Wikipedia talk:Administrator intervention against vandalism

Vandalism only accounts

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Vandalism_only_accounts

Un-sustained vandalism

Ok, I'm wonder whether to report the IP 170.91.5.4 (talk · contribs). He recently vandalised and since he had a histroy of vandalising, I gave him an uw-vand4. However, his last vandalism warning was about a year ago. Should I report or see how it goes? Pie is good ^{(Apple is the best)} 21:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Last warning was a year ago because the IP's been blocked since Dec 2007. Don't report for now, since their latest edit was to revert some of their own vandalism from a couple of days ago. Frankly, a {{schoolblock}} is likely, but let's see what happens; maybe they'll surprise me. --barneca (talk) 21:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Hesitantcy to Block Users

I'm curious, it appears sometimes that admins are hesitant to block users even when they've been sufficiently warned and have a long history of vandalism. When someone has already received their final warning and been told they will be blocked the next time they vandalize, why are they given another warning instead? My most recent example is 194.83.68.239 and this reason the report was removed. I'm just trying to understand the reasoning behind this so I know if I'm reporting people who shouldn't be.--Flash176 (talk) 15:42, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

That was a stale report; the final warning was from two days ago. As it's an IP that belongs to a school, it's likely a completely different person making the edits. We'll assume a bit of good faith and give them a couple more chances before a block is necessary. GlassCobra 15:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict with above) Let's go on a little journey together. Picture if you will, a computer in a library at a university. Hundreds of people sit down at that computer. Occasionally, one of them edits a Wikipedia article. Some of those people make good, beneficial edits: [1], or at least good-faith attempts at improving an article: [2]. Being a frequently used public computer, sometimes an asshole sits down and does this: [3].

We don't block this IP address for long periods of time because we don't gain as much in prevention of assholery as we lose in beneficial edits. Now, IP addresses can be blocked for extended periods if the vandalism is frequent, daily vandalism for many weeks, returns after every single block expiration, or if the pattern of edits shows that the IP is used by a single person to vandalise over many days. However, this IP address you cite in this case meets none of those situations. The IP is obviously shared, there are lots of beneficial edits mixed in with the vandalism, and the vandalism happens about 1 or 2 days a month, and sometimes goes 3-4 months between bad edits. So yes, admins DO block IP addresses for long periods of time if the situation warrents. This situation didn't warrent it... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 15:56, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thank you.--Flash176 (talk) 16:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

But if you find recent vandalism made from an IP address, please do not hesitate to warn him. we commonly make short blocks, whereupon vandals nearly always lose interest. --Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 17:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest we stop using warning templates that suggest anything about blocking when dealing with a shared ip. It's embarrassing when a good-faith contributor reads them and it's bad for our image, saying we'll block and don't. -- penubag  (talk) 07:52, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Especially when you see "This is your last warning" several times in a row. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 09:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

...both of the above are good points - however without a warning we fall foul of the "almost always rule" that an editor (inclusive of IP's) must be warned before a blocking. Personally I'd rather see a situation where wikipedia has a Bot that goes around and removes old messages from IP's that are in the style of a warning and are, say, 7 days old or so. As an admin I will still see the fact of the warning in the history but it removes the unsightliness in the cases that Penubag and Bugs are referring to.--VS ^talk 10:56, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If the bot allowed for blocks, maybe. But I think 7 days is too short. Maybe a month + block time. But even then...- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

<- I agree with Wolfkeeper, though I think 6 months is better. I've always hated "final warning," especially when I lacked the power to execute the ultimatum. I suppose the "Blatant vandal" is now deprecated, though I prefer it. It lacks the drawback of a possibly unenforceable ultimatum while retaining the deterrent value and alerting others that the editor has run out of opportunities to improve. Dlohcierekim 19:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I tend to think we often adhere to the "must be warned first" rule a little too rigidly. The point of that rule is to make sure users won't get blocked for something they didn't know wasn't allowed, not to ensure they collect the requisite four warning tokens before a block can be applied. In particular, for the kind of blatant vandalism of the "Miss Jones is a poopyhead" type often seen from schoolkids, there's really no need to warn the user first — they already know they're up to no good. Just slap a 3-hour block on them, leave {{uw-block}} on the talk page and hope they'll find something more interesting to do on recess by the time the block expires. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I hardened my stance on this starting about a week ago, and no one has complained (or requested unblocking) yet. And I've been putting old warnings in a hide box (rather than removing them) for quite a while now (e.g. here); it definitely makes the user talk page more navigable. --barneca (talk) 19:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

...and it seems to be having the desired effect. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:37, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

What to do about no edit summaries?

Sorry, not sure where to ask this question. I've asked GoldDragon (talk) twice to start providing edit summaries, but he ignores me. Is there anything that can be done?--Flash176 (talk) 17:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Depends, to you actually think this is disruptive or are you just blindly trying to enforce some rule? John Reaves 18:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If it were minor edits, I wouldn't care, but the user is changing quite a few things around and adding (sometimes unsourced) information. So, yes, I think it's disruptive.--Flash176 (talk) 18:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Edit summaries are not required, just encouraged. You can't make GoldDragon use edit summaries; the most you can do is remind him/her and hope for the best. If s/he doesn't want to use edit summaries, that's his/her prerogative. Parsecboy (talk) 18:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You might find that after editing long enough, edit summaries can seem very tiresome and just plain annoying. If you've got 30,000 edits and an edit summary for every single one... well, that's a lot of extra time.   jj137 (talk) 20:54, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have half that number of edits, and I find my own edit summaries very useful in remembering why I did what I did... If I need to remind myself, what chance the casual reviewer of my historic edits? LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:56, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

So true. If we didn't have edit summaries, obvious vandalism would be less obvious, and good natured edits would seem more questionable. ~ Troy (talk) 01:00, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

While that is all true, the fact remains that edit summaries aren't mandatory, and if a user doesn't find them to be useful, that's that. Like I said above, we can't force people to use them if they don't want to. Parsecboy (talk) 01:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes it can be annoying too. For example, if I fix a typo (like changing the comma to a period), I only changed 1 character yet on the summary I have to type "typo" so the summary is not summary at all, but longer than what I edited! OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:46, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Long term vandals and freshness of warnings

When I first started RCPatrolling, I hated the idea of not blocking someone like the current crop, that make a few bad edits and then stop-- racking up weeks of warnings without blocking. Is current consensus to block only with full set of recent warnings or to go ahead and blcok? How recent must the warnings be to count? Dlohcierekim 16:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally I consider anything in the past month or so to be recent. -Djsasso (talk) 16:39, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that less than three weeks is recent.--Megaman en m (talk) 16:45, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Anything that demonstrates "bad faith" is recent for me. If a user makes several bad edits, gets warned, disappears for two months, and then comes back and immediately starts doing the same thing, that's good enough for me. Particularly if it's a "named" user account, as opposed to an IP. - Philippe 16:48, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that 3-4 weeks is recent. That and the pattern of vandalism. For example if a vandal comes back and vandalises the same articles and uses the same type of edits as before then we can be reasonably certain that it is the same vandal. Dr.K. (talk) 16:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

In addition we may want to examine the case of the vandalism spree. IMO if a vandal is prolific and makes over 4-5 vandal edits in a short period of time then they should be blocked with or without a final warning. Dr.K. (talk) 16:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

For me, I take each report on a case-by-case basis. Generally, I like to know some things before I block: 1) That the person sitting at the keyboard has had the opportunity to read the warnings given to them and 2) That that same person has continued to vandalise after being given the opportunity to read the warnings and 3) That the block is likely to stop them from continuing their behavior. I base the length of my blocks on a combination of all of these factors. If it is clear, for example, from the editing pattern that the IP is used by a single person to vandalise over a long period of time, I may block for a long time since it is clear that they could have seen the old warnings, and still continues to vandalise, and the block is likely to be effective. If, however, the vandalism is sporadic, if it seems to be random with regard to target articles and style of vandalism, if it only occurs infrequently, or if it is interpersed with good faith edits, I will generally only block for a short time period (24-48 hours usually) and then only if the vandal is clearly sitting at his computer and vandalising RIGHT NOW. If an account shows that it is a shared account, but that it is clearly shared by lots of undersupervised middle schoolers, and has been blocked several times before without improvement, I will give a long (multi-month) school block. However, no two cases are usually identical, and each requires me to give some investigation before deciding how I will proceed. Its never as simple as merely counting the warnings and blindly blocking a certain length of time based on the number or timing of those warnings. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd say only the final warning needs to be particularly recent. If there are months worth of warnings on the talk page and it seems to be the same vandal, just jump straight to a final warning. If they continue to vandalise in the next couple of days or so, report them (if it's longer than that, go for another final warning, since it appears final warnings are sufficient to do the job). --Tango (talk) 17:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I am generally with Jayron32 that I do not have any blanket personal rules on what warnings are sufficient to block. For an account generally once the user has passed a final warning, and it is clearly in bad faith, I block, even if the final warning was not very recent (such as a week ago). I give more caution to IPs, generally I prefer if a level 3 or 4 warning has been given at least within the last few hours (preferably within the last hour) and the user has clearly ignored it before a block. However, if the edit history suggests it is the same user returning to vandalise with a single IP, then I am happy to block even if the last final warning is not very recent. Camaron | Chris (talk) 17:21, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there is a final warning template for "Long term pattern of vandalism" which can be used for someone trying to game the system by waiting out the warning's "freshness." As Tango said, such a final warning should be sufficient warning, although your own discretion could be used as far as a direct report to AIV or an admin. Hope that helps. here's the template: {{subst:uw-longterm}}
-RoBoTam^ice 19:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Cool template. Dlohcierekim 19:17, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The "only warning" and "final warning" templates are often misused, especially on shared IPs, and are frequently subsequently dismissed by admins. If a shared IP has a history of vandalism from some time ago, possibly with a few good edits since, you should be giving the editors more than one warning. Final warnings have no context for a new user. The editors should preferably be recently pointed to the sandbox and warned about blocking. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes that is another important point, unless a users edits are highly malicious or gaming the system I am a little hesitant to block if the user has only had a level 4 type warnings. In that event I usually re-warn at a lower level or post a general note as appropriate. Camaron | Chris (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I rarely give level 4 the first time around. But if I see that a vandal has hacked at an article more than five times in a short period of time and they keep hacking as I am reverting them then I tend to give a final to slow them down. If they persist after that then I report them. Sometimes this type of vandal will do WP:BLP damage and I find the faster the block the better it is in this case. Sometimes the vandal IP has a prior record other times it doesn't. So it's all relative. But you cannot generalise. Dr.K. (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Blocking policy?

I thought that to block an IP address the user needed to be active. Do two posts per day justify blocking per policy? Would not this be called pre-emptive blocking which is not permitted? see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/65.26.128.154 Note this is only a general question as it seems to be against policy as I understand it. I have no relationship to the blocked IP, so I do not care if it is blocked or not, just a policy question. Dbiel ^(Talk) 01:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. They were actively vandalizing when they were blocked, and they were sufficiently warned. None of the edits from this IP have been constructive so far, so we're preventing two vandal edits tomorrow. The alternative would be to start with a fresh level one warning every day, which would get a little tedious. --Bongwarrior (talk) 01:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I would say that in this case, since the IP is vandalizing the same article repeatedly, it's safe to assume it's the same person. Therefore, I'd say the block is fine. Parsecboy (talk) 01:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies, It gives me a different understanding as to what active vandalism is. Dbiel ^(Talk) 01:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The key factor here is most likely that the IP doesn't seem to be shared -- looks like the same person vandalizing over a few days, who is most likely to continue vandalizing unless blocked. Ideally we respond to such issues while the user is active, but the trend here was pretty obvious. – Luna Santin (talk) 19:09, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a note, the IP was active at the time they were blocked. He/she made this edit at 01:13 UTC, was warned a minute after that, responded with this charming edit two minutes after being warned, and was blocked two minutes later. This is a textbook example of how it's supposed to be done. --Bongwarrior (talk) 19:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, excellent point. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Backlogged

Hi, can an admin please review the vandalism entries - the page is getting backlogged, and those reported are continuing to vandalize. Thanks --Flewis^(talk) 07:00, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Since most admins probably read WP:AN more often than this talk page, I might recommend you drop a note there the next time you notice a backlog. Additionally, while backlogs can build up pretty quickly -especially since the advent of some of today's rapid-fire anti-vandalism tools- an admin or two can churn through even a long list of vandals in short order. --Kralizec! (talk) 12:43, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

BTTF: What the heck...

Ok, I'm lost here. User:WikiKingOfMishawaka removed the category "Universal Picture Film" from the "Back to the future" article, and some guy put it back because it IS an Universal Picture film. WikiKingOfMishawaka removed it again without any explaination, and that started a revert war. I went on the WikiKingOfMishawaka's talk page to ask him why he's removing the category to discover that the page is now semi-protected and he says "This has been discussed, digested, and spit back out." (I've never seen any discussion about this, but meh!) "I consider this matter closed, in my favor, and expect no further gibberish from you". I don't get it. Could somebody please explain to me on what ground user:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry has considered WikiKingOfMishawaka to be right? -- Lyverbe (talk) 01:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I saw what you mean. The tone of that editor was very hostile and even border line rude. I did not see any discussion at all and am not sure what it is that has been awarded in his favor.--Jojhutton (talk) 01:16, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Try reading the article history before getting involved. Being armed with facts is always helpful, in any situation. WikiKingOfMishawaka (talk) 01:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)