Here's how it works:
First you detect that someone has vandalised a page, for example replacing the entire page with profanity, or adding a page with useless content. So you revert the page to the last good version, or you mark the page as a candidate for speedy deletion. Congratulations, you have just successfully dealt with vandalism! In the overwhelming majority of cases, a vandal only defaces a single page.
If you're feeling energetic, you can go through any other recent edits made from the same IP address, and see whether those edits are also vandalous. If they are, revert them as well. Congratulations, you have just successfully dealt with repeated vandalism!
For persistent vandals who vandalise many entries, consider adding them to the vandalism in progress page. In the vast majority of cases this is unnecessary, and the vandals may be dealt with in the normal course of Wikipedia events. In cases of flood vandalism, sysops may choose to hide the edits from recent changes using the &bot=1 feature.
Adding someone to "vandalism in progress"
When you notice what you believe to be an act of vandalism at work, take note of that person's IP number or username. Edit the vandalism in progress page, and add the person's IP number.
Please only use this page for genuine malicious vandalism, and only for a sustained attack.
Blocking vandals
Sysops have the ability, and the authorisation, to block the IPs of persistent vandals. These blocks should last for a maximum of one month, in the case of static non-proxy IPs. In the case of dynamic or proxy IPs, the blocks should be as shortlived as possible, to avoid inconveniencing genuine contributors, depending on the number of people potentially affected.
Tools for finding information on an IP number:
If an ex-vandal evades an IP block by obtaining a new IP, and starts making genuine (non-vandalism) contributions to Wikipedia, then they will not be blocked or reverted simply because they used to be a vandal. We do not block vandals to punish them, but to preserve the integrity of Wikipedia. If an ex-vandal has reformed, then our aims are accomplished.
See also wikipedia:blocking policy
Vandalism defined
Vandalism is indisputable 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 replacement of prominent articles 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 explicit and inarguable, are not considered vandalism at Wikipedia.
These things are not vandalism, though they are sometimes called vandalism. They 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 where they can keep making their tests (sometimes they will even revert their own changes).
- Extended newbie test: Some users (especially the young ones) want to check out if they can make an article look really stupid, or radically change it to become unreadable. They simply want to test the limits of the wiki; they will stop when you revert their changes, and will feel embarrassed when you write them a message. Continuing such "testing" after this point is vandalism.
- Getting to grips with markup and manual of style: Some users take a while to get to grips with wiki-based markup, and spend a little while experimenting with different ways to make external links, for example. 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 deeply inadequate 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.
- 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 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 them a vandal. If someone is making solid edits but writing "hi mom!" in their edit summaries, this doesn't make them an oddball vandal, it makes them a newcomer. By all means have a friendly chat about the proper use of edit summaries. Don't blanket revert them. Don't block them.
Types of vandalism
These are the most common forms of vandalism on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:How to spot vandalism for details on each of these and tips on how to find such edits.
- Childish vandalism
- Adding graffiti or blanking pages.
- Spam
- Adding inappropriate external links
- Sneaky vandalism
- Vandalism which is harder to spot. Adding misinformation and typos
- Userpage vandalism
- Replacing userpages with insults, profanity, etc
- Attention-seeking vandalism
- Adding insults, using offensive usernames, replacing articles with jokes etc.
- VandalBot
- A robot that attempts to vandalize or spam massive amounts of articles, blanking, or adding commercial links.
- Silly vandalism
- Users will sometimes create joke articles or replace existing articles with plausible-sounding nonsense (example).
A study by IBM found that most Wikipedia vandalism is reverted within five minutes.
See also
- Trolls say controversial or unpleasant things (often on discussion pages or in their user space) in order to attract predictable responses or flames. See internet troll. See wikipedia:dealing with trolls.