Sharing the Addiction

An interesting thing happened this afternoon. I opened up my http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com wiki to find the content on the front page had disappeared with a single line on the page saying “THIS WAS DEMOLISHED BY JAMZ1″.  Having never had one of my pages vandalised before, I hopped into the page history to see who was at fault and discovered from the profile of the user that it was a 10 year old boy in Scotland. The actual page was very easy to fix given that I just had to roll back to an earlier version of the page. I then pondered if I should send the lad a message but then decided this might seem a victory to the boy as it would prove I had visited his profile and probably his wiki which may have been his goal in the first place.

So instead of rewarding him with attention, I sent this message to the Wikispaces team:

I just wanted to report that a Wikispaces member has purposely deleted the content from one of my wiki pages. I have reverted it back to before it was deleted so no real damage done but still think that this isn’t an appropriate way to behave on the web. When I checked out the history, it was deleted by a user called spyguy4 who it appears is a 10 year old boy in Scotland. I was thinking of sending him a message myself but didn’t want to reward his behaviour with attention – I thought it might be better coming from the Wikispaces team  

The page that was vandalised was http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com

Action following this message was swift – Wikispaces got back to me to say that they have suspended his account. And now I find myself feeling a little guilty! The kid had spent a bit of time setting up a wiki showcasing all of his interests (video games, cars etc) which I guess he can’t access anymore! I thought maybe a stern talking to would have done the trick. Still, I guess this is a very clear lesson for the youngster on what happens if you behave badly in virtual spaces. What would you have done in the same situation? Do you think the punishment matches the crime?

Tags: Wikis