Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:27, 18 January 2007

This page documents an English Misplaced Pages policy.It describes a widely accepted standard that editors should normally follow, though exceptions may apply. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

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This page in a nutshell: Intentionally making non-constructive edits to Misplaced Pages will result in a block or permanent ban.

Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Misplaced Pages.

The most common type of vandalism is the replacement of existing text with obscenities, page blanking, or the insertion of bad jokes or other nonsense. Fortunately, this kind of vandalism is usually easy to spot.

Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Apparent bad-faith edits that do not make their bad-faith nature inarguably explicit are not considered vandalism at Misplaced Pages. For example, adding a personal opinion once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated.

Committing vandalism is a violation of Misplaced Pages policy; it needs to be spotted, and then dealt with — if you cannot deal with it yourself, you can seek help from others.

Not all vandalism is obvious, nor are all massive or controversial changes vandalism; careful attention needs to be given to whether the new data or information is right, or false but well-intentioned, or outright vandalism.

Dealing with vandalism

Edits that blank all or part of a biography of a living person may not be vandalism, but instead an effort by the subject of the article to remove inaccurate or biased material.

If you see vandalism (as defined below), revert it and leave a warning message on the user's talk page. Check the page history after reverting to make sure you have removed all the vandalism; there may be multiple vandal edits, sometimes from several different IPs. If it is obvious that all versions of the page are pure vandalism, nominate the page for deletion. Also, check the vandal's other contributions -- you will often find more malicious edits.

Warnings

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

There are several templates used to warn vandals. They are listed at right in order of severity, but need not be used in succession. Though some people vandalizing are incorrigible returning vandals and may be blocked quickly, it is common for jokesters or experimenters to make non-encyclopedic edits; these people are usually stopped by a simple warning and often become productive contributors. If you are not sure that an edit is vandalism, always start with {{test}}.

The ~~~~ in the templates above causes the time and your signature to be added to the warning. The "subst" causes the template text to be pasted into the talk page as if you had typed it out, instead of leaving {{test}} visible when editing the page, because it is a comment in a talk page. You may also write your own message to the user.

If the vandal continues, list them at Misplaced Pages:Administrator intervention against vandalism. The blocking admin may leave {{subst:test5}} ~~~~ to notify that they have been blocked.

Trace IP address

Also, consider tracing the IP address. Find owners by using:

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

(If an address is not in one, it will probably be in another registry.) Then add {{vandalip|Name of owner}} to the talk pages of users who vandalize.

If an IP address continues to vandalize and is registered to a school or other kind of responsive ISP, consider listing it on Misplaced Pages:Abuse reports. Follow the instructions there and read the guide to see if it applies. If it does, list it.

Types of vandalism

Misplaced Pages vandalism may fall into one or more of the following categorizations:

Blanking

Removing all or significant parts of pages or replacing entire established pages with one's own version without first gaining consensus constitute vandalism. Sometimes important verifiable references are deleted with no valid reason(s) given in the summary. However, significant content removals are usually not considered to be vandalism where the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary. Due to the possibility of unexplained good-faith content removal, template:test1a or template:blank, as appropriate, should normally be used as initial warnings for ordinary content removals not involving any circumstances that would merit stronger warnings.

Spam

Adding inappropriate external links for advertisement and/or self-promotion. Note that this applies only to placing links on numerous and/or unrelated pages. Adding self-promotional links to a few related articles may be inappropriate, but is not vandalism.

Vandalbots

A script or "robot" that attempts to vandalize or spam massive numbers of articles (hundreds or thousands).

Silly vandalism; graffiti

Adding profanity, random characters, etc. to pages; creating nonsensical and obviously non-encyclopedic pages, etc. Please note that the addition of random characters to pages is a common way that new users test edit and may not be intentionally malicious.

Sneaky vandalism

Vandalism which is harder to spot. This can include adding plausible misinformation to articles, (e.g altering dates minorly), hiding vandalism (e.g. by making two bad edits and only reverting one), or reverting legitimate edits with the intent of hindering the improvement of pages.

Userspace vandalism

Adding insults, profanity, etc. to User pages or user talk pages (see also Misplaced Pages:No personal attacks).

Image vandalism

Uploading shock images, inappropriately placing explict images on pages, or simply using any image in ways that are disruptive. Please note though that Misplaced Pages is not censored for the protection of minors and that explicit images may be uploaded or placed on pages for legitimate reasons.

Abuse of tags

Bad-faith placing of {{afd}}, {{delete}}, {{sprotected}}or other tags on articles that do not meet such criteria.

Page-move vandalism

Changing the names of pages (referred to as "page-moving") to disruptive or otherwise inappropriate terms. Misplaced Pages now only allows registered users active for at least four days to move pages.

Internal link vandalism

Modifying links within a page so that they appear the same but link to a page that they are not intended to (e.g an explicit image).

Avoidant vandalism

Removing {{afd}}, {{copyvio}} and other related tags in order to conceal deletion candidates or avert deletion of such content. Note that this is often mistakenly done by new users who are unfamiliar with AfD procedures and such users should be given the benefit of the doubt and pointed to the proper page to discuss the issue.

Modifying users' comments

Editing other users' comments to substantially change their meaning (e.g. turning someone's vote around), except when removing a personal attack (which is somewhat controversial in and of itself). Signifying that a comment is unsigned is an exception. Please also note that correcting other users' typos is discouraged.

Improper use of dispute tags

Dispute tags are an important way for people to show that there are problems with the article. Do not remove them unless you are sure that all stated reasons for the dispute are settled. As a general rule, do not remove other people's dispute tags twice during a 24 hour period. Do not place dispute tags improperly, as in when there is no dispute, and the reason for placing the dispute tag is because a suggested edit has failed to meet consensus. Instead, follow WP:CON and accept that some edits will not meet consensus. Please note that placing or removal of dispute tags does not count as simple vandalism, and therefore the reverting of such edits is not exempt from the three-revert rule.

Talk page vandalism

Deleting the comments of other users from Talk pages other than your own, aside from removing internal spam, vandalism, etc. 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 this policy does not itself prohibit the removal and archival of comments at the user's discretion.

Repeated uploading of copyrighted material

Uploading or using material on Misplaced Pages in ways which violate Misplaced Pages's copyright policies after having been warned is vandalism. Because users may be unaware that the information is copyrighted, or of Misplaced Pages policies on how such material may and may not be used, such action only becomes vandalism if it continues after the copyrighted nature of the material and relevant policy restricting its use have been communicated to the user.

Malicious account creation

Creating accounts with usernames that contain deliberately offensive or disruptive terms is considered vandalism, whether the account is used or not. For Misplaced Pages's policy on what is considered inappropriate for a username, see Misplaced Pages:Username.

Deleted page re-creation

Repeated re-creation of pages that have been legitimately deleted via process pages, WP:PROD or speedy deletion. Re-creating a page once may be an understandable mistake - repeated re-creation after the user has been warned not to do so may constitute vandalism.

Hidden vandalism

Any form of vandalism that that makes use of embedded text, which is not visible to the final rendering of the article but visible during editing.

What vandalism is not

Although sometimes referred to as such, the following things are not vandalism and are therefore treated differently:

New User Test

New users who discover the "Edit this page" button sometimes want to know if they can really edit any page, so they write something inside just to test it. This is not vandalism! On the contrary, these users should be warmly greeted, and given a reference to the Sandbox (e.g. using the test template message) where they can keep making their tests. (Sometimes they will even revert their own changes; in that case, place the message {{test-self}} on their talk page.)

Learning Wiki Markup and Manual of Style

Some users require some time to learn the wiki-based markup, and will spend a little time experimenting with the different ways to make external links, internal links, and other special characters. Rather than condemning them as vandals, just explain to them what our standard style is on the issue in hand -- perhaps pointing them towards our documentation at Misplaced Pages:How to edit a page, and the like.

NPOV violations

The neutral point of view is a difficult policy for many of us to understand, and even Misplaced Pages veterans occasionally accidentally introduce material which is non-ideal from an NPOV perspective. Indeed, we are all affected by our beliefs to a greater or lesser extent. Though inappropriate, this is not vandalism.

Bold Edits

Wikipedians often make sweeping changes to articles in order to improve them -- most of us aim to be bold when updating articles. While having large chunks of text you've written deleted, moved to the talk page, or substantially rewritten can sometimes feel like vandalism, it should not be confused with vandalism.

Mistakes

Sometimes, users will insert content into an article that is not necessarily accurate, in the belief that it is. By doing so in good faith, they are trying to contribute to the encyclopedia and improve it. If you believe that there is inaccurate information in an article, ensure that it is, and/or discuss its factuality with the user who has submitted it.

Unintentional Nonsense

While nonsense can be a form of vandalism, sometimes honest editors may not have expressed themselves correctly (there may be an error in the syntax, particularly for wikipedians who use English as a second language). This is a type of mistake. Sometimes connection errors unintentionally produce the appearance of nonsense. In either case, assume good faith.

Bullying or Stubbornness

Some users cannot come to agreement with others who are willing to talk to them on an article's talk page, and repeatedly make changes opposed by everyone else. This is regrettable -- you may wish to see our dispute resolution pages to get help. However, it is not vandalism.

Harassing or Making Personal Attacks

We have a clear policy on Misplaced Pages of no personal attacks, and harassing other contributors is not allowed. Some forms of harassment are also clear cases of vandalism, such as home page vandalism, or a personal attack on another editor inserted into an article. However, harassment in general is not vandalism.

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

How to spot vandalism

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

See also

• List of media personalities who have vandalised Misplaced Pages

Tools:

• Administrator intervention against vandalism -- for quick action in clear cases
• Abuse reports -- for reporting abusive IP addresses to ISPs
• Cleaning up vandalism
• Counter-Vandalism Unit, a Wikiproject committed to cleaning up vandalism.
• Dealing with AOL vandals
• Requests for investigation -- for more complex abuse, or to request a watch on a user/page.
• Requests for watching -- get your pages watched by others
• Speedy deletions
• Template:TestTemplates -- a grid of templates that may be used on user talk pages

Essays/Guidelines:

• Do not insult the vandals, an essay on vandals and civility
• Edit war
• The Motivation of a Vandal - essay on the motivation of a vandal
• On assuming good faith - essay on the relationship between this policy and the Assume good faith policy.

Other:

• Favorite pages of banned users
• RC patrol
• Anti-vandalism ideas
• Vandalbot

External links

• Misplaced Pages policies
• Misplaced Pages vandalism
• Misplaced Pages how-to