User:Sonia/Adopt/Patrolling

Recent changes patrol
Hi, SS! To start patrolling Special:RecentChanges, click on this link or the one under "interaction," to your left. You'll get something like this:

The green and red numbers show what has been added or deleted from a page. Huge revisions (adding over 500 characters or so) are in bold. The diff links to the far left show you what the editor has changed (here's an example). In diff preview, the green text is the new revision, and the yellow is the older one. Red text or text with a plus sign (+) before it denotes added text. Likewise, text with a minus sign (-) in the yellow text shows what was deleted from the old revision.

When looking for vandalism, look for IP addresses (like 75.187.90.246) and redlinked users. Not all edits from IPs and redlinked users are vandalism, but they are the most frequent vandals.

Now, this is an example of a benign edit: Yes, the statement needs a ref, and the punctuation needs a space, but it is a well-intentioned edit. It should not be undone.

This is an example of vandalism: That was pretty easy to tell, no? Some might not be so easy to spot - see WP:VAND and, most importantly WP:AGF.

When faced with vandalism, the normal procedure is to click the ( undo ) link above the new revision (green). You don't have to add an edit summary since the undo function does it for you, but it is preferred that you place a small "rv vandalism" or something similar in the summary.

Then, go to the vandal's talk page. It will appear as ( undo ) right next to the IP or username. Click it (even if it is a redlink) and create a header at the bottom of the page in Month-year format (ex: January 2009). Then, under that, add an appropriate warning. For first-time vandals, type in  Name of the vandalized article goes here (optional, but preferred) ~ . For second-timers (or if the vandalism is more serious) type  Name of the vandalized article goes here (optional, but preferred) ~ . Then comes  Name of the vandalized article goes here (optional, but preferred) ~  and  Name of the vandalized article goes here (optional, but preferred) ~ .  Name of the vandalized article goes here (optional, but preferred) ~  is used as an only warning - it should only be used for severe cases, like harassment of other users and large amounts of vandalism at once.

If a user has vandalized after a final warning (vand4 or vand4im), report the user to WP:AIV. But we'll cover that in our next lesson. Have fun! :) &mdash;  La Pianista  (T•C) 23:51, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

✅, I guess. Singlish  Speªker ♪♫ 03:40, 11 January 2010 (UTC)