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{{tmbox
A vandal is a person who deliberately damages property, information etc. Vandalism is the act of damaging the property, information etc.
| type = content
| image = ]
| style = padding: 6px;
| textstyle = text-align: left;
| text = <div style="font-size: 14pt; text-align: center; line-height: 2em">'''This is <u>NOT</u> the page for reporting vandalism'''.</div>
This page is for discussion of the ''']''' page and its associated official policy.
* Report obvious vandals at ''']'''.
* Report any other incidents at the ''']'''.
* For common cases of vandalism, just ''']''' them.
}}
{{Policy talk}}
{{American English}}
{{Central|Category talk:Misplaced Pages vandalism}}
{{WikiProject banner shell|
{{Counter-Vandalism Unit}}
{{WikiProject Help |class=Project |importance=top}}
}}
{{Press
| author = Chris Matyszczyk
| date = 2013-05-02
| url = http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57582647-71/windows-8-wikipedia-page-vandalized/
| title = Windows 8 Misplaced Pages page vandalized
| org = ]
| archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/6GKWDVO4U
| archivedate = 2013-05-02
| accessdate = 2013-05-02
}}
{{archives|auto=yes|search=yes|bot=lowercase sigmabot II|age=180|index=/Archive index|
<br /><center>See also: ]</center>
}}
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== Vandalism? Promotion? ==
IP-addresses including
*
*
*
*
*
*
*likely many more in the same range
posted in late February many television series releases (like ) on pages like ] like they are notable events. It don’t seems notable?. But is it also vandalism or promotion? Or should it all be moved to pages like ] ] (]) 13:19, 13 March 2024 (UTC)


== Huh? == == should be protected ==
Does this read correctly?
'''If the vandal has been properly warned yet continues, do not report them at Misplaced Pages:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Admins can't block vandals as per the blocking policy.'''
I would have just changed it but it seems to read that way even in much much older versions of the article. What gives?
:That would be vandalism. I changed it. -]<small><sup>]</sup></small> 02:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


the page should be protected ] (]) 23:44, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
== Was this vandalism? ==
], including on the ], was recently editted to include a Christmas message/advert for a project. While the person that did it could claim the ] rule I think that the lack of discussion and repeated reversion could be seen as a kind of vandalism. Yes, it was quite appropriate but, at least in it's rather ugly form, it should not have been done. I can see both sides of the argument - anyone got any views? ] ] 14:36, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)


== I do not think that all humorous writing is vandalism, and this page could acknowledge that. ==
:It's not vandalism IMO, but it is against the 3RR ] | ] 01:11, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)


Considering that vandalism is done in bad faith, and does not need to be humorous. Vandals can attempt to destroy Misplaced Pages out of hate.
:I think the gesture was very nice, but I also think that they need to be told (gently) that breaking the 3RR is definitely frowned upon, and that we try to keep the templates to a minimum because there is not much real estate on the front page. I don't think it was vandalism. - ] 02:55, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Examples of humorous writing that is in good faith, but still disruptive, is when adding constructive material in an excessively humorous style, or inserting jokes that are meant to improve the fun of reading the article (and therefore helping it), but the jokes are out of place. Misplaced Pages is a serious wiki, after all. Sites like ] are examples of sites with a lot of humorous writing in good faith, to the point where humor is featured in encyclopedic material.
: No, I don't think it was vandalism. There probably is a grey area for vandalism (e.g. link-spam), but I don't think this falls into it. This is just a Misplaced Pages editor doing something that they ''thought'' was fine, but which others disagreed with. ] ] 11:32, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)


There are templates to warn people who are adding inappropriate humor into pages, and where such writing is not proven to be vandalism (therefore not making those templates be redundant to those for warning about vandalism), and they are ], ], ], ] and ].
I find that dates of birth and death are particularly vulnerable to sneaky vandalism.
:Definitely not vandalism. Just a disagreement, probably made more difficult by a language barrier (i.e. English not being GerardM's first language.) "Vandalism" should only refer to deliberate defacement. GerardM clearly thought he was being reasonable, although from his comments I couldn't quite understand his rationale. ] 07:24, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


How can this be acknowledged? Perhaps by mentioning something like this under "What is not vandalism" so that good-faith editors with too much humor can be seperated from those who want to damage this wiki, even if it can be hard to tell those two apart since humor happens to be common in vandalism. ] (]) 13:22, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


:Yes ] (]) 10:41, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
== ''Anyone'', Can Edit. Threats and Possibilities. ==


== images of vandalism for examples? ==
:There are many vague vandalism ]s of the endless possibilities of ] vandalism. One of such fears could be "What if suddenly Misplaced Pages is discovered by people who don't realize it is created for them also? What if for example, a random ] kid decides that it is funny to post an ] on a seemingly scholarly website? What is interesting about this sort of fear and possibility is that, for example, ''that'' ] would have the most to benefit from this site. Because what people underestimate is that EVERYONE has interests. Some people just don't realize they have the access to information to utilize them. In addition to the fact that person could realize they can have a voice and play an active role in editing biased statements about their ].


I propose adding images as examples of vandalism, such as this
::This seems like a worthless struggle to combat vandalism. The most obvious method to combat this barrage of idiotic behavior would be to require that a user be registered before he/she is allowed to edit a page. Why is this not implemented? Is it because of the simple changes that someone sees and wishes to fix, but they would be swayed not to do so by the 1 minute registration process? It seems absurd that there has been this constant struggle with these "vandals" when this option is there.
] ] (]) 06:45, 24 October 2024 (UTC)


:I have to look at too much of this already. I'll quit if any of you make me start looking at it in my free time. <span style="border-radius:2px;padding:3px;background:#1E816F">]<span style="color:#fff">&nbsp;‥&nbsp;</span>]</span> 06:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
----
:No, we don't draw attention to trolls here, see ]. Please find something constructive to do. ] (]) 07:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)


== Feedback requested about homoglyph vandalism ==
I think that it should be considered vandalism when someone eviscerates an article by deleting large quantities of factual, relevant reference material.] 19:14, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)


Hello. A discussion is taking place regarding this tricky form of vandalism. Your feedback would be appreciated at ]. Thanks, ] (]) 20:25, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
:Anyone looking at your edit history can see you're a controversial editor with an agenda, which is shown in articles such as ] and ]. ] 22:14, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

== Shortcut to this article ==

I created another shortcut: ]

==POV vandalism==
I disagree with the apparent blanket statement that POV edits are not vandalism. There are some cases - particularly where a user continues to restore POV rants that have repeatedly been deleted and go against clearly established consensus - where introduction of POV is indeed vandalism. --] ] 15:11, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)
:It's disruption, yes, but it isn't vandalism. I don't think we need to try and umbrella all parts of the blocking policy under the one term ''vandalism'' where they don't fit. ] 16:48, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

==Policy==
Is this page official policy? Should it have the <nowiki>{{policy}}</nowiki> template on it? ] ] 09:46, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

== Hoaxes ==

I see Hoaxes being described as vanadalism, and "Hoax from known vandal" as a reason for a speedy delete. But "Hoax" is not included in the list of types of vandalism. Should it be? ] 18:05, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

If it was meant to trick somebody on purpose, then yes. But if it is reporting a hoax (like debunking urban legends or the ] article, then it is acceptable. ] 17:26, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

:I moved the "Hoax" section up, to say it was a type of vandalism. This seems rather obvious, and I don't understand why it wasn't there from the beginning. If intentional misinformation placed in article space isn't vandalism, then little else could be. --] 20:53, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

== Is Deleting Sections of Talk Pages Vandalism? ==

There is an RfC currently in progress against a user who has, among other violations of Wikiquette, deleted other Wikipedians' comments from talk pages. The allegations against the user include vandalism because of the deletion of comments from talk pages. My question is: Is this considered vandalism?

In reading the definitions of vandalism, that appears to me to be a gray area of definition. I see that the blanking of pages, whether talk pages or articles, is vandalism. The blanking of sections from an article is not necessarily vandalism. It may be a bold (or reckless) edit.

It is clear enough that the deletion of posts by other users on talk pages is a serious breach of Wikiquette. It interferes with the function of the talk page to be a cumulative archive of comments. It has been my understanding that the only edits one could perform on material already in talk pages would be minor edits to one's own posts, e.g., to correct typos.

If it isn't vandalism, there should be another policy forbidding it. If it is vandalism, I would suggest that this official policy be modified slightly to include improper alteration of talk pages as a form of vandalism. ] 00:07, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

:I suppsoe obvious typo cleanup and correction of forrmating errors (to avoid brakign a numberd or bulleted list, for example) to others words might be ok. but changing the sense or context of others postings, much less deleteing them entirely, is IMO beyond the pale whether we call it vandalism or not. BTW I am even agaisnt ] when it involves changing the comments of others. that view does not have a clear consensus, however. ] 00:51, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

::I agree that previous personal attacks should not be deleted. If dispute resolution does not work, then the person posting the personal attacks can be a subject of an RfC, RfM, or even RfA. Deleting the attack interferes with the dispute resolution process.

I will not correct typos in the comment of others, by the way. That is not up to me. ] 01:39, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Twice now I've had people delete my comments from discussion sections of a page and after I point out that is vandalism they point to wiki policy and state its vandalism and they can remove other peoples comments all they like. As far as I am concerned deletion of peoples posts in discussion (and I am talking selective discussion, not removal of old information) is vandalism and I will always call people on it. ] 22:49, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

== Page moves ==
I've added this to the page: "However, Misplaced Pages now only allows users with 25 edits or above to make page moves". I wonder if it's exactly 25 edits, or is it 20 edits? Those who have fewer than 20/25 edits should post at ]. &mdash; ] (]) 00:53, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

: I'm quite a new user and my ninth and tenth edits was a page move. The page move in question did not work when I tried it before my sixth edit. -- ] 21:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

==Official policy vandalism==
I have added "Official policy vandalism" to the list of types of vandalism. It consists of deleting or altering portions of an official policy with which the vandal disagrees. A recent example is Dot-Six. ] 15:22, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

If somebody thinks that something is included to the official policy (i.e. agreeing to the policy), that should be considered as non-vandalism. Not to mention, new forms of vandalism on Misplaced Pages may be discovered. --] 20:18, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

What I was referring to was deleting paragraphs from official policies. Attempting to improve the wording of a policy is not vandalism. It should be done cautiously, but is not vandalism. Deleting paragraphs from a policy, or changing the meaning of the policy, should be considered a form of vandalism.

The statement that new forms of vandalism may be discovered and will have to be dealt with is true. ] 22:44, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

==Foreign language==
I don't think adding articles in foreign language should count as vandalism. It's more likely to be a newbie not realizing the different wikipedias, or realizing that there are other langs but thinking en: is THE only wikipedia. These usually are tagged <nowiki>{{notenglish}}</nowiki> and sent to ]. Usually a gentle warning and a point to the right place works better. On the other hand, 100% copy texts from other wikis, even after being asking not to would classify, but I htink that could be included into some other vand type. <] ]> 19:04, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

It should be a candidate for movement, not vandalism, since it is now obvious (from the Misplaced Pages front @ wikipedia.org) that there are many languages of Misplaced Pages over about 50K articles. ] 17:30, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

== NPOV tag ? ==

Why was an NPOV tag put on the vandalism article page? I will remove it if a statement is not added on this talk page as to what the neutrality dispute is. ] 23:47, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

:Apparently SuperDude115 put up the disputed POV tag because (as he/she wrote in the edit summary):

:"According to some edit wars I have noticed in the history, this will be tagged as 'disputed'."

:I have no clue what he/she is refering to. ] 18:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
::Most of the recent reverts I've seen have been to revert - gee gosh - vandalism. ] 23:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

:::I removed the NPOV tag. If anyone thinks that an NPOV tag is applicable, they should say why on this talk page. Perhaps someone was confused by the discussion of what is not vandalism. POV pushing is not vandalism, and should be dealt with via an NPOV tag and seeking consensus. However, this article makes it clear what vandalism is and is not. ] 23:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

== Addition ==

Subtantially changing other people's comments (and in particular, their votes on anything) is, to my knowledge, strongly frowned upon by the community as a whole, and can easily get the offender blocked. As such I thought it was best to add it here. ]]] 18:17, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

== A compromise ==

I enjoy wikipedia vandalism very much and have absolutely no intention of stopping whatsoever. However, I don't see why it should be only me taking pleasure from it, and thus I propose that you guys recommend articles that you would like me to vandalise, perhaps by sending me a message on my talk page. Perhaps there's a user you don't like? Don't worry, I'll sort them out...

Alternatively, I will have to continue random blanking, long, stupid articles, predjudiced statements, or (my personal favourite) page move vandalism. --] 21:22, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

:I have tried to reason with this potential vandal on his talk page, and hopefully he'll stop. ] ] ] 21:30, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

==Hoaxes==
If I understand this, hoaxes, although they may be removed through Afd, are not considered to be vandalism. I would recommend rethinking that. -] 01:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
:The manin reason is the danger of false positives. In a number of cases people have nominated articels for deletion as hoaxes in good faith, only to learn that they are accurate articles about unusual, improbable, or obscure topics. Had "Hoxes" been considered vandalism (and thus speedy deletable) many of these might well have been deleted before the info could be confirmed (and proper references added). Note that IMO '''admitted''' or '''confirmed''' hoaxes are vandalism, but one must be very careful in assesing the confirmation. Somtimes an article '''about''' a known hoax, clearly stating it to be a hoax, may be worth while. ] ] 17:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

== How to deal with vandalism from a shared PC eg in a school ==

Is there a process for dealing with an IP which is clearly being used by a range of people possibly sharing a PC resource somewhere. eg ] . The range of different types of attack show this is not a single person so warning messages are pointless. ] 13:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

:It looks as if it might be an open proxy of some sort. I understand that it is policy that an admin can block the address in that situation. A more helpful message to post might advise that anyone attempting to make good-faith edits from the address should create an account. ] 16:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

:: Many of these kinds of address are from PCs which are a shared resource in schools. This is supported by the obviously juvenile nature of many of the edits. It would be wrong to block a school computer from Misplaced Pages because of the behaviour of a few users. I suggest a list of known educational institution computers is maintained and anyone accessing Misplaced Pages from these always gets a special greeting message informing them of the sandbox and encouraging them to set up an account. In addition a list will allow these IPs to be monitored and vandalism quickly removed.] 08:50, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

==A Paradox==
The following text was posted on the ] article page (in place of the now-reverted content). It would have been a valid statement except that it was an example of what it condemned. -+] 16:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

=== '''A word about Vandalism''' ===
Vandalism is bad. Plz stop it everyone! How will u feel if somebody destroys a piece of work u hav spent a lot of time doing?

Plz stop.

Thank you.

Let us make the Internet a better place to live, play and work in.

== ] ==

Originally read, "Despite being severely disabled by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a form of Motor Neurone Disease, he is highly active in physics, writing, and public life."

I decided to settle a bet with my professor that wikipedia is not credible by creating an account and noting that he was also an avid bicyclist. Within 5 minutes a moderator came and corrected my error. Thank you for demonstrating that you are indeed credible

:You're.. welcome, I suppose. --] 20:57, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

::That was obviously a ]. Whether it was ] is a matter that can be argued. ] 22:26, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

:::I'll concede that it was both vandalism and a breaching experiment, accept punishment for it, and not do it again. --] 17:05, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

== Questionable Change to Definition ==

A change was just made to the definition of ] that seems overly expansive. Vandalism has previously defined as any unquestionably bad-faith change to the encyclopedia. The change made by {User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]] now appears to redefine vandalism as any change that compromises the content of the encylopedia, whether intended or unintended. I disagree. That change would appear to include reckless edits. I don't want to start an edit war, so I won't revert it immediately. However, can someone justify this change? It would appear to give admins the right to block anybody for any change with which they disagree. ] 17:07, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

*I agree. Although obvious junk we always call vandalism and don't try to look into the vandal's motives, in particualr chaildish tests may not really be bad faith edits. But since vandalism is a reason for blocking and for admin rollback, the def must not seem to include ill-advsied or controversial edits, and the current wording does exactly that. I will wait a bit for a suggested improvement before reverting, but this must not stand as it is at present, IMO ] ] 17:23, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
*Although ] is often bandied about carelessly, this change would seem to rather override it. I don't want to branded a vandal next time I muck up! -]<small><sup>]</sup></small> 17:36, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

*Yep, the change was questionable alright. I'm putting it back the way it was. Shouldn't such things be discussed ahead of time? ] ] 05:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

== Persistent reverting of MoS-edits ==

I've come across a problem, especially at pop-music articles, which seems to me to be low-level vandalism, but which isn't covered in the article's definitions (so far as I can see). Typically, I'll go through a set of articles, perhaps on the albums or singles of a certain performer, bringing it into line with the MoS (removing multiply duplicated links, removing irrelevant links (such as months, seasons, etc.), correcting links that need piping, changing hyphens to dashes, changing Christian names to surnames, correcting titles in line with the naming conventions, expanding abbreviations, and so on. The main editors then revert all my changes wholesale (often dubbing them "vandalism", and continue to revert them, no matter how often I explain what I'm doing, point them in the direction of the MoS and other documents, etc. The intervention of other editors usually does no good either; most of the editors want the articles to look like what they find in fanzines, the music press, etc., and are quite open about not giving a damn for Misplaced Pages policies and styles.

To make the mistakes in the first place clearly isn't vandalism; to revert my changes is also not vandalism (though it's irritating and poor editing), but to do it repeatedly ''is'' low-level vandalism, I think.

Any opinions on this? If there's general agreement with me, could something be added to the definitions? If there's general disagreement, could people suggest ways of dealing with this &mdash; it's a huge problem, and has caused many editors to give up in frustration (the most recent being ]). The editors involved are extremely stubborn, and often aggressive to the point of hysteria. Most experienced editors avoid this area of Misplaced Pages, and to be honest I don't blame them &mdash; but I don't feel that I can walk away now. --] (] 10:39, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

:I agree with ] that the edits to which he is referring are not vandalism, but also that there is a problem. It appears that the edits Mel is saying he makes fall into two classes. Some of the edits he refers to are simple cleanup of the wiki, such as the links and the piping. Some of them are stylistic edits, such as the title and the abbreviations. There is no excuse for reverting the cleanup. The question about the stylistic edits is whether the Manual of Style correctly reflects the Misplaced Pages consensus. What we have may be a case where the MoS is inconsistent with the consensus of the main editors. One possibility would be to revise the MoS to reflect consensus. Another possibility would be to revise the definition of vandalism to state that it includes reversion of MoS edits.

:I do have a weird suggestion for Mel. If he wants to clean up the wiki, he should refrain from making any MoS edits at the same time. That way, there is less likelihood that the cleanup will be reverted.

:If there is a good reason why the Misplaced Pages MoS is different from the style used in fanzines and in the music press, then perhaps there can be a list of diffs between music press style and MoS style and of explanations why MoS is right. Such a list would in any case be useful as a basis of discussion of whether the MoS style is more nearly correct than the music press style. ] 14:17, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

::I definitely do not believe that edits contrary to the Manual of Style qualify as vandalism. Frankly, I also feel that Mel needs to, instead of reverting the other party's edit with the admin rollback tool, leave comments on the article talk and user talk pages explaining his edits in detail and encouraging the other editor to understand why his reversion was inappropriate. (For example, on ], Mel reverted ] at least twice before leaving any comment on the user's page, and there was no comment on the article talk page at all until third parties interceded. This is unacceptable; comments should have been left in at least one and preferably both places after the '''first''' reversion.) MoS edits are not so critical that they can't wait three days for a local consensus to build. And I agree with ] that it's wise to split cleanup and MoS edits into separate edits.

I must admit that my previous experience with this editor (concerning his unexplained blanking of another User and Talk page), in which he simply ignored and deleted my comments on his Talk page, and his edit-summary descriptions of my editing in accordance with the MoS as "vandalism", probably influenced my attitude to his actions. If it hadn't been for that, I'd have explained earlier. Note, though, that when my edits ''were'' carefully explained to him, it had no effect whatsoever on his behaviour.

Note also that my question, though prompted by this set of articles, is much wider, and doesn't hang on what happened with BGC. To repeat: I'm not saying that "edits contrary to the Manual of Style qualify as vandalism", but that persistent reverting of edits that bring an article in line with the MoS and with Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines, after those edits have been explained, should count as low-level vandalism. If a certain editor or group of editors disagree with the MoS, then it's of course open to them to propose that it be changed &mdash; but until then, surely, the MoS should be followed, and those bringing articles into line with it shouldn't be harrassed and resisted.

Incidentally, one or two other editors have mentioned the use of rollback. I can't find any account of restrictions on its use (and no-one else has been able to help). I take it that there are two main problems with it: first, it labels the edit as minor, and secondly, it generates an edit summary that merely says who was reverted, and back to whom. Edits that only change style ''are'' minor, and once the edits have been explained there's nothing more to be said in the edit summary. I'm not sure, then, what the objection is to the use of rollback in this sort of case. --] (] 16:02, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

:Many of us rely on admin rollback being used '''only''' to roll back vandalism. The use of rollback to revert content changes which are not vandalism (especially, content disputes) is '''strongly''' discouraged (it should, in fact, be prohibited). Admins who use it for anything other than overt vandalism make trouble for recent change patrollers, especially those who use CDVF. It is generally known throughout the community that the rollback-style edit summary indicates admin rollback of vandalism and identifies the reverted editor as a vandal. The rest of us trust that our fellow admins will not misuse it. Your persistent use of it to roll back changes which are not vandalism (breaching this trust) has resulted in you being generally known as a "nontrusted admin", at least in this respect. You might want to consider whether this is a course of action on which you wish to continue. ] 17:28, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

::Again, could you point me to anywhere that this strong discouragement is expressed? I know of only a couple of people who have mentioned the rollback to me, and when I asked for a source for their objections they dropped the issue. I'm not sure what effect the claim that I'm "generally known as a 'nontrusted admin'" is supposed to have on me; I'm afraid that, without further evidence, it lowers my respect for you, as does the inability to distinguish between style and content. --] (] 22:00, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

:This really isn't the place to discuss this particular incident between you and BGC, so I will try to refrain from doings so as much as possible. However, while such a situation as continued reverting ''may'' not be appropriate user conduct, it still does not qualify as vandalism. I think that terming it as such would be inappropriate.
:This is a content dispute. Neither one of you is inherently right as to which version belongs in the article, even if your edits ''may'' be in line with the MoS. Let me note that both of you have continually reverted '''each other''' across many articles. While I agree that ] hasn't worked very hard to settle this dispute, he has responded to comments of yours left on his talk page, and has responded to your comments left in several other places.
:Terming this as vandalism would have far reaching implications. One of the implications is that it would allow you (and others) advantage in a '''''content dispute''''', as you would be allowed to revert more than three times and he would not. If he were to continue past three reverts, he would be subject to a block.
:If you have a problem with these articles, please follow the dispute resolution process. If you have an issue with BGC or another user's conduct, you may want to consider fililng an RfC. However, we have drawn a distinct line as to what constitutes vandalism, for good reason. Although, I am curious how you propose we should word the addition to the definition of vandalism. -- ] ], ] 18:09, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

::] clearly distinguishes between content and style; the edits concerned fall under style, ''not'' content. Nothing that I have said concerns content, and I'm puzzled as to why you think that it does.
::I should offer my apologies to editors concerned with this page; I intended to discuss the issue of the definition of vandalism, and the peculiar posse of aggressive editors have instead spilt their rants onto this page, below. I've pointed in each case to the places to look for swift refutations of their claims, but I'll not engage in any sort of dispute with them here. --] (] 22:00, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I've had my share of problems with Mel, though it wasn't about music articles. The problem with Mel is that he treats the work of other people with maximum disrespect. He makes you feel like a dumbass. If one makes a few errors, or if their language skill doesn't live up to his standards, he will not hessitate in saying that your English is bad. Another user, who was Asian, and whose English wasn't very fluently, was constantly insulted by Mel to the point that he stopped editing (see my talk-page).

Mel even rolled back my own talk-page. To be honest, he only did it once and I got over it; but what still bothers me is the way he treated my article on ]. Again, if I have to be honest, I will admit that he fixed a few things - a few things which would have taken me more time to fix. However, I don't agree with his edits on the Suleyman dispute and I also don't agree with him on the Danube argument (see my talk-page). When Mel cannot revert the articles (because of the third-revert rule), he will bring back-up. That back-up reverted the Vaslui article and my user-page.

Mel also managed to upset Bryan Adams. Yes, the artist himself. His assistant tried to fix a few things, only to have her edits reverted - over and over again. She tried to explain that she's Bryan's assistant and she tried to prove it by posting the email to the official site. I emailed her and, true enough, she confirmed her identity to me. Mel refused to verify her claims and he persisted on asking for sources. She is his assistant and she proved it quite clearly! The email was authentic! She is the ultimate axiom when it comes to factual accuracy on Bryan Adams! (see the discussion talk-page)

Mel does contribute to Wiki, but he also works against it and its users. All people, of all backgrounds and education skills, should feel welcome in contributing to this 💕. I'm more cautious now. Since our conflict started, my number of edits have dropped, and since then, I have only written one stub article. My activity used to be higher. I asked other people for assistance, but only those who had problems with Mel symphatized with me. True enough, I lost my temper and I insulted Mel. I still think he deserved it. --] 20:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

:A quick look at Anittas' Talk page (the History, as he deleted all my initial comments as soon as I made them), and the History of the main article in question, will quickly expose this peculiar rewriting of history. As for the Bryan Adams incident... check ] and the page of the person involved to see how this more than distorts the truth. --] (] 22:00, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I asked you to leave me alone, but you kept following me around. I reverted my own talk-page one or two times. I believe I have that right. The rest of your insults are still there, as are mine. What things distort the truth about the Bryan Adams incident? Are you saying that I'm manipulating the truth or that the person in question is not Bryan's assistant? I encourage everyone to go there and see for them selves. Click on 'history', if you will, and have everything checked up. Seriously, tho: how does it feel to upset a celebrity? In a rather bizzare way, I'm jealous. :D --] 22:40, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

:Mel also insulted ] to the point where DrippingInk ended up leaving Misplaced Pages. Due to DI being new to the website at the time, he thought article headers required proper English: for example, in ]'s article: "Personal Life and Trivia". However, Mel criticised him and told him that the edits he had made were inaccurate. Next, DrippingInk read the guidelines of Misplaced Pages and then told Mel that he now understood the Misplaced Pages policy. However, Mel insulted him by saying, "I now realize that English is not your first language." A few months later, DrippingInk left the site, to what was claimed as "being fed up, sick and tired of Mel Etitis, and never being able to add information without being attacked". If you would like this email, which was sent to me, then just ask for it. ] 21:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

::And another curious bit of revisionism. Again, as the History (and admin ]) will attest, after a very stormy time, during which he also reverted all my edits, I settled issues with DrippingInk, and we managed to edit very amicably. The arrival on the scene of other belligerents briefly set him off again, but temporarily, I think. --] (] 22:00, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I got here via a link from the Village pump. Aren't we talking about whether or not edits contrary to the Manual of Style are vandalism, not the actions of one particular admin? Let's get back on track people.

I think that because style changes can be both good faith and mixed with content edits, we should not extend the definition of vandalism to extend to style violations. There's a sort of de facto standard that flagrant style violations are vandalism: if I were to take the first sentence of an article, and make the letter big, I'd probably get reverted. Maybe even by rollback (even though it's not really ''mass vandalism''). This is further exacerbated by the fact that admins often use rollback in more iffy cases, and this is tolerated by the community.

So, I say the way things are right now are fine. Style disputes go in with content disputes, if the prevailing editor won't budge, file a request for comment or mediation or whatever, because the problem is probably an indicator of a deeper misunderstanding between the two parties. It may be difficult to develop consensus over all articles in Misplaced Pages, but it can be done. This is a user problem, whether it be good-faithed misunderstunding or bad-faithed disruption, and diplomatic conversation should occur rathering the labeling of "vandalism" to these editors. &mdash; <span style="font-variant:small-caps;font-family:sans-serif;">]</span><sup style="font-family:serif;">(])</sup> 23:11, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

:I'd just like to make the point that there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone making errors in a language that is not his native language. I'm personally quite proud of my French. I love speaking and reading in French. I'm probably a bit of a pain in the neck about it :-) . But unfortunately I ''don't'' speak like a native :-( . There's nothing humiliating in that.

:However, it is important, in an encyclopedia, that errors in spelling and grammar be corrected. I haven't ever contributed to the French Misplaced Pages so far, but I may do so some time. If I do, then it's quite likely that someone will come along after me and tidy up my language. I hope that no French Wikipedian would hesitate to do so if necessary.

:I wouldn't hesitate to come along and do a copyedit after a non-native had made additions to an article. It wouldn't imply that I thought the previous editor was stupid or had ruined the article or that s/he shouldn't feel welcomed at Misplaced Pages. Since I would see nothing wrong with making mistakes in a foreign language, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to be tactful and delicate and sensitive in correcting these mistakes. Obviously, that does ''not'' mean that I'd write an edit summary like, ''Correcting illiterate editor'' (well, I've never seen an edit summary like that). But I wouldn't hesitate to put ''Fixed grammar'' or something like that.

:It's quite true that Mel told some editors that there were grammatical errors in their edits. However, he did so ''after'' they had reverted back his corrections, re-introducing the errors that he had corrected. I presume that after they had reverted back, he felt that he had to tell them ''why'' he had made those particular changes in the articles. I think I would have done the same.

:I'm sure nobody wants non-native speakers to feel unwelcome. But surely doing a copyedit is not the same as insulting an editor? And, if the editor reverts back to the original grammatical errors, then it seems almost obligatory to explain that they ''were'' errors. ] ] 00:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I started several articles on Wiki, in which other people contributed to. Many of those people fixed my grammar errors. I never had a problem with that. I'm not insane, you know. This isn't about Mel doing honest editing. It's about something else. I'm tired of repeating my self. I know you've read what has been said, Ann. You know what transpired and I'm sure you understand that the problems doesn't lie in Mel's grammar corrections. I still believe he is wrong on the Danube argument. That article, in my opinion, remains awkward in that section. If Mel wanted to make peace with us all, he could have done so. Instead, he persists on treating us like mere objects - with a cold and disrespectful approach. I'm sure that all people, here, would like to go back to status quo with Mel. --] 00:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
:'''Please refrain from discussing Mel's conduct ''here''''', in this manner, as it is off-topic. -- ] ], ] 01:32, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

In my experience, the style of many music-related articles is way unencyclopedic. There are a very few exceptions which, although not MoS compliant are so brilliantly and rollickingly written it doesn't matter a wit but more wontedly they can be a dreadful read and yes, they do seem to be somewhat "owned." This may come down to consensus. Do WP editors and readers prefer a fanzine style for most pop music articles? ] 00:49, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, just my two cents but I think that the MoS should be followed no matter what or who is involved. If they don't stop and are stubborn, I would not be too adverse to blocking them for say, 15 minutes, leaving a note on the page talk and user talk about the MoS and just tell them not to revert you again. I also concur that you probably shouldn't use the admin rollback tool for this but rather use edit summaries that link to the manual of style somewhere. Anyways, that's just me and I can't say I've seen this happen before. ''']'''<span style="background-color:#C1FF5F">]|]</span> 01:29, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

== include Repeat-pattern vandalism under Dealing with vandalism? ==

There are instructions at ''Repeat-pattern vandalism'' for detecting a vandal making multiple vandalisms. I'd kind of like it to also be under ''Dealing with vandalism'' so people remember to check if the same person has made any other vandalisms, but that would be duplicated. What is opinion on making a note under ''dealing with vandalism'' to remind people to check other edits? ] 15:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

== How we can add auto signature to the templates ==

Example <nowiki>{{subst:User:Adam1213/tsandbox}}</nowiki>

#if it says with shift do it with shift
#goto Preferences
#turn on raw signatures
#Make your nickname ```` (with shift)
#add to the template ``` (with shift) where you want the signature to be save it.
#add for future info to the template
<--To edit this template without stuffing this up you need to:
goto Preferences
turn on raw signatures
Make your nickname -- ```` (with shift)
Made by adam1213
-->

---- ]|] 05:04, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

::This is out of context. I don't understand what the purpose of this concept is. ] 14:53, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

== Four warnings ==

Four warnings seems like a lot. Does anyone continue vandalism after the third but stop after the fourth? I propose that the second and third warnings be replaced by one intermediate in strength. &mdash; ] 07:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

:I think four levels works well - you don't always start at the first level, especially when it's clearly malicious vandalism rather than a test. Multiple levels allows for easy templates for several different users - more voices on the vandal's talk page will hopefully leave a stronger impression. - ] 23:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

::I agree. It does not mean four warnings before blocking, but four levels of warnings depending on the nature of the misconduct. I only use test1 if it appears to have been an experiment. I start with test2 or test2a if it is obviously vandalism on its face. ] 14:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

:::If admins are prepared to ban users who've had less than four warnings then I agree too - having the flexibility of up to four warnings when that granularity of escalation is needed can only be useful. However, I might create a test2.5 template intermediate in strength between 2 and 3 for those (more common, IMHO) situations where three warnings would be sufficient. &mdash; ] 16:13, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

::I was just thinking the same thing; three is really plenty. I definitely like the idea of starting with test2 for blatant vandals. ] 19:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

== Shared IPs / not biting newbies ==

For shared IPs, I think it might be a good idea to have an explanatory message to ensure that others using the IP don't get bitten. This could be an additional template to add at the top of the user talk page. I made a draft at ]. The idea is that this would be an extra template to add the top of a user talk page when adding the usual messages, ensuring that users sharing the IP with a vandal don't feel the messages are necessarily addressed to them. ] 21:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

:I completely agree with you, and encourage you to create the template ({{tl|shared-ip}}? {{tl|ip-warning}}?) I liked ], but would perhaps add something more explanatory, such as "Messages in this page might not be referred to you, as you might have been assigned for your current Internet connection an IP that has been previously used by another individual" or something like that. ]<small>(]/])</small> 08:45, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

:Oh, never mind, I already saw it... I also added it to {{tl|TestTemplates}} ]<small>(]/])</small> 08:52, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

:Why "IPs", people? Why not the way the world outside Wiki does it - with account name and password? If the user doesn't have one the only thing they can do is discuss the article, but not edit it. If they want to edit it then they'll get the "Plz, take your time to register" message. ] 23:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

== Current page ==

It seems that someone has vandalized the page about vandalism.

== need alternate test1 ==

I think we need an alternative to the current test1. I don't think we should start out thanking vandals for vandalizing. ] ] 04:18, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
:I strongly disagree. Vandalism (even the vulgar kind) is often just someone testing whether they can REALLY edit the article. {test} makes them feel welcome, and points them towards the Sandbox. I think it's just about perfect. And if the vandalism is clearly '''not''' a test, you can always start with {test2}. --] (]) <small>(])</small> 04:22, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

:'''Ashenai''' said what I was thinking; I like the current test1. It comes in handy when sending a message to someone who may not know what they're doing or aren't necessarily being that destructive. I also like to use it when I just feel like being nice, and it's generally a good message to keep from biting the newbies. However, if someone is repeatedly or maliciously vandalising, I don't think it's out of line to start with <nowiki>{{test2}} or {{test3}}</nowiki>. ] | ] 04:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

::If they're really testing to see if they can edit then there is no need to be vulgar (or blank the page). I want newbies to be welcome, but I personally don't welcome vandals or vandalism. Having people give them all of the warnings is exactly what many of them want - for us to waste more time than it took for them to do tha vandalism. I did start with test2 once (yesterday or the day before). ] ] 04:29, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

:::I think even the vulgarity and vandalism is often a test. They're thinking "no, it can't be. I can't really just edit this article and add 'fuckety-fuck' to the end, can I?". I've seen people self-revert such edits - with the realization that they can comes the understanding on why they shouldn't.

:::That said, where someone eg vandalizes this page, or does anything else to indicate that they've some familiarity with WP and are vandalizing it anyway, moving straight on to test2 or test3 seems fine to me. &mdash; ] 07:16, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

:::: I have seen people revert their stuff within a couple of minutes, and I think these are almost certainly legitimate tests. I don't think I've seen any such edits be vulgar or blank the page, though. There is only one thing wrong with the ''anyone can edit'' policy, and that is that '''anyone can edit'''. I have literally lost sleep over WP vandalism. With my earliest reverts I didn't leave a warning, then I found out about them and started doing it.

::::However, I think warnings are very unlikely to be effective. (1) Every case of WP vandalism I've found is by an IP address. I think these people are unlikely to ever see or read the warning. If they're using a dial-up connection, the next time they will have a different address. When I had a DSL connection, every time I disconnected and reconnected I got a different IP address. My cable IP address stays the same, but some cable users tell me that if they disconnect for a few minutes they get a different address. (2) even if they read the warnings, I think that they are unlikely to heed them. They want people to get upset at their vandalism and spend time fixing it. This is the same mentality as people who send computer viruses.

:::::Actually, I've been surprised when I've been on ] how effective these warnings actually are. Most people, including IP users, DO see the messages, as they're not likely to edit one page on Misplaced Pages and then go off to another website. While there are obviously vandals that are persistant and just want to cause trouble, I'd say a good 50% of people making bad edits stop once they get a warning and/or see how quickly their edits are reverted. They realize how vigiliant we are and figure it's not worth the trouble. On the other note, there ARE registered users who vandalize, and quite a few actually. Usually these are people who make accounts for the sole purpose of vandalizing pages. ] | ] 16:52, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

::::::How do yo know that when ones with only IP addressses seem to quit vandalizing that they don't just come back with another IP address and vandalize more? ] ] 19:49, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

:::::::Obviously this is harder to detect, but most vandals have their own ], and I've yet to see two vandalizers on the same night with the same style and targets. Furthermore, it isn't important enough to most vandals to get a new dial-up connection just so they can vandalize. However, all of these assumptions go out the window when talking about the most prolific vandals, who have hundreds of user accounts just so they can vandalize. ] | ] 20:36, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

:::::::: With a dial-up connection, if they disconnect (which dial-up users normally do) and reconnect, they automatically get a different IP address. I have around 100 pages on my watchlist (124 at the moment) and I have to check every edit that was edited by sn IP sddress. Quite a few of these are vandalism, and usually they have done just 1 or 2 with that IP address. ] ] 22:52, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

:::::::: Here's someone making repeated vandalisms over a long period after being warned several times: ] - clearly the warnings were ineffective. Some of the edits (i.e. the one to Pecival Lowell) change one digit in a date - probably to try to escape detection. Here is one with a lot of vulger edits: ]. Here's one that may be a legitimate test: ]. I reverted all of these a few days ago. I know I'm getting upset about this vandalism, and that is doing exactly what they want to do. ] ] 23:14, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

:::::::::Yeah, don't take it personally. I'm not denying that some people continue despite warnings, but the warnings are there for a reason, and the harshness or lack thereof of the warnings is why we have humans doing this and not bots. Just stay optimistic about the project and happy hunting. ] | ] 02:18, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

::::My opinion is that you should have to set up an account before you can edit, and that there shouldn't be as many warnings about vandalism before something is done. ] ] 15:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


Maybe the featured page should be frozen because it is highly vandalized-- two days ago I watched it and everything popped up from BS to photographs of genetalia. Agreed?

== Malicious animated GIFs? ==
I can understand what an offensive GIF might be, but malicious? What's that supposed to mean? --] 21:55, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
:Generally something that would get you in trouble if you were looking at it with your parents looking over your shoulder or at work. ] 20:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
::This sounds more like malicious parents or co-workers. In this case one should apply the latest bug-fix to his parents or co-workers. -- ] 15:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
:::Not malicious, per say, but buggy. ] 01:13, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

== What vandalism is not ==

Does anybody else think that ] should be added as another example of something which is not vandalism. I've been in a conflict where one user has accused another of vandalism based on something which, imo, comes more close to being a WP:POINT violation. I think the current gist of this page strongly suggests that WP:POINT violations wouldn't qualify as vandalism, but I think it might do us good to be more explicit on this front. ] ] 17:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

== Vandalism of talk pages? ==

How is vandalism defined with regard to talk pages? For instance, ] has comments similar to garden-variety article-namespace vandalism, but it's a talk page, so it should be subject to a different set of rules, no? --] (]) 22:15, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

== A thought ==
I have noticed that most of the vandals I have encountered are those with no user accounts, just IP addresses. Why doesn't Misplaced Pages just make editing open to those with user accounts? Sure it wouldn't completely wipe out the vandalism problem, but it would help it at the very least. It is also still open to anybody to edit, but it will discourage those vandals who just vandalize it because they are on the site and are fascinated about being able to change a webpage for an internet encyclopedia. ] 03:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
:This has certainly been discussed many times...I'm still not sure where I stand on it. However, the best place to see arguments for and against this change is at ]. ] &#124; &#91;&#91;User_talk:EWS23&#124;(Leave me a message!)]] 07:52, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
::If you mean closing the ability of IP addreses to edit, I think that you and I are in a minority in thinking that would be a good idea. I think that the support for the concept of anonymous editing is too deep a tradition to dispose of easily. ] 20:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
::Regardless if its a tradition or not, I think if it improves Misplaced Pages it should definitely be considered. And it isn't very anonymous because we can always see the contributions of that IP address. ] 03:56, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

== A smart policy in the edit process? ==

I have posted this idea on , but I thought I might post it here too...for your information.
Since I have started to grow weary of vandalism (haven't we all?) I have come up with an idea. I am a programmer myself, and it is possible that this idea has been discussed before, and/or has too serious disadvantages, but I thought I might aswell share it with you.

''Many vandalisms I have encountered concerns the removal of an entire page, replacing it with obscene and/or funny words.''

My idea is to re-program the edit-process (i.e when the user hits the "Save Page" button) so that ('''current page''' = presumed unvandalized page, '''new page''' = presumed vandalized page)

# (if '''current page''' size in bytes > a fixed value)
# AND ('''new page''' < another fixed value)
# then '''new page''' is deemed as vandalism and is refused to save

I know there is at least one problem with the idea; when a page needs to be deleted, removed, redirected...etc. One solution to deal with the redirection issue is to insert the following exception into the pseudo-code above:

# if ('''new page''' only contains a redirection link) then it is allowed to save

To solve this, the idea must be put forward to developers. As I said, I don't know if the idea is good or bad, but I thought it would be of interest anyway. If it is bad, it might nevertheless give rise to better ideas. I'd be thankful for feedback and all kinds of opinions. If you wish to contact me, please use my talk page in Misplaced Pages:

Regards, Dennis Nilsson. ] 18:16, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

::It wouldn't prevent deleting a page and replacing it with repetitive nonsense. (I'm a programmer too. Entering repetitive nonsense is a standard test to see how much cruft you can stuff in a web form.) ] 20:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
::While I think this is a good idea from a programming standpoint, I'm not sure that it would decrease vandalism at all. Current "blankers" would simply change their ], and just revert to adding nonsense sentences, rather than blanking and adding nonsense. Someone who wants to vandalize likely wouldn't be too upset about this. Also, with the current reverting process, it's just as easy to revert a 3000-character edit as it is a 10-character edit, so the workload would be about the same. ] | ] 21:09, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

==Vandalism of ]==
Remember when Pope Benedict was getting all that vandalism is it still happening? --] 21:10, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes. That is still a frequently vandalized and frequently restored article, as are a number of other prominent people. ] 21:55, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

== ????s ==

How can one tell vandalisim from a glitch, like what happened when the HTML Tidy program
malfunctioned, taking this site down and may have caused some Vandal reports, due to this
malfunction ? Can this be moved to User Talk:Martial Law ? ] 07:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

== Why isn't this policy? ==

"Is this page official policy? Should it have the {{tl|policy}} template on it? the wub "?/!" 09:46, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)" This question was ignored completely, so I'm forced to bring it up again. Are we somehow afraid to strongly forbid one of the greatest harms to this encyclopedia? I hope not. If there is no objection, I will add the template in two weeks. ] | ] 03:49, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

: No, for some reason violating old untagged pages leads to instant ban, violating pages tagged as "guideline" leads to tarring and feathering, and violating pages tagged as "policy" has very few effects.

: I think we can learn from this that there should be some kind of actual plan before randomly tagging things. (not meant to slight Superm401, as much as comment on the wierd tagging we have today). ] 07:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC) <small> ''In fact, um when did this policy tag sneak in actually? IIRC originally things could only be "official guidelines", because ] forbids too strict interpretation. In other news, some wikis have at times considered banning tagging altogether.''</small>
::I think your logic is a bit backwards. The reason violating old, untagged pages has the most obvious effects is that these pages are some of our most firm policy, regardless of their tags. The reason that they have no policy tags is that they are old. I'm trying to change that here. I'm not convinced admins don't enforce policies tagged {{tl|policy}}. Can you honestly say you've never seen bans for sockpuppets, legal threats, or personal attacks? All of those are tagged {{tl|policy}}. Let's look at this specific page. You would agree that admins will still ban people for vandalism if this is tagged {{tl|policy}}, right? Thus, the only difference is how regular users perceive the page. I see no reason not to be forceful to them in condemning it. ] | ] 21:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

== Presistent vandalism ==

Like the ] article, this page itself is now prone to presistent vandalism. Will somebody lock this page from editing? ''(unsigned comment from anon)''.
:Support locking this page, it's pretty complete and most edits right now are vandalism. ] <small>]</small> 00:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

== Vandalism help ==

If you are somebody who works on vandal on WP, please take a look at my userpage since I take time to look into every user creation log to be sure they are not vandal. The real vandalists have a vandal associated to their name and the ones that should be blocked have the mention ''soll block''. ] 23:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

== Toward a better metric for Reasonable Suspicion in the RC list ==

Anyone got any ideas on implementing a "contributions" counter and putting that digit on the RC list? Might be a bit of computing overhead, but hey, what are computers for? Profiling based on the appearance of an IP address rather than a username is somewhat prejudicial, IMO, and having people looking at users of all kinds with very few edits would be more profitable. More effective as a mentoring process as well.

Or maybe the fix should be that edits made by people with some small number of edits are noted in a "New User Edit" list separate from the RC list.

I think I'll go mention this idea on the feature request page.

--] 17:45, 8 December 2005 (UTC)


==Funny==
Honestly some of these vandalisms are funny.... the sound like they were written by a teenager cussing for the first time-] 11:06, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
:often enough, they were!--] 11:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
:You can find plenty of that kind of stuff at ] (BJAODN). I always thoroughly enjoy perusing that page. ] | ] 21:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

== Changing templates ==

I've cut out the test templates as they're not really the tool for the job for ''vandalism'' - they're for newbie users making mistakes, not people adding "u sux cock" to articles. True vandals don't need four warnings - a polite "please contribute usefully, we're watching" message followed up by a "stop or be blocked" is all that is needed, hence the new templates. There's no point giving vandals such a long leash - they know what they are doing. ] (]) 11:06, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

:How many warnings they need is based on circumstance on context in my book....something up to the individual person taking out the vandalism. For example a "Hey I can edit this" and a few test edits doesn't need people hounding them with the big.:
{{test4}}
:Saying that, something along the lines of Red Severe vandalism should get a test 4 straight off.....there isn't anything outlined to say you should go for each template in turn.

:Whether people are new or not is irrelevant. Test edits are vandalism just as much as "u sux cock". A lot of the time, test edits can be profanity anyway....there can be little difference. What we have to do is to assume good faith from the start, so as not to bite the newcomers.

:Obviously returning vandals know what they're doing so they're warned with the high ones or re-blocked straight away, but I don't think we should get carried away and label all newbies with the big warnings straight away, which is what will happen if we keep this as it is.

:How I see it is that new people countering vandalism are going to be hitting new members with threatening messages too early in the day. I also think the previous templates are very useful in helping new counter-vandalism users learn the ropes of the subst tags.

:I also think this is a bigger change than you make out, and this should have been discussed here in the first place. (These templates are used by lots of people, not just you).

:Because I think this I've reverted it back again until we can get this padded out by discussion.

:ps I thought you removed the templates to cut down the project pages size....yet it is only a few extra paragraphs.
:''' ''Agent'' '''] 13:25, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

::Remember the other templates still exist! As you say, you can use which ever template you feel is needed. {{tl|test2}} is useful for people just adding gibberish when it's still probably newbie testing, ''not'' vandalism.

::But there's no reason at all to warn people who are ''vandalising'' - rather than testing - more than once, and this is the ''vandalism'' page not ].

::I also don't see how having a shorter warning system affects people using Subst:. But I think it's worth noting that you don't even need to use subst: any more - the dire warnings of melting servers date from a time when Wikimedia had far less database server capacity than it does now. ] (]) 08:33, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
::: The other templates of course will still exist, but whether test or vandalism (if there is much or any difference) are mostly warned under the current templates. I feel removing them will cause these ones, which you say are only to be used for vandals, to be used on newcomers in the future.

:::Secondly, testing can often lead to vandalism as it gets out of control. It is very difficult to judge on whether the person at the other end is simply testing functionality, or knows it full well and is aiming to cause trouble. This is why everyone uses these templates, you can't tell the difference in some cases on vandals and newcomers...that is why the early warnings are so nicely put and that is why there is a structure and ladder of warning templates. Either way, if you are testing, you are still inadvertently vandalising articles.

::: On the use of the subst templates..... For vandalism they are useful in adding context to warnings in my opinion....removing the explanations on it's use will effect on how newcomers/vandals know what they've done wrong, if it isn't very obvious. ''' ''Agent'' '''] 20:20, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the current 4 warning system is fine. The first test warning seems to work well on first time offenders. It calmly conveys the message that their edits will not go unchecked. The following 3 show a good progression and seem effective enough. Based on what I've seen, most vandals quiet down after they receive a ''test3''. ] 14:51, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

:I beg to disgaree. First off, the test templates were never even meant for combatting vandalism - they were meant for tests! Secondly, {{tl|vd1}} is the same as the current first warning. But persisent vandals know exactly what they are doing, but often back down once warned they will be blocked. Why waste time with two intermediate warnings? It's a question of how much damage you are willing to tolerate to the encyclopedia - I don't think we need risk several more bits of vandalism (some of which slips through the net) before giving an effective warning. ] (]) 08:33, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
::I really don't think it wastes too much time overall. A typical persistent vandal will receive the chain of warnings in moments. For return offenders, it's usually best to jump right to ''test2'' or even ''test3''. No doubt one should have a flexible approach. ] 13:10, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

----
"objecting to offering both is inexplicable - please explain on talk". ]. <br>
Perhaps you should have proposed this here first, instead of just rushing in, once again like last time, when you know this is an issue a lot of people have a say in, and that will have objections.

Seen as my viewpoint didn't seem to sink in last time, I will say it once more in Mickey Mouse form:
* '''The current warning system is fine'''. Yes, some vandals shouldn't get such a long winded template ladder, but then, most of us know it isn't a rigid system. You can skip to the top warnings depending on severity. You can of course argue that they were "supposed to be for tests", but it would be foolish to think that today, it isn't used against vandalism of any sorts - deliberate or "testing". (Once again, there is a thin line between deliberate and testing)
* The majority of the time, '''you cannot tell the difference between testing and vandalism'''. If it is a returning vandal, then it is often plainly obvious for everyone to see and they're are normally blocked off hand. (as Pointed out by Mr PJM)
* Using your proposed system will most certainly '''lead to people biting newcomers''', whether or not the second system is there. A lot of people will use the first templates that come to them, and thus the current system will come somewhat irrelevant....I'm not blind to the fact you decided to put your templates smack above the "testing" ones.
* '''Having two sets of templates is confusing'''. Not only will it confuse new members on which one to use if helping against vandalism, but secondly it will cause confusion amongst some of the older Counter-Vandalism fighters as they see these templates and wonder about where they came from. Also the former point on confusing new fighters of vandalism, it could again lead to biting the newcomers

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and I would implore you not to make any more changes to templates without pre-discussing......your subtle attempts at changing the templates against ] and using the ] technique are becoming tiresome. ''' ''Agent'' '''] 18:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

First I must remind you of the rule of ].

Second, if what you say about the behaviour of RC patrollers is true, then ''edit the page to reflect that''. In the mean time... ] (]) 10:53, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
:I also note your relative inexperience of RC patrolling (from having viewed your user contributions). I suggest you are not best placed to comment on how RC patrollers work! ] (]) 10:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I opposing your views in a slightly heightened manner because you completely ignored what I said (Which incidentally you've done again) is a method of debate. We're not getting anywhere by you refusing to discuss this and flaunting your nupedia badge. I also didn't mention RC patrollers once,

:Yes you did: ''most of us know it isn't a rigid system. You can skip to the top warnings depending on severity.'' - only the actions of RC patrollers.

I pointed out the obvious downsides to your proposed system, with the old one, and the old one clearly is better.

:No, you have not at all provided any evidence for your assertions other than "because I say so". See below though.

You seem to ignore my points though, having not bothering to argue a point of view for a new system, but instead have decided to go around changing the system willy-nilly despite the opposition of everyone who has discussed this issue, and the support of no one.

:Everyone? I see only you arguing.

You seem to think you can hide behind you "being here since Nupedia" (not the only one) and your adminship.....

:I'm doing no such thing.

how about setting down here in bullet point form, the need for such radical changes? I think you should listen to other people's views and take note, whether you deem them "experienced" or not.

* You also have underestimated how much "experience" I have: Some of us can't be bothered with waiting for ].....especially after a break from wikipedia. Sometimes it is good to start a fresh.

It's up to you really....I've made a compelling case, along with PJM, on keeping the status quo, but you seem bent on getting your own way without cause for anyone elses viewpoint, by using either underhand tactics or completely ignoring everyone.

If you don't wish to take part in step one of the ] outline (Which so far you have avoided), then I'll happily seek other avenues.

''' ''Agent'' '''] 13:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

:If you want to take this to other dispute channels, then of course you can. ] (]) 08:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


:Now, to address your points again:

* '''The current warning system is fine'''. Yes, some vandals shouldn't get such a long winded template ladder
:There you go. That's what I'm implementing.
* The majority of the time, '''you cannot tell the difference between testing and vandalism'''. If it is a returning vandal, then it is often plainly obvious for everyone to see and they're are normally blocked off hand. (as Pointed out by Mr PJM)
:Of course you can. You don't add "f*** off wikipedia" by mistake.
* Using your proposed system will most certainly '''lead to people biting newcomers''', whether or not the second system is there. A lot of people will use the first templates that come to them, and thus the current system will come somewhat irrelevant....I'm not blind to the fact you decided to put your templates smack above the "testing" ones.
:The first template is the standard newbie test template, but it is clearly listed as being for ''vandalism'', not newbie testing.
* '''Having two sets of templates is confusing'''. Not only will it confuse new members on which one to use if helping against vandalism, but secondly it will cause confusion amongst some of the older Counter-Vandalism fighters as they see these templates and wonder about where they came from.
:Anyone is free to use a ] of templates. They are not in the least confusing; the page makes it clear which is for vandalism (vd) and which is for newbie tests (test). ] (]) 08:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

----

*'''There you go. That's what I'm implementing.''' You've clearly missed out the part where I said that the current system is not rigid. No one goes up and down this system like a ladder, and returning vandals immediately get hit with the top templates anyway (Which are pretty much the same last two in your system), making your system seemingly pointless.
*'''If it is a returning vandal, then it is often plainly obvious for everyone to see and they're are normally blocked off hand.''' So what is the point in these new templates, if they just get blocked and are hit with the upper templates of the ''current'' system anyway? It seems the usefulness of these templates is limited.

*'''The first template is the standard newbie test template, but it is clearly listed as being for ''vandalism'', not newbie testing.''' As I said, it can be difficult to tell between the two as newbie tests are often as stupid as clear vandalism as well. This will lead to newcomers being hit with severe vandalism warnings earlier than is necessary. Considering the point of your system is not to give returning vandals a long leash, when they just get "reblocked" as you said anyway, the point of these new-extra templates is limited. The consequences of them in the future far outweigh the need for them, if any.

*'''Anyone is free to use a ] of templates. They are not in the least confusing; the page makes it clear which is for vandalism (vd) and which is for newbie tests'''. There are new recruits for hitting vandalism all the time. They aren't going to go searching around wikipedia for some other page, they are going to use these.
'''Concluding Points'''
* There is a thin line between vandalism and newbie testing, which can be difficult to judge on in circumstances where the vandal is not a returning one. This will lead to your original point of removing the current warning system, becoming a reality as people use the warnings at the top of the page: one of the main reasons I oppose the addition of these warnings.
* The current system isn't rigid. You said returning vandals get reblocked anyway, making the need for what is essentially a copy of the top "newbie" warnings very limited. Limited enough to not warrant their existence.
* No one new to counter-vandalism on Misplaced Pages will search out other templates, they'll use the vandalism ones for everything, causing the 'biting of newcomers'. ''' ''Agent'' '''] 11:18, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

:Dan100 should give this up. The new templates he proposes add nothing and are actively counterproductive, for all the reasons Blightsoot has already explained.--] 17:52, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Blightsoot, if you believe people are using the existing templates differently to how this page desscribes, then why don't you update this page accordingly? But I must emphasise this one point again: it is ''not'' hard to differentiate newbie tests and vandalism - that's what the bulk of this page explains! ] (]) 09:12, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

== Wholesale reverts vandalism ==

I entered this on the list a while ago - someone (can't remember who) simply deleted it without any justification or explanation. I suppose he/she figures that such stuff is an unnecessary formality. In any event, rather than reinstate it I'll explain it first, wait for a discussion, and then reinstate it.

The practice here is when an editor (for reasons that are irrelevant) reverts a whole set of edits because he/she disagrees with one point in it. To illustrate the point, let's imagine editor A rewrites an entire paragraph for purposes that are also irrelevant. In doing so, let's imagine that editor A confuses "its" and "it's." The vandal reverts the entire edit, blaming the single mistake. In all likelihood, the single mistake is just a pretext for other motivations that the vandal either doesn't want to, or can't be bothered to, explain.

In my mind, this is vandalism - it destroys good faith edits by others, does nothing to further the quality of the articles, and only serves to discourage editors from trying to improve articles. --] 02:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

:See ]; what you are referring to doesn't seem related to vandalism. ] (]) 08:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

::To the extent that vandalism is the act of sabotaging the editing process, it certainly is. Clearly, this sort of vandalism has to be carefully defined to distinguish between legitimate reversions and this type, but there are ways to prove that it is vandalism. Characteristics would be that the reverts aren't explained or are explained by wholly insufficient grounds; and that the same version appears over and over again, regardless of intervening edit efforts. ] makes it clear that the revert capability is primarily intended to fight vandalism, and there should be no question that there's a huge burden attendant on using it for any other purpose - reflected in the point made on the same page that reverts must always be carefully explained. --] 18:36, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

== Is there a way to find the IP addresses of registered users? ==

Is there a way to find the IP addresses of registered users? I've been asked a few odd questions by a registered user and then my user page was blanked out by a non-registered user. Both happened within a week and I'd never had any problem in the months before. I want to find out if the registered user and the non-registered user are the same. Thanks! :) ] 17:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
:If there is an urgent need (and this wouldn't count, I think), you can post a note to ] or ] asking for one of the editors with ] access to find out for you. Since you only want the IP out of curiousity rather than anything substantive, I don't suppose they'd act on your request.



== Conceptualizing Edits ==

Let's define an "edit" simply as a modification to a wikipedia page. There are basically two kinds of edits - those that would enable someone to know more about the article subject, and those that would hinder someone from learning about the article subject. Edits in the first class are constructive, so that will be called "good" edits, edits in the second class will be called "bad" edits. I submit that bad edits (vandalism and good-faith mistakes) should not be applied in the first place, since they run counter to the fundamental purpose of wikipedia - to help people learn more about stuff.

The classification of edits into "good" and "bad" is analagous to normal and spam email. A "bad" edit hinders information and wastes time - similarly, a "bad" email hinders information (e.g. a phishing scheme) and wastes tons of time. Letting vandalism into articles and applying a fix after the fact is analagous to leaving spam in your inbox, and rather than deleting it, inserting another message saying "that was spam". Today, we have become conditioned to not even treating spam in the same category as legitimate e-mail - so it should be with "bad" edits, which includes all vandalism.

Fortuntately, there is a large band of people willing to root out vandalism. Unfortunately, their effors are applied sub-optimally. A simple scheme to allow users to classify edits and help identify vandals could be:

Changes should be given a vandalism score based on content (say from 1 to 10, with 10 being likely vandalism). Users can have only one change in the queue at a time. The vandalism score drops over time, perhaps scaled by the score (score = number of minutes before dropping). People on patrol can either increase or decrease the vandalism score of a given change. Once it goes above 10, the message is discarded and the user is blocked. Once it hits 0, the change is applied. Most legitimate changes (e.g. the change does contain the word PENIZZ or does not remove the entire article) will be scored low (1 or 2) and applied quickly (1 or 3 minutes). Users on vandalism patrol can see all recent changes sorted by vandalism score in order to focus efforts. Rather then spend time looking at changes that have already been reverted, all people need to do is validate the conclusions of the builtin vandalism detector and those of other users. As part of this scheme, the system would develop a huge database of confirmed vandalism attempts. This can be utilized by techniques such as bayesian filtering to further improve vandalism detection.

] 19:06, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

== HTTP versions of the IRC servers ==

I wanted to do some anti-vandalism after school, and Lupins tool only seemed to refresh only every minute(may be lag or something else), so I got the IRC server details, and put them onto on my website . If anyone likes the idea, say so <strong>]</strong> (<em>]</em>) 16:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
:It's a nice idea, but it doesn't appear to scroll, which is a bit of a PITA... ] (]) 13:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
::When I go to the page, it autoscrolls for me. Could be your browser. Works fine in FF1.5 <strong>]</strong> <sup>(<em>]</em>)</sup> 19:53, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Probably is my browser - it's Opera. I'll spread the link around a bit if you don't mind ] (]) 09:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
:OK, do so ] 17:50, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
::Checking my stats, I've seen I've encountered a weak ] on my site since this was linked (as of Tuesdays addition, I've had more-than-average visits) <strong>]</strong> <sup>(<em>]</em>)</sup> 18:47, 23 December 2005 (UTC).

== Please have ] read the vandalism policies again ==

Guys, you should probably have ] re-read the vandalism policies, or stop going by his own personal policy. I just presented a case involving user page vandalism, link vandalism, and abuse of tags (a trifecta), and he dismissed the entire thing as a content dispute. Alternatively, this might be a good reason to stop giving pubescent 15-year olds administrative powers over encyclopedias involving hundreds of thousands of people.] 10:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

== Vandalism of talk pages ==

This policy page works great for articles, but it doesn't say anything about talk pages. What constitutes vandalism of a talk page, and how should we respond to it? --] (]) 19:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

:Are you asking about user talk pages, or article talk pages? The most common form of vandalism of both is blanking them, which is usually rather obviously vandalism. I have also occasionally seen what were almost certainly deliberate attempts to alter the record of a discussion. That is a form of vandalism that only happens on talk pages. It is generally recognized that the user of a talk page has the right to blank it. (Deliberate repeated deletion of requests, such as of requests to be civil, is not vandalism. It is only ].) The posting of hateful or offensive comments on talk pages is not vandalism, but it is a personal attack, which is a different form of unacceptable behavior. Archiving and refactoring of talk pages are not vandalism. However, inaccurate refactoring of talk pages can be a controversial practice. ] 22:48, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

::I'm thinking about , which has since been blanked. The text you see is the product of three postings by (apparently) three different people. --] (]) 17:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

:::One could argue that that was only three stupid personal attacks, but one could alternatively argue that the three personal attacks were of such a crude nature as to be vandalism. If I had seen that in a timely manner, and had been an admin, I would have blocked the two anons and warned the logged-in. ] 23:33, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

::::Yes, indeed, but what to do about the text itself? --] (]) 00:25, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

== innocent NPOV vio or vandalism? ==

I came across what looked like vandalism to me, and I was wondering if I should notify the admins about it. Having read this article made me want to ask you guys first, because I'm still not sure, and I don't want to take up precious admins' time, lest more serious cases are longer left unhandled. The thing is, user ] has repeatedly been editing the ] and ] articles, and changing the short description of mr. ] to "human being, enemy". What made me question whether or not to alarm the admins are the facts that:
* their doesn't include any bad edits on the article ] itself,
* they seem not to do it very often.
On the minus side, all of this user's edits (except for the two they made to the ] article) are vandalous! What do you think I should do? Should I report it? ] 23:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
:Definitely! I'd say that's vandalism. My suggestion would be to leave {{tl|test-n}} templates, as per this page, for every suspect edit and actually telling him which page you think he's vandalising. If the vandal gets to a "last warning" but still vandalising, report to ]. ] (]) 16:45, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
::OK. They have so far only been given a level 1 warning, so I've issued them a level 2 warning. I'm keeping an eye on this person and if they do it again I will issue a level 4 warning and if they do it again then I'll report it to ]. ] 16:59, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

== Not trying to be rude but... ==

I am trying to nominate this page for deletion for obvious reasons. how am i suppose to tag it?{{unsigned|Parys}}

:What??? Why? ] 04:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

::what might those obvious reasons be? i beleive the afd process has been outlined on your talk page; anyways, i'd suggest you don't nominate this page for deletion, as the admins probably won't even wait for a vote and it will annoy the heck out of people. --] <sup>]</sup> 04:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

:Huh? The page is for the Misplaced Pages vandalism policies, not a holder of vandalism itself. Did you mean to post that on a different page?] 15:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

==Spam==

What is it in Misplaced Pages, and who decides if a external link is inappropriate ? Can the answer be moved to my Talk page ? ] 05:55, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

== lets sort out talk page policy once and for all ==

I see frequent inquiries regading vandalism on talk pages. And I see general consensus that removing parts of talk pages is vandalism if the content removed was not personal attack. Do I see that right? If I do, lets add this to list: . I propose this paragraph to be added:
;Talk page vandalism: Deleting other user's comment or deleting the whole section of talk page. Exceptions are deleting the section to put it to archive and ]s.

Another acceptable way of including this policy is just to modify this paragraph:
;Changing people's comments: Editing signed comments by another user to substantially change their meaning (e.g. turning someone's vote around), except when ] (which is somewhat controversial in and of itself). Signifying that a comment is unsigned is an exception. e.g. ''(unsigned comment from user)''
into this:
;Changing or deleting people's comments: Editing signed comments by another user to substantially change their meaning (e.g. turning someone's vote around) or even deleting the comment completely, except when ] (which is somewhat controversial in and of itself). Signifying that a comment is unsigned is an exception. e.g. ''(unsigned comment from user)''

Comments? Anybody think's this is a bad idea? --] 11:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

*I have removed the "Talk page vandalism" section since it does not accord with Misplaced Pages consensus or practice. Many users, including ] and at least two ], routinely remove comments from their Talk pages, and advertise this. See ] for an example: "''I archive when I feel like it. Depending on my whim, your comments may or may not be archived. The odds of not being archived are inversely proportional to the amount you annoy me. Please do not annoy me.''" Until now, no one has ever suggested that this was improper. If you would like to change that policy, I suggest you seek a broader consensus first. <TT>] <SMALL>(] • ])</SMALL></TT> 13:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
**On second thought, I think we should keep a section on vandalizing Talk pages in general, but make it clear that this only applies to article talk, not to the user's own Talk page. I have rewritten as below:

;Talk page vandalism: Deleting the comments of other users from article Talk pages, or deleting entire sections thereof, is generally considered vandalism. Removing personal attacks is often considered legitimate, and it is considered acceptable to archive an overly long Talk page to a separate file and then remove the text from the main Talk page. The above does not apply to the user's own Talk page, where users generally are permitted to remove outside comments at their discretion.

<TT>] <SMALL>(] • ])</SMALL></TT> 13:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

== Improper removing of Dispute tags ==


I believe that is a common practice that removing ] tags without an agreement with the other side of the dispute or a proper RfC process is a vandalism but it does not explicitly said here.

Suppose there is a content dispute of five users against two. Of course, the five users would win using the 3RR, but I think the minority should have the right to put a <nowiki> {{NPOV}} </nowiki> or <nowiki> {{disputed}} </nowiki>, etc. template. And the other side should not use their numbers to remove the tag without the agreement from the other side. ] 08:39, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

*I put the suggestion here and on the Village pump 10 days ago. Nobody seems to disagree, so I boldly put it into the policy. If you are disagree with the idea, please discuss it here, if you are disgree with the wording please feel free to fix ] 04:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

== Academic honesty ==

Discussion of possible interest to watchers of this page at ]. -- ] | ] 10:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

In particular, as citation is being more and more encouraged, we may want to add another category of vandalism: deliberate insertion of faked or actively misleading citations. I realize that we already (sort of) cover this under "sneaky vandalism", but perhaps it should be called out explicitly. -- ] | ] 10:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

*Fully agree, sensible addition ] 04:49, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

== Why are anonymous edits allowed? ==

Following the ], Misplaced Pages reacted by blocking anonymous users from creating new articles. The irony of this was that the vandal in question didn't create the article, he merely ''edited'' an existing article.

Indeed, I would venture that at least 90% of ] is done by an anonymous editor. As I'm going over my ], or the "]" page, chances are pretty good that if I see an edit by an anonymous editor, it's vandalism.

Registration is quick and easy, there's no reason why somebody acting in good faith wouldn't want to do it. If Misplaced Pages is serious about combating vandalism, blocking anonymous edits would be a quick and easy way to get rid of a big part of the problem. -- ] 16:22, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

*"''The irony of this was that the vandal in question didn't create the article, he merely ''edited'' an existing article.''". Actually, this is not true. The vandal did indeed create the article; it was later copyedited by someone else (who appeared to have been editing in good faith) but that second editor did not realize that much of the article's contents were nonsense. <TT>] <SMALL>(] • ])</SMALL></TT> 21:05, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
*** Are you sure? I can't verify one way or another as the page history only goes back to September 2005. But I find it hard to believe that this guy didn't have article about him until May 2005, especially since there's a ] disambig page that links to the article as early as April 2004. -- ] 21:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

:::The culture of Misplaced Pages is such that any restrictions on anonymous edits are going to be resisted by a substantial minority of editors, who see the right to anonymous editing as an ancient and honorable tradition. Suggestions to restrict the rights of anons are often condemned as "un-Wiki". I would agree with restrictions on anonymous editing, or even with its elimination, but I am not making policy. I think that anonymous editing was an honorable experiment that has been tried and failed. That opinion is worth what you paid for it. ] 21:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

== New US anti-annoyance internet law ==

Not sure if could apply to Misplaced Pages vandalism by Americans, but it says:
"''Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.''"
From .
] 18:29, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

== Throwing out everything with the bathwater ==

The definition of vandalism in the first section states: "Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia." It seems pretty clear to me that anyone who reverts or deletes entire sections of articles based on an objection to a single piece of the whole, is deliberately compromising the integrity of the encyclopedia. This happens in four ways that are similar to all other forms of vandalism:
* Content that is valuable and useful gets deleted outright
* Content that may be wrong is deleted rather than edited for clarity or precision
* Editors get discouraged
* A loophole is created for POV-pushing, as the vandal can simply revert back to his/her version on any minor pretext.
--] 21:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

You failed to notice the word "deliberate". Others may do things that *you* think are harmful, but that's not vandalism. Somebody may remove a whole section, that you think is essential, but that's not vandalism. As long as they do it in good faith (thinking it's unencyclopedic), it's not vandalism. Even if they make a mistake, its not vandalism, if it's an honest mistake. Vandalism has a narrow definition, and offending the wishes of another editor is not one. Sadly, I regularly see "Content that is valuable and useful gets deleted outright" all the time, but I don't call it vandalism, and I don't call those editors "vandals", because while I think its valuable, others may not. --] 21:32, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

::I think you may misunderstand the point. If an editor deletes an entire section, explaining why the entire section is wrong, then that clearly isn't vandalism and possibly only a difference of opinion. But if an editor deletes an entire section citing only one objectionable element that should simply have been edited, then it is hard to argue that the deletion serves any constructive purpose. The next question, then, is whether it is "deliberate," in other words whether the editor is motivated by a wish to compromise the integrity, etc. I think we all agree that since we can't read the minds of the editors, we judge the actions by its effects. One could argue for virtually every class of vandalism that an editor is merely misguided, or even deranged, to commit vandalism - which is why vandals aren't summarily blocked, their edits merely reverted. Clearly, experienced editors should start by pointing out that throwing out everything with the bathwater is a destructive practice at the outset, but when it is repeated behavior, the editor has clearly lost the benefit of the doubt. --] 21:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

:Not to mention that many articles are bloated and sometimes a severe edit is appropriate. That does not mean it is vandalism. ] ] 21:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

::Again, I think we should be able to judge the edit by the effect it had. Should I take from Daycd's opinion that I have license to simply cut out paragraphs and sections that I tend to think make the articles "bloated?" I wouldn't do that to make a point, but if someone did, I'm fairly confident they'd run into sanctions pretty quickly, unless such deletions were well-reasoned and replaced with something that at least was arguably better.\
:::First your stance is not assuming good faith. Second it goes against the '''be bold''' editing policy and third blanking of good content is already covered on this page as '' '''Blanking:''' Removing all or large parts of articles (commonly replacing the text with profanities) is a common vandal edit and '''Childish vandalism:''' or . (The ] is an example of this type.) Note that this page, itself, has been repeatedly since June 11, 2005.'' Assuming vandalism in the scenario you suggest is not a case of vandalism it is a case of content dispute. It may well need an RfC to solve the problem but it does not seem to warrant the vandalism label. ] ] 22:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
::::Concur. Unless it is clear that an edit was not made in good faith, it should not be considered vandalism, despite the fact that the edit may in fact be harmful. --] 22:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

== Propose to list Hoax as example of vandalism ==

The following was first listed (in the last few months) as what vandalism was not (weirdly). I then moved it to what vandalism was. Somebody suggested this was done without consensus. Fair point. I propose adding this to the list of type of vandalism. Please indicate if you support, oppose, or wish to reword it. Thanks. --] 22:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

;]:] with Hoaxes. This has been done before, with varying results. Some Wikipedians suspect that the majority of hoaxes here are attempts to test the system. If you are interested in how accurate Misplaced Pages is, a less destructive test method is to try to find inaccurate statements that are already in Misplaced Pages, and then to check to see how long they have been in place (and if possible, do correct them). Note that writing verifiable information ''about'' a hoax, is obviously not itself a hoax, and is often appropriate.

:Testing the system is vandalism. ] ] 22:17, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

::The problem with listing hoaxed as a form of vandalism, is that vandaism is subject to speedy deletion, as per ], but there are good reason for not allowing people to speedy delte things thy thing are hoaxes -- specifically that there have been too many false positives in the past, things people honestly belived were hoaxes but turned out to be "strange but true". Includign the above commetn with a sentance that "Technically Hoaxes are not considered vandalism, but we strongly disapprove of them nonetheless" might do the trick. ] ] 22:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
:::If it doesn't already say so, the CSD criteria should specifically state "simple vandalism", which excludes sneaky vandalism (including hoaxes). --] 22:24, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
::::But the reason it can't be speedied is not because it's allowed or ok, it's because it needs to be verified. hoaxes are nonsense, pure and simple; adding nonsense is considered vandalism, i don't think that that is a subject of debate. It should be '''a)'''considered vandalism (technically or otherwise) and '''b)'''carry a clear warning that it is not speediable due to the necessity of verification. i don't see a conflict there. just because it needs some research put into it to verify its nature as a hoax doesn't mean that it isn't vandalism; in fact, it's even ''more'' disruptive to wikipedia due to that, taking more time from editors, and being a more insiduous threat to intellectual standards here. just my two cents. --] <sup>]</sup> 22:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 06:07, 9 January 2025

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Vandalism? Promotion?

IP-addresses including

  • likely many more in the same range

posted in late February many television series releases (like ) on pages like 2024 in the Netherlands like they are notable events. It don’t seems notable?. But is it also vandalism or promotion? Or should it all be moved to pages like 2024 in Dutch television 82.174.61.58 (talk) 13:19, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

should be protected

the page should be protected Truth protest (talk) 23:44, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I do not think that all humorous writing is vandalism, and this page could acknowledge that.

Considering that vandalism is done in bad faith, and does not need to be humorous. Vandals can attempt to destroy Misplaced Pages out of hate.

Examples of humorous writing that is in good faith, but still disruptive, is when adding constructive material in an excessively humorous style, or inserting jokes that are meant to improve the fun of reading the article (and therefore helping it), but the jokes are out of place. Misplaced Pages is a serious wiki, after all. Sites like TV Tropes are examples of sites with a lot of humorous writing in good faith, to the point where humor is featured in encyclopedic material.

There are templates to warn people who are adding inappropriate humor into pages, and where such writing is not proven to be vandalism (therefore not making those templates be redundant to those for warning about vandalism), and they are here, here, here, here and here.

How can this be acknowledged? Perhaps by mentioning something like this under "What is not vandalism" so that good-faith editors with too much humor can be seperated from those who want to damage this wiki, even if it can be hard to tell those two apart since humor happens to be common in vandalism. CarlFilip19 (talk) 13:22, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes 194.74.221.162 (talk) 10:41, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

images of vandalism for examples?

I propose adding images as examples of vandalism, such as this

an example of vandalism, faking a person's biography

InsertCoolNameHere78 (talk) 06:45, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I have to look at too much of this already. I'll quit if any of you make me start looking at it in my free time. Remsense ‥ 论 06:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
No, we don't draw attention to trolls here, see WP:DENY. Please find something constructive to do. Johnuniq (talk) 07:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Feedback requested about homoglyph vandalism

Hello. A discussion is taking place regarding this tricky form of vandalism. Your feedback would be appreciated at WT:AIV#Homoglyph vandalism. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:25, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

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