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This page is an official policy on the BaseballWiki. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of BaseballWiki. The most common types of vandalism include the addition of obscenities or crude humor, page blanking, or the insertion of nonsense into articles.
Any good-faith effort to improve the BaseballWiki, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not considered vandalism. For example, adding a personal opinion to an article once is not vandalism — it's just not helpful, and should be removed or restated. Not all vandalism is obvious, nor are all massive or controversial changes vandalism. Careful attention needs to be given to whether changes made are beneficial, detrimental but well intended, or outright vandalism.
Committing vandalism violates BaseballWiki policy. If you find that another user has vandalized BaseballWiki, you should revert the changes and warn the user (see below for specific instructions). Users who vandalize BaseballWiki repeatedly, despite warnings to stop, should be reported, and administrators may block them. Note that warning is not an absolute prerequisite for blocking; accounts whose main or only use is obvious vandalism or other forbidden activity may be blocked without warning.
How to respond to vandalism[]
If you see vandalism, please do the following:
- Check the article's page history to identify all vandalism edits. Usually, if the most recent edit by a particular user is vandalism, then all recent edits by that user are also vandalism. It is then necessary to revert to the last version before that user started editing. It is also prudent to compare a substantially earlier (unvandalized) version with the current, as editors may have missed a substantial deletion (a whole paragraph or section) followed by a rude remark. A novice editor may have then simply edited the remark out without checking the history. A reversion to that point followed by re-insertion of non-trivial edits may be appropriate or the missing section may be moved via cut-and-paste operations within your browser.
- Revert the edits. If you are viewing the diff between the current version and the preceding version, you can click "undo" to undo the edit automatically. Otherwise, please explain in the edit summary that you have reverted vandalism.
- Check the user's other contributions (click "User contributions" on the left sidebar of the screen). If most or all of these are obvious vandalism, you may decide to report the user immediately.
For repeated vandalism by an anonymous IP address, trace the IP address (cf. http://dnsstuff.com) to the user talk page of the address.
How not to respond to vandalism[]
Do not feed the trolls. Fanning the fire will make the situation worse. If the behavior escalates, blocking is an easy solution to deal with those things]].
Do not nominate an article for deletion because it is being vandalized. That's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and simply encourages vandalism further.
Do not insult the vandals. If someone is doing something they know is wrong, insulting them over it is likely to make them vandalize more, just to get that reaction. Furthermore, BaseballWiki is not the place for personal attacks, is not a battleground, and two wrongs don't make a right. Instead, report them to the administrators if they appear insistent in continuing their behavior.
Avoid the word "vandal". In particular, the word should not be used in reference to any contributor in good standing or to any edits that can arguably be construed as good-faithed. If the edits in question are made in good faith, they are not vandalism. Instead of calling a person making such edits a "vandal", discuss his or her specific edits with him or her. Comment on the content and substance of his or her edits or arguments, not his or her person.
Tracing IP addresses[]
The owners of IP addresses can be found using:
- ARIN (North America)
- RIPE NCC (Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia)
- APNIC (Asia Pacific)
- LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean)
- AfriNIC (Africa)
- IPLigence
If an address is not in one registry, it will probably be in another.
Types of vandalism[]
BaseballWiki vandalism may fall into one or more of the following categorizations: Blanking, Page lengthening, Spam, Vandalbots, Silly vandalism, Sneaky vandalism, Userspace vandalism, Image vandalism, Template vandalism, Abuse of tags, Page-move vandalism, Link vandalism, Avoidant vandalism, Modifying users' comments, Discussion page vandalism, Repeated uploading of copyrighted material, Malicious account creation, Edit summary vandalism, Hidden vandalism, and others.