 | This is an essay on the conduct policy. 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: Yelling "vandalism" to "win" a content dispute in Wikipedia is not a winning approach. |
Wikipedia has content disputes between editors and conduct disputes involving one or more editors. Content disputes should normally be worked out in accordance with the dispute resolution policy between the editors, sometimes with help from other editors or from the community. Conduct disputes can be reported to a conduct forum such as WP:ANI or WP:AN, or Arbitration Enforcement in some cases, or dealt with by a single administrator. However, there are certain approaches that are sometimes taken by an editor in a content dispute in order to "win" the content dispute that are not constructive and may even change the content dispute into a conduct dispute. One of them is yelling "vandalism!" in order to "win" the content dispute, claiming that the other party's edits are vandalism. If you have been editing Wikipedia long enough to know what vandalism is, you have been editing Wikipedia long enough that you should know what is not vandalism. If you think that yelling "Vandalism" about a content dispute is the way to get your edits to prevail, or to get another person's edits reverted, or to prevail in the dispute, read the vandalism policy again, and you will see that the improper claim of "Vandalism" is a personal attack and should result in sanctions. (Some editors think that it doesn't result in sanctions often enough.)
Vandalism should be reported at the vandalism noticeboard. If you don't want to report another editor there, perhaps that is because they are not a vandal and their edits are not vandalism. Yelling "vandalism" on an article talk page or in a content forum without reporting the edits as vandalism is sometimes an indication that the person doing the yelling knows that a vandalism report will be closed, either without action, or by boomerang against the filer.
"Vandalism" has a precise meaning in Wikipedia. If you don't understand the vandalism policy, ask about it, or don't refer to it. If you do understand the vandalism policy, report it at WP:AIV. Shouting "vandalism" isn't a useful approach to a content dispute. If the other editor is not really engaged in vandalism, you won't "win" the content dispute that way, and you might "lose" by getting blocked or warned for the personal attack.
Administrators should enforce the policy that the idle claim of vandalism is a personal attack that is not permitted. Even if the reporting editor doesn't know better, they should know better.