VandalProof now uses a tabbed browser interface (pictured right), similar to that of Opera, IE7 or Firefox, which should make navigation a bit easier. To open a link in a new window, simply hold down the Ctrl key and click the link. To close a tab, double-click on it.
VP can now retrieve recent changes from the RSS feed, which offers a lot of new features. For one, it now uses Lupin's badword list to identify catchwords, such as obscenities, and report them in the recent changes list under "Filter" to make spotting vandalism easier. It will also now report the number of characters added or removed in the list, and it will display any particularly large removals in boldface. You can then scroll through the edits, using up and down arrows or clicking, and they will load instantly in the main browser window as you can see to the right. While it isn't as attractive to look at as diffs, they load with almost no delay so you can review 50 edits in less than a minute. If you would rather view the diff in the old, more attractive format, you can either click on the item in the list with the Shift key pressed or you can click "Last diff" in the main browser window.
Also in the interest of making things faster, I've now implemented precached rollbacks, whereby it retrieves the oldid of the last version by the previous user to which you can revert and then prepares to revert long before you click the Rollback button. This way, when you click Rollback, the reversion is almost instantaneous. It will also disable the rollback if someone else, such as User:Tawkerbot2, has edited the page following the change you are reviewing, which helps to prevent edit and warning conflicts. It's all still a bit shakey, but coming along quite nicely.
VP now also has the functionality to filter recent changes for edits coming from an IP range.
After griping about VP's bad log-in for so long, I finally did something about it! In v1.3, when you load up VP you will see this screen. It will now automatically identify under which account you are logged in on Wikipedia and what rights you have there, and if you are not logged in correctly (due to odd IE cookies, etc.) you can then click "Chg," enter your password, and click "Log-in to WP" to log you in on VP's internal browser and bypass any cookie problems. Note that you do not have to provide your password if you choose not to, and most users will not have any problems if they are correctly logged in on IE; this feature was provided merely to make things easier--the passwords are not stored or sent anywhere, not even on your own computer. Once you have verified that you are correctly logged in, you can click "Verify Authorization" which then checks if the username is on the approved user list and will then load up the typical VP form. Thanks to Yurik's fabulous Wiki API I've been able to make this process lightning fast!
I've now also implemented some of my first sysop tools. Under "User tools" there is now a "Block User" menu, from which you can select an expiry time, and it will automatically block the user for that time and post an appropriate block message on the user's talk page.
Following the recent AOL DoS attacks and the ceiling cat vandal, I and others agreed that the ability to pull up all on-top contributions from an IP range would be a very useful tool, so I decided to give it a shot. My first idea was to load up the contribs of every single IP address in a given range and add them to a list--then I decided I didn't feel like waiting an hour for the results, and I also didn't want to be the one responsible for bringing down Wikimedia's servers. So I came up with a much better approach that involves eliminating those IPs with no edits on top and then retrieving contribs from the remaining IPS, the results of which method proved quite successful.
As you can see at the right, this tool is now a quasi merge of the former "Rollback All" tool and another tool to retrieve the contribs from an IP range. When you load the dialog, you can input a username, an IP address, or a series of usernames and IP addresses (each divided by "&&") and click "Retrieve Contribs." This will then populate the list with all on-top contributions from the given IPs and usernames sorted by date from most recent to oldest. Double-clicking on an item will load the diff in a new browser window, and clicking "Rollback" at the bottom will then use bot rollback (admins only) to revert all checkmarked contribs from the given users or IP addresses, which goes quite quickly--much quicker than the former Rollback All tool could.
To load the contribs from an IP range, click on "Load IP Range." This will open an input box requesting the range to use, which you should enter in the following format: "STARTADDRESS::LAST". For example, "172.0.0.0::255" would equate to all IP addresses between 172.0.0.0 and 172.0.0.255. Note that all ranges must be smaller than 256 IP addresses. Once you enter the range and hit OK, the edit box at the top of the form will be filled in with a series of IP addresses ("172.0.0.0&&172.0.0.1 ... &&172.0.0.255"). Now you must be thinking that retrieving the contribs from 256 IP addresses must take a long time; however, as I hinted above, my method of elimination has resulted in a very quick query. If you look at the image to the right, you'll see that retrieving all of the on-top contribs from the AOL IP range 207.200.116.0/24 (or 207.200.116.0::255 in VP notation), quite likely the most active of all IP ranges Wikipedia, took only 52.10726 seconds; however, since I've uploaded that screenshot, I found a couple of foul-ups I made and have been able to reduce this query time even further. When I just ran this exact same query at 06:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC), it took only 37.38973 seconds.
Yes, that's right, ON WHEELS!!! VandalProof now has the ability to clean up page-move vandalism in just a couple of clicks. It's really quite simple to use — not too much to explain. You type in the username (or there will also be a menu item to load this when looking at a user's talk page, etc.) and click "Retrieve Log." This will return all the page-moves by a user and generate a list of actions to complete to undo the page-moves (as you can see to the right). Should you feel that any of the provided actions need not be performed for whatever reason, you can uncheck the item. When you click start it will go through the list, moving pages back to their original location and deleting the resulting redirect.
I actually just got to use this tool for real the other day, as you may be able to find in my log, reverting the page-move vandalism by Villy van der Veelen. There are still a couple of things I'd like to tweak on this, but for the most part, it worked flawlessly.
In the rare instances when two users attempt to revert and warn for the same edit, we often see cases of warning stacking. In v1.3, VP will be able to detect any other VandalProof warnings for the same edit and prompt you if the user has already been warned for the edit. I'm also working with Joshbuddy and Tawker to prevent stacking on top of Tawkerbot2's warnings.
Most of the anti vandal tools/methods I've seen don't have any capabilities for keeping an eye on things that are listed in the user 'log' rather than 'contributions'. This makes sense because page moves get listed in both places and deletion, protect/unprotect, and most other 'log' actions are available to admins only. However, image uploads are available to everyone and can be used to vandalize by overwriting an existing image with a new one. We now protect images displayed on the main page due to this problem, but it is always possible for someone to forget to protect an image or a vandal to hit an image on the 'article of the day' or other high traffic page. If this tool could (or already does) detect cases where an existing image file has been 'updated' I think that would go a long way towards stopping such attacks. --CBDunkerson13:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely a great suggestion--I wish I had thought of that earlier. Unfortunately, in order to release it this weekend, I'm not going to be able to incorporate that feature into the current version. I will definitely try to work it into 1.1 though. I'll have to honestly admit that the User Contribs function of VP is a long way from reaching its full potential--right now it simply loads the contribs in a list and clicking on an item produces the most recent revision to the article, which really isn't that particularly useful. In the future I'm hoping to add some functionality such as a one-click rollback of all user contribs, and thanks to your suggestion, the ability to view user logs as well. Just wondering, are IP users able to upload images? That seems awfully dangerous--since the previous versions are archived it's not too difficult to restore an image that gets written over, but it really wouldn't be that difficult for a user to piggyback some indiscrete yet harmful virus onto an image (if it hasn't already been done before). As much as I love the idea of a totally free encyclopedia, I sometimes worry that Wikipedia's openness leaves it quite vulnerable to a possibly catastrophic attack by a determined supervandal. AmiDaniel (Talk) 21:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For a very, very future release in my dreams:
Have a way where you can see if other users of the tool have cleared an edit, or added a user to the blacklist, and maybe an internal IRC component so you can alert other users in the vandalism wikipedia channel? :) --Mboverload00:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really want to comment much on this right now, but your suggestion is very closely related to my original "master plan" with this program. VP1 is a very small stepping stone along the path to my ultimate app that will guarantee that every edit is reviewed and all vandalism is deleted within minutes. But that's still quite a way in the future, so I really don't want to go into details about it now. For now I'm just concerned with getting VP1 up to par. AmiDaniel (Talk) 04:50, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't it be nice if we had patroled editing turned on? I think the world would be a much better place. Anywho, are you thinking of putting this on SourceForge? -Mysekurity [m!] 21:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Before you start working on this feature, look into the patrolling feature wich is part of mediawiki. Try to use as much existing features as possible so that users of different anti-vandal techniques are able to cooperate as well :) Henna13:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if this is a problem obviously, since I haven't used the program. However, I would advise you to be careful with detecting the vandals' past warning histories, as some people use non-standard warning templates (such as Mine. Just out of curiosity, how do you detect what warnings they have received? — Ilyanep(Talk)23:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you don't mind my moving this down to suggestions, but I don't think it really qualifies as a "bug." As of yet, the app only detects the common "test" templates and "block" templates by identifying key words on the user's talk page (such as "Thanks for experimenting"); as such, it would not recognize some of your templates as warnings. I really can't take into account every possible combination of words to mean "test1" and didn't want to dedicate too much time to cataloging every custom template, but as most users stick with the test templates, it generally provides an accurate overview of the user's vandalism history. Typically, it's mostly important to know whether the user is a repeat vandal or not, for which not every possible template must be counted. As for using your own templates, I've recently made it possible (though not particularly user-friendly) to customize the eight buttons that appear above the browser. I'll explain more about how to do this after I release the app. AmiDaniel (Talk) 03:39, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Moved from Questions / Feedback
Hi, one thing that would be a very useful addition to the programme would be having button to add vw and bv tags, not just the test, test2 etc. as the bv is often a lot more appropriate than test. --Wisden1711:51, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The buttons are actually customizable (though doing so is not particularly user friendly). Once I get some time, I'll expand the help file and explain this better, but essentially, you can open the file "CustomButtons.txt" from the app's directory and find the button you want to change. With the rollbacks, the first line will say "<ROLLBACK #>", the next will be the button caption (i.e. "Rollback {{test1}}"), the next will then be the message you want the button to post. Be sure the message does not exceed one line, as that will corrupt the file. Also be aware that it will add "A link to the edit I have reverted can be found here: link. If you believe this edit should not have been reverted, please contact me." to any message when posted. AmiDaniel (Talk)
Would it be possible to insert a tab or new window feature (preferably a tab feature) into the program? I revert vandalism mainly using my watchlist as a base from which I open up a new tab or window, as I go up my watchlist. I tried it with the current program, but it opened up a new window in the regular IE. tv31611:49, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is quite a bit of grey space doing nothing to the left and right of both the tabbed section and the browser section. I don't know if there is anyway of removing this (i.e. expanding the width of the tabbed section without reducing the browser width. Petros47116:33, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by excess grey-space? There shouldn't be any ... could you maybe post a screenshot? Oh, and what resolution are you using? AmiDaniel (Talk) 02:56, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict, lets see if we agree!) I've (roughly) highlighted the area I'm talking about. Screenshot is same size as my resolution (1280X800). Not a big deal, and I'm not sure how easy it is to change this sort of thing, but if it is possible to squash the things at the top just that little bit, so all that horizontal space can be used it'd be great. I'm sure other things are more important thought! Thanks again, Petros47119:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've already had a request for an OS X-port, and I'll keep the Linux suggestion in mind. Right now I'm just trying to get the Windows version up and running, but I will definitely try to open it up to the more enlightened users who choose not to subject themselves to Microsoft fascism ;). I, for one, unfortunately am dependent upon MS products for my job; thus, I don't use Linux, but I salute you for it! --AmiDaniel (Talk) 21:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Shucks. Well, as you keep on writing and adding stuff, just keep those of us on *nix in mind; 'ware the vendor-lockin, my son, and shun the frumious non-portability! --maru (talk) contribs03:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Writing the program in Java would make it available to Win, Mac, and Linux users, all at the same time (but I'm sure you already knew that) :) Search4Lancer19:21, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In the spirt of the tabs suggestion above, I have another idea. Going down each article in the list means there is alot of wait time for when you are checking out the next one. To make sure that what you are seeing is current it should only go one ahead. You can have this in an "hidden tab" which it changes to when you go down.
In a related idea, instead of having a static list of edits to check, make it load 3 new ones on the bottom for every 3 you check. AJAX-like. Thanks for the great program!--Mboverload19:58, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Loading times and a status bar and browser control
See #precacheing but I have some more ideas =). Does VandalProof get the user page AND the actual article at the same time? I think it should first get the article page, display it, then get the user page.
I would also like a forward and back button with a loading status bar.
ALSO: Maybe a small button that says "PageInClip" or something shorter. What ever would this do? Well, it would surf to the URL that is in the clipboard at the momment. It would be able to parse regular urls AND [[links like this]]. Since it's just getting it from the clipboard you don't even need an address bar. Can you say pimptastic? --Mboverload20:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about some hotkeys? Ctl+Shift+V brings VandalProof to the top. Plus with that combination you can do it with just one hand or have a keyboard that does macro support hit it for you - while you hit only one button! Pimptastic! --Mboverload20:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Shortcut keys within the app would definitely be a piece of cake... The ctl+shift+v thing is a little bit more difficult (I'd have to use API resources and trap for all sorts of things like is the screen minimized, is it maximized, what's in front of it, etc., etc.) but it can be done. I'll keep your suggestion in mind. Thanks! AmiDaniel (Talk) 21:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about a column showing(in the recent changes tab) how many characters where added/removed in an edit? Since a lot of the vandalism seems, to me at least, page blanking/blanking, and adding random insults, and/or profanities.--Dp462090|Talk|Contrib|20:26, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Although not too nice to the user, having to check every single edit is a good thing. Some vandalism is small and hard to detect if people just skip over small edits. Just an idea. --Mboverload21:52, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's sort of been my thinking with a lot of things in this app. A lot of the vandalism is incospicuous; the majority of reverts I do are on small stubs and are usually small changes (like changing 33% to 133% usw.), and that's the vandalism that really does harm. The really obvious vandalism, such as page blanking, is often picked up by bots (see User:Tawkerbot2, about the best antivandal bot I've seen). Currently my app just receives the standard feed, rather than the rss or the atom, as those feeds take much longer to load, and as with many things, I traded speed for functionality. Later versions may use IRC feeds and bots (much like WP:CDVF), in which case doing this would not be difficult, but that's still quite a way in the future. Thanks for your suggestion, though, and I'll keep it in mind. AmiDaniel (Talk) 22:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just a suggestion: if you manage to correct everything on here (including my problem) should the next version number (currently 1.0.1) really be that low? FetofsHello!01:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
1.0.1 is really just the composite of the simple bug fixes I've indicated on VP's welcome page. Nothing functional about the program will actually be changed, just a few minor bugs and mistakes I've made. The only major change of yet has been to the start-up routine, which in this version produces a fatal error for many users; otherwise almost all of the bugs that have yet been reported, I believe, are the result of a faulty instalation... changing the deployment method doesn't affect the actual file itself. Right now on my machine, the last full compile I did was the one I uploaded, and once I compile it with my current changes, it will then be the first revision to 1.0. Therefore, I think 1.0.1 is an appropriate version number. Once something about the actual function of the app is changed I will then up it to 1.1. AmiDaniel (Talk) 02:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
{{db-nonsense)} and other thoughts
Is it possible to have one added to the next version at all? (or is it here and I'm blind!) :) Thanks again! - GlenTC18:11, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't entriely understand what you mean. When you click db-nonsense it posts (or should post) the template on the current version of the article. By the way I've copied this to the Questions section of VP's talk page; please respond there. AmiDaniel (Talk) 21:46, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I should be more clear.
Under the Propose Deletion --> Speedy Deletion drop downs would a {{db-nonsense)} option be able to be added at all? Also...
Also, the {{test5-n}) button should really be replaced as 99% of users can't actually block.
A newpages section (like the recent changes) would be awesome for catching speedy deletes
Is it possible to have a back browser button added? This means once warned we can get back to the newpages, recent changes or watchlist more easily (I am right clicking and using the back option on the menu but it is cumbersome
Finally, I would encourage a link to a page which explains all the template tags (I created my own here) handy so users don't tag incorrectly.
Don't get me wrong, these are just tiny suggestions and I may be off base... as the softward is fantastic. Reverted about 50 cases this evening alone whilst working!
There used to be a db-nonsense tag, but for some reason it got removed ... I've now re-added it.
Awesome! Is there an easy way I can add to my current version?
2. By default there is no test-5 button, per the same reasons you provided, unless you added one yourself. The buttons are customizable. AmiDaniel (Talk) 22:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
3. I'm going to add functionality to the RC patrol, such as hight admins/wls, show only IPs, and show only new pages ... just like there are on the typical recent changes page.
Legend.
4. I'll see about putting in a few navigation controls ... likely not in this upcoming release though.
Thank you sir!
5. I think that's a great idea... one thing I probably should have noted is that the Rollback + ((summary)) button does not add {{summary}}, but rather "I have reverted a recent edit you made to the article [[:{{{1}}}]]. You did not provide an edit summary, and I could not determine whether the edit was vandalism or a constructive contribution. In the future, please use edit summaries.".
Fantastic!
Thanks for your suggestions, and I'll certainly keep them in mind. Could you please in the future post such questions/suggestions/bugs with VP on this talk page, though, rather than my own talk page? Your comments are helpful for other users of the tool as well, and it's quite tedious for me to constantly move around messages. Thanks. AmiDaniel (Talk) 22:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about a built-in article whitelist? Things like the sandbox shouldn't show up in the recent changes. Well, that's the only one I can think of right now =P --Mboverload20:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe importable/exportable whitelist/blacklist. Then we can add admins, established editors and vandals to the appropriate lists and share them with other users. --Dodo bird07:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The article whitelist/blacklist will take a little bit of work to implement, but I'll try to add it in 1.1. As to the importable/exportable user lists, the functionality to do so already exists in VandalProof. If you open up "WhiteList.txt" and "BlackList.txt" in the same directory as you have VandalProof.exe installed, you'll see the list exactly as it appears within the application. You can edit these lists externally with notepad or any other text editor, so sharing lists is actually quite easy. What I really need to create is some depository where any user can add the users on his/her list and where any user could then simply copy and paste the list into his/her own. AmiDaniel (Talk) 07:35, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you add a user to one of the lists, such as a user on the blacklist to the white list, their entry on the black list should be deleted.--Mboverload20:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
With VandalProof's ever expanding features and the increasing number of users I think that it is imparative that it is easy to contact any of the moderators (especially for when AmiDaniel is not online) in the event that a user is abusing the tool. It doesn't really matter if the user is intentionally abusing the tool or is having trouble using it, but they could be stopped before the damage gets out of control. The problem is that if someone notices an issue where the software is being abused, they may post it on AmiDaniel's talk page and if AmiDaniel isn't online, but another moderator is, they easily may not be aware of it. Basically, the page that I am suggesting would be an emergency page that listed the contact information for the moderators and people could list any abuse. Also, administrators could add this page to their watchlists and if they see a problem user listed, they could block the user until the user is able to fix the software problem (or in the case that is being intentionally abused, they could be stopped). I guess it would work similar to WP:AIV which basically acts as a 911 system to get into contact with administrators when a user is on a vandlism spree. Obviously I hope this wouldn't be needed very often, but I think something like this would be useful. If it is a bad idea, feel free to say so, or if it can be improved, speak up. I just don't want the community to start looking down upon this software if there becomes an issue with either troublesome users or users having trouble using the software. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 07:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Woo-hoo! A good suggestion that's incredibly easy to implement (you could even do it yourself!). In cases of abuse with this tool, I'd hope that admins would quickly step in and block the user for at least a short period (even if their abuse is accidental), which will then leave time for mods to remove the users from the list, add the appropriate TEMPREM commands, and contact the user to resolve the issue. That has always been my biggest fear with this tool (and especially with the Rollback All feature)--that either users with poor understanding of Wikipedia / VandalProof or intentionally disruptive users would use the tool in a way that it was not intended. That's why I set up my CheckUser list, to preemptively stop inexperienced users and vandals from abusing the tool, and why I've made sure that all edits will indicate in the edit summary that this tool was used to make those edits (and partially why source code is currently not available). I actually think this tool has even more ability to be destructive than, for instance, WP:AWB, but I hope that it will only be used to do good. Nonetheless, we always have to anticipate that one bad egg who takes a good thing and ruins it for everyone, so I'd say we should definitely implement some kind of "Moderators' Noticeboard". Thanks for the suggestion! AmiDaniel (Talk) 08:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This question kind of goes with that suggestion. I haven't gotten around to creating a test account and experimenting with this by myself, so I figured I'd ask you. Does the application check for permission before each edit (or X number of edits)? If this isn't the case, hypothetically, a user could open up VP and make bad edits (intentional or not) and if the moderator takes away the acccess, the user would still be able to use the program until the user closes and reopens the application. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 08:09, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to give tips and tricks to the vandals, but yes, it only checks the list when the user navigates to the start page (at first load or through the file menu); thus, the most effective way in stopping individuals who abuse the tool is an administrative block.
On a similar note as well, I was wondering if we could maybe start a discussion about the criteria for accepting/rejecting users? Currently, it states that users with fewer than 250 edits will not be accepted, which I think I'm going to change to 250 mainspace edits, but, to again use AWB as a milestone, should we maybe up it to 500 or otherwise tighten it? I sort of unilaterally set the standard, but I feel it might be a bit loose. What do you think? AmiDaniel (Talk) 08:29, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have mixed feelings. I haven't really thought these ideas through and I probably should go to sleep, but... One idea if the rules are less stringent is that users should be willing to be temporary banned if there is an issue with their usage of VP until they are able to get into contact with. Basically, treat users like bots. If a bot seems to go crazy, admins are allowed to ban them until the issue can be investigated. However, some may object to this harsher policy, so maybe the rules should be more stringent so that only more established users are able to use VP (so there'd be less of a likelyhood that the tool would be abused). I am kind of leaning towards suggesting that the rules should be a little more strict, but I am not really sure either way. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 09:02, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I should probably get to bed soon too (3:12 AM). I like the idea of adding a clause to the effect of "Administrators may temporarily block anyone using this tool in a questionable manner without warning or reason until the issue can be resolved." I don't know ... I'll think on it in the morning. AmiDaniel (Talk) 09:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to bug you with another issue. This is a low priority request, but would consider modifying the program to be able to adjust the widths of the display window? Right now I have an extremely wide "my watchlist", "recent changes", etc section that uses quite a bit of white space. Part of the problem is that I am running at a low resolution, but the other part is that I have a lot of tabs at the top of the page (both user added and admin tabs) that creates some horizontal scrolling. As I said, not a big deal, but I think it would be a nice ability to have. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 09:07, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Adjustable widths have always been in the back of my mind, but that's going to have to wait for a much, much later release. Just getting the controls to preserve their geometric ratio to the form when resized took two sleepless nights, and I've been terrified to change anything about the interface since (though adding the "Rollback All" button wasn't particularly difficult). I'll definitely consider it though. AmiDaniel (Talk) 09:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would love to have an option or workaround to make the viewing pane automatically scroll to the far right of every viewed page, so that i can see the maximum possible bit of the page at the cost of the standard wikipedia left-side bar. Also, its more useful for me to see the new edit (right side) than the old edit (left side) assuming one has to be cut off. Thanks! Great tool!-Lanoitarus(talk).:.05:34, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm using a somewhat larger-than-usual screen resolution so I rarely have problems with this, but I could definitely see how it could be helpful. Let me put a little thought into how to this, and I will try to work it into later versions. AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I kindof figured you were. Im running at 1280*1024, and i end up basically seeing only the left half of the revision side of the edit difference page. It would be much more useful to me to see the right side of the page, or have the page render smaller even, or ignore the left navbar completely or something. I generally have to scroll right on most article changes i view to tell whether its vandalism or not. Thanks!-Lanoitarus(talk).:.18:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to change the recent changes part of VandalProof to join an IRC channel which updates the recent changes list in real time (like on #vandalism-en-wp)? I think that'd be pretty cool, considering that there is no way to get links from an IRC client to open up in vandalproof. (Not that i've seen yet, anyway) :) Adrian(Talk)05:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
IRC functionality is being considered for later releases, but for now trying using the refresh timer. With it set at 5 seconds you'll rarely find holes of more than one or two articles in the feed, and if you change your edit limit (from file/set edit limit) to 50 with a 5 second timer you'll see every edit that comes through, guaranteed. It's not quite "streaming" but it's virtually the same. AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:43, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I need some back and forward buttons. Really small buttons somewhere. But I need em. Related to the status bar request --Mboverload06:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Working on it. For now you can also click in the browser and hit backspace to go backwards (or you can right-click for forward and back). I hardly ever use the back and forward buttons in normal IE, which is why I don't have them in VP. Thanks for the suggestion. AmiDaniel (Talk) 07:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there some way you can prevent images from loading in the pages in the VandalProof browser? I mean, I use a dial-up connection & the Rollback buttons won't highlight till the page has completely loaded (Adolf Hitler took nearly a minute & a half to completely load). Even on broadband, the image-filled pages take quite sometime to load. I suggest that there be some way to keep the images from loading or the Rollback buttons getting highlighted before the page has completely loaded. I always get to the vandalism & wait for the page to load only to see that someone else reverted before me! Hope you have a solution.
Dial up! =0 I don't know how I could live. Actually, I've been looking for quite some time for a way to load a diff but hide the entire preview section (as I rarely ever need to look at that, and it often slows everything down quite considerably). I keep thinking there must be an ampersand operator to do this, but I can't find one. Any help from others would be much appreciated! AmiDaniel (Talk) 00:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is it possible to add a button that lets you quickly got to the special:newuser?
or atleast add a back button
And can you make it so we can put our own welcome messages in for the welcome button? (so when the welcome button i pressed it puts our personally made welcome there istead of the default.) ILovEPlankton18:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The buttons at the type are customizable. Take a look at User:AmiDaniel/VandalProof_Help#Customizing_the_Buttons and see if that helps you. Navigation controls such as a back button are on my to-do list, and I will likely add some functionality for monitoring new users. I was actually thinking about proposing a WelcomeBot (which would monitor new users) as I see sooo many users who were never properly welcomed, but I'm not sure if some people would have reservations about an automated welcome as opposed to more personal, manual welcome. AmiDaniel (Talk)
Wondering if you can customize message buttons. There are a lot of test templates these days; and I make frequent use of the bv-n warning. - RoyBoy80007:34, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The tool currently doesn't offer spam / advertising warnings in the User Tools | Warn menu (such as Template:spam). Similarly, such warnings aren't counted in users' vandalism warning counts. Can this be rectified? (Otherwise, superb tool by the way!) Waggers16:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to see these in the Warn menu as well, I find myself having to use them fairly often, though not often enough to put as a button.-- SonicAD (talk) 02:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I thought I already had this on the menu, but apparently not--let me go add them in now. By the way, you can also use the new custom rollback to revert and post a spam warning, if that may be better suited to what you're doing. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But only works while the program is running. When you restart the program, it resets to 20 every time. I want to leave it permanently on 12. Thanks for trying to help. Rlevse10:00, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you can have the program pick that up from a file similar to how it picks up what to put in the revert messages. (the 8 custimisable controls (buttons) at the top of the form)... That way each user can have "save" his or her own favorite. (mine is also 12, as that involves no scrolling of the listbox, but I did not request this feature as Vandal Fighter still has some bad bugs that need fixed. Eagle (talk) (desk) 20:34, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why wasn't this added to v 1.2? It can't be that hard or time consuming to do and it's really irritating to have to change this every time the program starts? Rlevse21:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just a thought, but I have ran across several vandals that have been warned by tawkerbot, and I subsequently revert and warn with test1. As tawkerbot is "on" all of the time and reverts who knows how many edits, perhaps your program should recognize tawkerbot's warning as well. This would help "us" in recognizing whether a vandal has had "first contact" with any members of wikipedia.
distinct parts of tawkerbot's warning are...below
reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Wikipedia articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept our apologies
What do you think??? this warning is probably as commen as any other (test1-4). Sorry to bug you but hope you give it a thought.Eagle (talk) (desk) 05:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When patroling the recent changes, you come across alot of short "stubby" articles, It would be nice if we could have a button that added "xx-stub" to the bottem of a page, or just "stub".
I have code that will do this, but it's in C++/CLI, I will give it to you tommarrow, (it is cleaned up), provided that you tell me what to do to avoid sticky GNU issues. :-(. Eagle (talk) (desk) 07:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've actually been "working" on a little thing to sort out the entire mess of stub types (as I can never remember them to save my life) and post the appropriate one. We'll see. AmiDaniel (Talk) 07:58, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
really all is needed is basic templates, (i.e. from a menubar). Things like bio-stub, music-stub, geo-stub, ect.
Only the top level templates are needed, there are whole legions of stub sorters who will take it from there. (they are used to having to take it from the {{stub}} category. Trust me, they will take even top level cats only:-)... I have worked with them!!!.Eagle (talk) (desk) 02:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I've already started so it's too late now :-P. No, I'm thinking about going all out with this one--we'll see how far I get. Right now I've got it to the point where it automatically retrieves the stub types and allows you to replace it, which then automatically reorganizes the whole category/stub mess the same way AWB does. AmiDaniel (Talk) 03:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have a suggestion, when clicking on a article in one of the left boxes, if the user that made that edit have done more consecuetive edits, it would be nice to default to show the diff of them all, it also makes reverting to the correct version much faster. Stefan12:38, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This already works. If the previous two edits have been by the same user, when you click Rollback it will prompt you to view all edits by that user. In the next version you will also be able to right-click on a rollback button to automatically display all edit by the last user. AmiDaniel (Talk) 14:19, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think he means to show the diffs from all the edits to start with... After all vandals rarely (like never) make good edits, than vandalise:-).Eagle (talk) (desk) 02:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem there is that it would lag the program. I'm looking into using Wiki API to query histories as opposed to screnscraping--if i find it to be sufficiently faster then I might consider this. However, using my current method it would just be much too slow and would likely annoy everyone to have to wait for it to retrieve the edit, retrieve the page history, scrape it down, and then load the diff again. I'll continue to experiment with the Wiki API and see how that goes, though--it may be a possible solution. AmiDaniel (Talk) 01:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is it too complicated to modify the software to fit to other Wikipedias? The guys in the Russian one, for instance, don't even have warning templates... I'm willing to write them, but not for a while - currently, I'm involved in domestic translations (microwave manual : ). --Chodorkovskiy(talk)10:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, blacklists are grabbed from a text file, so how about the black list for everyone is shared centrally, and when a user is added to the local blacklist, it goes on the universal one. And the universal goes onto the local one. Same for whitelists.
Also, you could have a watchlist anyone can edit of highly vandalised pages. This is also importated and reflected in the RC view.
I just thought, wouldn't it be cool if the software could detect what warnings (the {{test}} series and the like) a vandal has recived, and then issues the next one, without having the user check first? Of course, a user would have to investigate before blocking someone (not to mention be an admin).
And are the recent changes updated in real time? How cool would it be to have RSS-based live collaboration with other editors weeding out vandalism?
Also, could you make it so any user with "wheel" or "communism" in their name was automatically blacklisted?
I've though about doing the autowarnings, and we may see that before too long--not this release though. The live collaboration is something that's been in the works since day one; again, not going to see it in this release, but that's where we're headed. The third one could probably be done in this version; lemme look into it. Thanks for the suggestions. AmiDaniel (talk) 17:51, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Could you make this work with Firefox and/or Opera? I feel that IE gives me too much trouble and I don't like how it renders some pages. My guess is if you're working on this tool for Mac and/or Linux you're probably incorporating a different browser anyway, but it was just a thought. This would probably also help you with your "tabs" feature. Thanks --– sampi (talk•contrib•email) 04:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I much prefer the Opera browser as well (I don't have really any experience with FF at all), but the problem is that I don't have, or am not familiar with, any OLE handles to Opera/FF, and even if they existed, that would mean more or less a complete rewrite. I also figured it easier to just stick with IE as almost everyone at least has it installed. Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think we're going to see this happen. Sorry. AmiDaniel (talk) 05:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is important to have it render in IE since that is how most people see it. I'm all for Firefox but in this case (just like with WP:AWB) you really need IE. --mboverload@00:36, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, but it is not hard to download Oprea or Firefox. Both are faster than IE in my exprience... especially firefox with the fasterfox pluginEagletalk22:55, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fownloading a browser and implementing a whole new rendering engine into an application that was built to use IE are very different things. =) --mboverload@00:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have Lupin's anti-vandal tool and it has an option where it can filter recent changes in order to recognize "clear" vandalism. It works wonderfully. This tool combined with VandalProof would be great. Lupin filters the recent chages using this list of "vandal" words. Hope it helps! --– sampi (talk•contrib•email) 19:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, belive it or not, VP already has filtering mechanisms like Lupin's tool, using the same wordlist and everything; however, it's disabled because it just takes too long. I'm not using an RSS feed (though that's not particularly fast) and loading each diff, searching for keywords, and reporting them back is a very slow process--it would be faster to just click on each one and see for yourself. I'll keep thinking about better ways to implement this--Lupins' anti-vandal tool was actually the inspiration for VP in a lot of ways--but it will probably be quite a while. AmiDaniel (talk) 17:49, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you could combine the RSS feed with the recent changes page to get extra data on some of the recent changes. r3m0ttalk20:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Do not display edits by a user on one of his own subpages (including main and talk). You might even be able to get away with this as default if you don't want to code in a menu to turn it off and on. Cheer mate! --mboverload@00:35, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
An option to not add users you BL to one's own watch list. I don't want to watch them and have to constantly go in a remove them from my watchlist. Rlevse14:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When you BL someone, they are not added to your watchlist. Check your Wikipedia settings--you may have "Add pages I edit/create to my watchlist" enabled. AmiDaniel (talk) 17:54, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to suggest the addition of the db-band Speedy Deletion template to the drop-down menus. I find myself using this template a lot. --cholmes7516:40, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Thanks for the suggestion, and if there are any more templates that you or others use that are not in the drop-down menus, please let me know. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:37, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Any ones in particular that you use? I've added all the ones that I use regularly and didn't want to incorporate every variation of {{deletebecause}}, but I'll take a look and see if there were practical ones that I forgot.
I'd adctually just been thinking about adding that. Let me see how quickly I can get it done.
It would be nice to have a confirmation button before a "Report to AIV" request is made. Something like "Are you sure you want to report User:XXXX ?"
A feature like this would have cut waaaaay back (and probably eliminated) my accidental reportings of users like Curps and Tawkerbot. --Zpb5203:40, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, it's become quite clear that something has to be done--just about everyone has had similar problems with "Report to AIV." In place of a separate confirmation message, do you think it would be enough if the "Brief reason for listing" prompt displayed the username (where you can still hit cancel)? That wouldn't be at all difficult to incorporate, and I think it may help to cut down on this problem a bit. I apologize for the high learning curve. It honestly wasn't my intention to make everything so complicated, and I'd like to work to make it more understandable; it's just difficult for me to anticipate problems that others will run into, as I'm just way too familiar with how it works. Anywho, keep up the good counter-vandalism work, and I hope v1.2 will make things a little easier to use. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:49, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that sounds good. Anything to let me know exactly who I'm reporting would be a 237% improvement! --Zpb5204:51, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, I just put in a couple of safety mechanisms. First of all, if the user is an administrator or on your whitelist it will prompt you before you can report him/her. Secondly, the reason for listing prompt now displays the username both in the dialog's caption, "Report so-and-so to AIV," and in the text of the dialog, "Brief reason for listing so-and-so." Hopefully, this will help to prevent accidental listings in the future. Sorry about that! AmiDaniel (talk) 05:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice to be able to add a custom comment into a popup box for warning vandals or people simply in error. HighInBC03:53, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's not enabled in the current version that you have, but it will be in the next version (which I should be uploading in a day or so). AmiDaniel (talk) 05:46, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I see that this program uses the IE ActiveX control, I wonder if you are aware that it is very easy to use the Mozilla ActiveX control instead? See http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/control.htm for more details, there is even a very simple section called "Porting a VB project from IE control". I found that this control did not have the functionality I needed for AWB, but maybe you will have more luck. Martin11:18, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the tip. I'll have to look into it a bit, though I think in the end I'll probably stick with IE for compatibility reasons. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can you tell us why VandalProof should implement its own gecko engine when IE doesn't add to the download size or startup time? IE in this purpose serves its job very well. --mboverload@06:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Problem is this is a lot of extra coding for AmiDaniel... perhaps if this ever goes open source this may get done:-)Eagletalk20:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi,
I would like VandalProof to ask a conformation message after I press the buttons / command buttons on the top-right side. I pressed welcomeg by accident.
Adding code shouldn't be too hard. Just add a message box that have yes and no buttons.
I personally think that would annoy the hell outta me to have a message box pop up everytime I go to revert an edit. I'll galdly introduce this as an optional setting if you'd find it helpful, but I don't think I'd ever use it myself. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:42, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, good point. I'll continue to use Vandal Proof to see if I accidently press a button again. There is no need to worry now about codding my request now. Cheers. --Starionwolf04:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any chance of improving the navigation, such as adding back and forward buttons? Apart from this it is a brilliant tool that I have been making good use of. Thanks. -- Beno100023:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'd like to put in some back/forward buttons as well, but I was really dumb when I designed the interface framework for VP. Everytime I want to add another button, etc., I have to go pull out a calculator and work out ratios, and it's just a real pain in the neck. I'm also not sure exactly where I'd fit the buttons--the screen's quite crowded as it is. I'll consider it, but for now I hope you can manage using Ctrl+B, Ctrl+W, and the menu items. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No matter how fast I am, the amazing tawkerbot sometimes gets there first. To give his edits a real meaning, I propose that if you come apon a revert done by tawker and hit a warn button, it will warn the user tawker reverted and not him. I think this is a fairly important feature. --mboverload@06:22, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Important Tawker has just suggested to me that it be coded into VandalProof to not warn TawkerBot. I find him/it beating me to it all the time and I've almost made the mistake many times. I think this is a good idea, if the bot makes a mistake, we will be only reverting it and not putting up a message. --mboverload@08:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While considering this, it may be worth extending it to all whitelisted users (as opposed to just tawkerbot) as once I was beaten to a revert by another vandalproof user, and accidently reverted their revert! Waggers09:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Along the same lines, it would be nice if the program recognized the Tawkerbot warnings. I've seen it where a user is listed as have "No warnings" but actually they have some from Tawkerbot. -- MisterHand16:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Along this same line of thought, it would be nice if a check was made right before the revert, to see if someone beat you to it. Then, if someone had, it would alert you and stop the process. Otherwise it would continue as normal. The current programming results in double warnings for the same revert (two users revert the same edit, but only one shows up, and both end up warning the user)--SomeStranger(t|c)21:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If it opened the edit page using the version specific url it could simply spot the "you're editing an out of date version" notice. Saves checking the history again which would be an extra page load. --Tango21:44, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, yeah... didn't think of that. Pity it doesn't say how many edits there have been since the one you're editing... oh, well. --Tango22:07, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Make a menu where we can add our own messages, just like we can do now for the main buttons.
On a related note, you could fit a whole new row of buttons if you made them 40% of their current size, which would perfectly fit their text.
PS: Please get on IRC =) --mboverload@03:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if this has been asked before, if it has - sorry. Is it possible to get the program to work when "Enhanced Recent Changes" is set under User Preferences? Thanks in advance. --Cactus.man✍15:12, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
With 1.3 I'm reworking the RC retrieval to utilize the RSS feed instead of simply scraping Special:Recentchanges, so this won't even be an issue at all. Sorry for the inconvenience, and I hope you can wait just a couple more weeks. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You should know that the RSS feed is statically generated about once every 10-20 seconds, meaning if this method is used, every VandalProof user on the planet will be seeing exactly the same edits. Meaning that there will be a lot of races, and a lot more vandalism slipping by. I discovered this while working on VandalSniper, but not until I had written the whole RSS retrieval class. =( --Chris(talk)22:57, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just a thought- I'd like to be able to select the namespace for Recent Changes. In my case, I just want to see (Main). Looks like that's already been suggested, though. Also, is there an FAQ as to what all of the buttons do? BTW - I've been using VandalProof as of this morning, and I'm really liking it ^_^ --Disavian01:19, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I came across {{TestTemplatesList}} today; it's a list of all of the warning templates. From there it's easy for a user of VP to see what each template says by clicking on it. --Disavian00:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to have it filter out various Namespaces, i.e. not show the Talk:, User Talk: etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crazynas (talk • contribs)
A good idea, but it should be an option rather than an automatic filter. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to remove abusive messages from talk pages. Waggers09:58, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was wondering if it was possible to maybe add the feature of describing the different user warnings. What I mean is that when I do a "Rollback {{test1-n}}" for example, not always I remember what that warning is. Maybe if you can add a mouseover description of the warning it would probably decrease the number of wrong warnings I put in user talk pages just like it is done on the "C", "T", "W" and "B". Thanks. Gadig13:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As a temporary solution, you can edit the text on the button; you could change 'Rollback {{test1-n}}' to 'First warning'. This can be done in a file named CustomButtons.txt which you should be able to find in the folder where you installed VandalProof. --XyraelT14:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Using a splitter control instead to divide the lists from the browser half would be more convenient, as I could resize them to suit my monitor size. Currently all controls seem to be resized proportionally.
It's unlikely to arrive in GTK for a looooooong time because AmiDaniel would have to write her own web browser control, unless there is one available, and even so a lot of the rest of the code would need redoing. Good idea though. --XyraelT09:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You took the words right out of my mouth! Yeah, I know the interface sucks. Right now I'm trying to fix the functional aspects of it; once those are up to par, I'll work on the interface. Thanks for the suggestion though! Oh, and btw, Xyrael, I'm a he not a she :-). AmiDaniel (talk) 09:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know, but I can't get it into my head that you are! It's totally absurd; I read the boyfriend box but missed the male one, and didn't check again for some weeks. By that point, my brain decided that you were a she and refuses to budge - it's so annoying! Sorry if I've caused any offence. --XyraelT16:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I thought, until I bothered to read the userpage, that AmiDaniel was a female whose first name was Ami and last name was Daniel. --Zpb5200:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since GTK+ is usually installed on Linux boxen, there is usually the Mozilla control available. In fact I am considering writing my own version of this software with Mono and GTK#. --Chris(talk)01:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Before you get too carried away with it, you should know that I've now begun an almost complete internal rewrite. Otherwise I don't have a problem with it and would be more than happy to colaborate on it. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Rewrite or not it's still a Windows program, and depends on IE (meaning things like Wine won't work). I use Linux as my primary desktop and need something that will work there. --Chris(talk)09:22, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure I've seen this discussed elsewhere... would it be possible to get a version of the program that uses admin rollback as well as issuing warnings? I've liked the tool so far, but it seems somewhat redundant if I have one click rollback. A couple of other suggestions: button to block for n hours and add a {{test5-n}} warning with n hours as the parameter. A series of block buttons for set amounts of time? There wouldn't necessarily need to be a seperate program for admins, since if non admins would click the buttons, MediaWiki would just tell them they couldn't do it, right? Anyway, I like the program! --Lord DeskanaDark Lord of the Sith21:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The blocking feaure with t5 warning I already have, though I'm thinking about using User:Bookofjude/block instead of t5, since I like it much better. I'll likely implement admin rollback eventually, though with the next version I'm using precached non-admin rollbacks which work pretty much exactly as fast as admin rollback. It may be a while for that release though ... life is awful busy right now. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:46, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not difficult to do at all. I kept all of VP's file access linear, so that any user knowing what he's doing can easily modify it. You can simply copy the Wikimark-up code of your /VandalismLog to your "VandalismLog.txt" leaving out any extra header information that VP adds in automatically. Then you can open up "MyCount.txt", where the first number is the number of edits you've reverted, and the second number is the number of mistakes you've made. You might also want to copy your /VandalismMistakes to your "VandalismMistakes.txt" as well. As long as you update it after logging off and copy it when you log in on a new machine, it shouldn't be a problem at all. If you'd like me to add in a little feature to do this automatically, I probably could quite easily. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Could the "Warning user using VandalProof" edit summary be changed to say which warning it was? "Issuing test3 to user using VandalProof" or something? --Tango18:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This how I originally had it, but I changed it back when I globalized a few of my routines. I definitely prefer more descriptive edit summaries, and this shouldn't be too difficult. It's on my list. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:44, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know many of us using VP would like to be able to use our custom signatures when we post our test templates and other assorted warnings. Any way it can be worked in to use '~~~' optionally instead of '~~~~?' -^demon[yell at me][ubx_war_sux] /19:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As an aside, I have to say I'm something of a signature nazi and don't at all approve of excessive sig cutomization. (So you know, your sig, with timestamp, is a ridiculous 382 characters long--the message of your post occupied two lines and your sig three--excessive, if you ask me.) However, you can customize this in VP already if you'd like. Open up your "CustomButtons.txt" and append to the end of each template message "~~~##NOSIG". The "##NOSIG" will tell VP not to append your sig to the message. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This tool or the related bot should also leave a message on the user talk page
Excellent, just excellent. I have added my warnings on talk pages for my last reverts by hand. Indeed a great tool. I think the bot has changed the page at the same time, when I was thinking about leaving a message for this user, so I have not seen the already existing entry on the talk page. JKW20:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And another thing, does your tool also support link SPAM, since 90% of my last reverts are rather WP:SPAM than vandalism. JKW20:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can add custon buttons - there are instructions somewhere. You could make one of those specific for spam. --Tango21:16, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The edit counter was really developed as a quick, easy way for myself and others involved in approving users to get a raw edit count (i.e., to see if the user has 250 in main). The current limit is 5000 as that's the maximum contribs that Wikipedia will allow to load at one time; to retrieve "accurate" counts greater than 5000 I would need to read timestamps and calculate offsets (and it would take a lot longer), which sort of defeats the purpose of a raw edit counter. For a more accurate count try Flcelloguy's tool or Interiot's tool 2 (if someone with more patience would like to fill in the links on those, it would be much appreciated). I may develop it further in the future, but for now I'm just gonna' keep it as simple as possible. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:35, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For me, it would be really helpful if there were a way top revert an edit and report the editor to WP:AIV in one action. I find that I have to open a new window with the article and do the revert by hand while I report the editor in VandalProof. Also, is there a back button for the browser? --David.Mestel05:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can do this yourself, by opening up your "CustomButtons.txt" and modifying the template message. There's more on how to do this on the help page. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:13, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When I try that, I can't get it to display as a header, because in the CustomButtons.txt file it will only take one line for custom input. —Mets501 (talk)22:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a dev bug in the Wiki itself. I'm trying to nag some devs to fix it, but it may never be. Before sticking a header and then the following text on one line would work just fine, but not anymore. I'm trying to throw together a work-around. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:58, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer talk pages of vandals to be divided up by month. Dividing by article doesn't really work, as the next time that article is vandalised by the same person the warning will go at the bottom, not in that section, so you'll have lots of sections with the same name. If you just want to divide it up, try ----. --Tango22:57, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to have the ability to set that my VP edits should not go to my watchlist, after having used VP for a while now Im getting more and more especially user talk pages of other users varning common IP vandal cluttering my watch list. I can go and remove these pages, but I would rather be able to set it in VP, I also would not like to have the articles themselves on my watchlist. Except for that, wonderful tool, keep up the good work, looking forward to the next version!! Stefan06:26, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It will only add user talk pages to your watchlist if you have it set in your Wiki preferences to add pages you edit/watch to your watchlist. I could naturally force it to unwatch any usertalk pages you edit; however there are a lot of user talk pages I prefer to keep on my watchlist, as I'm sure others do as well, so that's not really an option. Not much I can do about it, sorry, but you could always just turn that setting off in your preferences and then watchlist manually whatever you want to. It does automatically watchlist any article you tag for speedy deletion / prod to your watchlist, but not any article you revert, as I personally don't want all of those clogging up my watchlist. Anyway, I'm busy busy busy on the next version, and I'll hopefully have it ready sometime in the not too distant future. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, in pywikipedia you can specifically state if you want the page to be added to your watchlist or not when saving it, no matter your preference ... I think?, so it should be possible in VP also, but maybe the .NET framework you use does not have that feature yet. Thanks anyway, i will try to remeber to unset the add to watchlist next time I use VP. Keep up the good work, we are all wating!! (no pressure :-) ) Stefan13:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there's a check box under the edit summary textbox, "Watch this page", the preferences just set whether that should be checked by default or not, you can still change it. VP should be able to change it too, but it should probably be optional - if people have their preferences set to always watch things, they might well want to always watch things. --Tango13:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, VandalProof does have the ability to set it, as I explained above. However, there are really only two possible options--yes or no. VandalProof cannot make the distinction between pages you chose to watchlist and pages that are watchlisted due to your Wikipedia settings--it's not a mind reader. With user talk pages, VP will err on the side of the user's settings; thus, if the talk page is already by default watchlisted it will not de-watchlist it; likewise it will not watchlist it if the page is by default not watchlisted. If you do not want pages you create/edit to be added to your watchlist by default, then open up Wikipedia, go to "my preferences" / "editing," and uncheck "Add pages I create to my watchlist" and "Add pages I edit to my watchlist." That's really about all I can do for you. Sorry. AmiDaniel (talk) 20:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any way that the reporting feature for AIV could differentiate between IP users and logged in users so that it could use the correct templates? (IP users should be marked with {{IPvandal}}, not {{vandal}}).--SomeStranger(t)21:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is already a "hide logged in users" option on the drop down next to Update, I think. Is there an easy way to detect new users? --Tango23:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be useful if the program had two versions (admin and non-admin) and could tell whether you were an admin or not. That way, it would automatically give you admin tools if you were an admin (including "real" rollback), or non-admin tools if not. -- King of♥♦♣♠18:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it does that in the next release - the admin tools arn't implemented, but it definately detects your sysop flag. Thanks for the suggestion though. —Xyrael/ 18:33, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm working on it. The new log-in method will check for sysop rights, and if there, you get a nifty "+sysop" and can use VP's sysop tools. The one sysop tool I have more or less finished is blocking, whereby you can block a user and post a block-warning in one click (you can see me fiddling around with this here). I'm also reworking "Rollback All" to use server-side rollback and set "&bot=1" to hide mass clean up of vandalism from RC. There will prolly be more to come... 23:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Would it be a bad idea to release a "lite" version (with limited features) that doesn't require authorization to use? --Ixfd6421:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What features would it have? The important one if quick reversion, and that's the bit that needs authorisation to be safe. --Tango23:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to the new log-in method, I don't believe this will be necessary. The main incentive for this would be to make it less of a tedious task to log-in, which I think I've now solved. I'm not sure I'd want brand new users using anything but the browser of VP, and I also like having user lists to do stats on how many people on which wikis are using it. AmiDaniel (talk) 23:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've got another suggestion. As you probably know, some authorized users (including myself) are having trouble with the authentication due to browser/cookie issues. An idea to solve this problem is to allow users to verify themselves by entering their username and password into VandalProof. This implementation can also potentially prevent unauthorized users from using VandalProof on an authorized user's computer. The only problem is that some users may not feel comfortable about entering their password into third-party programs. --Ixfd6422:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would love to use the Gecko engine as I find it much superior to IE; however, I do have my reasons for using the IE rendering engine. The primary reason is its universality--everyone has IE, which makes it very easy to distribute. For a non-IE clone of VandalProof, you might check out VandalSniper, which is under development by User:Crazycomputers and runs under the Linux platform. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Was about to suggest tabbed browsing, but I see that's covered. What about a button to the effect of "Rollback, then go to user's contribs"? Apologies if something already works that way, I'm not in a position to check at the moment. Though part of me also wonders if tabbed browsing would, in itself, render that function silly. Food for thought. Luna Santin09:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, anytime there's a username displayed in the user-bar you can click the C button in the upper-right hand corner to load his/her on-top contribs in the left panel. I typically hit that to load his contribs and then rollback, so that I can then check if he's done anything I may have missed. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When I click buttom to "see all edits by this user" or whatever when a ip or user has made multiple edits in a row, VP re-retrieves the warning information that it had already pulled up a second ago. maybe this could be eliminated. I'm not familiar with the code, but it seems logical. savidan(talk)(e@)18:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reworking the talk page warnings dealio in the next release. The one problem with caching the data is that, well, someone might receive multiple warnings between the time you first encounter the user and the next time. However, I'm now going to be fetching the contents of talk pages using the query.php interface, which is much faster. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just a suggestion, but could the tool be modified to allow custom warnings to be saved for future use? Also, could we have a "preview warning" feature. Thanks - GW_Simulations|User Page | Talk|Contribs | E-mail21:10, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I know, but I want to edit the default test1 warning, it's in amidaniel's space but he might get unhappy if I edit it myself without permission.--Andeh11:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I dont know if this has been raised but...sometimes when I warn a user on a cetain topic a different person warns the user at the same time...so is there a way to check to see if the current articles the vandals or someone reverting it when you click one of the warning buttons? I think Lupin has something like that? Dspradau21:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One additional problem - strikes me again and again. Is VP warning a user where I didnot revert as someone else was faster. Often I leave the warning as the other reverter does not leave one but I think that VP should check that it actually edited the article before leaving a warning - lovely program though - Peripitus(Talk)12:01, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't vandalproof much, so this may be foolishness, but can we have a feature with the different deletion tags? That would be helpful for Special:Newpages patrollers. GangstaEB~(penguin logs) 19:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
If you were to implement an option for the sections to be over-under rather than side-by-side, perhaps room could be made
for a display of the number of charachters changed, like in Anti-Vandal tool. --Scienceman12304:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you should implement a feature that adds a new section for each warning (chackbox maybe?) so that it says "Your recent edit to XXXXX" instead of just slapping it on the bottom of the page. Also, for the article tools, maybe a feature to tag for NPOV, cleanup, accuracy, etc. --Scienceman12302:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of making a new section, it simply puts the title, equal marks, and message without making a new section. The contents of my file are as follows;
<Rollback 0>
Rollback
<ROLLBACK 1>
Rollback {{test1-n}}
== Your Recent Edits to [[%P]] == {{subst:test1-n|%P}}
<ROLLBACK 2>
Rollback {{test1a-n}}
== Your Recent Edits to [[%P]] == {{subst:test1a-n|%P}}
<ROLLBACK 3>
Rollback {{test2-n}}
== Your Recent Edits to [[%P]] == {{subst:test2a-n|%P}}
<ROLLBACK 4>
Rollback {{test2a-n}}
== Your Recent Edits to [[%P]] == {{subst:test2a-n|%P}}
<ROLLBACK 5>
Rollback {{test3-n}}
== Your Recent Edits to [[%P]] == {{subst:test3-n|%P}}
<ROLLBACK 6>
Rollback {{test4-n}}
== Your Recent Edits to [[%P]] == {{subst:test4-n|%P}}
<ROLLBACK 7>
Rollback (Custom)
##CUSTOMWARNING
<TALK 0>
{{welcomeg}}
==Welcome== {{subst:welcomeg}}##NOSIG
Welcoming user
<TALK 1>
{{anon}}
==Welcome== {{subst:anon}}
Welcoming anonymous user
<TALK 2>
{{summary}}
==Please Use Edit Summaries== {{subst:summary}}
Advising user to use edit summaries
<TALK 3>
{{Adw}}
{{subst:Adw|%P}}
Warning user that [[%P]] has been nominated for AfD
<TALK 4>
{{Drmafd}}
==Do Not Remove AfD Notices== {{subst:drmafd}}
Warning user not to remove AfD notices
<TALK 5>
{{Nn-warn}}
==[[%P]]== {{subst:Nn-warn|%P}}
Warning user that [[%P]] has been tagged for speedy deletion
<TALK 6>
{{drmspeedy}}
{{subst:drmspeedy}}
Warning user not to remove CSD notices
<TALK 7>
{{wr}}
==Do Not Remove Warnings== {{subst:wr}}
Warning user not to remove warnings
Am I doing something wrong? --Scienceman12323:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to have pop-up messages on buttons in the next version - it would be very helpful for people like me with a poor memory and new users? By that I mean if you hoover over the "rollback test n-1" button, it previews what the text would be (it does not have to be dynamic but just an indicator of the standard text that would appear?
Maybe a second row. I'd like a few buttons for speedy deletion and notification (specifically one for db-copyvio and sd-nothanks1), a button for rollback/blatentvandal, etc. St.isaac05:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was looking for the same thing that Scienceman123 was, and I think I know the problem. When you have a ==Header== followed by other text on the same line, the header ceases to work. As the custom buttons only allow you one line for the warning, it's currently impossible to add a header with the warning. The suolution? Instead using a new line to detect the start of the next button parameter, use some symbol, like a * or ^. That way, headers can be added and VP will add a much nicer looking display to vandalpages. --Daniel Olsen21:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm well aware both of the problem and the solution. MediaWiki used to support having headers on the same line as the remaining text, but after some changes were made, it no longer worked, causing problems for many but operators and Wiki coders such as myself. AmiDaniel (talk) 23:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know that I can do a find in the right-hand pane by using ctrl-f or doing a right click, but.... would it be possible to add the ability to do a find in the left-hand pane? In particular, I would like it for finding an article in my Watchlist. Thanks for your consideration. --Brian G (Talk) 23:31, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi: do you have anyway of adding a feature to VP whereby it would flag up (in a different colour, say) edits made to articles in certain categories? We have had a bit of trouble tonight with edits made to Christine Jennings, who is running for US Congress later this year. I've done a bit of detective work and it seems to me that Jennings and the woman she is running against, Jan Schneider, have both had people make edits to the articles which serve their own interests. I've discussed this with User:Jkelly, and he is of the opinion - and I agree with him - that this sort of thing is only going to get worse as we approach the election in November. I've created a category, Category:2006 US Congressional Election Candidates, and would love it if VP could flag up all edits to articles from this category. Any chance you could do that? Perhaps the best way would be to give users of VP the option to watch whatever category they wanted, then they could choose whether certain edits were flagged or not. --Jim (Talk) 00:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about making it easier to import the blacklist and the whitelist more convenient. Might I suggest putting an import button such as the one above the administrator list next to each list and then the global list gets updated automatically when you log out. Tarret19:53, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What I would like is you know the bar where we can see the users warning.. If we could fly off and have a list of what the users warning with each dates in order... If you know what I mean.. right now we can have 2*t1, t2, t3 9 September, 2006.. but the list would give
I know it would be kind of hard.. but anyway that would get us the exact dates of warnings, or the order.. it would be great :) --Deenoe14:21, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Have you tried clicking on the user warning bar? It expands into a full list displaying the full contents of their talk page, highlighting warnings, and providing the date and time the warning was issued. AmiDaniel (talk) 19:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It seems from the above that we're going to get some really great enhancements in the next version. I can't wait! Can you give any idea when it's likely to be released? --MichaelMaggs16:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
AOL users in those IP bands that are often assigned differently on each page load should not be warned. Doing so will almost never reach the right person and will just serve to annoy. Instead, {{AOL}} should be added to the top of the page if it's not already there. The full list of AOL proxy IPs is here. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:46, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Rollback {{test1-n}}, {{test2-n}}, etc buttons should have a division when placing the warnings, i.e. "----", so it doesn't seem related to other messages on the talk page. Take a look at this diff and you should see what I mean. --AAA!(talk • contribs)07:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
First off thanks a lot for making such a great vandal-fighting tool! It works great and it makes RC Patrol a lot easier.
With that said, I have one or two suggestions...
1) Give an option to not display edits to user/talk pages. I'm finding that these are less commonly vandalized than the mainspace articles.
2) Give an option to bold featured articles that are edited. I'm finding that edits to these made by anonymous users are quite often vandalism, or reduce the quality of the article and require attention.
You can hide edits to user and talk pages by opening up RC Preferences and clicking on the NS button next to each RCItem you wish to modify. From there you can select which namespaces you want to show up in the RC list. If you want to bold featured articles, you can simply add the list of FA's to your article blacklist and then specify in your RCPrefs that you want edits to blacklisted pages to be highlighted. AmiDaniel (talk) 19:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I edit and create articles on a iMac G5, and i would like to do anything to prevent vandalism on wikipedia. Can you please possibly make a VP Version capable for the Mac? If you can, i will apply to get it!
Yes please. VP is apparently supposed to work on a Mac because of its similarities to Linux, but I have yet to get it to work on my mac. Mkdwtalk16:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
VP will never be Mac-capable, I'm afraid, but if you're interested in a similar tool that will run on a Mac, I'm currently working on a Java port of the WP:VP2 client, which will be available soon. AmiDaniel (talk) 19:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The current template {{anon}} is somewhat different in the information it gives compared with {{welcomeg}}.
I have just created template {{Anonwelcomeg}} using the {{welcomeg}} details, but without any usernames included. Could this be substituted for the current {{anon}} template so that the information in each is the same? Richard Harvey10:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can modify all of the buttons and templates by editing your "Custombuttons.txt" file. See the help page for more info on how to do this. AmiDaniel (talk) 19:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Scanning recent changes for previously warned IP's
I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, or even exists in the tool, but can there be an option to scan and list the recent changes for IP edits that have warning messages in their talk page? the same way it does this when you select a diff. - Tutmosis00:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ouch. This would require a hell of a lot of processor time, server requests, and all-in-all tremendously slower operation. Doubt it will ever be implemented, sorry. AmiDaniel (talk) 10:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What about making the program calculate some kind of a Score for every edit telling users how probable it is that the edit is vandalism? This combined with the planned feature of network cooperation (so every edit gets checked only once or twice) would make it a lot easier. You could for example make a (automated?) list of "known good contributors" or give positive scores to users (the more a user edits without vandalism, the bigger the score) and give edits by this users a lower spam probability. You could also allow everyone to use VP for voicing his opinion, the opinions of users with a high positive score being given more weight (just add up the scores of all users that say "this is vandalism" - if the sum is over the value of x, revert) and other nice things. Would be really a lot of coding though, that would require a whole trusted dev team. --195.145.172.24213:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC) (I do not have an account in the en wiki, just de)[reply]
I second that. I always get confused when I see a warning for the same edit done at the same time, and then realize I was beaten to and was still giving the guy a warning. I mean, you can see it on the rollback, but not the rollback+warning--Wizardman15:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In order to determine if it's been "beaten to reverting", it would have to re-fetch the page history and parse it, which would require a tremendous amount of unnecessary time simply to keep logs more accurate. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:59, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You know how there's an option to hide WL Edits, Bot Edits, etc. Would it be possiblt to add in an option to hide talk pages as well? I'm always abotu to hit ollback on an opinion until I realize it's a talk page.--Wizardman15:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if it has been considered, but why not adding an option to display the last recent change made since the last other user before the current suspected vandal, quite frankly there are some vandalism that I can spot only through going through the last records. Could that be added ? -- Esurnir00:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Although I'm a WP:VP user and not an admin, its frustrating to have to take an admins time up to do blocks in repeat ongoing vandal attacks. It would be nice if WP:VP allowed its users to do a 1 hour or possibly 1 day temporary block on anon vandals after a T4 warning has been ignored. That would allow us to prevent much of the 'school dinner break' and 'Office dinner break' vandalism spree's! Richard Harvey20:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe that's possible since it really isn't up to the creator of the program to do this. Currently I'm pretty sure only admins can block and you can't make it so anyone who has access to vandalproof can block. Yonatanh19:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You'll have to take this up with the MediaWiki devs, and I highly doubt you'll ever get the consensus of the Wikipedia community behind allowing non-admins blocking rights. It's certainly not mine to decide, however. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:56, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if there was this option as it would be very useful if you're dealing with say a spam bot that has just spammed 100 pages. Of course it should check if his change was succeeded by someone else's.
Another suggestion is to let you revert vandalism even if there was an edit after the vandalism IF the edit after the vandalism was done by the same user that did the original vandalism. Yonatanh20:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it was originally in place for non-admins, but it was removed due to concerns over security and server-lag. It likely won't be reimplemented for non-admins again. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:54, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Does your tool automatically seek out changes like do > don't or adding 'not' or vice versa? Basically, sneaky changes to change a positive to a negative and negative to a positive? Although there will be some legitimate cases, such changes appearing on their own seem pretty suspect to me. --SeansPotato Business18:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The tools doesn't automatically seek out anything. Rather, you choose what changes you want to check, and then check yourself. If you think it needs reverting, do so. Ale_Jrbtalk18:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that when you are RC patrolling, the revert buttons should be: Rollback {{test}}, Rollback {{vandal}}, Rollback {{delete}}, Rollback {{spam}}, 2 more various options, and Rollback (custom). Each of the four rollback buttons would open a small popup window which would ask the warning level (1, 2, 3, 4, or 4im), and then would post the appropriate warning using the new system {{subst:uw-warningtype#|Pagename}}. Administrators would use one of the extra two buttons for Rollback {{block}}. This would allow over 20 warning templates to be accessed quickly and easily without use of the custom warning button, while still leaving one or two buttons open for customization. PyrospiritFlamesFire00:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I personally think this would be quite obnoxious--I prefer to do things in as few steps as possible. I see no reason why this couldn't be implemented as a custom param, however, something like "%%QUERY" to request user input. I'll pass it along. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:53, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, "as few steps as possible" is the idea behind this. It means you'll almost never have to type in your own custom warning, which I have to do whenever I want to post uw-test (any level), uw-spam (any level), uw-delete (levels 3, 4, or 4im), or uw-vandalism4im. I would much prefer two clicks for all 18 vandalism warnings rather than one click for 6 warnings but three clicks plus some typing for the remaining 12. Even if you don't do this, could you at least add the remaining 12 new vandalism warnings to the list of custom warnings so that I don't have to type them in each time? PyrospiritFlamesFire15:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if there was an edit summary when reporting someone on the AIV page. Instead, it makes me look like I neglect to add an edit summary. Thanks. Wikipediarules222101:21, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Um - I believe you need to have pop-ups installed for this as it uses the "&autosummary=" tag. Try installing them. They're really useful too :P Ale_Jrbtalk13:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if going to 'Article Tools' > 'Search Google' would either open a new window using the user's default browser or open it in a tab within VandalProof. I know that there are no plans to use Firefox, or any other browser, instead of IE for VandalProof but this wouldn't effect the people with IE as their default browser and would be nice for thoes of us that prefer another browser.
It would be nice to omit talk page edits from the recent changes list, since fighting vandalism on user pages isn't really a priority (for me at least). This can be implemented as a "Hide talk page edits" option in the Update drop down menu --Davidkazuhiro07:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can already do this. Go to "RC Preferences" and select the NS button next to each edit type. You can select which namespaces for which type of edits you want to display in the RC list. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some more templates to put on articles would be nice. Maybe, NPOV, sources, cleanup/wikify. Things like that would be helpful, maybe under a misc. section in Article tools. Mr.Z-mantalk¢21:57, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would really help vandalism fighting on RC patrol if the RSS feed showed the whole contribution of the editor in the diff rather than just the last edit. I've made a good number of mistakes this way, and it's really annoying when I have to go to the normal Wikipedia history to get the right diff. PyrospiritFlamesFire02:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My preferences are set so that any article I edit is automatically added to my watchlist. However, whenever I use VP, I really don't want to watch those particular articles because I have no interested in doing so. Can we possibly have a feature in which we choose whether or not we want to watch those articles we edit?--Ed¿Cómo estás?18:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Very quick suggestion: There should be a button that allows you to hide the left pane with a click. I often use this program to normally read Wikipedia, but the left pane often causes display issues outside of Recent Changes. PyrospiritFlamesFire02:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Something like Mozilla ActiveX Control I think would work best here, however, it would require an extra download and install for users, and may very well have a few quirks which would make it incompatible with the VP code. I'll look into it, but no guarantee this will work. --Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 08:59, 7 March 2007 (UTC)de[reply]
Hmm.. it seems like this wont work. It is simply unable to fill/submit the login or edit forms (and yes, the event triggers, but the form is never filled nor submitted, which is probably a gap in functionality) The last release of the Mozilla control was in December of '05, so don't hold your breath for it to become complete enough to use in VandalProof. For now at least, VP with the Gecko rendering engine is unlikely to work. :/ --Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 09:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've answered this before, but I'll answer it again. Mozilla's ActiveX control at present has a highly underdevolped DOM wrapper. Without a fully implemented DOM wrapper, it cannot be used for, well, anything except very, very primitive web browsing. It also has massive bugs in the software, causing massive memory leaks and making it almost completely unusable. It is also a highly complex and large component, requiring all users to not only have Firefox installed, but also to register a mass of dll's and ocx's (which has the risk of corrupting registries and interfering with IE components). I too would like to see VP and WikiMonitor and all other such softwares make use of the Gecko engine, which I find to be far superior to IE's, but the options Mozilla has provided to do this are simply not stable nor fully-compatible to actually use. In short, as Mike said, don't hold your breath. It likely will never happen. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:10, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, could you provide a menu option that disables all user scripts in VP when checked? That would prevent all the constant error messages from my monobook Javascript, which is designed for Firefox. Firefox users could select it so IE-incompatible scripts wouldn't cause problems, and IE users would leave it unchecked. PyrospiritFlamesFire01:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not particularly difficult to disable non-ie compatible scripts on your own:
var detect = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var IE;
var place = detect.indexOf('msie') + 1;
if (place) IE=true;
if (!IE) {
/* Your FF scripts here ... */
}
Wait, so if I put that in monobook.js, all the scripts I place in the "not IE" area will only be run in Firefox? Thanks, this will really help with compatibility! PyrospiritFlamesFire04:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if the user box on the contribs tab would be a drop-down menu containing the last n (10?) users that have been used in that tab. I use vandalproof to revert spammers, and now I have to do quite some operations to switch between two spammers/vandals. --Dirk BeetstraTC15:15, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Could VP automatically add an edit summary when reporting a user to AIV. I currently have enabled the force me to include an edit summary option which is a useful reminder but means I have to put one in myself when automaticaly reporting a user to AIV. Goodnightmush01:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously, it's been driving me crazy. Every time I clear my browser cache (Ctrl + F5), find something (Ctrl + F), undo something (Ctrl + Z), redo something (Ctrl + Y), print (Ctrl + P), cut/copy/paste (Ctrl + X/C/Z), or use any number of other common functions involving the Ctrl key, I end up inadvertently opening the next link I click in a new tab in VP.
It would be much appreciated if you did one of two things:
Change key to Alt, which is much less used.
Make it so that it only opens a new tab if you click on the link while holding Ctrl, not just after pressing it at some point.
Well, Ctrl's the standard key used for this by all tabbed browsers (Firefox, Opera, etc.) The problem with new-tabbing links when ctrl is down is known; WikiMonitor does not have this problem, but it has not yet been fixed in VP. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you should include buttons that goes to the previous page and next page, instead of clicking ctrl+B or ctrl+W everytime. --Jacklau9613:53, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I recently created a new template, {{wlink}}. It's designed to simplify linking to edit pages, history pages, diffs, purge functions, redirect pages, etc. This template might be useful in VandalProof.
Basically, VandalProof's rollback warning messages currently link to the diff in the standard method (using as an example one of my recent VP reverts):
This has the exact same function, linking to the same diff, but is simpler and appears as [1] instead.
In case you do decide to implement this template into the VP messages, there's a couple small differences you should know about in case they would affect VP's functioning. (Knowing the sensitive nature of programming, there's a good chance it would change some things.) For one, links that use this template replace spaces with + in the URL instead of _. Also, an extra & is applied to the end of the URL.
One problem with this is that if someone messes up the template, it could cause chaos with VP-generated posts. (I've broken the template a couple times myself.)
Can you make a bookmark tab for VP in the next version? If I want to concentrate in removing example.jpgs, I dont need to type the URLs any more. Thanks. --Jacklau9609:31, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please read before you tell me to edit the CustomButtons.txt
I know that I can customise the buttons on the top (i.e. {{test1-n}} etc.). I know, because I have customised mine (heavily). What I don't know, is why we can't customise the eigth button (Rollback (Custom)). I mean, we can customise it (I could change it to warn the user for some other random thing for example). But why can we not customise the list of custom warnings in that Custom button? Or if we can, how? If I'm not being too clear, I mean this:
<ROLLBACK 7>
Rollback (Custom)
##CUSTOMWARNING
Note that when you press this button (Rollback (Custom)) you are provided with a list of custom messages (and you can, of course, specify your own message). But why can we not add our own messages to this list, or modify the list in any way? If it's obvious and I just can't see it, please point it out to me. I'm using 1.3.5, by the way (1.3.6 has way too many RSS related bugs). --RazorICE13:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I second the above idea. It would be really handy to be able to add more classes of warning to fit the appropriate circumstance. I always view the vandal's talk page before deciding what warning to put in so it would also be useful for VP to automatically bring up the vandal's talk page in a second tab when an article is selected. Stephen Kirragetalk - contribs14:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Could there be a feature added that allows the user to ask that a page be either fully or semi protected (using much the same format as the WP:AIV tool)? C0N6R355talkcontribs22:47, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible for Vandalproof to detect whether a page exists before placing a speedy template? I've often found that while I'm pondering, someone has already speedied the article, so I end up recreating it with just a speedy template. David Mestel(Talk)07:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Make this program compatible with twinkle as I know many users who have twinkle won't use this program else wise. —«ANIMUM»23:10, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I previously used Twinkle as my anti-vandal tool, and after i preformed a revert, it would say wehter it was a vandal revert, or a good faith revert by saying "identified as vadalism" or "reerting good faith". I would like to see that feature hear at VP, b/c there have been problems with users thinking it was a good faith revert when it was really for vandalism. Tiptoety23:03, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How about a button that shows up on older revisions that you can click that will restore that one. (Good for when there are many vandalism edits made by a lot of people that haven't been reverted.) Thanks! —Signed by KoЯnfan71My TalkSign Here!00:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Make warnings more like how Wikiproject User Warnings wants
I saw many people asking for a Mac OS X version or a Linux version. I know a very simple solution for this: QT 4. It's a cross platform toolkit, and with KHTML and KIO you can easily port it, since it will no longer be dependant of Internet Explorer (KHTML renders the HTML page, KIO will be able to use HTTP). It's actually very easy to work with, it will be cross-platform (all you have to do is telling your compiler to cross-compile, GCC can do this), so Linux and Mac OS X users would be able to use it too. Note that a QT app looks like a normal, native toolkit-app on non-X11-platforms (Mac OS X, Windows). Yes, that means that your app could also be ported to Solaris or BSD.
20:26, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Srikeit(talk ¦ ✉) 19:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)