe Biden, and Discworld author Terry Pratchett.
According to an ongoing discussion by a handful of Wikipedia admins on one of the site’s public forums, the template’s since been fixed and the vandal in question — who first joined the site about ten days ago — has been put on an indefinite ban. One admin noted that by targeting these article templates directly, the user was able to bypass the typical protections put on certain Wikipedia pages to protect them from vandals in the first place.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.