This page in a nutshell: If you are ever tempted, and are not intimidated by the consequences, go ahead and vandalize all you want. Be warned, youwill get caught, and it is a temporary privilege.
Vandalism may sound like fun, but it sure does not look pretty to anyone.
Do you want to intentionallyirritate others because it's fun? Or do you want to do it just for thethrill of it?
Do you want to get blocked?
Then go right ahead: vandalize any page[dubious –discuss] that you please. Maybe an artist, a product, a politician, or someone'suser page, but definitely not this article. You don't even need tolog in ormake an account – just click edit at the top of the page, do what you like in the text box that appears, and click save at the bottom when you're done. Easy as that!!
You might getcaught by an automatic filter. If so, just change your text and click save again. And again. And again, until your edit is saved.
If you are a member of the Counter-Counter-Vandalism Unit, you may be permanently banned from all Wikipedia sites.And if you are a member of the WAAV (Wikipedia Anti Anti Vandalism Group), again, you may be permanently banned from all Wikipedia sites.
So you were able to vandalize, right? Here's what will happen next:
Your vandalism will bereverted. It will usually happen within minutes, if not seconds. A lot of obvious vandalism is reverted automatically (and usually immediately) by an automated computer program calledClueBot NG.
You will be left with anugly message on youruser talk page. Even if you remove it, which you can do, it'll always remain in thehistory of your talk page, and anyone will be able to see it (unless you request revision deletion or oversight, but in those cases, users with those privileges will still see them anyway).
Your acts of vandalism will always be a part of youruser contributions, and will be archived in thehistory of the page you vandalized. It will have your username (or if you are not logged in, yourIP address) in it. And it might have atag beside it that may say "repeated characters", "shouting", or (literally) "possiblevandalism" and will also be on the filter log of that page. Unless someone asks anadmin tohide your edit, anyone will be able to see your vandalism, which will look really, really ugly if you are striving to be a respected editor. Even if someone does, admins can still see your vandalism edit. Even if oversighters oversight your vandalism edit, they can still see the edit. And on top of that, if your edit gets caught by an automatic filter, it is still visible in thefilter log for everyone, even if an administrator or oversighter hides it.
If you continue to vandalize (and yes, you can!), you will be left with more ugly messages, and eventuallya big fat ugly message telling you that you areunable to edit Wikipedia. If you try to click edit on any page now (except for your user talk page), you will find this is most definitely not a lie.
What can you do now? You mayappeal the block, of course. Simplyadd a request to your talk page. Sooner or later an admin will see it, and say yes or no. If they say no, you can wait, or you can appeal your block again. If you make too many bad requests or misuse your talk page, though, your talk page access may be revoked.
If you vandalize without logging in, it'll make it harder for you or anyone else to make valid edits or register a username while connected via thatIP address or range. We havetools that can tell whether you're at home, work, school, or pretty much anywhere else in the world. If you vandalize from ashared IP or aproxy server, you are more likely to get blocked for a longer time – maybe even a year or two. Regardless, if you get blocked, other innocent editors, perhaps respected ones, may also get blocked for a while.
Any pages that you vandalize may getprotected, making it harder for others to edit legitimately. That's why we haveautoconfirmed and evenextended confirmed users, but as a regular vandal, you will almost never be one of them. At least some innocent users won’t get to edit them for a while, so great job!
If you usesockpuppets (multiple accounts), you will eventually get caught by acheckuser. Your IP address and all of your accounts will be blocked.
If you bring your vandalism to otherWikimediaprojects likeWikibooks orWiktionary, asteward will globally lock your account for cross-wiki abuse, preventing you from being able to edit pages on any Wikimedia project. In some cases of long-term abuse, your IP may even be globally blocked.
If you do lose internet access due to abuse, just get another internet service provider and you can start the cycle all over again! At least until there are no more providers to abuse the project with. In that case, you might as well resort to other illegal crimes against Wikimedia! Even if it meansmurder! Go on, do it!'Cause rules stink, right?
And if you ever decide you want to become a productive member of Wikipedia, contributing to the compendium of knowledge available for the education of all on this grand site, you may just find that it’s too late. You may only ever be remembered as a joker; you'll never get tostart over. Is that what you want your life’s legacy to be?Eh?
If you've done one, more or all of this stuff,congratulations. Enjoy your permanent ban from the project, and unlessyoudo have intentions of editing constructively, so long. If you had also vandalized other Wikimedia projects, congratulations, enjoy yourpermanent ban from all of Wikimedia. In other words,GG.
