User:Vassyana/insanity/VAN

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 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
If you see vandalism, please do the following:


 * 1) 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.
 * 2) For a new article, if all versions of the article are pure vandalism, mark it for speedy deletion by tagging it with.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) 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 Requests for rollback (WP:RFR).
 * 5) Leave a warning message on the user's talk page
 * 6) Check the vandal's other contributions (click "User contributions" on the left sidebar of the screen).
 * 7) If the vandal continues to cause disruption after being warned, please report him or her at Administrator intervention against vandalism.  An administrator will decide whether to block the vandal.

For repeated vandalism by an anonymous IP address, it is helpful to take the following additional steps:
 * 1) Trace the IP address (cf. http://dnsstuff.com) and add  to the user talk page of the address. If it appears to be a Shared IP address, add  or
 * 2) For repetitive anonymous vandalism, particularly where registered to a school or other kind of responsive ISP, consider listing it on Abuse reports.

How not to respond to vandalism

 * 1) Do not feed the trolls
 * 2) Do not nominate an article for deletion because it is being vandalized.  That's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and simply empowers vandals further.

Warnings
Note: Do not use these templates in content disputes; instead, write a clear message explaining your disagreement.

There are several templates used to warn vandals. They are listed at right according to the nature and severity of the vandalism. Though some people vandalizing are incorrigible returning vandals and may be blocked quickly, vandals can be stopped by a simple warning and go on to become productive contributors. If you are not certain that an edit is vandalism, always start with {{subst:uw-test1}}. Conversely, if you are confident that a user is aware of the disruption he is causing, you may start with a stronger warning such as {{subst:uw-vandalism2}} or {{subst:uw-vandalism3}}.

For a full list of user warning templates, see Template messages/User talk namespace.

Tracing IP addresses
The owners of IP addresses can be found using:


 * ARIN (North America)
 * RIPE NCC (Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia)
 * APNIC (Asia Pacific)
 * LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean)
 * AfriNIC (Africa)

If an address is not in one registry, it will probably be in another.

Types of vandalism
Wikipedia vandalism may fall into one or more of the following categorizations:

What vandalism is not
Although at times incorrectly referred to as such, the following things are not considered "vandalism" and are therefore treated differently:

If a user treats situations which are not clear vandalism as such, then it is he or she who is actually harming the encyclopedia by alienating or driving away potential editors.

How to spot vandalism
The best way to detect vandalism is through recent changes patrolling, using the recent changes link to spot articles with edits that had come from IP addresses, or keeping an eye on your watchlist. The what links here pages for Insert text, Link title, Headline text, Bold text, Image:Example.jpg and Image:Example.ogg are also good places to find many test edits and/or vandalism. Any vandalism found should be reverted to an earlier version of the page; remember to include any good edits that have happened since then! The auto-summary feature can help users detect vandalism.