The Marathon wiki

Wiki Internal

Welcome to CyberAcme's directive on how to handle vandalism!

What is vandalism?

Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of CyberAcme. Anyone who commits such an act is a vandal. Vandalism is prohibited on CyberAcme.

There are four mechanisms by which vandals can vandalize:

• Plain-text edits (includes "hidden" vandalism embedded within an article)
• Image uploads/inclusions
• Addition of external links
• Page moves/redirects

Examples of vandalism

The following list of examples is non-exhaustive:

• Sexual mentions
• Racist mentions
• Making article(s) with offensive name(s)
• User page blanking/replacement
• Talk page blanking/replacement
• Creation of account(s) with offensive name(s)
• Article blanking - If a user does not understand CyberAcme policy and means to delete a page to recreate it, make space for a redirect, etc...
• Spam - Examples could be advertisement or self-promotion on article namespace pages, etc...

Example: "Come visit my Freewebs site!" on an article

• Nonsense additions - Adding irrelevant information to an article that in no way pertains to the article. This does not, however, include adding information to a wrong section of an article. Mentioning that SPARTAN-117 was a male in the "references" section would not be construed as vandalism...the sentence should be moved to the appropriate section. This is, however, NOT nonsense. Nonsense is graffiti, etc...

Example: "hax0r 133t pwnz0r ter8t3btqy948y" on an article or "I LOVE YOUUUUUU!" on the Thief article

• Abuse of tags - Adding/removing "{{Delete}}", etc...when inappropriate.

Example: adding "{{Delete}}" to the Marathon (2026) article

• Modifying user comments
• Deleted page re-creation

Example: remaking user talk:PENI.S to taunt the vandal

What can I do?

1. Leave a message on the vandal's talk page telling them to stop immediately. However, do not provoke the vandal in any way or form, and state it perfunctorily and business-like.
2. Inform administrators immediately
3. Administrators should administer a username/IP ban immediately without remonstration with the vandal
4. Be extremely careful not to mistake inexperience for vandalism! Accusing a user merely unfamiliar with the wiki's functions of deliberate vandalism could be very offensive!