User:Puddleglum2.0/CVUA/Quattrovalvole

Hello @Quattrovalvole:, and welcome to your Counter Vandalism Unit Academy page! Every person I instruct will have their own page on which I will give them support and tasks for them to complete. Please make sure you have this page added to your watchlist. Your academy page has been specifically designed according to you and what you have requested instruction in - for that reason, please be as specific as possible in your answers, so that I know the best ways to help you (and do not be afraid to let me know if you think something isn't working). If you have any general queries about anti-vandalism (or anything else), you are more than welcome to raise them with me at my talk page.

Make sure you read through Wikipedia:Vandalism as that's the knowledge which most of the questions I ask you and tasks you do will revolve around.

How to use this page

This page will be built up over your time in the Academy, with new sections being added as you complete old ones. Each section will end with a task, written in bold type - this might just ask a question, or it might require you to go and do something. You can answer a question by typing the answer below the task; if you have to do something, you will need to provide diffs to demonstrate that you have completed the task. Some sections will have more than one task, sometimes additional tasks may be added to a section as you complete them. Please always sign your responses to tasks as you would on a talk page.

The CVUA curriculum

There are several sections of the training course. In some of them, will be asking you to do perform practical exercises; in others, I will ask you to read certain policies and guidelines, and then ask you some questions about their content. To be clear, it is not a problem if you give the wrong answer to any of the questions - making mistakes and discussing them is a crucial part of the learning process. For that reason, it is important that you do not attempt to find previous users' training pages in order to identify the 'right' answers to give: all your answers should be your own, so that we can identify and address any misconceptions that you might have. There is no time pressure to complete the course: we will go at whatever pace works for you, and you can take a pause or ask questions at any point along the way.

Communication

Counter-vandalism work can result in very large watchlists, which can make it more difficult to monitor pages using that alone. For this reason, I will ping you whenever I update this page with some feedback or a new task; I would also ask you to ping me when you have completed a task, so that I get a notification telling me that it's ready for review. See WP:PING for details on how to do this if you aren't sure.

The start[edit]

Twinkle[edit]

Twinkle is a very useful tool when performing maintenance functions around Wikipedia. Please have a read through WP:TWINKLE.

Enable Twinkle (if haven't already) and leave a note here to let me know that you have enabled it.

Alright @Puddleglum2.0:, I've enabled it and read through its description page. Quattrovalvole ^{(u/t, s s/t)} 12:49, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Awesome Quattrovalvole! Let's get started. -- puddleglum^2.0 17:10, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Good faith and vandalism[edit]

When patrolling for vandalism, you may often come across edits which are unhelpful, but not vandalism - these are good faith edits. While it is often necessary to revert such edits, we treat them differently from vandalism, so it is important to recognise the difference between a vandalism edit and a good faith edit. Please read WP:AGF and WP:NOT VANDALISM before completing the tasks in this section.

Please explain below the difference between a good faith edit and a vandalism edit, and how you would tell them apart.

Okay @Puddleglum2.0:, I think I get this. So I understand that it's essentially about the point of view of the editor - in vandalism, the person made an edit deliberately to degrade WP, such as someone purposefully deleting part of an article they don't agree with. So then, a good faith edit might be harmful, but didn't mean to. So if there's any possible way that an editor wasn't trying to harm WP's accuracy/credibility, you assume that possibility, and in turn good faith. It sorta reminds me of Hanlon's razor. Quattrovalvole ^{(u/t, s s/t)} 17:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

yup - the key word is intent - if an edit is intended to help but does not actually, it's good faith, whereas an edit with the intent to simply vandalise is, well, vandalism. When looking at edits, the difference is usually clear, but if there is any deliberation between the two, always assume good faith. Next question below. -- puddleglum^2.0 00:08, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Please find three examples of good faith but unhelpful edits, and three examples of vandalism. You don't need to revert the example you find, and I am happy for you to use previous undos in your edit history if you wish. Place diffs below

Okay @Puddleglum2.0: here's what I came up with. Quattrovalvole ^{(u/t, s s/t)} 17:17, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

In good faith, but unhelpful:

[1] - changed to past tense incorrectly, since the show has ended but is still accessible.

Y

[2] - "Race at Home Challenge" section overly reduced, but with intention of highlighting the separate article on the subject.

Y

[3] - "History section" partially redundantly wiki-linked, though more of a MoS error than one at risk of damaging WP's credibility.

Y

Vandalism:

[4] - this one seems pretty obvious.

Y

[5] - not a mainspace article, but still appears to be vandalism.

Y

[6] - deliberate blanking, seems like vandalism to me.

Y

A note about Twinkle[edit]

Hopefully you'll have noticed that Twinkle allows you three options for performing a rollback - green, blue, and red links (see the screenshot). All three will revert all of the most recent consecutive edits made by a single user to a page.

Try to use these buttons where possible. The green and the blue ones allow you to add an edit summary - it's described as 'optional', but you should not treat it as such - always leave a brief edit summary, even if it's just 'Rv test edit', or 'Rv unexplained removal of content', or whatever. Use the green one when you think it's a good faith mistake, and the blue one when you're not sure. Only use the red one when you are certain that it is unambiguous vandalism - it saves time, because it leaves a generic edit summary, and all of them will take you directly to the talk page of the person you have reverted, to allow you to use the 'Warn' option to give them a warning. (Also note that you can use the brown "restore this version" button when you need to revert edits by multiple users.)

Warning and reporting[edit]

When you use Twinkle to warn a user, you have a number of options to choose from: you can select the kind of warning (for different offences), and the level of warning (from 1 to 4, for increasing severity). Knowing which warning to issue and what level is very important. Further information can be found at WP:WARN and WP:UWUL.

Please answer the following questions:

Why do we warn users?

So as to inform them that their actions aren't tolerated and they'll be blocked if they continue.

When would a 4im warning be appropriate?

When a user performs extremely destructive vandalism on a particular page, or has displayed a large and previously-unnoticed chain of vandalism across many pages.

Should you substitute a template when you place it on a user talk page, and how do you do it? (Hint - read the link before answering!)

According to WP:SUBST, they should always be substituted. It appears that you do this like so:

{{subst:template name}}

What should you do if a user who has received a level 4 or 4im warning vandalises again?

Report the user to the admin-folk at WP:AIAV for further disciplines.

@Quattrovalvole: awesome - see above. -- puddleglum^2.0 18:49, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Puddleglum2.0: Alright, I've answered the above questions. Working on the vandalism reversion practice now. Quattrovalvole ^{(u/t, s s/t)} 13:22, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Find and revert some vandalism. Warn each user appropriately, using the correct kind of warning and level. For each revert/warning please fill in a line on the table below.

#	Diff of your revert	Your comment. If you report to AIV please include the diff
1	diff	comment
2	diff	comment
3	diff	comment
4	diff	comment
5	diff	comment
6	diff	comment
7	diff	comment
8	diff	comment
9	diff	comment
10	diff	comment