User:Puddleglum2.0/CVUA/Alan Islas

Hello @Alan Islas:, and welcome to your Counter Vandalism Unit Academy page! Every person I instruct will have their own page on which I will give them support and tasks for them to complete. Please make sure you have this page added to your watchlist. Your academy page has been specifically designed according to you and what you have requested instruction in - for that reason, please be as specific as possible in your answers, so that I know the best ways to help you (and do not be afraid to let me know if you think something isn't working). If you have any general queries about anti-vandalism (or anything else), you are more than welcome to raise them with me at my talk page.

Make sure you read through Wikipedia:Vandalism as that's the knowledge which most of the questions I ask you and tasks you do will revolve around.

How to use this page

This page will be built up over your time in the Academy, with new sections being added as you complete old ones. Each section will end with a task, written in bold type - this might just ask a question, or it might require you to go and do something. You can answer a question by typing the answer below the task; if you have to do something, you will need to provide diffs to demonstrate that you have completed the task. Some sections will have more than one task, sometimes additional tasks may be added to a section as you complete them. Please always sign your responses to tasks as you would on a talk page.

The CVUA curriculum

There are several sections of the training course. In some of them, will be asking you to do perform practical exercises; in others, I will ask you to read certain policies and guidelines, and then ask you some questions about their content. To be clear, it is not a problem if you give the wrong answer to any of the questions - making mistakes and discussing them is a crucial part of the learning process. For that reason, it is important that you do not attempt to find previous users' training pages in order to identify the 'right' answers to give: all your answers should be your own, so that we can identify and address any misconceptions that you might have. There is no time pressure to complete the course: we will go at whatever pace works for you, and you can take a pause or ask questions at any point along the way.

Communication

Counter-vandalism work can result in very large watchlists, which can make it more difficult to monitor pages using that alone. For this reason, I will ping you whenever I update this page with some feedback or a new task; I would also ask you to ping me when you have completed a task, so that I get a notification telling me that it's ready for review. See WP:PING for details on how to do this if you aren't sure. -- puddleglum^2.0 20:22, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

The start

Twinkle

Twinkle is a very useful tool when performing maintenance functions around Wikipedia. Please have a read through WP:TWINKLE.

Enable Twinkle (if haven't already) and leave a note here to let me know that you have enabled it.

Hi @Puddleglum2.0: and thanks again for getting this started and helping me. I'm excited to begin! I got Twinkle enabled now. Alan Islas (talk) 16:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Alan Islas: great! Redwarn is a helpful supplement to Twinkle that makes the interface a little more user-friendly. It isn't a huge part of the course, but it's handy nonetheless. You can find installation instructions and notes in use from the link above. let's get started! Best -- puddleglum^2.0 16:35, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Good faith and vandalism

When patrolling for vandalism, you may often come across edits which are unhelpful, but not vandalism - these are good faith edits. While it is often necessary to revert such edits, we treat them differently from vandalism, so it is important to recognise the difference between a vandalism edit and a good faith edit. Please read WP:AGF and WP:NOT VANDALISM before completing the tasks in this section.

Hi @Puddleglum2.0:, please see my answers below.

Please explain below the difference between a good faith edit and a vandalism edit, and how you would tell them apart.

Vandalism is deliberate and malicious, while an unhelpful good faith edit is basically a mistake. So the key difference is intent, not the result or effect. Since good faith is assumed and intent can be difficult to ascertain, vandalism can be better identified by a pattern of behavior and response to warnings.

yup, the key is intent, nice way of putting it.

Please find three examples of good faith but unhelpful edits, and three examples of vandalism. You don't need to revert the example you find, and I am happy for you to use previous undos in your edit history if you wish. Place diffs below

Examples of good faith unhelpful edits

Broken link about the wrong place added : In this diff the editor has added a reference to a stub article that did not have any sources. Obviously this is a good thing in principle. However, the link is now broken and more importantly from the title and the source I can tell that this was about Rosarito beach, and not about the very obscure small town that is the topic of this article. This requires local knowledge and the mistake was most likely in good faith (I'm planning to PROD this article).
Mistake in wikilink to another wiki : In helping me review an article I created, added an interlingua wikilink (to an article that only exists in the Spanish wikipedia) but it mistakenly linked to an existing page in the English wikipedia (the Australian National Water Commission, when the article was talking about the Mexican National Water Commission). They later corrected this when pointed out (I didn't know the correct syntax for an illm wikilink. This was obviously in good faith, since there was communication with the editor.
Changes from British to American English : In this example from the GOCE the editor has changed some words from British to American spelling, such as "defence" to "defense", which is unhelpful.

Examples of vandalism

Nonsense edit : In this edit a single letter 'Q' was added after an equation, which is non-sensical and appears random. It was reverted.
Silly vandalism : The phrase "and leather thongs" was added to a legitimate sentence, with appears to be a joke with obvious sexual innuendo.
Blanking : Content was removed without explanation.

@Alan Islas:

all correct, beautiful job! Here we the next section, apologies for the wait. -- puddleglum^2.0 23:24, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Warning and reporting

When you use Twinkle to warn a user, you have a number of options to choose from: you can select the kind of warning (for different offences), and the level of warning (from 1 to 4, for increasing severity). Knowing which warning to issue and what level is very important. Further information can be found at WP:WARN and WP:UWUL.

Please answer the following questions

Why do we warn users?

From WP:WARNVAND "The purpose of warning a user who has vandalized is to inform the user that the user's conduct is abusive and prohibited, and seek the user's compliance."

As the policy explains, the user may not be aware that their edits can be considered vandalism so essentially a warning is a notification or "heads up". This notification gives the user an opportunity to change, stop and/or correct their actions. If not heeded, measures can escalate to administrative intervention but a warning is a required first step for every instance of vandalism.

When would a 4im warning be appropriate?

From the policy: "This warning template should be used only in the worst conditions of vandalism. It indicates that this is the only warning the target will receive, and that further disruptive edits will result in a block without warning." And: "Only Warning – Assumes bad faith, very strong cease and desist, first and only warning. Generally used in the case of excessive or continuous disruption from a user or specific IP."

From that I understand that the 4im warning does not follow in a series of increasingly escalating warnings, as the other levels do, but instead can be triggered by a single or series of extremely bad actions, even if no previous warning was given. Examples are not provided, but in general I think it would be blatant, unambiguous and fully negative edit that does not leave any gray area, and thus bad faith has to be assumed.

Should you substitute a template when you place it on a user talk page, and how do you do it? (Hint - read the link before answering!)

Yes. Add "subst:" to the name of the template, inside the curly brackets.

What should you do if a user who has received a level 4 or 4im warning vandalises again?

Report to Administrator intervention against vandalism.

--- Hi Puddleglum2.0, please see answers above. Thanks! Alan Islas (talk) 21:58, 17 August 2020 (UTC)