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Counter-Vandalism Unit


Misplaced Pages vandalism information
(abuse log)

Level 4
Level 4

Low to moderate level of vandalism

2.12 RPM according to EnterpriseyBot 09:10, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Shortcut
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Announcements

  • VandalProof, a downloadable application which contains some powerful tools for detecting and reverting vandalism and administering appropriate warnings to vandals has become available (see Detection, reversion, and warning). 16:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool has been updated, allowing users the option of only monitoring edits within the article namespace and providing a non-admin rollback function. In addition, a new live spellcheck mode has also been included. 05:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
  • VandalSniper, a cross-platform VandalProof-like application, is currently in beta. At the moment it has only been confirmed to run on Linux. 19:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • A change was made to the descriptions of one of the barnstars to specifically mention the CVU. 08:33, 18 September 2006 (EDT)

General information

The Counter-Vandalism Unit

The Counter-Vandalism Unit (CVU) aims to help in cleaning up vandalism on Misplaced Pages by producing tools to assist in removing vandalism, provide advice on dealing with vandals, and to share information with other Wikipedians dealing with the same issues. Removing vandalism is a task open to all members of the Misplaced Pages community, and the CVU intends to make that task easier.

You can associate with the CVU by adding one of the following userboxes to your user page:

Code:Results in:
{{user CUV}}
CUVThis user is dedicated to
cleaning up vandalism.
{{user CVU1-en}}
This user is a member of the
Counter-Vandalism Unit.
{{user CVU2-en}}
This user is a member of the
Counter-Vandalism Unit.
{{user CVU3-en}}
This user is a member of the
Counter-Vandalism Unit.

If you prefer not to use userboxes, you can add yourself to Category:Counter-Vandalism Unit members.

Resources

What the CVU is not

  • Identifying with the CVU's role by one of the methods above does not grant you any special rights or privileges on Misplaced Pages.
  • The Counter-Vandalism Unit is not, and has not requested to be, sanctioned as an official project of the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • The unit is merely a collection of individuals dedicated to removing vandalism, and does not seek to represent itself as anything more. "Unit" is shorter and snappier than "WikiProject".

Current issues

Vandalism
Dealing with vandalism
Resources and assistance
Further information

See Misplaced Pages:Long term abuse for current vandalism reports.

Guidelines

Determining what is vandalism

The Wiktionary definition of vandalism is "needless damage or destruction of property, usually someone else's property or common or shared property".

On Misplaced Pages, vandalism is defined in Misplaced Pages:Vandalism. It is imperative to understand that not every destructive edit is classified as vandalism, in particular content disputes are not vandalism. There is a procedure to be followed in dealing with edits classifiable as vandalism. Note that different-language versions of Misplaced Pages language have their own rules, but these rules tend not to differ widely.

The key is to assume good faith. First time offenses at worst should warrant a warning via the posting of {{subst:test2}} --~~~~ on the user's talk page, followed by additional test template messages from WP:TT.

Please do not bite the newcomers. Many activities classifiable as vandalism may be just newbie mistakes. Proper procedure is placing a simple {{subst:test}} on their talk page and/or explaining to them why what they are doing is inappropriate. Another way to think of this is that if you "bark" at someone not to do something, they are more than likely to at least try it or to do it just to annoy you — a simple rule of crowd management (see also Misplaced Pages:Don't stuff beans up your nose).

Dealing with bad edits

Not all kinds of bad edits are vandalism, and not all vandalism is equal. The following remedies have been found to be consistent with policy.

Severe vandalism

If you are an administrator, it is warranted to block these violations on sight. If you are not an admin, report the incident on the Administrators' noticeboard or WP:AIV.

  • Vandalism bots and rapid vandalism - A rapid submission of edits from the same user(s)/IP(s) that are intended to disrupt. An example of this would be page move vandalism, made particularly troublesome because undoing page move vandalism frequently requires administrator assistance.
  • Page widening - Posting repeated sections into a page on Misplaced Pages (often making it megabytes long) can make accessing or editing the page difficult or impossible.
  • Intentionally exploiting bugs in the Misplaced Pages site software to permanently delete content, make it difficult to revert changes, etc.
  • Posting images, creating pages, or creating redirects to potentially offensive images or pages with the intent of insulting/offending others and with no encyclopedic aims. See Penis vandal diff for an example.
  • Choosing a username to impersonate or insult existing usernames. To handle this, apply {{usernameblock}}, {{sockpuppet}}, {{impostor}} or {{attackuser}} as appropriate.
Ordinary vandalism

For these violations, User warnings should be used. If the violations recur, short-term blocks may be warranted if you are an administrator (remember to leave a notice on their userpage). Non-admins should post the incident on the Administrators' noticeboard or WP:AIV to receive assistance.

  • Page blanking - Edits removing much or all text from articles. The majority of such edits are vandalism; however, there are legitimate "page blankings", such as for copyright violations where reverting to an old version is not practical. For an example, see Blanking diff.
  • Page gibberish - Edits adding a large quantity of nonsense text, generally repetitive sentences. See .
  • Minor vandalism - This is often actually just experimentation with people new to the Wiki concept, but does include malicious edits, such as changing dates or other numbers to false values or adding insignificant amounts of nonsense to pages. See a newbie test, a vandal diff, and another vandal diff.
Not vandalism

The following should not automatically be considered to be vandalism and should be dealt with in other ways:

  • NPOV violations - Violations of Misplaced Pages's Neutral Point of View policy. Revert and state on the talk page of the article (or user, if appropriate) your reasons for doing so. Obtain further input from the community if needed on IRC or as a Request for Comment. If the user persists in reverting to his prefered version of the article, however, that may be considered vandalism.
  • Revert wars - Repetitive changes between versions of an article by multiple editors, often in violation of the 3 revert rule. Seek assistance on IRC or from an administrator. If you are an administrator, read relevant policy if unsure. Depending on the circumstances, this may be considered vandalism on part of certain users.
  • Copyright violations - Inserting content that we have no license to or cannot use the license for. Revert the changes if there is an old version of the article that is not a copyvio, otherwise blank the article and put the copyvio tag on it. See Copyright problems. Persistent and defiant insertion of such content should however be considered vandalism.

Dealing with vandalism

There are many ways and places to fix/deal with vandalism on Misplaced Pages. However, a major risk in combating vandalism is forgetting not to bite newcomers. For non-severe vandalism, users should be warned with appropriate warning templates. See the list of warning templates. You can transclude an abbreviated version of this to a personal user page with {{TestTemplates}}.

Below are a few of the many methods in combatting vandalism here on wikipedia.

Detection, reversion, and warning

The following several are tools and methods useful for detecting and reverting vandalism as well as applying appropriate warning templates:

  • RC Patrol is the manual analysis of recent changes for suspicious edits.
  • There are several bots that automatically process the Special:Recentchanges feed and determine what may be vandalism, such as Tawkerbot2. Note that the bots are not 100% accurate in detecting vandalism.
  • VandalProof is a downloadable application under development by AmiDaniel which allows to revert a page, warn the vandal appropriately and put them on a "black" list with just one click. Also allows the revert of all of a user's contributions at once. Requires the author's permission to use.
  • CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter (CDVF) is an open-source program that displays a live feed of recent changes (RC) but contains extra functionality to assist in vandal fighting. The bot works on all language Wikipedias, though some features currently only work on the English Misplaced Pages (see changelog). This tool is available to both administrators and users.
  • The IRC Bot, pgkbot, by Pgk runs on the IRC channels above.
  • Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool catches what CDVF and IRC bots miss. It monitors the RSS feed for recent changes, checks those edit diffs for common vandalism terms, and lists them for reversion if they contain flagged terms. It also now contains a live spellcheck feature. This tool is available for both admins and users. Note that the latest version is considerably more resource-efficient than the original version.
  • RC birds is an IRC-aware program which auralizes recent changes using the metadata "about changes", and regular expressions. It both shows color-coded output from the IRC bot, and maps each RC diff onto a bird-call or other nature sound. Both admins and non-admins can use this to view RC.
  • RC patrol script gives non-admins revert, filter, and popup tools while using the (default) monobook skin .
  • Godmode adds reversion options to the browser for non-admins.
  • User:Adam1213/warn is a page which simplifies the process of warning vandals by allowing warnings to be submitted to specific users directly from the page.
  • See the list of Misplaced Pages's most vandalized pages.
  • Temporarily put the daily featured article on your watchlist, as it is an obvious target for vandals.
  • Check a vandal's other contributions when reverting vandalism. There may be other recent vandalism by the same user which has not yet been reverted.
  • List of suspected vandalised articles created by Vilerage – still being worked on.
  • Young Orphans – a new tool made by Interiot to find newly uploaded orphaned images. This is useful for finding various copyright violations and people who are using Misplaced Pages merely as an image hosting service.
    • How to use it:
      1. Look for images which mention "copyrighted", "fair use" or "public domain" in the edit summary column; these are the most frequently abused.
      2. Look for edit summaries in any language other than English; these images are typically webspam/vanity.
      3. Look for edit summaries which mention an image hosting services like Imageshack, Flickr, etc.; typically these images are uploaded with the intent of using Misplaced Pages as an alternative image hosting service.
      4. Use common sense; if an image is uploaded without an edit summary by a red-linked (no user page) user, check it out.
  • VandalSniper is a feature-wise port of VandalProof to Mono/Gtk#, bringing its featureset to Linux users. A beta is available.

Stopping vandals

  • Reporting vandals directly to administrators, especially on the IRC channels mentioned earlier. This will likely earn you the fastest results, as there are generally admins available to block vandals. However, you might consider viewing the block log for the account/IP before reporting, as people on the IRC channels monitor Misplaced Pages closely and the account may be blocked already. Additionally you can report more complicated, less blatant acts of vandalism to Misplaced Pages:Requests for investigation to request a prompt admin inspection.
  • See the Misplaced Pages list of administrators if you want to make direct contact with administrators via their talk pages.

Recognition

There is a barnstar to recognize the efforts of people fighting vandalism.

The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar {{subst:The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar|message ~~~~}} The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar

The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar (formerly the Anti-Vandalism Barnstar) may be awarded to those who show great contributions to protecting and reverting attacks of vandalism on Misplaced Pages. For more information on fighting vandalism, please see the Counter-Vandalism Unit.

This award was introduced on February 27, 2005 by brian0918, and was designed by Deathphoenix. This award was renamed on July 24, 2005 in appreciation of the efforts of former Wikipedian RickK in fighting vandalism.

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