 | This page documents one of Memory Alpha's guidelines. |
Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. |
Vandalism is the conspicuous defacement or destruction of a structure, a symbol, or information against the will of the owner/governing entity. In the context of an online community project, it is a usually deliberate attempt to damage the usefulness of content for other viewers.
Currently, anonymous editing is disabled on Memory Alpha, mainly because anonymous users have historically been more likely to vandalize Memory Alpha than registered users are. Administrators can change this setting through the Admin Dashboard, but should not do so without community consensus.
Assuming good faith
Don't confuse vandalism with bad spelling, poor styling, and other bold edits.
Edits that seem like deliberate vandalism are often just clumsy attempts at editing by people who are new to wikis or are not familiar with the policies and guidelines. In those cases, you can explain to that editor what they could do better, where they could go to discuss their ideas, and why certain things are just not allowed on your community, even if they're okay elsewhere. That way, a user who first seems like a vandal can turn into a productive member of the community. Unless you can clearly see that someone has bad intentions, always assume they just didn't know better and offer your help!
However, when an editor's assumed good faith becomes a continuous hindrance to the point that it is counterproductive to the project's goal, it may ultimately be deemed vandalism.
Avoiding critical mass
Vandalism is often an aggressive attempt at getting a point across to the community by an angry or spiteful user. You can try to defuse the situation by talking to the vandal, suggesting to work things out peacefully, or by explaining better ways to achieve what the vandal wants to achieve. If you alienate the editor, however – for example, by insulting them right back – vandalism can turn into a form of vengeance. Fandom has tools and mechanisms in place to minimize the effect of pranksters, and can even handle a few determined vengeful vandals, but dealing with a full-blown vandalism movement is much harder and costs a lot of time and effort.
Because of this, you should assume good faith and react with kindness wherever possible, to avoid making the vandal(s) even more hateful, and to prevent a vandal attack from reaching critical mass.
Dealing with vandalism
The best way for archivists to deal with vandalism is to revert the vandalism and alert the administrators, who will take appropriate action. This most often involves blocking the vandal, but there are several other measures that can be taken to prevent vandalism.
The AbuseFilter extension allows administrators to create sophisticated filters to block the submission of edits if certain conditions are met, such as a particular rude or inappropriate word being included in the new text. Please note that admins should not use this unless they are skilled coders and certain that they know what they are doing.
If a surge of vandalism hits Memory Alpha, SOAP, Fandom Staff, or a Wiki Specialist may, upon admin request or by their own judgement, enable the ProtectSite extension to restrict certain actions (such as editing, creating pages, or uploading files) to admins or established editors.