The vast majority of edit filters on EN Wikipedia could be said to target (different forms of) vandalism.
Examples herefor are filters for *juvenile* types of vandalism (inserting swear or obscene words or nonsence sequences of characters into articles), for *hoaxing* or for *link spam*.
In principle, one can open quite a few subcategories here (also check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism for a "in-house" classification of vandalism types on Wikipedia).
Some vandalism types seem to be more severe than others (*sock puppetry* or persistant *long term* vandals).
For these, often times, the implemented filters are **private**.
This means, only edit filter editors can view the exact filter pattern or the comments of these.
Although this clashes with the overall *transparency* of the project (is there a guideline subscribing to this value?), the reasoning here is that otherwise, persistent vandals will be able to check for the pattern of the filter targetting their edits and just find a new way around it.
There are also private filters targetting personal attack or abuse cases.
Here, filters are private in order to protect affected person(s).
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism following (mostly disruptive) behaviours are **not vandalism**:
- boldly editing
- copyright violation
- disruptive editing or stubbornness --> edit warring
- edit summary omission
- editing tests by experimenting users: "Such edits, while prohibited, are treated differently from vandalism"
- harassment or personal attacks: "Personal attacks and harassment are not allowed. While some harassment is also vandalism, such as user page vandalism, or inserting a personal attack into an article, harassment in itself is not vandalism and should be handled differently."
- Incorrect wiki markup and style
- lack of understanding of the purpose of wikipedia: "editing it as if it were a different medium—such as a forum or blog—in a way that it appears as unproductive editing or borderline vandalism to experienced users."
- misinformation, accidental
- NPOV contraventions (Neutral point of view)
- nonsense, accidental: "sometimes honest editors may not have expressed themselves correctly (e.g. there may be an error in the syntax, particularly for Wikipedians who use English as a second language)."
- Policy and guideline pages, good-faith changes to: "If people misjudge consensus, it would not be considered vandalism;"
- Reversion or removal of unencyclopedic material, or of edits covered under the biographies of living persons policy: "Even factually correct material may not belong on Wikipedia, and removing such content when it is not in line with Wikipedia's standards is not vandalism."
- Deletion nominations: "Good-faith nominations of articles (or templates, non-article pages, etc) are not vandalism."
Several of these behaviours could actually be conceived as **good faith** edits.
And, for several of them (as noted in the **good faith memo**), it is not immediately distinguishable whether it's a **good faith** or a **vandalism** edit.
Ultimately, the "only" difference between the two arises from the motivation/context of the edit.
## Properties/Characteristics
- maliciously intended disruptive editing
motivations:
- seeking attention
- misusing the encyclopedia for own purposes (self-promotion, seo..)
