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Wikipedia talk:Administrator intervention against vandalism

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot II (talk | contribs) at 23:07, 4 July 2009 (Archiving 2 thread(s) (older than 7d) to Wikipedia talk:Administrator intervention against vandalism/Archive 12.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Vandalism only accounts

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Vandalism_only_accounts

Question

Is it a personal attack if you ask a user what do we disagree upon and get no answer,is it considerd vandilism--HENRY V OF ENGLAND (talk) 01:26, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably not a personal attack, maybe a breach of Wikietiquette. But first I'd check to see if the user was inactive or if they blatantly refused to answer the question. Be sure to give them a sufficient amount of time to respond. just a little insignificant 02:05, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Should every vandalism be banned?

I'm wondering if every vandalism should get a ban when discovered, initially of say 15 minutes.

Then subsequent ones would quadruple, so on a second offense an hour suspension, 4 hours, 16 hours etc. etc. And if they made 3 edits in a row, the first ban would be 4 hours.

The only thing that would cause this to decrease should be positive edits that are kept; those would halve the vandalism tarif.

The point is that it's not a punishment, it's a way of progressively identifying which IP/accounts are actually making, on average, positive contributions, and disabling any that aren't. A lot of anonymous IPs have never made any positive contributions, but only vandalism. I tend to think that they should be banned; the case where we have a lot of vandalism and then it becomes all positive contributions, that seems rare.

Occasionally, you'll get an edit that is borderline. Those shouldn't be banned, but should still count towards the multiplier if there is a later vandalism. Doing that will help avoid people doing brinksmanship.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I sort of understand the reason you'd want to do this, but I think it's probably a bad idea for several reasons.
  • I think 4 levels of warning is too many, and could easily live with 3 or even 2 warnings before blocking, but zero warnings goes way too far. Quite a few people stop vandalizing after one warning; no sense blocking them, even for 15 minutes.
  • I don't think you want to encourage people to report IP addresses here after 1 vandal edit. If you think it sometimes gets swamped now, wait until all the one-off vandals clog up the board.
  • People often seem to have a hard time differentiating between test edits and vandalism. I don't think you want to risk blocking someone for test edits with no warning.
  • WP:CREEP.
  • A 15 minute block is only useful to stop current fast and furious vandalism anyway; they may not even notice they're blocked. Short blocks for stale vandalism are no more useful than putting a note on the IP's talk page (which, unlike blocking, everyone can do).
Now, I do agree we should be a lot more proactive about identifying, and {{schoolblock}}ing long term, IP addresses where there is almost nothing but vandalism, even if it comes a couple of edits per week, and never gets 3-4 warnings on the same day. But that's significantly different from the rest of your proposal. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:58, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Picking up on the "4 levels ... is too many" point, and the "Quite a few people stop..." point:
I'll usually just revert the first instance of vandalism I see (assuming the editor's contribs don't include other instances of vandalism, past or present). If they vandalise again I'll then go straight to a level 2 warning. This saves my time because many editors aren't vandals per se, they're simply "testing" editing and won't edit again once they know that yes, they really can edit Wikipedia: warning them would be a waste of my time and might scare off a potentially useful future editor.
That said, I'll keep their contribs page open in a tab, and warn them (level 2 or higher) if they vandalise again.
I use discretion with warnings, too, and I imagine blocking admins use similar discretion - if a vandal starts with a racist comment I'll start with an immediate warning, probably of level 2 or 3.
Cheers, This flag once was redpropagandadeeds 17:12, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the perspective of an admin who processes block requests at AIV almost every day. Wikipedia's official WP:BLOCK policy states that "everyone was new once, and most of us made mistakes ... before a block is imposed, efforts should be made to educate the user about our policies and guidelines, and to warn them when their behaviour conflicts with our policies and guidelines." Keeping that in mind, when I block a normal† run-of-the-mill anonymous vandal, the duration of that block is directly proportional to the amount of effort the Wikipedia community has put into educating the IP in question. If the vandal ignored four escalating levels of vandalism, I generally block for 31 hours. If the vandal got three levels of warnings, I often block for 24 hours. However if the IP only received two warnings, I either decline with a {{AIV|ns}} "insufficiently warned" or if I do block, it is almost always for something under 12 hours. †Note that I typically give BLP, defamation, and hate-speech vandals a 24 - 55 hour block after ignoring just a single level-four or 4im warning. — Kralizec! (talk) 19:05, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, Template:uw-test1 is there for a reason. Continually fighting vandalism, and witnessing the antics of persistent vandals who are gaming with the system (who, you've to admit, constitute only a minority of vandals out there), has the unfortunate side-effect of provoking you to label all IP edits as guilty-until-proven-innocent and retaliating with a heavy hand, which is not in line with WP:Assume good faith. I have been guilty of this myself. It helps to take a deep breath, cool down, and try to educate the editors instead. Often, a perceived vandal is really just making test edits because they don't really understand how the system works yet: changing a number here (which could be construed as subtle vandalism, if you're assuming bad faith), adding random characters there (which could be construed as malicious vandalism), etc.. Just because the last proven persistent vandal was doing the same thing doesn't mean the next IP has the same malicious intentions.—Tetracube (talk) 19:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. This is why it is important to select at WP:RfA admins who can be expected to know what they are doing. --Anthony.bradbury"talk" 19:37, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OTOH, if you really assume good faith, you should assume that the person editing is not a moron. Therefore, if they edit an article, insert "hi" somewhere, hit the Save button, and then see that the "hi" did indeed go into the article, then they should pretty much "get it" at that point. If they do it again somewhere else, maybe they're proving that every article can be edited. Okay, now they got that. If they edit twelve articles inserting various pieces of random text where they clearly don't belong, they are either a moron or a blatant vandal. If somewhere in there, you'd like to issue a warning to let them know we are watching and that there is a sandbox - and those are valid pieces of information to teach them - that is good. After that, if they persist, I whack 'em. The full set of four templated warnings before blocking is an antiquated approach in my view. Wknight94 talk 19:57, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question

Could someone advise on the correct course of action on the article Gaelcholáiste Reachrann? There seems to be persistent vandalism going back to March 2009 involving the insertion of "due to claims of abuse" or "claims of sexual abuse" using different IPs that geolocate to Dublin, as well as User talk:SkynetBot2201 (SkynetBot is already blocked). What is supposed to be done in a case like this? Where should it be reported? Thanks. Tameamseo (talk) 22:34, 27 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Page protection may be sutible in this case. If all the IPs are the same, then a range block could be put in place. - Kingpin13 (talk) 22:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks, I wasn't sure about protection because while the vandal is persistently reinserting the vandalism, I was under the impression that the level of vandalism would have to be fairly high for protection - in this case it's not like it's doing it every day. Maybe a rangeblock as I suspect it's the same person. How should that be requested? Tameamseo (talk) 23:50, 27 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You could post at the admins' noticboard, or ask an admin or (preferably) a checkuser. - Kingpin13 (talk) 08:41, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'll do that. Many thanks for the advice. Tameamseo (talk) 21:09, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

template spammer

This is an annoying user,but is this vandalism?

A sample of this persons edits over the last year or so:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Traveler100 (talk • contribs)

I too find this guy's contributions annoying, and have been reverting them on sight for a year or more. Astronaut (talk) 17:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not proposing preventing contributions from this address but would it be possible to force login under a name for this IP range (88.105. . .) so that wikipedians can easy locate and advise the person on how to make better contributions?Traveler100 (talk) 07:27, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An autoblock on 88.105.0.0/16 would block 65536 IP addresses which would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut when you take into account the relatively small number of minorly troublesome edits. Even taking the lowest and highest IPs from that selection gives you 24378 which is still a huge number. Unless the editor becomes significantly more prolific or damaging its just has way too much potential for collateral damage IMHO. Mfield (Oi!) 07:40, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe an abuse filter could be programmed to watch that range for template additions though. Mfield (Oi!) 07:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Annoying though it is, I agree that a rangeblock is just too drastic and potentially affects way too many legitimate editors. If it helps create an abuse filter, the type of behavoir I've seen from this guy is:
He also has a liking for articles somewhat related to sexual matters. Astronaut (talk) 15:48, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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