Powerbase:Vandalism

This is not the place to post notices of vandalism. Please email your report to management AT spinprofiles.org and sysop AT spinprofiles.org.

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of SpinProfiles. 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 SpinProfiles, 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 SpinProfiles policy. If you find that another user has vandalized SpinProfiles, you should revert the changes and warn the user (see below for specific instructions). Users who vandalize SpinProfiles repeatedly, despite warnings to stop, should be reported to the editors by emailing management AT spinprofiles.org and sysop AT spinprofiles.org, and administrators may block them.

How to respond to vandalism

If you see vandalism, please do the following:

• Check the article's History page (located at the top of the articles page) to identify all vandalised 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, email management AT spinprofiles.org to alert the Managing Editor.
2. Otherwise, revert the edits. Explain in the edit summary that you have reverted vandalism.

• Leave a message on the user's talk page reminding them that vandalism contravenes SpinProfiles policy. Their talk page can be found by clicking on their name in the articles History page and then click Discussion at the top of their user page.
• Check the vandal's other contributions (click "User contributions" on the left sidebar of the screen).
• If a vandal continues to cause disruption after being warned, please report him or her by emailing sysop AT spinprofiles.org. The SpinProfiles Sysop will make the decide of whether an individual who vandalises should be blocked.
• If you're not sure if something constitutes vandalism email management AT spinprofiles.org for clarification.

How not to respond to vandalism

When responding to vandalism remain polite and do not engage in insulting language. It may well be that a user has made a mistake but was acting in good faith. Blatant and repeated vandalism will be dealt with by the Sysop. They can be alerted by emailing sysop AT spinprofiles.org

Types of vandalism

SpinProfiles vandalism may fall into one or more of the following categorizations:

Blanking

Removing all or significant parts of pages' content without any reason, or replacing entire pages with nonsense. Sometimes important verifiable references are deleted with no valid reason(s) given in the summary. 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.

Page lengthening

Adding very large (measured by the number of bytes) amounts of content to a page so as to make the page's load time abnormally long or even make the page impossible to load on some computers.

Spam

Continuing to add external links to non-notable or irrelevant sites (e.g. to advertise one's website) to pages after having been warned is vandalism.

Vandalbots

A script or "robot" that attempts to vandalize or spam massive numbers of articles (hundreds or thousands).

Silly vandalism

Adding profanity, graffiti, random characters, or other nonsense to pages; creating nonsensical and obviously non-encyclopedic pages, etc. Please note that the addition of random characters to pages is a common way that new users test edit and may not be intentionally malicious.

Sneaky vandalism

Vandalism that is harder to spot. This can include adding plausible misinformation to articles, (e.g. minor alteration of dates), hiding vandalism (e.g. by making two bad edits and only reverting one), or reverting legitimate edits with the intent of hindering the improvement of pages. Some vandals even use edit summaries such as "rv vandalism" to mask their changes.

Userspace vandalism

Adding insults, profanity, etc. to user pages or user talk pages (see also SpinProfiles:No Personal Attacks).

Image vandalism

Uploading shock images, inappropriately placing explicit images on pages, or simply using any image in a way that is disruptive.

Page-move vandalism

Changing the names of pages (referred to as "page-moving") to disruptive or otherwise inappropriate terms.

Link vandalism

Modifying internal or external links within a page so that they appear the same but link to a page/site that they are not intended to (e.g an explicit image; a shock site).

Discussion page vandalism

Blanking the posts of other users from talk pages other than your own is generally considered vandalism. Editors are granted considerable latitude over editing their own userspace pages (including talk pages), and blanking one's own user talk page is specifically not prohibited. Users removing warnings from their own talk pages is prohibited on the grounds that it would create more issues than it would solve.

Repeated uploading of copyrighted material

Uploading or using material on SpinProfiles in ways which violate SpinProfiles copyright policies after having been warned is vandalism. Because users may be unaware that the information is copyrighted, or of SpinProfiles policies on how such material may and may not be used, such action only becomes vandalism if it continues after the copyrighted nature of the material and relevant policy restricting its use have been communicated to the user.

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 remain visible when viewing a page's history).

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.

What vandalism is not

The following actions are not considered "vandalism" and are therefore treated differently:

Tests by experimenting users

New users who discover the "edit this page" button sometimes want to experience editing a page and may add something unhelpful to a page (e.g., a few random characters) as a test. Such edits are not done in bad faith and are therefore not vandalism. Rather than be warned for vandalism, these users should be warmly greeted, and given a reference to the sandbox where they can continue to make test edits without being unintentionally disruptive.

Using incorrect markup and manual of style

Inexperienced users often are unfamiliar with SpinProfiles's formatting and grammatical standards (e.g. how to create internal and/or external links, when certain words should be bolded or italicized, etc.) Rather than label such users as vandals, just explain to them what our standard style is on the issue at hand - perhaps pointing them towards our documentation at SpinProfiles:How To Edit A Page, and the like.

Edits

Changes are often made to pages in order to improve them. While having large chunks of text you've written removed or substantially rewritten can be frustrating (and without good reason can constitute vandalism), simply making edits that noticeably alter the text or content of a pages should not be immediately labeled vandalism. It is best practice to be sensitive to the efforts that other users have put into creating articles/pages and only make sweeping changes if it will substantially improve a page.

Unintentional misinformation

Sometimes a user will add content to an article that is factually inaccurate, but in the belief that it is accurate. By doing so in good faith, they are trying to contribute to the encyclopedia and improve it rather than vandalize. If you believe inaccurate information has been added to an article in good faith, discuss its factuality with the user who has submitted it.

Unintentional nonsense

While intentionally adding nonsense to pages is a form of vandalism, sometimes honest editors may not have expressed themselves correctly (there may be an error in the syntax, particularly for those who use English as a second language). Also, sometimes connection errors or edit conflict unintentionally produce the appearance of nonsense or malicious edits. In either case, assume good faith.

Harassment or personal attacks

We have a clear policy on SpinProfiles of no personal attacks, and harassing other contributors is not allowed. While some forms of harassment are also clear cases of vandalism, such as user page vandalism, or inserting a personal attack into an article, harassment in itself is not considered "vandalism" and should be handled differently.

Keep in mind that we do not want to alienate or drive away editors by treating them as vandals when they have been acting in good faith.

How to spot vandalism

The best way to detect vandalism is through recent changes patrolling, using the recent changes link to spot articles with edits, or keeping an eye on your watchlist. The what links here pages is also a good place to find many test edits and/or vandalism. Any vandalism found should be reverted to an earlier version of the page; remember to include any good edits that have happened since then! The auto-summary feature can help users detect vandalism.

Acknowledgement: the content of many of the help pages in SpinProfiles have been adapted from Wikipedia.