The Last Stand Wiki:Vandalism

This is an official The Last Stand Wiki policy Policies provides a guideline that all editors should normally follow. Major changes, proposals, or other policy-related matters should be discussed at the Watercooler forum first.

This page in a nutshell: Vandalism is taking deliberate action to deface or destroy the wiki

Shortcuts:
TLS:VANDAL

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of any wiki. Vandalism is strictly prohibited on The Last Stand Wiki and on most other wikis, including Wikipedia. Administrators may block users that repeatedly engage in vandalism, with or without a warning.

How to Spot Vandalism

All users can locate and identify vandalism using these three methods:

• Monitoring Special:RecentChanges.
• Keeping an eye on your WatchList.
• Load an article and check the page history. All previous revisions of a page are stored, which allows users to locate and remove vandalism easily.

In addition to the three methods above, users can keep an eye out for edits performed by IP addresses, new users, and users with improvised and suspicious usernames. Automatic edit summaries may also assist users in catching vandalism.

What to do when vandalism is found

When an editor finds an edit that they are sure is vandalism, they should revert the edit immediately. Then they should open up the user contributions page of the user and check if they have made any more unconstructive edits. Currently, it is not required, but recommended that you warn the user about their bad faith edits. If they continue to vandalize, notify an administrator. Administrators should block vandals only when they've vandalized the wiki enough times and are a clear nuisance to the wiki.

Examples of Vandalism

The following are a few examples of vandalism:

Abuse of Templates

This includes randomly placing {{Delete}}, {{Merge}}, or any other templates on pages where it is not appropriate.

Illegitimate Blanking

Any sort of removing perfectly valid, legitimate, or acceptable content without providing a valid reason in the edit summary is considered vandalism. Entire page blanking is also taken as vandalism. If you would like to nominate a page for deletion, add {{Delete}} to the page instead.

Hidden Vandalism

Vandalism of this kind often takes advantage of the <!-- --> HTML comment feature, which involves using the tags to hide their bidding inside. Any text entered between those two tags is ignored by the parser and thus cannot be seen by readers, but will be seen by editors in the editing window. Vandals may enter link spam, nonsensical characters, hateful comments, or rubbish between the tags for editors to see. (For example, <!-- Teehee I have a purple nose! -->)

Hidden vandalism may also use other means to hide comments from readers, but are visible in the page's source, such as by using table rows (Which do not take any parameters) to hide comments within tables. For example:

{| class="wikitable"
|Food
|Quantity
|-
|Apple
|1
|-TROLLFACE
|Orange
|2
|}

Comes out as:

Food	Quantity
Apple	1
Orange	2

Note how the "TROLLFACE" text does not appear, as text added on the same line as a table row is ignored.

Inappropriate Comments

This type of vandalism takes advantage of the comments feature, located below every article and blog post. As comments cannot be edited by anyone other than the original author and administrators, most vandalism is usually done by leaving new comments, often with nonsensical characters, profanity, or personal attacks as their content. Such vandalism can only be dealt with by an administrator, and usually results in the offending comments being deleted.

Illegitimate Page Creation

Creating pages that have nothing to do with the wiki or the series is prohibited. This includes creating attack pages, spam pages, or mass-creating blank pages.

Deliberate Addition of False Information

Edits that deliberately insert false or incorrect information are considered vandalism. However, they should not be mistaken for good faith, accidental addition of incorrect info. Consider asking the editor on their message wall, and, if they persist or if they are evidently editing to mislead readers, contact an administrator immediately.

Page lengthening

Addition very large amounts of bad faith content to increase the page size to an unbelievable amount, to the point that one's web browser or computer crashes trying to load the page. Such a large amount of added content may provoke editors to immediately revert the edit, either via the Undo or Rollback function without checking the edit. If you are adding large amounts of legitimate content, it may be best to discuss it first in the comments section below each article.

Page-move vandalism

Renaming pages to silly or ridiculous titles. See The Last Stand Wiki:Page Titles before renaming an article. Only registered users can move pages.

Silly vandalism

The most common form of vandalism include the addition of nonsensical characters (e.g. dfnj23usedn1@#Q$eWQER!!!!!!), spamming words over and over (e.g. I AM GEORGE I AM GEORGE I AM GEORGE), or replacing entire pages with one silly word (e.g. Replaced content with "Hi").

Talk page vandalism

Modifying other people's comments on talk pages, unless trying to fix spelling or grammar without changing the integrity of the text, is looked down upon. Removing other editor's comments is also prohibited, unless you are archiving the page, in which case the entire discussion must go along with it.

User page and user message wall vandalism

Edits to other people's userpages should be limited strictly to typo fixing. Messages left to other users on their message wall should be legitimate and respectful. Malicious comments on a message wall can be removed by clicking "More" and then "Remove", which will hide the message but not completely remove it, and it can be restored later. Only an administrator can completely delete a message from a message wall.

What is NOT vandalism

Edit warring

While edit warring is a blockable offense and it is disruptive editing, it is not considered vandalism. If an editor feels that an edit war is about to occur, they should stop reverting and instead talk to the editor on their talk page.

Accidental addition of misinformation

Sometimes, an editor may add information that isn't true, but they have no intention of harming the wiki, and may be trying to help it. In such cases, assume good faith, forgive, and tell the editor of their mistake in a polite manner.