Pikipedia:Vandalism

Shortcut: P:VANDALISM

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Pikipedia. Vandalism is prohibited on Pikipedia, and anyone who commits it may be blocked from editing.

Good-faith mistakes are not vandalism. A new editor who adds information to the wrong section, formats a page incorrectly, or misunderstands a guideline is still trying to help the wiki, and should be corrected politely rather than treated as a vandal.

Types of vandalism

The following list is not exhaustive. Vandalism can occur through text edits, file uploads, external links, page moves, and account usernames.

• Inappropriate content: adding sexual, pornographic, or otherwise explicit material; slurs, hate speech, or harassment; graphic violence unrelated to the subject; or content promoting self-harm or drug use.
• Profanity: adding obscene or offensive language to any page.
• Blanking: removing all or large parts of a page without explanation.
• Nonsense and misinformation: adding gibberish, jokes, or deliberately false information to articles.
• Spam: adding advertisements, self-promotion, or links to unrelated, malicious, or adult websites.
• File vandalism: uploading offensive, explicit, or unrelated files; or overwriting existing files with unrelated versions.
• Hidden vandalism: inserting content that is only visible in the editor or that alters templates to affect many pages at once.
• Page-move vandalism: moving pages to inappropriate or nonsensical titles.
• Talk page and user page vandalism: removing or altering other users' comments, or editing another user's user page without permission (basic formatting fixes excluded).
• Abusive account usernames: creating an account with an offensive username, or a username meant to impersonate another user.
• Abuse of tags: adding or removing maintenance or deletion templates in bad faith.

All namespaces are covered by this policy, including articles, user pages, talk pages, and file pages.

How vandalism is handled

All edits are reviewed by wiki staff through recent changes, and every new upload is reviewed through the new files list.

1. Revert: Vandalism is reverted as soon as it is found. Explain the revert in the edit summary.
2. Warn: For minor or first-time vandalism, the user is given a warning on their talk page.
3. Block: Users who continue vandalizing after a warning are blocked. The length of the block depends on the severity and history of the vandalism.
4. Immediate block: Severe vandalism is blocked without warning. This includes explicit or sexual content, hate speech, harassment, malicious links, mass vandalism, abusive account usernames, and block evasion.

Where necessary, administrators can hide harmful revisions from page histories so they are no longer publicly viewable, and can identify and block alternate accounts used to evade blocks.

What you can do

• If you see vandalism, revert it and use a clear edit summary such as "Reverted vandalism".
• Report persistent or severe vandalism to an administrator.
• Do not respond to, argue with, or provoke vandals. Revert, report, and move on.
• Be careful not to mistake inexperience for vandalism. When in doubt, assume good faith and leave a friendly note.

See also

• Pikipedia:General content guidelines