MaterialWiki:Vandalism

This page documents an official policy on the MaterialWiki project. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Please do not edit this page without first ensuring that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss changes first on the talk page.

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the MaterialWiki project. The most common types of vandalism include the addition of obscenities or crude humor, page blanking, or the insertion of nonsense into articles.

Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not considered vandalism. For example, adding a personal opinion to an article once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated. Not all vandalism is obvious, nor are all massive or controversial changes vandalism; careful attention needs to be given to whether changes made are beneficial, detrimental but well intended, or outright vandalism.

Committing blatant vandalism violates MaterialWiki policy. If you find that another user has vandalized MaterialWiki, you should revert the changes and warn the user. Users who vandalize MaterialWiki repeatedly, despite warnings to stop, should be reported and administrators may block them.

How to respond to vandalism

If you see vandalism, please do the following:

1. Check the article's page history to identify all vandalism edits. Usually, if the most recent edit by a particular user is vandalism, then all recent edits by that user are also vandalism. It is then necessary to revert to the last version before that user started editing.
   1. For a new article, if all versions of the article are pure vandalism, mark it for speedy deletion by tagging it with {{db-nonsense}}.
   2. Otherwise, revert the edits. If you are viewing the diff between the current version and the preceding version, you can click "undo" to undo the edit automatically. Otherwise, please explain in the edit summary that you have reverted vandalism.
2. Leave a warning message on the user's talk page
3. Check the vandal's other contributions (click "User contributions" on the left sidebar of the screen).
4. If the vandal continues to cause disruption after being warned, please report him or her at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. An administrator will decide whether to block the vandal.

For repeated vandalism by an anonymous IP address, it is helpful to take the following additional steps:

1. Trace the IP address and add {{SharedIP|Name of owner}} or {{SharedIPEDU|Name of owner}} to the user talk page of the address.
2. For repetitive anonymous vandalism, particularly where registered to a school or other kind of responsive ISP, consider listing it on MaterialWiki:Abuse reports.

How not to respond to vandalism

1. Do not nominate an article for deletion because it is being vandalized. That's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and simply empowers vandals further.

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