User blog comment:Sam Imbecile/Watch out for vandals and spammers/@comment-961279-20191119060157

Sometimes a wiki gets picked at random to be attacked. Other times, it's specifically chosen for whatever reason they have. Regardless of which it is, one of the important things to remember is that most of the time, people who do this want to see others get upset by it. They enjoy watching people get angry by what they do and it gives them the attention they're looking for. They feel good by making other people feel bad.

A blog like this also gives them attention, but we can reduce how much they get by focusing on how to handle vandalism better in the future.

The first step is pretty much what I said above: a lot of vandalism is intended to make you upset, so the sooner you realize that, the easier it gets to brush it off. This can be hard to do when they're personally attacking you or the vandalism is happening to something you really care about. Just keep in mind, "They want to make me feel bad so they will feel good", and you're another step closer to the point you might say, "Oh. They're back again. No big deal."

The second step is to not make a big deal about it. Just clean up the mess and set a block, with as little comment about their actions as you can. If you have to say anything in the Edit Summary, keep it matter-of-fact. An edit summary of like "removing vile and horrific language" shows you paid attention to what they're doing and you're passing judgment on them. In contrast, putting "Reverting vandalism", "cleanup" or "profanity" in the Edit Summary shows why you're making a change without giving them any ammunition or extra attention.

Third, there's some tools you can add onto your account that helps with the cleanup. One's called QuickToolsv2 that lets you do things like delete several pictures, pages and article comments in just a few seconds. It also works with Message Wall messages to completely delete them, rather than the normal way of "deleting" them, which is really just hiding them a bit more thoroughly. Another is what's called a "bot rollback". It's a rollback of several edits by one person that is flagged as a bot edit, so they are hidden from the Wiki Activity and Recent Changes reports.

There's other tips to pass along, but I'm going to stop here for the moment.