Battlestar Wiki:Vandalism

This policy/project covers how to identify and properly deal with acts of vandalism, as well as the vandals themselves.

What is vandalism?

Vandalism is the willful destruction of a page, which can occur in the following ways:

• Spam linking: The act of adding inappropriate links to websites containing content completely unrelated to an article in question.
• Blanking: Deliberately "erasing" a page, so that the common viewer will see nothing. This is a form of "whitewash" vandalism.
• Creating Worthless Articles: The act of creating pages with content that has no place on this Wikipedia.
• Uploading Obscene Content: While Battlestar Galactica covers topics of a controversial nature, the uploading of pornographic or vulgar imagery (or sound files) is not permitted. While this act is, in itself, not vandalism by any means, inserting these images or files into other pages indiscriminately or randomly for adverse effect is vandalism.
• Hack-and-Slash Editing: Basically, this is an act of randomly removing sentences or words, and inserting obsceneties and nonsense to affect the quality of an article.

There are also lesser attempts at vandalism, which are a bit more controversial:

• Consistent Reverting of Content: While Battlestar Wiki has not instituted a "three revert rule", reverting content ad absurdum is highly frowned upon. Someone who consistently reverts content may be attempting to disrupt the Wiki by reverting a page to a previous edit, which may or may not have housed vandalized content.
• Moving Articles: Moving articles to another place is not considered vandalism by itself. However, moving an article to a namespace which has little or no encyclopedic value may be considered vandalism. (For instance, moving Ron D. Moore to "shaggy-haired caucasian toasterfrakker" would be obscene, unencyclopedic and inappropriate -- thus an act of vandalism.)

What isn't vandalism?

Most edits made in good faith are not considered vandalism. These include:

• Rewrites: This is the act of rephrasing a paragraph, portion or entire work. As mentioned on the edit page, while you are free to add content, please remember that it may be edited mercilessly and reworked as your fellow Wikipedians and readers see fit.
• Silly Pages: Some pages are made for fun. At present, Numerology and Toaster both have a serious and humorous intent.
• Most "Newbie" Edits: Edits from newcomers to the wiki may affect the content of the page; however, mostly they are made in good faith and thus demonstrate that the user needs both guidance and assistance.

Dealing with Vandalism

• For established articles:
  1. Revert the article to a previous, encyclopedic version.
• For new articles created by a vandal:
  1. Blank the contents of the page, then add {{deletebecause}}.
• For new images uploaded as an act of vandalism:
  1. Ensure that the image is an oprhan -- that it is not linked to any page.
  2. Edit the image description page and add {{deletebecause}}.
• For existing images overwritten by a vandal:
  1. Revert the image to a previous, encyclopedic version.
  2. Notify an admin. The picture will have to be deleted, but do not add a tag to the image description page.

Dealing with a Vandal

Remember, treat every case of suspected vandalism on a case-by-case basis: a "vandal" may be nothing more than a new user trying to see how a wiki works. (And in the process learning how one shouldn't work on a wiki.) Always assume good faith unless proven guilty of bad faith.

Deal with the vandal in the following order:

1. Notify an admin of the suspected vandal. Provide evidence to support your claim.
2. Notify the vandal that their edit has been identified and will be dealt with accordingly.
   • Do not be combatative; assume good faith.
   • Kindly, but firmly notify them that their test worked and direct them to the sandbox.
   • Let them know that further acts of vandalism will be dealt with at the administrator's discretion.

Should the suspected vandal be an actual, bona-fide vandal, the administrator then shall take action.

How big is the problem?

On Wikipedia, it is a problem that rears its head on a daily basis. This wiki has the good fortune that this problem is infrequent, and that the vandalism is usually corrected quickly and dealt with efficiently.

The reason that this page exists is to prevent vandalism by letting people how to identify it and what to do in the event that vandalism does occur.