User:AmiDaniel/VandalProof Help

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For a list of frequently asked questions, please refer to the FAQ. This help file is being updated. If you spot anything that is incorrect, please feel free to fix it!

Introduction

VandalProof contains many features; the key to getting the most out of it is to know what these features do, and how to use them. If at any time you are unsure how a feature works, or what it actually does, you can ask for help on the discussion page, or on the AmiDaniel forums.

To use VandalProof, you must be registered. For more information, and to register to use VandalProof, view the registration page.

Installation

1. To get VandalProof, you must download it. You can do so from AmiDaniel's website. You should download the .zip file, and unzip its contents to a new folder. You can create a shortcut to it by right-clicking the file, and choosing 'Send To>' then 'Desktop (create shortcut)'. VandalProof is now installed!

Quick-Start

1. Every time you run VandalProof, you will be displayed with an authentication page. If you are already logged into Wikipedia through IE, you should find that your username has been filled in for you. Click 'Verify Authorization'. The userlist will be checked to ensure you have permission to use the program.
2. If you have not already logged onto Wikipedia, you should click the 'Ch' button, and enter your username and password. You will be logged onto the Wikipedia, and should then choose 'Verify Authorization'.
3. Once you have been verified, you will be taken to the start page.
4. Import the list of administrators from the ‘’User Lists’’ tab. You may also want to add yourself to the whitelist (unless you are prone to vandalism and need to check your own edits).
5. You’re ready to start hunting for vandalism!

Getting Started

Once you have been authenticated by VandalProof, you are ready to begin using the program. You can jump right in, but this is not recommended. It is better if you take some time to learn how best to use the program.

The Interface

The VandalProof interface is divided into three main parts. These are:

• The menu-pane - this is found at the top of the VandalProof interface. It contains several menus that allow you to access the commands that you will use while fighting vandalism.
• The left-pane - this pane is used for several things. You can switch between its uses using the labels at the top.

• To keep track of your watchlist.
• To view and update the list of recent changes.
• To view the contributions of a certain user.
• To view the list of Administrators, and your White and Black lists.

• The right-pane - this pane is itself split into two sections.

• The button section, at the top, contains buttons that give you quick access to the most commonly used commands. What these buttons do changes depending on what you are viewing.
• The view section, below the buttons, is similar to a browser. It allows you to interact with Wikipedia.

The following sections go into more detail about what you'll find in each pane.

The menu-pane

The menu-pane is similar to that found at the top of most applications. Clicking through these menus, you will have access to all of the commands that you will need when fighting vandalism. Each command has a specific purpose that is clearly explained by its name.

The left-pane

The left-pane contains statistics that are useful in fighting vandalism. It is split into four sub-sections. You can switch between them by using the labels at the top.

My Watchlist

This will display recent changes to your watchlist in the left pane. Updating it will display a date stamp, and all changes that have happened to your watched pages since you last updated.

Recent Changes

This will display the list of recent changes. This is what your left pane will be displaying most of the time. The recent changes panel has, itself, three parts. Each of these is used for displaying some recent changes. As you click the update button, or it is automatically updated, changes will move down the lists. This allows you to go back to edits that happened a minute or two ago.

Recent changes are listed in a way that allows you to decide, at a glance, whether an edit requires closer investigation. If you think one does, clicking on it will display the edit, as well as other useful information, in the right-pane. It is split into the following sections:

• Article - the article name.
• User - the user. This can be an account name, or an IP address.
• +/- - how many characters the edit removed, or added. If this is a substantially large number, the edit will be flagged.
• Filter - how many words from the 'bad-words' list appear in the edit.
• Summary - the edit summary, if there was one.

User Contribs

This allows you to look up a user's contributions. This is useful for checking a user's history, and finding the other edits of persistent vandals.

User Lists

This displays the list of Administrators, and your White and Black lists. White and Black lists allow you to keep track of users you think above vandalism, and persistent vandals.

• White List. Your white list allows to you to track users who you think are above vandalism, and won't do it. You can choose for edits made by users on your white list to be flagged in the recent changes panel, and you will usually not need to check their contributions. Your whitelist should be used sparingly, as no one is truly above vandalism.

• Black List. Your black list allows you to keep track of vandals. Whenever you revert a user's changes, their username or IP address will be automatically added to your blacklist. You can choose for edits made by users on your blacklist to be flagged in your recent changes panel; these edits usually require special attention.

The right-pane

The right-pane is split into two sections.

The Buttons

The buttons at the top of the right pane allow quick access to the most frequently used commands - namely reverting vandalism, and placing templates on user talk pages. These buttons are context-sensitive - this means that they change depending on what you are viewing. When you are viewing a 'diff' (a difference between two versions of an article) they will give you the ability to rollback to the older version, and automatically warn the user. When you are viewing a user talk page, they will provide access to various templates.

The Main View

The main view, at the bottom of the right-pane, functions in much the same way as a browser. You can browse Wikipedia as you would normally from within it. It is here that article 'diffs' and user talk pages are displayed when you access them from the left-pane. The main view has multiple tabs on. You can use these as you would a normal browser - for checking sources and so on. To open a link in a new tab, hold down the 'Ctrl' button while clicking the link. To empty a tab, double click it. Clicking a change in the left-pane will display the diff in the currently active tab.

Patrolling

At the core of VandalProof is the ability to easily patrol and look for vandalism in Recent Changes, Your Watchlist, and User Contributions. The typical cycle for reverting vandalism is to use the display tools to display edits in diff format, and when you identify vandalism, use the buttons at the top of the page to simultaneously revert the vandalism and add a suitable warning to the user's page.

Recent Changes

You’ll likely spend most of your time using VandalProof patrolling recent changes. As such, the panel is highly customisable.

Most of the customisation can be done from the 'RC Preferences' page. You can access this from the 'File' menu. From this panel, you can customise the colours that will be used, what will actually be highlighted, whether changes should be highlighted using boldface, what namespaces should be checked and so on. Once you have set your preferences, you can confirm them by clicking 'Apply' then the window should be closed using 'OK'.

When you have configured the panel, you can start viewing recent changes. Clicking on an edit in this list will load a summary of the change made in the right-pane and will enable the eight distinct rollback buttons (see Non-Admin Rollback Function below). After you have viewed an edit, the edit will appear gray in the recent changes list to help you keep track of which edits you have not yet proofed.

You can choose to update manually, or you can ask the program to update for you. To do this, select a number from the 'Update every:' drop-down menu box, and click the start button. If you want to pause it for a short time, click the pause button.

Watchlist

To patrol articles on your watchlist, click the "My Watchlist" tab on the left of the screen. Then click the "Update List" tab as often as you like to update the display. From here, this works very similar to the "Recent Changes" tab—just click the change you wish to view and review it in the main section on the right of the display.

In the "My Watchlist" pane, the editor's username will appear in single curly braces to the right of the article name. If the editor is on your whitelist, a 'W' will appear to the right of their name (ex: {Username - W}). If they are an admin, 'admin' will appear (ex: {Username - admin}).

Non-Admin Rollback

Rollback One Edit

When viewing a comparison between two versions of an article (a diff) in the main browser, the eight command buttons at the top will be enabled and will have the captions “Rollback”, “Rollback {{test1-n}}”, “Rollback {{test1a-n}}”, etc. When you click on one of these buttons, it will restore the article to the version on the left side of the main window (using the popups autoclick method) and will then automatically post the selected template on the talk page of the user whose edit you reverted (test1, test2, etc.) along with a link to the reverted edit. It will then also add the reversion to your Vandalism Log and will update your statistics.

When you click on a rollback button, the program will check if the prior edit was also by the same editor. If it was, you will be asked if you want to view all the edits by this user, or simply rollback the edit displayed. If you choose to view all edits, the screen will refresh to show the edit difference between the current edit and the last version by a different editor. Clicking on a rollback button will now rollback all the edits.

If another editor has changed the page after you view it but before you click the rollback button, an edit conflict will be displayed and you must resolve the edit conflict. In this case the user warning is not added to the user's talk page (assuming you clicked a rollback button that includes a user warning).

Customizing the Buttons

Though not particularly user-friendly to do, the eight buttons that appear above the main browser are customizable. These buttons have two separate modes: Rollback and User Talk. When viewing a diff, the buttons will be in rollback mode, where clicking one will revert the edit and post the associated template on the talk page of the user whose edited you reverted. When viewing a userpage or user talk page, the buttons will be in User Talk mode, where clicking one will simply post the associated template.

To customize these buttons, open up the text file "CustomButtons.txt" in the same directory as you have VandalProof installed. In this file you will see the Rollback buttons defined in this format:

<ROLLBACK #>
BUTTON CAPTION
WARNING TEXT

And the User Talk buttons are defined in this format:

<TALK #>
BUTTON CAPTION
WARNING TEXT
EDIT SUMMARY

• BUTTON CAPTION: This is the text that is displayed on the button in the right-pane.
• WARNING TEXT: This is the text or template that will be posted on the user page. If you click a rollback button, this text will be used to warn the user. If you click a talk button, it will simply place that message or template on their talk page.
• EDIT SUMMARY: This is the edit summary that will be used when this message is posted on a talk page. Note that it is only available for the talk buttons.

If you change any of the lines, your changes will be visible the next time you load VandalProof. Be careful, however, to keep each property on the same line. When using templates with required parameters--i.e., {{nn-warn}} requires a Pagename parameter--you can simply input %P in place of the parameter. When %P is present in a template associated with a Rollback template, it will be replaced by the name of the article you reverted. When present in User Talk buttons, VandalProof will prompt you for a page name, which will then replace the %P.

Defaults

The rollback and user talk buttons are customizable (see Customize Buttons below). However, by default, the rollback options are:

• “Rollback” - merely reverts the edits, without posting any notice to their talk page; useful when the edit was most likely a simple mistake.
• “Rollback {{test1-n}}” - refers to the vandalism as an experiment and asks them to use a sandbox in the future.
• “Rollback {{test1a-n}}” - content removal notice and asks them to be careful as their edit may have been unintentional.
• “Rollback {{test2-n}}” - informs them that their nonsense is considered vandalism.
• “Rollback {{test2a-n}}” - sterner content removal notice.
• “Rollback {{test3-n}}” - requests them to stop their vandalism.
• “Rollback {{test4-n}}” - last warning with a stop sign.
• “Rollback (custom)” - allows you to use a custom message or template to warn the user.

The user talk buttons add the selected template to the user page that you are currently viewing. By default, the user talk options are:

• “{{welcome}}” - adds the standard Wiki welcome template for users with accounts
• “{{anon}}” - adds the standard Wiki welcome template for anonymous users
• “{{summary}}” - adds the standard Wiki summary template
• “{{Adw}}” - adds the advisory that an article you have been editing has been listed for deletion. You will be prompted for the article name.
• “{{Drmafd}}” - adds the "do not remove articles for deletion" template
• “{{Nn-warn}}” - adds the warning about not having notability criteria in an article. You will be prompted for the article name.
• “{{drmspeedy}}” - adds the "do not remove articles for speedy deletion" template
• “{{wr}}” - adds the warning that removing tags from your page is itself vandalism

Rollback All User Contribs

A screenshot of the "Rollback Contributions" feature.

When dealing with particularly persistent vandals, it's often the case that upwards of thirty edits need be removed, which even for administrators is quite a tedious task. Thus, I've now simplified the process of removing mass vandalism from one user to just four simple clicks.

Click one. To begin, you need to load the user's contributions inside of VandalProof. This still works much as it did in version 1.0: When viewing a user's talk page or an edit made by a user, you can simply click the small "C" button above the main browser, or you can type in a username under the User Contribs tab and click Update. You may notice that, unlike in version 1.0, VP now only loads the edits by the user that are on top (in other words, no one has modified the page since that edit). Clicking on an article's name in the list then produces a comparison between the last edit and the preceding edit, and you can still revert it like you used to.

Click two. Click on the button below the contributions list titled "Rollback All (loads in new window)." A small window will load that lists the contributions exactly as they appear in the contributions list on the main window. Next to each, you should see a small checkmark and two columns, Edits on Top and Revert To.

Click three. Click on the button titled Retrieve Edits. You will now see the columns next to the article filled in with the number of edits the user has made to the page since the previous user edited it, and it will also fill in the id number for the version of the page prior to the user's edits. This typically takes around 10-20 seconds for up to 30 edits. You may notice that some of the items will be unchecked--this may be because the user's edits to the page are older than one day, as edits older than one day are typically sound, constructive edits. If you see a zero in the Edits on Top column, either someone else has edit the page since the user or the user created a new page--new pages have to be handled one at a time, as you cannot "rollback" a page creation. Double-clicking on an item in the list will force a new IE window to open with the diff between the user's last edit and the version of the page prior to the user's modifications.

Click four. Click on Rollback. It will revert all checked pages in the list to the version specified by the number in the "Revert To" column, the version of the page prior to the user's edits. This usually takes about 30 seconds, depending upon the number of edits it has to revert.

Please note that this feature should be used sparingly and carefully in cases of repeated vandalism by one user. Using it to revert good-faith edits may be considered vandalism, and, as with any feature of VandalProof, it should not be used in edit wars, perpetuation of vandalism, attacks on contributors, or for any other counterproductive purpose. While it only takes a few seconds to revert all of an editor's contributions, it may take the editor a long time to undo your actions unless they too have access to VandalProof. I've debugged the feature quite extensively with my own sockpuppets and IPs and can say with 99% certainty that, when used correctly, the feature is bug free.

Vandalism Log

In the second position of your menu bar, which is at the top left of your screen, you will see "Vandalism Log". This is for handling and viewing your count, mistakes, and logs.

Selecting "Vandalism Log" (by clicking or using the Alt-L hotkey), provides you with three choices:

• "View Count" - shows you have many reverts you've made and how many mistakes you have made, simply select it to view it.
• "Record Mistake" - allows you to report which of your reverts you made in error. Selecting this will prompt you for an ID number, enter the ID number of the revert you made in error (see "VandalismLog" below to get the number). You will then be prompted to confirm that you have the correct article. Note: This will not actually change the article nor the user's talk page. You will have to do that manually.
• "Update Log" - allows you to create header and footer code as well as updating your logs. Selecting this will bring up a 3-tab window, one for each of your logs. To update the code and the logs, click the update button at the bottom of the tab window. The three logs are:
  • • "VandalismStats" - This code is pre-entered for you. You only need to change it if you want to.
    • "VandalismLog" - This has places for header and footer code to customize your Log report. The ID number of a revert is displayed on the left side of the log under the "No" column (see below for log viewing information).
    • "VandalismMistakes" - This has places for header and footer code to customize your Mistakes report.

VandalProof will display these logs in Wikipedia for you as subpages of your user page. To view them, click their update buttons to ensure you will see the latest information. Then view your user home page. At the end of your username, enter the name of the log you want to view: VandalismStats, VandalismLog, or VandalismMistakes. To view the logs without having to type this, make links on one of your subpages.

Non-customizable buttons

The CTWB buttons perform these functions on the user/IP displayed in main part of the right-pane.

• C = Display their Contribs
• T = Display their Talk page
• W = Add them to your Whitelist
• B = Add them to your Blacklist