User:Haemo/Vandalism

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Here's a quick guide, based on my experience in the trenches.

[edit] Equipment

In order to fight vandalism effectively, it's necessary to have several basic tools. There are a wide variety of all-in-one counter-vandalism tools, such as Vandal Sniper and Vandal Proof, but I've found it more effective to simply do it "by hand" - with a little help. The tool listed below, form an impressive vandal-fighting toolkit:

Being able to open multiple pages in a single window in an immense help, since it allows you to "thread" problem cases, or simply open several different recent changes at once.
I've used most of the major anti-vandalism programs out there, and they simply don't allow the speed and flexibility of Vandal Fighter. It's small, quick, and runs as a Java application.
  • Twinkle - or a similar set of utilities
Twinkle, and its sister projects, offer amazing tools for counter-vandalism activities. They allow three different rollback options for pages, and a host of warning templates. Simply invaluable - when you don't have them, you wonder how you ever got along.

[edit] Intelligence

In other words, know your enemy. Recent studies have shown that 97% of edits identifiable as vandalism come from anonymous (IP) editors. Moreover, only 3% of all edits can be construed as vandalism - so, it behooves the sensible editor not to analyze all edits in the Recent Changes log[1]. Instead, focus mostly on IP-edits - you'll get much more "bang for your buck". You can adjust these settings easily in Vandal Fighter, using the tabs. Experiment, and see what works best for you.

In addition, a majority of edits in excess of +/-400 bytes by an IP editor are vandalism - especially when they are on established pages about notable topics. Watch edits such as these carefully. Blanking a page (or nearly) is always vandalism - often, you'll be so swamped just reverting blankings that you'll get behind; don't sweat it.

Over time, you acquire a set of bromides, to guide you - here are my rules of thumb for edits which are likelier to be vandalism:

  • Schools, colleges, and universities - kids (of all ages) love to insert vandalism into these articles, usually about their peer group.
  • Celebrities, famous bands, etc - celebrities like Ashley Tisdale and bands like Nirvana attract a fair number of misguided "anti-fans".
  • Name pages - such as Alexander routinely attract self-referential vandalism.
  • Contentious issues - such as Abortion, The Holocaust, and Genocide attract a lot of vandalism, typically of the content-removal type.
  • Date pages - such as May 29 also tend to attract self-referential vandalism.