Talk:Wikipedia vandalism

Strange form of defacement

We have a wiki and are getting a strange kind of attack most likely from a bot - sets a misspelled word at the top of different pages - anyone have info on this?

LMS: I genuinely appreciate that you took time to contribute to this. My edits are not meant to be combatative in any way. Please, please believe me.

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As someone has noticed, yes my vandalsied homepages archive is gone. I deleted it. If someone else wants to run one, they can, but I decided it was just a silly waste of time.... Mainly just a desire to put the whole YouKnowWho/YouKnowWho war in the past where it belongs - SJK

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Given that Jimbo Wales decided that TMC's chosen username was vandalism, a summary of that controversy should be included in this article. -- NetEsq

Legal action against vandals

Moved from en:Wikipedia:Village pump on Saturday, August 2nd, 02003.

When certain users repeatedly (I'm talking about the really really bad ones) vandalize Wikipedia, why doesn't Wikipedia seek to press criminal charges or file a civil lawsuit? Vandalism is a crime.

The whole point about Wikiweb is that everyone can format the content of the pages. This will necessarily, by knowing how some (or a lot of) people behave, also have its negative consequences. If Wikipedia would press criminal charges here and there, this would discourage the signup of new users such as myself. Vandalism is a crime, but when you leave your Lambhorgini Diablo unlocked in the streets it will be vandalized. The regular users of Wikipedia, should then see their responsibility in fixing things up. And they / you / we do. In the Norwegian wikipedia, however, I've found alot of articles that really upsets me, but this doesn't allow the management to file charges according to the wikiweb manifesto. That's my opinion..

Sigg3.net 09:41 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia, and Wikipedians, reserve the right to complain to ISPs, workplaces, and/or schools, as appropriate, as well as take legal action if appropriate. See also: Wikipedia:replies to common objections. Martin 12:48 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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Jimbo Wales has said that he would, at least as a temporary measure (until some better solution can be found), give out the administrator password to anyone who asks for it.

not relevant any more. Ant

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Trolling below the radar

Take a look at Special:Contributions/66.157.94.151 some seem legitimate, but some seem suspicious, but I cannot confirm as inaccurate. I reverted the Michael Jackson one which seem an outright troll. This seems to be the biggest danger to the Wikipedia. This kind of vandalism can go unnoticed, because it is not possible to tell at first sight whether something is accurate or not if it is written in a certain manner. Have you guys run across the more sophisticated vandals? Dori 17:25, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

On a second though, after JeLuF's investigations, it seems that this user's edits may be legitimate, but the points about under the radar trolls remains. Dori 17:30, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

A quick look at Special:Contributions/66.157.94.151 makes it clear that this user is Easter Bradford or an EasterBradford sock-puppet or supporter, so misuse of Wikipedia is no surprise. Can you enumerate what else you find suspicious, Dori? And what did JeLuF determine? orthogonal 17:33, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I checked the facts that were added to Michael Jackson, Dorothy Parker, Eminem and Spike Lee using http://news.google.com . All edits were backed up by news articles. -- JeLuF 17:39, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Which does create some credibility. The problem is, that might be the whole reason for them. Wikilove is blind. It's a very complex issue. Andrewa 14:19, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I see no clearly-defined dividing line between trolling and POV. At one end there is deliberate vandalism and at the other there are contributions with perhaps just a very slight bias. Somewhere in the middle is the grey area where most discussion page arguments take place.

The most subtle problem is an article or section that contains nothing but a few negative statements on a subject. Such statements may be obscure but verifiable facts, but on their own can give an article a complete bias.

A recent example is an addition on "Saudi Culture" which said only that Saudi Arabia banned the burial of non-Moslems (untrue)and the practice of other religions (partly true - non-Islamic religious ceremonies are only permitted in private). Even if true, this is hardly a sound representation of "Saudi Culture" and not of much use to a schoolchild doing a project on the subject. What about camels, tents, songs, stories, carpets, desert-life, legends, musical instruments and so forth?

Do we need "balance police"? Anjouli 06:55, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't talking about POV or cases where editors really believe what they are adding is true. I am talking about cases where vandals pick an obscure topic and make remarks that are not true, but not easily verifiable. Thus they slip through until someone else takes an interest in that topic and discovers the "blatant" vandalism. Dori | Talk 20:54, Nov 29, 2003 (UTC)

vandal == leftist in wikipedia speak

I edited the Haymarket Riot page ONE TIME to correct the basic information and add new information, and my edits were deleted and called vandalism. Turns out that wikipedia is infested with fauxLibertarians who hate it when leftists add in facts that disagree with their world view.

vandal == information about vandalism used as pretext for censorship by administrators

It is interesting to note that this text regarding administrators who use vandalism as a pretext for censorship:

"Many localized Wikipedia versions seem to have administrators who claim "vandalism", remove the edit, block the user/IP and just to make sure remove the edit from the pages "history" page when factual objective information backed up by science and numerous references are added in cases where they know the truth and want to hide it. There are many examples of this; and you will be able to verify this approach to what is "vandalism" by adding such serious factual information yourself. These cases are edit disagreement where civilized debate on the discussion pages would reveal the information these administrators try to hide which is probably the reason such information is claimed "vandalism". Honest Wikipedia administrators really should keep an eye on what administrators call "vandalism"; a disagreement or dispute over a fact is not automatically vandalism if one party is a Wikipedia administrator, and blocking under the pretext of "vandalism" is not a good way to avoid debate." in this edit was removed by Wikipedia administrator Shanel without any reason given.

Where to report vandalism on meta?

The article page does not reveal where I report vandalism on meta itself. "Vandalism in progress" leads to a page on en.

Why I'm asking this? Therefore: Special:Contributions/Lets_go_Illini

--Johannes Rohr 07:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

"Vandalism" not to be applied to good faith text

Some materialists are foolishly going to hell and think that vandalism can have something in common with good-faith articles. So that is something to be considered well. My suggestion is still that new editions/additions to be moved to talk page first instead of marking it immediately as vandalism... At least few people have to see that addition - discuss it... It is not done just in few minutes and "vandal" is detected, no... Idea is that wikipedia must make those [edit] links on every page to be somehow hidden and/or not shown immediately... I mean it is better to print out text immediately not clicking on "print version"... Is there difference? Those [edit] links. So one must better see printable version, and if he wants - he is welcome to add something - go to that edit mode - just one click away... Many people read wiki, but do not like those [edit] links... So I think discussion page might be merged with that original page with edit links... And printable version must be first to see on website... Especially on mobiles phones netbooks etc...

Insanities?

There is a sentence in the article that doesn't make sense: "Blanking or putting insanities on other people's user page"

I don't have permission to edit but would someone who does please correct this? I am guessing the author meant "profanities". Bcaulf 04:59, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Discussion moved from Wikipedia vandalism

Hello,

My name is papotages and I've been working on fr.wikipedia.org. Being a member of the raëlian movement, I was constantly censored, not due to the lack of documentation, but because nobody could play the counterpart role. So, my arguments have been anoying to the community. I have been censored from the very begining. As you may know, in France, people are being disinformed, so the majority felt ok to censore me. The situation of cults in France is comparable to what it could be in totalitarian states.

Thank you for your help.

Liberty is threatened.

Pap'otages

Since the subject here is vandalism, rather than censorship, the above could be interpreted as vandalism but a kinder interpretation would be that its placement here is an error. Repeated placements after correction or removal would rise to the level of wasting other people's time and thus vandalism. 12.45.50.136 04:24, 18 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Vandalism and censorship are in many cases, but should not be, the very same thing. This is specially common in local Wikipedia projects like French version highlighted here. If you can not agrument civilized or provide links or in any other way counter the information then it is very easy to just claim "vandalism", censor the information and block the user who added it. Censorship and vandalism claims seem to go hand in hand, but, in my humble opinion, should not. Pap'otages comment is very relevant.

Gentle interpretation is that Papotages was seeking help, by whatever means he could imagine. I did not know of this message. Papotages was ip blocked the day after (or the very same day) he was writing that, and discussion for name blocking him was well under way. Actually, he would have been name blocked if it had been possible at that point to sysops. Vandalism and censorship were badly confused in his case, as it is much simpler to pretend dealing with vandalism than to face one's own censorship tendencies.

I came back from holidays 2 days after that message, and played the counterpart.

See the fascinating collection of point of view on the topic La neutralité de point de vue and his list of live examples of censorship as applied on the french wikipedia

Papotages is an interesting case of vandalism, so it seems quite on-topic here. In case anyone's wondering, he operates by opening about 15 windows of Special:Randompage. He then clicks edit in each one, pastes a pre-prepared body text and edit summary, takes a deep breath, then saves them all within the space of 30 seconds. Then he hangs up his modem, redials, and starts again. This should be dealt with in the same way as a vandalbot, that is by hiding the edits from RC. -- Tim Starling

Almost every time i edit a page it says vandalism. I don't consider it that but rather an expansion of wikiknowledge. Thanks.