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Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to reduce the quality of the encyclopedia. The most common type of vandalism is the replacement of existing text with obscenities, page blanking, or the insertion of Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense. Fortunately, this kind of vandalism is usually easy to spot. Any Assume 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 an opinion once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated.
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 Administrator intervention against vandalism.
A 2002 study by IBM found that most vandalism on the English Wikipedia is How to revert a page to an earlier version within five minutes (see official results); however, vandals persist as a problem for all users, and it is a good idea when editing an article to check its recent history to see if recent vandalism has gone unnoticed. In addition, the popularity and readership of Wikipedia has skyrocketed since the 2002 study, and there is no recent data corroborating the "five minute" expectation.
Not all vandalism is blatant, nor are all massive or controversial changes vandalism; careful attention needs to be given to whether the new data or information is right or whether it is vandalism.
Dealing with vandalism
Edits that blank all or part of a biography of a living person LIVING, but instead an effort by the subject of the article to remove inaccurate or biased material. Even when such edits are inappropriate, they should be treated as content disputes, not vandalism. In particular, vandalism warning messages should not be left on the talk page of the editor.
If you see vandalism (as defined below), Revert it and leave a warning message on the vandal's talk page using the system below. 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. Also, check the vandal's other contributions — you will often find more malicious edits.
Warning templates
Note that TestTemplates need not be used sequentially. If the edit is Vandalism#Types of vandalism, consider using or starting with . For continuing severe vandalism, may be skipped and a given straight after a test2. If, however, you are Vandalism#What vandalism is not, always start with . For extreme or extensive cases of vandalism committed by users with who have received no prior warnings, may be used. The~~~~ (use if an edit appears to have possibly not been an intentional act of vandalism): Thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been Reverting or removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the Welcome, newcomers if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.or or ~~~~ (use if an edit is clearly vandalism): Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. Take a look at the Welcome, newcomers if you would like to learn more about contributing. However, unconstructive edits are considered Vandalism, and if you continue in this manner you may be blocking policy from editing without further warning. Please stop, and consider improving rather than damaging the hard work of others. Thank you.~~~~ : Please do not add nonsense to Wikipedia. It is considered Vandalism. If you would like to experiment, use the Sandbox. Thank you.~~~~ (a variant suitable for vandalism that consists of blanking text) : Please do not remove content from Wikipedia. It is considered Vandalism. If you would like to experiment, use the Sandbox. Thank you.~~~~ : Please stop. If you continue to Vandalism pages, you will be Blocking policy from editing Wikipedia. This is your last warning. The next time you Vandalism a page, you will be Blocking policy from editing Wikipedia.
~~~~ (used as a first warning for extreme cases of vandalism) : This is the only warning you will receive. Your recent Vandalism has shown you to be intent on doing harm to Wikipedia. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be Blocking policy from editing Wikipedia.
Alternatively, you can use:
~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~
to explicitly state which articles were vandalized (suffix -n stands for named) and to add your signature. For example:
: Thanks for experimenting with the page France on Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the Welcome, newcomers if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks.
Additional warning templates are listed Template_messages/User_talk_namespace#Warnings
The "Template substitution" causes the template text to be pasted into the talk page as if you had typed it out, instead of leaving
You have been temporarily Blocking policy from editing for vandalism of Wikipedia. If you wish to make useful contributions, you may do so after the block expires.
Remember to sign and timestamp your warnings by leaving four tildes (like this:
Trace IP Address
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
If the IP address continues to vandalise and is registered to a school or other kind of responsive ISP, consider listing it on Abuse reports. Follow the instructions there and read Abuse reports/Guide to abuse reports to see if it applies. If it does, list it.
Types of vandalism
These are the most common forms of vandalism on Wikipedia:
- Blanking: Removing all or significant parts of articles (sometimes replacing the removed content with profanities) is a common vandal edit.
- Spam: Adding inappropriate external links for advertisement and/or self-promotion.
- VandalBot: A Bots that attempts to vandalize or spam massive numbers of articles (hundreds or thousands), blanking, or adding commercial links. Another type of VandalBot appears to log on repeatedly with multiple random names to vandalize an article.
- Childish vandalism: Adding graffiti or blanking pages. (The Anilocra/Weird female athelete vandal is an example of this type.)
- Silly vandalism: Users will sometimes create Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense or replace existing articles with plausible-sounding nonsense, or add silly jokes to existing articles (this includes Long term abuse/Mr. Pelican Shit). A better place for content that is intentionally of a joking or nonsensical nature is the Uncyclopedia or BJAODN (Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense).
- Sneaky vandalism: Vandalism which is harder to spot. Adding misinformation, changing dates or making other sensible-appearing substitutions and typos.
- Attention-seeking vandalism: Adding insults, using offensive usernames, replacing articles with jokes etc. (see also No personal attacks)
- User page vandalism: Replacing User pages with insults, profanity, etc. Protected Userpage is a proposed policy set to resolve this.(see also No personal attacks)
- Image vandalism: Uploading provocative images, inserting political messages, making malicious animated GIFs, etc. Repeatedly uploading images with no source and/or license information after notification that such information is required may also constitute vandalism.
- Abuse of tags: Bad-faith placing of or speedy-deletion tags on articles that do not meet such criteria, or deceptively placing protected-page tags on articles.
- Template vandalism: Any vandalism to templates.
- Page move vandalism: Moving pages to offensive or nonsense names. The most infamous example was Vandalism_in_progress/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. Some vandals will try to redirect pages to nonsense titles they create this way. This variation is usually performed by vandals whose accounts are too new to move pages. It is also often done on pages that are protected from moves.
- Link vandalism: Rewriting links within an article so that they appear the same, but point to something completely different or ridiculous (e.g. France).
- Avoidant vandalism: Removing
, and other related tags in order to conceal deletion candidates or avert deletion of such articles. - Random character vandalism: Replacing topical information with random characters, or just adding random characters to a page. "aslkdjnsdagkljhasdlkh," for example. Be careful: only in extended cases is this vandalism; it could also potentially be a new user test.
- Changing people's comments: Editing signed comments by another user to substantially change their meaning (e.g. turning someone's vote around), except when RPA (which is somewhat controversial in and of itself). Signifying that a comment is unsigned is an exception. e.g. (unsigned comment from user)
"Wikipedia:Vandalism"