User:Madminecrafter12/Vandalism

Vandalism is the act of editing or creating pages deliberately to obstruct the wiki. There are various methods used to deal with vandalism if you see it.

Meaning
The specific definition is vandalism is deliberately performing an action that harms, obstructs, or is misleading in some way. There are several other forms of editing or other actions that are harmful to the encyclopedia - however, unless they're made deliberately to harm, these would not be considered to be vandalism, although they may be disruptive editing.

What is not vandalism
This section is very important.


 * Doing something controversial without discussion - splitting pages, merging pages, etc. without discussion first is not vandalism.
 * Asking a question within an article, such as "Could somebody test this to make sure it's true?".
 * Test edits. If you see somebody add random wiki markup to an article, this is likely not be vandalism, but instead a test edit. This is disruptive editing, but it is usually not done deliberately.
 * Creating an article in the wrong namespace. For example, if a user created a page named "IGamer1556" saying "Hello, I'm IGamer1556! I love playing Minecraft, and I think the Minecraft Wiki is awesome," assume good faith, and simply move the page to their userspace. Do not accuse them of vandalizing - just kindly leave them a message explaining what you did and why you did it.
 * Making a mistake and messing something up. This is something that commonly occurs with new users, and is not vandalism. It can include stuff like misreading wiki-text thinking that it's messed up, when really it's just how it works, or adding wiki-text not really knowing how it works.

Assume good faith
Don't accuse an editor of vandalism if they didn't disrupt the wiki purposely or if you're not sure whether they did or not. When in doubt, assume good faith, and kindly reach out to them asking about their edit. When in doubt, always assume that others don't know what they're doing or made a mistake, rather than accuse them of vandalizing.

Reverting
There are 3 main ways of reverting vandalism: reverting to an earlier revision, undoing, and rollbacking. The final is only available to administrators.

Undoing
Undoing is the act of undoing one's edit and reverting all the changes that were in that edit. To undo an edit go to the page's history and click the "undo" button. You will see the diff show up as well as the normal edit box below. An edit summary will automatically generate. Undoing is rather flexible - e.g., you can use it to partially revert an edit by changing something in the edit box before saving, or you can add to or completely replace the automatic edit summary.

You can undo edits that are not the last edit made to the page, but this is only possible if there are no later edits that conflict with them. Otherwise, an error message will pop up saying "The edit could not be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits." Additionally, if you try to undo an edit that has already been undone, another message will say "This edit appears to already have been undone."

When undoing an edit, a clear additional edit summary should almost always be left, unless it's obvious spam or vandalism. However, it can never hurt to leave an additional edit summary even if it is clearly disruptive - so it's better to leave one when in doubt.

Reverting to an earlier revision
To do this, go the page's history. For the revision that you would like to revert back to, click the "edit" button next to the "undo" button, OR click the time that revision was made and then edit the source of that revision. You should see a notice saying "Warning: You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page. If you save it, any changes made since this revision will be lost." When you click "save changes," it should revert back to the earlier revision.

For non-administrators, this would most commonly be used if a user made multiple consecutive unconstructive edits. It may also be helpful if several users made unconstructive edits in a row (this would be useful for admins as well) or if a user partially reverted an unconstructive edit but not all the way. Doing this will not generate an automatic edit summary, so it's helpful to include an edit summary that mentions the revert, such as "Revert last 3 edits," "Revert to revision X," or even simply "Rvv" is better than nothing. Also, like undo, it's better to include an additional edit summary explaining the reasoning behind the revert if it's not obvious spam or vandalism.

Rollbacking
Rollbacking is a feature that is only available to administrators, GRASP, and Gamepedia Staff. Using rollback reverts all of the consecutive edits made by the last editor of a page, and will generate an automatic edit summary. However, there's also a pencil button next to the rollback option. Clicking this allows for a custom rollback summary, making it useful for reverting good faith edits without having to reload several screens by undoing or restoring an earlier revision. The custom rollback summary uses this script, and can be turned off in your preferences.

Warning
Warning users is usually leaving a message on one's talk page or a comment on their profile, telling them to stop doing something. There are several automatic templates that can be used to warn users: uw-vandalism, uw-test, uw-delete, and uw-wrong. If none of these apply to what action a user did or you're not sure if they do, it's usually better to write a custom message with a more precise explanation.

Although a persistent and determined vandal usually won't listen to warnings, warnings can be helpful for when either somebody knows that what they're doing is wrong but doesn't think about the consequences, or they think that would they're doing is helpful when really it's not. If an editor is doing something wrong but acting in good faith, it's usually better to give them a warning before blocking them.

Blocking
Blocking users can only be done by administrators, and is usually only necessary if a user has repeatedly performed disruptive actions towards the wiki. A blocked user can still read the wiki as normal, but they're not able to edit pages, move pages, upload files, etc. If an administrator is blocked, they have the ability to unblock themselves, but they can't block or unblock other users.

There are a variety of reasons why a user may need to be blocked. The most common are due to vandalism and spam. Some other reasons may include copyright violations, disruptive editing, edit warring, personal attacks, sock puppetry, or unacceptable usernames. Id a user is acting in good faith, it's almost always better to warn them before blocking them and see if they continue their disruptive behavior - many users don't know they're doing anything wrong.

Block lengths of users, and block settings vary greatly, depending on the circumstances. There are no exact rules about the details of blocking, but there are a few expected guidelines as follows:


 * IPs, in most circumstances, should not be blocked for longer than 2 weeks, unless they have repeatedly vandalized after multiple blocks. This is because IPs can be reassigned, be shared, etc. IPs should never be blocked indefinitely.
 * In most cases, a blocked user's talk page access shouldn't be revoked unless they are known to abuse it
 * If a user has a blatant inappropriate username, they should be blocked indefinitely. However, unless they have repeatedly vandalized, they should usually be allowed to create a new account, so that they can still edit but under an appropriate username. If this is the case, it's usually good to leave them a talk page message explaining the circumstances.