User:Marechal Ney/Why I revert vandalism

Were you about to ask me why I reverted your edit? This page can help you faster than I can reply to your message.

The official Wikipedia policy defines "vandalism" as:

“ Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. ”

This policy is intentionally vague to enable vandal-fighters to deal with any non-constructive edits they find.

Also note, there are also many types of edits which are not vandalism but which I would have reverted, with a different reason; Wikipedia:Not Vandalism provides more information, as will have my edit summary and the warning I left on your talk page (if I did).

My "criteria"

Following is an non-exclusive, open-ended list of things that I regard to be non-constructive and revert as such. If your edit fulfills any of the criteria below, that is why I would have reverted it.

Note: "edit" refers to changes (etc) in both the body of text and the edit summary.

General

G1. Anything listed on Wikipedia:Vandalism as a common type of vandalism.

G2. Any edit summary that lies (that is, for example, saying you corrected a typo when you actually deleted half of the article). This type of edit mayhave resulted in you being given two warnings for the same edit.

G3. A number of edits in a row, where at least one of them is obviously vandalism.

Formatting

F1. 'Any edit that consists solely of text generated by clicking on the buttons above the editing window. For example: '''Bold text''', [[Link title]], ''Italic text'', <nowiki>Insert non-formatted text here</nowiki>, <!-- Comment -->, [[Image:Example.jpg]], <small>Small text</small>, <sub>Subscript text</sub>, <ref>Insert footnote text here</ref> and so forth.

F2. Almost any edit at all that includes text generated by clicking on the buttons above the editing window. Note: If it is obvious that the inclusion of the default text was an error, I may simply remove it instead of reverting.

F3. Large deletions of content without a clear reason in the article or an explanation in the edit summary.

Content

C1. Any edit that contains swear words, except where they make sense in the context of the article.

C2. Any edit that compares someone or something to genitalia.

C3. Any edit that says "xxxxx is gay" or anything of that sort. If you are making a serious statement about someone's sexuality, you must cite sources per WP: BLP.

C4. Any edit that includes a broad generalization (eg "xxxxx is the best/worst/most incompetent").

C5. Any edit that uses the term boasts in the sense of ("xxxxx boasts a great selection of yyyyy")

C6. Any edit that personally attacks someone.

C7. Any edit that includes a clearly non-notable person (eg on the article January 1 births "Alice’s boyfriend Bob").

C8. Any edit not on a talk page that apologizes for vandalizing. If you are really sorry, please, just stop.

C9. Any edit that adds defamatory or questionable content to a page without including a citation.

C10. Any edit that adds an external link that appears to constitute Link Spam

C10. Any edit that is rumor or speculation. If rumor has it, Wikipedia doesn't want it.

Mistakes happen

If you feel your edit doesn't fall into these criteria then there's a chance I may have made a mistake in reverting. Common reasons for mistakes include:

• Procedural error that results in me accidentally reverting an edit.

• Deleting content that, although seemingly false, is actually true. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. If this is the case, though, please try to provide a source to prove it.

• Random silly errors. I'm human too, I think.

Please leave me a message on my talk page and I will look into it. Bear in mind that you will get a much better response from most editors if you are kind and courteous that certainly is the case for me.

I will not respond to threatening or abusive messages so don't bother, they will just be deleted and reported.

You must also understand that I edit with neutrality. I do not care what your particular viewpoint and probably have no interest in the subject of the page being edited, so before you accuse me of being an "-ist" or of some kind of "ism" or accuse me of having a particular viewpoint or bias, I won't take you as seriously. I do not care who you are or where you come from, or the topic of the article, if I feel an edit is non constructive, I will revert.

I shamelessly stole, and changed, this from User:I dream of Horses, who "shamelessly stole from User:Fraggle81, who shamelessly stole from Callanecc who shamelessly stole it fromDougweller, who shamelessly stole it from J.delanoy". As this has already been stolen by many people from many people, you are free to steal it yourself and edit it for your own purposes.