Star Trek Expanded Universe:Vandalism

Vandalism is intentional alteration (changing, adding or removing content) which destroys property or compromises effective presentation of information. In an open-source community such as, this may include obscenities, crude humor, spam, page blanking, and/or patent nonsense.'' (The preceding is not all-inclusive of possible types of vandalism.)

Not all apparent vandalism may be actual vandalism. One should always assume good faith. When edits clearly constitute deliberate, intentional vandalism (edits made in "bad faith"), adequate response is required.

Responding to vandalism
If you see or suspect vandalism, you may take the following steps:
 * 1) For new articles, check the article's page history by clicking on the history tab near the top of your screen (or "diff", "hist" or "page history" on recent changes).
 * 2) If all versions of the article are pure vandalism, mark it for speedy deletion by tagging it with speedydelete.
 * 3) Otherwise, revert the harmful edits. You may click "undo" or "rollback" after comparing differences in page histories. Include a brief note in the summary field, such as "rv vandalism", explaining that you have reverted vandalism.
 * 4) Leave a warning message on the vandal's talk page.
 * 5) Check the vandal's other contributions, by clicking "user contributions" along the side of your screen.
 * 6) If the vandal has made a number of harmful edits, and/or persists in doing so, report it so that administrators may investigate and take action. In most cases, obvious vandalism will result in a block or ban of the vandal.

Do not get into arguments or make rude comments to the offending user. Negative comments reflect on the community and achieve no constructive purpose.

Do not tag an existing article for deletion if it existed prior to the vandalism.

Types of vandalism
Vandalism may fall into one or more of the following categories:

What vandalism is not
Although at times referred to as vandalism, the following is not actual vandalism and may be treated differently.

If a user treats situations which are not clear vandalism as such, then that user is actually harming the encyclopedia by alienating or driving away potential editors.

How to spot vandalism
The best way to detect vandalism is to patrol recent changes, spot edits from IP addresses, or keep an eye on watchlists. "What links here" pages for Insert text, Link title, Headline text, Bold text and Image:Example.jpg are also good places to find test edits or vandalism. Vandalism should be reverted to an earlier version of the page. Remember to include good edits since then!