Guild Wars Wiki talk:Vandalism

I'm sure someone is going to point one hundred flaws in the wording, not to mention on the intention behind this draft, but here it is : P My main point with this suggestion is to make a line drawing what is vandalism in user talk pages, and thus allowing the users (not only the owner, rather any user) to remove vandalism from that kind of page. Erasculio 22:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * What is this meant to solve? At first glance, it's pointless; bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy is never a good thing. - Auron 22:57, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Vandalism on talk pages, if it may be removed or not, who can remove it, and so on.Erasculio 23:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Kinda agree with Auron. Is hard to give a specific definition to vandalism that doesn't end leaving something out (and thus, causing problems later). As an example, as it is worded now, we couldn't revert gibberish bot vandalism from talk pages. If you really just want to give a little control to users over what goes on their talk pages, as i think you do, maybe changing/creating a policy for talk pages could work, but messing with "vandalism" as a whole is a baaaaaad idea...--Fighterdoken 23:15, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * (EC, @Erasc) Is there a problem with vandalism on talk pages that I have managed to miss all this time?
 * Bot spam is removed already (by pretty much anyone, not just the user whose talk got vandalized). Editing others' posts (to remove profanity etc) is a very bad idea; there's no reasoning for it. Discomfort is no grounds to alter the meaning/severity of another's posts by changing his wording.
 * I won't vehemently disagree with removing sexual stuff; but tbh, those comments should be archived, not removed outright.
 * And of course, if the swearing/sexual content is in the form of a personal attack, we already have a policy for it. - Auron 23:21, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Gaile's talk page, mostly. For example, someone added an advertisement about a vagina gel there that was slightly, err, inapropriated. And while we knew that Gaile would not be fond about having it there, we could not remove it. Also the discussion that happened in the Admin noticeboard (here) and was, IMO, left open; I would like to get a closure about that. It was tried to have this discussion somewhere else but it simply died before starting; my idea here is, even if the policy is rejected (which wouldn't bother me), to have this discussion here and finally set what is allowed to be removed and what isn't. Erasculio 23:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sysops should remove it and warn/ban the person that put it there tbh. That kind of stunt shouldn't take longer than a minute to resolve, but this wiki seems to enjoy making things harder than they should be... - Auron 23:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sysops and everyone else can and do remove that stuff. No vandalism means no removal is either. Blocking is the issue. Backsword 05:21, 31 October 2007 (UTC)


 * This is contraproductive. GWW:ADMIN and GWW:CONTENT already works to allow SysOps to deal with vandalism. I agree that talk pages needs a scope defeniton, but that's for a talk page policy.
 * Backsword
 * Actually, it was tried to have this discussion on GWW:CONTENT, but it didn't work. Hopefully the discussion may happen here, even if the policy is later merged or rewritten on an existing policy. Erasculio 11:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I would suggest Guild Wars Wiki:Talk Page Policy instead. Backsword 11:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed the 3rd point on the user talk page as no one is supposed to remove anything, so how can you get permission?-- §  Eloc   §  13:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It's the "no one is supposed to remove anything" mentality I'm suggesting to change - that's the main point of this proposal, to allow the removal of vandalism from talk pages : ) Erasculio 13:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The "no one is supposed to remove anything" mentality comes from having too many policies scaring users. I agree with Auron, there's no need for a policy for this, is too freaking obvious.[[Image:User Ereanor sig.jpg]]reanor 15:16, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I feel it is a very bad way to try to promote what is basically a no profanity policy around the corner by messing with the definition of vandalism. If we want to know what vandalism is, we can all go to an online dictionary to look it up, if you want to know how to deal with it, other policies are already dealing with it, so this is pretty much pointless. --Xeeron 15:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The thing is, there is no current policy dealing with vandalism, not on talk pages. And while it could be said that current policies could be changed to deal with vandalism in talk pages...No discussion on those policies' talk pages has lead anywhere. Hence a new try, with a policy that is exactly about that.
 * If this policy is rejected, it really wouldn't bother me. What does bother me is the argument that this subject is already discussed elsewhere...While in fact it isn't, and currently it being open to interpretation has led to some issues (as seen on the discussions I linked above).
 * The main difference about this and the "No profanity" policy is that this does not allow the removal of profanity from an article's talk page (as was asked for in the "No profanity" policy), neither does it allow for the removal of profanity on a user talk page whose owner is not bothered by profanity, nor does it allow contributors to edit prophanity out of someone's text (it's either removal or nothing, no editing). Instead, it aims at giving users the freedom to decide to remove content they consider to be offensive from their talk pages without having to archive it.
 * What is the point of archiving content that is purely vandalism, instead of just removing it like we do in every other article? If this edit had been done to my talk page as opposed to my userpage...Would there be any benefit to the wiki at all to archive such content, instead of reverting it? The log is kept on the page's history, in case someone feels the desire to look for vandalism in user talk pages, but is there a point in keeping it in the archives? Right now there is no solid answer for that question on the wiki, and that's what I would like to discuss. Erasculio 16:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem with "Vandalism" is that is too intuitive, and users need a certaing level of freedom to be able to judge what is vandalism and what is not (freedom that they will not have if a policy exists). But over what you say about talk pages i would have to agree; i would like if it could be possible for users to set a certain set of rules for their own talk pages, and not only allowing or not profanity/trash talk, but also topics unrelated to GW by example (always putting a limit to how far can someone limit topics on talk pages). I mean, the way it is now, user A and user B could start a chat-like conversation on the talk page of user C about soccer, and user C (who has no interest in that topic, and don't even know user A or B) would have nothing to do but archive it? (this is probably in the same level as the "deleting or not talk pages of articles already deleted" discution).--Fighterdoken 03:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * What about a vandalism guideline to allow a rough definition of vandalism while preventing loophole exploitation? -- Gordon Ecker 04:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not just mention vandalism in GWW:CONTENT and allow for the removal of obvious/blatant/undeniable vandalism from all pages? -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 04:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I do think it strange there is a conversation here on archiving vandalism. I don't think that anyone honestly thinks that reasonable or necessary, that not removing it is valid course of action, and it surely isn't current practice.  Is there a problem with current practice which requires such policy?  I have to agree with Auron et al that a policy isn't required.  I do, however, think that the current user talk page is excessive in what it requires you retain (your conversation example).  Consider; "Sign your comments. Do not modify other peoples comments. Do not modify your own comments which have been replied to, please use strike through.  Any talk about wiki business should be archived rather than deleted.  Otherwise content can be deleted.  Above all try not to be a prat and think before you post."  --Aspectacle 04:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I obvisously do think this is a too obvious policy..like, common sense peoples!-- §  Eloc   §  04:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The current talk page formatting draft would allow the removal of "unquestionable vandalism and spam.", but those criteria wouldn't apply to Fighterdoken's scenario. -- Gordon Ecker 05:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The thing is, this may be common sense, but we still got a sysop being bashed for doing it some days ago. Which is IMO unfair - either we assume this is common sense and so we accept it when it's done (without bashing the one who did it) or we set a line saying what can and what cannot be done; otherwise we're just placing the users (especially the sysops) in a situation of "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
 * I like Ab.er.rant's proposal of just saying, somewhere else, that vandalism may be removed from places other than a main space article; but at the same time we end with the problem, what is "obvious/blatant/undeniable vandalism"? One user in the discussion linked above has a different opinion, and thinks that comments such as "No u" in a discussion is vandalism. We could also end with someone who thinks profanity is vandalism, and that's a discussion that has already been done with. Hence a suggestion - reject this policy and do more or less what Ab.er.rant said: mention somewhere else (like in the article Gordon linked above) that we may remove vandalism from talk pages, but only from user talk pages. This would prevent an user removing a statement in a common discussion (like this one) because he thinks it's vandalism, and it would also prevent the wiki from having to set a definition of vandalism (something someone would eventually find a way around, and that would be too much bureaucracy). Erasculio 13:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Have to remember that not only on user talk pages you can find what would be clearly "vandalism". V-bots also attack article/user/guild talk pages (or create new ones in some cases). Maybe having a few notes about talk pages where: a) Users may set special rules about topics/language on their talk pages (allowing removal of items that don't meet the criteria); b) No wiki/GW/contributions topic may be banned from any talk page; c) Article talk pages should only contain information related to the article in question (no talking about tennis on a charr article)? --Fighterdoken 20:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * What about making this a guideline and adding a concise general definition of vandalism to the top? -- Gordon Ecker 00:24, 12 November 2007 (UTC)