R5 Wiki:Policies/Vandalism

Vandalism is an addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the wiki's integrity. The most common types of vandalism are replacing text with obscenities, blanking pages, or adding nonsense.

Any good faith effort to improve the wiki, even if it's misguided or incorrect, is not vandalism.

Vandalizing pages is a violation of wiki policy. Vandals will be banned indefinitely at the first violation.

Fix vandalism
When you see that a page has been vandalized, please revert the page to the previous version. Reverting the vandalism quickly helps to protect the wiki, and it sends a message to the vandal that his or her efforts have been wasted.


 * Click the "history" tag on the page, and you'll see a list of all of the previous versions of the page.


 * You can see any version by clicking on the date. Click on the most recent version before the vandalism.


 * Click on "edit", and you'll see a regular edit page, plus a warning that says that you're editing an out-of-date revision of the page.


 * Hit save, and the unvandalized version will become the current version of the page again.

Check the vandal's contribution history
It can also be helpful to click on the vandal's IP address or username to see their contribution history. They may have vandalized other pages, too, and you can revert those.

Don't tease the vandals
Vandalism is irritating, especially when you can tell that it's the same vandal who's come back more than once. Please resist the urge to let the vandal know how annoyed you are. Don't write anything in the edit summary except "vandalism", and don't post anything on the contributor's talk page.

Vandals are looking for two different kinds of satisfaction: the pleasure of defacing our work, and the pleasure of watching us get angry about it. When you revert the vandalism and ignore the vandal, you take all the pleasure away; the vandal will get bored and move on to pulling the legs off of spiders or whatever else they enjoy.