User talk:UBX/vandalized

September 2011

Suppose someone vandalized a userpage by increasing the number on the template by one. In that case, the user would have to let the vandalism remain... or maybe there's some other twist of logic here... Interchangeable|talk to me 19:23, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Hehe, I was just thinking the same thing.

• Vandalism is defined as edits deliberately trying to compromise Wikipedia (by posting misleading information, say).
• Say an editor increments another's counter in good faith: then they are disrupting the other person's user page, but trying to inform them about it
  • Yet if the edit informs them of something useful, it is not vandalism
  • But if it is not vandalism, then increasing a vandalism counter when none has taken place is misleading
  • But if misleading information has been posted, then vandalism has taken place
  • Yet if vandalism has taken place, then incrementing the vandalism counter is useful to Wikipedia; and so doing so does not constitute vandalism
  • ...
• Say the editor increments the counter in bad faith: they want to trick the other user into thinking their page has been vandalised one time more than it actually has
  • It is only a trick or a deception if no vandalism has taken place but the vandalism counter has been changed
  • Yet in this case, by the definition of misleading information constituting vandalism, vandalism has taken place
  • But then incrementing the edit counter would not have been trickery
  • ...

It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 23:20, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

The good news îs that I don't think that ever has happened or ever will happen. A user who intends to vandalize a userpage does not commit an act so simple as moving the template up one - they delete all content or replace it with something malicious. On the other hand, if a vandal changed this template in any way other than up by one, there would be no problem; the user could simply replace the vandalized number with the number one higher than they had previously.

And it should also be noted that all of our assumptions assume that the user must keep a correct count. This is not true. All problems can be solved simply by replacing the template with the "too many times" version. Your question about whether this constitutes vandalism is still very interesting, philosophically speaking. Interchangeable|talk to me 15:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)