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What is Vandalism?
Vandalism is any addition, removal or change of content done in a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia. The most common way of vandalism on Wikipedia is adding crude humor to a page, blanking pages or big sections without reason and inserting obvious nonsense into a page. Creation of abusive accounts is also very commonly seen on Wikipedia. As we move on with the course you shall learn about types of vandalism, how to find and spot vandalism etc.
Types of Vandalism
......1. Abuse of tags - Placing of unnecessary tags on pages that do not meet the criteria is considered vandalism. These tags can be the {{afd}} tag, {{delete}}, tag or/and {{sprotected}} tag. Baseless removal of important tags from pages is also considered vandalism. This may include removal of {{Citation needed}} tag or/and removal of {{db}} tag.
......2. Account creation, malicious - Creating accounts with usernames that contain deliberately offensive or disruptive terms is considered vandalism, whether the account is used or not.
......3. Avoidant vandalism - This type of vandalism is quite common. Removal of {{afd}}, {{copyvio}} and other deletion tags in order to prevent deletion of such content is considered vandalism. However new users make this mistake as they are unfamiliar with the AfD procedure, such users should be educated that removal of these tags is vandalism and instead they should discuss their deletion on the proper page.
......4. Blanking, illegitimate - Removing encyclopedic content without any reason, or replacing such content with nonsense is considered vandalism. Content removal is not considered to be vandalism when the appropriate reason for the removal of the content is provided or is readily apparent by examination of the content itself. Sometimes an editor may make a good-faith removal of a section and forget to leave a reason for it, in such cases {{uw-test1}} or {{uw-delete1}} warning should be issued to the editor.
......5. Copyrighted material, repeated uploading - Uploading or using material on Wikipedia even after being warned in ways which violate Wikipedia's copyright policies is considered vandalism. But if a user makes this mistake for the first time, it shouldn't be considered vandalism, because users may be unaware that the information is copyrighted, or of Wikipedia's policies on how such material may and may not be used. He should be instead taught about Wikipedia's policies on Non-free content
......6. Edit summary vandalism - In order to leave a mark vandals make offensive edit summaries so that what they wrote cannot be easily expunged from the record (edit summaries cannot simply be "reverted" and require administrative action if they have to be removed from a page's history). Such vandalism should be brought to immediate notice of an administrator.
......7. Gaming the system - Deliberate attempts to avoid enforcement of Wikipedia policies, guidelines and/or procedures by causing bad faith edits to go unnoticed is considered vandalism. This includes marking bad faith edits as minor to get less scrutiny, recreating previously deleted bad faith creations under a new title, use of the {{construction}} tag to prevent deletion of a page.
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