This is an article about vandalism on Wikipedia. For related internal pages, see Wikipedia:Vandalism and Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism.
On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, offensive, libelous or degrading in any way.
Throughout its history, Wikipedia has struggled to maintain a balance between allowing the freedom of open editing and protecting the accuracy of its information when false information can be potentially damaging to its subjects.[1] Vandalism is easy to commit on Wikipedia because anyone can edit the site,[2][3] with the exception of protected pages (which, depending on the level of protection, can only be edited by users with certain privileges). Certain Wikipedia bots are capable of detecting and removing vandalism faster than any human editor could.[4]
Vandalizing Wikipedia or otherwise causing disruption is against the site's terms of use. Vandals are often blocked from editing, and may also be further banned according to the terms of use. Vandals could be banned either for just a few months or indefinitely depending on the level of vandalism they have committed. Vandalism can be committed by either guest editors (IP addresses) or those with registered accounts (oftentimes accounts created solely to vandalize).
To combat inappropriate edits to articles which are frequently targeted by vandals, Wikipedia has instated a protection policy, serving as a user-privilege merit system. For example, a semi-protected or fully protected page can be edited only by accounts that meet certain account age and activity thresholds or administrators respectively. Frequent targets of vandalism include articles on trending and controversial topics, celebrities, and current events.[5][6] In some cases, people have been falsely reported as having died. This has notably happened to United States Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, and American rapper Kanye West.[7]
^"Wikipedia testing new method to curb false info". Christian Science Monitor. CSMonitor.com. 25 August 2009. Archived from the original on 1 August 2012. Retrieved 7 June 2012.
^Cite error: The named reference newscientist was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"Wikipedia tightens online rules". BBC News. 6 December 2005. Archived from the original on 13 December 2010. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
^"Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia". BBC News. 25 July 2012. Archived from the original on 16 September 2018. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
^Kleeman, Jenny (2 April 2007). "Wikipedia fights vandalism". The New Zealand Herald. Archived from the original on 13 December 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
^Martin, Lorna (18 June 2006). "Wikipedia fights off cyber vandals". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 28 December 2016. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
^"Vandals prompt Wikipedia to ponder editing changes". ABC News. 28 January 2009. Archived from the original on 15 October 2013. Retrieved 26 November 2011.
and 27 Related for: Vandalism on Wikipedia information
OnWikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification...
City will not be like that". Cybervandalism is vandalismon the internet. For example, vandalismonWikipedia involves adding questionable content, removing...
of a bot that reverts vandalismonWikipedia is ClueBot NG. ClueBot NG, which uses machine learning to identify likely vandalism, can revert edits, often...
English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January...
some protection against editing to prevent further vandalism to the article. The English Wikipedia article for Donald Trump was created in 2004. After...
The Hillsborough disaster Wikipedia posts refers to vandalism edits on various Wikipedia articles, yet mostly the Hillsborough disaster article, via the...
earlier instances of Wikipediavandalism. The contributor apologized on Wikinews, saying: "I will never vandalize anything onWikipedia or post wrongful information...
Archived from the original on March 20, 2007. Retrieved April 8, 2006. "Wikipedia:Vandalism [archived version]". Wikipedia.org. November 24, 2009. Mark...
Halliday, Josh; Arthur, Charles (July 26, 2012). "Boot up: The Wikipediavandalism police, Apple analysts, and more". The Guardian. Retrieved September...
its effects" and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities". VandalismonWikipedia – the act of editing the project...
hemisphere." In addition to the racial bias onWikipedia, public encyclopedias are generally vulnerable to vandalism by hate groups, such as white nationalist...
reading Wikipedia articles. Some apps load content from the Wikipedia site and process it; other apps use the MediaWiki API. Some only display Wikipedia content...
Archived from the original on 12 August 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2010. Shachaf, P.; Hara, N. (2010). "Beyond vandalism: Wikipedia trolls" (PDF). Journal...
amount of vandalism, and the accuracy of information on the project. The media have covered controversial events and scandals related to Wikipedia and its...
Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15...
vandalism-control strategy. The incident ultimately led Wikipedia to introduce stricter referencing requirements for biographies of living people. On...
issues such as hoaxes, vandalism, an imbalance of material, and inadequate quality control on articles. Christopher Dawson wrote on vulgar content and absence...
Japanese Wikipedia (ウィキペディア日本語版, Wikipedia Nihongoban, lit. 'Wikipedia Japanese-language version') is the Japanese-language edition of Wikipedia, a free...
accused of cultural vandalism Scots edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (in Scots) Scots Wikipedia Statistics for Scots Wikipedia by Erik Zachte....
causing expenses and loss of profit and value. Cybercrime VandalismVandalismonWikipedia Romagna, M.; van den Hout, N. J. (October 2017). "Hacktivism...
impossible to uniquely distinguish users, and to prevent vandalismWikipedia "instituted a blanket ban on anonymous edits from the six ISPs, which account for...
The German Wikipedia (German: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia...
Wikipedia editing called Snuggle with Stuart Geiger. Snuggle tackles vandalismonWikipedia and highlights constructive contributions by new editors. He has...
candidate as well as removing vandalism. On August 2, 2013, an editor using an IP address linked to the US Senate edited the Wikipedia page of whistleblower Edward...