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Whats it about?

Hello, what exactly is the CVU, barring the obvious, about. What do you guys do? To put it better, how do you combat vandalism. Please tell me more, either here or on my talk page if you prefer. Thanks Banes 18:38, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

The Counter Vandalism Unit utilizes (primarily) the #en.wikipedia.vandalism IRC channel to identify and revert vandalism as it occurs. We invite all RC patrollers who use IRC to join us in the channel. -- Essjay · Talk 03:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Ah. Must a User utilize that channel to join? Will remove my name until the "membership requirements" are made clear. Sorry to everyone for the precipitate action. Thanks.—encephalon 09:04, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
As you can see from the elections everyone in this group get along well. There have be no oppose votes at all (at this point) --☺Adam1213☺ Talk+|WWW 10:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Any and everyone is welcome to be a member, I for one am not an admin. Requirements for membership is simple, you need internet access and an irc client.. ;) --Cool Cat Talk 00:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I disagree that we should require people to use IRC, people can still counter vandalism without using the IRC channel by just going to Special:Recentchanges so using the IRC channel while helpful isn't necessary for reverting vandalism just like adminship isn't either. As proven by the fact that the CVU was started by cool cat who isn't an admin. Jtkiefer T | @ | C ----- 01:02, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Actualy you are right. All vandal fighters are welcomed to be a member. The IRC bot is there as a mean to achive it. --Cool Cat Talk 14:54, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for that clarification. I'll add my name back, then. encephalon 15:54, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I too am glad you have clarified this - I counter vandalism all the time on RC but find IRC annoying! -- Francs2000 16:23, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I feel this should be a page where all RC patrolers meet. Links to other RC progs are also welcome. I am going to seperate the IRC bot links a bit. ;) --Cool Cat Talk 22:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Oops, looks like I missed it all:-) I could have sworn I had this page watchlisted. Still, thanks for the explanation. One thing though, I am an upandcoming young vandal fighter who uses Cryptoderk. Now, is that a problem, am I wanted on the CVU? Banes 16:17, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely not! I think CDVF is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I know plenty of other CVU members use it too. -- Essjay · Talk 20:01, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I recomend a combination of several of them. The IRC bot detects more obvious cases of vandalism. The not so obvious cases require CDVF or other progs. Some people just refresh the RC page. I do not like sliced bread. --Cool Cat Talk 22:26, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I tend to use the IRC channel when WP is slow, or when I want to some casual vandal fighting. If I'm up for an intense session, I use CDVF. In either case, Im usually on channel, as there are usually admins hanging out there that will institute blocks when they are needed. --GraemeL (talk) 14:23, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposals to move out of user space

Should this be moved to the Wikipedia space? Jobe6 02:56, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I am fine with that, though. I am concerned of people complaining about /this not belonging in wikipedia namespace/being redudent/type excuse here to irritate/etc/... --Cool Cat Talk 03:29, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


Actualy on a second though thıs page should be in commons. I am getting more and more users asking for other wikis to be covered. Also we now have 20 members and it apears its not going to slow down. Dont get me wrong I am not complaining but its starting to become hard to manage given I havent quite advertise this. No ANB entry no VP entry either. --Cool Cat Talk 14:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I am moving the page to wikipedia namespace as this is being popular we are aproaching 30 members just in en alone and most other language users (on irc) are unaware of the page :) --Cool Cat Talk 19:16, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

IP proxy lists

These vandal bots are obviously using IP proxy lists. So, why don't we just block all IP's on such lists? — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-15 20:48

NTL proxies are used by "good" users as well. One problem could be the colatoral damage. I do not however know how many good users use NTL proxies. --Cool Cat Talk 08:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Well I do for a start, NTL uses transparent proxies, though it is possible to set a specific proxy, there are quite a lot of NTL proxies. I thought NTL passed through the real IP in one of the headers, if they are on cable this seems to remain pretty static, don't know about dial-up/ADSL. I would have thought the best thing to do was capture that and report to NTL abuse. --pgk(talk) 18:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Is it permissable, after having done a 'whois' on any IP in question, to contact the Service Providers and report the abuse? Below is a common return from the whois database (names and locations omitted (*)).......

% Information related to '***.***.***.* - ***.***.***.***'

inetnum: ***.***.***.* - ***.***.***.***
netname: ******
descr: ******
descr: ******
country: **
admin-c: THT8-RIPE
tech-c: THT8-RIPE
rev-srv: ******
rev-srv: ******
status: ASSIGNED PA
remarks: ****************************
remarks: * In case of abuse please *
remarks: * contact: abuse@***.** *
remarks: ****************************
mnt-by: HPT-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered

role: T-HT Contact
address: T-HT, ******
address: ******
address: ******
address: ******
phone: +*** * **** ***
fax-no: +*** * **** ***
remarks: trouble: ****************************
remarks: trouble: * In case of abuse please *
remarks: trouble: * contact: abuse@***.** *
remarks: trouble: ****************************

Perhaps the Counter Vandalism Unit could be charged with emailing the ISPs abuse 'box, or indeed phone or fax them, giving details of the offending IP number(s) and the times and dates of the vandalism. The ISP should be able to check their records/logs and determine what phone number was assigned those numbers on those particular dates and at those times and could then notify them about the Wikipedians complaint. Most cases of vandalism are perpetuated by kids/teenagers who must inevitably answer to Mom & Dad. Prevention is better than cure so if somehing like this were to become common practice it would really cut down on vandalism. --MrMiagi 18:27, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Counter Vandalism Unit - User:MARMOT

File:CVU2.PNG
  1. http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User:Cool_Cat&limit=500&action=history
  2. http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Cool_Cat&limit=250&action=history

MARMOT is begining to be a serious problem. I am recieving multiple vandal bot atacks on my userpage and blocks are being inefective. I feel much more serious mesures should be placed into practice to contain this vandals apathy. --Cool Cat Talk 20:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Why don't we just block IPs on published proxy lists? That should help at least some in overall vandalism. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-15 20:50
He finds new ones I think. I just recived a new wave of attack btw. --Cool Cat Talk 22:28, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
That's the third attack today. Titoxd(?!?) 22:30, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Send a message to the WikiEN-l email list if you haven't already. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-15 22:59
We do, if you find any open proxies that aren't blocked please report them to me (in addition to or instead of blocking them yourself) as I can use them to seed the search for more open proxies. --fvw* 04:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
And I think 6th this week and 8th the past 15 days. Each bomb run leaves a mess. Only admin block can stop MARMOT and since I am not one I am powerless to directly stop him. Admins aren't always avalible. --Cool Cat Talk 23:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, we could protect your page, but then the vandal will probably target something we don't know about under a user name we don't know about, which is worse. Maybe it would be best for you to just ignore it. If an admin sees it, he'll revert it, but don't revert it yourself or take any steps to get it reverted, don't even tell people about it. Admins and RC Patrol will notice. Maybe the vandal will eventually give/grow up. The point is for you, the target, to spend as little effort counteracting it. You might even do what I do, add a little tally on your user page, under a positive heading, like "Awards and recogntion". Take the vandalism as a compliment. Partly reverse psychology, partly to show you're in control of the vandal's life every minute he spends vandalizing your page. Also, set your wikimood bar at 100%. You love being vandalized, dammit! :) — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-16 01:30
Aye, I could get my page protected,but like you said this will only make him use a second target (such as my talk page). --Cool Cat Talk 07:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure these are open proxies, though I'd love it if we were able to find out (*cough* *cough*). In the grand scheme of things this isn't that much of a problem though. There's some persistence but the edits are easy enough to revert and the sockpuppets easy enough to block. Why is this on Jimbo's talk though? I'm sure if he could wave a magic wand and make it stop he would, but I doubt there's much he can do here. --fvw* 04:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
He could password protect the site, and change the main page to read "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that Jimbo can edit." — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-16 04:34
I think its NTL proxies which are not open to everyone but to NTL users I believe. MARMOT is using the second largest ISP in the UK and occasionaly random open proxies he discovers I believe. I dnsed several of his ips and posted that info on the Wikipedia:Long term abuse/MARMOT. --Cool Cat Talk 07:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

This idea is nice

I might not participate in your unit but I do my little bit in curbing vandalism. I'm also planning to start a "Counter Copyvio Unit" as I'm involved in keeping copyrighted materials away from Wikipedia. Any thoughts or suggestions on this? I may or maynot be a member myself (I hate memberships) but I think someone like me who finds that blatant copyvios are emanating from one anon user or in an article for a time period would make use of the unit to do the job. Many might find the violations but might not have time immediately to curb/report it and in the meanwhile other editors might edit it making it a waste of energy for the genuine contributors. Thus the idea. Tx Idleguy 11:32, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Actualy the irc bot does detect copy vios. You may use it to do so. We could create a sub body for copy vios. I do not object to expanding the grasp of this :) --Cool Cat Talk 17:18, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Another good resource for those wanting to fight copyvio is Copyscape lets you search the web for pages with the same content of a given page

Countering vandalism for specific pages

I check for vandalism on pages on my watchlist, which is small but growing all the time. Can I join the CVU, or is this for users who combat vandalism in a broader sense? Durga2112 11:56, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Certainly that's what I do for the most part. I think the page indicates that everyone who wants to combat vandalism is welcome. --Nlu 12:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

User creating multiple socks for hoaxing, multivoting?

Hi, this is my first time here, but looks like you guys might know good ways to deal with something like this. Someone in Hampshire, England seems to be creating multiple socks in connection with a series of what I (and others) feel are obvious hoax articles. See Gravitational Oscillating Plane Theory and check out the contribts of

This person appears to be using socks to vote multiple times in at least one AfD.---CH (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

These users cannot run sockpuppet checks, but David Gerard can. Rob Church Talk | FAHD 02:28, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

RfC

I am the former 134.250.72.176. Recently while I was User:134.250.72.176, I was removing {{AOL}} templates for reasons of redundancy and clarity, and in the hopes of creating a list of known AOL IPs using Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:AOL. In doing so, it was often the case that the page was blanked, in most cases for two reasons: because the template was the only thing on the page or because beside the template, only patent nonsense, or other unnecessary, out of place, old, or irrelevant comments were on the pages. Please note that any worthwhile and related information and discussion was most likely moved to the talk page (where it belongs). It should also be noted that I quite frequently place templates on anonymous IPs to better educate Wikipedians on the who and where of IPs, and therefore left all templates on the talk pages there, or added them when they were misplaced.

Following my actions, I later found that my edits were reverted. I was also asked by Hall Monitor to stop vandalising pages. (For discussion prior to and concurrent with this issue in chronological order, see User talk:134.250.72.176, Hall Monitor who, and Fvw.)

I discussed the matter with Hall Monitor, and deciding that the matter was over, I decided to reconvene my work. I reverted the pages, but this time I added an explanation to the summary. (See my contributions as User:134.250.72.176 here.)

Still later, I found that my work was still being reverted, despite the explanation (though I doubt it was read). For the most part, the discussion should provide any details you might need regarding this. In my opinion, I find that the reverts were the result of lack of effort in finding reasons for the change, and falling into the habit of casually reverting — not heeding the guideline in the {{sharedip}} and {{AOL}} templates: 

Caution should be used when blocking this IP or reverting its contributions without checking.

Despite this single occurence, I think that some work needs to be done in addressing how Wikipedia handles anonymous IPs, though I have yet to find a way to do so.

If it is decided that this might be worthy of an RfC page, I think that it would best fit here.

Thank you for your understanding and willingness to offer your help and perspective in this matter. Should you find my actions inappropriate in anyway, please remember to be nice.

134.250.72.174 01:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC), the former 134.250.72.176 talk

207.200.116.68 01:09, 20 October 2005 (UTC), from AOL

It is easy to evade such misunderstandings (I have not checked and trust you (I think)), just get an account. --Cool Cat Talk 23:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
There shouldn't be a need to evade it when there is no reason for misunderstanding. The former 134.250.72.176 talk 00:40, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Problems with IRC channel?

I'm attempting to connect to the IRC channel with CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter, but after a split second, the server disconnects me. Anyone else having this problem, or is something screwy on my end? — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 06:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

brownie.wikimedia.org has retired I think. Adjust it to use irc.wikimedia.org --Cool Cat Talk 20:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, I tried that too (connecting over port 6667), and get the same problem. It worked fine for me once (the first time I ran the program) and hasn't since. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 01:19, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Its working fine over here. Actualy both servers still work. Just use the IRC bot for now :P --Cool Cat Talk 09:18, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
The server name is/was browne.wikimedia.org. Rob Church Talk | FAHD 02:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


I was attempting to connect to the IRC channel that was mentioned at the beginning of the CVU page, but I'm not able to connect through with Chatzilla on Firefox. Is there an update on the IRC channel that I can connect to or is this link out of date and we're not using a gathering place? --LifeStar 21:42, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Try conncting manually to FreeNode and then "/join #wikipedia-en-vandalism". 68.39.174.238 21:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Nope, that didn't work. I'm getting an error in connectiong. Is this down?--LifeStar 21:58, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Date editor

This has been going on for awhile now, and I'm getting kinda frustrated with it. There's something -- and I say something because I'm pretty sure it's a bot of some sort -- running out of 131.107.0.80 (a Microsoft proxy) that frequently edits the date entries. It just made a run at 1915 and for every good addition it makes, it takes out a few it shouldn't. Of course it never leaves an edit summary, but I'm inclined to blame faulty design rather than malice. Does anyone know what's going on with this thing? There's some discussion in the IP's talk section, but it's not very illuminating. –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 17:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Posted by User:Messenger (single use) on Wikipedia:Counter Vandalism Unit

Hello, I am the user behind SuperTroll,
I would like to inform the administrators of Wikipedia that I now intend to cease vandalizing articles.
I first became interested in trolling and vandalism when I saw how "famous" other vandals and trolls had become. I set myself a challenge to make my name appear on the "Wikipedia anti-vandalism pages", but I not only accomplished that, but my name has even appeared on Wikipedia:WikiDefcon. Now that I have made that major achievement, I have no reasons to continue vandalizing. I intend to open a legitimate account and make only legitimate edits. I do understand that certain users may have a problem with that, as I have vandalized all their hard work and wasted their time, but I would now like to make a formal apology to them and make a sincere promise (although I don't know how much a troll's promise is worth) to never vandalise again.
Yours with the deepest respect,
SuperTroll (a.k.a. "The Troll of Manchester", "The High Speed Troll", many people in this list and certain other accounts you missed, such as Quadel and Fred Baudor).
message left on 21:01, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
PS Sorry for blanking this page, It's just a sure way to get your attention. :-)

I moved this here in case anyone wants to read it. Thatdog 21:07, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
As it turns out, it was a total lie (not that that was too surprising), as SuperTroll went back to his old tricks just a few hours later. --Nlu 06:31, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
KAWAII! We get taunted by vandals now. --Cool Cat Talk 15:12, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Logos

Based on a discussion on User talk:Angela, I've removed the two CVU logos from all pages where they could be interpreted as providing Foundation support for local wiki issues. Snowspinner 06:27, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Adding Test template to anonymous IP address user talk pages

If a vandal uses an anonymous IP address to vandalise is it still advised that we should use the Test templates (where appropriate of course)? Thanks Juliusross 11:44, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Annons should be treated no different from regular users. --Cool Cat Talk 15:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The procedure for handling vandalism remains the same. You use {{test}} in the first instance, the appropriate form of {{test2}} in the second, and so forth. Rob Church Talk | FAHD 02:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Teh leader

Since CVU is up and kicking (and I demonstrated that I am not cut out for the job) I am stepping down from my "Director" post. We need a new leader to lead us against vandalism. --Cool Cat Talk 13:50, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

SuperTroll and the .dk clone of SuperTroll

See Wikipedia:Long term abuse/SuperTroll for everything I found out as of last night - David Gerard 17:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

A gradual move to an improved and simpler design

I decided to incredibly simplify and redo the CVU page. I changed the background to white because it was difficult to read on some of my older monitors. I also removed the non-English and other wiki references, as I believe that was a little overload to start. We need to focus on the English Wikipedia to begin with if we are going to be successful. Feel free to discuss and change as you wish. If you don't like my changes for whatever reason - feel free to revert them or edit them to be a happy-medium between our ideas. Thanks --Randy 17:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I've made some further changes in the same vein. One interesting point is that, if we're going to limit ourselves to en.wiki for the time being, the category system could stand to be greatly simplified. As it is, the list of members is probably nested two levels too deep in the categories. Kirill Lokshin 18:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree - That is definitely the next change that needs to be made. It should probably be done by someone familiar with how the category system was set up. --Randy 18:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Introduction

Hello everyone. I just wanted to introduce myself briefly. Some of you may have already seen some of my contributions to Wikipedia, but most of you probably have not. I've only been here a little more than 4 months. I'm very often on RC patrol, doing a combination of Welcoming Committee, reverting vandalism, and using the {{test}} templates to send messages to vandals and newbies. I'm glad to have found this project, and will continue to work hard on it for as long as I'm involved with the Wikipedia project. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 08:25, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I have joined or more to the point would like to join...

Hi all, I would like to join the CVU... DO i need to add any marks on my user page or do i just have to add myself to the members list on the CVU page?? (btw i have add a mark on my user page already but i was not sure) - Simsy 19:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC) |(Feel Free to leave me a message)

No one is required to add marks in their userpage, we encourage it but I do not remember of a policy making it manditory. The only reason there is a list is so we can easily identify RC patrolers. --Cool Cat Talk 16:47, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Is this like a police unit ?

Is this like a police unit for Wikipedia ?Martial Law 23:15, 24 October 2005 (UTC) :)

No, more like a volunteer fire department. The CVU is a voluntary association of Wikipedians who believe it's important to work to keep the encyclopedia free of vandalism; to that extent, we've collected some tools here to help in this work. It's not any more "official" than any other Wikiproject, if that's what you're wondering. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 23:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
That said, I am troubled by some of the militarism in its rhetoric and posture. Snowspinner 23:42, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree that things are becoming over militaristic. I have been toying with proposing a name change more in line with other Wikipedia user groups. Something along the lines of "Association of Vandal Fighters". There's no need to have too formal a structure, when all we want is a place for vandal fighters to exchange information and ideas. Anybody else have thoughts on this? --GraemeL (talk) 00:00, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I have no particular thoughts on a name change, but I'd agree that we might want to take another look at the project description page, and consider rewriting elements of it to avoid coming off as too overzealous. Vandalism is clearly a problem, but it's also important to keep our collective cool, not bite newcomers, and avoid any sort bunker mentality. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 00:19, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, the name started out because it rhymed with a "Counter Terrorism Unit" or CTU mess with the word Terrorism and you get Vandalism. A millitary structure was not intended by all means. The name in my view should imply that we are against vandalism. --Cool Cat Talk 16:47, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with GraemeL as far as CVU becoming too overly-militaristic. I also agree that structure should be more loose and should be more of an information exchange area. And when you think about that, is there really a need for a director and assistant directors? Maybe this whole idea was taken a little too far and we should back down a little bit -- afterall, too much structure can be just as bad as none at all. --Randy 00:38, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
CVU is NOT a millitary. I do not know who came up with the idea and I do not care about gossip. CVU is simply a RC patroller hangout where we discuss matters of vandalism and devise a strategy to more systematicaly and efectively remove vandalism from wikipedia.
The name is fancy and at least I like it. We can vote for a change if it is really necesary but right now I do not see a complaint from members.
If you have concerns please tell us the spesific points you do not like, general referances does not identify the problems. Thanks. --Cool Cat Talk 16:19, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I've never seen CVU as overly militaristic. I'm not surprised some people see it that way, though, since anyytime a group organizes to fight against something (in this case, vandalism on WP), someone is going to accuse them of being militaristic, regardless of any evidence (or lack thereof). --nihon 17:04, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Logos derived from a militarist government agency and a DEFCON system both strike me as problematic. Snowspinner 17:07, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that some people would have a problem with the CVU regardless of the origin or insipiration for its logos and name. Based on what I've seen so far, as well as some history I've dug through, nothing done by the CVU even approaches "militaristic." Rather, it seems to be a bunch of people who want to help keep WP cleaned up and fix any problems as they crop up. Rather than coming down on a really small (all things considered) group that's doing it's best to keep up with those people who seem intent on destroying and vandalizing the information found here, a more effective approach might be to just leave us alone to do the job. If you notice something that could have been handled more effectively, post and say so. Otherwise, there's no reason to fix something that isn't broken. --nihon 22:14, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Cool Cat that CVU is not designed to be overly militaristic. In practice, it is just like any WikiProject, only that we decided to use a "catchier" name. However, I don't know of any CVU member who thinks he/she is part of some sort of army. As long as that is true, there don't have to be any worries. In fact, I'd oppose any name change to CVU. Titoxd(?!?) 21:11, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Jeez, Wikipedia is getting nastier and nastier every day. The CVU is not a millitary, it is not a police unit, and it isn't up to anything. The name is take-off on the Counter Terrorist Unit and frankly, is harmless. We don't have Willy on Wheels in Wiki-Guantanamo Bay being tortured for information, and we don't have hitmen looking for MARMOT. If you don't like it, don't use it, but please, leave those of us who would like to join together to discuss and combat vandalism alone. Fnord, TINC. -- Essjay · Talk 21:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
As per Essjay and in addition:
Counter terrorist unit is a FICTIONALgoverment agency. Inother words it does not even exist. The name doesnt quite matter. What mattersis what it really is.
DEFCON stands for defese condition. It is a meter that simply displays the volume of vandalism basedon analgorithm yet to be coded. We do not have wiki-nukes on wiki-silos either.
--Cool Cat Talk 09:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Elections?

I see we have elections going on for Director and Assistants. What are these positions going to involve? I'm recently a member on "the list" of CVU, but have never backed down from reverting vandalism when I see it. I read the above discusson with valid concerns for an overmilitaristic format for the group. However, it might be very helpful for WP to have a few designated members as specialists in Vandalism (Director/Assistants if you will) for users to approach when out of control vandaliasm is encountered. As a new user, I am just not as familiar with the ins and outs of reporting and reverting vandalism and expert advice could be helpful. Anyway, just some thoughts.—Gaff ταλκ 01:03, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

The Director and Assistant Director notations came about before the CVU was extended outside the IRC channels. In their original context, they referenced Cool_Cat having full access on all the CVU channels and me having similar access. I gave Cool Cat the notation "Director" and he gave me the notation "Assistant Director." What powers they should have now that the CVU has expanded is a question for the CVU to decide. -- Essjay · Talk 01:56, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
The directors and the assistant directors should be no more important than regular members. The name director may be inaproporate as everyone has their own ways they are confortable to use and this isnt a millitary community, I am open for suggestions regarding a name change. I am not bugged by it either. What is important is that the "leaders" are there to resolve conflicts like jimbo being "god" but never throwing lightning bolts unless it is imperative.
While I was a director and while essjay is an assistant director, neither of us excercised any power that anybody else lacked. I do not see what kind of an extra power the directors should have anyways aside from maybe dealing with users who are not here to fight vandalism. Such a thing has not happened yet as well. This arises the question "Do we really need leaders".
What will cvu become will be based on concensius. So far majority of the ideas came about someone suggesting it as it is easier to draft a constitution and later ammend it by basicaly rewriting it completely. --Cool Cat Talk 16:43, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

warn

I have made warn well User:Adam1213/warn I have some ideas on making it work even better with linking from the bot --☺Adam1213☺ Talk+|WWW 05:56, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Hey, that looks like a pretty cool tool! Does it work at this point? And does it sign your name, or can anyone use it?—Gaff ταλκ 21:21, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Looking good. I like that it opens a new section and adds text instead of inserting a bare template. However, when I warn I usually subst in one of the test#-n templates, so that it's clear to the author as well as later patrollers what article I'm talking about. It'd be nice if we could specify the article from your warning page, too. Anyway, just a thought. –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 21:14, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I might add that eventually... its just not all that easy... --Adam1213 Talk+ 07:39, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

can I join?

Title says it all.

Prodego talk 18:49, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Just add yourself to the membership list. -- Essjay · Talk 21:04, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Frequency?

I'm trying to establish the frequency of vandal attacks on Wikipedia articles. Is there any method of tracking frequency of vandalism over time, and if so where is it? --Davril2020 21:26, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

"Vandalic" template

See whether you guys like the {{User van-0}} template and whether it is appropriate. :-) --Nlu 06:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Darth Boz

What was with the Darth Boz vandalisms anyway? It was just rather stupid

Director?

What would the director/assistant directors do?

Prodego talk 21:56, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Administer beatings until morale improves! --GraemeL (talk) 22:04, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Hopefully nothing much. Director/assistant directors are regular CVU members. May be the assistant is bad definition, we may want to have 3 regualr directors elected by community support. There are no firmly established roles. Its more than open for debate. --Cool Cat Talk 00:04, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

They will make sure to let the vandal understand that vandalism creates spiritual turbulence, resulting in misfortune. -- Svest 02:31, 31 October 2005 (UTC)  Wiki me up™

Firefox extension

Does anyone know how to make a Firefox extension? My basic idea is that when you turn it on, the extension will check whether any newly opened windows contain words (the usual obscenities) listed in a text file, and if not, the tab will be closed. Then, I can just keep opening up edits made in CDVF and have it check for the usual things. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-30 03:38

Advice on dealing with user

I'd like the advice of my fellow vandal fighters on an anonymous user I've been tracking. His/her edits fall under this category in the vandalism guidelines:

Mistakes
Sometimes, users will insert content into an article that is not necessarily accurate, in the
belief that it is. By doing so in good faith, they are trying to contribute to the
encyclopedia and improve it. If you believe that there is inaccurate information in an
article, ensure that it is, and/or discuss its factuality with the user who has submitted it.

When this user added many accounts of non-factual information, I informed them that the information was incorrect. However, they continue to try to add this information. On the second attempt, I left a message for them to please explain their edits on my user talk page, or on the article talk page. You can see my exact messages at User_talk:66.215.3.69. Please let me know if I went about this correctly or incorrectly, and what I can do to improve my efforts in the future. Thanks for your time and comments. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 04:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

If he/she is not listening and keeps readding the same information, I'd report him/her under 3RR (assuming that it's done enough times during one day). --Nlu 04:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Negative- it's happened 2-3 times in the past 48 hours, but would certainly apply if you included the 3 other pages that they are putting similar (incorrect) information on. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 05:09, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


Members list

I suggest that the members list is done alphabeticaly or by joining date. --☺Adam1213☺ Talk+|WWW 08:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Advice on getting started in anti-vandalism activities

Good morning, folks.

I'm somewhat new to Wikipedia, insomuch as while I've used it for an information source for a long time, I've never attempted to do anything more demanding than correcting the occasional typo. More recently I've started to contribute more in the way of counter-vandalism activities, though, and find myself with a number of question that I'm hoping someone here can answer. In fact, until today, my counter-vandal efforts were limited to using the Recent changes link - until discovering the wonderous magic of CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter. While that helps immensely in identifying potentially vandalous activities, it doesn't seem to offer much in the way of help in reverting the article. Namely, the process of adding the comment text "Reverting vandalism by [Special:Contributions/x] to last version by [Special:Contibutions/y]". I find myself using a painfully slow process of opening multiple browser tabs and cutting/pasting back and forth. Is there something incredibly obvious that I'm missing out on? Is there some bot that will assist in this process (being also new to Wikipedia bots, I'm just starting to discover their existence now)?

Thanks so much, Shawn 13:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Shawn, the tool that you refer to is an admin-only tool. I wish I have it, too. :-) :-( I've given up on trying to do it manually until/unless I become an admin; rather, I just type "rvv", which appears to be a fairly standard thing to do as well. Just make sure when you revert that you've actually caught all of the vandalism. --Nlu 14:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, "rvv" (or "Reverted vandalism", for those who dislike abbreviations) is just fine. The tool isn't completely admin-only however — there's a (somewhat slower) version available via Sam Hocevar's "godmode-light" script (found here). Obviously, if you do use that, take care to only use it for vandalism and such. Kirill Lokshin 14:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I played around with the godmode script for a couple days, but it has problems. It's mostly nonfunctional in Safari and from FireFox Mac, it did Very Bad Things to articles. It converted <, >, & and a few other characters into their code equivs (e.g., &lt;) when they shouldn't have. I also found I was sloppier in my reverts. I'd just hit the rollback on the most recent when on a couple occasions more than one IP had been vandalizing. So I mostly stick with rvv unless I think it needs more explanation. –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 15:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

RC IRC channel docs & other dev resources?

Hi! I'm quite taken with CryptoDerk's tool, and it has inspired notions of some other changelog-related tools. Could somebody point me to the docs on the IRC-based recent changes feed? Also, is there some sort of central spot for people who develop tools that use Wikipedia? As I develop I want to run my ideas by people who know more of the guts, so that I don't cause any trouble. --William Pietri 18:20, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Election results

Please read Wikipedia talk:Counter Vandalism Unit/Elections#Confirmation of results and voice any objections to closing out the elections. --GraemeL (talk) 18:52, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Lupin's latest tool

Lupin is currently working on a tool that should help catch vandalism not caught by either CDVF or the IRC bot. It's far from complete, but you can use what has been created so far by adding the following to your User:YOURNAME/monobook.js file: 

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/recentdiffs.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

Save your monobook.js, then hit CTRL and F5 at the same time to refresh your monobook.js file. Now, go to the 500-entry list of RC, and, in the left toolbox, click "Show filtered diffs". This will check the diffs from every entry on the list for common vandalism terms (like "poo"). As it finds diffs that contain such terms, it will list them on that page. Above each diff, it tells you what term triggered the diff. There are a lot of false positives, but I've already found a few missed vandalisms this way. You'll have to refresh the page manually once it has gone through the list, so, since this is a 500-entry list, you should only refresh every few minutes. You may also want to turn on "Hide registered users" when it gets really busy. In the future, this will probably use the IRC RC stream, and be much better at what it does. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-5 21:27

Since this list gets quite long, you should probably just search for "Match:" on the page to go to the next instance. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-5 21:39

  • Actually this has proven quite useful. I just checked the last 500 anon edits, and found a couple dozen obvious, but missed, vandalisms. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-6 03:12
  • It should be noted that while the tool is running through the list of 500, it effectively stops any other connections your trying through Wikipedia. I find that the best thing to do is either load it and walk away for 5 minutes (or do something else), then come back and skim through them. If you find any to revert, you should middle-click (or CTRL+click) to revert in a new tab, and ALSO open up the user's contribs list in another tab for checking later. Once you get through the list, then you can go back and check the contribs for further vandalism, and start over again. It may also be a good idea to Show logged-in users, since vandals can sneak in that way (I just found one that way). — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-6 04:08
  • My preferred page to run this tool on is [1] - 50 matches, article namespace only, logged-in and anons. My computer is a little feeble the task of searching through 500 diffs for bad words takes it too long. By the way, this tool also works on history and contribs pages, where I sometimes find the "Show all diffs" link useful for seeing who is responsible for a particular chunk of text. Show all diffs is faster than show filtered diffs, since the data downloaded is the same but it doesn't filter the results. Lupin|talk|popups 14:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

Please don't delete this, it's a well-meaning question and not intended as vandalism: Is this discussion page open for discussion of the Unit by non-members, or is it just for Unit members to talk about operational matters? (I only ask because a question I asked further up was immediately reverted; I wanted to ask a serious question about the "militaristic" aspect of this Unit, not wishing to offend, and genuinely didn't realise unwanted comments on a discussion page would constitute vandalism. Apologies if this is out of place.) Will any criticism left here be treated as vandalism? I'd appreciate it if this comment could be answered rather than simply erased.

As other people have pointed out, your original comment was probably not seen as a "serious question" or very constructive. I personally don't think it is vandalism...the user that reverted it IMHO was too hasty. I can understand though from what you wrote:

I posted this over at Talk/Vandalism in Progress. Apologies if it's a bit harsh, but I'd still like to ask the same question I asked there: "Just out of interest, how many members of the "Unit" have actually served in the police or armed forces, and how many are living out some kind of weird SpecOps fantasy? I'm sure the idea of a group of Wikipedia enthusiasts banding together to stamp out vandalism is well-intentioned, but to a complete outsider and former soldier like me the idea of calling yourselves a "Unit" and making up a mock-army badge looks a bit (a) self-important, and (b) silly. Sorry, just my two cents."

So...you first ask "how many are living out some kind of weird SpecOps fantasy". That is insulting because it makes so many presuppositions about people you apparently know very little about and all in the guise of a "serious question". Your intentions may have been good, but hopefully you should know by now that posting a question on a talk page of a group, pointing out that they are "silly" and "self-important" and asking how many are "living out ...some...weird fantasy" could easily be construed as a highly nonconstructive comment. If you merely wanted to ask how many were in the armed forces, you could have done so in a much nicer way. Not only that, you appear to have some kind of axe to grind when you go around asking the same insulting question in more than one place. And your "sorry" is easily seen to be insincere. It's like saying, you look silly. Sorry. Nobody asked you! If you're going to say insulting things, saying sorry, doesn't really help things. Someone told my friend (out of the blue) the other day at school, "That outfit looks silly on you. Sorry." Your comments weren't really any better. It was unsolicited and not helpful.
So...I'm sure a lot of people here are willing to forgive and forget, but you should know that you have really stuck your foot in your mouth.--Madison 10:29, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
It was more likely construed as a personal attack by the user who reverted it, since the language you used was a little bit insulting. I don't know if anyone has served in special forces, but the Unit members do not consider the CVU as militaristic in nature. Titoxd(?!?) 01:45, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification and non-deletion - apologies if the original message came over as insulting, it wasn't really intended as such. As a former serviceman myself, the insignia and name (capitalisation of Unit) in particular certainly struck me as *very* militaristic in tone and I was wondering if, in the event it was intentional, whether - and this is not meant as an insult in any way - whether any of the members had actually been in the forces, or whether it was just a bit of fun to adopt militaristic motifs (and furthermore if any other veterans or police, or indeed anyone currently in the forces - or *firemen*, since that parallel was explicitly drawn at the top of the page - had commented on it). I had visions of that badge being sewn onto Wikipedia programmers' camo jackets or something. In any case, everyone insists it's not meant to be militaristic at all, so it's moot anyway; I was just keen to pipe up and the discussion page seemed the proper place. Again, thanks for the reply.
I don't get why even if it looked to you like it was militaristic, you would think that people "in the forces" would want to use "militaristic motifs". ((P.S. my dad was in the navy and I don't really see him getting together with his buddies to play war games or hang around in camo!) I really think that you aren't really being honest as to what you were feeling when you wrote that stuff. Perhaps you felt offended or something by seeing people not from the military use what you saw as a military insignia. Just my two cents. BTW, I don't see the insignia as militaristic. Otherwise any insignia would look militaristic! There's nothing on it but the name and a Wikimedia image. The name has an overtone, but I would say an image of editors wearing camo jackets is really reading things into it big time. --Madison 10:29, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I simply construed it for what it is: someone wishing to feel better about himself by publicly dismissing others' intentions as inferior. Bravo, and on an internet website, nonetheless! — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-7 02:09
Actually I was doing neither of those things, but feel free to be rude; although I think this was meant to be far more "insulting" than the thing you deleted, I'm not willing to rise to it. I'd like to ask what "and on an internet website, nonetheless" was meant to mean, though?
While I am no expert in the matter, please keep in mind that you are free to dispute any revert/edit made by anyone here. I'm also a newcomer to the group, and my choice to join (with no military background) was made with no assumption that the group was in any way affiliated with any military organisation. In fact, I would view such an organisation (if one exists) as the antithesis of what Wikipedia is. You are have as much athority to take action as any of the people here - we are all self-declared members of the 'CVU'. All discussion on Wikipedia is open to all users. Shawn File:SFerrier Talk Redirect.png 08:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

{{user CVU1-en}} and {{user CVU2-en}}

I've created these templates so that they are more compatible with the Babel templates. So hopefully, you won't need to use those messy "subst:" codes on your user page anymore. --Ixfd64 20:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I have joined the "task force". Though I don't have the slightest clue how to use IRC I still counter vandalism by going to Special:Newpages and Special:recentchanges. hope that's not a problem with membership. --Philo 11:37, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

'Flag admin' - suggestion

Just a simple suggestion for any new version of CDVF or bot. Non-admins fighting vandals currently have to use IRC or WP:AIV to secure an admin review of a problem user (impersonator etc|), or ask for a block. I suggest creating a simple flag, which can be included in any edit summary, which would show up on the CVUbot and CDVF, indicating to any admin that an editor wishes admin intervention. E.g. rvv etc .... *admin* (or test4 *a*) - where *admin* or simply *a* is the flag. Of course, it could be misused - but then, if vandals use, it ..... we know who they are. Doc ask? 18:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Do we need to allow anon IPs edit content?

I know this may sound controversial, but I am curious as to the legalality of wikipedia actually limiting article edits/revisions/add-ons to registered users? Though it won't eliminate all vandalisms, at least it would allow us to ban users who have abused their priveleged. I understand the idea of open-source, but there still needs to be a final checker of what is good or not. Even Linus of Linux fame is the final one who approves of changes to the linux kernel code. Anyhows, those are my 2 cents. --LifeStar 21:14, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals) for the arguments for and against this sort of restriction. --GraemeL (talk) 21:34, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Majority of vandalism are from anon ips yes, majority of the contribution from IPs however is not vandalism. It takes several seconds to register a newer username, this way is better as anon vandalism is easier to monitor.
"confirmation" idea is bad because if you take a look at the RC feed of any hour on wikipedia you'd be shocked with the number of edits. Wikipedia is too popular for confirmations :). linux kernel code does not change as much as wiki ;). --Cool Cat Talk 11:09, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
What I would like to see is to limit the number of edits per hour that an anon can make. That way, the amount of vandalism that an anon can make would be easily manageable, while legitimate anons would be encouraged to register. --Nlu 10:46, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Lupin's NEW new tool

Lupin has just released a tool that everyone on CVU should be using. It feeds off of IRC RC, checking diffs for common vandalism terms, and lists them live. More info at WP:LAVT. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-11 07:38

After using the new tool for a while, I'd like to assert that it rocks the f-ing house. Babajobu 06:34, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

A tool like that, if it is really any good, could be useful to CVU SWAT, should it be created. Lets see how a troublesome vandal likes this creation.Martial Law 07:00, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

This is AWESOME, now to fight those vandals :-).Voice of AllT|@|ESP 07:32, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Bike vandal

Does anyone have sufficient knowledge to write up an entry for the bike vandal? I don't, really. --Nlu 05:09, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Can you give an example? --Cool Cat Talk 10:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I am actually at a loss to come up with an example now, but occasionally this vandal surfaces to vandalize pages (usually of African American figures) by blanking and replacing with "Nigger stole my bike!". --Nlu 10:12, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
A recent example here --pgk(talk) 10:14, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Ill ask NullC when I see him, tho blankings are detected effectiveky at keast by the irc bot :) --Cool Cat Talk 00:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
For an example of a recent sock puppet of the vandal, see User:Nword. I thought of starting both a page for the vandal and a template, but after looking at the data available to me, I don't think I am capable of doing it -- since I have no idea who the first incarnation of this vandal was, nor do I have a list of sock puppets. --Nlu 18:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Here's yet another reason for the creation of CVU SWAT.Martial Law 01:08, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:About and Wikipedia:Contact us

These two pages are vandalized on a daily basis, but for some reason often don't get cleaned up immediately, sometimes remaining vandalized for several hours. It would be appreciated if more users could add them to their watchlist. Fredrik | talk 21:23, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:About was already on the IRC Bot's watchlist, but I added Wikipedia:Contact us, which should allow more people to keep an eye on it. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 01:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Special Alert

A really catastrophic malfunction with the HTML Tidy may have caused numerous Vandalisation reports. This malfunction happened on 11-14-05, causing the site to go down, and caused what looked like vandalisim all over the place. Contact all Admins. and CVU personnel for more information. I will continue to monitor this situation. I found out about this malfunction while investigating a appearant vandalisation attack on my user page.Martial Law 08:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Update?

Any more news about this attack? I noticed whole site was extremely bogged down and non-functioning around 4pm Eastern time here in the US. I had a feeling that the site was being attacked with a DOS attack or something. Any more info would be appreciated, thanks.--LifeStar 14:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

This is a attack ? That , among other things,is why a CVU SWAT unit is needed.Martial Law 00:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I really doubt that it is. Again, Martial Law, I appreciate your idea, but I think you're really mixing two ideas; one is vandalism and one is site maintenance. I don't think the folks in the CVU are necessarily equipped to handle the latter. (Some are, obviously.) --Nlu 00:11, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
No, folks, it was not an attack, it was the developers turning off HTML Tidy in MediaWiki because it was causing the servers to crash. Titoxd(?!?) 00:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


How about setting up a CVU SWAT

How about setting up a CVU SWAT to handle the really nasty vandals.Martial Law 08:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

This CVU SWAT can also handle minor site malfunctions as well.Martial Law 09:02, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Um, I'm not really sure what kind of distinction you are proposing here (what makes a "really nasty" vandal, and how do you propose we handle them any differently?), but it might be worth repeating that the CVU is not a military body. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 09:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It is Wikipedia that is not a military body. But what is wrong with setting up colourful organisations? -- Zondor 10:34, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The CVU functions as a policing agency against vandals, the CVU SWAT is intended to take care of the really nasty,troublesome vandals and to handle minor site malfunctions, as stated, leaving the Wikipedia Techs to handle the really nasty malfunctions, like the HTML Tidy malfunction.Martial Law 23:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the CVU swat team is a good idea. We need people to monitor particularly troublesome vandals. And Wikipedia already has all sorts of pseudo-governmental structures, why not some paramilitaries? Babajobu 14:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Because the purpose of military organizations is to use lethal force to end disagreements with no regard as to the rightness or wrongness of the parties involved. I think a militaristic tone is incompatible with WP:AGF and "don't bite the newbies". Even if we know it's a joke, they may take it as hostile. Better analogies are the volunteer fire brigade, which is poised to swing into action to prevent damage; and the men in white coats, who contain crazy people to keep them from inadvertently damaging themselves or others and work with them until they behave sensibly. --William Pietri 16:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
A military structure requires someone raining orders on others and "forcing" them to do things as subordinates are required to obey the commander. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia runs on the basis of voluntary contributions from users.
Majority of the vandals are just testing, and the ones that won't stop what they are doing is blocked for a certain period of time. The philosopy is however to talk softly and carry a big stick.
A 24 hr block will contain the apathy of a vandal for 24 hours, after that they may/may not continue. If you ask them to stop they are more than likely to never vandalise for eternity and can turn out to be RC patrolers.
"Don't bite the newbies" is an imperative part of the Counter Vandalism culture we are trying to establish here. --Cool Cat Talk 18:04, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Okay, sounds like the Swat team conceit is not popular. Perhaps volunteer fire brigade is a better metaphor. Babajobu 18:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Exactly what is being proposed here? How would you see the "nasty vandals" being delt with in a different manner from what is done currently? Oh, if we are going to be a fire brigade, I want to be Dibble. --GraemeL (talk) 18:25, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think a Wikipedia Watch would be more interesting, myself. Kirill Lokshin 18:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think what MartialLaw's getting at is a coding error/hacking patrol. That (after I gave it some thought the last half-day or so), however, I think is beyond the scope of CVU, which deals with vandalism, not database errors or security issues on an external basis. I personally wouldn't have any idea how to deal with coding or hacking. :-) A SWAT team is, also, I think, unnecessary as far as vandalism is concerned; we are the SWAT team of Wikipedia, already, I think, as we revert vandalism when we see them, and that's all we can do; short of programming automatic reversion bots (which would be a difficult, if not impossible, undertaking) I think this is all we can do. --Nlu 18:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia currently doesn't allow us to watchlist the contributions of vandal prone editors or IP addresses. I figured members of the firebrigade could at least check in on the recent contributions of frequent vandalizers to see whether they've made any mischief that has gotten past rc patrol. Babajobu 20:45, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Not true, thats been covered by my bot for IPs. Any IP blacklisted (ie any IP blokced for vandalism) is monitored closely. Username vandals are however not watched (as those are generaly indef blocked it isnt quite necesary). We have to be vigilant but that doesn't mean we need to cause havoc. --Cool Cat Talk 20:58, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm referring to a specialized outfit that can handle both the really bad vandals, like those who use obscene edits all over the place, and to handle minor malfunctions, leaving the Wikipedia Techs to handle the MAJOR malfunctions, like the recent HTML Tidy problem.Martial Law 23:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

- and the CVU can then handle the non threatening vandals, who are'nt in a habit of willful vandalisationMartial Law 23:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Um, is there a reason why CVU can't handle both? Titoxd(?!?) 00:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

the intent is to lighten the work load of both the CVU and the Wiki techs.Martial Law 00:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

We can't lighten the load of the developers, the only thing we can do is get more of them, but they're awarded security privileges in a lengthy process which is set by the developers themselves, so there's nothing we lay Wikipedians can do about it. The CVU isn't overloaded by nasty vandals, when something really important happens, it is listed on WP:AN and dealt with it by 670 admins. So, there's nothing the SWAT unit could really do. Titoxd(?!?) 00:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
If wikimedia breaks its the job of devs to fix it. We need more RC patrolers when too many cases of vandalism happens. We cant do more to vandals than blocking them. I however do agree we need more people with checkuser privilages, but that has nothing to do with CVU. --Cool Cat Talk 14:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Bot too noisy on IRC

With the need to split the lines of the bot output in the IRC channel the channel is becoming increasingly noisy, this damages that chat element of the channel and makes it a less "fun" place to be for fighting vandalism. To address this a few things have been suggested

  1. Remove admin and whitelist messages (or enable them to be switch on and off as required)
  2. Remove the revert link as if seems redundant when you have the diff link.
  3. Use abbreviated links, like [[page+newver+oldver]] these would need to be converted by a special wikilinks script, most suitably for mIRC and Chatzilla since they don't need to expand the displayed version. (I have produced updated scripts for both mIRC and Chatzilla), the disadvantage would be you must use the scripts when using the channel else the links are no good.

Does anyone have any comments on why any or all of the above would be a good/bad idea? or any additional ideas how we can "calm" the channel?

Pgk 21:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Fully support, although we might say 'the channel is for vandal-fighting not chat', the sense of community is an incentive to be there, it breaks the monotony of revert/blocking -and without it, there will be less people and for shorter times.--Doc ask? 21:37, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree, we have to make it reasonable to carry on a conversation. -Greg Asche (talk) 21:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Being able to chat in the channel is useful. --GraemeL (talk) 21:46, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

  1. I can make that happen
  2. Revert link is usefull for non admins, I don't forexample load the diff lets say if a blacklisted IP is removing like 30kb on Wikipedia ...
  3. I am fine with that but that destroyes the functionality for people not using the clients you mention. We need to get brion or some other dev to make us a [[ ]] able link, like this being a diff pagename+oldid+newid (should also work on wikipedia).
I can make those happen but will take time... I can code a "battle mode" and a "calm mode" so that bot spams less on hightened times. Some of the changes you ask me to do are there beacuse of requests so if I do what you want exactly some other people will be pissed, so what I want to do this in a way making everyone happy :) --Cool Cat Talk 22:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • What we should do is clean out periodically the list of blacklisted IPs (at least take out the AOL IPs every once in a while), so their edits don't clutter the output more than they should. Titoxd(?!?) 23:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    It would be much easier to never blacklist AOL ips since its pointless as AOLers get a new ip per edit or something like that. It would be however usefull to display that the blanking is coming from an AOL ip. I'll need to know what AOL IP ranges are tho. Can you get me this info? Paste here --Cool Cat Talk 13:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

To do:

  1. Get devs to code wikifyable diffs (without url) + get devs to code wikifyable "revert" links (without url).
    This way it works on all clients
    I havent made a bugzilla request, I dont have the time, can someone do so for me and post the links here?
  2. Code a feuture to "quiet" the bot a bit on demand.

--Cool Cat Talk 22:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, wikiclickable links aren't so good for all of us. I IRC using either BitchX or Kvirc. Neither supports wikilinks, and there are no scripts to do so out for either. I like having the real URL's, as those are very easy to use. I would like, however, if the bot would be able to blacklist usernames, as well as IP's ;] --негіднийлють (Reply|Spam Me!*) 09:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Cool Cat, it might also be helpful to have an option to be able to turn off the 'block log', not the username warnign but the flag when a block happens. Just there we were hit bu another vandalbot, and the channel became useless as it was flooded by Curps's bot blocking 50 usernames. --Doc ask? 23:25, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm.... I can do that. Or I could ignore blocks from curps, since he knows what he is doing and his blocks are indefinate anyways. Or I could code an option to temporaily hide blocks etc etc. Block log is useful to evade multiple blocks on a single user as multiple admins are generaly watching. Is this incorrect thinking? --Cool Cat Talk 13:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Concrete proposal

  • Get rid of "possibles", it's on channel topic and it's mentioned everyonce in a while on channel. All warnings are "possible" , so mention it every time it's redundant.
  • Remove "Page:". The double brackets make it evident what the wikipage is.
  • Change "Change: +127" to "(+127)". It's less verbose and still understandable.
(Computer2) Possible IP blanking Page: Jacques-Yves Cousteau By: User:69.170.117.110 Change: -8263 bytes Revert: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Jacques-Yves_Cousteau&action=edit&oldid=28417012
(Computer2) Diff: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Jacques-Yves_Cousteau&diff=0&oldid=28417012 Excuse: N/A
versus
(Computer2) IP blanking Jacques-Yves Cousteau By: User:69.170.117.110 (-8263) Revert: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Jacques-Yves_Cousteau&action=edit&oldid=28417012
(Computer2) Diff: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Jacques-Yves_Cousteau&diff=0&oldid=28417012 Excuse: N/A
  • Right now there's inconsistency the way watched pages are handled:
(<Computer2) ***Possible IP gibberish*** Page: 50 Cent By: User:68.39.174.238 Change: +2122 bytes Revert: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=50_Cent&action=edit&oldid=28455481
versus
(Computer2) Admin edited watched page Page: Soviet Union By: User:Piotrus Change: +28 bytes Summary: History - link Comecon, destalinization

Any of them will do, but let's be consistent (I prefer asterisks)

  • Don't get rid of "admin edits" since that let us see some vandalism has been cleaned up and therefore we don't have to check (otherwise we'd be all checkign the same entries at the same time)

I know those are very minor changes (about 5 chars) but when you repeat them thousands of times (in several channels) you save up a significant amount of space/bandwith. Those were just examples, several other minor gainings could be done -- ( drini's vandalproof page ☎ ) 00:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The *** represents watched pages suffering from a second type of prospective attack (if a watched page is blanked the *** manifests for example).
Originaly there were two errors (that a page is blanked and a watched page is edited) which were quite annoying (at least to me).
Given that what should I do about whatched pages?
I'll make other modifications you request this weekend, unless there are objections... They make sense and are very reasonable. I need some clarification on the watched page thing. --Cool Cat Talk 13:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
It's just that I nw associate asterisk (which stand out visiaully) with watched pages (pages needing special attention).
Sometimes you use *** to denote a watched page (as in the IP gibberish) and sometimes you use words as in the 2nd example or as in
(Computer2) Warning! Watched page is edited by user Page: John Roberts By: User:Cleared as filed Change: +5 bytes Revert: 
(Computer2) Warning! Watched page is edited by IP Page: Joseph Stalin By: User:66.76.67.66 Change: -14 bytes Revert:
what I meant is to uniformize those warnings and use always asterisks (or words), but this is of course only styllistical matter. -- ( drini's vandalproof page ☎ ) 17:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

When a watched page is edited and its nothing suspicipus the bot posts it in words, *** generaly means warranted problem. Removal of 50K from George W. Bush has a 99.999% chance to be vandalism.

When a watched page is edited and it triggers nothing its likely to be no biggie. --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:39, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Many peoples IRC clients dont have a pluging for wiki links or cant run a plugin for wiki links. However if you would like it to be like that I recommened having 2 rooms. Or even easier for some, have the bot use multiple names. you can ignore one if you want so that you dont get the other stuff. --Adam1213 Talk + 10:03, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Chatzilla script

I've updated the chatzilla wikilinks script which might help some people, if replaces the diff and revert links with --Diff Page-- and --Version Edit Page-- as links to the original urls, which helps declutter things. It will also affect if these links are used in other IRC conversations.

Script is at User:Pgk/script

--pgk(talk) 13:36, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

CVU Qualifications ?

What are the CVU qualifications ? Others may also inquire.Martial Law 23:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

If you mean qualifications for joining, the answer is an interest in spending some of your time removing vandalism on Wikipedia and a willingness to add your signature to the member list. It is neither an exclusive nor an exhaustive group. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 01:49, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
The restrictions are that you need to have a username (for practical purposes), and you must not vandalise. Aside from that no restriction/qualification I know about.
Also you need a computer and internet. :P --Cool Cat Talk 13:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

CVU SWAT

This is what CVU SWAT would handle:

  • Troublesome vandals, such as those that are habitual vandals.
  • Minor site malfunctions, such as the occasional glitch.

The CVU can refer troublesome vandal cases to CVU SWAT, leaving them free to find more vandals. Martial Law 00:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The intention is to lighten the load for both the CVU and the Wiki techs.Martial Law 00:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The CVU SWAT logo is to be like the CVU logo, only that there is a M-16 and a two ended open ended wrench in the logo placed in a "X" pattern.Martial Law 00:25, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The title would be similar to the current logo, only that it'll say CVU on the upper left, SWAT on the upper right.Martial Law 00:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

CVU's scope is to chase those troublesome vandals, and we can't do a thing about site glitches, because only developers have the ability to fix MediaWiki's code. Also, I'm not sure how such a project might be seen by those who already accuse us of being militaristic. Titoxd(?!?) 00:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm 100% against this idea. No need to bring in a special ops team, especially since they couldn't do anything we don't already do. --nihon 00:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The intent is to lighten the work load, so that no one feels unduely stressed.Martial Law 00:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC) No, you're not being militarisic at all. The CVU already functions as a policing body on Wikipedia. The SWAT idea is so that troublesome vandals could be dealt with, minor glitches dealt with, so that the work load of the CVU and the Wiki techs is lightened.Martial Law 00:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You still haven't explained how this would be any different from CVU as it exists now, a different logo and a duplicate, for some unexplained reason hierarchically superior, organization aside. As Titoxd has explained already, the developers are the wiki techs, not us. The CVU is a voluntary association of vandal patrollers, not an organization for solving all of Wikipedia's problems. If anyone in the CVU is feel stressed or "overworked" from combatting vandals, I highly recommend them taking a break from it and contributing in some other area. Countering vandalism is not the be-all and end-all of Wikipedia, by any means. There are plenty of people who patrol recent changes on Wikipedia for vandalism, whether they're in this group or not, and "troublesome" vandals are dealt with just the same as any other kind: reverted, warned, and blocked as necessary. If you have a problem that can't be solved in this manner, try WP:AIV, WP:VIP, or the administrator's noticeboard. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 02:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
"The CVU already functions as a policing body on Wikipedia", I don't agree with that, CVU carry out RC Patrol the same as many others it doesn't do it in any special way or have any special authority. Major problems outside of normal vandalism tend to get attention from the wider community anyway like bots getting used to tidy/stop and admin rollback is fast. If anyone feels stressed I agree with MC Masterchef they should take a break, and/or should shout for some help with whatever they are doing (part of CVU is to provide a meeting place so you can easily get contact with other vandal fighters.) --pgk(talk) 07:25, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I understand how annoying the returning vandals can be, my userpage has been target of the Love Virus not once but over 5 times (who the hell is counting), recently MARMOT (Author of the Love Virus) was given a second chance and was unblocked. I believe the worst vandals can be rehabilated to be good users or at least an effort should be made to that end.
CVU is not a body "above the law", members don't get special privilages aside from special toys. Arbcom and Jimbo wales are the only two bodies of wikipedia that have 'special' privilages, however not even Arbcomers are exempt from wikipedias polcies (and they have to be ten times more carefull so as not to give trolls any material) and I haven't seen User:Jimbo Wales vandalsing pages.
CVU is "nothing new", RC patrolers existed prior, CVU only increased the level of communication between members and provided some toys etc.
Biting newbies with M-16's is not going to make wikipedia a better place. --Cool Cat Talk 14:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
What you are suggesting may fall under WP:H. Last thing we want is to give vandals/trolls material to complain about "abusive admins".
Problematic IPs are watched. I am considering ways on how to process blacklisted usernames. Given the list grows like there is no tomorrow, I need to find an effective way to process it. I am trying to model a way atm but frankly I am quite lost. :(
--Cool Cat Talk 14:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the creation of a SWAT sub-group for this group is not needed. The CVU already does a pretty darn good job at repairing damaged work from what I can see. It may take time, but we all eventually get to the pages that have been vandalized. Besides, I think our efforts should be devoted to creating better tools and prevention tactics than talking about creating a seperate team. We're one team already and we need to ultilize our resources into better prevention methods and tools to combat the flood of vandals. (I prefer we block out IPs from school addresses that have been troublsome, but that's another story.)--LifeStar 16:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree to all but block on shared school ips. We do not want to impose long term blocks on any good user. --Cool Cat Talk 17:17, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
But are school users "good users"? I am beginning to take the view that the vast majority of these school edits are so unproductive that the schools that fail to control/account for their students' behavior are not, as corporate bodies, not "good users." As such, perhaps they should be blocked by considering them corporately, and then if specific individuals at the schools need editing access, they can be unblocked. --Nlu 17:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Before this gets too much further, what exactly are we defining as a 'school'? After all, I've been editing from my university's IP for two years now. Also, my best friend back home got started on wikipedia as something to do during study periods to keep him busy. --InShaneee 18:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Most of these idiotic edits are coming from high schools. As for your friend, I do admit that there may be collateral damage, but schools have a responsibility to make sure that their students are not committing vandalism, in my opinion. If he ever gets blocked, perhaps he should talk to the teachers at his school to bring the issue to their attention. --Nlu 18:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
The problem is, schools are TRYING to take some responsibility, and not doing a good job at it. The aforementioned friend can no longer edit from school, or view Wikipedia at all, as it's blocked by the school's firewall as a 'messageboard'. Anyway, IMHO, I think we should treat IPs as we would any other user, with perhaps a little more leniency, and I don't think a permablock should EVER be applied (since no vadal will be using that IP for more the a few years) (Also, I support the SWAT proposal if and only if we get kevlar uniforms :) ). --InShaneee 22:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
No one can contain the apathy of a middle schooler. It will always leak. AOL Ips are a much more serious problem, as it is easy enough to block a school while AOL IPs are... ummm... annoying? --Cool CatTalk|@ 15:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Why not vote on this ? I've seen one user who wants to create CVU SWAT to monitor troublesome vandals. CVU SWAT is NOT about biting newbies, like myself.Martial Law 06:54, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

CVU is just a group of users who like to do cleanup. Any user can monitor toroublesome vandals if he likes, and he can call himself only "the swat" no need to vote. -- ( drini's vandalproof page ☎ ) 07:36, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I understand you are trying hard to make wikipedia a more vandal free enviorment, but this seems to be excessive. --Cool CatTalk|@ 15:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if an introduction of a capitalist element like a for-profit organisation to be set up to help better keep vandalism at bay. ie. mercenaries. -- Zondor 09:12, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to tell, is this supposed to be sarcasm or not? — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 11:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
If it is for real, I still will be equaly amused. ;) --Cool CatTalk|@ 15:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Depending on how well Wikipedia:Tools/1-Click Answers will generate income for the Wikimedia Foundation, it could spend it on improving the quality of the articles like hiring vandal fighters or good editors. A well organised and highly reputable mercenaries could ask for donations. What other ways can you be rewarded to provide incentive to fight vandals or make good article edits? Edit counts? Number of vandal blocks? Barnstars? Operating for profit is very effective at production of goods and services and you don't necessarily need to resort to ads on the pages. Why would you sign in everytime under an account rather than contribute anonymously? -- Zondor 02:23, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
You a citizen of the Ferengi Alliance? --Cool CatTalk|@ 19:13, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Autoit wiki gets so much vandalism but it is small...

The main page is not protected, so even it gets vandalised. Autoit wiki All edits from users that are not logged in seam to be vandalism --Adam1213 Talk + 09:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but we can't watch over every wiki out there. -- ( drini's vandalproof page ☎ ) 18:01, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Was wiki attacked again? Nov. 18, 2005

I tried to access wiki for the pass 1.5 hrs and only now can log in. What happened? Was there some sort of DOS attack on the servers again?--LifeStar 16:28, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

No, it was just typically slow, the developers didn't see any indication of a Denial of Service attack. Titoxd(?!?) 17:38, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Geez... new servers and OCR lines they need...--LifeStar 19:51, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

What is it with these "attack" rumors ? Martial Law 06:39, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Really, what is it with these "attack" rumors ? Is there any basis for these rumors that I'm unaware of ? HTML Tidy's malfunction caused this site to go down, and made a royal mess of Wikipedia, and there are some minor malfunctions, a few major malfunctions going on. I've had one in which I could not access Wikipedia @ all. All I got that time was,"Contact REFUSED" to "wiki.riteme.site" and several "Operation has timed out." signals.Martial Law 07:41, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Er - server outages. we get them. our hardware is paid for by donations, and run (mostly) by volunteers. it's a fact o' life. no attacks (rumoured or not) needed. (late at night. shift key tired. sorry.) ;-) JesseW, the juggling janitor 11:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

High profile pages that get heavy vandalism

Please check out this proposal[2]. Also see the George Bush talk page. Thank you.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 07:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Dealing with school/large range of IPs that have vandalized?

Is it possible for an admin or a site manager of the wiki pages to find out contact info for the IT admins of the school systems that we have determined that many of the vandals who commit their work from? I think it would be a good idea to at least let let the school know that its own students are committing an unwanted service to a web site, with its own computers. Though this may not reduce the # of attacks, at least the admins and IT guys will become aware that their own students are causing many problems with web sites using school paid computers. --LifeStar 17:30, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Now this is what I'm talking about! User_talk:142.22.186.12, this is an example of what I hope we can consider doing. This particular case was brought to the school administrator's attention by one considerate student. Maybe we need to start posting messages on these particular talk pages informing the responsible students to contact their school IT or administrators about the vandal attacks that have been originating from their school computers. --LifeStar 19:50, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this talk page is an exemplory example of what can be done with Wikipedia vandalism from a public school/library/etc. IP address. However, I'm not sure whether most of those places have IP addresses you can pinpoint to the classroom/computer/user. If they do, that would be awesome and could stem some public vandalism. If not, then there would be no dent, but at least the IT/administrators would be aware of it. However, we must make sure that good faith edits are allowed to continue from these locations- I'm sure they constitute a large portion of our good contributions. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 21:44, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Interesting idea. For schools that have IT directors listed with e-mail addresses available from whois, perhaps e-mail can be considered. There can really be nothing we can do to make sure that they don't disable access for their students, however, once they become aware of the vandalism; it's really within their exclusive domains by that point. --Nlu 22:10, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

CVU user box idea

Although I've spent some time now and then reverting vandalism, I'm troubled calling myself advanced in any way at the art of counter vandalism. At the same time, I've been updating my user page and really liked how it was possible to create an entry based on skill level for most of the language programming disciplines. To that end, I've mocked up an idea for an equivalent gradient for CVU activity.

CVU-0 This person does not understand counter vandalism or sees no need for it.
CVU-1 This user is a beginning counter vandilism unit member.
CVU-2 This user is an intermediate counter vandilism unit member.
CVU-3 This user is an advanced counter vandilism unit member.
CVU-4 This user is an expert counter vandilism unit member.

Just to spice it up a bit, I could see changing the names "beginning", "intermediate", "advanced", and "expert" over to something more related to the organization of CVU. Is anyone else interested in this? If so, it will only take a few minutes to build the templates and sub-categories. --StuffOfInterest 18:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea but we would have people bullying others for having "a higher understanding of CVU". --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:41, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


I also dislike the current template and use my own:

CVU
1

This user is a novice vandal fighter.
Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave!


Be aware of the use of irony in calling myself a novice :-P

Btw, use <includeonly>[[Category:Counter Vandalism Unit Member/wikipedia/en]]</includeonly> if you make the templates. --GraemeL (talk) 18:45, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh now that would work IMHO. --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:55, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
As long as the current one is not done away with, I'm fine with this idea. I do think it's weird to have "levels," though, since anyone with half a brain can pick up how to do what we do within just a couple days at the most. ---nihon 20:35, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
As long as we keep the current one I am fine for them to be even called offical ones (with approval of other CVU members) it might be good to have the wikipedia cvu logo in one. --Adam1213 Talk + 10:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Being that nobody has come out strongly opposed to the idea of the above boxes, the next thing to consider would be names for the templates. In the computer langauges area they follow the syntax of "User (language)-(level)". Being that CVU is multi-lingual there will need to be some name structure in there to denote language. Perhaps "User cvu-en-(level)". Another alternative would be "User cvu-(level)-en", but that one just doesn't speak to me. --StuffOfInterest 12:49, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

we should have an article with a list of reasons not to vandalise and / or spam wikipedia.

Expect in not to long a really good program to be working really well (my automatic reverter and warner) --Adam1213 Talk + 10:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I like the ones on the project page especially:
This user is a member of the
Counter Vandalism Unit. 
and use it on my userpage. xaosflux T/C 17:40, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Resignation

I hereby tender my resignation as a director of the Counter Vandalism Unit effective immediately. -- Essjay · Talk 17:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Uh, why? --Nlu 18:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I've left Wikipedia. -- Essjay · Talk 19:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

!!!! --Cool CatTalk|@ 20:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

What happened to the Joining section?

Just curious why that section was removed from the main page? Can people no longer join CVU? --nihon 17:22, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm curious about that as well, why was that section KIA by CoolCat? --LifeStar 20:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems to tell you all you need to know under the "Counter Vandalism Unit members" section --pgk(talk) 20:21, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh I merely moved it. It should still apear on the main page :), I just think its more approporate if its in the "joining" section. However if you have objections feel free to revert, I was being bold and I feel it looks better :). --Cool CatTalk|@ 20:02, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Essjay

This is bad, the director left before we even knew what the director's job or succession was... Do the assistant directors assume control? If so which? Do we hold emergency elections?

Prodegotalk 17:28, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

What is your chain of command ?Martial Law 23:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

If Democratic, hold elections. If military related, insert the 2nd in command. Same applies to Corporation/Company chains of command, such as the COO suceeds the CEO.Martial Law 23:29, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

That's the problem—as the group is all volunteer, and not officially sponsored or endorsed by MediaWiki or the Wikipedia Foundation, there really isn't a chain of command. We all just work to minimize the effect of vandalism on the site. Now, whether that's an effective way to work is a topic for another discussion. ^_^ --nihon 01:28, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, if everybody just keeps doing what they have been voluntarilly doing all along the effects of the directors resignation (if any) will be minimized. Proclaiming "this is bad" when in fact nobody knows anything much about what has happened at all seems, to me, to be counter-productive - akin to making a mountain out of a mole-hill. For all we know what has happened with the director is for the best of the community and is good. The reality is probably that we should be thankful for what Essjay has done and if that is the case then thank you Essjay. --MrMiagi 17:17, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Of course, Essjay was a great wikipedian! But, the reason I say bad, is because we don't know what it means. Prodegotalk 14:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Creating a template for notifying responsible users

Hey guys, I'm curious if you guys would think it'd be a good idea to create a template that we could put on troublesome IP addresses to inform responsible users that they ought to contact their IT/administrators about the issues we've been having with their fellow work/college/schoolmates? I've posted a message on a few troublesome IP addresses in the hopes that someone will contact their school admins like one student did a few weeks ago. I don't think EVERYONE will do it, but there might be a higher chance that someone will take action if we personally create a message asking them to. What do you guys think? --LifeStar 20:09, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure. Any ideas? Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 20:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I was looking on wiki for a little bit, but I couldn't find any articles on how to create my own template. If someone could point me to something about it, I can work out a small template and let you guys weigh in on what you think. --LifeStar 20:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
It's just a regular page. Go to Template:Itnotify (or whatever you think the best name should be), click on the redlink, and make it just like a regular page. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 20:22, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Here's my Idea:
==Welcome!==
Welcome! We are aware that your IP address is shared by a number users. There may be warning messages
waiting for you, that may not be directed at you. If they are not, we encourage you to contact your
ISP, or IT Admin. Abusive users, such as those sharing your IP address, may cause this IP to be
banned from editing. If you know the person or persons causing this, please contact them, 
ask them to stop, and remind them of the possible consequences.

Something along those lines.... mayhaps a touch less threatening ;] --негіднийлють (Reply|Spam Me!*|RfS) 03:51, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Id support that however we may have a template of similar nature. --Cool CatTalk|@ 19:59, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

defcon

we should have a babel box sized version with the number just like the current babel but only the number and short comments. --Adam1213 Talk + 07:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Nice idea --Cool CatTalk|@ 15:02, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

John Seigenthaler Sr.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/12/05/wikipedia.rules.ap/index.html

This really is an embarasment. I hereby start/continue discussion on how to deal with incidents like this. --Cool CatTalk|@ 17:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

A suggestion. Feel free to improve the template. All articles currently "watched" by the CVU should be labeled with this assuming there are no objections. --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

People like John Seigenthaler Sr. and CNN reporters dont know about our existance and are rightfully stressed. --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Why is the "S" in "Summaries" capitalised? Izehar (talk) 19:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Typo? :P, fixed. People feel free to edit the template. --Cool CatTalk|@ 15:06, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, no kidding on how embarassing this incident is. Remember Cool Cat, we're not an official org. within wiki, though that would be nice, he will never hear about the active # of users who patrol and try to reduce vandalism as much as possible. With that lack of knowledge, critics will continue to have more ammo to shoot at sites like wiki that depend on open-source inflow of data. Anyhows, one sad day for CVU indeed. --LifeStar 19:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Do you have any idea at all what this makes you people sound like? You have absolutely NO official status yet you "patrol" Wikipedia and impose your will on other users.
And you're not even doing a decent job of it.
I've just been accused of vandalism by one of your "patrols" (shades of the "Thought Police") for doing something the Wikipedia guidelines SPECIFICALLY STATE is NOT vandalism.
But then, that's the trouble with movements like yours, isn't it? You start out with the best intentions, before long you think you're not only entitled to enforce the rules but to start making up your own!
I'm not surprised your "director" took an instant "powder". Sensible guy.

BTW, Cool Cat, where do you propose we put this template of yours? In the actual article itself, talk page, bottom of the article? --LifeStar 19:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think a template's needed; it will make the article a target for more vandalism. Izehar (talk) 19:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I would not like to see this on article pages. We really don't need to advertise that we are getting vandalism on a particular page, we just need to clean it up quietly (I've even had doubts about the "vprotected" template - although at least that explains why an article is locked) -- sannse (talk) 20:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Why an aritcle is locked can be explained on the talk page for the benefit of the editors not the readers. Izehar (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Such templates are a terribly bad idea. Anything that acknowledges vandalism encourages it. The proper response to vandalism is to revert it, quietly, and to deal with the offenders appropriately within the scope of blocking policy. Kelly Martin (talk) 20:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree with sannse and Kelly. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 20:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
The thing is this is in the talk page on articles that are already hammered by vandalism. The problem of being quiet is CNN reporters being unaware of our existance. Being brodcasted on national TV as an "uncredible source" and that "we aren't making an effort to prevent such incidents" is very very bad publicity for wikipedia. There is no reason to hide the fact that George W. Bush is getting hammered on a hourly (or much less) basis. --Cool CatTalk|@ 14:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It seems that Kelly and Kat beat me here to say this is a bad idea. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 20:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Not even a notice on the talk page of the blocked article? How will editors know why it is locked? Izehar (talk) 20:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm talking about the new template, not {{vprotect}}. Vprotect works fine as is. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 21:11, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I also agree, I can't see it would provide any deterrent and may just act as a magnet. --pgk(talk) 20:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Well I propose we put this to the talk page to articles who are already vandal magnets. Vandals will vandalise anyways. WP:FAC is a vandal magnet if you think about it. It would advertise the CVU page (and give vandals the very CVU page to vandalise rather than actual articles). I do not think this template would make George W. Bush a greater target. The media and critics dont know about people like us because of our paranoia about "vandal magnets". Of course I am being blunt (as usual), no offense was intended. --Cool CatTalk|@ 14:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry Cool Cat, I just don't see it as useful. It appears to be directed at casual editors, but they won't see it on the talk page. And if it is on the article instead, then it will be seen by vandals, who will try to get us to add it. The best way to deal with vandals and trolls is always to feed as little as possible. And for readers.. the presence of a big template saying that an article is subject to vandalism will, in my opinion, be more embarrassing than the (usually) brief instances of vandalism -- sannse (talk) 19:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps but I really feel we need to tell poeple that there may be stiff on George W. Bush RC patrollers miss as RC patrol cannot win the war never ment to conclude. --Cool CatTalk|@ 21:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Just to point it out, User - User:LettuceSalad is vandalizing pages and placing John Seigenthaler Sr. as committing acts throughout history. I don't have the time to deal with the user right now. Avengerx 17:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, first thing, the constant indenting is giving me a headache. Second thing, I've listed this user on the admin's intervention page. They've blocked the user for 24hrs. We'll see what happens after that. --LifeStar 19:10, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


Admin trigger in the channel / separate chat channel

This is something that I may have mention in the channel before, I can't remember. One of the things that seems to be hard to do sometimes is to get an admin's attention to get an quick block. One of the things that having this unit can do is enable quick and swift blocks of persistent vandals. Is there a way to get some sort of universal, client-independent trigger that would play a noise or something that would alert admins that someone needs a block? Or is that asking too much?

Also, as a separate question, what is the status of the #wikipedia-en-cvu channel that I was invited to the other day? its that an official "Chat" channel, or are we still trying to find a way to chat around the bot? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mo0 (talk • contribs) 20:45, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to do it. I already watch the string adminAttn when I'm on the channel, but it is a ChatZilla-specific feature. However, I would do something similar to /msg *all users with voice* or something like that. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 20:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Interesting suggestion. However admins wouldnt be paying attention to it if not paying attention to channel. :) --Cool CatTalk|@ 21:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Titoxd, you *might* be able to /notice +#wikipedia-en-vandalism hey, is there an admin around?, depending on your chat software --негіднийлють (Reply|Spam Me!*|RfS) 03:55, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Adding one's name to the list....

I would like to add my name to the members list, but clicking on the appropriate edit section for the letter "M" gets me a completely blank page, and I don't want to mess anything up, so I've left it alone thus far. Is that where I should put my name, or is there someplace else to do it? MSJapan 14:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I've added you (it's a bizarre page, not sure what's going on there) Dan100 (Talk) 15:03, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I've got the same problem – I want to add myself, but all I get is a blank page too, both clicking to edit the "M" section and the whole article. MJSkia1 23:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

It really is borked - can whoever created page/knows how it works fix it? Dan100 (Talk) 08:28, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I've added MJSkia1 and also a means for people to add themselves. Dan100 (Talk) 08:40, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Fixed the issue, I did have to sacrifice the numeric list. May the numericness rest in peices. :o --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:29, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks a bunch! MJSkia1 04:04, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Due to the huge list size, this process is a little diferant now, see Memberlist below for more info. xaosflux Talk/CVU 06:48, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Delete vandalism from history

I propose a cleanup campaign to clean histories from vandalism. Granted vandalism gets forgotten in history but why not clean up further than reverting vandalism. Granted this must be done carefuly and only by admins. --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

If only my Rfa were faring better...:) That sounds like a excellent idea, Cool Cat, and I think your reasoning and conjecture for that implentation is quite sound. Perhaps if I become an admin in the future, I would be estatic to help.-MegamanZero 22:53, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Recommend against doing this in quite strong terms; it increases load on the servers, and raises the potential for mistakes to occur. In addition, deleting and selectively-undeleting parts of our most vandalised articles can, and has been known to, render the article inaccessible for a period of time, usually requiring database administrator intervention to correct. 86.133.53.111 19:04, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, deleting vandalism from articles with a lot of edits is very hard. You have to delete the whole thing and then undelete one by one the versions you want to keep. All non vandalism versions must be undeleted for some reason in the GFDL. The George W. Bush article has over 2000 edits. It would be a waste of time undeleting the 1800 non vandalism versions. I know that developers can delete bad versions, but there are only seven of them. IMO this is a bad idea. Izehar 19:13, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

HELP!

I need help reverting a bunch of edits by Val42. As you can see from the contributions listing, Val42 was engaged in link spam on board game articles: alphabetically through the category starting with the first edit of December 12. Please help me in reverting this as it spans an entire category. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 06:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Specifically I'm referring to the addition of boardgamegeek.com links. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 06:51, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
That's definitely a lot of links - but should they be removed? Would it be any different from removing lots of IMDb links from movie articles? As far as I can tell, the linked pages don't seem to be commercial, and at least appear to be useful. Thoughts? --PeruvianLlama(spit) 07:30, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Hey there, my name's Mike Selinker. I find the current dispute between you guys and Val42 interesting, and I thought I'd give you my opinion as a game designer who has a number of games described on that site [3]. Personally, I don't care whether game entries have the BGG link. But I don't think they're spam per se. BGG is the encyclopedic database for every board and card game ever created. Mostly it's used as a reference and review site. People do trade games on the board, so that does make it commercial; still, imdb also has an amazon link. WAvegetarian's way more experienced on here than I am, so I'd defer to Connor as to whether it's appropriate; what I guess I'm saying is that it might be useful. Your mileage may vary.--Mike Selinker 14:55, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
WAvegetarian I also feel this isnt exactly "spamming" or "vandalsim". I am more than likely to give links to AnimeNewsNetwork.com when writing articles on anime. While I would not care to post the site on every posible anime page, I do not think I would be spamming... --Cool CatTalk|@ 16:06, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
There are many sites out there that exist only to make money by collecting eyeballs at the ads, they provide some info to try to pose as valid. I revert external links to sites like that all the time over on the dog project articles. I thought this site was one of those and reverted about 20 or 30 of the links myself before real life called me away. Maybe this site is actually the premier fan site for games - reading the External links guideline it could fit under that, so maybe it should stay. It is too ad filled for my tastes, but I won't object to leaving the links. - Trysha (talk) 17:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I first discovered this when I found that a link had been added to Super Scrabble, an article in my watchlist. When I followed the link, I came to a page that to me seemed to have three prominent features: a rather uninformative infobox that duplicated info found in the article; one banner and two large text link ads in the center of the page and "above the fold," i.e. able to be seen without scrolling; further down there was an extremely brief summary of the game, covering some of the information in the article and nothing new, which was in the same box as a Google AdSense ad; below that were site hosted marketplace statistics, some pictures with questionable copyright status and an open web forum with pretty much nothing going on in it. From this page, the site appeared to be an excuse to show ads to people. I checked on the editor's contributions and discovered what I mentioned in the first comment of mine. I checked one other link and found a similar situation. The other thing that seemed sketchy was that every link added included next to it an internal link to BoardGameGeek, making it seem like self-promotion. That this article is very short and has had only one editor also made me suspicious. That is why this appeared to be advertising to me. I trust Mike Selinker to know what he's talking about when it comes to games. The manner and volume of the edits triggered the vandal fighter in me, but if it is indeed "encyclopedic database for every board and card game ever created," than I don't have a problem with its inclusion on the articles. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 18:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Again, I'm not trying to suggest what is appropriate, but I can give a fuller description of what this site is. Check out the link for Settlers of Catan. On this page you have all the game's publishers, all the expansions, files that people have created for playing the game in different ways, pictures of the game in play (almost certainly of questionable copyright status, as you say), forums, reviews, and lists in which people have included the game (sort of like Wiki categories only with lots of personal commentary). The ads are indeed obnoxious, but that doesn't detract from the site's utility. There still might be a strong reason to not have it in links, but utility probably isn't it.--Mike Selinker 18:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I have just been told about this discussion by WAvegetarian. I have chased down a few vandals by looking at their "contribution" history before. I evaluate the edits to see if there is still things to save, as (most) of the reverts have done. (I did other things to improve the articles besides just add the Board Game Geek links.) On my talk page and here, WAvegetarian has explained his reasoning as to why he thought that I was vandalizing pages. If I had seen a similar pattern, I may have come to a similar conclusion. I actually found out that the first revert (before it was even posted here) was because I had linked to the wrong BGG game.

Anyway, what I would have to say in my defense has already been said above. I would like a discussion as to whether or not BGG links belong in articles or not. Such links may even belong in some but not others. However, I suggest that such a discussion be taken to one of the groups about games. I've started such a discussion on the Board Game talk page. Val42 18:42, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

numbers on the members list

if the numbers were only removed to fix up the edit sections I would like them back once we have a way of not having the problem and the numbers. And I know just where we can get someone that can fix it Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) --Adam1213 Talk + 12:53, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Memberlist

Anyone else think that the memberlist on the Project Page isn't very helpful? A link to should suffice, with membership additions occuring by Users adding the category to themselves. It worked well for Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#Participants and we only have 117 members over there. I think the same would improve our project page here. xaosflux Talk/CVU 05:44, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm? Yeah perhaps. however one prolem we are facing is people placing the template in a sub user page causing multiple entries. Aside from that it would work since we have over 200 memebers now the list is just... umm too long... I have to agree. What do you guys feel? --Cool CatTalk|@ 11:36, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like a decent enough idea. As for the sub user page problem, it can easily be resolved by placing <includeonly></includeonly> tags around the template code on the sub user page. While this means the template is no longer visible on the sub page, it still remains visible on the main user page and most of all it results in only one entry in the category per user. — Impi 16:22, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Yea, but the volume of the task is a bit scary :o --Cool CatTalk|@ 16:31, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
True, I guess it's not quite a perfect solution. — Impi 23:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Ok lets make it happen then :P if 4-5 people did this task isnt that bad --Cool CatTalk|@ 19:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I've made these changes, hopefully everyone will like them, if not you know where the rollback button is! xaosflux Talk/CVU

Regarding subpage duplicate counts, there are about 3 or 4 out there right now, but still sitting at abou 320 members for en: xaosflux Talk/CVU 06:45, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

New RC bot!

Hey y'all, I wrote a new RC bot for meta. It's in #meta-vandalism. Works pretty much the same as cool cat's bot, but it runs on Linux using Eggdrop, TCL, and MySQL. It has one flaw so far, however. It runs on my laptop. Therefore, when I go to work, it goes with me. I'd host it on my colo box, but my ISP has broadly blocked IRC access, due to MASSIVE DDOS. Anyhow, enjoy it while it's there! --негіднийлють (Reply|Spam Me!*|RfS) 03:48, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Actualy there already is such a bot watching over meta. at #wikimedia-meta-vandalism I think. I'd have to check. :) --Cool CatTalk|@ 19:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Watch

Has anybody read www.wikipedia-watch.org? It's hilarious! He's now milking that John Seigenthaler Sr. incident for all it's worth. Izehar (talk) 15:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is hilarious, and to some extent, painfully accurate. Agent Blightsoot 16:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

The John Seigenthaler Sr. incident proved three things
  1. We RC patroles/CVU members are not doing a decent enough job to keep vandalism off of wikipedia. We need to work harder.
  2. RC patroles'/CVU members' work is imperiative for wikipedias survival.
  3. Wikipedia is notable enough to catch CNNs attention. Regardless of the mocking by CNN (understandable given the articles regarding CNN staff is full of "conspiracy theories" and a person not understanding NPOV would be as expected feel insulted) wikipedia still is around. I do not see a massive number of people leaving wikipedia. It really should be treated as a minor incident that the media exagarated (as they generaly do hence why I dont like the media in general)
Now time to revert vandalism! :) --Cool CatTalk|@ 19:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

" We RC patroles/CVU members are not doing a decent enough job to keep vandalism off of wikipedia. We need to work harder." I think it would be easy to say that, but I have to point out that we do have lives to lead (Well..some of us do) ......that means it shouldn't be a case of working harder, but having more CVU members....that way the load is spread out. I mean even if it is just a small contribution now and then, it can make the difference. We don't all need to be doing several hours a day. Agent Blightsoot 21:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Correct. Thats why we as an entier community need to work harder. All it takes to increase our efficency is perhaps 10 more reverts? If all 200+ members of CVU more actively patroling for vandalism things would be much much easier. For saying this I perhaps sound like a dick however I think it is necesary to call for more comunity cooperation. My comments are not to insult you or anyone but I really am pointing the facts. --Cool CatTalk|@ 11:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

George W. Bush

The George W. Bush (primary vandal target) is exposed again. Everyone added it to your watchlists? It would be terribly embarrassing if a journalist was google searching for Bush (he's always in the news) and they got WoW's genitalia filled article of GWB. Izehar (talk) 19:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Altough GWB is considered as a dick in many medians, I'd rather not see any evidence of dicks on that article. ^.^ --Cool CatTalk|@ 11:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

How valid is www.completewhois.com for CVU use?

I came across the www.completewhois.com website and used it already for one repeat vandal. I sent an email to the IT guy's email address which was listed in the data. Do you guys think this would be another avenue we could explore to see if we can curb some vandals right at their own servers? --LifeStar 16:13, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Why not use [4] it is what that website uses as well :) --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:54, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
In case anyone missed it, this gotten taken several steps further, and the RIR links are on the bottom of all anon's talk pages now, hope it helps! xaosflux Talk/CVU 03:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Help - how do I get this warning to show up?

I would like the below standardize message to show up at the bottom of a anon IP address, specifically User talk:207.63.63.204 because of a message left me on my talk page. I don't think that {{sharedIP}} {{sharedwelcome}} seem quite appropriate quite yet since there is not rampant vandalism coming from the IP, which is a high school. I orginally saw the message at User talk:86.134.35.152. Does it automatically appear with high enough level of warnings of anon IPs?? Thanks --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 18:33, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

This is the discussion page for an anonymous user who has not created an account yet or is not signed in. We therefore have to use his or her numerical IP address to identify him or her. Such an IP address can be shared by several users. If you are an anonymous user and feel that irrelevant comments have been directed at you, please create an account or log in to avoid future confusion with other anonymous users. We also recommend creating an account if you do not want anyone to see your IP address.

Copy paste? --Cool CatTalk|@ 18:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
That is a software embeded message. It appears a little bit after the page gets created, depending on the server caches. When you put the first message on the page you create the page. xaosflux Talk/CVU 08:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Invisible spam, fyi

I saw this invisible spam today. The spammer put the link inside a div with style="o.v.e.r.f.l.o.w:auto; height: 1px;" Tom Harrison (talk) 18:40, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Huh. So, (read: no technical knowledge) the purpose is to generate googlable (is that a word yet?) rating links?--Bookandcoffee(Leave msg.) 19:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes; The spammer hopes that it looks to Google as if Wikipedia has linked to his page, and that the spammer's page will be more prominently displayed in the search results. See Link farm. Tom Harrison (talk) 20:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, the more accurate term for what he is doing is Googlebombing. He's a recurrent vandal, should be shot blocked on sight. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 22:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Fixing What is Broken

The current vandalism is out of control and is destroying our encyclopedia; we need to take action immediately, or everything we've worked for will be annihilated by the ever-increasing stream of vandals, both long-term and short-term. CVU needs to take on expanded powers to be able to counter this ever increasing threat; thus, it should be operated as a military body, and be given broad powers to further its mission. The fact that Willy and tCV have been operating unchecked for months is a disgrace; an efficient vandal fighting team would have blocked them and every subnet they've operated from by now.

We need dozens more administrators, as well as a minimum of 10 current CVU administrators with CheckUser rights. CVU members should be immune from ArbCom decisions, and should be able to dispatch vandals and problematic netblocks as they see fit. The notions of community consensus and assuming good faith are standing in the way of operating an efficient vandal fighting team.

Anyone who stands in our way is just as good as the vandals themselves. --Hexagonal, December 24, 2005 at 19:40:59

You're being paranoid and over-reactive. If you see a problem, just fix it. If you seem someone being abusive, report them. Claiming that you need "expanded powers" is just bunk. --nihon 02:46, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
CheckUser rights cannot, and will not, be given out to a large number of users due to legal and technical issues. Forget it. Furthermore, being jumpy with rangeblocks will cause a developer to desysop you in rapid order. Immunising CVU members from ArbCom will also not happen, as ArbCom are a Board-mandated body within Wikipedia; the CVU is not, and a good number of CVU members are abusive enough that taking them out of jurisdiction of ArbCom would be idiotic, to say the least. Calm down, and remember - this is an encyclopedia, not a war. 86.133.53.111 19:10, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
As our logged-out developer pointed out, more powers are not going to help a bit, and taking any subset of users out of ArbCom jurisdiction is simply a bad idea. We don't need more powers, we need more patrollers. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 19:58, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Checkuser rights are given to people who have the technical knowlege to put it to good use. Also the comunity or board (representing the comunity) should feel confortable enough to hand over that power.
CVU is NOT above the law. CVU enforces existing policies. If you think a policy/rule needs to be changed (including Wikipedia:Vandalism) please use the polcy/rule talk page. While everyone is welcome to discuss any policy here we (CVU) do not make the policy.
Adminship and check-user rights are not a privilage. Use what you have to combat vandalism. The most important tool in reverting vandalism is the actual revert. Blocks and checkusers are only usefull in preventing future vandalism.
Any CVU member being M:dicks are to be dealt with just like how any other user would be. CVU members and RC patrolers are generaly need to be extra careful so as not to feed trolls.
I am the fouder of the CVU. I am neither an admin nor do I have checkuser rights. I had two RFAs and the comunity concensus felt they were not ready to hand over admin powa to me. I do not believe the comunity thinks I am a potential threat. They are simply playing it safe. Adminship is not necesary to revert vandalism. Blocking and deleteing nonsense pages are a very useful tools but please understand we do not want people who have a hidden agenda (such as vandalising wikipedia with admin powers) to be granted such power. Admins are given powers which they can cause havoc such as the power to delete any page (such as WP:VfD). Trust comes over time. --Cool CatTalk|@ 21:16, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't think that the CVU needs any more powers than it already has. This is not a official Wikipedia body, this is a group of people who have joined together to join the same goal. I personally don't see the pressing need to do this RIGHT NOW, because to me this all doesn't seem to be as much of an imminent threat. Locking down the site would go against its intent. We just need to roll with the punches. Mo0[talk] 23:59, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
This casual attitude is part of the problem. A casual attitude toward vandalism might be acceptable for fighting casual vandals, but we aren't dealing with casual vandals. Do you think that people like Willy on Wheels and the various people using Wikipedia to spread viscious lies are casual? The CVU needs hard line tactics to fight hard line vandals. I finally registered here after the FUD campaign conducted by The Register. Vandalism is unacceptable and we must take the fight to the vandals. If there were a more potent CVU, it would be easy to identify the sources of the vandalism, ferret out sleeper accounts, and block ranges to prevent future attacks. If we are to be taken seriously as an encyclopedia, we need to take an aggressive stance against vandalism. Hexagonal 03:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
CVU as a body has no power. Every individual has their own power. CVU merely merges the powa. ::::ttnet (my isp) is known to cause a level of vandalism and spamming not just on wikipedia but thorughout the internet (and is banned from several IRC servers for example). Many of the ttnet ips are blocked regularly on wikipedia some by CVU members. What you are suggesting is me getting blocked as I use ttnet and I have a dynamic IP. I also do not have an alternative as far as ISPs go.
UKs second largest ISP is where vandals WoW and MARMOT orriginate. Blocking this ISP completely will however block majority of English speaking contribution form the UK. Also blocking AOL comletely would make wikipedia basicaly no diferent from britanica, editable by the few.
I understand what you are trying to do but that is liek curing the patient by nuking the city. --Cool CatTalk|@ 17:13, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
It isn't necessary to block a whole ISP in order to block the ranges used by hard line vandals. If you don't like my solution, how about you come up with an idea to keep Willy and the rest under control. Hexagonal 22:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
We have them. We keep doing what we've been doing all this time. Willy hasn't ruined this encyclopedia, nor has he come close. We're not an army. If there's vandalism, we revert it. If they persist, we block them. I don't see that becoming any less effective in the future. --InShaneee 03:35, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
We should function as a military unit though. Current vandalism fighting methods are ineffective, and good editors are wasting time on RC patrol when they could be contributing. Simply waiting for vandals to show up, then using weak countermeasures, only wastes editors' time. Think of all the people sitting around for hours on RC patrol, when a vandal only has to show up for 10 minutes to cause a disturbance. Hexagonal 09:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
The day this place becomes a "military unit" I will abandon this place. The idea war originaly generated by a misguided individual who though Counter Vandalism Unit was a military body based on its title. I am tired of explaining Arbcomers and board members that this place has nothing to do with the millitary. I refuse to take orders or give them.
CVU was formed because I and several others (basicaly first 4 members) thought the methods used to combad vandalism was inefective. After colaborations (mostly on IRC) methods in dealing with vandalism have been improved.
Improvement was mostly through bots as well as policies such as semi-protect:
  1. Semi-protect was my initial idea (or I was not aware of similar requests) on villige pump and the wikiproject I started for it. I was mocked for that one for about a month but it has been implemented. They are using my template design somewhat I think. The idea was revived after I gave up all hope and left it alone. People need to get mocked on CNN so they start thinking...
  2. Vandals such as willy on wheels is dealt with a great ease since the developement of tools against them spesificaly (such as my bot) as well as wikimedia code adjustments (IP's (anons) used to be able to move pages for example).
  3. Giving hordes "power" will not even slow down vandalism. You do not need to know an IP to block it. Wikimedia software allows admins to block all IPs of a spesific username without knowing the actual IPs. English wikipedia has about 700+ admins now and the number is increasing by the week.
Mocking minor vandalism on wikipedia have been a recent media habit. Since the interview I will only bother citing CNN as a 'reputable source' for fatality tolls etc. I never trusted CNN much anyways (I just dont trust anyone or any organisation easily) now I have spesific reasons why I shouldn't. I would not take anything John Seigenthaler Sr. writes about for granted either. I guess Comedy Central will be my news source (which generaly is mocking of Fox news which is highly aproporate). Media likes manipulating facts so they sell more newspapers or have more viewers for better comercial profits. Media, such as CNN, should see wikipedia as a threat as we make their lying much much harder.
I understand what you are trying to do, however please understand that the best way against vandalism is not always the most efficent way. We should not create policies and restrictions in the expense of what makes wikipedia great.
--Cool CatTalk|@ 10:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Vandalism is ruining this encyclopedia, and fast. The sheer quantity of it is making janitors out of good editors. We know that the hard line vandals are busy developing high powered vandalbots. What are we going to do when Willy gets a proxy-aware vandalbot that can cycle through 1000 proxies?
I HIGHLY doubt there are THAT many open proxies out there, and some users are like to run proxy detectors and ban them. 68.39.174.238 23:52, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh really? 1000 proxies is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Wikipedia administrators have banned off proxies in the thousands already, and these were just the ones which were used for abuse, thus bringing attention to themselves. The ISC estimates that 0.007% of all address space is running a proxy in some form (note that not all of these proxies can be used by the public, and not all of these proxies follow a standard proxy protocol) Hexagonal 01:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Willy is among us, and we can't forget that. We've been lucky so far, that his sleepers mainly involve the words "Willy", "on Wheels", or some variant. If he began mass-creating sleeper accounts with normal names, we'd never be able to catch them. We would be at his mercy whenever he decided to put them to use.
But forget Willy. There are many, many other people who would like to execute mass vandalism. The GNAA could be watching us right now, trying to learn how to best disrupt the encyclopedia. All they would have to do is read any of the numerous discussions about vandalism to know how vulnerable the encyclopedia is. What if the Milk Man comes back? What happens when, not if, tCV goes on another attack spree? We MUST be proactive about this! Hexagonal 23:46, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
User:SPUI is an ex-gnaa member. As far as I care he is no better but thats just me. Willy likes to be detected and there is evidence willy on wheels found a new hobby and the people we see are his imposters although I wouldn't count on it. Proxies are mild irritation. Your average vandal is a HS kid who has too much free time. People who are more dedicated in vandalising wikipeida will always find ways. Letting them vandalise in a way we can detect them is a better option. We cant really prevent vandalism. NYPD couldn't, I do not believe we can. However we can revert, remove and block the people commiting the act. No need to arm nuclear missles. --Cool CatTalk|@ 10:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
WOW has 1094 sockpuppets now, few share IPs. None of the range blocks would slow him down. --Cool CatTalk|@ 13:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS, Counter-Vandalism Unit/Archive 1! For all to share--Santa on Sleigh 22:00, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


Radio Maryja and the vandalism of one of the members of Counter Vandalism Unit

I am sorry to say it, but one of Your members, Ksenon, is leading with me an editorial war in the article entitled Radio Maryja. He erases everything that I have written about antisemitism and xenophobia in this radio, and then says that I do not follow the neutral point of view in my edits that he usually reverts. Then he replaces it by his own accusations. This user is strongly politically biased, and he made the article a complete nonsense now. The two main features about radio Maryja are that this is a strongly antisemitic radio station, its listeners are informed about conspiracy theories, and that the radio is officially owned by the catohlic church. It all was erased. Your Counter Vandalism Unit is, I am afraid to say it, not free of some fauls. Cheers, Moa anbessa 11:24, 25 December 2005 (UTC) PS. Here is a perfect article about racism in this catholic radio, well sourced etc, unfortunatelly in Polish: http://www.or.org.pl/artykuly/acala-rm.html Pity to say it, but a link to this article was also erased by the "CVU" member.

After reviewing the entire history of the article, I can say that I think Ksenon may have been a little over zealous by deleting rather than editing and modifying, especially with this edit. Outside of of that one edit, I don't think Ksenon is doing anything out of hand. On the other hand, I can see many instances where you (Moa anbessa) were addiing clearly POV information. As it currently stands, I think the article is doing quite well, though it still needs a bit of cleanup. --nihon 22:55, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
Gees POV articles are such a pain... --Cool CatTalk|@ 21:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree, especially when one of the people obviously has an agenda for or against the particular subject. --nihon 21:57, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Sci.psychology.psychotherapy and the vandalism of one of the members of Counter Vandalism Unit

Main page: Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Sci.psychology.psychotherapy

Ok this is WAY OUT OF THE LINE. CVU members are allowed to place articles for deletion. There is no rule that prevents people from placing articles for deletion, this is not the page to discuss articles for deletion. Take it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sci.psychology.psychotherapy. Geez! I am moving this to the talk page of the VFD page. --Cool CatTalk|@ 16:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Combatting vandalism on user pages

Yesterday, I saw an IP blanking someone's userpage. I thought to myself, shouldn't I revert this. So that's what I did. I was quite surprised to receive a thank you note on my talk page from the user. Surely, shouldn't we all look out for our fellow Wikipedians? And revert any vandalism to any page. Also, one final request - unlock your vandal counts so we can add the vandalism we've stopped. Your thoughts? Perhaps we should make a template saying Feel Free to Revert Me. ComputerJoe 20:27, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

My vandal counter isn't locked and I welcome anyone reverting vandalism on it although it is not a vandal pit-stop (should be after I said this), I generaly do not thank for reverts of vandalism. People who know anythng about me know I am greatfull and my thank you is the revert of vandalism on your userpage. :) --Cool CatTalk|@ 09:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
They're tempting targets, especially for persistent vandals, but attacking user pages is the Wiki equivalent of flying toward a bug zapper. Frequently vandals go after them to retaliate against rollbacks and warning messages, which just proves they are aware that what they're doing isn't appreciated. It's strong evidence they aren't making good faith edits, and just expedites a block. I suspect most neophyte vandals assume that user pages aren't closely monitored, when, of course, it's exactly the opposite. There are some gotchas when it comes to dealing with user page vandalism, though. For various reasons, a lot of people edit their own pages when they're not logged in. Other user pages are collaborations, with many editors contributing. In either case, you may get chewed out for reverting when you just thought you were doing a good deed. For the non-obvious cases I've taken to peering at page histories and user contributions, but sometimes I just wish people would make proper use of edit summaries, sub-pages, and talk pages. –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 20:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Also by spendin tome on userpages they aren't vandalising wikipedia pages ^-^' --Cool CatTalk|@ 10:05, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Please dont overly discuss "Counter Vandalism Unit"

Instead lets discuss vandalism on wikipedia (spesific repeating cases) and ways to counter them. After all that is what "Counter Vandalism Unit" is about, right? --Cool CatTalk|@ 12:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Godmode on Safari

Is there a way to add the godmode script to Safari? It seems very useful. GabrielF 04:07, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean? The scripts are added to your monobook.js file, which is browser-independent. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 04:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I never was able to get it to work. Every time I tried to its rollback button, Safari would crash. Until I got my mop, I used Firefox for Wikipedia (and pretty much only Wikipedia). –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 12:34, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandal wishing to convert

Please direct me to the right venure for this...

Tried to vandalize a page, and was really impressed with the response time, less than a minute.

I am interested in the process. Not to promote vandalism, but just in general. I've installed a copy of mediawiki at work and the company loves it. We use it for all kinds of stuff.

One of the issues in proper adoption at a corporate level is the issue of vandalism.

I'm also keen to NLP studies, which I have a feeling you guys are interested in too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.204.237.156 (talk • contribs) 09:20, December 30, 2005

We keep track of the Recent Changes. Some people run bots that scan this list for specific criteria that they think makes an edit more likely to be vandalism. Each registered user also has a personal watch list, where they can track the most recent changes to pages they have added to their list. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 11:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

You can help (and you did:)

Thanks!
Thanks!

Thanks to all who helped take care of the Richard O'Connor article while it was on the mainpage. The CV unit and RC Patrol truly ROCK most righteously, and I salute you! Once more, thanks --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 06:09, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Crocodile Dundee Vandal

Can whoever runs an autoblocker bot PLEASE start countering this idiot? He's taken over half the bloody blocklist in a matter of a day. Hexagonal 17:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the CVU determines things, but perhaps Crocodile Dundee should be considered a persistent vandal? But then, it's mostly manageable, given he targets the same pages.--cj | talk 15:50, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

"Vandalism Unit"

I found this one amusing, so I thought I'd share. User:OmegaStauf vandalized Wikipedia:Vandalism by adding Image:Wmvu.png to it. Cute. I added it to my watchlist, since anything that links to that is suspect. It'll work as a quasi-honeypot, perhaps. –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 22:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Code of Conduct

Should there not be a code of conduct for (new) members of the CVU? Otherwise, the problem might arise that vandals or pov-warriors would use the CVU as a means to legitmize their actions (although this may also have advantages, one would find them easier). I'm asking this because Street Scholar (talk · contribs) joined the CVU on December 15., 2005. Only four days before he was edit-warring and pov-warring in wikipedia articles (which included the blanking of text and references). [5] [6] [[7]] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]. These are only examples of December 11., 2005; many more can be found in his contributions (for example see [13]) --Kefalonia 16:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think a code of conduct is needed, being a member of the CVU does not afford any special benefits or privileges. CVU members are bound by the Wikipedia policies and guidelines just as much as any other contributor. If there is a particular user who is causing problems, take it to the dispute resolution process the same as would happen with any other Wikipedian. --GraemeL (talk) 16:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Backslashes?

What's up with the backslashes? Has anyone seen this before? Tom Harrison Talk 17:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I've been seeing that more often as well. I mentioned it to an anonymous editor who'd been making otherwise okay edits, except they were filled with backslashes like that. He said he was just editing the articles and didn't actually see the backslashes. So, maybe it's browser-related or perhaps an external program "helpfully" commenting out things it shouldn't? –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 17:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Interestingly, according to the Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Wikipedia is Communism, the Communist vandal has recently being "inserting backslashes before all apostrophies, ruining much formatting." - Akamad 19:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I found something here [14] that suggests these backslashes indicate a compromised webhost that should be blocked. I want to know more about this before I start blocking these on sight. Tom Harrison Talk 19:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Hmm...this is sounding like his browser is inserting escape characters. For instance, in Perl, you have to put the slash before any character you don't want interpreted. --nihon 23:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Channels

Can we get a listing of all the channels used by the bot on a subpage somewhere? Everytime I need to know if we have a bot for a particular project, I find myself banging my head against the wall... -- Essjay · Talk 11:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh... --Cool CatTalk|@ 22:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
1. #wikimedia-meta-vandalism.txt
#wikimedia-commons-vandalism.txt
2. #wikipedia-en-vandalism.txt
#wiktionary-en-vandalism.txt
#wikibooks-en-vandalism.txt
3. #wikipedia-de-vandalism.txt
4. #wikipedia-fr-vandalism.txt
5. #wikipedia-es-vandalism.txt
6. #wikipedia-bg-vandalism.txt
7. #wikipedia-ja-vandalism.txt
8. #wikipedia-it-vandalism.txt
9. #wikipedia-pl-vandalism.txt
10. #wikipedia-pt-vandalism.txt
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