User:RadicalOne/WikiCommentary/VandalismTemplates

Summary
Vandalism comes in all varieties, from edits that may well be test edits - such as adding "ASDFGHJKL" to the bottom of the page - to overt and obscene vandalism, like replacing the article header with a string of profanity. By and large, Wikipedia treats all vandalism as essentially equal, with successive warnings becoming more and more severe. However, this is a rather simplistic evaluation criteria.

Full Text
One of the largest issues concerning Wikipedia is the issue of vandalism. Due to the open nature of the database - the very nature that has boosted its popularity - it is a common target for both immature outbursts and more subtle, opinion-driven modifications. It also sometimes falls subject to unintentional damage from test edits by users as yet unfamiliar with the interface and/or operation of the database. Common practice is to revert the edits in question, and post one of a set of template messages to the user's talk page. The first time, the following message is standard protocol: This is a helpful notice for a great many edits, but for others it is entirely insufficient. Take a recent edit I saw to Saturn's Talk Page. It consisted of replacing one of the headers - and many user comments - with nonsense laced with obscene language. With an edit such as this, "did not appear to be constructive" is a severe understatement. Because of that, I used a custom message: Each potentially vandalous edit should be subjected to a set of criteria, and the appropriate warning template selected based on that. For example, the edit to Talk:Saturn merited at least a level-two warning, even if it is the first edit like that.  -RadicalOne --- Contact Me  00:07, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Intent - Which is more likely bad faith, "asdfghjkl" or the aforementioned edit to Talk:Saturn?
 * Placement - Is it at the top, where everyone sees it, or in the middle somewhere?
 * Plausibility that the Editor is Serious - Some non-NPOV edits are seen to be vandalism at times; perhaps an edit to the talk page is more appropriate than risking a possible edit dispute.