Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-05-30/Vandal fighter

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Recent changes patrol adds new tools against vandalism

By Worldtraveller, 30 May 2005

Anti-vandalism tool written by Wikipedian

CryptoDerk has this week released the latest version of some open source software he has written to help combat vandalism on Wikimedia Foundation projects. The software, titled simply CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter or CDVF for short, works on Wikipedia and its sister projects, and runs off a live feed via IRC of the recent changes on the project. CryptoDerk first released the software on 9 May, and has been rapidly adding new features and functionality, releasing version 2.1 on 26 May.

Features

CDVF runs under Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS, and is essentially a GUI for a recent changes feed which allows users to customise what changes they see in a variety of ways. Most usefully, usernames and IP addresses can be added to blacklists and whitelists; changes made by users on the blacklist are flagged with an icon, while those on the whitelist do not show up.

Users can import their watchlist into the program, allowing the program to highlight changes made to articles on it. The program can also be set to automatically blacklist users whose edits have been reverted by users in the whitelist. Another feature handy for detecting suspicious edits is a display of the number of bytes added or removed at each edit, quickly revealing any page blanking or section removal.

Recent changes via IRC

The software is yet another enhancement for those for whom the simple recent changes page is not enough. Hard core Wikipediholics have for some time been able to take advantage of live feeds of recent changes [1], which update in real time, and have more recently been able to monitor changes via IRC. An IRC channel tracking recent changes was recently installed on one of the Wikimedia servers.

CDVF takes recent change watching one step further, and many users have already declared themselves hooked. CryptoDerk expects to keep up the rapid release of new versions, and has many new feature developments in the pipeline. More information about CVDF, including where to download it from, can be found on CryptoDerk's CDVF page.

Also this week: Official positions — Time article — Rock rat — Election — Features — Vandal fighting — Substubs, templates — Trophy — T.R.O.L.L.

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