User:Girth Summit/CVUA/Minecrafter0271

Hello Minecrafter0271, 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 in your answers, 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). You can ask any questions about counter-vandalism stuff here, and if you have questions about any other area of editing you are more than welcome to raise them with me at my talk page.

During the course, I will provide you with links to various pages detailing policies and guidelines. Please take the time to read each of them carefully, and don't hesitate to ask questions if there's anything that you're not sure about.

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.

The CVUA curriculum

There are several sections of the training course. In some of them, I will be asking you to do perform practical exercises; in others, I will ask you to read certain policies and guidelines, and then ask you some questions about their content. To be clear, 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, and fill in any gaps in your knowledge as we go along. 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. GirthSummit _(blether) 19:32, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

The start

Twinkle

Twinkle is a very useful tool when performing maintenance functions around Wikipedia. I see from your contributions history that you have used Twinkle a bit - just to be sure though, please confirm that you have read WP:TWINKLE, and are comfortable with how it works. Leave a note below to confirm that you are happy to move on, or ask any questions you would like to about how it works.

@Girth Summit: I have read WP:TWINKLE, and I am comfortable with how it works. I am happy to move on. Minecrafter0271 (talk) 22:35, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Good stuff Minecrafter0271 - next task below. GirthSummit _(blether) 07:28, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Good faith and vandalism

When patrolling for vandalism, you may often come across edits which are unhelpful, but not vandalism - these are good faith edits. While it is often necessary to revert such edits, we treat them differently from vandalism, so it is important to recognise the difference between a vandalism edit and a good faith edit. Please read WP:AGF and WP:NOT VANDALISM before completing the tasks in this section.

Please explain below the difference between a good faith edit and a vandalism edit, and how you would tell them apart.

@Girth Summit: A good faith edit is an edit where a user makes an edit with the intent to improve a page, but might not succeed. A vandalism edit is an edit where a user makes an edit with the intent to harm a page. Minecrafter0271 (talk) 15:11, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Minecrafter0271 This is correct so far as what vandalism is - I'd like your initial thoughts about how you might tell one from the other. Don't wirry about beibg 'wrong' - I'm looking to get your initial thoughts about this, so we can discuss it. Identifying vandalism is fundamental to what we do, so it's important to get this right from the start. GirthSummit _(blether) 19:37, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: If a bad edit is made by a new user and it only happens once, then it is most likely a good faith edit. If a bad edit is made by an experienced user and it keeps happening, even if that user is warned, then it is most likely vandalism. Minecrafter0271 (talk) 23:18, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, actually new users and IPs are responsible for most acts of vandalism, rather than longer-standing accounts. What you need to do is look at the edit, and ask yourself 'Could someone have done that without meaning to damage the page?' If it's random text, it could be someone testing to see whether they can edit. If it's removing material, it could be someone doing it accidentally (maybe they hit Control+A before they started typing?). Someone adding profanity, or adding 'is an asshole' after the name of the subject of an article, however, is obviously up to no good. Similarly, if someone adds random text or blanks a page once, you could consider it to be an accident; if they keep doing it after they've been reverted, it starts to look like intentional vandalism.

If you're not sure, then WP:AGF applies, and we assume it's not vandalism - don't call it vandalism unless you're sure. This first part of the course will teach you how to deal with both vandalism, and stuff that needs to be reverted but probably isn't vandalism.

Let's go and look for some - next section is below. To find problematic edits, I use the 'Recent Changes' feed - you should be able to find it by looking on the left of your screen, in the links in the 'Interaction' section. Note that you can apply filters, so that you're not looking at all recent edits. I recommend looking at it with the following filters applied: 'Likely bad faith', 'Human (not bot)', 'Latest revision'. Doing that, I find that roughly half of the edits will need to be reverted - either because they are vandalism, or because they're test edits, page blanking, unsourced and potentially controversial assertions, etc. Take a look, and report back as described below... ​ GirthSummit _(blether) 17:40, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Please find three examples of good faith but unhelpful edits, and three examples of vandalism. You don't need to revert the example you find, and I am happy for you to use previous undos in your edit history if you wish. Place diffs below.

@Girth Summit: Okay. Here are some examples of good faith edits.

1. Here looks like a test edit, made by an IP user.

   Y Yes - might have been vandalism, but there's not enough there to be sure so classifying it as a test edit is the best choice.

2. Here looks like someone added in a POV edit. Since I'm not sure what their intentions were, I'm going to assume good faith in this situation.

   Y It's definitely good faith; I don't actually see anything wrong with it at all. It's part of a plot summary of a film - yes, if it were describing real events you could see it as POV, but in describing the plot of a work of fiction it looks fine to me.

3. Here looks like someone removed a citation. They may think that the citation wasn't reliable, but they didn't remove the text that goes along with it. Hence, I will assume good faith.

Y Certainly not vandalism - potentially a POV issue, but it's not my area of expertise. If you look again at the diff, they did actually change the text - the changed the political alignment from 'centre' to 'centre-right', and they changed the cited source to a different source. Personally, I wouldn't have reverted that, certainly not without investigating both sources to see which was the more reliable. Edit warring about political things like that is quite common - I try not to get drawn into it when patrolling for vandalism, it's usually best to leave it to editors with knowledge of the subject.

Alright. Now, here are some vandalism edits.

1. Here looks like someone called him a "big thot." That's not something someone would accidentally do. Therefore, I'm calling vandalism.

   Y Agreed - clearly vandalism.

2. Here somebody just typed a bunch of nonsense. AND, if you look here, then you'll see that they also did some vandalism to the same article.

   Y Agreed. The combination of the deceptive edit summaries and the fact that they repeated their actions after being reverted make this clear to me that it's intentional vandalism.

3. Here, someone literally blanked almost all of an article. I'm pretty sure that that's vandalism.

   Hmm. Hard to be sure about this one. Blanking doesn't necessarily mean that it's vandalism - if someone thinks information is wrong, they might want to remove it. That isn't compliant with our policies, but nor is it vandalism, in the strict sense of the word. I would have reverted this, but I'd have used a 'removal of content' warning, rather than a vandalism one (more on that in the very next section).

Thanks for going through all those. Cheers! Minecrafter0271 (talk) 01:32, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

OK Minecrafter0271 - good work on these - see the feedback above. Next section is below... GirthSummit _(blether) 17:44, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Warning and reporting

When you use Twinkle to warn a user, you have a number of options to choose from: you can select the kind of warning (for different offences), and the level of warning (from 1 to 4, for increasing severity). Knowing which warning to issue and what level is very important. Further information can be found at WP:WARN and WP:UWUL.

Please answer the following questions

Why do we warn users?

To make sure that they know that what their doing is against Wikipedia Policies.

In part, yes - they are informative, and give links to relevant policies. They serve other purposes too - warnings on a talk page show other patrollers that a user has been informed about problematic editing already, allowing them to escalate their warning level appropriately, and they also make the decision to block easier for an admin - if the user has been warned multiple times and is still being disruptive, it's easy to justify a block.

When would a 4im warning be appropriate?

When someone has vandalised Wikipedia enough times to get their final warning.

Yes, if a user has been repeatedly vandalising but hasn't been warned, you can go for a 4im; also, if they have performed particularly egregious vandalism, like putting racist abuse or unsourced accusations of criminality onto a BLP, always go straight for 4im.

Should you substitute a template when you place it on a user talk page, and how do you do it? (Hint - read the link before answering!)

Yes. It makes it more personal. You do it by adding {{subst:whatever warning here}} on their talk page

Yes, you should substitute it - it's not about making it personal though, it's about making sure that the text stays the same if the template is later changed, and indeed it allows the user to respond to any warning without editing the template itself.

What should you do if a user who has received a level 4 or 4im warning vandalises again?

Post it at Administration intervention against Vandalism.

Yep - use Twinkle to report at AIV, it makes it very easy.

Thanks Girth Summit. See you later! Minecrafter0271 (talk) 19:01, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Good work Minecrafter0271 - next task is below, time to go and revert some vandalism. GirthSummit _(blether) 13:23, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Find and revert some vandalism. Warn each user appropriately, using the correct kind of warning and level. For each revert/warning please fill in a line on the table below.

#	Diff of your revert	Your comment. If you report to AIV please include the diff	Trainer's Comment
1	diff	comment
2	diff	comment
3	diff	comment
4	diff	comment
5	diff	comment
6	diff	comment
7	diff	comment
8	diff	comment
9	diff	comment
10	diff	comment