Vandalism on Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing a page in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, offensive, libelous or degrading in any way.

Throughout its history, Wikipedia has struggled to maintain a balance between allowing the freedom of open editing and protecting the accuracy of its information when false information can be potentially damaging to its subjects.[1] Vandalism is easy to commit on Wikipedia, because anyone can edit the site,[2] with the exception of protected pages (which, depending on the level of protection, can only be edited by users with certain privileges). Certain Wikipedia bots are capable of detecting and removing vandalism faster than any human editor could.[3]

Vandalizing Wikipedia or otherwise causing disruption is against the site's terms of use. Vandals are often blocked from editing, and may also be further banned according to the terms of use. Vandals could be blocked either for just a few hours/days/months or indefinitely depending on the level of vandalism they have committed. Vandalism can be committed by either guest editors (IP addresses), or those with registered accounts (oftentimes accounts created solely to vandalize).

To combat inappropriate edits to articles which are frequently targeted by vandals, Wikipedia instates a protection policy, serving as a user-privilege merit system. For example, a semi-protected or fully protected page can be edited only by accounts that meet certain account age and activity thresholds or administrators respectively. Frequent targets of vandalism include articles on trending and controversial topics, celebrities, and current events.[5][6] In some cases, people have been falsely reported as having died. This has notably happened to American rapper Kanye West.[7]

Counter-vandalism measures

There are various measures taken by Wikipedia to prevent or reduce the amount of vandalism. These include: Editors are generally warned before being blocked. The English Wikipedia and some other Wikipedias employ a four-stage warning process leading up to a block. This includes:[11]

In 2005, the English Wikipedia started to require those who create new articles to have a registered account in an effort to fight vandalism. This occurred after inaccurate information was added to Wikipedia, in which a journalist was accused of taking part in John F. Kennedy's assassination.[12]

Wikipedia has experimented with systems in which edits to some articles, especially those of living people, are delayed until it can be reviewed and determined that they are not vandalism, and in some cases, that a source to verify accuracy is provided. This is in an effort to prevent inaccurate and potentially damaging information about living people from appearing on the site.[13][14]

Notable acts of vandalism

Seigenthaler incident

In May 2005, a user edited the biographical article about John Seigenthaler such that it contained several false and defamatory statements.[17] The inaccurate claims went unnoticed between May and September 2005, after which they were discovered by Victor S. Johnson Jr., a friend of Seigenthaler. Wikipedia content is often mirrored at sites such as Answers.com, which means that incorrect information can be replicated alongside correct information through a number of websites. Such information can develop a misleading air of authority because of its presence at such sites:[18] "Then [Seigenthaler's] son discovered that his father's hoax biography also appeared on two other sites, Reference.com and Answers.com, which took direct feeds from Wikipedia. It was out there for four months before Seigenthaler realized and got the Wikipedia entry replaced with a more reliable account. The lies remained for another three weeks on the mirror sites downstream."

Stephen Colbert

References

Wikipedia testing new method to curb false info Christian Science Monitor, CSMonitor.com, 25 August 2009, retrieved 7 June 2012^
Wikipedia tightens online rules BBC News, 6 December 2005, retrieved 26 November 2010^
Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia BBC News, 25 July 2012, retrieved 19 September 2021

Political vandalism

Politicians are a common target of vandalism on Wikipedia. The article on Donald Trump was replaced with a single sentence critical of him in July 2015,[23][24][25] and in November 2018, the lead picture on the page was replaced with an image of a penis, causing Apple's virtual assistant Siri to briefly include this image in answers to queries about the subject.[26] Both Hillary and Bill Clinton's Wikipedia pages were vandalized in October 2016 by a member of the internet trolling group Gay Nigger Association of America adding pornographic images to their articles.[27] That same month, New York Assembly candidate Jim Tedisco's Wikipedia page was modified to say that he had "never been part of the majority", and "is considered by many to be a total failure". Tedisco expressed dismay at the changes to his page.[28] On 24 July 2018, United States Senator Orrin Hatch posted humorous tweets after Google claimed that he had died on 11 September 2017,[29] with the error being traced back to an edit to his Wikipedia article.[30][31] Similarly, vandalism of the California Republican Party's Wikipedia page caused Google's information bar to list Nazism as one of the party's primary ideologies.[32]

The week of 29 January 2017 saw various acts of Wikipedia vandalism that attracted media attention. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's Wikipedia page was vandalized and his picture replaced with that of Baghdad Bob, Dana J. Boente's page description was edited to read that he was "the newest sock puppet for the Trump Administration", and Paul Ryan's picture was added to a list of invertebrates, with the edit summary stating that he was added due to his lack of a spine.[33][34][35]

On 27 September 2018, the personal information of U.S. senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch were added to their respective Wikipedia articles during the hearing of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The information included their home addresses and phone numbers, and originated from the network located from within the United States House of Representatives. The edits were removed from Wikipedia and hidden from public view shortly afterwards.[36][37] These edits were captured and automatically posted publicly to Twitter by an automated account. Twitter shortly removed the posts and suspended the account in response to the incident.[38] An internal police investigation located the person who made the edits, and 27-year-old Jackson A. Cosko (a staffer for Congress paid by an outside institution) was arrested and charged with multiple felony crimes relating to the incident. Cosko was sentenced in 2019 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to five felonies.[39][40][41]

In September 2025, the Wikipedia article of Filipino lawmaker Zaldy Co was vandalized, with his surname changed to "Co-rakot"—a pun on the Filipino word kurakot meaning "corrupt"—and later to "Co-rrupt." The edits coincided with news reports linking him to alleged irregularities in government flood control projects. The page was restored to its original version two hours after the tampering was detected.[42]

Miscellaneous

A vandal called "Willy on Wheels" moved thousands of articles so that their titles ended with "on wheels".[43]

In 2006, Rolling Stone printed a story about Halle Berry based on false information from Wikipedia, which had arisen from an act of Wikipedia vandalism.

In the music video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's 2006 song "White & Nerdy", Yankovic is shown editing the Wikipedia page for Atlantic Records, replacing the entire page with "YOU SUCK!" written in a large font; this was in reference to a dispute he had with Atlantic over the release of his song "You're Pitiful". The music video spawned copycat vandalism and Atlantic's page getting protected. Herald Sun writer Cameron Adams interviewed Yankovic in October 2006 and brought up the vandalism, to which Yankovic responded "I don't officially approve of that, but on a certain level it does amuse me".[44]

In February 2007, professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued a Miami company whose IP-based edits to the Wikipedia site included negative information about him.[45]

In August 2007, local media from the Netherlands reported that several IP addresses from Nederlandse Publieke Omroep had been blocked from Wikipedia for adding "false and defamatory" information to pages.[46] A similar incident occurred with the Minister of the Interior in France in January 2016.[47]

In May 2012, media critic Anita Sarkeesian created a Kickstarter project, intending to raise money to make a series of videos exploring sexism in digital gaming culture.[48] The idea evoked a hostile response,[49] which included repeated vandalism of Sarkeesian's Wikipedia article with pornographic imagery, defamatory statements, and threats of sexual violence.[50] More than 12 IP addresses from unregistered editors contributed to the ongoing vandalism campaign before editing privileges were revoked for the page.[49]

In November 2012, the Leveson report – published in the UK by Lord Justice Leveson – incorrectly listed a "Brett Straub" as one of the founders of The Independent newspaper. The name originated from one of the several erroneous edits by one of Straub's friends as a prank to Wikipedia by falsely including his name in several articles across the site. The name's inclusion in the report suggested that part of the report relating to that newspaper had been cut and pasted from Wikipedia without a proper check of the sources.[51][52] The Straub issue was also humorously referenced in broadcasts of BBC entertainment current affairs television program Have I Got News for You (and extended edition Have I Got a Bit More News for You),[53][54] with The Economist also making passing comment on the issue: "The Leveson report... Parts of it are a scissors-and-paste job culled from Wikipedia."[55]

In April 2015, The Washington Post reported on an experiment by "Gregory Kohs, a former editor, and prominent Wikipedia critic": "Kohs wrapped up an experiment in which he inserted outlandish errors into 31 articles and tracked whether editors ever found them. After more than two months, half of his hoaxes still had not been found – and those included errors on high-profile pages, like "" and "". (By his estimate, more than 100,000 people have now seen the claim that volcanic rock produced by the human body causes inflammation pain.)"[56]

In August 2016, a sentence was added to Chad le Clos's Wikipedia page saying that he "Died at the hands of Michael Phelps, being literally blown out of the water by the greatest American since Abraham Lincoln" after Phelps won the gold medal for 200-meter butterfly at the 2016 Summer Olympics.[57] This particular instance of Wikipedia vandalism attracted moderate media attention.[58]

On 25 April 2018, various pages related to American video game director Todd Howard were vandalized after a post went viral on Tumblr stating that his page would no longer be semi-protected as of said date. Although Howard's page had its protection extended, a massive raid campaign vandalized many related pages. These included "" (the most popular game he worked on) and "" (his hometown).[59]

On 16 August 2021, a template that was transcluded onto approximately 53,000 pages was replaced with a swastika. The vandalism was reverted five minutes later.[60]

The 2022 film Tár includes a scene showing the Wikipedia article of Lydia Tár, the main character, having been vandalized with the text "LOL, this actually got vandalised!".[61] A hoax page on the character was later created on Wikipedia.[62]