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Wikipedia:Vandalism

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Vandalism is any indisputably bad-faith addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia. The largest quantity of vandalism consists of the replacement of existing text with obscenities, namecalling, or other wholly irrelevant content.

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.

Committing vandalism is a violation of Wikipedia policy; it needs to be spotted, and then dealt with – if you cannot deal with it yourself, you can seek help from others.

A 2002 study by IBM found that most Wikipedia vandalism is reverted within five minutes. (See official results.)

Types of vandalism

These are the most common forms of vandalism on Wikipedia.

Spam
Adding inappropriate external links for self-promotion.
VandalBot
A script or "robot" that attempts to vandalize or spam massive amounts of articles (hundreds or thousands), blanking, or adding commercial links.
Childish vandalism
Adding graffiti or blanking pages. (The female cyclist vandal is an example of this type.) Note that this page, itself, has been repeatedly blank page vandalized since June 11, 2005.
Silly vandalism
Users will sometimes create joke articles or replace existing articles with plausible-sounding nonsense, or add silly jokes to existing articles (this includes Mr. Pelican Shit.)
Sneaky vandalism
Vandalism which is harder to spot. Adding misinformation, changing dates or making other sensible-appearing substitutions and typos (e.g. [1] which was reverted because the source material is easily available).
Attention-seeking vandalism
Adding insults, using offensive usernames, replacing articles with jokes etc. (see also Wikipedia:No personal attacks)
User page vandalism
Replacing User pages with insults, profanity, etc. (see also Wikipedia:No personal attacks)
Image vandalism
Uploading provocative images, inserting political messages, making malicious animated GIFs, etc.
Template vandalism
Adding any of the above to templates.
Page move vandalism
Moving pages to offensive or nonsense names. Most infamous example was Willy on Wheels. However, Wikipedia now only allows users with 25 edits or above to make page moves, and the reason must be stated.
Redirect vandalism
Redirecting articles or talk pages to offensive articles or images. One example is the Autofellatio redirect vandal.
Link vandalism
Rewriting links within an article so that they appear the same, but point to something irrelevant or ridiculous (e.g. France).
Avoidant vandalism
Removing {{vfd}}, {{copyvio}} and other related tags in order to conceal or avoid entries to risk deletion.
Random character vandalism
The kind of vandalism that has childish keyboard toying. ex:kldsjkglsadjlkadsjhkl;asdgj;klsag
Changing people's comments
editing signed comments by another user 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)
Official policy vandalism
Deleting or altering part of a Wikipedia official policy with which the vandal disagrees, without any attempt to seek consensus or recognize an existing consensus. Improving or clarifying policy wording in line with the clear existing consensus is not vandalism.
Edit wars
Many times, edit wars occur on some Wikipedia articles. This situation is occasionally considered vandalism depending on the circumstances of it.

What vandalism is not

Although sometimes referred to as such, the following things are not vandalism and are therefore treated differently:

Newbie Test
New users who discover the "Edit this page" button want to know if they can really edit any page, so they write something inside just to test it. This is not vandalism! On the contrary, these users should be warmly greeted, and given a reference to the Sandbox (e.g. using the [{{test}}] template message) where they can keep making their tests. (Sometimes they will even revert their own changes.)
Learning Wiki Markup and Manual of Style
For some users, it takes a while to learn the wiki-based markup, and will spend a little time experimenting with the different ways to make external links, internal links, and other special characters. Rather than condemning them as vandals, just explain to them what our standard style is on the issue in hand—perhaps pointing them towards our documentation at Wikipedia:How to edit a page, and the like.
NPOV Violations
The neutral point of view is a difficult policy for many of us to understand, and even Wikipedia veterans occasionally accidentally introduce material which is non-ideal from an NPOV perspective. Indeed, we are all blinded by our beliefs to a greater or lesser extent. While regrettable, this is not vandalism. See also: NPOV dispute.
Bold Edits
Wikipedians often make sweeping changes to articles in order to improve them—most of us aim to be bold when updating articles. While having large chunks of text you wrote removed, moved to talk, or substantially rewritten can sometimes feel like vandalism, it should not be confused with vandalism. That said, the wise Wikipedian tempers boldness with WikiLove.
Mistakes
Sometimes, users will insert content into an article that is not necessarily accurate, in the belief that it is. By doing so in good faith, they are trying to contribute to the encyclopedia and improve it. If you believe that there is inaccurate information in an article, ensure that it is, and/or discuss its factuality with the user who has submitted it.
Bullying or Stubbornness
Some users cannot come to agreement with others who are willing to talk to them on an article's talk page, and repeatedly make changes opposed by everyone else. This is a matter of regret—you may wish to see our dispute resolution pages to get help. However, it is not vandalism.
Harassing or Making Personal Attacks
We have a clear policy on Wikipedia of no personal attacks, and harassing other contributors is not allowed. Some forms of harassment are also clear cases of vandalism, such as home page vandalism. However, harassment is not in general vandalism.
The Unexpected
Just because someone is editing in an unusual way doesn't make him or her a vandal. If someone is making solid edits but writing, "Hi, Mom!" in his or her edit summaries, this doesn't make them an oddball vandal; it makes him or her a newcomer. By all means have a friendly chat about the proper use of edit summaries. Don't blanket revert him/her. Don't block him/her.

How to spot vandalism

This is a collection of tips on how to find vandalism. Once you've found it, read how to deal with vandalism and revert the page to an earlier version.

Vandalism by non-logged in users
Most vandalism is carried out by users who have not yet created an account. There is an option on Special:Recentchanges to hide logged in users. This can be a way of filtering for only the edits most likely to be vandalism. Non-logged in users can not mark their edits as minor, so filtering minor edits out of recent changes using Special:Recentchanges/hideminor can also be useful in finding vandalism. Clicking the "diff" link next to each edit will compare the article's current and previous versions.
Vandalism by new users
New users are prime suspects for vandalism. Special:Contributions/newbies will show you the latest contributions by the people who most recently created a Wikipedia account. Be sure not to confuse a vandal with a clueless newbie.
Page creation vandalism
As well as vandalising existing pages, users will often create pages filled with vandalism. A good place to find these is Special:Newpages. The page size is shown next to each title so you can look particularly for the pages that are very small. Pages with ridiculous titles will also be easier to spot on Special:Newpages than they might be elsewhere. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol for an attempt to coordinate the checking of new pages.
Vandalism of high profile pages
Highly visited pages are the top targets of vandalism. The easiest way to spot these is to add them to your watchlist and check them regularly, particularly for anonymous edits.

Any page linked to from the Main Page is likely to be a vandalism target. There are links on Wikipedia:Editing the Main Page to the related changes of each of the Main Page templates. Checking this will show you the changes to all the pages linked from the Main Page and is often helpful in finding vandalism.

Simple vandalism
Simple vandalism involves a vandal spreading the textual equivalent of graffiti over pages, such as "Tim loves Sally" or replacing the entire page with a slur or slogan, or other obvious and childish pranks.

Toolbar experiments are often on the border between vandalism and newbie tests. This is where users often push all the buttons on the editing toolbar and then hit save. This leaves behind text like

'''Bold text'''''Italic text''[[Link title]]<math>Insert formula here</math>

The following searches will find all instances of such vandalism.

Google:

Also related to the toolbar are the example images and media formats. Checking which pages link to Image:Example.jpg and Image:Example.ogg can be useful in spotting vandalism.

Spam
Wikipedia is occasionally spammed by users doing nothing other than adding inappropriate external links, either in an effort at search engine optimization or to drive traffic to a site. If you find spam on a large scale, you may be encountering a spambot. Spambots, and sometimes humans, will spam many sites at once.
Sneaky vandalism
Sneaky vandals are those users that think they can outsmart the wiki and put their little comments, misinformation, and typos on articles, without anyone noticing. Switching one number (often a date) for another and deliberately introducing typographical errors are their favorite tactics. Often this vandalism can be detected by looking at other edits by the same user, but we must be careful to avoid confusing sneaky vandalism with genuine corrections to an article.
Repeat-pattern vandalism
Once graffiti or vandalism has been detected, you might go the Page history and click on the vandal's highlighted Username or IP number. Then, a click on User contributions will give you a complete history. You may detect sneaky vandalism this way that no-one else has found.
Vandalbot
A vandalbot is a program that attempts to vandalize or spam massive amounts of articles, blanking, or adding commercial links. In this situation, administrator intervention is needed and the IP address or complete IP range used by the vandal should be blocked, and all changes reverted systematically. See meta:Vandalbot for guidance.

Dealing with vandalism

If you see vandalism, revert it. Additionally, leave warning messages on the vandal's talk pages. If the vandal has been properly warned yet continues, report them at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Admins can block vandals as per the blocking policy.

Warning templates

  • {{subst:test}} or {{subst:test1}}
    • Information icon Hello, I'm [[User:{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}]]. An edit that you recently made seemed to be a test and has been reverted. If you want to practice editing, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on [[User talk:{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|my talk page]]. Thanks!
  • {{subst:test2}}
    • Information icon Please refrain from making test edits in Wikipedia pages, even if you intend to fix them later. Your edits have been reverted. If you would like to experiment again, please use the sandbox. Thank you.
  • {{subst:test2a}} (a variant suitable for blanking vandalism)
    • Information icon Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use the sandbox for that. Thank you.
  • {{subst:test3}}
  • {{subst:test4}}
  • {{subst:test5}}
    • You are using this template in the wrong namespace. Use this template on a user talk page instead.

The "subst" causes the template text to be pasted into the talk page as if you had typed it out, instead of leaving {{subst:test}} visible when editing the page.

Related page


See also

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