Reported vandalism of a Wikipedia article (Sponge). A section of page content has been replaced with an insult: "get a life losers".
OnWikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionallyhumorous,nonsensical, ahoax, 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 ofprotected pages (which, depending on the level of protection, can only be edited by users with certain privileges). CertainWikipedia 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'sterms of use.[a] Vandals are oftenblocked from editing, and may also be further banned according to the terms of use. Vandals could be banned either for just a few hours/days/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 oradministrators respectively. Frequent targets of vandalism include articles on trending and controversial topics, celebrities, and current events.[6][7] In some cases, people have beenfalsely reported as having died. This has notably happened to American rapperKanye West.[8]
Screenshot of "administrator intervention against vandalism" page on theEnglish Wikipedia in June 2022
There are various measures taken by Wikipedia to prevent or reduce the amount of vandalism. These include:
Using Wikipedia's history functionality, which retains all prior versions of an article, restoring the article to the last version before the vandalism occurred; this is calledreverting vandalism.[6] The majority of vandalism on Wikipedia is reverted quickly.[9] There are various ways in which the vandalism gets detected so it can be reverted:
Bots: In some cases, the vandalism is automatically detected and reverted by aWikipedia bot. The vandal is always warned with no human intervention.
Recent changes patrol: Wikipedia has a special page that lists all the most recent changes. Some editors will monitor these changes for possible vandalism.[10]
Watchlists: Any registered user can watch a page that they have created or edited or that they otherwise have an interest in. This functionality also enables users to monitor a page for vandalism.[10]
Incidental discovery: Any reader who comes across vandalism by chance can revert it. In 2008, it was reported that the rarity of such incidental discovery indicated the efficacy of the other methods of vandalism removal.[10]
Protecting articles so only established users, or in some cases, onlyadministrators can edit them.[6]Semi-protected articles are those that can be edited only by those with an account that isautoconfirmed (at least four days old with at least ten edits).Extended confirmed protected articles are those that can be edited only those with an account that isextended confirmed (at least thirty days old with at least 500 edits).Fully protected articles are those that can be edited only by administrators. Protection is generally instituted after one or more editors make a request on a special page for that purpose. An administrator familiar with the protection guidelines chooses whether or not to fulfill this request based on the guidelines.
Blocking and banning those who have repeatedly committed acts of vandalism from editing for a period of time or in some cases, indefinitely.[6] Vandals are not blocked as an act of punishment – the purpose of the block is simply toprevent further damage.[11]
The "abuse filter" also known as the "edit filter", which usesregular expressions to detect common vandalism terms.[b]
Editors are generally warned before being blocked. The English Wikipedia and some other Wikipedias employ a 5-stage warning process leading up to a block. This includes:[12]
The first warning "assumesgood faith" and takes a relaxed approach to the user. (in some cases, this level can be skipped if the editor assumes the user is acting inbad faith[c]).
The second warning does not assume any faith and is an actual warning (in some cases, this level may also be skipped).
The third warning assumesbad faith and is the first to warn the user that continued vandalism may result in a block.
The fourth warning is a final warning, stating that any future acts of vandalism will result in a block.
After this, other users may place additional warnings, though only administrators can carry out the block.
In 2005, theEnglish Wikipedia started to require those who create new articles to have a registered account in an effort to fight vandalism. This occurred after inaccurate information was added to Wikipedia in which a journalist was accused of taking part inJohn F. Kennedy's assassination.[2][d]
Wikipedia has experimented with systems in which edits to some articles, especially those of living people, are delayed until it can be reviewed and determined that they are not vandalism, and in some cases, that a source to verify accuracy is provided. This is in an effort to prevent inaccurate and potentially damaging information about living people from appearing on the site.[13][14]
ClueBot NG
The most well-knownbot that fights vandalism is ClueBot NG. The bot was created by Wikipedia users Christopher Breneman and Naomi Amethyst in 2010 (succeeding the original ClueBot created in 2007; NG stands for Next Generation)[9] and usesmachine learning andBayesian statistics to determine if an edit is vandalism.[15][16]
In May 2005, a user edited thebiographical article aboutJohn Seigenthaler Sr. so that it contained several false anddefamatory statements.[17] The inaccurate claims went unnoticed between May and September 2005, after which they were discovered byVictor S. Johnson Jr., a friend of Seigenthaler. Wikipedia content is often mirrored at sites such asAnswers.com, which means that incorrect information can be replicated alongside correct information through a number of websites. Such information can develop a misleading air of authority because of its presence at such sites:[18]
Then [Seigenthaler's] son discovered that his father's hoax biography also appeared on two other sites, Reference.com and Answers.com, which took direct feeds from Wikipedia. It was out there for four months before Seigenthaler realized and got the Wikipedia entry replaced with a more reliable account. The lies remained for another three weeks on the mirror sites downstream.
ComedianStephen Colbert made repeated references to Wikipedia on his TV showThe Colbert Report, frequently suggesting on-air that his viewers vandalize selected pages. These instances include the following:
On a 2006 episode of his show, Colbert suggested viewers vandalize the article "Elephant". This resulted in many elephant-related articles being protected.[19]
On 7 August 2012, Colbert suggested that his viewers go to pages for possible 2012 U.S. Republican vice-presidential candidates, such as theTim Pawlenty andRob Portman articles, and edit them many times. This was in response to aFox News hypothesis that mass editing of theSarah Palin page the day before she was announced asJohn McCain's running mate could help predict who would be chosen asMitt Romney's running mate in the2012 election. After Colbert's request and his viewers' subsequent actions, all these articles were put undersemi-protection by Wikipedia administrators, with editing restricted to established users.[20]
In April 2014, theLiverpool Echo reported that computers on anintranet used by theBritish government had been used to post offensive remarks about theHillsborough disaster on Wikipedia pages relating to the subject. The government announced that it would launch an inquiry into the reports.[21] Following the allegations,The Daily Telegraph reported that government computers appeared to have been used to vandalize a number of other articles, often adding insulting remarks to biographical articles, and in one case falsely reporting a death.[22]
Political vandalism
The article forDonald Trump was blanked twice on 22 July 2015.
Politicians are a common target of vandalism on Wikipedia. The article onDonald Trump was replaced with a single sentence critical of him in July 2015,[23][24][25] and in November 2018, the lead picture on the page was replaced with an image of a penis, causingApple's virtual assistantSiri to briefly include this image in answers to queries about the subject.[26] BothHillary andBill Clinton's Wikipedia pages were vandalized in October 2016 by a member of theinternet trolling groupGay Nigger Association of America adding pornographic images to their articles.[27] That same month,New York Assembly candidateJim Tedisco's Wikipedia page was modified to say that he had "never been part of the majority", and "is considered by many to be a total failure". Tedisco expressed dismay at the changes to his page.[28] On 24 July 2018, United States SenatorOrrin Hatch posted humoroustweets afterGoogle claimed that he had died on 11 September 2017,[29] with the error being traced back to an edit to his Wikipedia article.[30][31] Similarly, vandalism of theCalifornia Republican Party's Wikipedia page caused Google's information bar to listNazism as one of the party's primary ideologies.[32]
The week of 29 January 2017 saw various acts of Wikipedia vandalism that attracted media attention. White House Press SecretarySean Spicer's Wikipedia page was vandalized and his picture replaced with that ofBaghdad Bob,Dana J. Boente's page description was edited to read that he was "the newest sock puppet for the Trump Administration", andPaul Ryan's picture was added to a list ofinvertebrates, with the edit summary stating that he was added due to his lack of a spine.[33][34][35]
On 27 September 2018, the personal information of U.S. senatorsLindsey Graham,Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch were added to their respective Wikipedia articles duringthe hearing of Supreme Court nomineeBrett Kavanaugh. The information included their home addresses and phone numbers, and originated from the network located from within theUnited States House of Representatives. The edits were removed from Wikipedia and hidden from public view shortly afterwards.[36][37] These edits were captured and automatically posted publicly toTwitter by an automated account. Twitter shortly removed the posts and suspended the account in response to the incident.[38] An internal police investigation located the person who made the edits, and 27-year-old Jackson A. Cosko (a staffer for Congress paid by an outside institution) was arrested and charged with multiple felony crimes relating to the incident. Cosko was sentenced in 2019 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to five felonies.[39][40][41]
In September 2025, the Wikipedia article of Filipino lawmakerZaldy Co was vandalized, with his surname changed to "Co-rakot"—a pun on the Filipino wordkurakot meaning "corrupt"—and later to "Co-rrupt." The edits coincided with news reports linking him to allegedirregularities in government flood control projects. The page was restored to its original version two hours after the tampering was detected.[42]
Miscellaneous
A vandal called "Willy on Wheels" moved thousands of articles so that their titles ended with "on wheels".[43]
In the music video for"Weird Al" Yankovic's 2006 song "White & Nerdy", Yankovic is shown editing the Wikipedia page forAtlantic Records, replacing the entire page with "YOU SUCK!" written in a large font; this was in reference to a dispute he had with Atlantic over the release of his song "You're Pitiful". The music video spawned copycat vandalism and Atlantic's page getting protected.Herald Sun writer Cameron Adams interviewed Yankovic in October 2006 and brought up the vandalism, to which Yankovic responded "I don't officially approve of that, but on a certain level it does amuse me".[45]
In February 2007, professional golferFuzzy Zoeller sued aMiami company whose IP-based edits to the Wikipedia site included negative information about him.[46]
In August 2007, local media from the Netherlands reported that several IP addresses fromNederlandse Publieke Omroep had been blocked from Wikipedia for adding "false and defamatory" information to pages.[47] A similar incident occurred with theMinister of the Interior in France in January 2016.[48]
In May 2012, media criticAnita Sarkeesian created aKickstarter project, intending to raise money to make a series of videos exploring sexism in digitalgaming culture.[49] The idea evoked a hostile response,[50] which included repeated vandalism of Sarkeesian's Wikipedia article with pornographic imagery, defamatory statements, and threats of sexual violence.[51] More than 12 IP addresses from unregistered editors contributed to the ongoing vandalism campaign before editing privileges were revoked for the page.[50]
In November 2012, theLeveson report – published in theUK byLord Justice Leveson – incorrectly listed a "Brett Straub" as one of the founders ofThe Independent newspaper. The name originated from one of the several erroneous edits by one of Straub's friends as a prank to Wikipedia by falsely including his name in several articles across the site. The name's inclusion in the report suggested that part of the report relating to that newspaper had been cut and pasted from Wikipedia without a proper check of the sources.[52][53] The Straub issue was also humorously referenced in broadcasts of BBC entertainmentcurrent affairs TV programHave I Got News for You (and extended editionHave I Got a Bit More News for You),[54][55] withThe Economist also making passing comment on the issue: "The Leveson report... Parts of it are a scissors-and-paste job culled from Wikipedia."[56]
In April 2015,The Washington Post reported on an experiment by "Gregory Kohs, a former editor, and prominent Wikipedia critic": "Kohs wrapped up an experiment in which he inserted outlandish errors into 31 articles and tracked whether editors ever found them. After more than two months, half of his hoaxes still had not been found – and those included errors on high-profile pages, like "Mediterranean climate" and "inflammation". (By his estimate, more than 100,000 people have now seen the claim thatvolcanic rock produced by thehuman body causes inflammation pain.)"[57]
In August 2016, a sentence was added toChad le Clos's Wikipedia page saying that he "Died at the hands ofMichael Phelps, being literally blown out of the water by the greatest American sinceAbraham Lincoln" after Phelps won the gold medal for 200-meter butterfly at the2016 Summer Olympics.[58] This particular instance of Wikipedia vandalism attracted moderate media attention.[59]
On 25 April 2018, various pages related to American video game directorTodd Howard were vandalized after a post went viral onTumblr stating that his page would no longer be semi-protected as of said date. Although Howard's page had its protection extended, a massive raid campaign vandalized many related pages. These included "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" (the most popular game he worked on) and "Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania" (his hometown).[60]
On 16 August 2021, a template that wastranscluded onto approximately 53,000 pages was replaced with aswastika. The vandalism was reverted five minutes later.[61]
The 2022 filmTár includes a scene showing the main character's Wikipedia article having been vandalised with the text "LOL, this actually got vandalised!",[62] a hoax page was later created forLydia Tar on Wikipedia.[63]
^abcdKleeman, Jenny (2 April 2007)."Wikipedia fights vandalism".The New Zealand Herald.Archived from the original on 13 December 2013. Retrieved25 November 2010.
