Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism

How to help

• Anyone can help! Whenever you spot a page that has been vandalised, you are encouraged to edit it and clean it up, and/or warn the vandal using an appropriate warning template. See What to do if you spot vandalism below.
• If you find yourself cleaning up vandalism frequently, you might be interested in patrolling recent changes. Note that participation is entirely voluntary. Also, you are not required to enlist anywhere.
• There are various tools to help you. See the Tools section below.

What to do if you spot vandalism

This guide only applies to vandalism as defined by official policy.

1. Revert the vandalism viewing the page's history and selecting the most recent version of the page prior to the vandalism. Use an edit summary such as 'rvv' or 'reverted vandalism' and click on save page.

See also the section below for tools to help with reverting.

2. Warn the vandal. Access the vandal's talk page and warn them using an appropriate template.

See a guide to {{test}} templates for an overview of the most commonly used warning templates and test templates for a wider selection of warning templates.

3. Report vandals who continue to vandalise after having received a final (Test4) warning. Most simple cases of vandalism should be reported to WP:AIV. For complicated situations that need in-depth investigation visit WP:RFI (it may take a while to receive a response on that page as it is not the proper page to report users that need to be blocked right away). Cases that are not simple vandalism but need a fast response can be reported to WP:AN/I. WP:LTA may be used for reporting particular vandals who persistently return (e.g. via sockpuppets).

Tools

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

Screenshot of Wikipedia recent changes IRC feed

Monitoring

The old school way is to load recent changes and check the (diff) links. If they contain harmful edits, you revert to the previous version. However, the high volume of edits that occur each second makes this nearly impossible most of the time, and several tools have been created to simplify the process:

• Vandal Fighter is a Java program that displays the IRC feed and allows filters to focus on certain types of changes (e.g. anonymous IPs). It also maintains a personal list of trusted users, watched articles, etc.
• Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool monitors the RSS feed and flags edits with common vandalism terms. It also has a live spellcheck feature.
• VandalProof is a Windows program that provides several tools to make finding and reverting vandalism easier.
• VandalSniper, a VandalProof-like application, is currently in beta. At the moment it has only been confirmed to run on Linux.
• WikiGuard is an OSX program that monitors the IRC feed and attempts to approximate each edit's risk.
• RC birds is a Java program that emits different bird sounds for the RC feed depending on the user.
• The IRC Bot, pgkbot, by Pgk, runs on the IRC channels below.
• IRC Bots reporting at the #vandalism-en-wp channel on the freenode network list suspected vandalism edits (for example: blankings, edits made by blacklisted users, etc.)
• Young Orphans is a tool made by Interiot to find newly uploaded orphaned images. This is useful for finding various copyright violations and people who are using Wikipedia merely as an image hosting service.

Rollback scripts

Admins get a rollback button when looking at diffs in order to revert articles to their previous versions. However, non-admins can emulate such a button using several tools.

• RC patrol script gives non-admins revert, filter, and popup tools while using the (default) monobook skin.
• Godmode-light is a Javascript program to give nonadmins a rollback button.
• Navigation popups are a set of utils that appear when hovering over wikilinks. Particularly, hovering over links of old versions provides a "revert" link.

Special pages

• See the list of Wikipedia's most vandalized pages. The related changes link will display recent changes to all pages listed on Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages, for those who wish to follow vandalism on Wikipedia but who are unable or do not desire to use IRC bot tools.
• User:Adam1213/warn is a page that simplifies the process of warning vandals by allowing warnings to be submitted to specific users directly from the page.

IRC channels

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

• #vandalism-en-wp Primary RC bot listing/CVU meeting place (NickServ registration required; voice invitations available on request at #cvu-request)
• #wikipedia-en-vandalism2 User vandalism and alternative RC bot listings (NickServ registration required)
• #cvu Discussion/experimental bots channel (if you would like to report vandalism on IRC without registering, please do so here)
• #cvu-proxies Open proxy reporting channel
• #cvu-test Channel for bot testing
• #cvu-checkuser Requests for checkuser (only works when an admin with checkuser is online)

Other

WikiDefcon

WikiDefcon 4: Low to normal levels of vandalism from shared IPs and experimenting users.

[[edit]]

Bump down to normal. MER-C 12:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit, a Wikiproject committed to cleaning up vandalism.
• WikiDefcon is a tool used as an indication of the current overall level of vandalism that is taking place on Wikipedia. On the page, click the edit button below the Defcon meter to change its level from 5 to 1; 5 indicates very low levels of vandalism, and 1 indicates extremely high.
• Counter-Vandalism Wiki (Not owned by, operated by, or affiliated with Wikipedia.)
• Wikilink scripts enable you to double click on [[wikilinks]] within IRC clients. Useful if doing patrol on the IRC channels.
• There are other scripts that may be handy while doing cleanup (not necessarily vandalism cleanup). Check them at WikiProject User scripts/Scripts (WP:JS)

Announcements

• Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Removing warnings, a discussion of whether vandals should be allowed to remove legitimate warnings from their talk pages is presently being discussed. 22:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Restrictions on Anonymous Editing from Shared IPs, a proposed policy to restrict anonymous editing by users connected through shared IP addresses has been rejected. Proposal and discussion retained for historical interest. 21:28, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
• VandalSniper, a cross-platform VandalProof-like application, is currently in beta. At the moment it has only been confirmed to run on Linux. 19:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
• Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool has been updated, allowing users the option of only monitoring edits within the article namespace and providing a non-admin rollback function. In addition, a new live spellcheck mode has also been included. 05:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• VandalProof, a downloadable application which contains some powerful tools for detecting and reverting vandalism and administering appropriate warnings to vandals has become available (see Detection, reversion, and warning). 16:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• We have implemented a new system of verification on #vandalism-en-wp to prevent vandals from monitoring us. Please request access at the IRC channel verification page. - 22:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
• WikiGuard, an open-source OSX application for monitoring vandalism, is in development.

Keep in mind...

Some useful reminders:

• Civility is one of the pillars of Wikipedia. Avoid being rude, no matter how aggressive or obnoxious the vandal is. Some of them may want you to become angry and lose your temper: Don't fall for that!
• Don't bite the newcomers. Not all bad edits are necessarily intentional vandalism. Some of them may just be test edits by newer editors.
• On many ISPs, IP addresses are shared by many users, so be extra-careful not to be rude in your messages, as people seeing them may not be the same ones who vandalised.
• Content disputes are not vandalism: If a user is adding biased content or you disagree with the information added, that doesn't mean the editor is vandalising. This includes violations of Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. Corollary: 3RR rule still applies since it's not blatant vandalism. Instead of constantly reverting, discuss edits on talk pages and obtain community consensus. See resolving disputes.

Dealing with vandalism