Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by NeonMerlin (talk | contribs) at 08:07, 6 July 2006 (Newly discovered, but months-old, type of vandalism). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Talk about removing warnings is spread out over this page and getting hard to follow. It has been suggested to move the conversation about this issue to Misplaced Pages:Removing warnings and to eventually vote on Misplaced Pages:Removing warnings poll. In the Meanwhile please refrain from adding/removing the section on removing warnings from this article until we can find consensus. Thank You

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December 2005 January 2006 – April 2006 Note: This page was created on 20 September 2004. Until proper archives are created, past discussion is available in the history.

Bots hidding vandalism

I don't know if it happens to you as well, but the recent heavy activity by robots that format articles has given me a lot of extra-work spotting vandalism in the articles I watch by getting extensive watchlists of modified articles that have only been slightly touched by a Bot.

To illustrate the problem, let me show you this edit that added some nonsense, but at the same time removed the chinnese interwiki link (zh:). Hours later to this vandal edit YurikBot restored the interwiki link, leaving the vandalism untouched. The following day I check for the last changes, and saw tha the page has been edited by YurikBot, thus thought that there's no need to check its edits, but luckily checked it anyway.

Since bots produce a huge number of changes in articles that might have not been otherwise modified in months (and therefore there's no need to check them for vandalism), it might be reasonable to give Bots a special status that would later allow us to ignore their edits when requesting your our watchlist. This way watchlists would be much more compact, and we would have less work doing our everyday check.

Another idea would be the display in the watchlists the number of edits to that page since your last log-on, or something like that. Any other ideas? Comments? Good wiking, Mariano(t/c) 14:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, that's a good point. Maybe edits made by bots could be flagged as "(bot)" or something like that? Beno1000 12:03, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Edits made by bots SHOULD be flagged as "(bot)". It sounds like a good idea as well. --Siva1979 18:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

What does "nonsense" mean?

As was stated so aptly at "18:38, 7 April 2006 Alienus (→Abuse of Admin Powers by Connolley - incompetent)" on the discussion history page of User talk:William M. Connolley "if a definition is circular, it forms an endless loop that explains nothing. This isn't a mere issue of subjective content dispute, but rather a defintion that cannot ever be correct because it has no content". As admin William Connelley has been assisting in the vandalism of the libertarian article, by unilaterally blocking all users who revert back from a circular definition, some detail on the vandalism page as to what "nonsense" means, is necessary. I have added the following sentence to clarify what is meant by "nonsense", "This nonsense sometimes consists of inserting sentences which make no grammatical sense whatsoever, such as inserting a "circular definition" to replace one which is not circular."

Any objections?pat8722 15:02, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Strongly object. This is WP:POINT, because you were blocked. Don't try to game the system. KillerChihuahua 15:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Also suggest you strike through your accusation that WMC is a vandal, personal attacks are a blockable offense and you have been warned already concerning this, by another admin. KillerChihuahua 15:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

An allegation of "Vandalism" is not a personal attack, it is claim that requires determination. Is it, or is not, vandalism to place nonsense in a wiki article. Are we all in agreement that a circular definition is "nonsense"? pat8722 15:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Objectionable load of garbage.' First of all, you don't change a page and then discuss it. Second of all, changing it does not automativally vindicate you from prior blocks. You were still wrong, as that was the policy in effect at the time. Third, solve your content disputes on the article talk page. Lastly, I wonder if it's really circular, or if you just don't understand the words. In any case, your argument doesn't belong here. MSJapan 15:16, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The policy in effect at the time was that NONSENSE can be reverted under the then-in-place vandalism policy, which is all I did. I am not seeking to vindicate a prior block, I just want to make sure no one else is blocked for reverting nonsense, where the nonsense comes in the form of a circular definition.pat8722

Edits which are merely incorrect or logically inconsistent have never been considered vandalism on Misplaced Pages. I would be extremely surprised if the community approved of this large expansion of the definition of vandalism. Enforcing such an ambiguous definition would be impossible and detrimental to the project. Rhobite 15:18, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I am not at all proposing an expansion, just a clarification of what is meant by "nonsense". pat8722 15:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

No, you are attempting to expand "nonsense" to include your definition of a circular argument. This is nonsense. Not english, not any recognizable language. Other examples include recognizable words, but make no sense. What you have is a content dispute; resolve on the article's talk page. KillerChihuahua 15:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

As I said, logically inconsistent edits have never been considered vandalism before, so this is an expansion of the vandalism policy. Since a circular definition still conveys information, and can often be fixed easily, it is not equivalent to nonsense. Adding a circular definition isn't inherently malicious, so it should not be treated as vandalism. Rhobite 15:39, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I have asked the linguists and grammarians at wikipedia (on their talk page) to contribute to this discussion. I am not seeking to "expand" what "nonsense" means, only to have what "nonsense" means explained on the vandalism page, so that we can help wikipedia be the quality encyclopedia it has the potential of being. As CIRCULAR definitions are NONSENSE,they ARE EXCLUDED UNDER PRESENT POLICY, we just need to clarify that. Circular definitions are "fixed" by replacing them with non-circular ones. The present problem is that users who try to do that are being blocked. (An edit doesn't have to be malicious to be vandalism, although the deliberate insertion of a circular definition is malicious, is it not?) (pat8722 15:44, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Talk:List of linguists isn't exactly a gathering point for linguists on Misplaced Pages. I think you should add a note to Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Policies. Rhobite 15:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I have also posted my message on the Talk:Grammar page. We aren't looking for more people with political agendas to participate. We are looking for those who will respond objectively, i.e. grammarians, who have no purpose but to help us produce a quality encyclopedia. pat8722 15:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Policy reflects usage, it does not dictate usage. If, in your opinion, the policy is vague, then I'm all for discussing ways to tighten the language. However, the policy cannot be expanded in a way that does not reflect usage. As Rhobite said above, we can't expand the use of Vandalism to cover things that the community does not consider vandalism. Such an expansion would probably take a community-wide vote. If you want to work towards that, again, feel free - I think Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy) is probably a good place to start the discussion. Guettarda 16:02, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

As I have stated repeatedly above, I am NOT looking for expansion of the definition of "vandalism", only a stated clarification of the CURRENT policy, which classifies "nonsense" as vandalism. If a circular definition is "nonsense" (which any grammarian will tell you it is), then IT IS PRESENTLY PROHIBITED AS VANDALISM, we just want to say so explicitly, that all. pat8722 17:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

There are many problems with what you are arguing, but among the more amusing ones- grammarians don't decide whats circular, that would be in the realm of logic. JoshuaZ 19:06, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

As I said before, you can't interpret Misplaced Pages policy legalistically. Policy reflects the way the community operates, it does not dictate the way the community must act. You are seeking to expand the sort of "nonsense" that constitutes vandalism. Thus, yours is a proposal to change policy. Guettarda 19:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Not at all. The present definition prohibits circular definitions, just as it is written (as circular defnitions are nonsense, do you agree?), and the present definition of vandalism prohibits nonsense. You are the one who would be proposing a policy change, if you want to allow circular definitions as being acceptable. pat8722 19:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this present discussion is a perfect example of nonsense. — Dunc|☺ 20:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Pat, the "present definition" of vandalism isn't determined by what's written down and what those words mean to you. The present definition of vandalism is determined by community practice, and what's written down is an attempt to distill that into a few sentences. If one of those sentences seems to imply that circular definitions are vandalism, and yet the community is not treating them as such, then that sentence is a less-than-perfectly-accurate distillation of what policy actually is. Try not to worry about it. (This is what Guettarda meant about not interpreting WP policy "legalistically". Think about that.)

Beginning to treat circular definitions as vandalism would be a change in community practice, which is where policy is determined. Thus you are proposing a policy change: from the current policy, to one that more closely matches your particular understanding of a sentence you read. It would be a bad policy change, because it would open a door for abuse, with people taking it as license to revert without discussion definitions they don't like, as long as they accuse them of "circularity". Better we all try to err on the side of more discussion, and accusing our opponents of vandalism less never.

Oh, I'll also disagree that circular definitions are nonsense, in the non-Misplaced Pages meaning of the word. That's coming from a mathematical and cognitive science point of view. (IANACS, but I like their point of view.) -GTBacchus 18:00, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Blanking of messages on User talk pages should not be considered vandalism

It is unnecessary and counterproductive that some editors on Misplaced Pages consider that the removal of messages or warnings from user talk pages as vandalism. While such removal is certainly not recomended, and can reasonably be considered antisocial, it is not, and should not be descirbed as, vandalism. Many good-faith editors remove messages from their talk page. Describing this as vandalism merely imputes bad-faith to many editors when this is not the case. JesseW, the juggling janitor 02:40, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Message removal I can agree should not be considered vandalism, however warnings are another matter. Someone actively removing warnings may be doing so to evade a block (afterall, if the warning is removed and the behavior that earned the warning continues, the next editor/sysop to come along will not see that the editor had been previously warned (at least not without delving into the history of the page; something I suspect few do)). —Locke Cole • t • c 02:51, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Removing a warning from a talk page is not vandalism. It's problematic, potentially antisocial, and dispreferred, but it is not vandalism. I'm sorry, but I've seem this used to accuse good-faith editors of vandalism too many times. It's not true and it needs to be removed in order to stop people from using it to accuse good faith editors with attitude problems of vandalism. Kelly Martin (talk) 03:01, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Kelly. We have a narrow definition of vandalism, and that's a Good Thing. "Removing warnings" should be removed from this page. It might not hurt to add somewhere that removing warnings and other messages from one's own talk page is explicitly not considered vandalism. -GTBacchus 03:45, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm a a little late here, but strongly disagree, especially when dealing with anons. When one is dealing with vandalism it highly useful to know what the user has done in the past, and it is much easier to see this when one has it on their talk page than having to possibly slog through the history. JoshuaZ 20:12, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I also disagree with removal of warnings, except in the most obvious of cases (e.g. a blatant vandal adding a test4 to an admins page). It would be much better for a third party to remove inappropriate warnings. Petros471 20:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is no good reason whatsoever to remove a "VALID" warning from a talk page. unless it's to archive. ⇒ SWATJester Aim _Fire! 09:29, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Joshua, I would also be more strict in the case of anonymous vandals removing vandalism warnings (they sometimes replace them with obscenities), but I still wouldn't call it vandalism. I think calling it vandalism leaves established editors at the mercy of disruptive users who think it's fun to send {{test4}} to administrators who remove spam. AnnH ♫ 08:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

What is and is not considered vandalism is being discussed here. Saying "it's not vandalism" is not a compelling argument to have it removed IMO. With regard to having this abused, scold the editors/sysops abusing it against editors in good standing, don't take it out on the policy. —Locke Cole • t • c 10:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

What the hell? Why was this removed from the policy? There doesn't appear to be any consensus that it should be removed. Did I miss some bigger discussion somewhere else? I see 3 people who believe it should be removed, and 3 that believe it should stay. Well, thanks to the removal, RC patrol and user warnings are now useless. It doesn't matter if you warn a vandal multiple times over and over, which are warning signs to the next admin to view that page to be less lenient with that vandal: he/she can just delete the warnings and there's nothing you can do about it. ⇒ SWATJester Aim _Fire! 09:57, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Great case in point: Shaft121 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), blocked just yesterday, deleted his warnings, they've been reverted back in multiple times. With this change in policy (which, btw, WP:TALK also disagrees with, stating as well that removing warnings is vandalism), I'm now in 3RR violation because I'm no longer reverting simple vandalism. And this vandal gets off scot free, thumbs his nose at the admins, and moves onward. The people who are making a good faith deletion of their warnings will take the appropriate action upon receiving the first warning-deletion warning, be it archiving, leaving it alone, protesting the warning. The true vandals will just blank it anyway. Making warning-deletion ok just gives more power to the vandals, and takes less away from the vandal fighters.⇒ SWATJester Aim _Fire! 10:05, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't get the wrong impression: I don't think that warnings should stay on there forever. The user should archive them, or, barring that (lets say they don't get much talk page action), then WP:VANDAL or WP:TALK should be updated to include a length of time after which it's acceptable to remove a warning: say, a week, 2 weeks, a month, whatever. But users getting warned and blocked, and then removing the warning less than 24 hours later and saying "haha, can't revert me or I'll give you 3RR" is ludicrous. This whole situation is easily solved by adding a clause in to state that after XXXX length of time you can remove your warning, or, after ANY length of time, you can archive them along with the entire content of your talk page.⇒ SWATJester Aim _Fire! 10:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think consensus was reached. A straw poll? Computerjoe's talk 10:09, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I was just about to leave a rant asking why this has disappeared, but it's been fixed now, I've already noticed vandals removing today's warnings and at least one noticed was pointing here asking for the warners to be blocked under 3rr. Tis' fine as it is now - warning messages should not be removed. --Alf 10:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I brought this issue up on WP:VPP a few days ago, but I hadn't examined this talk page, so I assumed consensus had been reached that removing warnings was not vandalism (so I suggested that perhaps it should still be banned via some other policy). So of course I too think that it would be best if removing warnings were still considered vandalism. --TreyHarris 10:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Removing warnings don't Vandalize the Policy

Let's move this Debate to Misplaced Pages:Removing warnings so we don't keep changing the Policy

This Conversation is taking place on Sevral Locations on this talk page. Anyway Wether or not we call removing warnings Vandalism I feel it should not be allowed to pretend they never existed. I Don't care what you call it but If it is a vandal that is removing warnings it doesn't really matter becose their Talk page history should be managable and any warning would also be pernamently in the talk page history. If it is a Good faith editor calling removing warnings shoulden't be called vandalism becose they aren't vandals. Mabe we should make a whole new policy page for removing warnings. Mabe we can call it Misplaced Pages:Removing warnings. We can then poinnt the templates there. Template:Wr0 Template:Wr Template:Wr2. My problem with people removing warnings is that instead of resonding to the warning they just remove it. If they leve the warning on or archive it then they can just respond to te warning and explain how it is inapropriat. But just removing the warning withouth an explanation almost Proves that the warning was unjust--E-Bod 16:27, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another page titled Misplaced Pages:Removing warnings. (Discuss)

I just found this nice template we can add to this page. However if i am the only one who feels this way then mabe sombody else can add the template--E-Bod 16:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Acually I just realized it is already Here Misplaced Pages:Talk page More Specifically Can I do whatever I want to my own user talk page?--E-Bod 17:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

It was moved again to Misplaced Pages:Talk_page#Etiquette But the Offical policy M:Help:Talk_page has nothing on the issue--E-Bod 22:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Removal

I removed "removing warnings" from the page in good faith; I figured if anybody objected (as they have now), they'd put it back (as someone has now). Replying to User:Swatjester: To clarify, I don't think anyone's suggesting that we should make warning-deletion "ok", just that it isn't vandalism. If an active vandal removes warnings, I say put 'em back, just don't call it vandalism. It's disruption, and vandals don't get to argue due process. Nobody applying common sense would holdy you in violation of 3RR for that; that would be egregious Wikilawyering.

In reply to Locke Cole above, I'm not concerned about people accusing good editors of vandalism when they remove spurious warnings, I'm more concerned about how this policy is applied among the more borderline editors. Giving somewhat tendentious editors another excuse to wrongfully accuse one another of vandalism is a bad idea. We have a very narrow definition of vandalism and that's a Good Thing. As User:Kelly Martin puts it above, an attitude problem should not be branded as vandalism. -GTBacchus 16:57, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree that removing warnings should not constitute vandalism. It is an open invitation to revert war on User talk pages and harass people with warnings about removing warnings. Swatjester was recently involved in just such a conflict with Drmagic where there was no ongoing dispute except whether or not it was okay to remove past warnings. Such disputes have a pointlessly hostile and negative impact on good users that outweighs the limited benefit that such a rule would have in dealing with real vandals. If someone is an ongoing disruption to Misplaced Pages, and is trying to cover that up, then go tell sysops. Using a rule like this to revert war about warnings and warnings about warnings, will not improve the behavior of true vandals and has a lot of potential to upset useful users. Dragons flight 17:16, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

You should only use Template:Wr0 Once (if at all nomater how tempting it is) about a warning you made to inform them not to remove future warnings. But after that It should be sombody else who moves it to Template:Wr and then Template:Wr2. And if you go ahead and "tell sysops" They will tell you To have some tea and let the person get into trouble with somebody else User_talk:Yskyflyer#help_me. It is Point less for one person to warn somebody twise about removing warnings, however if uninvolved people use the warning it may have more meaning--E-Bod 17:34, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

First, Dragons flight, where do you think that DrMagic's dispute came from? It came from him being blocked the day before for 3rr, and trying to hide his warnings. As for getting a Sysop to do something about it, guess what, we already have to. If a person blanks the warnings, and you go tell a sysop, the sysop is just going to ask "did you give him Wr0, Wr1 and wr2"? If not, then they probably won't protect the page. Dragons flight, I'm not sure why you think I was "harassing" Drmagic, considering that was the first contact I'd ever had with him, and the entire situation was resolved amicably. But that's neither here nor there, the point is, that removing warnings disrupts the project, and THAT is vandalism. ⇒ SWATJester Aim _Fire! 18:54, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

First, the block was a mistake and the blocking admin lifted it [http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=&page=User%3

IP addresses

It's not clear to me from the article when or why the vandalip template should be used. In addition, how do you obtain an IP address in place of a user name? Is it the case that there is only reason to block/comment on an IP where the user is anonymous? --Cedders 10:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't simply revert blanking

I was very surprised to find out I had done wrong in reverting what I interpreted as blanking vandalism recently. My mistake clearly follows from WP:AGF and WP:V, but I hadn't thought it through. It's possible that the editor (who has been mistaken for a vandal) merely wanted to dispute the unsourced statements, and of course, by WP:V, they can do that merely by removal (so it may not be "vandalism", but actually just a legitimate verifiability dispute with some collateral damage). So when responding to blanking "vandalism", rather than simply reverting, you need to go through the article and restore only sourced statements, not all the statements blanked. We should include some language about only restoring sourced statements after blanking. I'm waiting for Jimbo Wales' response to me to clarify, but I'm thinking that since in a degenerate case, you could have a very large article blanked that could take a very long time to verify all the sources, and it would be bad to have a blank page up so long, maybe a compromise would be to put a {{citation needed}} on every statement and restore it?

In any case, I bet I'm not the only one who's been just reflexively restoring blanking without giving it a second thought, so I wanted to make others aware. --TreyHarris 01:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Oops, Jimbo just responded to me the moment before I saved this, and he says he's considering the issue I just brought up. So I guess it's best to wait for now. --TreyHarris 02:00, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Still haven't heard from Jimbo, but I've been thinking about this a bit more, and I'm reminded how annoying it's been in the past when I've responded to a {{citation needed}} by digging into the library and emerging with a source, only to find out someone else just sourced it prior to me. Unlike a simple copyedit or other vandalism-fighting maintenance tasks, verifying a source is real, tedious, thankless work. It seems to me if an article is blanked, there may be dozens of us replicating that work to verify the same sources—and talk about edit conflicts galore! I'm not sure how to solve this one. Maybe put up a cleanup-like template, informing the reader that the article is being verified and will return soon (perhaps with a link to a prior revision marked with a warning that it may be inaccurate), and put another copy of the pre-blanked revision on a talk subpage, with every sentence marked as to its sourcing status? Then all editors can work on verifying the sources, resaving the page as they do, and once all the sentences are sourced or rejected, move it back to the article page and take the "verifying" notice down? (Of course, if an article gets blanked multiple times, after the first verification you could simply revert to that version while verification commences on the diff from that version to the one currently pre-blanking.)

I certainly don't like the idea, it sounds dreadfully tedious and complicated. But I can't think how else to let multiple editors work on getting a blanked article back up, if we assume that reversion is not allowed without source verification. Maybe someone else will have a brilliant idea.

I've never been a fan of WP:STABLE, but it occurs to me that it might be the only solution. --TreyHarris 05:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Link in the "Sneaky Vandalism" section broken

In the Misplaced Pages:Vandalism section on Sneaky Vandalism, the link to an example is broken. Maybe someone has a working example? Friendly Neighbour 08:28, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Settling the removing warnings issue

Whether or not removing warnings is vandalism, against policy but not vandalism, or something else entirely has consumed a considerable amount of time since the notion was first added to VAND. To settle the issue, I am proposing a poll. Right now it is still under construction, but I would appreciate feedback and help improving it. Comments should be directed at the poll's talk page. Dragons flight 21:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Conrad's recent edit to Vandalism

They seem to allow more leeway with test4, are the edits he made acceptable? JoshuaZ 03:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the first part of the edit an accurate description of how {{test4}} is sometimes used, and I don't think that use is inappropriate in cases of extreme vandalism. Why should someone have multiple chances to replace an entire article with a picture of a penis, for example? One hopes that encoding that use on this page will not lead to editors becoming cavalier about skipping test1-3. Maybe it's better left to the discretion of experienced editors to use judgement and finesse in their dealings with vandals, but it doesn't bother me written in the guideline for now.

There's also all that about {{test4im}}, the phrasing of which I don't like much. Test4 is sufficient, I think. -GTBacchus 03:57, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I think people are often too willing to skip straight to test4 and its variants already or just skip up the ladder a bit, so I'm not convinced codifying this is a step in the right direction. (Recently I saw someone give a test3 to what was clearly a testedit by an IP with otherwise no background at all). JoshuaZ 04:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that {{test4im}} does serve a good purpose. If a user has committed very serious acts of vandalism or has committed, say, five or six acts in rapid succession without there having been time to warn him for each act, then {{test4im}} does sound better than {{test4}}. Maybe a slight rewording would be in order, though. - Conrad Devonshire 22:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Too many vandalism templates

I find there's too many and I have trouble deciding which to use. Please consider removing at least one. Some are very similar to each other. Thank you.--Andeee 07:14, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I have added a few additional discriptions which may prove helpful. - Conrad Devonshire 22:51, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Putting each warning into a class showing which is more of a harsh warning would be good. Also, if the template went in order of the severity of the warning.--Andeee 16:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You are right. If you want this page to make any since to you you should view the really good and clear vision that had been up until recently. a random section I found in the history that looks perfect is Dealing with vandalism (I chose this edit because it was old but not too old). I do believe it is never appropriate to use {{subst:blatantvandal}} or {{subst:testblatant}}~~~~. I have seen people who just don't know how to code add "Bold text History" when they meant to do "History" when they really should have done == History == And a Vandal test template was added to the users page (fallowed by an apology for leaving it). Calling an edit Blatant vandalism is a violation of Assume good faith. We the templates can exist for that special case you would use it but It should not be used. When would you use it. If the blank the page you give them a test. If they change some facts around give them a test. If the vandal really is trying to destroy Misplaced Pages it wont make a difference if we tell them politely or rudely. Blatant vandal assumes they have no purpose in Misplaced Pages other than messing it up and so fails to redirect the user to the sandbox and proper policies. I never use the Blatant vandal template. I use the self test template if is see them revert the test themselves (This actually happens ALot) (not with a self test you don't do anything to the article they vandalized because they fixed it themselves). I If they didn't revert the edit themselves then i give them a normal test I assume they would do that if these is the . The only person who would be upset by a warning message is a good faith edit. Anybody else might pride them selves on their warnings. Minor vandals are rarely blocked. Only the most active of vandals actually get blocked. Especially IP addresses. Never put a blatant vandal warning on an IP because you don’t even know if the person receiving the warning

There are alot of template that aren't put her such as Template:Test0 and shouldn't

To find the appropriate template go to Template_messages/User_talk_namespace. Multiple warnings to an Ip addresses should have an IP message on the page. Although I have seen a lot of IP addresses with only one or to edits to the page they vandalized. You can’ call vandalism blatent unless you know from that users history that they are a blatant vandal. But in that case the warning would have already been given and raised so it doesn’t make since to use Blatent vandalism.

Please see the talk page for the template if you want to understand how to use that template. Please not Blatantvandal and Testblatant are now one template (one redirects to the other both should not exist except for that special someone that you really care about)

My coment is a little to long. If you can shorten it without changing what it says please do so and sin after my signature shortened by your signature --E-Bod 21:49, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

vandals with one edit?

Sorry if this has been asked before, but are we supposed to give warnings to IP vandals when their one vandalism is also their only edit? Do they generally turn out to be dynamic IPs for whom warning would be pointless? Thanks. --Allen 00:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and sometimes. Some bother, some don't. KillerChihuahua 18:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I've been wondering that for a while. --Allen 02:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

New definition of Vandalism

Would someone still be considered a Vandal, if that person knows what s/he is doing is interrupting progress, and possibly would be considered vandalism by others; but still believes what s/he is doing is right? For example, sonstant reverting and "correcting" something, without explaining why (sort of like an edit war), and believing what s/he is doing is benefiting the readers? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.164.209.137 (talk • contribs) .

I don't think intention of the editor can really be used to judge if something is vandalism or not. Maybe there are people who believe that adding "EEEEEEEPPPPPP" to an article about World War II is improving it? I would tend to disagree, but at Misplaced Pages we assume good faith and with good reason. So the best approach is to judge if the edit is vandalism based on its content not on what you think the editor's intention was. If you believe an edit is vandalism, leave a message (usually one of the satndard ones) on the editor's talk page and if they are making a good faith effort to improve the artyicle they will usually enter into a dialog and you can help them find the right way to express their intention. Just my 2 cents, Gwernol 21:52, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Penny Arcade gets to the source

I think it'd be great if we included a link to John Gabriel's Greated Internet Fuckwad Theory. It's humorous, but so true. ~MDD4696 19:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

First sentence of "Dealing with Vandalism"

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

Does anyone else feel we should change the word "usually" to something like "sometimes" or "occasionally"? The current version seems to indicate that the subject of the article editing it is more frequent than vandalism of that page, which is typically not true, in my opinion. I thought about just changing it myself, but I figured I'd get a few comments first. Also, I'm guessing this paragraph was put up after recent controversies regarding biographies, but is this important enough to be the first paragraph of the "dealing with vandalism" section? EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 04:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I would say 'sometimes' is rather more accurate than 'usually'. I'd be happy to change it if there are no further comments (or they are in agreement), especially as I don't think there was any discussion to add this bit? Ditto with it being the first paragraph, it would be much more appropriate under "What vandalism is not". Petros471 18:53, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Concensus and Vandalism

I'm actually surprised to see that editing against established concensus and super-majority is not considered a form of vandalism. If a few people would take a look at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Cyde2 and Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy you'll understand the context of this confusion. When a ratio of 10:1 say that something should be included, yet a few come along and keep removing content, at what point does it move from edit war to vandalism? Perhaps something needs to be in WP:VAN and WP:CON to clarify this. --StuffOfInterest 18:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Pages needs revert

This user has made recently several small non-sense edits (changing dates, adding incorrect data etc.) and I wonder if somebody would warn/ban him and revert his edits. I realise that's probably not good page for reporting vandalism, but I couldn't find proper one and didn't know what to do. Visor 18:41, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Replied on user talk page; checking this out now. KillerChihuahua 21:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Policy idea

How about we just change the definition of vandalism to "disagreeing with a humourless admin" - it would save time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.255.232.80 (talk • contribs) 00:57, 14 May 2006 (UTC).

Recreating deleted pages

Recreation of properly deleted pages isn't listed as an official type of vandalism. Shouldn't that be one of the types, especially given that there are warnings for doing that. Nationalparks 01:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a good question. I have to say that my experience of recreation of deleted articles is that its mainly by editors who don't understand WP:V or WP:N and are making good faith - if misguided - efforts to get a particular article created. As such its not really vandalism. There are some users who clearly vandalize by creating and reposting vandalistic articles. By the letter of the policy they aren't breaching any rules, but again my experience is that these vandals won't limit themselves to just this form of vandalism. They usually have plenty of other infractions that they can be cited for. If we see or are seeing vandals exploit this "loophole" through repetitive recreation of vandalism articles only then we should indeed extend the official rules. 2 cents from me, Gwernol 01:53, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes it's clearly a case of {{db-repost}}, such as what happened at Star pig. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 05:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Grammar error

"Dispute tags are important way for people to show that there are problems with the article." should be "Dispute tags are an important way for people to show that there are problems with the article." Ørjan 20:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

fixed, thanks for pointing that out.--Alhutch 20:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

User_talk vandalism?

Is it permissible to archive your warnings? Because the page doesn't make that clear. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 05:31, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Elaborating on the Main Definition of Vandalism

The beginning section of the definition says: 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 an opinion once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated.

This gives Wikipedians an example of a good-faith edit, but it does not give an example of a bad-faith edit, except by implication. I want to make explicit what is already implied and to give an example of what a bad-faith edit is that would be categorized as vandalism.

What is already implied: 1) Adding an opinion more than once would be vandalism. Of course, sometimes what is considered opinion is itself arguable, and therefore should be taken to the Talk Page before being considered vandalism. Once taken to the Talk Page, anyone continuing to edit what is knowingly under discussion would be considered committing vandalism, as the Talk page naturally puts on hold an edit that is under discussion. 2) Related to the principle in #1 - A bad-faith edit that does make its bad-faith nature inarguabley explicit is considered vandalism. This would mean, for example, that anyone who is already aware that a particular edit is currently under discussion, would be committing vandalism by making an edit pertaining to that point of discussion.

I propose to make this change unless anyone has some detailed reasons why this is not feasible. (Diligens 21:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC))

Machismo

Most Misplaced Pages vandals are probably young males. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.18.14.4 (talk • contribs)

Interesting theory, on what do you base this? HighInBC 13:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

On the fact that young females clearly tend to have a much more serious approach with Misplaced Pages, and don't insult directly something unpleasant which an article talks about. Moreover, the language of the attacks by Wiki vandals is usually characteristic of a rough boy's slang (bad words, ferocious humor, sexual references, etc.).

Sounds about right to me. DL 14:49, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Doing something about repeat vandals

One thing I've noticed, is that there are some vandals who repeatedly vandalize something, yet nothing more is done other than another warning added to their talk page. One that I've cleaned up after on several things now has 11 separate warnings in their talk page. Which, at that point in time, shouldn't their access be restricted or something? it just seems silly to have people like that continually mucking things up, for others to clean. - Hellmark 22:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

You are right. I've things like this with other users as well. Repeated warnings with no follow-up will make the vandal think that nothing is going to happen and they can keep vandalizing without retribution. It's a bad policy and harmful to Misplaced Pages. -- 127.*.*.1 14:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I find this frustrating as well. Especially when several of the warnings are "final" warnings (you will be blocked). I guess part of the problem is people being too lazy to post the vandal at WP:AIV. But from my experience, it also seems that most admins will only block an IP if the vandalism is very frequent (say, several in the last day or two). If an IP is all-vandalism, and is vandalizing past their final warning, but only vandalizes a couple times a week or so, they usually won't be blocked. I'm sure there's a good reason for this informal policy, but it does lead to these frustrating talk pages with multiple test4's. --Allen 14:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that guy, I reported him, and despite having 11 warnings (4 of which were "final" warnings). They refused to do anything, because he hadnt done any vandalizing in the last few days. And he wasnt even warned for some of the other stuff he's done. -- Hellmark 03:11, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Advice Please

First, apologies if this is the wrong place to ask. I am fairly new to Misplaced Pages and I have an issue I have not had to deal with before.

I have a unregistered user who continually blanks out sections of an article I've written. I can't give them a warning on their talk page, he doesn't explain his edits and I've since added references to to the sections he keeps blanking. What's the next step? The Vandalism article doesn't really say - I'd like to see the article locked from edits by unregistered users (not sure how to do that anyhow). Whois lookup just shows a major ISP. Is that fair enough? The article concerned is here: Jacqueline Pascarl-Gillespie. Any advice appreciated. --Commking 08:06, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Why can't you give warnings? -- 127.*.*.1 15:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The user concerned is unregistered, and so doesn't have a talk page. Warnings have been left on the talk page of the article concerned, to no effect. What's next? --Commking 21:05, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

User talk:144.133.93.78 No talk page? -GTBacchus 21:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Anonymous vandals

I'm sure there's a better place to discuss this. But it seems the vast majority of vandalism is done by anonymous users. Is there any talk about restricting edits to logged in users?

I understand the value of anonymity in some circumstances; maybe allow verified users to make anonymous (IP address-only) edits?

Miken32 01:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

test4 and IPs

I've been looking over this talk page and Misplaced Pages talk:Administrator intervention against vandalism, and two things seem clear to me:

• A lot of editors (including me) have been frustrated by seeing "the next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked" over and over on IP talk pages, without the user being blocked.
• No matter how many instances of vandalism there are, we cannot block IP addresses unless the vandalism is very frequest; to do otherwise would violate WP:BITE.

So instead of putting up with the frustration of seeing final warnings that clearly don't mean what they say, why don't we just stop using test4 on IP talk pages? We could add a paragraph to WP:VAND saying so, and have a <noinclude> section on Template:test4 as well. --Allen 01:17, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry

Guys, I have done my share fair of vandalising pages at wikipedia. I don't know why. But the truth is I am only apologising because I accept defeat. I mean, I am sorry I am a horrible person. I don't want to enjoy vandalising pages, but I do. Does that make me a bad person? I'm not sure.

Congratulations to those who work hard to stop vandalisers. I promise from now on to be well behaved. Thank you everybody.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.109.188.209 (talk • contribs)

Warning messages

Should they be placed only by the person who has reverted the vandalism to which the message relates? If another editor reverts vandalism without giving the vandal a warning, should someone else supply it? Шизомби 23:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

"most vandalism is reverted in five minutes"

This is just irresponsible to continue advertising/quoting this study in 2006. A study done in 2002, when Misplaced Pages was a vastly smaller and less famous site, is in no way comparable to our current situation. Without good data from at LEAST late 2005, we should stop referring to this number entirely. I know that most of my watchlist (which is purposefully composed of mostly sideline and special interest pages) contains vandalism 12, 30, 120 minutes after the edit. The 70%+ statistic once cited for Special:Unwatchedpages (a list only available to admins) also should be mentioned on this page, to honestly present the scope of the problem. -- nae'blis _(talk) 17:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

When I followed the links to the results of the 2002 IBM study, it was not 100% clear that the information on the IBM site fully supports the assertion that "A 2002 study by IBM found that most vandalism on the English Misplaced Pages is reverted within five minutes (see official results)." It seems there is some leap of inference there, or else I did not understand the results correctly? 69.140.157.138 16:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I couldn't find a mention of "five minutes" in the online text, only "But we've also found that vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly--so quickly that most users will never see its effects." Also "vandalism" seems to mean page blanking in that quote. Gimmetrow 17:16, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Conrad_Devonshire's removal of template:blatantvandal from Misplaced Pages:Vandalism

template:blatantvandal appears to be more appropriate for use as an initial warning than test2. Not having template:blatantvandal on the page is inconvenient for editors who wish to access it, but perhaps more importantly may obscure the existence of template:blatantvandal from new users. Therefore, I suggest restoring template:blatantvandal to Misplaced Pages:Vandalism. If redundancy is a concern, the text "or starting with {{test2}}." could be excised. John254 21:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Well in addition to that, the entire list of template warnings lists it as a later warning, though it was listed on the page as an early warning, and also I was the one who originally added it to the page.--Conrad Devonshire 21:19, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The list of template warnings lists template:blatantvandal as a "final" warning because, in appropriate circumstances, a user may be blocked for continued vandalism after receiving this warning. This is precisely why we need template:blatantvandal as an initial response to aggressive vandalism: so that we can have the vandal blocked after two vandalisms, rather than waiting for him to vandalize three times before we can block him. Furthermore, template:blatantvandal is more appropriate as an initial warning since it contains the language "Welcome to Misplaced Pages. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing.", some of which is present in the other initial warning, template:test, but none of which is included in template:test2. Thank you for your addition of template:blatantvandal to Misplaced Pages:Vandalism. It's such excellent work that I think we should retain it, at least until some more users comment about this issue. John254 22:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Notes from user

Reading through these vandalism pages is really impossible for newbies to understand. I don't understand at all how to report vandalism. Each listing brings me to a whole new page. Is there anyway you can simplify this whole proccess? This just makes it impossible for any newbies to report problems. (Added to Main Article by User:CDMACORE.) (Added to talk by Shaun Eccles-Smith 11:39, 10 June 2006 (UTC). )

That's a fair question. The policy pages are not particularly newbie friendly, precisely because they are policy pages, not guides to vandal fighting. They tend towards the "legalise" because they are trying to be precise. When I started out I found the recent changes patrol page was a great introduction to vandal fighting and reporting. Good luck, Gwernol 12:05, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

It is very true that there are a lot of pages. The reason for that is that vandalism is a big issue on Misplaced Pages, and there is a fair amount that needs to be documented to do with it. You might find this guide to cleaning up vandalism useful. Most vandalism should be reported to this page, however vandals should be warned before being reported there. Petros471 12:17, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

How do I warn a user? I'm new here and basically being bullied by a user (Locust43) who has been here for a while. He keeps changing the Sprint Nextel page, even though he told me through e-mail that he works for Verizon Wireless and hates all other carriers. So he keeps changing info on that profile, and when I restore it or update it in anyway, he gets me into trouble. Any help will be appreicated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CDMACORE (talk • contribs) 17:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we should write a guide for n00bs on how to pwn or at least counter vandals. — Rickyrab | Talk 17:41, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

That's what WP:CUV is for (kind of, that and a portal for vandalism related stuff), so any suggestions as to how to improve that would be welcome! Petros471 18:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Clarifying simple vandalism

I have seen people getting blocked for reverting the removal of dispute tags, and claiming that they were simply reverting vandalism. It's quite clear from WP:AN/3RR that edit warring over POV tags, etc. counts as edit warring. See here. I have added "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" to this policy page, as the practice is to block people for that kind of edit warring, so it should be made clearer in this page as well as in the 3RR page.

I also think that the Talk page vandalism definition should be changed:

The above does not apply to the user's own Talk page, where users generally are permitted to remove and archive comments at their discretion, except in cases of warnings, which they are generally prohibited from removing, especially where the intention of the removal is to mislead other editors.

There are people who send bogus vandalism warnings to administrators who rollback spam, or send bogus {{civil}} templates to people who politely criticize them, and who then begin to troll and revert when people remove these warnings from their talk page. I know that there is disagreement over whether or not people should remove unwelcome comments from their talk page, but I feel it is definitely not vandalism, and should not be included in a section that deals with real vandalism. An administrator's warning of a possible block if the behaviour is continued should not be reverted (though even if it is, I'd hesitate to call that vandalism). A disruptive user who sends templates to established users with whom s/he is in dispute may be and usually is reverted. AnnH ♫ 07:56, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that a very clear policy has to be outlined as to what constitutes 'Simple Vandalism', which would be excluded from 3RR. Reading the current version and searching for simple I only found it in one place, certainly not sufficient for allowing someone to decide whether a persistent reversion of what appears to be 'simple vandalism' by someone else (typically anon IP or suspected sockpuppet) is acceptable (e.g. is inserting AdSpam simple?). Also, Simple Vandalism (and hence 3RR exclusion rule) has to be clarified if it is different in a Talk page vs. an article. Thanks, Crum375 02:03, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

New or old type of vandalism?

There are six template tags being used at the top of the Opposition_to_homosexuality article. Would this be considered vandalism? Right now it has {{POV}} {{Original research}} {{Unreferenced}} {{POV-check}} {{Unbalanced}} and {{afd}}. Some of these tags are obviously redundant, and they may have been used simply to push the text of the article further down the page, making the article difficult to read. --Facto 09:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Permanent semiprotection

Perhaps some pages, such as Jew, are best kept permanently semiprotected, unless something big comes up involving the topics of such pages, as commonly used pages are often vandalized by anons. — Rickyrab | Talk 17:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Help needed

There is a problem on the football (soccer) site and I do not know how to fix it. Please educate these guys as to how bloody wrong they are. --SPUI (T - C) 01:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

How are they "bloody wrong"? — Rickyrab | Talk 22:46, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't forged comment signatures be added to types of vandalism?

Shouldn't forged comment signatures(excluding ones used as examples, otherwise we wouldn't be able to use an example on the page and i wouldn't be allowed to use the one below) be added to types of vandalism? i'd have thought that if a user added comments with a forged signature e.g.:

this is an example of a comment with a fake signatureJimbo Wales 21:22,

they could cause problems by having loads of fake votes etc"" 21:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think this type would be included under 'Sneaky Vandalism', as would any other malicious and subtle mis-information. Crum375 00:19, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

New essay

Hi, I think this is a good place to announce that I've written a brief Misplaced Pages essay about the relation between WP:AGF and WP:VAND. It's called Misplaced Pages:On assuming good faith. Feedback and imrpovements are welcome. -GTBacchus 21:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Usually not vandalism?

"Edits that blank all or part of a biography of a living person are usually not vandalism but are instead an effort by the subject of the article to remove inaccurate or biased material. Even when such edits are inappropriate, they should be treated as content disputes, not vandalism. In particular, vandalism warning messages should not be left on the talk page of the editor."

Um? Why is this obvious falsehood the first sentence of the "dealing with vandalism" section? Is this some defunct vestige from the Seigenthaler controversy? -Silence 07:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I've chaged "are usually not vandalism" to "may not be vandalism," keeping the same link. I think that's more plausible and leaves the relevant advice intact. -GTBacchus 07:58, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism vs. (possibly well-meant) disruption

I'm not sure throwing the word "vandalism" around in warnings and block messages is a good idea. It could escalate the situation, making the accused person feel offended and further their disruption into the realm of making personal attacks and other lack of civilities. Furthermore, a lot of disruptive users are new (or at least possibly new, if you suspect them to be a sockpuppet), and we don't want to bite newbies. Furthermore, there is no advantage in assuming bad faith, even when it seems obvious, because all countermeasures (reverting and blocking) can be done based on people's actions, not their intent. Anyways, I think that most warning and block messages should be reworded in a way that accuses the warnee/blockee of (possibly well-meant) disruption, not vandalism. Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 14:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Reverting to very old versions

There is a pattern of disruptive editing I've seen lately, where using popups or not, users will roll an article back to a version that is at least 25 revisions old. It seems by the definitions provided, it is not vandalism, yet, its highly disputive to continued work and restoring seems to work toward a 3rr violation. What is everyone's view on this? joshbuddy, talk 18:14, 22 June 2006 (UTC)