 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Thanks to the efforts of vandal-fighters, blatant vandalism is less of a hindrance to the project than it once was. We should be wary of giving it too much importance to the neglect of other concerns. |
Vandalism on Wikipedia is a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopaedia, often through the insertion of obscenities, insults, nonsense or crude humour, or by page blanking.
In the early days of Wikipedia, vandalism was a very serious problem, requiring time-consuming effort by volunteers; this led to restrictions on editing which prevented certain forms of vandalism from occurring, but which also involved negative side-effects. In recent times, the ingenuity of our coders and diligence of our vandal fighters have led to new, faster and more effective means of combating vandalism, without some of the negative side-effects of restrictive measures.
As the problem of vandalism becomes decreasingly significant relative to other concerns, we should give it a decreasing level of consideration relative to other concerns when deliberating on the value of proposed counter-vandalism measures.