Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to reduce the quality of the DJBWiki, and is a violation of DJBWiki Policies. If you see vandalism, revert it and leave a warning message on the vandal's talk page and then contact the DJBWiki Staff. Check the page history after reverting to make sure you have removed all the vandalism. When in case of major acts of vandalism, the DJBWiki Staff should be contacted immediately, so that they can deal with it quickly and efficiently.
Some of the most common types of vandalism are as follows:
- Blanking: removing all or significant parts of articles, sometimes with profanities
- Spam: adding inappropriate external links for advertisement and/or self-promotion
- VandalBot: a script or "robot" that attempts to vandalize or spam massive numbers of articles, something logging on repeatedly with multiple, random, names
- Silly/Childish: replacing content with or adding silly or bad jokes to an article that is often childish in nature
- Attention-Seeking: adding insults to articles, using offensive usernames, etc.
- User Page: replacing user pages with insults, profanity, etc.
- Sneaky: adding misinformation (such as changing dates or names) that is often difficult to find
- Images: uploading provocative images, inserting political messages, making malicious animated GIFs, etc. Repeatedly uploading images with no source and/or license information after notification that such information is required may also constitute vandalism
- Abuse of Tags: adding irrelevant tags to articles, uploading offensive tags, or removing tags to avoid detection of content, usually that would warrant deletion
- Templates: any change made to a template without the knowledge and approval of the DJBWiki Staff
- Page Move/Redirect: moving, or redirecting, a page to an offensive or provocative one
- Linking: rewriting links within an article so that they appear the same, but point to something irrelevant or ridiculous
- Talk Page: removing or changing warnings or other content from talk pages to alter the meaning
- Official Policies: deleting or altering part of a DJBWiki official policy with which the vandal disagrees, without any attempt to seek consensus or recognize an existing consensus
- Copyrighted Material: knowingly using copyrighted text or images that violate Dark Jedi Brotherhood policies. Due to the fact that often times users are not aware the information is copyrighted, this will only result in serious consequences if it continues for long periods of time
While all of these are considered acts of vandalism, both minor and major, some things, while they may come off as vandalism, are not considered so. Any effort to improve the DJBWiki, for instance, although ill-considered, is not vandalism. Bold edits, harassment, personal attacks, and general mistakes are also not considered vandalism, although they still result in consequences. Mistakes made by new users, typically because they are testing their access, is also disregarded, as is changing the point of view of an article from neutral. Typically, most changes like this should simply be fixed, and the user referred to the DJBWiki Guidelines or a staff member.