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“

Civility, Maturity, Responsibility

”

Current events

New warning templates have been fully implemented.
WikiScanner, a tool to identify edits from specific organizations, has been released
Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Task Force is now up and running. Please feel free to join.

Guidelines and policy

If an edit meets the criteria of vandalism, revert it. Please be graceful in doing so and do not bite newcomers. Vandalism should be dealt with using warning templates; if it continues nevertheless, it should be reported directly to the administrators using the links below.

Tools such as blocking and sock puppet reports should not be used as punishment, but rather as prevention against future vandalism. The CVU's purpose is to repair and prevent vandalism, not to punish users, for which being a member of the CVU grants no special authority.

Tools

The following is a list of tools and resources available for those who want to clean up with a more systematic approach.

Monitoring

Shortcut

WP:OLDSCHOOL

The old school way is to load recent changes and check the (diff) links. It can be filtered according to featured articles, good articles, living people, new accounts' contribs, IPs' contribs, mobile contribs (as these are more prone to vandalism, see Help:Recent changes), and even by likelihood of being damaging or bad-faith. Searching for pages by their namespace and specific tags (e.g. VisualEditor, possible BLP issue or vandalism, etc.) can also be done. If they contain harmful edits, you revert to the previous version. However, the high volume of edits that occur each second makes this difficult to accomplish most of the time, and several tools have been created to simplify the process:

Huggle is a fast diff browser which parses edits from users and sorts them by predicted level of vandalism. Once identified, malicious edits can be reverted in the click of a button. Due to the fast-paced nature of the program, users on the English Wikipedia must have the rollback permission to use it; however, this is not a requirement on other wikis.
IRC Bots report at the #cvn-wp-en ^connect channel on the Libera Chat network list suspected vandalism edits (for example: blankings, edits made by blacklisted users, etc.).
Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool monitors the RSS feed and flags edits with common vandalism terms. It also has a live spellcheck feature.
RCMap geolocates anonymous edits from the IRC live feed and displays them on a world map, with links to diffs. Supports multiple languages in a unified interface.
Please be aware that this program is not hosted on Wikimedia Foundation servers
RC Patrol is a lightweight script that makes it easier to patrol recent changes. After installing, visit this page. The script uses ORES to automatically determine whether the edit needs review. You need rollback or admin permissions to use the script, just like with Huggle.
RedWarn patrol can be activated by any user of RedWarn on the recent changes page, quick reviewing and one-click rollback of disruptive edits.
SWViewer (direct link) is a user-friendly webapp with simple and intuitive UI that enables you to monitor recent changes in real-time. It also provides features to monitor multiple wikis at the same time. In order to use the application, rollback permission is required.
AntiVandal is another web-based vandalism monitoring tool, similar to Huggle in User Interface. It can be used to quickly revert vandalism and warn the vandal using escalating or 4im only warning templates. Users can also directly report vandals to Administrator Intervention against Vandalism after sufficient warning has been given. Rollback or admin permission is required to use the script.
WatchlistBot is an XMPP bot that sends messages in realtime when articles are modified. Users with a Jabber account can subscribe to the bot and watch both articles and users.

Rollback tools

These tools extend the rollback feature by allowing you to specify a summary when using rollback. They may also offer additional features:

Huggle
RedWarn
SWViewer
Ultraviolet
AntiVandal
User:Gracenotes/rollback.js
User:Ilmari Karonen/rollbacksummary.js
User:Writ_Keeper/rollbackSummary.js
User:Plantaest/TwinkleMobile (using Twinkle on mobile)

Rollback-like scripts

These tools can be used to achieve the same effect as rollback if you do not have it.

RC patrol script gives non-administrators revert, filter, and popup tools while using the monobook skin.
RC review script for today's featured article gives all editors access to see recent changes in the featured article appearing on the Main page
Please be aware that this program is not hosted on Wikimedia Foundation servers
Navigation popups are a set of utilities that appear when hovering over wikilinks. Particularly, hovering over links of old versions provides a "revert" link.
Twinkle gives both non-administrators and administrators three types of rollback functions. Other functions include a full library of speedy deletion functions, user warnings, pseudo-automatic reporting of vandals, and more.
RedWarn, like Twinkle, gives both non-administrators and administrators nearly twenty types of rollback functions, including a "rollback preview" and "quick rollback".
Ultraviolet also provides several different types of rollback functions for both non-administrators and administrators, like RedWarn.
mobileUndo (new version) a script which allows you to revert when using the mobile interface.

Special pages

User:Adam1213/warn is a page that simplifies the process of warning vandals by allowing warnings to be submitted to specific users directly from the page.

Task Forces

Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit A voluntary group who will provide assistance at times of high levels of vandalism and advice on counter vandalism methods.
Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol Another voluntary group who will check recent changes for recently edited pages and intervene if necessary.

IRC channels

Note that these are not operated by or affiliated with Wikipedia.

#cvn-wp-en ^connect Primary RC bot listing (Activity feed only, discussion takes place in #wikipedia-en ^connect)
For a list of bot commands, see CVNBot Documentation. To use these commands, you must have a NickServ registration, and be voiced by a channel operator.
#wikimedia-unifications ^connect Account creations
#cvn-commons-uploads ^connect File uploads
#cvn-wp-en-cluenet ^connect Channel that reroutes information from ClueNet. (Read-only, only staff and bots can speak)

Discord server

A Discord server has been started to help coordinate anti-vandalism response - please consider joining.

Join now

Vandalism Detection Score Services

WMF ORES is a web service and API that provides machine learning as a service for Wikimedia projects maintained by the Scoring Platform team. The system is designed to help automate critical wiki-work – for example, vandalism detection and removal. Currently, the two general types of scores that ORES generates are in the context of “edit quality” and “article quality.”^[1]

Other

Template:Vandalism information, a tool used as an indication of the current overall level of vandalism that is taking place on Wikipedia. On the page, click the edit button below the vandalism meter to change its level from 5 to 1 and/or add a short comment; 5 indicates very low levels of vandalism, and 1 indicates extremely high. You can add the vandalism information template to your userpage to stay up to date. See Template talk:Vandalism information for different styles.
Countervandalism Network, volunteer group that operates the "#cvn-" channels. This group is not owned by or affiliated with Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikilink scripts enable you to double click on [[wikilinks]] within IRC clients. Useful if doing patrol on the IRC channels.
There are other scripts that may be handy while doing cleanup (not necessarily vandalism cleanup). Check them at WikiProject User scripts/Scripts (WP:JS)
Template:Toolbar experiments, a tool to help with finding test edits in articles.

References

^ "ORES - MediaWiki". www.mediawiki.org. Retrieved 2019-07-24.

Recognition

The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar (formerly the Anti-Vandalism Barnstar) may be awarded to those who show great contributions to protecting and reverting attacks of vandalism on Wikipedia. It was introduced on February 27, 2005 by brian0918, and was designed by Deathphoenix. It was renamed on July 24, 2005 in appreciation of the efforts of former Wikipedian RickK in fighting vandalism.

{{subst:The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar|message ~~~~}}

Userboxes

Code:

Results in:

CUV

This user is dedicated to
cleaning up vandalism.

This user is a member of the
Counter-Vandalism Unit.

This user fights in open resistance against the forces of the Vandals.

This user fights in the ground forces of Operation Enduring Encyclopedia.

If you prefer not to use userboxes, you can add yourself to Category:Wikipedians in the Counter-Vandalism Unit.

Current events

New warning templates have been fully implemented.
WikiScanner, a tool to identify edits from specific organizations, has been released
Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Task Force is now up and running. Please feel free to join.

Guidelines and policy

If an edit meets the criteria of vandalism, revert it. Please be graceful in doing so and do not bite newcomers. Vandalism should be dealt with using warning templates; if it continues nevertheless, it should be reported directly to the administrators using the links below.

Tools such as blocking and sock puppet reports should not be used as punishment, but rather as prevention against future vandalism. The CVU's purpose is to repair and prevent vandalism, not to punish users, for which being a member of the CVU grants no special authority.