MarioWiki:Vandalism
Vandalism is the deliberate defacement of the wiki through lowering the quality, validity, and usability of our articles and other types of pages. However, any edit which is made with the good intent of improving the wiki, even if it were misinformed or poorly considered, is not considered vandalism at the Super Mario Wiki.
Trolling, although not completely synonymous with vandalism, is taken just as seriously. And depending on the frequency and severity, it may also be punishable on the same level. Trolling is the disruption of the wiki's communication channels, which include discussion pages and talk pages of articles and users. This may be through harassing or provoking disagreeable reactions from other users.
Vandalism and trolling are not tolerated in any way at the Super Mario Wiki. This page explains how to recognize vandalism and similar behavior, the procedure and standards of conduct which are to be followed if a vandal is identified, and how to go about restoring pages which have been vandalized.
Identifying vandalism
The following actions are considered vandalism:
- Blanking pages, or removing large amounts of content from pages without a good reason.
- Adding false or unrelated information to articles on purpose, or creating pages containing such information.
- Making edits which are detrimental to the quality of a page, such as capitalizing all words.
- Spamming pages with advertising or other unsolicited messages.
- Adding profane or inappropriate content, as well as uploading images containing such content.
- Posting messages on talk pages with the intention to offend, harass or aggravate other users.
Monitoring the wiki's recent changes page is the best way to detect vandalism as soon as it happens. Edits made without a description, especially by an anonymous user or a user with a red username, should be checked by using the diff link in front of the edit. This will show the difference between the previous revision of the page, and the edit which was made by that user. Additionally, all edits shown on the recent changes page will display whether a large amount of content has been added (+500), or removed (-500). Any large changes to a page should be inspected.
Newly-created pages, which are symbolized on the recent changes page by an N, are also important to check out.
Dealing with a vandal
If you see a user or an IP address who is actively vandalizing the wiki, bring it to an online administrator or a patroller's attention as soon as possible. If no admins appear online, then visit this page and follow the instructions to directly contact the administrative team. One of them should appear online as quickly as possible to deal with the situation. Do not engage with a vandal or troll, whether it be through talk pages or edit summaries. And do not participate in an edit war with a vandal. It is best to report them immediately, and allow the admins to deal with the situation. If you do not feel comfortable about reporting the actions of a troll on an admin's talk page, then you are welcome to send an admin a personal message via the Mario Boards instead.
If a new account has been created with the purpose of vandalizing pages, then that account must immediately be blocked indefinitely. If a registered user has made a mix of constructive edits as well as their minor vandalism, then that user should be dealt with according to the warning policy. If an IP address is caught vandalizing, then that address should be blocked for a limited amount of time (never indefinitely).
Restoring pages which have been vandalized
Admins are equipped with more vandal-fighting functions than the regular user. However, all users are able to manually revert vandalism on a page using the "undo" link found beside the edit on the recent changes page, the page's history or the vandal's contribution list. If several vandal edits have been made to a page by the same user, non-admins are able to revert them all in a single edit using the following instructions:
- While viewing the "difference between revisions" page, click "Older edit" or "Newer edit" until you find the most current non-vandalized revision. Alternatively, you can reach the last non-vandalized revision by clicking on that revision's date and time in the page history.
- Click on the "edit" tab at the top of the page. You will see a notice in bold font at the top of the page, which reads "You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page".
- Without editing the page's content, scroll down to the edit summary and type "reverting vandalism" or "reverting spam".
- Save the page. This will remove multiple changes made to a page by a vandal.
Sometimes, a user may have vandalized a large number of pages before an admin steps in to block them. Patrollers and administrators possess a "rollback" feature, which is a quick way to revert a large number of edits made during a vandal attack. Additionally, administrators are able to prevent certain revisions of pages from being viewed by the public. This would be performed if a vandal were to add extremely inappropriate content to an article (i.e. sexually explicit messages, sensitive personal information about a user, links to dangerous websites, etc.).
