"Sticks and stones may break my bones..." but warnings never hurt me. Actually, that's not true; especially when a link to the edit in question is provided: many vandals new in the business are often outright baffled by the fact that their "I have little nipples" can be easily traced back to its author. I Know What You Did Last Summer is more profound than it seems at first glance.
This is where the tools I once used in the fight against vandalism are moved from my user page when I get my hands on more powerful software. Since not all of the latter is readily available to everybody, I decided to display relatively simple, time-proven gadgets here. This is by no means a category of anti-vandalics, just a gallery of the things I personally came across and found to work. It might come in handy to someone who wants to help, but cannot yet use the more sophisticated tools.
Note: none of the tools listed here have been created by me, I just list them for convenience.
I have a dream, that some day this page will become a museum of sorts, where young CVU recruits will come to be astounded by the courage and determination of old-timers, who practically had to whack each vandal with sticks and stones, so to speak. The gallery will also demonstrate the evolution of vandal-fighting programs, serving as a tribute to the programmers who determined the course of this first-ever cyber war.
A manual way to report a vandal to the admin: you go to the AIV page and type or copy-paste the template, replacing the "username_or_ip" with an actual username or IP adress.
This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.
A list of warnings to post on the vandal's talk page. Note that these are not all the templates, just the ones I used. Also, adding "-n|article name" after the warning number specifies the vandalised page, but I'm too lazy for that.
Copy {{subst:js|User:Lupin/recent2.js}} into your monobook.js page - create it if it doesn't exist.
Filters recent changes for "bad" words and edits made by anonymous users. Also allows monitoring of the watchlist in real time and adds a "rollback" function for administrators.
//
// Edit tools for the vandal whack-a-mole game
// [[User:Kbh3rd/whackamole.js]] - please include this line
//
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="'
+ 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Kbh3rd/whackamole.js'
+ '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');
Adds a list of ready warnings to the toolbox when editing a talk page. Also adds a search-Google-for option, but that doesn't work for me.
In the future, registering may become obligatory for editing Wikipedia, user pages may become protected. But there will always be vandalism. As the Counter Vandalism Unit will evolve, so will vandals. While battling never-ending waves of idioticy will become tiresome, challenging the world's biggest security detail will become a form of rebellion. "Vandalism requires an ongoing response".
You are that response. The fact that someone read this page to the bottom gives me hope. Hope and confidence in the future of Wikipedia, the Internet and the world. --Chodorkovskiy 11:17, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
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