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Help:Vandalism

From SWGames, the Star Wars Games Wiki, currently editing over 2,066 articles

Here's how to help restore pages that have been vandalized.

[edit] Vandalism

To begin, you first must understand what vandalism is. Take this quote from Wikipedia:

Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia (such as swearing, deleting letters to make inappropriate words, etc.) (see also Newbie experiment). The most common type of vandalism is the replacement of existing text with obscenities, namecalling, or other wholly irrelevant content. 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 Wikipedia.
Vandalism is not synonymous with trolling, although some trolling is vandalism:
Trolling is deliberate and intentional attempts to disrupt the usability of a wiki for its editors, administrators, developers, and other people who work to create content for and help run that wiki. Trolling is deliberate violation of the implicit rules of Internet social spaces. It is necessarily a value judgment made by one user about the value of another's contribution.

[edit] Recent Changes

So a vandal puts bad things on pages, basically. How do you help prevent this sort of thing?

One way you can help is by going to the recent changes page, and looking doing the following:
  • First of all, every edit on the page with a ! next to it has not been inspected yet.
  • Click on the diff link next to an edit that has a ! next to it to see the difference between the two most recent edits.
  • If the page is not vandalism, then click the [Mark as patrolled] link next to the edit.

If there are so many ! signs that you can't possibly check them all, then look for these things:

  • A new page, symbolized by a N, is important to check out.
  • An edit made by a red username, or a user name spoofing another user's name, needs to be inspected.
  • An edit without a description is often made by a vandal in a hurry. Check these out.

If the page you find is vandalism, like if the page is blank, or if profanity has been added, you can revert the edit:

  • While in the differences page, click previous diff and/or next diff until you find the most current non-vandalized version.
  • Click on the Revision as of 00:00 link above that version and click "edit" at the top of the page. Alternatively, you can find the last good version and click on the date (not the diff) in the page history.
  • Type "reverted vandalism" or "reverted spamming" in the edit summary. The shorthand for this is "rv/v" or "rv/s", repectively.
  • Save the page (without making any changes).
  • Now the page is the version that you selected, in effect removing the vandalism.
This text is stored on Wikia Help. Suggest changes here.

Vandalism is the conspicuous defacement or destruction of a structure, a symbol or information against the will of the owner/governing body. In the context of an online community project, it is a deliberate attempt to damage the usefulness of content for others.

Contents

Assuming good faith

Useful community content is that which most concisely and accurately reflects the widest range of relevant information on a topic. In the context of a wiki project, intent to reduce relevant information to that of a single viewpoint could be considered vandalism. In keeping with assume good faith, however, it may be possible to look at a one-viewpoint edit as additional information that the user feels should be incorporated or is under-represented. In such a case, it benefits the project to explain more effective methods of bringing this information to light while retaining the existing knowledge in the article. While calling someone a vandal almost always makes the accusation true, extra patience instead can enable one to become a beneficial editor.

Avoiding critical mass

Vandalism usually starts as a form of heavy-handedness which is never effective at getting a point across in a wiki community. We can nip it in the bud by explaining more effective ways of making proposals and working with others. If we alienate the editor, however, vandalism can turn into a form of vengeance. The wiki engine is written to minimize the effect of pranksters, and can even handle a few full blown vengeful vandals, but it cannot handle a vandalism movement that has reached critical mass, a situation where we react to vandalism by assuming bad faith and thereby create more vengeful editors. As a project approaches crisis levels, it becomes harder and more time intensive to assume good faith, but every act of kindness and patience moves the project away from critical mass.

Dealing with vandalism

See also

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