Wikipedia:Go ahead, vandalize

Vandalism may sound like fun, but it sure does not look pretty to anyone.

Do you enjoy vandalism?

• Are you bored or angry?
• Is it tempting or funny?
• Do you want to intentionally irritate others because it's fun? Or do you want to do it just for the thrill of it?
• Do you want to get blocked?

Then go right ahead: vandalize any page that you please. Maybe an artist, a politician, or someone's user page, but definitely not this article. You don't even need to log in or make an account – just click edit at the top of the page, do what you like in the text box that appears, and click save at the bottom when you're done. Easy as that!

You might get caught by an automatic filter. If so, just change your text and click save again. And again. And again, until your edit is saved.

The only rule of this game is that you generally can't do it to any pages that display the silver, dark blue, pink, or gold padlock on the top right corner.

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If you are a member of the Counter-Counter-Vandalism Unit, you may be permanently banned from all Wikipedia sites.

And if you are a member of the WAAV (Wikipedia Anti Anti Vandalism Group), again, you may be permanently banned from all Wikipedia sites.

So you were able to vandalize, right? Here's what will happen next:

1. Your vandalism will be reverted. It will usually happen within minutes, if not seconds. A lot of obvious vandalism is reverted automatically (and usually immediately) by an automated computer program ClueBot NG.
2. You will be left with an ugly message on your user talk page. Even if you remove it, which you can do, it'll always remain in the history of your talk page, and anyone will be able to see it (unless you request revision deletion or oversight, but in those cases users with those privileges will still see them anyway).
3. Your acts of vandalism will always be a part of your user contributions, and will be archived in the history of the page you vandalized. It will have your username (or if you are not logged in, your IP address) in it. And it might have a tag beside it that may say "repeated characters", "shouting", or (literally) "possible vandalism". Unless someone asks an admin to hide your edit, anyone will be able to see your vandalism, which will look really, really ugly if you are striving to be a respected editor. Even if someone does, admins can still see your vandalism edit. Even if oversighters overlook your vandalism edit, they can still see the edit.
4. If you continue vandalizing (and yes, you can!), you will be left with more ugly messages, and eventually a big fat ugly message telling you that you are unable to edit Wikipedia. If you try to click edit on any page now (except for your user talk page), you will find this is most definitely not a lie.
5. What can you do now? You may appeal the block, of course. Simply add a request to your talk page. Sooner or later an admin will see it, and say yes or no. If they say no, you can wait, or you can appeal your block again. If you make too many bad requests or misuse your talk page, though, your talk page access may be revoked.
6. Once your block expires, or if an admin says yes to your appeal, you will be able to edit Wikipedia again! But if you persist with vandalism (or you make an account just to vandalize), you may be blocked indefinitely or completely banned from editing Wikipedia, and will be unable to create another account from your IP address. Any accounts that are created from other IP addresses found to belong to you will be blocked, too. If you continue to change your IP address and vandalize, we will discuss the issue with your Internet service provider. Anyone can report you to your ISP for abuse if you do it as an IP, even if they're not a Wikipedian.
7. If you vandalize without logging in, it'll make it harder for you or anyone else to make valid edits or register a username while connected via that IP address or range. We have tools that can tell whether you're at home, work, school, or pretty much anywhere else in the world. If you vandalize from a shared IP or a proxy server, you are more likely to get blocked for a longer time – maybe even a year or two. Regardless, if you get blocked, other innocent editors, perhaps respected ones, may also get blocked for a while.
8. Any pages that you vandalize may get protected, making it harder for others to edit legitimately. That's why we have autoconfirmed and even extended confirmed users, but as a regular vandal, you will almost never be one of them. At least some innocent users won’t get to edit them for a while, so great job!
9. If you use sockpuppets (multiple accounts), you will eventually get caught by a checkuser. Your IP address and all of your accounts will be blocked.
10. If you bring your vandalism to other Wikimedia projects like Wikibooks or Wiktionary, a steward will globally lock your account, preventing you from being able to edit pages on any Wikimedia project. In some cases, your IP may even be globally blocked.
11. If you do lose Internet access due to abuse, just get another internet service provider and you can start the cycle all over again! At least until there are no more providers to abuse the project with. In that case, you might as well resort to other illegal crimes against Wikimedia! Even if it means murder! Go on, do it! 'Cause rules stink, right?
12. If doing all this by yourself seems too hard, you could ask your friends to help them out, if they're in the mood for it. If not, consider getting your little brother or sister, or mischievous cousin.
13. And if you ever decide you want to become a productive member of Wikipedia, contributing to the compendium of knowledge available for the education of all on this grand site, you may just find that it’s too late. You may only ever be remembered as a joker. Is that what you want your life’s legacy to be? Eh?

If you've done one, more or all of this stuff, congratulations. Enjoy your permanent ban from the project, and unless you do have intentions of editing constructively, so long. If you had also vandalized other Wikimedia projects, congratulations, enjoy your permanent ban from all of Wikimedia. In other words, GG.