User:Ricken/SandboxPG/Vandalism

Vandalism is the addition, removal, or change of content, in a deliberate attempt to damage AmtWiki. Vandalism is prohibited. While editors are encouraged to warn and educate vandals, warnings are by no means necessary for an administrator to block (although administrators usually only block when multiple warnings have been issued).

Examples of typical vandalism are adding irrelevant obscenities and crudeness to a page, illegitimately blanking pages, adding personal insults to a player page, and inserting obvious nonsense into a page. Abusive creation or usage of user accounts and IP addresses may also constitute vandalism.

Upon discovery, you should revert clearly vandalizing edits, using the undo function. Once the vandalism is removed, you may warn the vandalizing editor that their actions are against AmtWiki policies. Notify administrators of vandalizing users who continue to vandalize despite warnings, and administrators should intervene to protect content and prevent further disruption by blocking such users from editing. When warranted, accounts whose main or only use is vandalism or other forbidden activity may be blocked even without a warning, usually indefinitely.

How to spot vandalism

Vandalism is usually obvious, taking place over the course of one or two edits. You can detect recent vandalism in many ways, including:

• Keeping an eye on the recent changes list
• Patrolling the pages on your Watchlist
• Checking the recent changes of an article in it's article history, accessible from the top of every page.

Suspicious edits are often performed by unregistered users with no other contributions, or users with red linked named and improvised usernames. However, IP addresses are valued contributors, and many editors choose usernames that look to be jumbles of letters on purpose. Some vandals are also registered users with contributions or normal-looking usernames. Always check an edit before assuming it is vandalism.

Types of vandalism

Vandalism usually falls into one of these categories:

• Abuse of tags: Bad-faith placing of non-content tags such as {{afd}}, {{cleanup}}, or other tags on pages that do not meet such criteria. This also includes removing tags in bad faith.
• Avoidant vandalism: Removing {{afd}}, {{copyvio}} and other related tags in order to conceal deletion candidates or avert deletion of such content. However, this is often mistakenly done by new users who are unfamiliar with AfD procedures and such users should be given the benefit of the doubt and pointed to the proper page to discuss the issue.
• Edit summary vandalism: Making offensive edit summaries in an attempt to leave a mark that cannot be easily expunged from the record (edit summaries cannot simply be "reverted" and require administrative action if they have to be removed from a page's history). Edit summaries are still bound to the policies and guidelines of AmtWiki.
• Gaming the system: Deliberate attempts to circumvent enforcement of Wikipedia policies, guidelines, and procedures by causing bad faith edits to go unnoticed. Can covere a number of things that entail going against the spirit of the rules, often following the letter of the rules instead.
• Hidden vandalism: Any form of vandalism that makes use of embedded text, which is not visible to the final rendering of the article but visible during editing. This includes link vandalism, or placing malicious, offensive, or otherwise disruptive or irrelevant messages or spam in hidden comments for editors to see.
• Illegitimate blanking: Removing all or significant parts of a page's content without any reason, or replacing entire pages with nonsense.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. Blanking that could be legitimate includes blanking all or part of a player page by the player themselves. AmtWiki preserves the rights of players to voluntarily blank their player page for whatever reason, though the blank pages of non-knights may later be nominated for deletion.
• Illegitimate page creation: Creating new pages with the sole intent of malicious behavior.
• Image vandalism: Uploading shock images, inappropriately placing explicit images on pages, or simply using any image in a way that is disruptive.
• Link vandalism: Adding or changing internal or external links on a page to disruptive, irrelevant, or inappropriate targets while disguising them with mislabeling.
• Malicious account creation: Creating accounts with usernames that contain offensive or disruptive terms, or for the purpose of disrupting the wiki process.
• Silly vandalism: Adding profanity, graffiti, or patent nonsense to pages; creating nonsensical and obviously uninformative articles. Due to the nature of AmtWiki, player pages might contain content that is silly, unnecessary, or otherwise out of scope. However, if these are non-malicious and following AmtWiki's policies and guidelines, they are considered in good faith and not technically vandalism.
• Spam external linking: Adding or continuing to add spam external links is vandalism if the activity continues after a warning. A spam external link is one added to a page mainly for the purpose of promoting a website that is unrelated to Amtgard or is otherwise out of scope, rather than to improve the page.
• Talk page vandalism: Illegitimately deleting or editing other users' comments. Users are, however, permitted to remove comments from their own user talk pages.
• Template vandalism: Modifying the wiki language or text of a template in a harmful or disruptive manner. This is especially serious, because it will negatively impact the appearance of multiple pages. Some templates appear on hundreds of pages, can editing them can be extremely disruptive.
• User page vandalism: Unwelcome, illegitimate edits to another person's user page may be considered vandalism. User pages are regarded as within the control of their respective users and, with certain exceptions, should not be edited without permission of the user to whom they belong.
• Vandalbots: A script or "robot" that attempts to vandalize or add spam to a mass of pages.

What is not vandalism

Although the follow situations might be construed as vandalism, they are not usually such. Each case of potential vandalism should be considered independently. Treating these situations as vandalism when they are clearly not can drive away potential new editors and disrupt the wiki as much as vandalism itself.

• • Accidental nonsense: While intentionally adding nonsense to a page is a form of vandalism, sometimes honest editors may not have expressed themselves correctly. Also, connection errors or edit conflicts can unintentionally produce the appearance of nonsense or malicious edits. In either case, assume good faith.
• Boldly editing: Bold edits are attempts at large scale edits without consulting other editors. Though they may precede consensus or be inconsistent with prior consensus, are not vandalism unless other aspects of the edits identify them as vandalism. AmtWiki encourages users to be bold with their edits.
• Copyright policy violations: Uploading or using material on Wikipedia in violation of AmtWiki's copyright policies is prohibited, but is not vandalism unless the user does so maliciously or fails to heed warnings.
• Disruptive editing or stubbornness: Some users cannot come to agreement with others who are willing to talk to them about an editing issue, and repeatedly make changes against consensus. Edit warring is not vandalism and should not be dealt with as such. Getting an outside opinion may help.
• Edit summary omission: The edit summary is important in that it helps other editors understand the purpose of your edit. Though its use is not required, it is strongly recommended, even for minor edits, and is considered proper AmtWiki etiquette. Even a brief edit summary is better than none. However, not leaving edit summaries is not considered vandalism.
• Editing tests by experimenting users: Users sometimes edit pages as an experiment. Such edits, while potentially, are treated differently from vandalism. Most users are unaware that they can use the "Show preview" button at the bottom of the page, and it's more helpful to let them know on their talk page.
• Harassment or personal attacks: Personal attacks and harassment are not allowed. While some harassment is also vandalism, such as user page vandalism, or inserting a personal attack into an article, harassment in itself is not vandalism and should be handled differently.
• Incorrect wiki markup and style: Inexperienced users are often unfamiliar with AmtWiki's formatting and grammatical standards, such as how to create internal and/or external links or how player pages should be laid out, etc. Rather than label such users as vandals, just explain to them what the standard style would be for the issue at hand, perhaps pointing them towards the appropriate Help:Contents page.
• Lack of understanding of the purpose of AmtWiki: Some users are not familiar with AmtWiki's purpose and may start editing it as if it were a different medium—such as a forum or blog—in a way that it appears as unproductive editing or borderline vandalism to experienced users. Although such edits can usually be reverted, it should not be treated as vandalism.
• Misinformation, accidental: A user who, in good faith, adds content to an article that is factually inaccurate but in the belief that it is accurate is trying to contribute to and improve AmtWiki, not vandalize it. If you believe inaccurate information has been added to an article in good faith, remove it once you are certain it is inaccurate, or discuss its factuality with the user who has added it.
• Reversion or removal of out-of-scope material

Some material—sometimes even factually correct material—does not belong on AmtWiki, and removing it is not vandalism. Check to make sure that the removal was in line with AmtWiki standards, before restoring it or reporting its removal as vandalism.

Responding to vandalism

If you see vandalism in an article, the simplest thing to do is just to remove it. If you see vandalism on a list of changes (such as your watchlist), then revert it immediately. You may use the "undo" button (and the automatic edit summary it generates), and mark the change as minor. It may be helpful to check the page history to determine whether other recent edits by the same or other editors also represent vandalism. Repair all vandalism you can identify.

Sometimes vandalism takes place on top of older, undetected vandalism. With undetected vandalism, editors may make edits without realizing the vandalism occurred. This can make it harder to detect and delete the vandalism, which is now hidden among other edits. Check the edit history to make sure you're reverting to a "clean" version of the page. Alternatively, if you can't tell where the best place is, take your best guess and leave a note on the article's talk page so that someone more familiar with the page can address the issue—or you can manually remove the vandalism without reverting it.

If the article seems to be created for the sole purpose of vandalizing the wiki, tag it with {{afd}} to have it marked for deletion. Do not nominate an otherwise acceptable article for deletion simply because it has been vandalized, as this further contributes to the disruption of the wiki.

If you see that a user has added vandalism you may also check the user's other contributions (click "User contributions" on the left sidebar of the screen). If most or all of these are obvious vandalism you may let an admin know, though even in this case you may consider issuing a warning first unless there is an urgent need to block the user. Remember that any editor may freely remove messages from their own talk page, so they might appear only in the talk history. If a user continues to cause disruption after being warned, report them to an admin, who will then decide whether to block the user.

Warnings

The purpose of warning a user who has vandalized is to inform the user that the user's conduct is abusive and prohibited, and seek the user's compliance. Not all that appears to be vandalism is in bad faith, and a warning can politely advise and correct users unaware of the nature of their actions. A warning may even dissuade a user acting in bad faith from continuing, particularly as the warnings escalate and the user is informed of the consequences of continuing. Warning a user for vandalism is generally a prerequisite to administrator intervention.

When warning a user be sure to clearly state the policies that they are breaking, either by quotation or by linking them to this or another relevant page. Avoid calling them a "vandal"; warnings and discussions should focus on the problem at hand, not on personal attacks. Don't feed the trolls.