Wikipedia:Editor review/RoadieRich

RoadieRich
I'm still pretty new to wikipedia, and would like feedback on how to improve. RoadieRich (talk) 19:55, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

 Questions


 * 1) What are your primary contributions to Wikipedia? Are there any about which you are particularly pleased? Why?
 * Mainly patrolling Recent edits and new pages, using TW and Welcome. I've also tried to clean up some of the new pages listed as unpatrolled.
 * 1) Have you been in any disputes over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
 * There's been a couple of occurances where a new page with only one contributor who has reverted my edits, but they tended to be borderline vandalism (removing maintenance templates is one that sticks in my mind). I warned the user in question, and by that time, another editor had begun to assist.  I also tend to edit with other websites open in other tabs, I think if I find myself getting into an edit war, I'm more than happy to flag the article up for 3rd party attention, and leave it for a while.  I'd have to look up the templates and protocols for this first, however.
 * There's been a couple of occurances where a new page with only one contributor who has reverted my edits, but they tended to be borderline vandalism (removing maintenance templates is one that sticks in my mind). I warned the user in question, and by that time, another editor had begun to assist.  I also tend to edit with other websites open in other tabs, I think if I find myself getting into an edit war, I'm more than happy to flag the article up for 3rd party attention, and leave it for a while.  I'd have to look up the templates and protocols for this first, however.

 Reviews 

Hello RoadieRich,

In the Editor Review request page, I founded your request. Doing a lot of vandalism recovery myself, I accepted to review what you did.

In brief, you are doing great. Sure, nobody is perfect, but overall, your work of cleaning Wiki from vandalism is good.

For an article like Oakland  Alternative High School,  you did not stop at the first recovery after the blanking, but also  recovered more vandalism hidden under the first case. Doing that, you founded many vandalism by the same user and flagged him right to the  admins for what he deserved : to be blocked. You did the same kind of recovery for Malachi Smith.

This deep investigation is very important because once vandalism is hidden  under anti-vandalism  recovery and / or good faith edits, it is much more difficult to find  and recover. That's why every recovery needs to be complete the first time. Should you have a point to improve, it would be that.

Here is an example : http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malachi_Smith&action=historysubmit&diff=342657206&oldid=161359749

That's the diff between your last recovery of Malachi Smith and an older version. The only difference is a spam link in the recovery you approved as good. In fact, that spam link was added LONG LONG time ago, and survived until today. (I let you clean it yourself).

Such text should not be in the article. First, article must never use --I-- or --You-- ; only the third person. Also, if an official website can be used as a reference, it should be listed in the  appropriate section and not advertised in the middle of the article.

Here is another one, bigger than the first :  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oakland_Alternative_High_School&action=historysubmit&diff=342656922&oldid=340702442

Your last version, the one by Cluebot, contains more vandalism.

As an help for finding this kind of vandalism, here is my trick : After the first, obvious recovery, you go in the history of the article. You first check the few firsts un-reverted reviews. You may have to go back 20 changes down for finding 3 un-reverted edits. Once done, you go even deeper and search for what looks like a few good faith edits. Because they did modify the article with good faith, there is a much better chance that they left a clean article behind them. Compare the oldest of these good faith edits with your last recovery and look for  damage. When you found some after good faith edits, most time you have to fix it manually instead of using Twinkle.

It is with that technique that I founded the spam link on your recent edit as well as  the rest of the vandalism.

In the second example, the one about Oakland school, the vandalism was done by one of the culprits you  identified. That's another point to look for in the history. Now that you know one as a vandal, you have to search for him more than any  other. You can do it in two ways. First, by looking for him in the history of the article where you founded him first, and second, in the  list of his contribs.

By flagging problematic cases to the admins, by cleaning articles and by warning users who did wrong, you are  doing a great job and provide a significant help in cleaning Wikipedia. You can improve by looking deeper for vandalism, and not only will you found more, but you will clean what is the most difficult to clean.

Keep up the good work and I will be pleased to help you should you need  anything.

Heracles31 (talk) 00:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)