User:OGWFP/Beginners guide to RC Patrol

I'm writing this guide for new wikipedians who may not know what they want to do, wikipedia is a big place and there are lots of maintanance tasks required to keep the site running smoothly, it can be very daunting to the new wikipedian, i certainly remember when i was new, i didn't know what i was meant to do, write an article? just keep reading until i found a typo? but soon i discovered WP:RCP, in my opinion, RCP is perfect for new wikipedians and is quite easy, i'm writing this guide or essay just to explain how i typically do it, but remember there's nothing wrong in doing it your way, as long as you get the job done.

What is a Patrol?

(Offical Page WP:Patrols)

The name is actually very self explanatory, just like a police officer, store detective or parking warden, you're patrolling for an offender and taking appropiate action, there are lots of patrols wikipedians do, Recent Changes is only one such patrol.

What Recent Changes Patrol is

(Offical Page WP:RCP)

During a RCP you'll be checking recent changes to pages on the encyclopedia and reverting edits deemed inappropiate, issuing warnings to people who make inappropiate edits, and welcome new users who make constructive edits, among other things.

What you'll be looking out for

(Offical Pages: WP:CVU WP:VANDALISM WP:Test edit WP:RS WP:COPYVIO)

What's deemed inappropiate to the wiki can be but are not limited to the following:

Vandalism (defacement of pages)

Adding of false information to pages

Adding information but without a reliable source cited

Test edits (edits done by daring new editors to really see if they can change things)

Copyvios

And many more.

Tools of the Trade

You can actually do RCP without any tools, but having tools helps a lot, for example by making the reversion of vandalism just a single click, and providing a UI to issue warnings to offending users.

The tools i use are WP:Twinkle and WP:RedWarn, follow the instructions to install them, you'll need to be autoconfirmed (i.e have an account) in order to use them, they carry strong warnings stating that misuse can get you in big trouble, which is true, but i think you'll find most tools you've used in your life can get you in serious trouble if misused.

Know your Tools

Don't just jump into RCP without knowing how to effectively use your tools, it shouldn't take a parking warden ten minutes to print a ticket, and the same applies to wikipedians doing RCP, you can practice on the User Warnings Sandbox, though do heed the warning not to test any feature that alerts the administrators, you can test rollbacking or reverting on the sandbox if you want.

Best devices to do RCP on

A desktop computer or a laptop with an external mouse, i couldn't fathom RCP on a phone, a keyboard is important as well, wikipedia is full of words, and a mouse with a scrollwheel is very useful as you'll be clicking the diff link a lot.

Methods of doing RCP

There are many ways you can do RCP, there for instance IRC feeds of the recent changes, but what i use is just Special:RecentChanges, i set filters to look for bad faith edits and edits from IPs and new accounts.

How to do RC Patrol

Let's get into it, but first a few things.

Work out a time you want to do your RC Patrol, think of wikipedia as a huge ship, and this being your watch or duty, it can be as infrequent or frequent as you like, or as regular or as sporadic, remember you aren't the only one, if you looked away from your recent changes for a minute wiki won't crash and burn, there's always someone to fill you in if you miss an oppertunity or were AFK at the time, remember you can always thank those people for doing the reversion for you.

Then using your preferred method, watch the recent changes, that's all there's to it.

But when you see a new change, click the diff button to see the change and check it, does it have problems? if it does, revert it and tell the editor what they did wrong.

if it's a silly edit, you could also give them a

Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

Prepare to see some stuff

There are lots of reasons someone may want to vandalize wikipedia, you'll find people dishing out their hate for certain famous people, people straight up blanking pages, and in general people going to town on any page that isn't protected, people tend to like to display how immature they are through wikipedia edits, just remember the trout if you need it.

But also remember to welcome new editors, if they did something wrong, like not citing an RS, tell them so and send a warm welcome encouraging the creation of an account, just like an actual cop every case won't be humanities worst, you will see for instance test edits, you can give those people a warm welcome and tell them that the sandbox is meant for it.

What to do with the persistant vandal

Sooner or later you'll come across that one person, luckily i've only seen them once in over 200 edits, they will continue to screw up articles and attempt revert wars with the very people trying to minimize their damage, just remember WP:3RR.

In my case we had reverted their work three times and given out several warnings, they did not care and started blasting our talk pages with colourful messages, i kept my calm and asked the teahouse, and followed their advice to file a report on WP:AIV, they were even nice enough to remove the colourful message from my talk page.

Also while i haven't had to do it, remember that you can request a page to be protected in the case of persistant vandalism, for example if bad rumours are spreading about someone whose page happens to be unprotected (RC Patrol doesn't have to be the whole wiki, i was patrolling Boris Johnsons page on the night he was kicked out from being PM).

Don't worry if someone gets there before you

It happens, sometimes it's not even a human, it's ClueBot NG, but if it is a human, you can thank them for the edit and give them wikilove.

Remember it's not all vandalism

It can be easy to get stuck in a rut where you see any flawed edit as vandalism, but remember the good faith, some humans are merely trying to add to articles or do test edits, telling them that they're edit was vandalism could put them off from becoming a wikipedian.

Sharing the fact

There are userboxes for that, including those for the CVU, Twinkle, Redwarn and both together, there is also the RC Patroller badge, you can have a small one in the top right corner of your user page, but i wanted a huge one, so i linked directly to the image.

Most importantly of all

Have fun!