Vandalism

From TranceWiki

Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia (see also Wikipedia:Newbie experiment). The most common type of vandalism is the replacement of existing text with obscenities, namecalling, or other wholly irrelevant content.

Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Apparent bad-faith edits that do not make their bad-faith nature inarguably explicit are not considered vandalism at Wikipedia.

Committing vandalism is a violation of Wikipedia policy; it needs to be spotted, and then dealt with – if you cannot deal with it yourself, you can seek help from others.

A 2002 study by IBM found that most Wikipedia vandalism is reverted within five minutes. (See official results.) A breaching experiment in September 2005 [1] similarly resulted in patent nonsense being reverted in five minutes.

Sometimes an update might look like vandalism. Careful attention needs to be given if the new data or information is the right information or is it vandalism. It should be supported by evident facts.