Brickipedia:Counter-vandalism unit

Counter-vandalism unit
Report vandalism New pages patrol CVN Feed

Shortcut: BP:CVU BP:CVN

The Brickipedia Counter-vandalism Unit is a group of editors dedicated to keeping Brickipedia a clean and safe site for everyone. These editors not only improve the content of the wiki, but work to remove vandalism and spam. Members of the counter-vandalism unit have many tools that aid in fighting vandalism, such as VDA. Users who are involved in counter-vandalism may also be assigned rollback rights to help them undo vandalism faster.

Anyone can be involved with Brickipedia's counter-vandalism unit, but please put your name in the list at the bottom of the page.

Tasks and duties[edit source]

Patrollers and undoing vandalism[edit source]

Time, article name, difference between revisions, history.

Most members of the counter-vandalism unit are considered patrollers, or people who look through the recent changes and new pages looking for spam and vandalism. This is the easiest way to find vandalism, and an easy way to check edit to see if they are is to click the diff button beside each edit. A way to find possible vandalism it to look at the byte count, which is located to the right of the diff. If it is a positive number, then there was content added. If it is negative, then content was removed.

Before undoing an edit, always check the history and make sure that you get all of the edits undone. If the user or IP has edited more than once, then compare the current revision with the last good one, and click undo.

Click the "Compare selected revisions" button.

Warning vandals and reporting to administrators[edit source]

Once the vandalism is undone, all vandals should be warned based on the judgement of the user reverting.

If a vandal has already been warned and continues to vandalize, report the user on the admins' noticeboard. Administrators check the board regularly, and will be able to block the vandal from editing.

Related tools and user rights[edit source]

VDA[edit source]

The user interface of VDA.

VDA is a JavaScript application that allows users to revert vandalism and perform other menial vandal-fighting tasks much faster, and works like Twinkle on Wikipedia. It has many packages called libraries that perform different functions. One such package is called VDA Revert.

VDA Revert is very easy to use. On history pages, you can either click the Rollback button to perform the MediaWiki action of the same name or press Revert on any revision to revert back to that revision. When comparing revisions, you may press a button that says "Revert back to old revision" to revert to the revision shown on the left panel. Once you've selected the revision, VDA Revert prompts you for the reason why you reverted the edit(s): is it vandalism, good faith, or something else?

Users who want to use this counter-vandalism tool need to go into their personal common JS file (User:<insert name here>/common.js) and input the following code:

importScriptPage("MediaWiki:VDA.js", "vda");

$(function () {
    VDA.load("RV");
});

Any abuse of the code will result in the protection of your personal code file, and you will be blocked from editing depending on the severity of the abuse.

Other libraries include administrator/VSTF notification, vandal warning systems, RecentChanges viewers, and more. For more information, see VDA Wiki.

Rollback[edit source]

Rollback is a user right that allows a user to undo all of the recent edits by one user on one page. Rollback is assigned to users that are good at reverting vandalism, and can be trusted with a tool that undoes it faster. A user may request rollback rights on the admins' noticeboard. Rollback should be used for undoing blatant vandalism only, and undo should be used for the rest.

Many people have a strange notion that rollback should also be given as a sort of "award" for general good work around a wiki. This is not so, as rollback is a tool to fight vandalism, and nothing more.

Get involved[edit source]

Report vandalism[edit source]

Sometimes you can't revert all the vandalism, or you need a user blocked. When this is the case, please report it on Brickipedia:Vandalism reports. All administrators check that page, so the vandalism will be dealt with quickly.

Userboxes[edit source]

There are a few user boxes related to the CVU, which are shown below:

Userbox

Description

This user is a recent changes patroller.

These users often sit watching the RecentChanges.

This user is a newpage patroller.

These users watch and mark new pages as patrolled. They are also part of the new page patrol team.

Countervandalism Network[edit source]

To aid in finding and removing vandalism, a countervandalism IRC channel has been set up for all Brickimedia projects. All edits that could be vandalism are displayed on it, and have a link to the difference between the revisions. The channel is located on the freenode network at #cvn-brickimedia^{(Access the IRC)}. See Brickipedia:IRC for more information.

Members of the CVU[edit source]

Below is a full list of all CVU members. Feel free to put your name onto it!