User:La Pianista/Adoptee classroom

Participate in WP:PR (Grade: B+)
1. Here's your first assignment: participate in the peer review of one of the subjects in the backlog. Read the article thoroughly, take note of what you like and don't like, follow the link on the talk page, and leave your comments there. Be sure to make the heading with four equal signs and labeled as "Comments from Happysunshine." Good luck! -- La Pianista!  «talk» 20:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I left my comments under The Tales of Beedle the Bard, hope I did ok! :) ~ California   Girl  15:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Very good! The only things I would suggest is to bullet your individual concerns:


 * like
 * this (with a small star, or asterisk before each suggestion).
 * Indent
 * by adding more asterisks.


 * And link your username with the following template:  , which will produce.
 * Overall, I give a B+. :-) -- La Pianista!  «talk» 21:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

-Woo hoo! talk to you later ~ California   Girl  02:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Revert vandalism (Grade: B)
Read Valce1's first assignment below. &mdash; La Pianista!  «talk» 04:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Happysunshine
I reverted vandalism on these pages: Jammu and Kashmir, Standard RAID levels, and Eldest. ~ California   Girl  16:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Very good job! My only objection would be that two of the above reversions didn't warn the vandals as specifically as I would have liked - in other words, you didn't specify the article that they vandalized.
 * Another one of the reversions didn't revert the first edit of the vandal; when looking through the history, always check to see several reversions by the same user. Revert them all, but send only one warning.
 * However, considering this is your first time, (and that, yet again, I conveniently left some information out of your instructions), I'll give you a B. La Pianista!   «talk»  19:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ha, no, you don't have to put "Comments from Happysunshine" everywhere. ;) Only during Peer Reviews, and it's best to template your username as


 * Anyhow, next assignment! &mdash; La Pianista ( T • C • S ) 20:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Learn Wikimarkup
Follow the instructions here. Good luck! &mdash; La Pianista ( T • C • S ) 20:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism (Grade: C)
1. First assignment: Undo vandalism.

Vandalism is the intentional addition of malevolent content to Wikipedia. It can be simple (such as the blanking of a page), insulting (such as the addition of racial slurs, etc.), or sneaky (such as the addition of false facts disguised as real ones). Most of the identification of vandalism will rely on your intuition to detect.

You can set out to find vandalism by clicking on the "recent changes" link to your left. Most vandalism is done by red-linked users or IP addresses, which look like long strings of numbers broken off by periods (IPs, in other words, are anonymous users). To select the edit by that person, click on the "diff" link besides that edit, and it will show you what has been removed or added onto the article. If the content seems to constitute vandalism, click "Undo" and save the page. Then, add a warning on the userpage.

Basic vandalism templates have several degrees, from one to four. To add a warning level 1, type "name of vandalized page" ~. This will create:

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. -- La Pianista!  «talk» 03:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Summarize your edit in the summary box with "Your recent edits" or "warning user level 1."

Warning level 2 templates are "name of vandalized page" ~, which will produce:

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. La Pianista!  «talk» 03:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Levels three and four of vandalism warnings look like the above, but instead of "1" or "2," "3" or "4" are used, and look more severe. I will tell you later how to report an IP to administrators after the last block has been given. Good luck! -- La Pianista!  «talk» 03:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Whoa! You're totally organized here Pianista :) Are you a teacher or something IRL? lol :P


 * Oops forgot to sign:  Valce  1   (talk)


 * Looking through for evidence of vandalism - for the most part, changes have been fairly innocuous when I've checked :( Though there were a few I was uncertain of, some internet fact-checking revealed that I was wrong (apparently, Jimmy Carter was not a comedian o.o)


 * How do I add a warning to the userpage of someone who is an IP? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valce1 (talk • contribs)


 * Normally, when you check the "diff" of the page, you would see something like 71.325.654 ( talk ). The talk page is redlinked, so you simply create the page. Click on the link and post a message for the IP.
 * And considering your thoughts on vandalism, it's mostly not that subtle. It's apparent nonsense, like "HHHHHHHAAAAAAAIIIIIIII!" "i is coolest" or something even worse, like the changing of the first sentence of "____ is a world-renowned scientist" to "_____ is a dirty lying cripple"...and others of the like. For now, until you've got the feel for it, you should only revert obvious edits like this. -- La Pianista!  «talk» 01:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and please indent your comments with a colon.
 * One
 * colon
 * per
 * indent. :) -- La Pianista!  «talk» 01:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hooray! I found one :P The Messenger (Hope that works!! Valce1 (talk) 19:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

(no-indent) Hm. Your undos were pretty good, but the messages you sent the IPs were unclear. It looked like you copy-pasted what I gave you.

Firstly, you don't have to put quotation marks around the names of articles; that would make them redlinked. It also looks like you copy-pasted the the "  " tags, as well (The purpose of the "nowiki" is to show what I typed instead of automatically changing it to a formatted text). Another one of the messages only contained quotations marks.

I also should have told you to mark your messages with the header ==Current Month Year==, which would produce:

July 2008
message goes here

Overall, I am sorry to say I give you a C. &mdash; La Pianista!  «talk» 04:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Understood! Thanks for the honesty and the tips - I will try to do better in the future :)

&#123;&#123;SUBST:User:Valce/signature}} (talk) 21:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Participate in WP:PR (Grade: A)
Read Happysunshine's first assignment above. &mdash; La Pianista!  «talk» 04:30, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Did one for Procar just now :) Looking at some of the others...  Valce  1   (talk)  00:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Did one for the wrestling article on Sacrifice (2008). This one was... not very well written, but the writer definitely shows potential in his tenacity. I was harsh, but I tried to intersperse some positive things about the article too :)


 * I must say...
 * Great job! I like how constructive and sincere your comments were; any editor would easily find them helpful. With experience, you'll learn not only how to fix prose and grammatical problems, but also how the tone of Wikipedia sounds and how to make articles "fit in," so to speak. For a new user like yourself, that was really great work.
 * My only problem is that, to repeat the response you got on Talk:Procar, you should place the comments on the page designated for peer review. You can reach that page by clicking on the bold request link in the little peer review box on the talk page.
 * But since I didn't tell you that, I won't deduct that from your score. I give you an A! :) &mdash; La Pianista!  «talk» 04:04, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and just one more thing...like I mentioned to Happysunshine, it would be even better if you linked your username on the level four heading ("Comments by etcetera, etcetera") by using the template  , which would produce . So phrase it as Comments by  &mdash; La Pianista!   «talk» 04:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks LP :)  Valce  1   (talk)  13:50, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Learn Wikimarkup
Follow the directions here and tell me once you've created your subpage. Good luck! &mdash; La Pianista ( T • C • S ) 04:13, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Participate in WP:PR (Not yet graded)
1. Here's your first assignment: participate in the peer review of one of the subjects in the backlog. Read the article thoroughly, take note of what you like and don't like, follow the link on the talk page, and leave your comments there. Be sure to make the heading with four equal signs and labeled as "Comments from What!?Why?Who?." An example would be:

Comments from

 * Comment 1
 * Comment 2
 * etc.

And don't forget to watchlist the page for followup on your suggestions. Good luck! &mdash;  La Pianista  (T•C•S) 03:06, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Identifying vandalism (Grade: A+)
Hi, Spittlespat. I've noticed that you've taken an interest in cleaning up vandalism. Before you do anything, though, let's try a quick quiz on what vandalism is.

"The best way to detect vandalism is through recent changes patrolling, using the recent changes link to spot articles with edits that had come from IP addresses, or keeping an eye on your watchlist. The what links here pages for Insert text, Link title, Headline text, Bold text, Image:Example.jpg and Image:Example.ogg are also good places to find many test edits or vandalism. The auto-summary feature can also help users spot vandalism, as can viewing the abuse log. Edits tagged by the abuse filter may also contain vandalism. However, many tagged edits are legitimate, so they should not be blindly reverted."

- Vandalism

I'll list a few diffs for you - type "V" after each one that you think is vandalism.


 * 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miss_Sweden&diff=next&oldid=332196445
 * 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Al-Ghazaly_High_School&curid=8677776&diff=332198464&oldid=332196300 V
 * 3) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crack_a_Bottle&curid=21014608&diff=332198424&oldid=332198031
 * 4) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wayne%27s_World_%28film%29&curid=77744&diff=332198345&oldid=331290385 V
 * 5) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Earth_Charter&curid=2109212&diff=332200161&oldid=332200099 V
 * 6) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cannibaloki/Sandbox&curid=17844121&diff=332203238&oldid=331333834
 * 7) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strip_search_prank_call_scam&curid=5443665&diff=332202759&oldid=331251015
 * 8) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poor_Law_Amendment_Act_1834&curid=2053279&diff=332202670&oldid=332202106 V (gosh i wish I hadn't read that)
 * 9) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Legendary_creature&curid=24921390&diff=332446869&oldid=332353623
 * 10) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&diff=prev&oldid=332195556

&mdash; La Pianista  ♫ ♪ 04:26, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Great, Spittle! You got them all right. Maybe I was a bit easy on you, hmm...
 * One more vandalism-related assignment and we'll move on to content contribution. &mdash; La Pianista  ♫ ♪ How's my driving? 04:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Using the correct template...correctly
By now, I trust you're familiar with the usual ways of monitoring recent changes, etc. So I'll skip that part. Let's get to the most important part of reverting vandalism, besides the actual reverting.

Most of the time, you can just send the user a basic vandalism warning. For first-time vandalizers, type  ...  at the bottom of the page and replace the "..." with the name of the article that has been vandalized (make sure that the capitalization of the article matches the name you typed in the template. It would be best to copy-paste the title of the article to prevent typos.) Then, type uw-v1 in your edit summary. It's simple, short, and easy to understand by fellow vandalism-reverters. The "subst" is crucial to the template's functioning, so don't forget it!

For first-time vandals whose edits have a slight chance of being benign, type  ...  filling in the template as above. Then there is uw-v2, uw-v3, uw-v4, and uw-v4im. The last is an only warning - use sparingly. If the user continues to vandalize after uw-v4, report him to WP:AIV (I noticed this edit, btw).

Then there are specific warnings for test edits outside sandboxes, page blanking, and addition of unsourced and possibly slanderous material. If you would like to read more, see this page.

Why is using the correct template important? Well, most of these editors are new and don't fully understand how disruptive their edits are. Those who make test edits are the most likely to be making a good effort and are "vandalizing" purely by accident. This is why we always provide the benefit of the doubt to new editors and only warn them when there is no question that their edits are vandalism. We don't want to discourage new users from joining the project. On the other hand, there will be some persistent trolls who are bored and look forward to attracting the most attention and making an editor lose his temper. This emphasizes the golden rule of dealing with vandals: never let him know that you are angry (if you are). This only serves to fulfill his purpose. The less emotionally involved you are, the better (except with new users, of course, in which case you want to be as warm and amiable as possible.)

Anyways, good luck on your assignment, and let me know when you've started patrolling so I can review your edits. :) &mdash; La Pianista  ♫ ♪ How's my driving? 04:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)