User:Norm/tips

Here are some of my tips for working with Wikipedia and other Wikis.

[edit] Tabs

Using a web browser that supports tabbed browsing is really useful for people who edit large amounts of articles. If your browser dosen't support tabbed browsing, I recommend you get one that does (I use Mozilla Firefox). It makes stuff like patrolling recent changes and watchlists much easier by being able to check multiple edits at once. Tabbed browsing can also give you the illusion of being able to edit many articles at once at unbelievable speeds by submitting changes in batches. Also really effective at fighting vandalism as the vandals see all their hard work getting reverted really quickly. For fun, middle click the random page link ten times to get ten random pages for you to work on. It is a effective way at cleaning up Wikipedia by working on each page and doing as many ten page batches as possible.

[edit] Vandals

Most vandals are anonymous users who get excited when they discover the "edit this page" link. Patrolling anonymous edits on recent changes can catch most vandalism. Once the vandalism is reverted, be sure to leave a warning to the user. If using one of the test templates, use subst: in it to include the text in the page. This gives the illusion that you took the time to write a warning for them and gives the warning more credibility. Remember to sign the warning to show that real people check contributions for vandalism.

Once vandals have been warned, there is usually one of the four following reactions. There are vandals who feel embaressed when you give them a warning and usually stop editing, there are ones who feel guilty and apologize, then make constructive edits. Some ignore your warning and continue vandalizing until they get blocked. The worst type of vandals are the ones that go crazy! They vandalize your user page, they insult you and try to cause as much chaos as possible. Being effective against fighting these types of vandals is to remember thay they are the vandals and that you must make it clear that they will not succeed in their attacks. Remember to list persistent vandals on vandalism in progess.

[edit] Interwiki links

Following interwiki links (the "other languages" links) is really useful as articles about topics may be more developed in another language Wikipedia. You can get things like images, data, text, links and references and make the English Wikipedia more useful by merging them. If you can, return the favor and add things to other language articles as well. The Wikimedia Commons makes it easy to add images to all languages, so uploading images to the Commons is recommended.