Wikipedia talk:Vandalism/Archive 9

AGF revert?
I'm wondering what you would do with this edit. I found it using Stiki. I performed an AGF revert then welcomed the user with a warning template. Andrew327 17:32, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You reverted this edit which added "its a quite cute animal" to Lion-tailed macaque. Your mild welcome/warning is good. Edits like that from an IP/user with no history of similar junk should not be treated as standard vandalism because a bored kid mucking around today might be a great editor in a few years. I think I would just revert the user with a neutral edit summary like "not needed" or "unhelpful" and not issue any warning, but anything which doesn't sound pompous or unduly WP:BITE the user is fine. We should never encourage mucking around, and edit summaries should be unadorned, but I once indulged myself with this revert, and put a message here. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. I know the rules, but I think learning what to do in the gray areas only really comes with experience. Andrew327 00:18, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Some errors in "Edit summary" section
I removed "not" from "However, not leaving edit summaries is not considered vandalism" because it's really misleading. How "not leaving edit summaries" cannot be helpful. It's written in the same (Edit summary) section that the use of edit summaries is considered as proper Wikipedia "etiquette". As per the understanding from this policy, "Not vandalism" are edits that are disruptive but made in good faith. Some editors reverting my edits as "original obviously correct" and "awkward reasoning". Please give proper reasoning here. Thank you. Forgot to put name 14:55, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a classic and correct use of an intentional double negative. Putting an edit summary is clearly not vandalism, but the converse is not true, that is, not putting an edit summary does not mean that the edit is vandalism and no edit should be reverted simply because of the lack of an edit summary. That is exactly what the guideline already says. Just because you didn't understand it doesn't mean the guideline should be changed, especially when the change completely reverses the meaning. oknazevad (talk) 21:58, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Place to list IP's?
What to do about (assuming good faith) clueless contributors, who add wrong information using anonymous access? Is there a place where one can put IP addresses in order to have them more closely followed by admins? (I just ran accross and ) &mdash; MFH:Talk 08:30, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
 * In general, feel free to issue appropriate warnings on their talk page—if you think it will help. See WP:RBI for a rationale to ignore them without warnings.  If they are willfully injecting errors or unwanted content, report to WP:AIV.  If they are merely conducting an editing test or two, revert and WP:WELCOME them.  —EncMstr (talk) 08:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

How does it affect Wikipedia? Stats needed
This article should state how quickly vandalism is reverted, an estimate of how many articles it affects, and so on. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 16:15, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 11 February 2013
Remove line...unfortunately he has split with his wife and now lives in state college, Pennsylvania.

Violindirector (talk) 12:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Which page are you talking about? It's not this one. Hut 8.5 12:37, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Violindirector's only other edit, this one, was at the page Jonathan Carney, which is not semi-ed. Why the user has chosen this forum of all places to request a change that they ultimately made themselves anyway, is as much a mystery to me as is why this page is on my watchlist. :-) -- Racer X11 Talk to me Stalk me  23:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Soft Blocks
Should this policy be clarified to state that soft blocks rather than hard blocks are the proper response to vandalism from IP address ranges? There should be some guidance to administrators that IP addresses, and especially IP address ranges, should not be hard-blocked due to vandalism if there can be multiple people from an address. Hard-blocking an IP address is an extreme remedy unless it is a static IP address, and most IP addresses are not static IP addresses. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:00, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Name of a group of vandals
In 2012, groups of vandals vandalized The Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog, I've tried to revert it but the edits by the vandals came back. Should we called them the "Mafia" because it consists of 2 or more vandals? NewFranco (talk) 14:46, 27 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I would think Mafia would be reserved for organized, planned, long range vandalism for a purpose. Your example is more like a gang of vandals.  —EncMstr (talk) 17:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, a group of Vandals would be a band. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Question
How do i alert people to the use of "BAMF" as an acronym used as vandalism, usually after the name of a person (often not notable), so it looks like a title of some sort, but is just the acronym for "bad ass mother fucker"? i search for this term every few months, and find it used often on high school pages next to the name of someones favorite nonnotable athlete. I dont know if this Four-letter abbreviation is on any antivandalism word lists, but it should be. I will try other forums for this concern as well.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
 * You could try WP:EF/R. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Rolled Back
I had to revert this talk page to an old version, because it seems that vandalism on this talk page confused Miszabot, and as a result the bot broke the formatting in archiving the discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:38, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The bot later went and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Vandalism&diff=556978351&oldid=556921184 made the exact same edit again]. I've fixed the damage completely; it was caused by [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Vandalism&diff=517085929&oldid=513416893 this edit] and the use of the nowiki tags before the header. Graham 87 08:34, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Authority needed to issue warnings
I am unfamiliar with meta-editing wiki pages and had to take action against a persistent vandal. This pages states "you may consider issuing a warning first" when dealing with users participating in all/mostly vandalism. As a layman it is not clear to me whether I, having an account without any authoritative permissions, can or indeed should "warn" another user about their vandalism. My case was solved swiftly by an administrator but I thought I'd leave a note here in case someone feels that clarification might be appropriate. AD (talk) 21:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Anybody in good standing can issue warnings; but only an admin can actually impose a block. There is a series of templates etc. for progressively more severe warnings. If you find it necessary to progress beyond level 4, see WP:AIV. Other warning templates are available, see WP:WARNING. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:07, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Demonstrating vandalism without vandalizing
I'm in a dilemma. I want to demonstrate to my students why the school won't allow them to use Wikipedia as a source. A large part of me wants to make the dramatic gesture of vandalizing a page before their eyes, but even if that didn't make me feel guilty, I know that it would only get me blocked from editing in fairly short order. (I have a much higher opinion of Wikipedia's ability to self-regulate than most scholars!)

I'm not very good at navigating nuts and bolts of Wikipedia, but does anyone know any way to find particularly recent or particularly dramatic examples of vandalism and show what the page looked like at that time? 24.74.53.195 (talk) 04:59, 8 December 2013 (UTC)Kirala


 * You can view a wikipedia page at any of its past states through the view history tab and then click on the date and time and it brings up the the version at that time. If you want to see a lot of reverted vandalism look at contributions by User:ClueBot_NG. You could also do it all in your sandbox. XFEM Skier (talk) 06:07, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Any place where there's a good way to find particularly spectacular examples of vandalism? King Louis XIV of France's army of flying monkeys comes to mind, but I can't remember when that was apart from "a few years back". 24.74.53.195 (talk) 06:51, 8 December 2013 (UTC)Kirala


 * I recommend elephant from around July and August in 2006. It has lots of vandalism from the end of July when it was mentioned on the Colbert Report]. XFEM Skier (talk) 09:21, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The King Louis thing (and the Colbert stuff) sounds more like what we call "trolling". Vandalism could be blanking a section or page, inserting nonsense, writing "poopy", etc. Pick any article, look in its history, and you will see run-of-the-mill, unsophisticated vandalism here and there. Doc   talk  09:24, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Pick any major article, click on history, click on "500", and look for any edit that was immediately followed by "reverted edits by...". Those are usually vandalism. Someguy1221 (talk) 11:19, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Look in Special:Log/protect, look for the word "vandalism", follow the page link and check its history. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:54, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Vandalism and edit summaries
I'm wondering if forcing editors to include a summary before saving would eliminate most vandalism. As it is, an editor can save without summarizing their edits. And while legit editors often include at least a brief summary, I did a survey of hundreds of reverted vandalism, concluding that 100% of vandal edits did not include one.

Would it be asking too much to require someone who is contributing something of value to an encyclopedia to at least summarize their edits? I doubt if legit editors will mind, while vandals would probably decide to skip their vandalizing since writing a phony summary would usually mean having to lie outright. --Light show (talk) 18:57, 23 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it would do little to prevent it unless it used an dictionary lookup on the words and then legit editors would be annoyed when they did abbreviations. Otherwise vandals will just smash the keys, but that might make it easier to catch. I personally think it would be helpful to force summaries for many other reasons. Also note that people that really want to get away with vandalism hide it very well and will make summarize with outright lies. XFEM Skier (talk) 19:18, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It's been proposed several times before, and always turned down. One reason is that they might put "djvbhjdfkbh" or something; or they might put "I edited the page" which is good English, but disguises the true nature of the edit. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:50, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If I saw either of those red flag summaries, I'd definitely check the edits. Most drive-by vandals won't bother putting on a disguise. The majority, maybe 99.9%, will move on if they can't quickly use their smartphone to make an anonymous stupid remark. In fact, it's rare to even find a news site or blog that doesn't require a name and password before making a comment. --Light show (talk) 07:21, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

More vandalism types
can blocking users for no reason, Duplicating Articles, and replacing articles with another one be considered vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jordan5000000000 (talk • contribs) 11:26, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Blocking users for no reason would be an abuse of administrator privileges, which is not vandalism but a different offense. I don't think that duplicating articles is vandalism.  It could be done for either of two reasons, unintentionally, in writing an article with a different title than an existing article, or intentionally.  In the former case, the answer would probably be to decide what is the proper title, merge the articles, and make the other title into a redirect.  Intentionally creating a duplicate article sounds like something that an inexperienced user could do out of ignorance of how redirection works.  Replacing an article with the contents of another article on an unrelated topic would probably be considered vandalism.  Replacing an article with a completely rewritten article on the same topic might be a controversial case of being bold.  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:24, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * To repeat, blocking users for no reason would be an abuse of administrator privileges, not vandalism. The administrator who did that would probably be desysopped, that is, have their administrator role removed.  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:24, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Is it considered to be vandalism when editors delete reliably sourced, relevant, NPOV material from articles? This doesn't seem to fall under WP:CENSOR because it sounds like that only covers administrative deletions by Wikipedia officials. Some editors seem to spend a lot of time deleting stuff they personally disapprove of from articles, even though it seems to be appropriate for the articles. Ghostofnemo (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I considered to be WP:POINTy rather than vandalism. You really need to consider that edit in the context of [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_British_Rail_modern_traction_locomotive_classes&action=history&offset=20131129000000&limit=20 the edits which had happened the previous day]. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:02, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * WP:POINT mentions deletion of unsourced material, but not reliably sourced, relevant, NPOV material. Here are some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=9/11_conspiracy_theories&diff=405170520&oldid=405158745 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=9/11_conspiracy_theories&diff=482102967&oldid=482101670 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=September_11_attacks_advance-knowledge_conspiracy_theories&diff=529672499&oldid=529654789 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Police_state&diff=578931729&oldid=578657087 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_nicknames_of_United_States_presidents&diff=487201463&oldid=487199503 Ghostofnemo (talk) 13:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Two more examples of reliably sourced material being deleted from articles. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nelson_Mandela&diff=585300836&oldid=585294103 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Police_state&diff=583771857&oldid=583771693 Is there a policy to prevent this, and what can be done about it? Ghostofnemo (talk) 23:54, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Ghostofnemo, are you seriously looking for the policies to be changed to give you an edge in your content disputes? "Reliably sourced" is a judgement call subject to consensus. "NPOV" is a judgement call subject to consensus. "Relevant" is a judgement call subject to consensus. "Disagreeing with Ghostofnemo" is not vandalism, nor will it ever be. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * So you're saying there are no objective criteria on Wikipedia? Or is that just your personal opinion? Ghostofnemo (talk) 05:51, 13 December 2013 (UTC) And as far as "giving me an edge" all of these edits have remained deleted, except I was able to get it in the atomic bombing article, after a contentious dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Harry_Truman and multiple deletions, that Truman was the man who was ultimately responsible for the authorization to drop the bombs (a small detail that some editors felt was not important or factually incorrect)! I get lucky sometimes! Ghostofnemo (talk) 06:04, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem with objective criteria is that even the words used to write such a criterion have their own subjective meaning. If objective criteria were easy to come by, we wouldn't need consensus. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:30, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest that reliably sourced, relevant, NPOV material should GENERALLY not be deleted from articles. Without objective criteria (being mentioned by a reliable source makes something notable, for example), you can have a group of editors without any expertise overrule people who actually have some grasp of the material. Ghostofnemo (talk) 13:52, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with this 100%. Even a few editors with an agenda can remove reliably sourced material from articles that they don't like, using Wikilawyering tactics and borderline bullying. It is one of Wikipedia's biggest flaws at the moment. Jus  da  fax   14:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I've also mentioned this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research#Reverse_original_research Ghostofnemo (talk) 18:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

"What is not vandalism" section
What about editing with no reliable sources, can we add whether that is vandalism?--78.156.109.166 (talk) 20:46, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't think so via WP:AGF. XFEM Skier (talk) 21:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The times that adding content without sources might be problematic are covered at WP:V. In particular, "All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." and "Please remove unsourced contentious material about living people immediately." Note that the word "vandal" and its derivatives are not used; therefore, adding unsourced content, even if a WP:BLP violation, is not necessarily vandalism. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:09, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Talk page vandalism
Hi, I'd like to propose one clarification to the Talk page vandalism section. Vandalism can occur on talk pages not only from refactoring/deletion of comments, but also from the deliberate introduction of disruptive, off-topic content (not talking about minor instances), or content that cannot be used to improve the article. For example, this character is an IP-hopper who regularly posts rambling gibberish on article talk pages. I'm not quite sure how to phrase this, but I'm thinking something more like:
 * Talk page vandalism includes the introduction of disruptive content, off-topic ranting, spam, lists and tables that have no context, and illegitimately deleting or editing other users' comments. However, it is acceptable to blank comments constituting vandalism, internal spam, or harassment or a personal attack. It is also acceptable to identify an unsigned comment, and format comments with indentations to improve readability. Users are also permitted to remove comments from their own user talk pages. A policy of prohibiting users from removing warnings from their own talk pages was considered and rejected on the grounds that it would create more issues than it would solve.

(Boldtext represents my additions) Thoughts? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:38, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Seems to me that such nonsense is nuke-able with the text that already exists, so why add more?NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:40, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, I appreciate your feedback. The existing text for that section only calls the pernicious refactoring of other users' comments vandalism, which makes it unclear if other forms of talk page disruptions are considered vandalism. I have found in my excursions that lack of specificity makes it difficult to dissuade/correct/enforce problematic behavior, so that's my rationale for the addition. WP:DE says "Disruptive editing is not usually considered vandalism, though vandalism is disruptive." I'm suggesting that we make it clear that the community doesn't consider talk pages as playgrounds. If my proposed language is too wordy, how about something like "Talk page vandalism can include any of the other forms of vandalism mentioned, as well as the illegitimate deletion or refactoring of other users' comments," etc. I still think it's worth mentioning that minor formatting for readability is allowed. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:07, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The controlling text is in the first few paragraphs. As I read it, the section where specifics are mentioned for different page spaces provides only - or at least should provide only - essential supplementation due to unique nature of the type of space.  That isn't really the case with your examples.  Indentation is already A.O.K. in explicit text in the talk page guidelines (granted that is a mere "behavioral guideline" instead of policy), and as for adding gibberish.... deleting gibberish from any part of wikipedia is a no-brainer, except if the poster is posting at their own talk page but even then its still a candidate for deletion via MFD.  If what you want is to prevent this in the first place, you don't need to define the act as vandalism to seek admin help in correcting the behavior.  Just work up the steps of WP:DR saying it is disruptive.  Why the desire to use the "vandalism" label instead? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:43, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I see your point about the controlling text, however the implication is that the controlling text governs article content and its "integrity"--after all, that's what we're working on. (I will respectfully point out that you are essentially making an other-stuff-exists argument, though.) I suppose what's bumping me about the Talk Page Vandalism section is two-fold: 1) Talk pages are a different environment from an article, and casual users sometimes treat it differently. It would be nice to be able to point to something definitive to help dissuade the practice, and this seems to be the place. 2) The current language can also be interpreted as defining talk page vandalism only as comment deletion/refactoring. I don't currently have difficulties dealing with the users who disrupt via talk pages--I warn warn warn, I report, I see them get blocked, so changing the language doesn't give me any personal advantage. My interest is improving specificity, which I perceive as oft-times lacking at the project. (Ex: my nemesis, the ill-defined TV infobox "Format" parameter!) As for the indentations, I was suggesting that addition because the Talk Page Vandalism section endeavored to describe legitimate refactoring, but not indents. Anyhow, I'm not going to go to the grave over any of this, but I admit I don't quite understand the reluctance towards a few words of specificity. I'm interested in hearing other users' opinions though before I go. Regards, sir! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:26, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Administrator intervention against vandalism Comment
Added a link to the Administrator intervention against vandalism noticeboard, as it is not otherwise obvious how to report vandalism. --Zfish118 (talk) 00:26, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * While I applaud your WP:BOLD style, the very first line at the top of the page states:

This is not a noticeboard for vandalism. Report vandalism at Administrator intervention against vandalism.
 * As such, I changed it back. — Kralizec! (talk) 13:51, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Has anyone considered that the information should have a more obvious and aesthetically pleasant presence on the page the way this talk page has prominent banners, the way the Help Desk has a prominent "Click here to ask a new question" text, and the way the Village Pump has five delightful boxes with images? This article, which means to describe the biggest problem known to Wikipedia, doesn't facilitate the solutions, even if the solutions are listed in the 2nd section. N00bz visit this page to find out what to do and run smack into a text wall, can't we make it easier? And if we can't, then never mind. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:13, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Claims of Vandalism
Should there be, somewhere in the policy article, a statement about improper claims of vandalism? In particular, should there be a statement that calling another editor's edits vandalism, when there is a content dispute and the edits clearly fall within WP:NOTVANDAL, is a personal attack and may even result in a block? A few editors take content disputes to the noticeboards, calling another edit vandalism (such as the removal of unsourced BLP content). Should this policy be amended to state that such allegations are personal attacks? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:48, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * See WP:CREEP and how do you define the subjective term "clearly"?  NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:31, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Does it help to say "Not all detrimental edits are vandalism." in the nutshell?
I added the phrase "Not all detrimental edits are vandalism" to the nutshell with the edit summary "I've seen this missed so many times that I think it is worth putting in the nutshell."

This was reverted by NewsAndEventsGuy with the edit summary ""missed" you say? From where? And how is nutshelling this an improvement?"

Perhaps I didn't explain my reasoning very well. I meant that it is missed by users... as in they don't realise that it is the case. One symptom of this is requests at WP:AIV that relate to non-vandalism behaviour. These are a pretty regular occurance. I don't think this will be the only symptom, pehaps its just the easiest to keep track of. Another symptom is users calling other users vandals when they are not. Apart from the obvious issues around civility, I don't think it helps for people to be working with false definitions.

Yaris678 (talk) 11:23, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not helpful. We're here to say "Don't do it", not "You might get away with it". -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:35, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Plus, if people aren't following WP:CIVIL (and a host of related guidelines etc), adding still more text for them to ignore is not going to fix anything; rather it just adds to (ignorable) WP:CREEP. The better solution is to make effective use of already-existing WP:DR. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:12, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Firstly, I hope you can see that your arguments contradict each other. The people we want to say "don't do it" to are even less likely to look at this page than the people who might report "vandalism" that is not vandalism.  If you want to argue that the existing nutshell should also be removed then I might go along with that.
 * In terms of creep... well it's not creep in the traditional sense since "Not all detrimental edits are vandalism." is a summary of information already on the page. There is obviously the issue of whether this summary is helpful... or whether it would be better to just wait till people get to the relevant part of the page... but that is what we are trying to discuss here, so I don't think the use of the word creep in this context is helpful.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 13:24, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I could get behind adding something to the nutshell along the lines of "Since the 'vandalism' label is frequently misapplied, before calling an edit 'vandalism' please read the section below regarding what is not vandalism". NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:00, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems a more long-winded way of saying the same thing as "Not all detrimental edits are vandalism." but if there is consensus around that form of words then that is fine. I wouldn't put it in the nutshell though.  It isn't summarising the policy.  It is giving instructions.  I would put it in box like the one that says "To report persistent vandalism, visit Administrator intervention against vandalism."  Yaris678 (talk) 14:28, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

WP:Abuse response
Abuse response appears in this page under the Guidelines section, however that page appears to be deprecated. I believe the page (and process) have not used since last year, with a backlog of cases as early as 2012. I think it should be marked as deprecated for the time being on this page. Is this page actually used anymore? - Mtmelendez (Talk) 14:49, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Abuse reponse is clearly an inactive project, and deprecated, as the page itself directs people to use either WP:AIV or WP:LTA instead. I've been going through the cases that are open, on hold, or waiting for investigation, and closing them as some of them are almost 2 years old. This policy page shouldn't even mention it, since doing so is misleading to readers and of no help to editors. --  At am a  頭 18:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I also noticed that the "How to respond to vandalism" section suggests going to abuse response for long-term abuse from IPs, which is also incorrect. Steps 1 and 2 should be eliminated (since only the information in step 1 is still a valid instruction) and it should just be a simple paragraph explaining how to deal with IPs. --  At am a  頭 18:46, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Nobody has objected in more than a month and this seems like a common sense move, so I went ahead and removed both references to the inactive Wikiproject. --  At am a  頭 17:24, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 April 2014
Sajikizhisseri (talk) 14:47, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ". Please note, this is not the place to report vandalism - try Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. - Arjayay (talk) 14:59, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: as you have not requested a change.

"Unencyclopedic" in the What Vandalism is Not section
The word was piped here: WP:Unencyclopedic, which is an explanation of arguments not to make in AfD discussions and not related to the material in the subsection of this policy page, so I think it's just better to not pipe it anywhere, or find someplace better to pipe it. The section here explains that it's sometimes OK to remove material for being unencyclopedic, but WP:Unencyclopedic says that it's not a valid reason for deleting articles. These messages aren't exactly on the same plane, and, to the extent that they are, they kind of contradict one another. That's my thinking, anyway.&mdash; alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:46, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

The Accused
So long story short you guys. I found this article on the destruction of the library of alexandria where the introductory paragraph was kinda off and i rewrote it. I m on an oldpoor phone so i had to write it in parts and couldnt do anything but submit it that way. A reviewer rolled em back, thankfully because that was the plan, and made some confusing edit suggestions. Also redirected here. So heeeere i am. I cant make an acct and i just wanna help. Also if one attribute defining Wiki Vandalism is malicious intent, i was at best pseudo-vandalising unless i misunderstand malice. If you have the time, make some edits and splice it in so its as accurate as possible. I just rearranged data and tinted it with my core beliefs. Welcome to articles. Yall rock. 69.171.187.14 (talk) 09:43, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It looks like you were editing Destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Generally, the talk page of the article should be used to discuss proposals for changes, that is Talk:Destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The place to ask for assistance is WP:HELPDESK.
 * It's understandable that edits this this would be reverted because a lot of stuff was deleted. The simplest might be to wait until you are near a computer rather than trying to use a phone for complex work—many experienced editors would only use a phone for simple stuff like a short comment or adjusting a couple of words. Please at least put a note on the article talk about anything you believe should be done to fix the text. Bear in mind that reliable sources would be wanted. Johnuniq (talk) 10:48, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

IP edits are automatically suspicious?
WP:V:
 * In all the three methods above, examples of suspicious edits are those performed by IP addresses, red linked, or obviously improvised usernames

Really? The already trigger-happy wikipolice needs extra encouragement to revert IP edits without taking a proper look at the edit itself?

WP:V:
 * [...] if an editor treats situations which are not clearly vandalism as such, then that editor may harm the encyclopedia by alienating or driving away potential editors.

So... which one is it? What does the Wikipedia community actually want? Do you want to encourage users to treat any and all IP edits as suspicious, as the first quote does? Or to apply due diligence before labelling edits as vandalism, because doing otherwise will certainly drive away potential editors? You cannot have it both ways, and in my experience, IP editors are basically never given any respect at all. So I for one don't see the point in aggressively alienating IP editors like the less-than-gifted clown posse does via Huggle etc, much less to encourage that exact kind of behaviour in a core policy. Just my 2 cents. Feel free to revert as vandalism or to respond with some other assorted niceties. --85.197.5.119 (talk) 21:48, 24 July 2014 (UTC)


 * One gets suspicious, then looks, then decide if it is vandalism. There is no contradiction. If it is not vandalism I normally give a welcome. Chillum 21:54, 24 July 2014 (UTC)


 * That section doesn't advocate labeling of all IP edits as vandalism, it just suggests some kinds of edits which are more likely to be vandalism than others and hence are more fruitful places to check. While most IP edits aren't vandalism most vandalism does come from IPs.  Hut 8.5  21:59, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Vandalism from school class C blocks
There was repeated vandalism on the afternoon of 1 May 2013 to the featured article, If Day. The vandalism came from IP addresses that belonged to the Volusia County Schools in Florida. Vandalism from schools has happened in the past. Should the policy be clarified to give more instructions on what to do with school vandalism? Here are my suggestions. First, administrators should use soft blocks rather than hard blocks. There is no need to prevent teachers or administrators from doing constructive edits from the IP block. Should something be said here, or should something be said in the blocking policy?

I would also suggest that any Wikipedian who wants to go an extra mile and knows how to look up IP addresses can report the vandalism, preferably with timestamps, to the contact person for the address block. This should certainly not be required, but I'm an old and hardened spam-fighter and I did just that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert McClenon (talk • contribs) 01:53, 3 May 2013‎ (UTC)


 * This vandalism thing has been the same with Orange County Public Schools, also from Florida. Although I don't know which school is vandalizing Wikipedia, I do know that some misbehaving students like the terrorist group, ISIS. Myself, I am against them and I am with the USA :)! So OCPS, whoever is doing this please stop, and how do I look up where is the actual IP address internet router from? Thanks! 50.9.114.198 (talk) 13:01, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Visual representation of vandalism
A couple of programmers have created a website that represents the ongoing edits on Wikipedia visually. You can see this here: http://listen.hatnote.com/#en Please watch and listen to the page for a moment and then scroll down to the bottom of the page where it explains what the representations actually mean.

Edits are represented by different colored bubbles. White bubbles represent edits performed by registered users. Edits that add additional material to the article are represented by a chime tone. If the edit is small the tone is high-pitched. If the tone is low that means a significant portion of the article was expanded.

Green bubbles represent edits performed by unregistered users. If the green bubble is quite large then that means an un-registered user has made a significant edit to the article. If the tone that accompanies the green bubble is a low guitar twang, then that means that the unregistered user has deleted a very large amount of text from an article. If the tone that accompanies the green bubble is a high guitar twang, then that means that the unregistered user has deleted a small amount of material from the article.

I have noticed a pattern of vandalism using this tool. For example green bubbles that appear along with the name of an article that designates the article as being a school article, and that this edit is according during school hours, then chances are it is vandalism done by someone attending school at that time of day. This has been very easy to catch and I can do it within seconds.

I have also discovered that the majority of vandalism is performed by nonregistered users. Again, this can be visually demonstrated on the Hatnote website. I have been very successful at rolling back vandalism using this tool. I don't use any of the other methods listed on the article page. This way of identifying vandalism is quick and easy and easily understood.

 Bfpage &#124;leave a message — Preceding undated comment added 20:03, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Self-reverting vandalism
Should there be something pertaining to users (usually IPs) who vandalise an article then immediately revert themselves? It's extremely frustrating to come across this kind of vandalism only to find that the vandal reverted themselves immediately and nothing more can now be done. Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty &#124; Averted crashes 19:31, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * So they're making the same revert you want to make and denying your fun... gee darn. Other than banning IPs generally, what could be done? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:50, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The first edit of the pair might still be eligible for WP:REVDEL. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:47, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It's amazing how this thread has been here since March and apparently no one knows about the Uw-selfrevert template. PCHS-NJROTC  (Messages) 01:29, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Useful! I didn't know about it. Maybe it should be added to the list of standard talk page templates in Twinkle Noyster  (talk),  09:48, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've noticed it's not in Twinkle. I really wish it was, because I find myself manually typing it in when I need to use it. Should bring it up on Wikipedia talk:Twinkle PCHS-NJROTC  (Messages) 03:17, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It is in Twinkle under Warnings - Single issue notices. --Neil N  talk to me 14:31, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Vandalism vs. Editing Tests: What's the difference?
Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content, in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. ... ''Users sometimes edit pages as an experiment. Such edits, while prohibited, are treated differently from vandalism. These users should be warned using the uw-test series of user warning templates, or by a talk page message including, if appropriate, a welcome and referral to the Wikipedia sandbox, where they can continue to make test edits without being unintentionally disruptive. Registered users can also create their own sandboxes as a user subpage. If a user has made a test edit and then reverted it, consider placing the message uw-selfrevert, on their talk page. How can one honestly tell "experiments" from so-called "silly vandalism" which is defined as Adding profanity, graffiti, or patent nonsense to pages; creating nonsensical and obviously unencyclopedic pages, etc'', especially considering the number of self-reverts I see even with blatantly ridiculous edits? How does one classify any form of "silly vandalism" as a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia without assuming bad faith? Wouldn't it be easier to just say to assume silly edits are test edits unless the same person (which is in itself can be difficult to determine when dealing with IPs) keeps doing it after multiple warnings (although in the case of IPs, how does one even know that the tester/vandal even saw the warnings unless (s)he replies)? PCHS-NJROTC (Messages) 02:03, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd say the difference is whether the incident was isolated to a single page, or if it was spread among many, even with self reversions. Adding random silliness once and reverting could be likened to a good-faith, but inappropriate "Hello World" moment; doing this on multiple pages shows an increased risk of a poor faith motive. --Zfish118 (talk) 19:05, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * If that's the case though, why do we have escalated warnings for editing tests? PCHS-NJROTC  (Messages) 13:16, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Giving an example
What if somewhere in this article, there was a randomly inserted sentence of all caps spam, followed by a sentence explaining just how annoying these are, serving as a good example of vandalism and the importance of controlling it? Just a funny idea I thought of. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:C402:D400:E56F:1B71:41D0:5CCF (talk) 21:03, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Example of the warnings
User talk:PelocKidding — Preceding unsigned comment added by SandKitty256 (talk • contribs) 22:56, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Escalation: time lapse after previous warning
How long after a previous warning should we allow before wiping the slate clean and going back to a first warning? It might be useful to include some guidance on this in the policy. Should it be a shorter time for IPs than accounts? ClueBot seems to go back to a Level 1 warning after 2 to 4 days, while humans often escalate after several weeks. Any thoughts? Noyster  (talk),  16:50, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the warning should go back down no matter how long it was in between the vandalism attempts. Kitty 56 (talk) 23:04, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Loose Allegations of Vandalism
It seems to be very common among a class of inexperienced editors with a strong POV to refer to any revert of their edits as vandalism. Has anyone ever actually been blocked for wild or sloppy use of the terms "vandal" or "vandalism" in order to "win" a content dispute, or is this considered a case of biting the newbie, or is this considered ignorance, or is there some other reason that it is ignored? My own thought is that if you are familiar enough with Wikipedia policies to know what is vandalism, you should know what is not vandalism. It seems that the editors who claim that reverting their edits is vandalism probably know that that is not vandalism, because they use that claim to yell, rather than reporting the perceived vandalism, but that is only my opinion. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:06, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
 * A pet peeve of mine, as well. Willondon (talk) 02:24, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Change definition from "compromise the integrity" to "damage"?
Any objection in the definition to changing "compromise the integrity of Wikipedia" to "damage the integrity of Wikipedia". It seems clearer and more succint. Willondon (talk) 02:29, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Even more succinct and clearer is "damage Wikipedia". —EncMstr (talk) 04:58, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Oops. Good eye. That's what I meant. Darn copy and paste! Willondon (talk) 14:58, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 September 2015
Please block https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/173.2.26.39 for vandalism

65.175.135.214 (talk) 23:23, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've given them a final warning. Stickee (talk) 23:43, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

RfC
A RfC has commenced on whether a limited unbundling of blocking should be tried for eight weeks, see Vandalism/RfC for a trial unbundling of blocking. Esquivalience t 02:40, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Use of second person
I am disappointed to see reverted; use of first-person language is more likely to lead colleagues taking responsibility for their actions; and thus to them behaving in a more welcoming way to new editors. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:52, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I can see the argument there, but I still favour third person as being more encyclopedic. And with the other way, addressing the reader seems to come out of nowhere when you consider the context of the surrounding article. I see, though, that the article has 790 watchers, with 65 of them viewing recent edits. Wow! If you switch it back to second person, I won't object. We can let other editors or inertia guide things from there. Cheers. Willondon (talk) 18:30, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Project pages aren't articles so the "encyclopedicness" (?) consideration doesn't apply, and
 * If an editor treats situations which are not clearly vandalism as such, then that editor may harm the encyclopedia by alienating or driving away potential editors
 * is, to say the least, awkward. EEng (talk) 02:51, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

El Clásico
El Clásico should be protecting by repeating vandalism ! Also List of El Clásico matches. Someone should do something. There was more then 10-15 vandalism attacks in last 24 hours !--Alexiulian25 (talk) 17:32, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * When something like this happens, Alexiulian25, head for WP:RFPP. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for advise! I am a beginner in editing Wikipedia that is why I asked here.--Alexiulian25 (talk) 17:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Mental Health
What if the person who edits is suffering from a mental health issue/crisis. Instead of the normal vandalism notices if it could be sufficiently proven, maybe details of appropriate mental health support organisations in there country. Or would this be seen as repressive?

This would be slightly more serious than a drunk student? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.21.120.74 (talk) 22:17, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Why is Southwest Florida wiki pages always vandalized?!
It has happened AGAIN in Southwest Florida! I understand this is not the place to report, but I can't report in the admin report, because I have to be a user to report. Remember the WZJZ vandalism in the summer of 2014? Well, it has happened again. This time, in it's rival's wiki page, WXKB aka, B103.9. Somehow, an anonymous person called 50.153.117.2 vandalized and spammed WXKB 4 times on forgotten edits, possibly add-ons to vandalize WXKB. He/she called it 103.9 The Melinda. It made no sense at all, and this is the first time where a vandalized page can't be undone automatically. Thankfully, I restored the page back to B103.9, like normal. I don't know if this is vandalism or if WXKB called themselves like this temporarily until becoming B103.9 again. WZJZ was vandalized by a fake story and it's rival, WXKB was vandalized by a fake name and couldn't be undone like normal. Either way, I don't know whether to skip Level 2 of vandalism warning to Level 3 for doing undo-able vandalism. Please stop this person. P.S. I'm 50.9.114.198, who is anonymous, but good person, but I have a new internet provider, so I'm now 72.185.224.136, and this isn't the first time 50.153.117.2 (NOT 50.9.114.198 so please DON'T GET CONFUSED), as he also vandalized The Terminator pages. Thanks! 72.185.224.136 (talk) 18:14, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, the probable answer to the first part of your question is that there is a person in Southwest Florida who enjoys vandalizing Wikipedia. Second, why don't you create an account?  There are a number of myths that creating an account deprives you of the privacy that you have as an unregistered editor.  They are myths.  You will have more privacy as a pseudonymous editor, as well as various privileges.  Third, as a registered editor, you will be able to use Twinkle, which makes it easy both to issue warnings to vandals (and, yes, you can skip levels) and to request semi-protection of vandalized pages.   (By the way, the reason you can't report vandalism at the vandalism noticeboard is because a vandal was repeatedly removing the reports of their own vandalism, and the page has been semi-protected.)  So why don't you register?

Racism
I find it very offensive and disappointing that wikipedia, presuming to be academic, would use the V word like this everywhere! 112.198.83.45 (talk) 04:49, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not really academic. For example this is no place for original research, unlike academia. It is a place where existing knowledge is collected, so you can learn by reading articles, but there are no teachers or assignments like in an academic environment. Gap9551 (talk) 05:28, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree. Using racist terms is unacceptable.119.92.93.84 (talk) 15:23, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Blocked for Non-Usage?
Hi. I rarely edit anything on wikipedia, because all of the admins are mentally ill and do not like it if you touch stuff. Which seems contrary to what this site was supposed to be about...

Anyhow, why do I get blocked for not coming here? Seriously, I will come to wikipedia like once a month maybe, read something real quick, and think "sounds close enough" and then close it out. When I come back it will be like "You have a new message". New message? I don't even have an account anymore. Have not had one in like 10 years. I will click it and it will be like "You are currently banned for vandalizing the page BLACK MALE BALLERINAS SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO ELEPHANTS THAT EAT FELINE FECES. Continue to vandalize this page and you will be permabanned cus wiki is uber-1337!"

I never edit these friggin pages. Why am I getting messages about it?112.198.83.45 (talk) 05:09, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Gap9551 (talk) 05:22, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I have the same problem. And I also do not want to make an account. Anytime I make an account, I am harassed, stalked, and abused my the wikilords. If I post as a guest, content I publish, actually stays published! Also, if you are a guest, you are not required to source anything. Just like the wikilords.119.92.93.84 (talk) 15:25, 7 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, and thanks for your insightful recent comments on talk pages. If you are truly harassed on a registered account, there are places to report that, and action will be taken against those who did it. Everyone, registered or not, experienced or new, has to follow the same guidelines, including using sources. You can have a look at Why create an account? and I hope you decide to make an account and stay. 18:04, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Prevention of Vandalism
The current gold standard of vandalism prevention is to lock a page against further editing. This keeps all of the good edits out too. So, I recommend that sensitive web pages (The Bernie Sanders page, for example) have a 24 hour (or a delay based on traffic volume to the page) time lock. Trusty editors (defined numerically as people in good standing who have made lots of recent edits) will then get a reasonable amount of time to see the most recent edits and to reverse any vandalizing edits before the general public sees such edits. If the writer of a particular edit sees the page she will still see her edits immediately, but no other neophyte will see the edits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul Klinkman (talk • contribs) 01:39, 27 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Prevention of vandalism is not a purpose or goal of Wikipedia. There is a balance to be struck between the number of editors watching a page who would likely revert vandalism in a timely manner vs. the frequency of vandal attacks and the distribution (number) of the vandals in a particular time period.  See the page protection policy and the blocking policy.
 * In some situations, it is better to protect the page; in others it is better to block some users from editing. In other situations it is better to do nothing.  There is also the possibility of enabling pending changes on an article so that the changes of newer editors and those not logged are not visible to most readers until a trusted editor endorses the latest edits.  It is important to keep articles as accessible for editing as possible because most edits are improvements.  That is the goal of Wikpedia administrators.  —EncMstr (talk) 06:14, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Vandalism in 2012
To let you know that not all vandalism is reverted. I just found vandalism with the tag section blanking from 9 November 2012 (3.5 years ago!!), that was never reverted. See here. Sander.v.Ginkel (Talk) 19:18, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Blanking pages versus blanking content
Should the ur-example in the lead be just about blanking pages, rather than blanking content? Were I to blank the page on, say, William Shakespeare, that would, obviously, be considered vandalism. But per the current wording of the policy, if I merely blanked everything that comes after William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor could that not also be considered vandalism? I know that the wording in this policy, as written, has been around for a good while, and I hold it in the highest regard. But I also know that, in the meantime, vandals have gotten much more clever than we had it back in the good old days. I believe that the current wording of this policy no longer holds up to the spirit of the original ideal.

Truth be told, I'm very invested with maintaining WP:PRESERVE, which is a "velvet glove" policy. Try to not blank content, please don't remove content, and our project would prefer that if you do remove content, then you also should consider doing this, that, or the other thing. WP:VAND needs to be the "iron fist" which resides within the velvet glove of WP:PRESERVE, and that can only occur if both policies are on the same page. -- Kendrick7talk 08:23, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Reversion or removal of unencyclopedic material section
Per my recent edit, I find this section somewhat redundant, and it pointlessed muddles the distinction between WP:BLP and WP:PRESERVE. -- Kendrick7talk 18:13, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
 * We do not need a copy of WP:BLP text here. We need to explain why these BLP removals are not vandalism. --Neil N  talk to me 18:18, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Kendrick7, you're seriously tagging a policy because your bold edit was reverted? --Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 18:24, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
 * OK. I guess I could try delving into why BLP matters more succinctly. Tags are a good way to generate feedback and consensus. -- Kendrick7talk 18:33, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Reference desk trolling - remove or mark?
This year, a reference desk Nazi troll got the entire section removed, including all constructive contributions. I was told that this is consensus, based on WP:Deny. Now another Nazi troll got the section hidden and marked as vandalism with Template:Hidden archive top. I prefer this second method, even though possibly in a way that also hides the headline. Is there really consensus that deletion of all contributions is appropriate? --KnightMove (talk) 06:48, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Grammar
In the section Identifying associated IP addresses, is "more far uniformly structured" supposed to be "far more uniformly structured"? Gulumeemee (talk) 04:21, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thanks for pointing this out <b style="color:seagreen">Noyster</b> (talk),  12:52, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Trolling and offensive vandalism on Alicia Vikander's page
Did you notice the continuous offensive vandalism on Alicia Vikander's page? They keep editing her personal life details claiming she's been sleeping with several men, that she's bisexual (??? she's NEVER said so!) and she's not really with fassbender, only to diffamate her while they're relationship has been and keep being confirmed by the two actors.We know who hides behind these posts. They are few people running hate blogs against actors on the net, they are internet trolls pretty jealous of Vikander and so they find amusement in creating lies. Can you please do something not to make it happen again? What I read this morning was incredibly offensive. Her partner is Michael fassbender, met on the set of The Light Between Oceans and they've been dating since autumn 2014 (http://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/alicia-vikander-michael-fassbender-and-i-have-never-hidden-the-fact-we-re-a-couple-a3353831.html -  http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/michael-fassbender-home-support-takes-my-breath-away-424782.html  -  http://www.vogue.com/13374233/alicia-vikander-january-2016-cover/ - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8HUetP9sHT8  -  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aIXaXBJRhqA )

and she's never admitted that "she had sex relationships with other men" during the years nor that she's bisexual (which wouldn't be a problem but it's not true). Please, protect her personal details, its awful and offensive. Also, in the main part of the bio, there are many inaccurancies, fake accusations and offensive sentences towards here, clearly written by someone who hates Vikander and changed her page to make her look an unpleasant person. I've re-edited it but vandals may change it again as they apparently did and keep doing several times.

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.51.170.143 (talk) 08:05, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Someone has requested semi-protection at WP:RFPP. In the future, the place to request help regarding an article on a living person is WP:BLPN (which can be found by clicking "Help" in the left sidebar). Johnuniq (talk) 09:06, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Someone has requested semi-protection at WP:RFPP. In the future, the place to request help regarding an article on a living person is WP:BLPN (which can be found by clicking "Help" in the left sidebar). Johnuniq (talk) 09:06, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

What exactly is "vandalism"?
So I've been dating a seemingly sweet girl for a few months now, and we were talking about politics, Wikileaks, and Wikipedia. We were talking about the reliability of Wikipedia, Wikileaks, etc (because someone had told me I shouldn't believe what I read on Wikipedia), and she said it is reliable because Wikipedia removes "vandalism" real fast, and not knowing what "vandalism" is I asked her about it and how she knew, and she showed me a link to a page (see below) and said she had done this when she was in high school and Wikipedia fixed it right away. She said that she was writing about one of her high school teammates (cause she was involved in various sports in high school), and that she regretted doing it. So what exactly is "vandalism"? Is it some sort of hacking? Should I trust this girl, is she a hacker? Can she be arrested for what she did? Is this something I should break up with her over, or is this nothing? I'm not into dating the criminal type, so that's why I ask. Also, what exactly is Wikipedia's relationship to Wikileaks, and are the things they are reporting about Hillary Clinton reliable or can they be vandalized? This is what she showed me: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Casual_Friday&diff=prev&oldid=159160092 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Casual_Friday&diff=next&oldid=159160092. StanTheMan34243 (talk) 23:45, 18 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Vandalism is the act of causing damage to a work. It is not illegal (at present).
 * The only relationship between Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) to WikiLeaks is that they both used wiki software to manage and display information. WikiLeaks stopped using wiki software around 2010.
 * Please see Our Five Pillars for Wikipedia is and is not. —EncMstr (talk) 00:37, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey proposal to make finding vandalism faster in watchlists and RC pages
In the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey, I have written a proposal to hide edits from editors you trust in Watchlists and RC pages to make our RC patrol and watchlists much more manageable, and thus help us winnow down to vandalizing edits in a quicker manner. Please consider supporting this proposal with your vote by December 12. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 04:31, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Requesting Block or Ban of User Pauciloquence for Targeted Negative Campaign, Harassment and Vandalism on Charlie_Zeleny Wikipedia Page
Requesting Block or Ban of New User Pauciloquence for Targeted Negative Campaign, Harassment, Vandalism, Disruptive Editing and The Three Revert Rule on Charlie_Zeleny Wikipedia Page.

The page has been edited positively by a variety of users including Bythebooklibrary and Voceditenore who have been constructively editing the subject's page and creating a dialogue on what changes need to be made together as a positive community. This has been moving the page successfully to becoming a solid and valid Wiki article.

Unfortunately, the page is currently suffering for the edits of Pauciloquence for reasons including the three-revert rule on edit warring. Attempts to make this subject's drummer page be similar to most other drummers in the community including the full breakdown of drummer's gear section listing the instruments that the drummer plays. The three revert rule was satisfied when dealing with this point on Sat 12/17/16 by Pauciloquence and am suggesting a Block/Ban.

Please see the Talk page for more information on all issues pertaining to Pauciloquence in addition to the latest infractions of the three revert rule and more. Please Block and Ban from this page. Thank you very much.


 * To Pauciloquence - Targeted Negative Campaign - Charlie Zeleny Wikipedia Page

This is starting to appear to be a targeted negative campaign against the subject's site with the amount of massive editing you have personally done on this particular page (almost -12,000 words in 2 days). This is very peculiar especially since you have only 2 days worth of editing history with the majority of deletions happening on the Charlie Zeleny page when all other pages in your history are very minor edits (even when these pages have the same problems you claim the Charlie Zeleny page has).

The current page of Charlie Zeleny has 41 References so far and there will be the addition of many more to support any and all claims found in the subject's article. These 41 references are already almost 4x as many as other major drummer figures on Wikipedia including one that Charlie Zeleny has taken over for named Chris Adler from Lamb of God when Charlie joined Blotted Science (Chris Adler has only 11 sources on a page that has no problems whatsoever). The fact that the Charlie Zeleny page is experiencing this much difficulty with this amount of sources and references makes no sense whatsoever when there are many other major drummer figure sites that are very similar in format, style and overall information (including the deleted Gear section and other biographical information). Here are drummer pages that all have less sources currently than the Charlie Zeleny page of drummers who are associated with the subject on his projects (there are many more to list if needed):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Bozzio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jarzombek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Roddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Adler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Minnemann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Portnoy

Here are other drummer pages with less sources than the current Charlie Zeleny page and similar sources that are being disputed. These pages are existing without any problems whatsoever (and are a short list of drummers starting with the last name starting with A to use as an example):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Abbruzzese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Acu%C3%B1a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Aldridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Allen_%28drummer%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine_Appice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinny_Appice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Aronoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Augusto

The amount of negative edits and difficulty in being able to adequately update this page for the Wikipedia community due to the Pauciloquence negative targeted editing campaign is extremely concerning and needs to stop.

Pauciloquence, please refrain from editing this page moving forward otherwise formal action will have to be taken. Thank you very much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.35.194.25 (talk) 13:36, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I will be continuing to edit this and other pages. Just because you do not like that I am enforcing the policies and guidelines of wikipedia does not me you can tell me to stop editing an article. By all rights I should ask you if you have a conflict of interest with the article subject since you seem to be for leaving in huge sections of unsourced information.

Saying other articles have this or that is no excuse. Each article stands on its own and must follow policy and guidelines. On a BLP article unsourced info maybe removed at anytime. Unreliable sources may also be removed. Best regards! Pauciloquence (talk) 13:43, 13 December 2016 (UTC) Pauciloquence, please refrain from editing the Charlie Zeleny page moving forward otherwise formal action will have to be taken to have you Blocked or Banned.

From the Wikipedia Disruptive Editing Page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing

This page in a nutshell: Disruptive editors may be blocked or banned indefinitely.

Disruptive editing is not always intentional. Editors may be accidentally disruptive because they don't understand how to correctly edit, or because they lack the social skills or competence necessary to work collaboratively. The fact that the disruption occurs in good faith does not change the fact that it is harmful to Wikipedia.

From the Wikipedia Competence Is Required Page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Competence_is_required

Where we often see big controversies, though, is with editors who are unintentionally and often unknowingly disruptive while trying to help. This is where we sometimes see an unintended side effect of our (generally quite useful) notion of assuming good faith. Many editors have focused so much on this tenet that they have come to believe that good faith is all that is required to be a useful contributor. Sadly, this is not the case at all. Competence is required as well. A mess created in a sincere effort to help is still a mess.

From the Wikipedia Compared To Good Faith Page

Compared to Good Faith

Assuming that people are trying to help seems trivial—but if someone is unable to help or is sometimes helpful but at other times disruptive, their edits may cause a net loss to the project. The proverbial bull in a china shop might have good intentions, but he's clearly bad for business. We always must value the project as a whole more than we value the contributions of any individual editor.

If an editor has already demonstrated incompetence that causes disruption, no amount of good faith can fix the problem resulting from the editor's lack of competence.

Some common types

Newbie

Further information: WP:Do not bite the newcomers

Most of us were pretty incompetent at editing Wikipedia when we started. We might not have understood wikicode, we might not have signed our posts, or we may not have fully appreciated exactly which sources are reliable. The great thing about this situation is that it's easily fixable. Help the newbies understand what we do here, and soon they'll be making themselves useful.

Social

Some people just can't function well in this particular collaborative environment. We can't change Wikipedia to suit them, so if they're unable to change themselves, they'll need to be shown the door.

Some behavioral issues and personality traits may be correlated with the inability to collaborate in an environment in which collaboration is essential. The Wikipedia community assesses editors solely on the basis of their contributions and actions within Wikipedia. Blocking an editor who has demonstrated that they cannot participate in Wikipedia is not discrimination on the basis of disability (if one exists), even if that disability contributes to their failure to participate. Wikipedia is not therapy.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.35.194.25 (talk) 13:36, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Having trouble with the New User Pauciloquence again suggesting block and ban of user plus roll backs of most recent edits. This is Third Infringement and Will Put In Formal Request for Block/Ban on Next Infringement

Most prominent drummers especially known for their solo work have complete gear lists on Wikipedia and is a very helpful service to the drummer community and Wikipedia community on a whole. Drummers especially with signature gear such as the custom snare Charlie Zeleny has have exactly formatted gear lists. The subject's page should be laid out and fit into the Wiki community in a similar way and should be allowed. These are pages that are well sourced and credited and are in similar length, format and style as the subject's page.

Here's a short list of drummer pages in the Wikipedia community that list similar complete lists of gear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Adler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinnie_Paul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zonder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Young https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Yeung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Vannucci_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Ulrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Theodore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zak_Starkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questlove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Rockenfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Roddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Royster_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilan_Rubin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Rudd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Pennie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pridgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Laboriel_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_Larkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Luzier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_Lucas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jojo_Mayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Mullen_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jordan_%28musician%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Kollias_%28drummer%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Haake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Robert_Promi%C5%84ski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Erlandsson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zac_Farro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Fishman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Beauford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Donati https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dolmayan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brann_Dailor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Copeland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Cobham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Che https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Bozzio

Thank you very much. 100.35.194.25 (talk) 12:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Manually Reverting The Page To Before Pauciloquence Article Vandalism

The removed Gear section is being reverted to the full list of gear on the subject similar to most other drummer Wikipedia pages in the community.

In addition to that rollback, the phrasing of the first paragraph will be changed back to the original form to be written in a unique way as compared to the subject's website and elsewhere on the internet to avoid plagiarism. Thank you very much.

Manually Reverting The Page To Before Pauciloquence Article Vandalism: Second Rollback of Vandalism

Same issues apply above. Making formal request for Block and Ban of Pauciloquence.

All other editors have been extremely helpful in updating this page in constructive, comprehensive and complete ways. 100.35.194.25 (talk) 13:19, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

100.35.194.25 (talk) 13:39, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

It seems wrong for this page to be protected against Vandalism. Does that not go against the very spirit of the page?
What do you think? RFC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.143.198.23 (talk) 01:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

What? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.86.255.128 (talk) 20:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Talk page vandalism
I am quite sure I found two subjects only consisting of spam and vandalism in one article talk space: Talk:The_Majority_Report Talk:The_Majority_Report. I found no real specifics how to be sure I identified the spam and vandalism as such, since the info on Talk page vandalism on the Vandalism project page is quite... scare. So, to be sure I better ask here: Am I right in presuming that both subjects of that talk page can be completely be removed? Cheers, --Rava77 (talk) 01:33, 18 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Rava77 I've removed the "sign sign sign..." section as of no possible value. The other section does appear to have some sort of relation with the article content, as the article does mention Bill Scher in connection with something called liberaloasis. This guidance deals with editing talk page comments made by other people. If in doubt, don't <b style="color:seagreen">Noyster</b> (talk),  10:54, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

'Whois' of IPv6 users
This section of the page sensibly suggests a whois page to look up shared IP users' details to help with templating. That tool doesn't work for IPv6 users, though, who are probably going to become more common. Should the page recommend a different tool instead, or perhaps split recommendations for the two IP protocols? For example, seems to work pretty well for IPv6 but does not support IPv4. Mortee (talk) 22:06, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Link Broken
The link to the user talk page (the example for an account that has received multiple warnings) leads to a page that has been deleted. This needs to be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Icedog68 (talk • contribs) 23:43, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Removed the sentence "An example of warning a repeat offender can be found at User talk:201.21.233.202/Archive 1" due to broken link and lack of other example. Consider adding your own example of a warned user if available, although users with multiple warnings might be hard to find due to blocks. Enzokarate (talk) 22:51, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Proper and common names.
"Vandalism is the proper name for any malicious edit which attempts to reverse the main goal of the project of Wikipedia," it sez in the intro here. If that were so we would have one more data-point for Bertrand Russell's sad plaint, "The Visigoths were illiterate, so naturally they got a bad press." Fortunately, the Vandals have lost the copyright on their name, another of the shortcomings of their illiteracy no doubt. Thus Wikipedia editors can get away with taking it in vain. Imagine people demanding safe spaces and trigger warnings with swords and battleaxen. David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 20:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * You made my day! Thanks! L3X1 My Complaint Desk 18:25, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Need consensus for added info about templates
I would like to add some additional clarifications about the warning templates. For example, whether good or bad faith is assumed. Please tell me if you object to this or if this is wrong:
 * Level One: Assumes good faith
 * Level Two: Assumes no faith, bordering on bad faith
 * Level Three: Assumes bad faith, and explicitly states that you're vandalizing.
 * Level Four: Assumes very bad faith, if you do it again, you get blocked.
 * Lever FourIM: Very serious vandalism, no second chance. Next time, you get blocked. Use this template sparingly and only for really serious offenses. SomeWikiuser999 (talk-contribs) 17:35, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * See and .  Level two is supposed to be just "no faith", nothing about "bordering".  Personally, I don't think there should be a different definition here than at WP:UW which "owns" the templates.   Murph 9000  (talk) 20:00, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Sounds about right! Let's wait another day and if nobody objects, I'll edit. SomeWikiuser999 (talk-contribs) 22:35, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

'VDHOAXES' anchor added to 'Hoaxing vandalism' section
Vandalism redirects to WP:HOAX, so I've added a non-redirecting anchor ('WP:VDHOAXES') to the subsection text. --Dervorguilla (talk) 00:27, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Merge
Shouldn't we merge this page with Vandalism on Wikipedia? They're practically both the same! RullRatbwan (talk) 13:19, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose, and I'm fairly certain it's prohibited by policy. Any similarity is just a coincidence.  This page is is a project management page, the other an encyclopedia article.   Murph 9000  (talk) 14:39, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Who are these Vandals?
I had thought they were adults, probably boozed up. But an Admin who responded to me by providing a WP:SEMI for 7 days said that would be long enough to hold off the kids till they went back to school. Do we suspect most of our vandal frenemies to be juvenile? L3X1 (talk) 17:08, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It depends on the content of the vandalism. In my experiences, when I've actually been able to narrow down who was on the other side of the fiber-optic cable, it seems a lot of the silly vandals are somewhere between middle school age and college age (with a higher percentage at the middle school side of the scale), and a lot of them are cheerleader types, but some of them are adults. Some of them are even professionals, like doctors (a doctor in Michigan actually made the news for wiki vandalism). A lot of the adults who vandalize used to be cheerleaders or sorority girls. The ones that are male tend to be jock types or former jock types. I don't understand it because when I was in school most of the cheerleaders were really nice girls, but it seems they are the main demographic responsible for vandalism at Wikipedia. Then there's political and religious vandals, and they are pretty diverse, ranging from little kids to elders nearing death. Note that posting any particular person's information on the wiki would be a violation of WP:OUTING, even if (s)he is a vandal. PCHS-NJROTC  (Messages)Have a blessed day. 19:49, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

How to mass hide vandal's edits
Hi all. I am viwiki's sysop. I want to hide (change visibility) all of a vandal's edits. Is there a way to do that systematically, all at once? Thanks for your advice. Tuanminh01 (talk) 03:31, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Dear Administrators, Philip J Fry and Telenovelafan215 are the same person. He don't accept nothing what others write. Immediately wipes and fixes according to his desire. List sources such as regular magazines. Meny regards! Sebastian Sebastian.777 (talk) 17:26, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Proposal on Community Tech for Deferred Changes
I have proposed the implementation of deferred changes on the Community Tech Survey, an (almost) unanimously supported feature that has seemingly been abandoned by its original developers. You can support the proposal here if you find it useful. Thanks. <b style="color:#FA0">Darylgolden</b>(<b style="color:#F00">talk</b>) Ping when replying 08:49, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok. L3X1 (distænt write)  15:47, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Racist
Is it not racist to say "vandalize"?96.31.10.178 (talk) 02:40, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Nope. L3X1 (distænt write)  14:48, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it is. 96.31.10.178 (talk) 22:50, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Then why did you ask? --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106; &#x1D110;&#x1d107; 23:47, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I thinking some deny would be approriate? L3X1 (distænt write)  02:10, 27 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Racist? What Gaul! <b style="color: red;">E</b><b style="color: blue;">Eng</b> 13:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

New option for reading difficult diffs
Quick note to say that folks who regularly deal with diffs may be particularly interested in the Beta Feature for visual diffs. Go to Special:Preferences and scroll about halfway down the list to find it.

Here's the main reason why you might be interested:



In the old diff mode, none of the text changes, such as the removal of the word not, are marked at all, because the paragraphs were re-arranged. Here, they're highlighted. The toggle box at the top lets you switch back and forth, so you can use both for the same diff. Some changes are easier to spot in one mode, and others in the other mode, so the system is set up to let you use both. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Changes to the page
I have started making some changes to this page. It has become somewhat bloated and redundant in places, and also does not really reflect current practices regarding vandalism. A few of the changes I have made, and rationales:


 * 1) The page placed too much of an emphasis on the use of warning templates, and made it seem as though the use of them was required. Warnings are all that is required, and templates exist to aid in giving warnings, but their use is not mandatory and we are all free to warn using a purpose-written note rather than a template, and indeed in many situations such tailored warnings are preferable.  I have tweaked the language to make it clearer to new vandalism fighters that the warning (and not the template) is the required piece.
 * 2) Clarified what is and is not vandalism, and made clear that there are appropriate responses to all problematic behavior, just that such behavior is not always vandalism
 * 3) Made it a little more clear what to expect from administrators who respond to reports of vandalism

The page still has organization, repetition, and bloat issues; I may undertake some more rewriting to deal with that as well. -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 18:38, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Reverted "unexplained removal" to "wanton removal"; proposed revision Suggestion
I reverted the edit of 07:48, 25 June 2017 which changed: "The wanton removal of encyclopedic content..." to "The unexplained removal of encyclopedic content ..." The edit summary was: "Replaced somewhat rare/polysemic word "wanton" with more recognizeable/appropriate word "unexplained". A lot of readers of this page probably don't know what "wanton" means."

I agree that wanton is antiquated, but unexplained is not a good synonym. The word wanton implies a reckless, deliberate, senseless, or malicious intention, in other words, "bad faith". On the other hand, "unexplained removal of content" has a generally accepted meaning on Wikipedia (see WP:RM), which is specifically not (necessarily) vandalism. The sentence with "unexplained" can be interpreted as defining anyone who makes edits that fail to meet the requirements of NPOV, V, or OR, as always guilty of a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia, even if they (mistakenly) believe they are improving it. Specifically, fanatics and fundamentalists of various types should not be labelled "vandals", even though they disregard all content policies.

The text does go on to say "Even if misguided, willfully against consensus, or disruptive, any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia is not vandalism." However, since it's already been defined above that disregarding core content policies is always a deliberate attempt to cause damage, it could be assumed that doing so is also defined as acting in bad faith. This actually happened to me; and based on the present definition I incorrectly reported such an editor for vandalism rather than disruptive editing, and was corrected by an admin.

It's also in part because of the edit of 07:40, 1 July 2016‎, which seems to have made a significant alteration in the definition of vandalism. It changed a fairly straightforward definition that "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content, in a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia", to the more complex language about disregarding content policies, and changed "in a deliberate attempt" to "is a deliberate attempt" to damage Wikipedia. Even with wanton, it seems to imply that edits which disregard content policies are defined as deliberate damage and therefore vandalism, rather than defining an intention of "deliberate damage" as vandalism. Vandalism is not the act of causing damage, and not even intentionally doing things that are known by the community to cause damage, but knowingly intending to cause damage. For that reason, I think it would be best to remove the language about disregarding the content policies in defining vandalism, as it can be easily misinterpreted.

I would like to propose the following revision:

On Wikipedia, vandalism has a very specific meaning: editing (or other behavior)  deliberately intended to damage Wikipedia, and to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia, in a variety of languages, presenting the sum of all human knowledge.

Vandalism is the malicious and senseless addition, removal, or changing of encyclopedic content, in a deliberate attempt to sabotage or subvert Wikipedia. Examples of blatant vandalism include adding irrelevant obscenities or crude humor to a page, illegitimately blanking pages, and inserting obvious nonsense into a page. Some edits that appear to be neutral, verifiable, and reliably sourced, may turn out instead to be deliberate hoaxes or pranks. Abusive creation or usage of user accounts and IP addresses may also constitute vandalism.

--IamNotU (talk) 20:21, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I have not read your above wall of text yet, but this page has 896 watchers and none of them had any problem with my amended wording last June. Or July, August, September, October, November, December or January. "wanton removal" was the policy status quo for seven months, and is clearly what the previous version meant, just not exactly what it said; you need consensus to change it back to what you interpret "unexplained removal" to mean if you think the two are substantially different and the policy refers to the latter. To give an example, I recently removed a lot of "encyclopedic content" from the Kakinomoto no Hitomaro article, and several of my removals were not accompanied by specific explanations; this does not make them vandalism by any stretch of the imagination, though, as he previous "encyclopedic" article was poorly written and basically unsourced, and anyone abiding by WP:AGF would assume that what I was removing I was replacing with similar, but better, content (or planned to do so in the immediate future). The problem with defining "unexplained removal" as vandalism is it leaves the door open for editors like and  to go around defining any edit hey don't like that happens to remove material (and whose explanation they don't happen to "recognize") as vandalism. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 23:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm very sorry but I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying. "Unexplained removal" was the policy for the past seven months, not "wanton removal". The prevous version was "wanton removal", for a whole year, since 3 July 2016‎. I changed it from "unexplained" back to "wanton" for exactly the reason you say! Because "unexplained removal" does not equal vandalism. An edit like the one you describe is not vandalism, just because it's unexplained. It needs to be wanton, i.e., deliberately malicious, gratuitous, senseless, intentionally abusive, etc. I've changed it to "malicious" instead, as that is maybe more easily understood. Please read my comment above if you have time. --IamNotU (talk) 00:21, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Shit, you're right. I don't normally remember edits I made months ago and looked at them out of order so defended the wrong wording. But thanks for checking that for me; the version before my edit was live for only a year, and my edit has been live for the better part of a year now, and none of the 900 or so page-watchers had a problem with my edit, so pending some demonstration that the previous wording was supported by consensus the wording I added should still be considered the status quo.
 * Anyway, "unexplained removal" is better because "wanton" is subject to debate, and no removal that includes a policy-based explanation in its edit summary can be called vandalism (even if the explanation may not be valid).
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 03:17, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I disagree with Hijiri 88 because then we get to the debate of what constitutes "explanation". Is it an edit summary? A removal can have a bogus explanation. Wanton or malicious don't give as much room for misunderstanding. Thinker78 (talk) 06:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Malicious is something like posting links to malware or a shock page, or inserting text attacking people. Playing about at Wikipedia where anyone can edit is not "malicious". Wanton removal is a bit antiquated but has the advantage of being accurate. Unexplained removal is not vandalism—not unless it's part of a pattern of wanton disruption. The edit summary section should be restored. It is not vandalism to ignore edit summaries, and that is policy which needs to be stated somewhere. Also, it is helpful to explain that people should be using them. Johnuniq (talk) 07:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that the edit summary section should be restored. The reason given for the removal seems to imply that it was in the "types of vandalism" section, but it was in the "what is not vandalism" section, and should remain there. PS I see your point that "malicious" is a fairly strong word, but I don't think it's inaccurate. All vandalism, even if it's just mischief, is at least slightly malicious - the vandal gets a kick out of making a mess that someone else has to clean up. Also, "wanton" is normally followed by a negative action, like "wanton disruption", or "wanton defacement". "Wanton removal" is odd, like saying "wanton washing-up"... --IamNotU (talk) 02:17, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Hijiri 88, what do you have to state regarding Thinker78's above reply and this removal that Johnuniq opposes? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:23, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I restored it. I was going to replace the "malicious" mentioned above with "unreasonable" but I see that "malicious" appears several times in the policy. The other mentions are referring to malicious behavior, but I suppose "malicious removal" is sort-of ok. Johnuniq (talk) 00:17, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry to be late. I'm really not that bothered by any of this either way. I swore off trying to edit policy pages a long time ago after the "BURDEN Incident", and have since then only done so when (a) something disastrous happens like a cadre of admins show a severe misunderstanding of a policy because said policy's wording is vague, or (b) the policy is messy and clearly has been edited freely by any number of users without much care for whether a policy can be authoritative when it has these attributes. I don't agree with Johnuniq's restoring of the "edit summary omission" under what is not vandalism, since, while I've been accused of some pretty daft forms of vandalism in my day, I've never personally seen "This edit didn't include a summary, so it is vandalism." Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 05:48, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I certainly know what wanton means but I don't like Chinese food. <b style="color: red;">E</b><b style="color: blue;">Eng</b> 13:27, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Requesting advice and help at Wikivoyage
On English Wikivoyage we have a contributor that has become know as the Telstra editor, due to most of the time coming in using mobile IPs in Brisbane from this provider. The person will create a new user (here is a list of a few make one or two edits, creates another user and makes a few more edits on the same article or another. Although goes in wave this can be a daily occurrence. Some edits can be constructive, others minor formatting that are no harm but many are creating irrelevant articles which only creates work for other editors and of little use to readers. So not always vandalism but has become disruptive. Can anything be done? The person has over many years never replied to approaches over talk pages. Can a block be created to not allow edits from a user from a particular internet provider that has not confirmed the email address they registered with? Is it possible for an administrator to merge user accounts so at least the hundreds of userids and edits are grouped together? --Traveler100 (talk) 06:31, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Today for example, these are all good edits, , , but really annoys other members of the community that constantly creates new accounts and never engages in conversation. --Traveler100 (talk) 11:31, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikivoyage is obviously set up differently to en-wiki. We don't easily know if the account has a confirmed e-mail address. We also don't allow multiple accounts. Once one is blocked then any new ones are blocked on sight (we block a person, not just an account) - and yes we do have the determined vandals - we have edit filters to flag up suspicious edits of certain well know habits. I'm sure others will chip in something.<b style="border:1px solid #dfdfdf;color:green; padding:1px 3px;background:#FFD">Ron h jones </b>(Talk) 14:42, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * If this happened here we would at least consider applying some sort of block to the IP ranges the vandal edits from. You'll need to find a checkuser to find out which IPs the logged in accounts are editing from and whether there would be any collateral damage to legitimate editors coming from those IP addresses. If the edits conform to some pattern then you could use an edit filter as suggested above.  Hut 8.5  19:25, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The IP range is of the Australian mobile provider Telstra, mainly but not exclusively Brisbane cell network. I think too many other people would be hit. Hence the question is it possible for this IP range to allow only accounts with registered and confirmed email address? --Traveler100 (talk) 20:03, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Not on en-wiki - we don't know who has an accounts with a registered and confirmed email (except going to the user's page and seeing if there is an e-mail link) - there is no automatic tagging about e-mail addresses. But we have the option of selecting "Prevent logged-in users from editing from this IP address" on the block template - normal IP blocks don't block logged in users. <b style="border:1px solid #dfdfdf;color:green; padding:1px 3px;background:#FFD">Ron h jones </b>(Talk) 23:53, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Should one remove vandalism warnings?
Sometimes I see editors plastering a vandalism warning in new editors, biting them, failing to even welcome them and above all, misidentifying an edit as vandalism. Take for example an edit made by ZoeeTalksALot, which gained him a vandalism warning in his/her/their talk page by Shellwood. The edit was previously in a dispute with other editor, who claimed that "we don't stylize names", something that I tried looking in the MOS and failed to find. As I told Shellwood, who for some reason decided to remove my notification from his talk page instead of discussing it, I reviewed the vandalism warning and I think it was issued in error. ZoeeTalksALot, in this edit, changed Zombies for Z-O-M-B-I-E-S. I believe Shellwood thought it was an unconstructive edit because of the spelling, but actually Z-O-M-B-I-E-S is the actual name of the movie. Said mistaken warnings may be seen by more editors who then issue an escalating warning, which might be in itself unjustified as it can be seen in the case of ZoeeTalksALot, who received multiple warnings in my view unjustified. You might argue that because multiple editors issued warnings then they were justified, but at least one said editor, Geoff, appeared to backtrack from his warning in the reply he made in ZoeeTalksALot's talk page. So I wonder, should one remove vandalism warnings that one thinks were issued in error by another editor to a third editor? Thinker78 (talk) 02:21, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I was under the belief one oughn't unless they are so gross a violation that ANI is needed. cinco deL3X1 ◊distænt write◊  20:07, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I've done that a handful of times. More often, I leave a personalized note for the editor who was warned, pinging the editor who did the warning. --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 20:18, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that there needs to be a policy against users that want to cry "vandalism" because they merely don't like the way an edit was done. It would seem to me that abusive use of a vandalism warning should merit a permanent ban of the account that maliciously used the vandalism warning. I've found many times where vandalism warnings have been used abusively, in circumstances where the edits might be contentious, but are clearly NOT vandalism, but rather represent disagreement on interpretation of WP policy. Therefore, it would seem to me that severe consequences need to come with misuse, as to deter major problems that are likely to come of it. USN007 (talk) 21:27, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

On Editing
I think the fact that the page isn't blocked or semi-blocked is a bit hypocritical. Would it be possible to semi-block it? ThePRoGaMErGD (talk) 19:42, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to the protection level of Vandalism? It is presently semiprotected. --Bsherr (talk) 20:22, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

blp vandalism on pages with few watchers
Hope this is the right place to ask this; it's not a vandalism report so much as a question about why a particular bit of vandalism didn't get discovered faster. I ended up at a page this morning and while making an unrelated edit noticed an unsourced possibly libelous addition that had remained in the 'personal life' section for a week here. The page has few watchers, but I would have thought adding without a reference into a "Personal life" section of a BLP the terms 'nudist' and 'nudism' would have flagged it to be checked more quickly than that. Pages on my own watch list that get flagged as possibly problematic are often fixed before I even get there; I had an edit conflict yesterday when I and another editor warned the same user for the same bit of vandalism within seconds of one another. So I'm wondering why this one lingered for what seems like a long time. Not that there's anything wrong with being a nudist, but if it's not been reliably, er,...covered... --valereee (talk) 11:39, 30 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Is there a better place to bring this up? --valereee (talk) 21:59, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid a simple answer is that sometimes stuff slips through the net. There are probably some subtle factors you've already alluded to - it's not widely watched, probably not widely read, and the vandalism wasn't egregious or from someone found to be vandalising other pages. If the opposite were true it might have been picked up sooner. -- zzuuzz (talk) 22:13, 15 May 2019 (UTC)


 * , you could try mentioning it at User talk:ClueBot Commons, but it's not an obvious vandal-word and may get a lot of false positives. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:06, 16 May 2019 (UTC)


 * zzuuzz, thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I'll try that! --valereee (talk) 10:34, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

"Keep Calm and Click Edit" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Keep Calm and Click Edit. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed,Rosguill talk 19:42, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Image
Can I add the image that is shown on the right?

—Your&#39;s sincerely, Soumyabrata (talk) 17:17, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * No thanks. There is no need to explain what bored kids do—WP:DENY is best. Johnuniq (talk) 01:54, 4 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Agree with Johnuniq, but this one still makes me laugh. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:11, 4 July 2019 (UTC)



Own work, but how about this teaching-though-analogy one, from Encourage the newcomers? HLHJ (talk) 23:39, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

"fixed typo"
I see so many of these or with similar edit summaries that are stealth vandals trying to hide under the radar. Typically they are a single-edit account or IP. Would there be a way to flag anything by a 1-edit account that contains the word "fixed" in the edit summary? Example. Example. -- Green  C  01:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * As well as people hiding vandalism, it is also used by people who are just fixing typos, and people who don't know what to say. So anyway, what we have is, for people using the app, tags and filter . For others, filter {{{efl|970}}. To get tags going for the latter filter, one could ping or post about this at the edit filter noticeboard. -- zzuuzz (talk) 03:38, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I often use typo as an edit summary, sometimes I'm more specific. I find with the "typo" edits that others do, the greater the number of bytes total change the more suspicious one should be, by the time fixing a typo adds or removes several hundred bytes it is well worth being suspicious. As a rule of thumb, if an IP or a newbie uses typo as an edit summary, the number of bytes changed is also the percentage chance of the edit being vandalism.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  19:08, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah I think it's a combination of "typo" in the edit summary, and an editing history of exactly 1 article. As in the above examples by Sowaybackinthemine and BigMacOneThousand. This is a very specific and unusual pattern yet one I see frequently. It is meant, of course, to make the person untraceable and unblockable. --  Green  C  00:01, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * That would exclude the many dynamic IPs who genuinely fix the odd typo with the edit summary "typo". HLHJ (talk) 23:42, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Keep Calm and Click Edit" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Keep Calm and Click Edit. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Bsherr (talk) 17:07, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Integrating new very simple page for beginners
I recently noticed that there is no extremely simple page targeted at someone who may never have edited Wikipedia before but comes across some vandalism and wants to revert it. WP: Cleaning up vandalism, which has come closest to fulfilling the role, is way too big/complex to be easily usable: for instance, it lists an absurd 20 different tools for monitoring vandalism, rather than just pointing to the best one. Conversely, the "for beginners" section here doesn't explain quite enough—for instance, it assumes that someone knows how to navigate Wikipedia's page histories, which is second nature to us but one of the least user-friendly parts of the project for someone who's never seen it before.

I wrote a new page, Help: Simple guide to vandalism cleanup, to help address these issues. It's much shorter than a typical sprawling help page, and the core of it is a very simple series of steps explaining how to revert. I'd like to propose that we take out the "for beginners" section here (which newcomers have no easy way to find anyways; it's not even in the ToC) and replace it with a notice at the top just under Policy like this:

Does that sound alright to everyone? Cheers, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 06:26, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You want to add an orange banner to the top of this policy page or you mean an edit notice? Why not link the new page as a section link under "Handling" or "How to respond to vandalism" as we do with all our how-to pages? Not sure there is a place for non-informative banners on policy pages.-- Moxy 🍁
 * It appears orange here because it's the talk namespace, but it'll be the normal gray if added to the page, similar to how the similar notice at the top of WP:About looks. And the alternative would be to place it as a hatnote similar to what we do for WP:PSCOI at the top of WP:COI, but this page already has a lot of those (even after I just cleaned some up), and I think new editors are likely to miss it unless it's a little more prominent than that. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:42, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Novel idea but not sure banners just for links to help pages will go over well on policy pages (we already have hatenote spam problems) Banner blindness.....that said perhaps it is best as a hatenote or  try slipping it into the nutshell or as stated above a normal link.-- Moxy 🍁
 * I'd be fine with a Template:For hatnote for this purpose. --Bsherr (talk) 03:19, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to remove IP addresses from anonymous editors
There is currently a draft proposal at Meta wiki to remove IP addresses of anonymous editors, your comments would be welcome at the talk page. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:46, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, that has about the ratio of support to oppose that I'd expect from such a proposal. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:03, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's going ahead regardless, apparently from this this is an order from the legal department of the WikiMedia Foundation. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Redirect vandalism section
In the section Vandalism, I have added the redirect vandalism section. This is because making abusive edits isn't the only Wikipedia vandalism. There are some redirect-vandalism pages. Most redirect pages are usually useful and constructive. Redirect vandalism is also not allowed on Wikipedia, especially redirect to non-existent pages, which is applied with WP:G8. Seventyfiveyears (talk) 17:56, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Good addition. As seen here, NinjaRobotPirate and I can attest to that. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 18:39, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Can you explain what you mean by the sentence about G8? It doesn't make sense as written. Dan Bloch (talk) 01:16, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Can you please explain what you mean by "Pages that redirect to non-existent pages are also applied with G8"? Dan Bloch (talk) 03:28, 16 October 2020 (UTC)


 * This basically means that pages that are dependent on non-existent or deleted pages meet the Criteria for Speedy Deletion. G8 applies to any pages dependent on non-existent or deleted pages, such as talk pages of non-existent or deleted pages. Read G8 for more information. Seventyfiveyears (talk) 11:50, 16 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Right, but I still don't understand that sentence. Are you saying that if the redirect vandalism creates a page, then G8 applies to it?  Or that for people who are already familiar with G8, redirect vandalism is similar?  Or something different? Dan Bloch (talk) 18:26, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * For example, changing redirects from the current page to non-existent pages are applied with G8. However, if the redirect page was changed to non-existent page from the current page is sometimes reverted. If the redirect page is chosen to target to a deleted or non-existent page but could also mean another page, it is sometimes changed to its similar page. Otherwise, the redirect pages are speedy deleted. Seventyfiveyears (talk) 18:46, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

In the same section, I also added a section called "Revert vandalism". Bascially, if someone reverts an edit to the latest revision that's nonsense, promotional, personal attacks or harrassment, I think that would also count as vandalism, and that any type of vandalism, including the one I added, must be reverted to a constructive one. I one time saw that a user reverted to a revision that was promotional, so I think that would be vandalism also.  Seventyfiveyears (talk) 14:41, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Question about vandalism
Would it be vandalism if I said on a article that a "this place is a nice place?" I am only just wondering. I am not going to do it. Cwater1 (talk) 02:19, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Could be Vandalism. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:49, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 March 2021
{


 * Incomplete-document.svg Oops! Your request was left blank. Unfortunately, no information was passed through to our editors. Please resubmit this edit request in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. If this request was submitted in error, you may ignore this message. —  TG HL ↗  (talk) 22:11, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there a point to specifying 'subtle' vandalism?
I mean vandalism's vandalism, isn't it? As opposed to the other types, that sounds kind of interpretive. TheKing&#39;sMongrelSon (talk) 19:03, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is. Cupcake547Let's chat! 22:37, 7 April 2021 (UTC).

Rates of vandalism
Hello! Today I got to try out the much-touted Twinkle. I got to zap some bits of vandalism. Then I wondered: Is there a record of the amount of vandalism that gets reverted? I want to see the amount and see if it's gone up or down over the years. I thought that'd be interesting. Abillionradios (talk) 11:55, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Good question. You could start by looking at Counter-Vandalism Unit/Vandalism studies. --Bsherr (talk) 22:33, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Where to report an incidence of vandalism
I have found a significant instance of vandalism that remained undetected for six months. As it is an article designated "vital" I thought those interested in vandalism might find it an interesting example. It relates to what in the U.S. is a big topic, those who support and those who oppose the former American Confederacy. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see Lost Cause of the Confederacy.) It's at Talk:Battle of Fort Pillow. If there is some place where such an incident should be posted I'd appreciate the link. deisenbe (talk) 09:29, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Page Replacement
We need a new entry of a form of vandalism. Below is the text I prepared.

Copying the content of one page, then replacing all content of an unrelated page with the copied content, effectively making the pages identical. [|Even this page was a victim of this exact form of vandalism.]

The Epicness9000 (talk) 08:28, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks but there is no need to document every bad thing that might be done. Vandalism is pretty obvious and I'm not sure that it's helpful to explain any of its various forms. Johnuniq (talk) 09:57, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Johnuniq per WP:BEANS. Schazjmd   (talk)  15:44, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Racist term
It would be nice if a better term could be used. Vandals are a race of people known through various centuries due to their encounters with the Roman Empire, when the Roman Empire ended their country, the Vandal people dispersed into the populations of Europe, so modern Europeans will have Vandal DNA or be related to people with the DNA. We have a very descriptive English language, it only takes seconds to think of alternatives, such as 'damage', 'malicious damage', 'sabotage' 'wiki-damage' etc. Middle More Rider (talk) 03:14, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Er, no. Vandalism is the normal English-language term for this behaviour and almost nobody considers it to be offensive.  Hut 8.5  08:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Apart from potentially millions of people who study history and are aware. Same as people don't just use the Latin word for 'black' and say "tough luck" to black people who find the word offensive. It's about the principle of using a person's ethnicity, whoever they are, to mean something bad. Nor should a person's ethnicity be used to mean good either, that would be verging onto racial superiority. Middle More Rider (talk) 11:33, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * That's not remotely comparable. The word you referred to is universally considered offensive by English speakers and is certainly not the most common word used to describe black people. There are also millions of black people today who would be offended by it. The Vandals largely ceased to exist after the Vandalic War in the 6th century, and the word "vandalism" wasn't even coined until 1200 years afterwards. If this request is serious and not just trolling then there are much better ways to spend your time than taking umbrage on behalf of long-dead ethnic groups.  Hut 8.5  12:15, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

This is a talk page and that's my opinion. And having good, consistant, anti-racist principles is NOT trolling, that suggestion at least rude. Middle More Rider (talk) 13:37, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Except that the Vandals were not BIPOC by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, they had completely disappeared as a discernible ethnic group more than a thousand years before the current systems of structural and institutional racism came into being (influenced by the early modern Spanish concept of limpieza de sangre, colonialisation and slavery in the European colonies in the Americas, scholars like Lord Kames, White, Jefferson and de Gobineau, see Scientific racism). This is patent trolling, distraction and WP:POINTy. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:52, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

They were an indigenous tribe of Europe, one of many who were wiped out people, culture and religion. Referring to indigenous Europeans as barbarians and turning the name of a tribe into a crime of destruction ... It really isn't that much different than white Americans referring to native Americans from a few hundred years ago as savages. In other words it is racist and wrong. Just because it is from an earlier era before the more recent forms of chattel slavery doesn't mean it wasn't wrong. You say there are no more vandals left so who cares...would you say the same thing if the name of extinct native American tribe was disparaged in such a way? It also WAS colonialism - what do you think the Romans and the Huns were doing that was different than what later Europeans (and Asians) did? They expanded, conquered, spread their culture and wiped out those around them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.207.171.154 (talk) 21:53, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism
What is Vandalism DeVriesmi (talk) 17:51, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * do... you need a definition? cause im pretty sure the article goes over that. do you need an example? do you need the definition of the english word vandalism(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vandalism)? is this a joke and i missed the point? its most likely the last one -a really self-degrading name(speak of the devil)- 16:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * You should at least read the article before coming here. DiegoonusRHF (talk) 18:49, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Addition to filter?
Can we create a vandalism filter that looks for the change of any other content to "Ben Dover"? -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  15:14, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you would request this at WP:EFR ("edit filter/requested"). Regards, Dan Bloch (talk) 21:53, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

This is the sort of page that makes me less inclined to fix vandalism, and more inclined to quit Wikipedia
An anonymous IP Address in Aberdeen, Scotland, has recently made 2 edits in total (see here), which, taken together, constitute self-evident intentional vandalism: they basically change a sourced sentence saying Liz Truss's new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is married with 2 kids, to a falsely-sourced sentence saying he is a lifelong supporter of Glentoran, which anybody familiar with Northern Ireland would understand as a way of implying that he is biased in favour of Protestants/Unionists/Loyalists and against Catholics/Nationalists/Republicans. Using 2 edits suggests an experienced and clever vandal (though possibly actually just a rather lucky one), because neither edit is quite such obvious vandalism when seen in isolation. I reverted the 2 edits, indicating in the 2 edit summaries that, taken together, they appeared to be vandalism. I then checked the IP's contributions, discovered they had nothing except 2 bits of vandalism, and decided to try to report the matter, and thus, after first going to Vandalism-only_account, I eventually ending up here.

What I discover here is that there is no proper place to report the matter, and instead I am expected to now warn the IP address to refrain from vandalism, and my failure to do so will instead seemingly now make me liable to receive some kind of warning (or other such undesirable) template myself (seemingly contrary to at least the spirit of WP:NOTCOMPULSORY) - or at least that is what comes across as implied by the current rather bossy wording of the page (speaking of my 'responsibility', etc); the wording of the template itself does not seem problematic, at least on first reading. And, incidentally, the bossy section seemingly contradicts what is said at the top of this Talk Page, which simply says to revert the vandalism, and makes no mention of a 'responsibility' to post warnings to vandals.

I am just an ordinary user, not an admin, and therefore I do not have the tools that an admin has to protect themselves against possible retaliation by a troll (or organised trolls, as is always possible, but perhaps especially possible with apparent political/tribal vandalism, such as in this case). For me to give a warning to such a vandal (which incidentally would almost certainly be pointless as they almost certainly know it's vandalism, and may also never see the warning anyway) would further expose me to the risk of such retaliation, with no tools to defend myself, and this is over and above the risk I now belatedly realize I may have already taken by simply reverting the vandalism. Of course the risk may well be low, but I don't know that, and even if it is low I don't really see why I should bother taking the risk at all, now or in the future, especially when the risk seems almost certainly pointless (at least in this case,and perhaps also in many other cases), and when Wikipedia seems so unconcerned about this problem from the perspective of me and other ordinary users.

As a result I now rather regret even having bothered to revert in the first place, and will quite likely be much less inclined to revert vandalism in future, as well as rather more inclined to instead quit Wikipedia through increased disillusion at the kind of place it appears to be (a look at my declining edit counts in recent years would indicate that I am already pretty disillusioned anyway, probably like many other editors,and the last thing Wikipedia needs is to further increase such disillusion). And it seems quite possible that I am not the only ordinary editor to have similar previous or future experiences and/or reactions.

I do not know precisely how to fix this problem, but quite likely it can be significantly reduced by offering a place (and mentioning it on this page) where such vandalism can be reported for possible action (even if it's just issuing warnings) by admins or by any other editors who are not too bothered by the risk of retaliation by (individual or organised) vandals/trolls. And rewording the bossy section about the user's 'responsibility' to make it sound less bossy (and more in line with what is said at the top of this Talk Page) would perhaps also help.

Regards, Tlhslobus (talk) 03:50, 7 September 2022 (UTC)


 * As someone who has been wikihounded in the past, and temporarily quit because of it, I totally understand your reluctance to open yourself up to on-wiki harassment. I have found several admins who've been helpful to me in similar situations in the past. I would think many admins would be willing to revert such vandalism if you were to email them with an explanation and a diff of the edits in question, especially one with whom you may have a cordial relationship. In some cases, especially edits to BLP articles, the edit may even need to be suppressed/oversighted. I don't think that's the case here, but an Irish or British admin who better understands the context may disagree. BilCat (talk) 05:09, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 October 2022
need to fix typo change x to y Bensonvin (talk) 18:17, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * x to y i meant Bensonvin (talk) 18:17, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. MadGuy7023 (talk) 18:20, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Articles self-conflicts
I had made two past edits concerning article self-conflict to this page, modifying one of the bullet points of the "How to Spot Vandalism" section to do this. Seeing as they were both reverted, I don't want to cause a multi-man edit war, so I want to discuss my edit here before starting. Here's the new bullet point I intend to add:


 * Often, vandalism is small-scale within articles, with vandals rarely "correcting" other parts of the article to "agree" with their edits. The two main reasons are vandals either trying to do damage as fast as possible or avoiding detection as discussed above. This frequently causes internal conflicts in the article, with one part of the page stating information but the rest of the page stating the opposite. In short, if an article can't seem to agree with itself, it has most likely been vandalized.

Thanks in advance! The Epicness9000 (talk) 00:36, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I think it's too far down in the weeds for a general discussion of vandalism, and there are plenty of good-faith edits that introduce conflicting information without being vandalism.  Acroterion   (talk)   00:43, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Adding type of vandalism
Whilst I could BOLDLY add this in, I would like some input here. I wish to add a new section that informs about the existence of "derp vandals" or editors who abuse recent changes. This is a particular type of vandalism which is quite disruptive, and includes giving wildly inappropriate level4im warnings. The difference between a derp vandal and a new user who doesn't know what RC patrol is is quite simple, one is doing it deliberately to harm the encyclopedia, the other is not. Telling the difference is a bit trickier. Basically, a derp vandal will exclusively use level4 or level4im templates (because biting new users hurts Wikipedia), and reverts at random, or reverts everything. They tend to know the syntax well enough to use the templates correctly, and often appear to be using some sort of automated or semi-automated tool, which results in a similar edit summary pattern.

The section I want to add to the page is this:

Recent changes abuse
Abusing recent changes by reverting at random, or simply reverting all edits, including deliberately reverting constructive and good faith edits. Recent changes abuse often includes giving level 4im warnings exclusively, including for constructive edits. This type of vandalism is also known as "derp vandalism".

Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 03:01, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * No, vandalism is doing stupid stuff with content. People invent new ways to be disruptive all the time and giving them ideas is not helpful. If you see someone doing anything inappropriate, such as biting new users, try to engage with them on their talk and explain why it is undesirable. If they persist, raise the issue at WP:ANI. We don't need a written rule to cover every bad action. Also, some level4 or level4im warnings are appropriate. Johnuniq (talk) 04:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @Johnuniq: This stems from a discussion on my talkpage with . He raised the issue that admins might not be particularly familiar with this type of vandalism, due to the similarity it has in appearance to legitimate RC patrol. This is supposed to educate admins and RC patrollers on what to look out for.
 * No, vandalism is doing stupid stuff with content: This absolutely falls under the definition of WP:VAND as it is "editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose". It does this by removing good edits and driving off newcomers. It is also deliberate, as evidenced by the often automated or semi-automated way that this is done.
 * I think that you misunderstand why I am requesting this addition. This is not about an occasional misuse of the level4 and level4im templates, or about incorrectly reverting an edit. This is about indiscriminately reverting edits and leaving level4im warnings for constructive edits en masse. This is the sort of thing that, if a block was requested at ANI, the requesting editor would likely be told "just take it to AIV next time".
 * We don't need a written rule to cover every bad action: This isn't supposed to be a rule, it is just a documentation of a form of vandalism.
 * There are at least two, (if not more) edit filters designed to catch this sort of thing. There is also more than just one editor who does it. It is not just an isolated incident.
 * Here are some examples of a "derp vandal", some only show a few edits, due to proxy switching, and note that they are not all the same person, there are at least 3 distinct users behind these:
 * (Edits from 3 and 4 December)
 * Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 05:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * That's disruptive editing (WP:DE). I just blocked the first of those (Special:Contributions/2404:c0::/32) and the remainder seem to have already been blocked. It may be one person or one person and some copycats, who cares. It's best to apply WP:BEANS and WP:DENY and block on sight. I'm busy off-wiki and may not respond quickly but if you leave any new occurrences on my talk or ping me to a discussion I'll take action. If the issue is larger than such a makeshift approach can handle, it should be raised at WP:AN to get community input about the best approach. Johnuniq (talk) 05:55, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 05:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * That's disruptive editing (WP:DE). I just blocked the first of those (Special:Contributions/2404:c0::/32) and the remainder seem to have already been blocked. It may be one person or one person and some copycats, who cares. It's best to apply WP:BEANS and WP:DENY and block on sight. I'm busy off-wiki and may not respond quickly but if you leave any new occurrences on my talk or ping me to a discussion I'll take action. If the issue is larger than such a makeshift approach can handle, it should be raised at WP:AN to get community input about the best approach. Johnuniq (talk) 05:55, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Mako001 (C) (T)  🇺🇦 05:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * That's disruptive editing (WP:DE). I just blocked the first of those (Special:Contributions/2404:c0::/32) and the remainder seem to have already been blocked. It may be one person or one person and some copycats, who cares. It's best to apply WP:BEANS and WP:DENY and block on sight. I'm busy off-wiki and may not respond quickly but if you leave any new occurrences on my talk or ping me to a discussion I'll take action. If the issue is larger than such a makeshift approach can handle, it should be raised at WP:AN to get community input about the best approach. Johnuniq (talk) 05:55, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

WP:VAN
Should we add WP:VAN as a shortcut? MusiBedrock (talk) 09:36, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I believe what is being asked is should the shortcut be added to list of shortcuts at the top of the project page, included in Template:Policy.
 * (i.e. change  to  )
 * To produce this:


 * Is that right User:MusiBedrock? Template:Policy states To include up to five shortcuts, pass parameters... so it would need to replace one already on the list?
 * And I just now realized in my example it kicked off WP:VNDL:) -- DB 1729 talk 17:26, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Not yet. Well, you need to increase the limit for the number of shortcuts, e.g. increasing the limit to include up to seven shortcuts, pass parameters, etc. MusiBedrock (talk) 02:03, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Do we really need to list that many shortcuts in the first place? The others are just as memorable, so adding "VAN" seems superfluous, especially since we have "VAND" already. BilCat (talk) 02:08, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * No, too similar shortcut. "VAND" is far more useful. MusiBedrock (talk) 01:29, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Can someone help report 49.183.30.114?
Hi,

can someone help me report 49.183.30.114, for the following vandalism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Snorlax&oldid=1089124024

Its, in my opinion, probo a lv.3-4

thanks,

&#61;&#123;δ θ η μ τ π&#125;&#61; (talk) 19:16, 25 January 2023 (UTC)


 * That was last May, so no. Dan Bloch (talk) 19:37, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Another type of vandalism: duplicating the article text?
In the few days of total time that I did recent changes patrolling for, another common way I see people vandalise articles now, is they copy-and-paste the article text, within the article, duplicating/repeating the information. At a first glance it looks constructive and good-faith, as the addition makes sense and sounds encyclopedic. You never realise it's unconstructive until you read through the entire article and find that the same paragraphs, sentences etc have been repeated twice or more.

Here is a good recent example of this. The vandal even copied the article text in the edit summaries to make it look less like vandalism.

So far I don't see anything on the "types of vandalism" section that goes over about this. Maybe it falls a little bit into subtle vandalism?

I feel like this is worth mentioning in the info page (the types section) as it is probably something people are less likely to notice due to the reasons mentioned in first sentence above. AP 499D25 (talk) 08:35, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

The problem with this definition
According to this page, vandalism is defined as "editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia, in a variety of languages, presenting the sum of all human knowledge.

However, many/most editors on Wikipedia do not intent to present the sum of all human knowledge. If they did, there would be no need for notability guidelines and most deletion processes. Under the current definition, most editors who nominate an article for deletion are vandals, because they don't think Wikipedia should encompass "all human knowledge". But these editors are clearly not vandals, so the definition of vandalism should be restated. Kk.urban (talk) 01:41, 6 August 2023 (UTC)


 * This seems like trying to indirectly raise a point that would be better off raised on the pages for the notability and/or deletion-related policies you disagree with. It's tangential at best to the definition of vandalism. Gnomingstuff (talk) 11:05, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not suggesting that notability policies should be changed. I don't think that Wikipedia SHOULD present the sum of all human knowledge. I'm suggesting that the definition of vandalism should be changed to reflect how it is actually used. Kk.urban (talk) 17:18, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with Kk.urban in that the language is too encompassing. I think it suffices to say, "editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia". Because this is the English Wikipedia and adding articles or content in other languages is mostly not how things work.
 * In addition, not all human knowledge is contained in Wikipedia nor it is sought, just part of it. I mean saying we want all human knowledge sounds ideal and very lofty but it is not current practice. Per WP:NOTEVERYTHING, "Information should not be included in this encyclopedia solely because it is true or useful. A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject." Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 03:10, 16 September 2023 (UTC)