Hello New3400, and welcome to your Counter-Vandalism Unit Academy page! Every person I instruct will have their own page on which I will give them support and tasks for them to complete. Please make sure you have this page added to your watchlist. Your academy page has been specifically designed according to you and what you have requested instruction in - for that reason, please be as specific as possible when under my instruction, so that I know the best ways to help you (and do not be afraid to let me know if you think something isn't working). If you have any general queries about anti-vandalism (or anything else), you are more than welcome to raise them with me at my talk page.
Make sure you read through Wikipedia:Vandalism as that's the knowledge which most of the questions I ask you and tasks you do will revolve around.
- How to use this page
This page will be built up over your time in the Academy, with new sections being added as you complete old ones. Each section will end with a task, written in bold type - this might just ask a question, or it might require you to go and do something. You can answer a question by typing the answer below the task; if you have to do something, you will need to provide diffs to demonstrate that you have completed the task. Some sections will have more than one task, sometimes additional tasks may be added to a section as you complete them. Please always sign your responses to tasks as you would on a talk page.
- Once you graduate, I will copy this page into your userspace so you have a record of your training and a reference for the future.
- Curriculum
There are several sections of the training course. In some of them, will be asking you to do perform practical exercises (for example, patrolling recent changes or the abuse log in order to find problematic edits); in others, I will ask you to read certain policies and guidelines, and then ask you some questions about their content. It is not a problem if you give the wrong answer to any of the questions - making mistakes and discussing them is a crucial part of the learning process. For that reason, it is important that you do not attempt to find previous users' training pages in order to identify the 'right' answers to give: all your answers should be your own, so that we can identify and address any misconceptions that you might have. There is no time pressure to complete the course: we will go at whatever pace works for you, and you can take a pause or ask questions at any point along the way.
- Communication
Counter-vandalism work can result in very large watchlists, which can make it more difficult to monitor pages using that alone. For this reason, I will ping you whenever I update this page with some feedback or a new task; I would also ask you to ping me when you have completed a task, so that I get a notification telling me that it's ready for review. See WP:PING for details on how to do this if you aren't sure. Pahunkat (talk) 21:10, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
New3400 Pinging again. Pahunkat (talk) 11:33, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
The start
editGadgets
editTwinkle
editTwinkle is a highly useful gadget that can be enabled by any autoconfirmed user. It is used to automate a variety of maintenance tasks, including reverting vandalism, tagging pages for deletion and requesting page protection (you'll learn about these later in the course). See Wikipedia:Twinkle for more information about this tool.
Redwarn
editRedwarn is a tool specifically designed for reverting vandalism and warning users. You can read its documentation, including how to install the tool, at Wikipedia:RedWarn.
Huggle
editHuggle is another anti-vandalism tool which comes in the form of a desktop application. To use Huggle you must have rollback permissions, so we won't be covering Huggle during this course - though feel free to ask me about it upon completion. You can read up about it at Wikipedia:Huggle.
- Enable Twinkle and RedWarn (if you haven't already) and leave a note here to let me know that you have enabled them.
User:Pahunkat, they are on, but i dont know if RedWarn will work, there was a error message and i didnt see the checkmark. New3400 (talk) 12:47, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- That’s fine New3400 - as long as you’ve got Twinkle working, we can continue. Any idea what’s wrong for Redwarn - do the icons come up on a diff page? Pahunkat (talk) 14:50, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- User:Pahunkat, from what i can tell, i have no clue if its working, it didnt have the checkmark. New3400 (talk) 14:58, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- New3400 - if you go here (just got that article from the random article function), what do you see? Pahunkat (talk) 17:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- User:Pahunkat, i just see 2 rollback buttons and vandalism button. New3400 (talk) 17:12, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- New3400 - if you go here (just got that article from the random article function), what do you see? Pahunkat (talk) 17:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- User:Pahunkat, from what i can tell, i have no clue if its working, it didnt have the checkmark. New3400 (talk) 14:58, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
Finding the vandals
editThere are two main ways to find edits to check for vandalism. The first is through the recent changes log - this can be accessed by clicking the 'Recent changes' link in the 'contribute' section at the left navigation bar, or navigating to Special:Recentchanges. The second way if through monitoring the abuse log, which lists edits which have tripped edit filters - these edits may still go through or may be disallowed depending on the filter. This can be accessed at Special:Abuselog.
Good faith and vandalism
editWhen patrolling for vandalism, you may often come across edits which are unhelpful to an article, but not vandalism - these are good faith edits. Note that good faith edits are different to completely good edits. While it is necessary to revert good-faith edits, we treat them differently from vandalism, so it is important to recognize the difference between a vandalism edit and a good faith edit. Please read WP:AGF, WP:BITE and WP:NOT VANDALISM before completing the tasks in this section. I'd suggest starting off with monitoring recent changes.
- Please explain below the difference between a good faith edit and a vandalism edit, and how you would tell them apart.
A good faith edit is when a editor try's to edit a detail that might appear incorrect, but is correct. it can also mean editing a template, or some test edits. a Vandalism edit, however, is when a editor makes a very bad edit, for example, putting lewd images, threats against other users, or just spam in general. New3400 (talk) 13:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- the key difference here is intention - vandalism is malicious editing with the intent of disrupting the project, whereas good faith edits are edits that still need to be reverted but are made in good faith. Note that good-faith edits and completely good edits are different.
Question: - what indicators would you look for to tell the two apart? And what about borderline cases - would you treat these as vandalism or good faith edits?
User:Pahunkat, for example, if i started dropping the f bomb everywhere, thats definitely vandalism. if i just spam a few letters in, its probs a test edit. and i would see the ip and or the accounts history before making a decision. New3400 (talk) 15:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
- Also look out for edit summaries - added content (-5,720) is highly unlikely to be true.
- Please explain why it is important to not to WP:BITE newcomers whose edits may have been made in good faith
Because 1. everyone is a newbie at first, 2. people will not return if we just give them a block or a major warning. there has to be history of that occuring. New3400 (talk) 13:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
Biting the newcomers would deter new and good-faith editors from contributing to the project.
- Please find three examples of good faith but unhelpful edits, and three examples of vandalism. These can be from your editing history or from your next recent changes/Abuse log patrol.
ok, i got the 3 good faith edits done, can you review them, User:Pahunkat? New3400 (talk) 15:14, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
| Type | Diff | Trainer's comment |
|---|---|---|
| Good-faith edit | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephen_A._Smith&diff=prev&oldid=946418868 | Unreferenced statement, but nothing to suggest bad intentions
|
| Good-faith edit | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Norvel_Pelle&diff=prev&oldid=1007151386 | I'm not an expert in such subjects, but once again I see nothing to suggest bad intentions from the user
|
| Good-faith edit | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Parkinson%27s_disease&diff=prev&oldid=1007500248 | Assume good faith - likely a test edit
|
| Vandalism | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grammy_Award&oldid=1012278553 | |
| Vandalism | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grammy_Award&oldid=1012278483 | |
| Vandalism | Diff |
A note about Redwarn and Twinkle
edit
Hopefully you'll have noticed that RedWarn allows you three primary options for performing a rollback - green, blue, and red links (see the screenshot). All three will revert all of the most recent consecutive edits made by a single user to a page. The orange button should only be used when a user blanks a large portion of the page without an edit summary that explains why - this is called unexplained removal of content.
Try to use these buttons where possible. The green and the blue ones allow you to add an edit summary - it's described as 'optional', but you should not treat it as such - always leave a brief edit summary, even if it's just 'Rv test edit', or 'Rv unexplained removal of content', or whatever. Use the green one when you think it's a good faith mistake, and the blue one when you're not sure. Only use the red one when you are certain that it is unambiguous vandalism - it saves time, because it leaves a generic edit summary, and all of them will take you directly to the talk page of the person you have reverted, to allow you to use the 'Warn' option to give them a warning. (Also note that you can use the purple "restore this version" button when you need to revert edits by multiple users.) There are more options for 'rollback' buttons if you click the three dots at the very end of the menu, for edits that require reverting because they violate other Wikipedia policies and guidelines (for example edits uncompliant with the manual of style, undisclosed paid editing and enforcing violations of WP:3RR).
Likewise, with Twinkle there are three 'rollback' links - once again they are red, blue and green. You should apply the same principles of judgement as for the buttons in RedWarn when deciding which link to use.
Note that, per WP:3RR, An editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page—whether involving the same or different material—within a 24-hour period. However, exceptions apply (see the 3RR page) - including reverting blatant and obvious vandalism. If you're not sure, it's best not to go past three reverts and attempt to engage the editor in discussion.
New3400 - see above, mostly the intro again and about WP:TW (which I see you've used with Puddleglum), and WP:RW (which you haven't used, but isn't necessary if you don't want to install it since Twinkle will suffice). Distinguishing between good faith and bad faith edits is important in counter-vandalism work, so take your time. With luck this will just be a bit of a refresher. Once you finish, or if you have any questions, ping me below. Thanks :-) Pahunkat (talk) 21:13, 12 February 2021 (UTC)