Bulbapedia:Dealing with vandalism

	This is an official Bulbapedia policy. In a nutshell:
	Vandal edits should be cleaned up as quickly as possible. Let a staff member know if you need a hand.

As a wiki that encourages contributions from all registered users, Bulbapedia is sometimes subject to vandal edits caused by users who do not have Bulbapedia's best interests at heart. Vandal edits are not the end of the world, but this page outlines how to deal with vandalism.

For Bulbapedia users

Verify if the edit is vandalism

Sometimes, nonconstructive edits may be made without vandal intent. If a contributor appears to be deliberately filling articles with jargon, false information, or spam, it is likely vandalism. Be careful, though, not to automatically assume bad faith. It may be that a newer contributor is struggling to use the wiki interface.

Revert the vandalism

All users can revert vandalism. Staff members at the junior administrator level and higher have a tool called "rollback" which lets them quickly revert vandalism.

Alert a staff member

If you think disciplinary action should be taken on the user, such as a block or reprimand, please contact an active staff member. Staff names are italicized in the recent changes. Contact via the talk page is fine, although you may also use the Bulbagarden forums, IRC, or instant messaging clients to contact staff.

For administrators

Administrators should ban large-scale vandals on sight. Take care to ensure that the user you are blocking is a user contributing in bad faith. Spambots should be blocked on sight and all traces of their edits (including your deletion summary) removed from the page history.

System administrators

Extremely large-scale vandalism involving the use of multiple sockpuppets should be resolved by immediately enacting the following measures:

1. Blocking all instances of the vandal. Be sure to check the user list for unactivated ones.
2. Locking the database, preventing all edits and new user registrations.
3. Altering the MediaWiki configuration to prevent new user registrations.
4. Unlocking the database, then reverting the changes as outlined above.

At a later stage, once all vandalism has been reverted, the user and their revisions may be completely removed from the database. Please be sure to lock the database before starting.