User:Slakr/Why you shouldn't vandalize

Although it might be fun to leave random crap on articles and/or delete parts of them, there are a few big reasons why you shouldn't do it:


 * 1) You're vandalizing a non-profit organization Wikipedia runs solely on donations, but, I suppose if you're the type of person that's okay with the idea of vandalizing churches, charities, and other non-profit organizations, then you'll be okay with vandalizing Wikipedia.


 * 1) You're harming yourself and others We know you use Wikipedia for reference, because that's how you got here in the first place&mdash; you were looking for information, and an encyclopedia is a great place to find it. That said, destroying parts of it is very much the same as scribbling in or  burning books, because although the knowledge isn't lost forever, it's rendered inaccessible to anyone looking for it.  Since you're not the only vandal we have, please keep that in mind next time you're trying to research information on a topic, because you might find that you can't find it&mdash; someone's destroyed it.


 * 1) You're actually causing damage Each time you make a change to a page, the entire state of the page is transmitted (which makes us buy more bandwidth) and saved to disk (which makes us buy more hard drives)&mdash; forever. In order to undo vandalism, the same thing has to happen&mdash; essentially twice.  Unlike in real life, we can't just paint over it; instead, we have to completely replace whatever is damaged but also keep whatever is damaged, as well as not damaged, in storage.  Say, for instance, you scribbled "fuck" on a bathroom stall (or, article in this case).  You've consumed twice the amount of resources as a normal edit&mdash; if not more.  That is, on Wikipedia, we not only have to keep the copy of the stall the way it was before you vandalized it, we also have to replace the stall with a brand new one, and keep the entire vandalized stall in the page history for reference.  Essentially, we have to keep 3 complete stalls&mdash;forever&mdash; where we would have only had to keep 1.

Though, I suppose if you know you're doing all of those things and still consciously making the choice to continue doing so, then I sincerely do feel sorry for you and whatever bad things that have happened in your life to turn you into a person that would deliberately cause harm to others. :o(

I only hope things get better for you at some point in the future.