Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Think tank/Archive1

When to use Level 4im

We haven't done a think tank discussion since a deletion attempt ago, so I thought now would be a good time to bring that aspect back into the CVU so this page isn't as useless. So, for our first topic, I'm curious what you all think about the Level 4im warning tags. I personally am not sure when to use them and when to use Levels 1-4. Which do you all choose and why and under what circumstances? --Triadian (talk) 06:50, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Back before the BLP warnings came into wider use, 4im was a place for the worst of the worst, which was usually slander and libel. That's a bit of a generalization, but I use it according to my own discretion. bibliomaniac15 00:05, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Using Huggle, I don't really have any control over what type of warnings. But, for me, I find that the Level 4im warning is basically a waste of time unless your dealing with a known sockpuppet or vandal bot. For an Administrator to block or ban a user they must have four warnings before they can do anything. Now, unless they delete a extremely popular article and fills it with extreme amounts of vulgar language and maybe a few pictures, it would seem to me the only real time to use it. Plus, with the 'expect good faith' it's kind of hard to use since most of these vandals are either anonymous users who just started making edits. Well, just my two cents. Renaissancee (talk) 04:39, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

My personal use of the level 4im in any particular warning is when the person has multiple warnings for other related things. Like say if the person had L2-3 about page blanking, L-2 about testing, and then they vandalized something. I don't want to use an inaccurate template, like say L4 blanking, but at the same time I think giving them a lower level warning about vandalism would be the wrong response. So then I use L4im relevant to whatever I reverted. I hope that this wasn't as hard to read as I fear it may have been. -FaerieInGrey (talk) 09:40, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

How about this: Use 4im if any assumption of good faith would be insulting to the person's intelligence. This should only be used if there is no possible excuse, or at least, none that makes any sense whatsoever. --Thinboy00 @207, i.e. 03:57, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Haha, sounds good to me. --Triadian (talk) 04:08, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

My attitude is to try and assume good faith, ie. that the editor is just testing Wikipedia and doesn't mean any real harm, or they've made a bit of a mistake. If that's blatantly not the case, and no amount of imagination can make me think that they're not deliberately vandalising, then a 4im it is. As an admin, I don't agree with Renaissancee's view above that the vandal must have four warnings before an admin can do something. I look for a final warning, or a level 3 warning if things are particularly bad. It's not the number of warnings, it's the clarity of "if you carry on, you will be blocked" that's required. waggers (talk) 09:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I use 4im warnings when it meets one of these criteria:

• vandalism on highly used template
• vandalism that can earn a lawsuit
• first edit was attack on user Leujohn ^(talk) 13:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I would add things such as multipule edits of major vandalism in quick sucession, highly sophisticated vandalism (i.e. using parsers, advanced wikimarkup, and CSS) that causes a major disruption (i.e browser crashing), and obvious use of multipule socks at one to vandalize (place 4im on the puppetmaster's page). In all cases the "thank you" replacement parameter in the template should specify the specific reason, abbreviated list of pages affected, and/or abbreviated list of socks. This behavior usuall indicates that the user has no possible good faith, and little chance of reform.--Ipatrol (talk) 21:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Twinkle and rollback

I believe there was some discussion of reconciling the two, but I can't seem to find any of it, and IIRC it went nowhere. Thoughts? --Thinboy00 @219, i.e. 04:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Reaction to "Wikipedia:Revert, block, ignore"

So how 'bout it folks? Which side of Wikipedia:Revert, block, ignore do we side with more and can anything useful come from this essay for a future guideline, essay, etc? --Triadian (talk) 04:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiment of the essay, but I disagree that the CVU and other related resources for anti-vandalism are harmful. Our primary advantage over vandals is our organization (except for Steven Colbert stuff, which is moderately unusual). On the other hand, all the barnstars (particularly the RickK one, but not limited to it) may be harmful (as well as the userboxen etc.). I appreciate RickK's contributions as much as anyone else, but I feel that the more we glorify ourselves as warriors, the more the vandals will do the same. User:Grawp is arguably an example of this, but I don't feel like arguing over that right now... none of us really understand what his thought pattern is, or how to best react to it (see the mailing list for more on this -- some people think we should go to the police, others totally disagree. I haven't been keeping up with the thread so I don't know the status on that.). --Thinboy00 @023, i.e. 23:32, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it can be ascertained whether the organization does more good than harm or vice versa. Suggesting that one way or another is hypothetical. The userboxes and awards probably encourage more people to combat vandalism... more than vandals take advantage of that. Getting in somebody's head is virtually impossible, so I don't think anyone really knows what such rewards/banners do. --Triadian (talk) 01:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

If we rename defender of the wiki (which isn't used much now anyway), we will probably be seen as less paramilitary, which would be IMHO a Good Thing. --Thinboy00 @143, i.e. 02:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

My 2 cents: After the abuse filter is implemented, pattern vandalism may be a thing of the past thanks to the instant RBI that the abuse filter provides. (The AntiAbuseBot is doing a pretty good job anyway.) If people begin to evade the filter, it can be quietly updated by an admin. The value of the CVU and other anti-vandalism efforts is in reverting non-pattern vandals, who just vandalize on a lark and don't even know that the CVU exists. --N Shar (talk · contribs) 22:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

My thoughts: The methos is generally correct, but there are some bad-faith edits here for the sole reason to destroy Wikipedia. (Trust me, I know one such person) I oppose that things like WP:CVU is harmful because for the bad-faith kind of editor, it raises a phsycological effect letting that editor know that there is organized resistance against vandalism, and to the bored student mentioned in the essay, I doubt they know that we even exist. Leujohn ^(talk) 13:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism Question

According to Wikipedia:The motivation of a vandal, attention seeking is the most common purpose for vandalism. Therefore, shouldn't there be a bot or two dedicated to patrol of featured lists and articles? —Anhydrobiosis (via posting script) 04:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Cluebot and friends all do vandalism patrol AFAIK, but it isn't targeted to Featured Articles in particular... --Thinboy00 @051, i.e. 00:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Anonymous edits

This might be a FAQ that I haven't seen discussed anywhere, but what would be the impact if only registered users were allowed to make edits? I saw earlier some studies revealed that 95%-odd of vandalism is done anonymously, so seemingly limiting edits to registered users would remove a lot of this problem. It would also require a would-be editor to register first, which could also reduce spontaneous edits, and thus improve quality. Is there a reason for allowing anonymous editing? Wdford (talk) 12:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

This has came up a lot of times. See WP:Editors should be logged in users. Leujohn ^(talk) 13:45, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Another problem is the server load. If every vandal registered for an account every time they spammed, how would the server keep up? Quintus314 (talk) 15:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but surely by requiring an account to be created, you would discourage most spur-of-the-moment vandalism. Mind, this is too big a can of worms to open purely for a vandalism front, as most constructive edits and corrections are made by IP addresses, not registered accounts. Mouse Nightshirt | talk 01:11, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Taking one statistic in isolation usually gives a distorted image, a lot of simple vandalism probably comes from anonymous users, however so do a lot of minor fixes and many established editors started dabbling with wikipedia as anons, so throwing the baby out with the bathwater would spring to mind. Also take into account that many of the long term vandalism problems come from registered accounts, delivering some of the worst vandalism such as the subtle difficult to spot vandalism.
It's also a foundation issue that non-registered users be permitted to edit.
You may also like to consider m:GAY --82.7.40.7 (talk) 20:57, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

if pages which are tempting targets for vandals are set to logged in users only, there might be less vandalism- if someone wants to target it tthey have to create an account- not an outright protect, just the ones that are anonymously vandalised- less work and we keep our anonymous ccontributors Fastpatrol, wikimaintenance and counter vandalism unit hows it goin? 09:42, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Analyses

• Report: How long does vandalism survive on Wikipedia? Good news — As of June 2009, 25% of all vandalism is reverted within 60 seconds, and the median time-to-correction is down to four minutes. However, there is room for improvement in detecting long-lasting vandalism. —Aetheling (talk) 18:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC).

Great news.... but are the analyses being updated this was from 2009 its over two years old are these analyses being done on a regular basis?

Simsy (talk) 11:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)