Wikipedia:Vandalism

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page is an official policy on the Simple English Wikipedia. Many people agree with it. They see it as a standard way that all users should follow. When changing the page, please check that the other people agree with your changes. Use the talk page when you are not sure or when you want to propose a change.

Shortcut: WP:VAN

Wikipedia is a target for vandals. Instead of making useful changes, vandals do some or all of these:

• Add text or pictures that may offend people.
• Add lots of nonsense.
• Add information that they know is wrong.
• Remove information from pages.
• Make personal attacks: they insult other people on Wikipedia.
• Move pages to other names, usually names that make no sense.

Vandalism is a very serious problem, and people who vandalise may be blocked from making changes to Wikipedia.

How to fight vandalism

Only administrators can block users, but you can still help! To find vandalism, become a newest changes patroller!

1. Click the 'New changes' link on the left bar.
2. Check some of the edits by pressing the (diff) link to see the changes. Look out for anonymous users - most vandals contribute with just their IP address rather than a user name.

If you see that a page has been vandalised:

1. Revert the page
2. Warn the vandal by putting {{subst:test}} ~~~~ on their talk page, or {{subst:stopvandal}} ~~~~ if they have vandalised many pages.
3. Check their contributions by clicking their name on the 'history' tab. They may have vandalised pages before.
4. If they continue to vandalise pages, do not continue to fight with them by reverting -- report them to administrators here.
5. If there are no administrators online to block the users, try to contact them through their other Wikipedia talk pages if they have one, or through the email links on Wikipedia:Administrators.

In addition to New changes, users may also watch for vandalism in #vandalism-simple, an IRC channel dedicated to fighting vandalism on Simple Wikipedia and Wiktionary.

Antivandalism Tools

Pilotguy has a tool that can leave warnings on talk pages of vandals in one click. Based off en:User:Kbh3rd's. it works by showing warnings on the sidebar (where "what links here, related changes, special tools" are), whenever you are editing a user talk page (see example). When you are not, it will show a "Google" link. When you are reading an article, just highlight some text, click the "Google" link, and it will search for that text at Google. To use this tool, add the following to your monobook.js.

You'll need to flush your old monobook.js from your cache. Pressing Ctrl+F5 on some browsers might work, or Ctrl-R on some others. When you get the proper version into your browser, that Google link will show up in your toolbox. The warning links should only appear when you're in edit mode on a user talk page.

//
 // Edit tools for the vandal whack-a-mole game
 // User:Pilotguy/whackamole.js - please include this line
 //
 document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Pilotguy/whackamole.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

Please drop me a note with any questions. —Pilotguy push to talk 00:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)