User:AmiDaniel/VandalProof/v110

New Features in Version 1.1

Rollback User Contribs

A screenshot of the "Rollback Contributions" feature.

When dealing with particularly persistent vandals, it's often the case that upwards of thirty edits need be removed, which even for administrators is quite a tedious task. Thus, I've now simplified the process of removing mass vandalism from one user to just four simple clicks.

Click one. To begin, you need to load the user's contributions inside of VandalProof. This still works much as it did in version 1.0: When viewing a user's talk page or an edit made by a user, you can simply click the small "C" button above the main browser, or you can type in a username under the User Contribs tab and click Update. You may notice that, unlike in version 1.0, VP now only loads the edits by the user that are on top (in other words, no one has modified the page since that edit). Clicking on an article's name in the list then produces a comparison between the last edit and the preceding edit, and you can still revert it like you used to.

Click two. Click on the button below the contributions list titled "Rollback All (loads in new window)." A small window will load that lists the contributions exactly as they appear in the contributions list on the main window. Next to each, you should see a small checkmark and two columns, Edits on Top and Revert To.

Click three. Click on the button titled Retrieve Edits. You will now see the columns next to the article filled in with the number of edits the user has made to the page since the previous user edited it, and it will also fill in the id number for the version of the page prior to the user's edits. This typically takes around 10-20 seconds for up to 30 edits. You may notice that some of the items will be unchecked--this may be because the user's edits to the page are older than one day, as edits older than one day are typically sound, constructive edits. If you see a zero in the Edits on Top column, either someone else has edit the page since the user or the user created a new page--new pages have to be handled one at a time, as you cannot "rollback" a page creation. Double-clicking on an item in the list will force a new IE window to open with the diff between the user's last edit and the version of the page prior to the user's modifications.

Click four. Click on Rollback. It will revert all checked pages in the list to the version specified by the number in the "Revert To" column, the version of the page prior to the user's edits. This usually takes about 30 seconds, depending upon the number of edits it has to revert.

Please note that this feature should be used sparingly and carefully in cases of repeated vandalism by one user. Using it to revert good-faith edits may be considered vandalism, and, as with any feature of VandalProof, it should not be used in edit wars, perpetuation of vandalism, attacks on contributors, or for any other counterproductive purpose. While it only takes a few seconds to revert all of an editor's contributions, it may take the editor a long time to undo your actions unless they too have access to VandalProof. I've debugged the feature quite extensively with my own sockpuppets and IPs and can say with 99% certainty that, when used correctly, the feature is bug free.

Moderator Tools That Actually Work

Unfortunately, during the one week that version 1.0 was in circulation we didn't have any active moderators. This wasn't because the moderators were lazy or there wasn't any work for them to do, but rather because of a bug in the Moderate User List feature. I've now fixed the bug so that it actually works, and I've also added quite a bit more functionality that the old version didn't have.

The Moderate User List dialog is now twice as wide as it was before, and on the left you'll see a list of the users in the Awaiting Approval section. It only recognizes users who have added themselves in the correct format (* {{user2|YOUR_USERNAME}} with spaces replaced by underscores), thus the need for users to list themselves correctly. Below the list of not-yet-approved users, you will see three buttons--Talk, Contribs, and Count--clicking upon which will open a new window. There is also a button titled Approved and another titled Not Approved, which either move the selected user to the approved list or remove them from the Awaiting Approval list. As before, you can click on Update List to make both the official list and the list on the talk page current, and it will add appropriate edit summaries regarding who has been approved / removed and whether or not the list is empty. Holds still have to be handled the old-fashioned way.

Bug Fixes

Crash on Startup

This bug results from unterminated threads and memory leaks within the incorporated IE browser control between runs (I intend to write a strong-worded letter to Microsoft once I can prove this). I've now managed to significantly reduce the prevalency of this bug, but it has not yet been exterminated. It seems only to occur upon initial run when the start page is stripped down, translated, and reformatted; thus, I've now created an optional switch that will allow users having this problem to load the start page in its "ugly" form, but as there may be potential security problems with it, I will only distribute the switch to users via e-mail.

Report to AIV

The Report to AIV function in 1.0 posts the vandal data on the user's talk page, rather than at WP:AIV. This resulted from my inability to distinguish between "TRUE" and "FALSE", but has now been corrected.

%P in Place of the Pagename

This was a relatively minor bug, whereby clicking cancel when prompted for the page name to use in a template, such as {{nn-warn}}, would not cancel, but rather would post the template with %P in place of the article's title. It has been corrected.

Javascript Warnings

Several users have experienced non-fatal, though annoying Javascript warning messages. These warnings have also caused some features to function incorrectly as they interrupt critical chains of events. Though not tested, it is believed that a proper installation, which is almost complete for version 1.2, should fix this bug.