User:Wikitrevor/Vandalism
Vandalism[edit]
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 or crude humor, page blanking, or the insertion of nonsense into articles.
Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not considered vandalism. For example, adding a personal opinion to an article once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated. 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.
Committing vandalism violates Wikipedia policy. If you find that another user has vandalized Wikipedia, you should revert the changes and warn the user (see below for specific instructions). Users who vandalize Wikipedia repeatedly, despite warnings to stop, should be reported to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, and administrators may block them. Note that warning is not an absolute prerequisite for blocking; accounts whose main or only use is obvious vandalism or other forbidden activity may be blocked without warning.
How to respond to vandalism[edit]
If you see vandalism, please do the following:
- Check the article's page history to identify all vandalism edits. Usually, if the most recent edit by a particular user is vandalism, then all recent edits by that user are also vandalism. It is then necessary to revert to the last version before that user started editing. It is also prudent to compare a substantially earlier (unvandalized) version with the current, as editors may have missed a substantial deletion (a whole paragraph or section) followed by a rude remark. A novice editor may have then simply edited the remark out without checking the history. A reversion to that point followed by re-insertion of non-trivial edits may be appropriate or the missing section may be moved via cut-and-paste operations within your browser.
- For a new article, if all versions of the article are pure vandalism, mark it for speedy deletion by tagging it with
{{Db-g3}}. - Otherwise, revert the edits. If you are viewing the diff between the current version and the preceding version, you can click "undo" to undo the edit automatically. Otherwise, please explain in the edit summary that you have reverted vandalism.
- To make vandalism reverts easier, you can ask for the rollback feature to be enabled for your registered Wikipedia account. Intended strictly for use to revert vandalism only, this will enable you to revert recent edits with a single click. See Wikipedia:Requests for permissions (WP:RFR).
- For a new article, if all versions of the article are pure vandalism, mark it for speedy deletion by tagging it with
- Check the user's other contributions (click "User contributions" on the left sidebar of the screen). If most or all of these are obvious vandalism, you may decide to report the user immediately.
- If appropriate, leave a warning message on the user's talk page
- If the user continues to cause disruption after being warned, please report him or her at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. An administrator will decide whether to block the user.
For repeated vandalism by an anonymous IP address, it is helpful to take the following additional steps:
- Trace the IP address (cf. http://dnsstuff.com) and add
{{whois|Name of owner}}to the user talk page of the address. If it appears to be a Shared IP address, add{{SharedIP|Name of owner}}or{{SharedIPEDU|Name of owner}} - For repetitive anonymous vandalism, particularly where registered to a school or other kind of responsive ISP, consider listing it on Wikipedia:Abuse reports.
