Your second task: Vandal fighting
Because of Wikipedia’s immense popularity, there are a lot of people, and I mean a LOT of people, who think it’s fun to vandalize it. If you aren’t sure what vandalism is, I suggest you read the Wikipedia page on it, here. As always feel free to ask me any questions before, during or after this task.
Now, we’re going to do a bit of vandal fighting. Basically, this is undoing, or removing, the work of vandals. And the easiest way to do it is to follow these instructions (read through all the steps first to get a feel for what you will be doing):
- Click on the recent changes link that appears on the sidebar of a Wikipedia page.
- A page with the last 50 edits to the encyclopedia will show up. Towards the top will be some options. Click the link that hides logged in edits, since the vast majority of vandalism is done by anonymous users.
- A new page will load, showing the last 50 edits (you can change this number by clicking the relevant links) made by anonymous users (who are identified by their IP address).
- Each edit will contain a link to the “diff”, “hist” (history of the article), the article itself, the IP address the made the edit. It will also contain a number, either in green or red, and the edit summary (if any). The number is what you’re concerned with.
- Scroll through the list, and try to find a number that is large, either positive or negative. Numbers larger then +300 or smaller then -500 are good signs to look for, but you can also look for edit summaries which contain swearing, or don’t seem to be constructive.
- You may need to refresh or revisit this page several times
- When you find one of these edits, click the link to the diff.
- A comparison between the anonymous edit, and the previous version (a diff) will load. If the edit on the RIGHT (the most recent) appears to be vandalized (compared to the edit on the LEFT), then click the link that says “Undo” (next to the edit date).
- The next page that loads will contain the edit window, but it will be slightly modified. Firstly, at the top, there will be another diff; the same diff from the previous page, but reversed. This indicates what the page will look like when the vandalism is undone. Another different thing is that the edit summary field will be filled in for you, and it will mention that you undone the edits by a user, and reverted to the edits by a previous user. You may want to add something like "as Vandalism" to the end of the edit summary. With all this in mind, save the page.
- Now, there are many editors that fight vandalism and someone may have performed the revert during the time you had the page in edit mode. If this occurs you will get an Edit Conflict warning. Just abort your edit by returning to the recent changes page and look again.
- Now that you’ve reverted vandalism, the next step is to warn the vandal. To do this, click the history tab at the top of the article, and find the second last version (as in, the one before your undo). Next to the date and time will be the vandal’s IP address, and next to that will be a link to his/her talk page. Open that link in a new window/tab (you want to leave the history open so you can get a diff later).
- The vandal’s talk page will open. Chances are an edit box will open, meaning that there was no page until now (you’re creating it). If an edit box doesn’t appear, click the edit link at the top of the page.
- Visit this page (in a new window/tab), and look through the many options for warning messages. You don’t need to memorize all of them (hence the page!), you just need to know which one is appropriate. Pick an appropriate one for the vandalism you just undid ({{subst:uw-vandalism1}} and {{subst:uw-test1}} are the most common, but if the vandal has been warned before, you should use the next number in sequence (with 4 being the harshest)).
- Having chosen your warning message, copy the code for it (Ctrl + C), and paste this into the edit box for the vandal’s talk page (Ctrl + V). Insert an edit summary that mentions your warning the vandal, and save the page.
Advanced note: You can include a link to the page that was vandalized by changing {{subst:uw-vandalism1}} (or equivalent) to {{subst:uw-vandalism1|Article Name}} (or equivalent). Be sure to preview the page before saving, though.
Having undone the vandalism, and warned the vandal, you’re done! Get the diff for the vandalism you reverted, and for your warning, and add them in a new section on your adoption the same way you did in task one (by starting a new thread using the “+” at the top), so I can check out your work in keeping Wikipedia vandal free!
If you are interested in fighting vandalism on a regular basis there are scripts that make the job much easier, let me know if you would like to know more.