Wikipedia:Vandalism
 | This page documents an English Wikipedia policy. It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Intentionally making abusive edits to Wikipedia will result in blocks or bans. |
On Wikipedia, vandalism has a very specific meaning: 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.
The malicious removal of encyclopedic content, or the changing of such content beyond all recognition, without any regard to our core content policies of neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), verifiability and no original research, is a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia. There are, of course, more juvenile forms of vandalism, such as adding irrelevant obscenities or crude humor to a page, illegitimately blanking pages, and inserting obvious nonsense into a page. Abusive creation or usage of user accounts and temporary accounts may also constitute vandalism.
Vandalism is prohibited. While editors are encouraged to warn and educate vandals, warnings are by no means a prerequisite for blocking a vandal (although administrators usually block only when multiple warnings have been issued).
Any good faith effort to improve the encyclopedia is not vandalism, even if misguided, willfully against consensus, or disruptive. For example, edit warring over how exactly to present encyclopedic content is not vandalism. Careful consideration may be required to differentiate between edits that are beneficial, edits that are detrimental but well-intentioned, and edits that are vandalism. If it is clear that an editor is intending to improve Wikipedia, their edits are not vandalism, even if they violate some core policy of Wikipedia. Mislabeling good faith edits "vandalism" can be harmful, as it makes users less likely to respond to corrective advice or to engage collaboratively during a disagreement. For that reason, avoid using the term "vandalism" unless it is clear the user means to harm Wikipedia; this is even true when warning a user with a user warning template. Choose the template that most closely matches the behavior you are trying to correct.
Types of vandalism
Vandalism on Wikipedia usually falls into one or more of these categories:
Abuse of tags
- Bad faith placing of non-content tags such as {{afd}}, {{db}}, {{sprotected}}, or other tags on pages that do not meet such criteria
- This includes baseless removal of {{policy}} and related tags.
Avoidant vandalism
- Removing {{afd}}, {{copyvio}} and other related tags in order to conceal deletion candidates or avert deletion of such content
However, this is often mistakenly done by new users who are unfamiliar with AfD procedures and such users should be given the benefit of the doubt and pointed to the proper page to discuss the issue.
Edit summary vandalism
- Making offensive edit summaries in an attempt to leave a mark that cannot be easily expunged from the record
- Often combined with malicious account creation
To elaborate, edit summaries cannot simply be "reverted" and require administrative action if they have to be removed from a page's history.
Hidden vandalism
- Any form of vandalism that makes use of embedded text, which is not visible to the final rendering of the article but visible during editing
- This includes link vandalism, or placing malicious, offensive, or otherwise disruptive or irrelevant messages or spam in hidden comments for editors to see.
Illegitimate blanking
- Removing encyclopedic content without any reason, or replacing such content with nonsense
Content removal is not considered to be vandalism when the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary.
Blanking that could be legitimate includes blanking all or part of a biography of a living person. Wikipedia is especially concerned about providing accurate and unbiased information on the living; blanking may be an effort to remove inaccurate or biased material. Due to the possibility of unexplained good faith content removal, {{uw-test1}} or {{uw-delete1}}, as appropriate, should be used as initial warnings for content removals without more descriptive edit summaries.
Illegitimate page creation
- Creating new pages with the sole intent of malicious behavior
- It also includes personal attack pages (articles written to disparage the subject),