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User:Yunshui/Adoption/Kevin12xd/Vandals

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Good faith and vandalism

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  • Please explain below the difference between a good faith edit and a vandalism edit, and how you would tell them apart.
Good-faith edit: An edit made by a user to intentionally improve an article (at least from the editor's point of view).
Vandalism: An obvious edit made to "mess-up" articles and complicate the Community.
You can tell them apart by considering what was edited, and by looking at the page's "View history" and comparing the suspected vandalism edit with a previous edit.
checkY Yes, that's a very good summary of both concepts.
  • Please find and revert three examples of good faith but unhelpful edits, and three examples of vandalism. Please warn the editors with the correct template and give the diffs of your revisions below.

Good faith but unhelpful edits:

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☒N That's pretty clearly vandalism, and it wasn't you who reverted it.
checkY Good example: this editor was clearly trying to add content but was not aware of WP:NPOV or WP:V.
checkY Borderline, but assuming good faith was the right thing to do here.

Vandalism edits:

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☒N That looks like a good faith attempt to change the formatting to me, rather than a deliberate attempt to break the table. The IP has a history of making small but generally productive edits in this topic area.
checkY Good call, definitely vandalism.
☒N Not clear cut vandalism; all the editor did was remove a wikilink and a line break - they may have had good reasons for doing so.

Warning and reporting

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  • Please answer the following questions
    • Why do we warn users?
We warn users to ensure that they realize what they are doing is wrong and therefore give them a chance to realize their mistake and help out Wikipedia..
checkY That's definitely the main reason, but there are a couple of other benefits to warning correctly...
Warning correctly will let the editor know that their edits are indeed being watched, and vandalism edits will not be lost. HOWEVER, taking a look at how editors should not bite newbies, it might be a good idea to post the warning not immediately after the offending edit, but maybe revert it, then wait a minute or three before posting the warning. Then again, I could be wrong, because that policy may only apply to the patrollers of new pages. Please let me know if I am wrong.
checkY Yep, that's right. As far as the speed of the warning goes, I'd recommend getting in there as quickly as possible - warning vandals, assuming the warning s correct, isn't especially bitey; AGF is not a suicide pact.
    • When would a 4im warning be appropriate?
When the user has used blatant vandalism a few times or has performed basic vandalism a few times.
checkY Yes - I also consider 4im warnings appropriate for single instances of highly egrarious vandalism, such as extreme attack pages or edits that need to be RevDeled.
    • What should you do if a user who has received a level 4 or 4im warning vandalises again?
Inform an administarator to place a block on that user.
checkY Partially right - how would you inform the administrator?
You would use the Administrator Intervention against Vandalism page.
checkY You meanAIV, of course, which is absolutely correct.
  • Please give examples of three warnings that you might need to use while vandal patrolling and explain what they are used for.
The warnings are generally classified by order of their severity (Level 1, Level 2 etc.)
  • Hello, I'm Kevin12xd. I wanted to let you know that I undid one or more of your recent contributions because it didn't appear constructive. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks!
I usually use this for good faith but unconstructive edits. It doesn't work well with obvious vandalism, though.
checkY Whilst your answer isn't technically correct (it should be "Used for first instances of vandalism to encourage users to contribute productively", or something similar), I actually agree with your assessment of the template - I too often skip level one warnings where the vandalism is clearly deliberate and egrarious. Your answer also shows that you;ve given some independent though to the process, which I admire.
  • Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted or removed. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you.
I use this template thr most often. It is used for instances of clear-cut vandalism that doesn't seem too severe (a severe instance of vandalism would be something along the lines of a racist comment, etc.).
checkY Yes, that's a pretty decent rationale.
I usually use this template for instances of serious vandalism. This can be described as a softer substitution for a 4im warning, as the level 3 warning cautions the vandal about recieving a block.
checkY Whilst that's sort of true, you should use this template extremely rarely as a first response to vandalism - it's really for instances where other, less severe warnings have already been given and ignored.
Yes, all genuine vandalism and appropriate levels of warning.
checkY Good revert and correct template warning.
☒N This user hadn't been warned, and appeared to be acting in good faith; the report was declined as a result
☒N Whilst you were right to revert the promotional edit to Barpeta district, the previous warning for this IP was nearly three weeks old - there hadn't been enough recent activity to warrant blocking the IP address. (As an administrative rule of thumb, I personally tend to avoid blocking IPs unless they've committed four or five instances of vandalism in the last 48 hours.)

Dealing with difficult users

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  • Why do we deny recognition to trolls and vandals?
We deny recognition to trolls and vandals so that they will not "inspire" other users to do the same. The denied recognition also increases the chance of them realizing that no one likes the vandalism and no one is receiving the terrible message that the vandal may be trying to send.
checkY Partly right, but the issue of them inspiring others rarely raises its head - more important is the fact that recognition often inspires the vandals themselves.
  • How can you tell between a good faith user asking why you reverted their edit, and a troll trying to harass you?
It is quite evident; a good-faith user trying to ask you why you reverted their edit would USUALLY use proper grammar paired with proper spelling. They would speak civilly, and at least try to address only the situation at hand. However, a troll trying to harass me may make intentional spelling errors, as well as make personal attacks. They may also drift of the topic of the revert.
checkY I dunno, I've dealt with my fair share of trolls who were perfectly well-spoken (as well as a few genuine editors who couldn't spell for toffee). A more reliable way to tell the difference is in their responses to you: if they keep plugging away in the same vein after you've explained the problem with their edits, you may be on troll turf. If they accept your reasoning, ask for help or provide cogent counter-arguments, it's worth assuming good faith. It can be very difficult to tell, sometimes; it's worth looking over their edit history and talkpage history if you're unsure.

Protection and speedy deletion

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  • In what circumstances should a page be semi-protected?
A page in which the content seems to attract vandals and needs to be semi-protected to keep some vandals OUT.
checkY That's close to correct - can you explain briefly how you would recognise such a page?
Take a peek at the History of the article. If it seems to attract ClueBot, IPs and edits with no summaries, with the vandalism shown when you check the diffs, then the page should be semi-protected.
checkY Yes, that's pretty accurate.
  • In what circumstances should a page be fully protected?
A page should be fully protected, meaning it can only be edited by administrators if the page is very visible, such as the Main Page, or Wiki.png.
checkY Partly right, but there's another common reason for fully-protecting a page.
If edit warring between (auto)confirmed users and vandalism from (auto)confirmed users persists on a semi-protected page or a PC page.
checkY Yep, bingo.
  • In what circumstances should a page be speedy deleted?

There are many instances in which a page should be tagged for speedy deletion (or in your case, deleted...flat sysop joke). Some of the more common instances are unsourced BLPs. Starting from...erm...I forgot the date, but Twinkle has instructed me that, I believe on a certain date after April, all BLPs must have verifiable sources, or they may be deleted. Otherwise, it may be tagged as an unsourced BLP. Another (unfortunately) common reason for speedily deleting a page is if the page can classify as an attack page. As a courtesy, all attack pages must be blanked as well as tagged. One more circumstance in which a page should be speedily deleted is if the author requests deletion, either explicitly (by blanking the page) or inexplicitly, by asking on their Talkpage.

checkY Unsourced BLPs aren't speedily deleted; they get tagged with BLPPROD, which is a different process. Attack pages and author requests are a couple of the criteria (and well done for noting the convention of blanking attack pages), but there are many more. What you've said is correct, but where can you find all the reasons for speedy deletion?
  • Correctly tag one page for speedy deletion and post the diff below.
Here
checkY Yes. You could also have tagged it with G12 (copyright violation), since the text is taken from www.reverbnation.com/thewildcore (and a number of other sites). Since it was in article space at the time, A7 (no indication of notability (band)) would also have been appropriate. You can add multiple critera using Twinkle by ticking the checkbox at the top of the Twinkle window. Malik Shabazz subsequently moved the page into userspace rather than deleting it, but it looks like he missed the copyvio; I've now deleted the page under G12.
  • Correctly request the protection of one page (semi or full); post the diff of your request (from WP:RPP) below.
Here is my request, which actually led to the protection of the page.
checkY It did indeed (movelocked, silverlocked and pending changes, that's some pretty heavy duty protection!). Good call, well done.
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