Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Vandalism studies/Obama article study

A study to see whether leaving Barack H. Obama open to IP edits hurts or helps the article.

Background
Mr. Obama is in the news daily as a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate. As such, the Wikipedia article gets many views and edits each day. The article is the second result on a Google search for Barack Obama. Because the article is so highly trafficked, it is the target of much vandalism and nonsense edits by anonymous IPs. However, the article is on many watchlists, and vandalism is often reverted quickly. Because of the sheer number of edits though, this is taxing to those who have the article watchlisted. There has been discussion at the article talk page (now archived) about the merits of semi-protecting the article. The article is currently semi-protected (on March 17, 2007 by User:Steel359).

This page analyzes the edits made during the period of January 1, 2007 to March 9, 2007. Edits that are blatant vandalism, nonsense, or otherwise unhelpful (e.g. non-neutral edits, edits that give undue weight, etc.) are noted.