Commons:Vandalism

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This page is considered an official guideline on Wikimedia Commons.

It illustrates standards or behaviors which most editors agree with in principle and generally follow. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

This page in a nutshell: If you see vandalism, revert changes, delete vandalized images, warn the vandal, and seek help from administrators. Consider joining the Counter Vandalism Unit to combat vandalism.

Shortcuts: COM:V • COM:VAND • COM:VANDAL "Vandalism" refers to actions taken with the deliberate intention of harming the site rather than improving it, or with reckless disregard for such damage and with no positive intent. A particularly incompetent or poorly thought-out edit might sometimes be mistaken for vandalism, but when in any doubt you should begin with an assumption of good faith, and that assumption should be particularly strong with respect to any account that has made productive edits in the past. In the event that you see vandalism, e.g. an obscene file is uploaded over an existing one, or another malicious change is made, you can do a number of things yourself:

If it is a change to the description of an image, revert the vandalism.
If the vandalism is an image:

To revert an image, you must log in and your account must be confirmed or autoconfirmed. (If you do not have an account, creating one takes only a few seconds, needs no personal details, and is free. There is a four-day wait for autoconfirmation.)
Then, in the "File history" section below the image, click the "(rev)" link next to the previous version of the file. (The change has now taken effect, though you might not see it because of your browser cache. If so, try clicking on the time and date of your version, then refresh your browser to see the change.)
Finally, add {{speedydelete|"Delete the old vandalised version."}} to have the vandalism deleted.

Warn the vandal about the consequences of their actions using {{Test}}, {{Test2}}, etc.
If you require assistance, get help from administrators, who can also block users and delete pages:
- Make a note at Administrators' noticeboard/Vandalism, or
- Enter our IRC chatroom (#wikimedia-commons), and say !admin@commons, or ping an admin by saying their nick.
If you want to help fight vandalism, become a patroller and check out the Counter Vandalism Unit.