| Type | Description |
|---|
| Abuse of tags | Bad-faith placing of non-content tags such as{{afd}},{{delete}},{{sprotected}}, or other tags on pages that do not meet such criteria. This includes baseless removal of{{policy}} and related tags. |
| Account creation, malicious | Creating accounts with usernames that contain deliberately offensive or disruptive terms is considered vandalism, whether the account is used or not. For Wikipedia's policy on what is considered inappropriate for a username, seeWikipedia:Username policy. See alsoWikipedia:Sock puppetry. |
| Avoidant vandalism | Removing{{afd}},{{copyvio}} and other related tags in order to conceal deletion candidates or avert deletion of such content. However, this is often mistakenly done by new users who are unfamiliar with AfD procedures and such users should be given the benefit of the doubt and pointed to the proper page to discuss the issue. |
| Blanking, illegitimate | Removing all or significant parts of a page's content without any reason, or replacing entire pages with nonsense. Sometimes referenced information or important verifiable references are deleted with no valid reason(s) given in the summary. However, significant content removals are usuallynot considered to be vandalism where the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary. Blanking that could be legitimate includes blanking all or part of abiography of a living person. Wikipedia is especially concerned about providing accurate and unbiased information on the living; blanking may be an effort to remove inaccurate or biased material. Due to the possibility of unexplained good-faith content removal,{{uw-test1}} or{{uw-delete1}}, as appropriate, should be used as initial warnings for content removals without more. |
| Copyrighted material, repeated uploading of | Uploading or using material on Wikipedia in ways which violateWikipedia's copyright policies after having been warned is vandalism. Because users may be unaware that the information is copyrighted, or of Wikipedia policies on how such material may and may not be used, such actiononly becomes vandalism if it continues after the copyrighted nature of the material and relevant policy restricting its use have been communicated to the user. |
| Edit summary vandalism | Making offensive edit summaries in an attempt to leave a mark that cannot be easily expunged from the record (edit summaries cannot simply be "reverted" and remain visible when viewing a page's history). Often combined with malicious account creation. |
| Gaming the system | Deliberate attempts to circumvent enforcement of Wikipedia policies, guidelines, and procedures by making bad faith edits go unnoticed. Includes marking bad faith edits as minor to get less scrutiny, making a minor edit following a bad faith edit so it won't appear on all watchlists, recreating previously deleted bad faith creations under a new title, use of the{{construction}} tag to prevent deletion of a page that would otherwise be a clear candidate for deletion, or use ofsock puppets. |
| Hidden vandalism | Any form of vandalism that makes use of embedded text, which is not visible to the final rendering of the article but visible during editing. This includes link vandalism, or placing malicious, offensive, or otherwise disruptive or irrelevant messages or spam in hidden comments for editors to see. |
| Image vandalism | Uploading shock images, inappropriately placing explicit images on pages, or simply using any image in a way that is disruptive. Please note though thatWikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors and that explicit images may be uploaded and/or placed on pages for legitimate reasons (that is, if they have encyclopedic value). |
| Link vandalism | Adding or changing internal or external links on a page to disruptive, irrelevant, or inappropriate targets while disguising them with mislabeling. |
| Page creation, illegitimate | Creating new pages with the sole intent of malicious behavior. Includesblatant advertising pages,personal attack pages (articles written to disparage the subject),blatant POV pushes,hoaxes and other intentionally inaccurate pages.New users may sometimes create test pages containingnonsense or even autobiographies, and doing so is not vandalism, though such pages are normallyspeedily deleted. Also, creating a page on a topic that is simply not notable is not vandalism. |
| Page lengthening | Adding very large (measured by the number ofbytes) amounts of bad-faith content to a page so as to make the page's load time abnormally long or even make the page impossible to load on some computers without the browser or machine crashing. Adding large amounts of good-faith content is not vandalism, though prior to doing so, one should consider if splitting a long page may be appropriate (seeWikipedia:Article size). |
| Page-move vandalism | Changing the names of pages (referred to as "page-moving") to disruptive, irrelevant, or inappropriate names. Onlyautoconfirmed andconfirmed users can move pages. |
| Silly vandalism | Adding profanity, graffiti, orpatent nonsense to pages; creating nonsensical and obviously unencyclopedic pages, etc. However, the addition of random characters to pages is often characteristic of an editing test and, though impermissible, may not be malicious. |
| Sneaky vandalism | Vandalism that is harder to spot, or that otherwise circumvents detection, including adding plausible misinformation to articles (such as minor alteration of facts or additions of plausible-sounding hoaxes), hiding vandalism (such as by making two bad edits and only reverting one), simultaneously using multiple accounts or IP addresses to vandalize, abuse of maintenance and deletion templates, or reverting legitimate edits with the intent of hindering the improvement of pages. Some vandals even follow their vandalism with an edit that states "rv vandalism" in theedit summary in order to give the appearance the vandalism was reverted. |
| Spam external linking | Adding or continuing to add external links to non-notable or irrelevant sites (e.g. to advertise one's website) to pages after having been warned is vandalism, or sites that have some relationship to the subject matter, but advertise or promote in the user's interest, or text that promotes one's personal interests. |
| Talk page vandalism | Illegitimately deleting or editing other users' comments. However, it is acceptable to blank comments constituting vandalism,internal spam, orharassment or apersonal attack. It is also acceptable to identify an unsigned comment. Users are alsopermitted to remove comments from their own user talk pages. A policy of prohibiting users from removing warnings from their own talk pages wasconsidered and rejected on the grounds that it would create more issues than it would solve. |
| Template vandalism | Modifying the wiki language or text of atemplate in a harmful or disruptive manner. This is especially serious, because it will negatively impact the appearance of multiple pages. Some templates appear on hundreds of pages. |
| User and user talk page vandalism | Unwelcome, illegitimate edits to another person's user page may be considered vandalism. User pages are regarded as within the control of their respective users and, with certain exceptions, should not be edited without permission of the user to whom they belong. SeeWikipedia:UP#OWN. Related isWikipedia:No personal attacks. |
| Vandalbots | Ascript or "robot" that attempts to vandalize or add spam to a mass of pages. |
