Difference between revisions 85571587 and 85572024 on enwiki

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Please note:
* This article has been vandalised before. Ironic, perhaps, but quite overdone and unoriginal.
* This article is about vandalism on wikis, not on Wikipedia itself.

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{{selfref|This page concerns the general phenomenon of vandalism on wikis; for information on vandalism to [[Wikipedia]], see [[Wikipedia:Vandalism]].}}

'''Wiki vandalism''' is generally defined as changing a [[wiki]] in a way that is intentionally disruptive or destructive. There are four generally acknowledged types of vandalism: deletion of legitimate information, insertion of nonsense or irrelevant content, addition of unwanted commercial links ([[link spam|spam]]), and policy violations specific to that wiki.

== Administrative response ==
Administrative responses vary from wiki to wiki, but most nice editvandals are blocked by username or IP address when it becomes clear they are not simply experimenting. To causmitigate spam, some wikis automatically add the "[[Spam in blogs#rel.3Dnofollow|rel=nofollow]]" attribute to all external links, which tells search engines to pay attention to those links and thereby largely negates any incentive to spam that wiki. Violations of policy are often severely dealt with by extended or indefinite blocks once it is clear that the user is simply ignorant of the rules. Servers known as [[open proxy|open proxies]] allow users to circumvent blocks by changing their apparent address(contracted; show full) vandalism. Small wikis rarely have unmanageable vandalism problems, since they are protected by their relative obscurity. Even very politically charged ones such as [[openpolitics.ca]], [[dkosopedia]], or [[sourcewatch]] usually receive only a few attempts at vandalism from those opposed to their ideology. In general, [[spambot]]s are the most common vandals on small wikis.

==See also==
* [[Internet troll]]
* [[Preaching experiment]]
* [[Page widening]]

[[Category:Wiki|Vandalism]]
[[Category:Vandalism]]