Wikipedia

User:Hersfold/Adopt/Katieishme

< User:Hersfold | Adopt
Archive of Adoption files This page is an archive of discussions relating to an editor adoption program between the adopter User:Hersfold and the adoptee User:Katieishme. Please do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct all new discussions to the adopter's talk page. Adopt-a-User


Katieishme (talk · contribs)

The Status Bot has been blocked.
See my last edit here.

 

Welcome to Wikipedia, Katie! I'm glad you registered to join and am looking forward to us working together to get you to be a top-class editor! This page is what I call my Adoption HQ, and it's where I'll post most of the information in relation to this program, such as assignments or lessons for you. I'll try to give you an update on your talk page whenever I change anything here, but try to check this page fairly often anyway. If you ever need to get in touch with me about anything quickly, post it on my talk page. If it's really urgent, you can send me an email by clicking on the "Email this user" link to the left of the page. In order to do that, you'll have to activate your own email address if you haven't already - go to Special:Preferences and add your email address to the box, then save the page.

Here's how I hope this will work out - this is only a guideline, and subject to being completely tossed around or completely ignored, depending on how you're doing, time constraints for one or both of us, and so forth. If it needs to be altered, we'll work it out as things go along.

  1. For the first week or so, I'll recommend a few things for you to start with based on the interests you've pointed out on your user page and some tasks I enjoy doing. I'll give you this time to tinker around, get involved with some projects, and meet other editors. Since I won't be around for the first week anyway, this will be a good time for us both to figure out what to start with. I'll take a look through your contributions to see how you're doing.
  2. After I get back, I'll start working with you to improve on any problems I see, and introduce new ways of doing somethings to make your editing easier. There are some tools I'd like to show you which come in handy for some tasks. This sort of cooperative editing thing is what the program is supposed to focus on, so this will be an ongoing process throughout the adoption.
  3. While we're doing the above, I'll post some lessons here on occasion that detail how a few of the more important policies and procedures work out. Some of these cover tasks I'll have you do, as general maintenance things that every editor has to know how to do, such as anti-vandalism and copyright concerns. Others will be less general, however it is still important that you know how they work should you have to get involved with them somehow, such as deletion policies. A few of these I will post when I think it is necessary (for example, the copyright lesson will be one of the first, as one of the most critical lessons I have), however in general I'll let you decide what gets posted when, so that you don't get overwhelmed.
  4. Once you're feeling confident with everything you're doing, and I think you've got everything you need to get, I'll give you a link to another one of my adoption center pages, which gives instructions on how to take your exam. The exam is really little more than a formality - I am not required to give you one, and I'm not requiring you to take it. However, the exam does allow both of us to make absolutely sure that you have the essentials of a Wikipedia editor, and could prove to be an interesting challenge anyway. My last adoptee was forced to leave Wikipedia for personal reasons before he could take the exam, so I haven't actually given it yet, so I'm really hoping you do. It shouldn't be all that hard, so don't worry too much.

By the way, this program does work both ways - if at any time you see anything I'm doing that I need to change, please let me know! I learned a few new things from Audacitor, my last adoptee, and I'm looking forward to what you have to teach me. :-)

Getting started

Now, then. As I said above, I'd like you to go ahead and start some small-scale editing so I can see what you already know and what you need to work on. Don't do anything you don't feel comfortable doing - and if you don't feel comfortable doing anything, that's perfectly alright. To help get you started, here's a list of projects that you might be interested getting involved in, as well as some pages that you may want to read if you're not sure what to do.

Things to start with:
Projects you may be interested in:

And if a project isn't what you're looking for, I've found that clicking on Random article is a good way to both learn new things and find something to do.

If at any time you need help with something, usually I'll be around to assist. If I'm not around (like for next week), there are a ton of places you can go for assistance:

  • The Help Desk is staffed by a wide range of volunteers such as myself who will usually answer your questions very quickly
  • Placing the text {{helpme}} on your talk page will call an editor there to help you out with whatever you need.
  • The New contributor's help page is a help desk specifically for new users like yourself.
  • If you have an IRC chat client, you can go to #wikipedia-en-help on freenode.net and get a quick response there.

Again, I'm sorry to offer my help to you and then immediately run off, but you definitely won't be alone! I hope everything goes well for you. Good luck, and happy editing as always! Hersfold (t/a/c) 18:59, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Initial Report

Ok, Katie. It's been over a week now, so about time we got started on things. Looking at your contributions so far, here's what I noticed:

  • You haven't edited that many articles - your only "mainspace" contributions have been two edits to Emergency medical technician - good job on starting with what you know. However small, this was enough for me to tell what you need to work on. In the future, though, don't be afraid to edit things. We know you're human, we know you're going to make mistakes, we all do. Just be BOLD and do it. If you do mess something up, it's really easy to undo whatever you did and fix things.
  • In this edit (actually two edits combined into one), you added some content to the introduction. What you added was a definite help for including more information and making the article clearer, however there were a couple things you need to keep an eye out for:
  • Adding redundant links. It's wonderful that you're adding wikilinks to other articles - that's one of the advantages of having an electronic encyclopedia - but make sure you're not linking too much. In the above edit, you added links to Advanced life support and Basic life support but didn't remove the existing links to those same articles in the following sentence. Only the first instance of a term in an article should be linked, with a few exceptions. Having too many links just makes the whole article turn blue.
  • Watch your spelling and capitalization. There were a few places in there where your spelling was off, or your edits caused some funky capitalization issues. Sometimes, it may be best to develop your edits in a word processor on your computer, then copying the new text into the box. Alternatively, some browsers such as Mozilla Firefox feature spell checkers.
  • Good work with the reference you added. I know you were asking me about citation templates, but what you used there will work just fine. Interesting note: I don't know if you noticed or not, but when you add an ISBN number to an article, it automatically links it to a special page that can help people find the book you're referring to. For example, here's the ISBN you added: ISBN 0-7637-3902-2
  • Looking at your userpage, it looks like you're not too comfortable with wikimarkup yet. Using HTML code as you did will work in basic situations, however many HTML tags are disabled in MediaWiki for security and performance reasons. Don't worry about it, though - we'll work on this and get you going. The design of your userpage, however, is very clean and efficent - well done!

If I seem to be a bit harsh here, I do apologize; that is not my intention. We will be working on the problems I addressed above, as well as to introduce you to other key bits of working on Wikipedia. Good work so far! I'll post shortly with what we're doing next. Hersfold (t/a/c) 00:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Not at all :) It's good to hear how to improve! The reduntant links I wondered about, but was trying to leave as much of the original article in tact as possible. Good to know I can remove those. I used the template for the citation but wasn't sure if that was the correct one or not. There were several other places in the article where I could have added other sources. Is it ok to just add sources? A question on editing. If I find in an article something that I think is a content error, is that something I should fix myself or put up on the talk page for the author to correct? Some articles, like the EMT article say that they need to be edited. If I edit the article should I leave the tags on the article for someone higher to remove? The spelling is a little trickier. My word processors are set on UK English as default since that's where I grew up. Should I set those to US English for editing purposes? I'll definately watch out for that more :) Sorry I've been a bit slow. I'm getting ready for school to start back tomorrow. Katie (talk) 02:17, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
It's no problem, and I completely understand - I move back in this Sunday, and classes start on Monday. To answer your questions:
  1. YES!! Wikipedia's main criticism is that it isn't reliable, and the best way we can refute that point is by adding more references. That's actually what I initially started out doing on Wikipedia, with Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check. And you just reminded me of a project I'm supposed to be working on that's exactly that, adding references to Bertrand Russell to get it back to being at least a Good Article (long story).
  2. Yes to both. If you see something that you know is wrong, you can certainly be bold and fix it. When doing this, however, you should make sure to leave a full explanation in the edit summary and a reference to support your change. If you think the change is a little more controversial, you can certainly bring it to the talk page as well. I should also point out that there is no harm whatsoever in doing both. One last thing on this - you mentioned "the author" in your question, which provides another wonderful opportunity to raise a partially off-topic but still valid point. Remember that since anyone can edit articles, there are no "authors" as we define them in the English language (either American or UK ;-)). We may give credit for and keep counts of how many Did you know? tags, Good articles, and Featured This-thats-and-others we have, but nobody really "owns" articles, and some editors have been blocked for trying to do so. That of course doesn't mean that discussion is impossible - in fact, consensus is what Wikipedia works and thrives on.
  3. We'll get to cleanup later on (it's one of my lessons, although I do need to work on expanding it a bit), but there's no harm in starting early! If you feel that you have corrected the issue that a particular tag is talking about, you are more than welcome to remove it. If you're not quite sure, then leave a note on the talk page when (if) you do so. There is no rank system on Wikipedia - certain trusted users are granted extra tools for use in their duties, and the duties they perform are crucial to the smooth operation of the project, but that does not mean they are in any way more important than other users. In fact, just to get this point across, we call them janitors: WP:MOP links to the same place as WP:ADMIN. Today's Motto of the Day actually makes that point very clear.
  4. Eh... that's a tricky one. The Manual of Style outlines how to format articles, and covers just about everything you can think of and even some things that wouldn't even occur to you, however it is a tad ambiguous and open to interpretation on some points. In this particular matter, however, it is clear on a few points: One variety of English should be used throughout an article to maintain consistency, and efforts should be made to find words common to all dialects. When it comes to choosing said dialect, though, things get a mite tricky, but can be worked out through a step-by-step process. If an article's subject has ties to a particular dialect, that dialect should be used. This is the primary determining factor. Obvious cases include United Kingdom (British English), United States of America (American English), and so on. If a subject is more international, or could be a complete toss-up, as is the case with EMT, the existing dialect should remain in use. This is perhaps the one case where the original author gets to have his say for all time. If an article is written in American English, it should stay in American English unless the previous rule overrides it. This is intended to help reduce stupid edit wars over whether the word "color" should have a "u" in it or not. I say it shouldn't, you say otherwise. However, it's the article that gets the final say. For the full explanation on this, see WP:ENGVAR. Since Emergency medical technician appears to deal mainly with the United States (which is also a problem), I would stick with US English for it. Which means take out all the U's.
By the way, I do apologize for being incredibly verbose (oops, there I go again), however I am doing my best to provide as much information to you as possible. If you would rather me provide shorter answers for easier reading and just let the links do most of the talking, please let me know. It's partially in my nature to type this much, but I will certainly make an effort to reduce that if you'd prefer. Keep up the good work! Hersfold (t/a/c) 04:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikimarkup 101

So by now you know how to edit pages, one of the most important features of Wikipedia. The interesting bit, however, is getting things to look, well, interesting. There are a number of different bits of code that you can use in your editing to create different effects when the page is saved - they can be as simple as bold text or italics, but different bits of code can be combined to make a very appealing layout.

I should warn you that in most cases, special formatting is frowned upon in articles. It should only be used in certain situations, and when it is necessary to illustrate a particular point. Aside from those cases, text in articles should be just as you see it in this sentence - plain black, with only the occasional wikilink to spice things up.

 
The editing toolbar, minus a few buttons

Here, I'm going to show you what each of the buttons on your editing toolbar does and how to use the particular bit of code it produces. There are rather a lot of them, so what I'm going to do first is show you where you can go to test all this out while you're reading. There are two places: you can go to the main sandbox that everyone uses at Wikipedia:Sandbox. This is a special page that is cleaned out every hour automatically, that gives editors a place to play with new code and vandals a place to vandalize other than our articles. The only problem with the sandbox is this: Whatever you save there isn't likely to stay for long, and there is a high chance of you getting hit with a few edit conflicts. So, to avoid that, you can create your own sandbox! On Wikipedia, you are able to tack "subpages" onto your main user page to use for testing things out, writing new articles, or other projects like what we're doing here. This page (User:Hersfold/Adopt) is a subpage of User:Hersfold, and the source of this lesson (User:Hersfold/Adopt/Wikimarkup) is a subpage of that subpage. You can create user subpages by searching for the page you want to create in the search box. It won't find it, of course, however a red link will appear at the top of the page. Click on that, and edit away! For example, try searching for User:Hersfold/Example and creating it.

To make your sandboxes, we're going to skip a few steps. This is a handy little box that we can use to start making a new page. Replace the word "YOURUSERNAME" below with your user name ("Hersfold", for example) and click the button. It will bring you to your own personal sandbox, which you can start using right away.


Now that you have somewhere to test all this code out in, let's start showing you what all it does. Here we go!

Toolbar
Button		 What it does The code it makes Short description What it looks like Notes
  Bold text '''Bold text''' Three apostrophes (') on either side of the bold text Bold text The title of an article is always in bold the first time you see it.
  Italic text ''Italic text'' Two apostrophes (') on either side of the italic text Italic text
  Internal, or "Wiki" link [[Link Title]] Two square brackets on either side of the link Link Title OR Wikipedia OR User:Hersfold/Adopt Pages that do not exist appear in red (Hence the name "red link"), blue if they do exist, and in bold if they link to the page they are on.
Internal link, but this time with a twist [[Link Title|displayed text]] An internal link, with a pipe (usually found under the backspace) separating the title and the text to be displayed The free encyclopedia By inserting a pipe, you can make different text appear. Clicking on the link to the left will bring you to Wikipedia.
  External link [http://www.example.org link title] A single square bracket on either side of the URL and title. The URL and link title are separated by a space. link title The arrow you see indicates an external link. Other symbols represent other types of pages: A lock for an https:// or "secure" site, an Adobe PDF logo for .pdf extensions, a smiley-face speech bubble for irc:// channels, among others.
  Level 2 section heading == Headline text == Two equals signs on either side of the headline. To avoid breaking the Table of Contents, I will not demonstrate this here. The heading with your username is a level 2 header, and the heading above this table (Wikimarkup 101) is a level 3 (=== level 3 ===) Lower-level headers can be created with more equals signs. Only one equals sign on either side makes a level 1, usually only found in the title of the page. Level 2 headers are most common, and levels 3 and lower allow more specific divisions.
  Insert image [[File:Bad Title Example.png]] Exactly the same as an internal link, however the pipe works differently. The Image: prefix and .jpg (or whatever) extension MUST be present.   The image size, framing, location, and captioning can all be controlled using the pipe character mentioned before. The most common application is [[File:Bad Title Example.png|thumb|caption here]], which produces a captioned thumbnail as you see in the picture of the toolbar above. Further settings are described in Wikipedia:Extended image syntax.
  Insert media [[Media:Example.ogg]] OR [[Image:Example.ogg]] Exactly the same as an internal link, however pipes should not be used. The "Media:" OR "Image:" prefix and ".ogg" extension MUST be present. Media:Example.ogg OR Sound files are always in .ogg format, for reasons we'll get to later on. Don't worry if you've never heard of it before, the MediaWiki software features a built-in player, which you can get to appear by using the "Image:" prefix instead of "Media:". It doesn't make any sense to me, but that's how it works.
  Mathematical formula <math>Insert formula here</math> Two math "tags", a technical term (not really) for two angle brackets surrounding the word "math". A closing tag is indicated with a slash.  
  		This gets super-complicated and math formulas are only used on a limited number of articles anyway, so I won't go into too much detail. If you really want to play with it, there's an index of character codes at Help:Math.
If these formulas do not display properly, please let me know.
  Ignore wiki formatting <nowiki>[[Insert]] '''non-formatted''' ''text'' here</nowiki> Two "nowiki" tags. [[Insert]] '''non-formatted''' ''text'' here This code I've been using throughout the table to show you the code. Any wikimarkup inside a nowiki tag is ignored and displayed as written.
  Signature with time stamp --~~~~ The operative bit of the code is four tildes (that squiggly bit next to the 1 key). The two dashes don't do anything. Hersfold (t/a/c)
Hersfold (t/a/c) 20:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
20:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC) 		Three tildes (top) only display your signature. Four tildes (middle) show your signature with a timestamp, and are most commonly used. Five tildes (bottom) give only the timestamp.
  Horizontal line ---- Four dashes.
Please use sparingly.
Buttons shown below this line are only used on Wikipedia. While the code will do the same thing on other wikis, you may not see a button for it on your toolbar.
  Create a redirect #REDIRECT [[Insert title]] The phrase "#REDIRECT" followed by a wikilink to the target page. Preview "Acidic", a redirect page Redirects are intended to correct spelling and capitalization mistakes in searches (since the search sucks) and reduce confusion over related terms. Any link to a redirect page will send you instead to the target - for example, click on Acidic and see where it takes you.
WARNINGS: The code must be on the first line of a page to operate. Also, NEVER redirect to a redirect. This creates a "double redirect", which can screw up the server, your browser, and your brain, if you're the one trying to search for something.
  Strike-through text <s>Strike-through text</s> This is one of the few active HTML tags. It's two "s" tags around the text. Strike-through text This is usually used when someone is retracting a comment they made in a discussion or talk page, but wishes to leave the comment visible as a matter of record. Note that even if something is removed on Wikipedia, you can still find it in the history.
  Line break Before<br />After Again, an HTML tag. A single tag with two variations: <br> or <br />. I haven't been able to find any difference between the two. Before
After 		Useful on Wikipedia because simply hitting "Enter" doesn't work. You have to hit enter twice to make a new paragraph, or use this to knock it down a line.
  Superscript x<sup>3</sup> HTML "sup" tags x3 Not much to say here. This is NOT what you use to make footnotes, though. That button comes later. This also doesn't work in math formulas, so don't try it.
  Subscript H<sub>2</sub>O HTML "sub" tags H2O See above.
  Smaller text <small>Small Text</small> Big text HTML "small" tags Small Text Big text Nothing to say here either.
  Comment <!-- Comment --> Same as the HTML code for comments. Angle bracket, exclamation point, two dashes, your comment, two dashes, closing angle bracket. Note how nothing appeared in that box. There is something there, it just didn't print. These are usually used to leave unobtrusive messages to editors about articles. For a funny example of a comment in action, go to Madness and click the edit button.
  Picture gallery <gallery>

Image:Example.png|Caption1
Image:Example.png|Caption2
</gallery>

 Two "gallery" tags, which enclose a list of images to be included in the gallery. Captions can be added by inserting a pipe after the image name, followed by the caption. Demonstration not possible here. Click the link to the left to see an example. Galleries are a way to show several pictures in an article without cluttering them up, but they have been criticized for being "tacky," and really should be used sparingly.
  Quoted text (appears indented) other text<blockquote>

abc
</blockquote>other text

Two "blockquote" tags around the quote other text

abc

other text 		Should be used for extended quotes. If you use this, make sure to provide a source for the quote, and to use direct quotes as little as possible to avoid copyright infringement.
  Insert table {| class="wikitable"

|-
abc
|}

Table syntax is complicated, and we'll cover that later on. This is a table. Like I said, we can cover this in a separate lesson if you want. It's not something I'm going to require.
  Add a reference (footnote) blah blah<ref>Reference</ref> Two "ref" tags around the reference text. blah blah[1] References are displayed using the code <references />. There's a fancy bit of coding you can do to make the same reference appear multiple times, demonstrated in the second line. By adding a name="blah" parameter to the first instance of a reference, you can make the same reference appear more than once. I have these footnotes displayed below the table so you can see how they appear.
Add a duplicate reference blah blah<ref name="copy">Duplicate</ref> blah blah<ref name="copy"/> The duplicate reference has a slash at the end of the tag. blah blah[2] blah blah[2]

The references

(That was a level 4 header, with four equals signs)

  1. ^ Reference
  2. ^ a b Duplicate

Other stuff

You can make lists and indents by adding characters to the beginning of a paragraph, like so:

A space before your paragraph will make the paragraph display in a box with machine font, and will cause it to run off the page if it is long enough.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

A colon (:) will cause a block indent, with all lines starting away from the edge of the page.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

An asterisk (*) will make a bullet.

  • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

A pound or number sign (#) makes a numbered list.

  1. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
  2. Curabitur pretium tincidunt lacus. Nulla gravida orci a odio. Nullam varius, turpis et commodo pharetra, est eros bibendum elit, nec luctus magna felis sollicitudin mauris. Integer in mauris eu nibh euismod gravida. Duis ac tellus et risus vulputate vehicula. Donec lobortis risus a elit. Etiam tempor. Ut ullamcorper, ligula eu tempor congue, eros est euismod turpis, id tincidunt sapien risus a quam. Maecenas fermentum consequat mi. Donec fermentum. Pellentesque malesuada nulla a mi. Duis sapien sem, aliquet nec, commodo eget, consequat quis, neque. Aliquam faucibus, elit ut dictum aliquet, felis nisl adipiscing sapien, sed malesuada diam lacus eget erat. Cras mollis scelerisque nunc. Nullam arcu. Aliquam consequat. Curabitur augue lorem, dapibus quis, laoreet et, pretium ac, nisi. Aenean magna nisl, mollis quis, molestie eu, feugiat in, orci. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.

You can mix and match the last three characters to get several different effects. The only caveat, though, is that you must have a continual line of #'s in order to maintain the numbering. This does not mean, however, that the numbered list has to be displayed at all times. See below for an example:

This code Produces this
:Lorem
:*Ipsum
:*#Dolor
:*#Sit
:*#*Amet
:*#Consectetur
Adipisicing
:::Edit
Lorem
  • Ipsum
    1. Dolor
    2. Sit
      • Amet
    3. Consectetur

Adipisicing

Edit

Note that you don't have to hit enter twice when starting a new line from one of these types of paragraphs. However, when you don't use them, you do. Those last two sentences are on a different line from this one in the editing box, but there is no line break when they are displayed.

That's all I have for now. Please let me know what questions you have, although try playing with the code in your sandbox first. That will answer most of your questions, but I'm here if you still need help!


Vandalism 151

What we're going to do now is get you started with some basic vandalism patrols, and get you introduced to some of the tools available for helping with this. This is by no means something you will be obligated to do as an editor, however it is something you should know how to do due to the high risk of vandalism on Wikipedia. Should you ever become an administrator, you will likely be expected to deal with vandalism in some respect.

To start off, let's get some background. Wikipedia is, as you know, a wiki, meaning anyone can edit virtually any page. This is both a blessing and a curse, however, as while it does allow a wide range of information to be added and shared, it also allows people with less than benevolent intentions to come in and mess around with stuff. It requires a fair amount of work during every hour of every day to ensure that this vandalism does not run rampant and destroy the project. Fortunately, with a near-endless supply of volunteers across the world, this doesn't really cause a problem. The addition of various tools help aid our cause and make the "reversion", or removal, of vandalism happen within minutes (sometimes seconds).

What we define vandalism as is "an unhelpful or unconstructive edit" to an article or other page. Most commonly, these are pretty blatant - replacing a whole page or section with curse words, simply removing entire sections, and so forth. Occasionally, it's less obvious, like changing key words in a section to completely alter the meaning. Basically, anything that can't be helpful at all to the article should be considered vandalism, however you should always remember to assume good faith for questionable cases.

The most commonly used, and arguably the most critical tool in this respect, is Special:RecentChanges. Recent Changes is a special page that lists every edit made across the project within the last few minutes. You can find a link to it in the toolbar to the left. The page is formatted similarly to a page's history, with a few differences. Here's how a standard entry generally looks:

So that you can know all the terminology (which in some cases will be used across the site), I'm going to explain what all of this means. Feel free to skip this if you've already clicked the links.

  1. A "diff" is the difference between two revisions. Wikipedia has a special feature that allows you to compare revisions to see exactly what was changed. This is particularly useful when on vandal patrol, as this is the best thing available to tell you if the edit was or was not vandalism. Clicking on the link above will only take you to the help page on diffs, unfortunately, however an actual diff link will bring you to a screen that looks like this one, an actual diff of another article. Content removed appears in red text in a yellow box on the left; content added appears in red text in a green box on the right.
  2. The "hist" link will bring you to the page's history. You can click on the "hist" link above to get to the help page for this feature. A page's history lists all edits ever made to a page, something which is required under the terms of the GFDL, Wikipedia's licensing.
  3. The next link is the article that the edit was made to.
  4. The time stamp will indicate when the edit was made. The time will appear in your time zone, as you have it defined in your Special:Preferences. Note that this is different from signature timestamps, which are always in UTC/GMT time.
  5. The green or red number after the timestamp will tell you how much was added or removed to the article in the edit. A green "+" number shows the number of bytes added to the article - a red "-" number indicates the number removed. In general, the number of bytes is equal to the number of characters, however this is not always the case: Certain special characters can contain more than one byte, and templates can completely mess this number up. Templates will be covered in another lesson later on, however you will be using some in your patrols later. This number will be in bold if a very large number of characters were removed, which is usually a good indicator of vandalism.
  6. The next part is the name of the user who made the edit, which will link to their user page. In this case, an IP address made the edit, so the link will instead go to their contributions. Since most vandalism comes from these anonymous editors, this serves as another convenience to those on patrol. The user name is followed by a link to their talk page.
  7. The last part of a RC report is the edit summary. When editing a section of an article, the title of that section will automatically be included in the edit summary, as you see above. Other special edit summaries include "Replaced page with..." and "Blanked the page". In general, these last two are dead giveaways for vandalism edits, however you will occasionally see an editor blank his own user or user talk page, so be careful about that.

Now that you know how to use Recent Changes, I want you to and find some vandalism edits. I don't want you to remove the edit yourself just yet - we'll get to this shortly and chances are, another editor or bot will beat you to it. So before you go on, go to Special:RecentChanges and find three vandalism edits. So that I can check your work and we can discuss things, I want you to copy the links to the diffs of these three edits into the brackets you see below. (This is most easily done by copying the URL from your address bar while you're viewing the diff.) Once you've done this, I'll post the second half to this lesson.

IMPORTANT WARNING: Due to the very nature of vandalism on Wikipedia, it is possible you will encounter something that will offend you. I take this time to point out Wikipedia's Content Disclaimer, which basically says that you can find just about anything on here and it's not WP's fault. While you may find something offensive in your searches and subsequent vandal patrols, it is best to simply brush it off and not take it to heart. Later on, when you are actually reverting vandalism, it is possible that your own user pages will be vandalized. Mine have been a total of 22 times so far, one of which was a death threat. Here the same thing applies - ignore and simply remove it. I do not tell these things to scare you, or to imply that it will happen. I am simply pointing out that it is possible, although exceedingly rare. In many cases, these attempts to attack you are in fact somewhat amusing. If it occurs, just remember how intellectually superior you clearly are to the vandal and be glad that you actually have a life. Please add your signature here (~~~~) to confirm that you have read and understand this warning:

Now that that's over with, go do your task. Have fun! (By the way, please ignore new pages, indicated by a bold "N" on the log entry.)

  • Diff 1: [1] Why you think this is vandalism: Racist comments and use of bad language. Does not contribute to Wikipedia's image as a reliable resource.
  • Diff 2: [2] Why you think this is vandalism: Removed all content and replaced with "what ever."
  • Diff 3: [3] Why you think this is vandalism: addition does not contribute to the article.


I'm still a little confused with how to read these. When a page is edited does the edit show up immediately or does it have to be previewed first? A couple of these I looked at the edits but then when I went to the page they had been changed. Does this mean that they were fixed as I was looking at them? Thanks! Katie (talk) 16:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
When a page is edited, the edit appears immediately. This is partly why vandalism is such a problem - we don't have any way to review edits before hand, and even if we did, we don't have the manpower to make the process efficient enough to work. You didn't see the results of the edits here because in every case, the edit was reverted within a minute's time; probably within the time it took you to review the edit. That's partly because two of these (the edits to Tradition and The Oprah Winfrey Show) were reverted by another anti-vandalism tool, an automated account known as a "bot". User:VoABot II is one of four or five currently operating AVB's (Anti-Vandal Bots) that are programmed to detect and revert vandalism extremely quickly. It is very likely that you'll get beaten to a reversion at least 40% of the time while on patrol. While frustrating, it's a great help to keeping things working.
Now that you know how to recognize vandalism, we'll move on to the second half of the lesson, where you actually get to do something about it. Another couple warnings, which will probably be repeated in the lesson: Not all vandalism is as obvious as what you just found. That's a good example of blatant vandalism, and your first example above I would have gone straight to a final warning, instead of moving up the warning scale as we usually do. (It'll be explained soon, don't worry). A lot of vandalism is a bit more sinister in nature, but we'll cover different kinds and how to recognize them in Vandalism 221. Second warning: The tools you are about to use carry a great potential for a great amount of damage. Used properly and carefully, the tool is designed to avoid causing problems. However, if you are not careful in what you do, you could be causing the problem we intend to correct. Improper use of this tool can and will lead to a block of your account's editing privileges, possibly indefinitely. Be careful with it. Only use those functions for which you are given directions for use, and if you're ever not sure about something, just err on the side of caution and don't do it. This is the opposite of my usual advice, but I want to make sure you don't end up blocked over a few simple mistakes. I will help you understand how to use the entirety of the tool in time. Now then, here's the rest of the lesson.


How to revert

This part of the lesson is designed for use with Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino, and other similar browsers. If you use Internet Explorer, please let Hersfold know. Do not attempt to install the script mentioned on this page if you use Internet Explorer.

Now that you know how to recognize vandalism, we're going to have you start actually taking action against it. First I'll show you how to do it the "old-school" way of doing things, manually reverting each edit. Since this is rather slow, I'm also going to have you install a tool which can help you do all of this quicker. The reason I had you tell me your browser is because the tool I prefer to use these days works with everything except Internet Explorer. If you're interested, I can show you how to install the tool used in the IE portion of this lesson, however the tool we're going to work with here works much better for vandalism and other similar tasks. Moving on now...

First off, and it's important that I show you this first, we're going to cover manual reversion. The definition of "revert" is (according to Wiktionary, our sister project) "To turn back, [...] or, to change back." That's what we're going to do. It would take an horribly long time to remove vandalism if we had to re-write each article every time it was vandalized. Since we have a record of every edit ever made, however, it's very easy to simply "turn back" to a previous version. Let's try this out.

So that we don't risk messing up any articles, or having things not work, we'll be doing these tests in my sandbox, at User:Hersfold/Hersfold's Sandbox. Go ahead and open that page in a new tab. Once there, go to the page history. You'll see that I've made a few nonsense edits to get things ready for you. This is what we're going to revert. Follow these steps carefully to make sure you don't miss anything:

  1. Click on the top most "(last)" link. This will bring you to a diff screen, showing you the changes I last made.
  2. On the right side, next to "Current revision (timestamp)", you'll see two links: (edit) and (undo).
  3. Click on "undo". You'll be brought to a screen that looks like a combination between a diff and the edit screen. This shows you what changes you're making, and allows you to make other changes at the same time, however this is not recommended.
  4. Go down to the edit summary and enter a reason why you are making the reversion after the pre-loaded stuff. Usually "vandalism" will do - other variations include "rvv" for "ReVert Vandalism" and so forth. Even though this isn't technically vandalism, go ahead and enter that here and save the page.
  5. You're done! The page should now look as it did before I made that edit. Well done.

The problem with the undo button is that it does take some time to do. You've got to go through extra pages, click extra buttons, and so forth. Chances are, someone else will have beaten you to the reversion before you are able to complete the action, resulting in either an edit conflict or you inadvertently re-adding the vandalism by reverting the reverter. So, to help out with that, we're going to have you install Twinkle.

Twinkle is a user script designed and largely maintained by User:AzaToth, an administrator with a knack at coding scripts such as this. Twinkle allows a user-friendly interface that can automatically do a wide range of tasks, as well as providing non-administrators with admin-like tools. Chief among these, and the feature we're going to be using here, is "rollback", a reversion method that can undo multiple edits by a single editor at once. Rollback will undo all edits by the same editor, to the last revision made by a different editor. So, if Bob edits a page, then Vandal comes in and makes two edits, then you come in and rollback Vandal's edits, the article will be restored to Bob's version. This is different from the "undo" button, which can only do one edit at a time.

Until very recently, the official version of rollback was available only to administrators, due to its ability to undo a large number of edits with a single click of a button. As of January 9th, 2008, admins have been given the ability to grant other users the "rollbacker" permission mask, which allows non-admins the use of this feature. If and when you are given this permission, it provides an extra "[rollback]" link next to the undo button in page histories and diff pages. Long before then, however, Twinkle has allowed a similar version of rollback, with added compatibility for the other features offered by the script. Since you're new to the site, it is unlikely that an admin will be willing to grant you the permission - such tools are granted as a matter of earned trust and demonstrated knowledge of policy - so we're going to use Twinkle, which also lets you do other stuff anyway. It's really no big deal - I have been granted rollback permissions, but don't plan to use the button too much as Twinkle is more efficient.

Before we go on, I am not going to force you, by any means, to use Twinkle. I use it on a regular basis and enjoy the features it has, but that's just me. If you decide you'd rather not use it, you have no obligation at all to keep it. You can remove the script by following the installation steps in reverse.

Here's how to install Twinkle. Go ahead and do this now, so that you can follow the tasks further on:

  1. Open Special:Mypage/monobook.js in a new tab. This is where you can install Javascript codes such as Twinkle. (NOTE: This assumes that you are using the "Monobook" skin. If you have selected another skin in your preferences, please let me know, as you'll have to go to a different page.)
  2. Copy the code below into the monobook.js page.
    importScript('User:AzaToth/twinkle.js');
  3. Save the page.
  4. Bypass your browser's cache by following the directions for your browser here.
  5. Go to Main Page.

If the script installed correctly, you should see a bunch of extra tab buttons at the top of the page. This is Twinkle.

Each of the tabs you see allows you to take a different action on the page you are viewing. For the most part, we're only going to deal with one tab right now - the other function we'll be using is reached through the diff screen.

Go back to my sandbox and click on the page history. Now we're going to revert things the Twinkle way.

  1. Click on the top-most "(last)" link. This should now correspond with the edit you made to the page a few minutes ago.
  2. In addition to all the usual stuff you see on a diff screen, now you've got more buttons! These buttons are the Twinkle version of rollback. On the left, you'll see a brown "Restore this version" link. This will undo all edits back to that edition of the page. This shouldn't be used too often, although may be necessary if multiple vandals hit a page all at once. The ones you'll be dealing with are on the right side. There are three forms of rollback within Twinkle. All three work essentially the same way, and identically to the actual rollback feature I mentioned before. The difference between the three is the edit summary left by the script. For what you know is vandalism, click the red button only. If you're pretty sure the editor made a genuine mistake, but it still needs to be removed, then click the "AGF" button (stands for Assume Good Faith). The blue button in the middle generally won't be used, but it goes neither direction (does not assume good or bad faith).
  3. Now, to revert your edit, click the red button (we'll be treating you as a vandal just for this demonstration). A page will load and begin spitting out a bunch of lines of text, telling you what the script is doing.
  4. Sometime during the script's running, it will open a new tab or window. This new screen will have your talk page open for editing. This is so that you can give the vandal (in this case, you) a warning.
  5. At the top of your talk page (in the new window), you'll see a small tab that says "warn", which should appear right next to "watch/unwatch". Click on this now (don't worry, you won't be giving yourself a warning!)
  6. A blue box should appear. This form allows you to select a warning message to issue to the vandal. After you vandal-revert someone, the form will have some information already filled in for you. Leave this alone. What you are interested in are the two menus up top. The first one allows you to select the level of warning to issue. For a first-time vandal edit, you should usually select a "General Note (1)" warning. If the vandal has been given warnings previously, you can go to the next highest level they haven't been given yet. (If the last warning was a level 2, the next should be level 3, and so forth). In the second box, choose the most appropriate reason for the reversion and warning. "Vandalism" is rather general and vague, but sometimes is the best to issue. DO NOT CLICK SUBMIT. When you are done looking around, close the menu by clicking the red X.

Other functions of Twinkle allow you to report vandals to administration for blocking, mark or propose pages for deletion, request protection of a page, and more. We can get into these more later - the reporting function will be handled in the next vandalism lesson.

When using Twinkle, be very careful about what you are doing and why. Twinkle is a very powerful tool, and because of this, it creates a great potential to cause great damage. Misuse of this tool, intentional or otherwise, can and will result in a block. You should not use the functions of this script until you understand how to do so. These will be explained to you in time. Even for those functions you do know how to use, if you are ever in doubt about what action to take in a situation, just don't take it. On patrol, there is always a more experienced editor just seconds behind you, so it'll be taken care of. As you do patrol, you'll become more and more confident about what it and what is not vandalism, and our next lesson on vandalism deals with those other kinds. Until then, good luck going on patrol! Please let me know as soon as possible if you have any questions. Happy editing as always.  Hersfold (t/a/c) 20:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

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