User talk:Xykon

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[edit] RC Patrol

The "recent changes patrol" is just the loosely held-together group of Wikipedians who "patrol" the recent changes page. The old-fashioned way of doing it is by just clicking on the "recent changes" button on the left of your screen and scouring through the latest changes to see if they are done by vandals. This is the way I do it because I find it takes me longer to use the programs they have out there to monitor RC, which I believe you can find on the RCP page. As you might be able to imagine, this is a rather impossible task, which makes it fortunate that there are a sizeable amount of people out there who want to do it, like me, for instance, until recently. What you want to look for depends on your level of experience. You could, theoretically, click on every change you see and check to see if it's a vandal (or just poorly done) edit of some sort. This is a bit time-consuming, so what I've done in the past was create a hierarchy of things to look for:

1. Blatant vandal edits are pretty easy to spot. When Wikipedia is "under attack" by a particular vandal (such as the Squidward vandal) using bots and an IP range or five, it's going to be obvious. However, these problems are usually sorted out quickly by admins, so it might just help to not get in their way or to slow them down by eating up the bandwidth. These types of vandals don't come every day.
2. New pages almost always come first in my book. If I see the little "N," and especially if it's done by a new user (see two down), I check it out to see if it's for real or some sort of attack/non-notable page/or any other of the things that fall under WP:AFD or WP:CSD. However, if the page is created by a known user who includes an adequate description in his summary like "redirect page," then I won't worry about it.
3. IP address changes are next for me. These are quite frequent and you'll never be able to get all of them, but the more that are caught, the less vandalism there is on Wikipedia. It might make more sense for you to not focus too much on big articles you see getting vandalized (like if it's an edit to "George Bush" by an IP address with no summary) because most big pages are monitored by veteran vandal fighers and admins. Also, it's important to get properly acquainted with the idea that not all IP users are malicious in nature, so when you revert a page, be sure to do a little bit of research in the page history to find the last good edit. Also, if you find another bit of vandalism, try to be thorough and get personally edit that out.
4. New user changes are not always going to catch vandals, so that's why it shows up here at the bottom of the list, but it might be useful to track these guys too. Not sure how to spot a new user? Nine times out of ten, people unfamiliar with Wikipedia will go a while before they make a user page for themselves, so their name will appear as a red link instead of a blue one on the RC page. As I said above, pages created by new users are a priority over just random changes they've made.
5. Dates are another one I'll throw in here because some of the most vandalized pages on Wikipedia are the ones for years/months/days. Someone will come in and add their name under "Births in 1988" or "June 29 - John met Sarah." These all fail Wikipedia:Notability in some way or another, though be careful about notability...it is a very hotly debated issue on this site, and it always will be.

So that's all I can tell you about the RC patrol. To become one, all you have to do is start checking out the RC page. There's no need to sign up for anything, but you can if you want to...I think they've got a "signup sheet" over there somewhere. Remember, though, Wikipedia has very strict guidelines about dealing with new users and the "powers" of a vandal-fighter. We are not to ever bite the newbies, and there is almost always a test template that can be put on a user's talk page instead of a personalized warning. This usually keeps tensions low and gives the vandal more information than you might have remembered. Also, if you attack a user, even if he is a vandal, you are also, in one way, considered a vandal, so it is important to remember to keep your cool and refer to admins if things ever get out of hand. It may help, also, to use the {{welcome}} or {{welcomeip}} templates along with your vandalism warning to ease any potential tensions. If you have any other questions, I'll be on Wikipedia from time to time, but don't expect an immediate response. Good hunting! JHMM13 (T | C) 14:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)