Vandalism

An example of vandalism on a wiki, which is replacing several content of the sponge page on Wikipedia.

Vandalism on a wiki is editing the wiki's content in an intentionally disruptive manner. Vandalism includes addition, removal or modification that is degrading in any form of way.

Examples

1. On Wikipedia, there are tons of vandalism incidents:
   1. In May 2005, a anonymous user vandalized American journalist John Seigenthaler's page to add biased information that "he was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s, and was thought to have been directly involved in the John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy assasinations".
   2. A user named "Willy on Wheels" renamed multiple pages on the site so that their titles ended with "on wheels".
   3. In 2012, The Oatmeal, a satirical website published a comic in which Thomas Edison should be added as an example to the disambiguation page "douchebag". This caused the douchebag page to extended-confirmed protected after Edison's name was repeatedly added and removed.
   4. On October 2016, Bill and Hillary Clinton's pages were vandalized by a hacker who went as far as to replace their pages' backgrounds to a pornographic image of a woman.
   5. Similar to the incident above, Donald Trump's article was vandalized so that his infobox image was replaced to that of an uncensored penis, which caused Siri to also include the penis image on queries about Trump.
   6. On April 2017, the article for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's infobox image was replaced to that of a cockroach.
   7. On April 2018, several pages related to video game director Todd Howard were vandalized after he stated on Tumblr that his page would no longer be semi-protected on April 25.
   8. At one point, a section on the page about Sponges was replaced with "get a life losers" as shown in the example image.
   9. On the Dutch Wikipedia at one point, a user vandalized Xi Jinping's infobox image by replacing his image to that of Winnie the Pooh.
   10. Around late 2017 to early 2019, the page for the country of Uganda was vandalized with Ugandan Knuckles related edits.
   11. On August 2023, the page for the Japanese anime studio OLM was vandalized by a user named "Itolobosb lobos" to include a fake Pokémon movie. This happened three times and there were other vandalisms by multiple anonymous users in July of that same year.
2. Various FANDOM wikis had suffered through vandalism:
   1. FreedomInc20XX, one of the admins of Ficreation (now known as Fanon Kingdom Wiki), abused his power as admin by vandalizing the main page of the wiki.
   2. A user named BenjaminGeek vandalized several pages on the Baldi's Basics Fanon Wiki and Baldipedia by replacing the pages' content with "Beware of Lynn Loud Vendalism [sic]" or "Beware of Colin Vendalism [sic]".
   3. The page for Panini on the Chowder Wiki was vandalized with the lyrics of Lil Nas X's song with the same name.
   4. On the Tamagotchi Fanon Wiki, several pages got vandalized by a raider with another one being vandalized by a troll.
   5. On the Lu and the Bally Bunch Wiki, an anonymous user edited the "crying" page with false info.
3. On December 11th, 2022, a vandal raided Weirdcyclopedia by vandalizing several pages and creating sock accounts and articles that trolled and harrassed two former Qualitipedia admins, SuperStreetKombat and DarkMatterMan4500, without ever getting blocked due to the apparent retirement of the wiki's only administrator. The mysterious vandal returned there every few months to continue their vandalism while managing to get away with their crimes without getting punished once by admins or even ShoutWiki's staff members, and was one of the users responsible for the wiki's closure on June 17th, 2023, making them one of the most dangerous vandals in wiki history.
   • Many thought the vandal to be -abigblueworld-, a user infamous for raiding Qualitipedia, but she eventually debunked the rumors by stating she wasn't the one responsible for what happened on December 2022 and speculated that another infamous user was truly the one behind the incident.

Why This Practice Is Tiresome

1. First of all, it makes wikis look less professional.
   • Vandalism can sometimes be politically fueled, which may result in people being brainwashed into extremist/biased beliefs in some cases.
   • Vandalism can also go unnoticed for months or even years in some cases, degrading the quality of articles as a whole.
2. Second, it's a trolling method and intollerance to take criticism, which is already bad enough.
3. Because of vandals, it caused several pages on wikis to be protected and can only be edited by the wiki's staff, which can prevent edits which contain better/more-detailed or up-to-date information.
4. Acts of vandalism can also cause several websites, such as Google to list false information that is directly mirrored from these wikis.
   • On top of that, some vandals went as far as to vandalize articles to put uncensored inappropriate images on some pages, with an example being Donald Trump's image on his Wikipedia article getting replaced with a penis, which caused Siri to also include the penis image on queries about Trump.
5. Speaking of the pointer listed above, some vandals went as far as to even put personal information (doxx) of several people on their respective pages, which can result in several crimes such as harassment and stalking.
6. Vandalism can even involve illegal actions, like copyright violations and libel.
7. Some acts of vandalism can even tarnish wikis' reputations.

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. Though wrong, some acts of vandalism can be pretty funny and comical.