Wikipedia:Vandalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This page documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
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This page in a nutshell: Intentionally making non-constructive edits to Wikipedia will result in a block or permanent ban. |
| Vandalism |
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| Dealing with vandalism |
| Resources & assistance |
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Counter-vandalism tools |
| Further information |
| Blocking IP addresses ISP contact information Don't provoke vandals |
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Editing abuse:
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Noticeboards:
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Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia.
The most common types of vandalism include the addition of obscenities to pages, page blanking, or the insertion of bad (or good) jokes or other nonsense. Fortunately, these types of vandalism are usually easy to spot.
Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Apparent bad-faith edits that do not make their bad-faith nature inarguably explicit are not considered vandalism at Wikipedia. For example, adding a personal opinion once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated.
Committing blatant vandalism, however, is a violation of Wikipedia policy; once it is spotted it should be dealt with accordingly — if you cannot deal with it yourself, you can seek help from others.
Not all vandalism is obvious, nor are all massive or controversial changes vandalism; careful attention needs to be given to whether changes made are beneficial, detrimental but well intended, or outright vandalism.
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Dealing with vandalism
If you see vandalism (as defined below), revert it and leave a warning message on the user's talk page. For the reversion edit, put in the edit summary that you have reverted vandalism, but do not perpetuate the vandalism by putting the text you have reverted. Check the page history after reverting to make sure you have removed all the vandalism; there may be multiple vandal edits, sometimes from several different IPs/accounts; and that you have not unintentionally reverted any legitimate edits. If it is obvious that all versions of the page are pure vandalism, then you should nominate it for deletion. Also remember to check the vandal's (or vandals') other contributions -- you will often find more malicious edits to revert.
Warnings
Warning templates
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Note: Do not use these templates in content disputes; instead, write a clear message explaining your disagreement.
There are several templates used to warn vandals. They are listed at right in order of severity, but need not be used in succession. Though some people vandalizing are incorrigible returning vandals and may be blocked quickly, it is common for jokesters or experimenters to make non-encyclopedic edits; these people are usually stopped by a simple warning and often become productive contributors. If you are not sure that an edit is vandalism, always start with {{uw-test1}}.
The "subst" causes the template text to be pasted into the talk page as if you had typed it out, instead of leaving {{uw-vandalism1}} visible when editing the page, because it is a comment in a talk page. You may also write your own message to the user.
If the vandal continues, list them at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. The blocking admin may leave {{subst:uw-block1}} to notify that they have been blocked.
Tracing IP addresses
Also, consider tracing the IP address. Find owners by using:
- ARIN (North America)
- RIPE (Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia)
- APNIC (Asia Pacific)
- LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean)
- AfriNIC (Africa)
(If an address is not in one, it will probably be in another registry.) Then add {{vandalip|Name of owner}} to the talk pages of users who vandalize.
If an IP address continues to vandalize and is registered to a school or other kind of responsive ISP, consider listing it on Wikipedia:Abuse reports. Follow the instructions there and read the guide to see if it applies. If it does, list it.
Types of vandalism
Wikipedia vandalism may fall into one or more of the following categorizations:
- Blanking
- Removing all or significant parts of pages, or replacing entire established pages with one's own version without first gaining consensus. Sometimes important verifiable references are deleted with no valid reason(s) given in the summary. However, significant content removals are usually not considered to be vandalism where the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary. An example of blanking edits that could be legitimate would be edits that blank all or part of a biography of a living person. Wikipedia is especially concerned about providing accurate and non-biased information on the living, and this may be an effort to remove inaccurate or biased material. Due to the possibility of unexplained good-faith content removal, {{uw-test1}} or {{uw-delete1}}, as appropriate, should normally be used as initial warnings for ordinary content removals not involving any circumstances that would merit stronger warnings.
- Excessive lengthening
- Adding copious repetitive or meaningless content to a page.
- Spam
- Continuing to add external links to non-notable or irrelevant sites (e.g. to advertise one's website) to pages after having been warned is vandalism.
- Vandalbots
- A script or "robot" that attempts to vandalize or spam massive numbers of articles (hundreds or thousands).
- Silly vandalism
- Adding profanity, graffiti, random characters, or other nonsense to pages; creating nonsensical and obviously non-encyclopedic pages, etc. Please note that the addition of random characters to pages is a common way that new users test edit and may not be intentionally malicious.
- Sneaky vandalism
- Vandalism which is harder to spot. This can include adding plausible misinformation to articles, (e.g minor alteration of dates), hiding vandalism (e.g. by making two bad edits and only reverting one), or reverting legitimate edits with the intent of hindering the improvement of pages.
- Userspace vandalism
- Adding insults, profanity, etc. to user pages or user talk pages (see also Wikipedia:No personal attacks).
- Image vandalism
- Uploading shock images, inappropriately placing explicit images on pages, or simply using any image in ways that are disruptive. Please note though that Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors and that explicit images may be uploaded and/or placed on pages for legitimate reasons.
- Abuse of tags
- Bad-faith placing of {{afd}}, {{delete}}, {{sprotected}}, or other tags on pages that do not meet such criteria. This includes removal of long-standing {{policy}} and related tags without forming consensus on such a change first.
- Page-move vandalism
- Changing the names of pages (referred to as "page-moving") to disruptive or otherwise inappropriate terms. Wikipedia now only allows registered users active for at least four days to move pages.
- Link vandalism
- Modifying internal or external links within a page so that they appear the same but link to a page/site that they are not intended to (e.g an explicit image; a shock site).
- Avoidant vandalism
- Removing {{afd}}, {{copyvio}} and other related tags in order to conceal deletion candidates or avert deletion of such content. Note that this is often mistakenly done by new users who are unfamiliar with AfD procedures and such users should be given the benefit of the doubt and pointed to the proper page to discuss the issue.
- Modifying users' comments
- Editing other users' comments to substantially change their meaning (e.g. turning someone's vote around), except when removing a personal attack (which is somewhat controversial in and of itself). Signifying that a comment is unsigned is an exception. Please also note that correcting other users' typos is discouraged.
