- This guide only applies to vandalism as defined by official policy.
1. Revert the vandalism by viewing the page's history and selecting the most recent version of the page prior to the vandalism. Use an edit summary such as 'rvv' or 'reverted vandalism' and click on save page.
- See also the section below for tools to help with reverting.
2. Warn the vandal. Access the vandal's talk page and warn them using an appropriate template.
- See a guide to {{test}} templates for an overview of the most commonly used warning templates and test templates for a wider selection of warning templates.
3. Report vandals who continue to vandalise after having received a final warning. Most cases of vandalism should be reported to WP:AIV. Cases that are not simple vandalism can be reported to WP:AN/I. WP:LTA may be used for reporting particular vandals who persistently return (e.g. via sockpuppets).
The following is a list of tools and resources available for those who want to clean up with a more systematic approach.
Monitoring
Screenshot of Wikipedia recent changes IRC feed
The old school way is to load recent changes and check the (diff) links. If they contain harmful edits, you revert to the previous version. However, the high volume of edits that occur each second makes this difficult to accomplish most of the time, and several tools have been created to simplify the process:
- VandalProof is an anti-vandalism program for Windows. (Not currently accepting new members)
- Vandal Fighter, the original anti-vandalism program, is a Java program that displays the Recent Changes feed from Wikipedia's IRC bots and allows filters to focus on certain types of changes (e.g. anonymous IPs). It also maintains a personal list of trusted users, watched articles, etc.
- Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool monitors the RSS feed and flags edits with common vandalism terms. It also has a live spellcheck feature.
- WikiMonitor is a Windows program that enables users to monitor recent changes, their watchlist, users' contributions, and other feeds in real time as well as providing multiple tools to aid in semi-automated editing and reversion. It is compatible with all Wikimedia wikis.
- VandalSniper, a VandalProof-like application, is currently in beta. At the moment it has only been confirmed to run on Linux.
- WikiGuard is a Mac OS X program that monitors the IRC feed and attempts to approximate each edit's risk.
- RC birds is a Java program that emits different bird sounds for the RC feed depending on the user.
- The IRC Bot, pgkbot, by Pgk, runs on the IRC channels below.
- IRC Bots reporting at the #cvn-wp-en channel on the freenode network list suspected vandalism edits (for example: blankings, edits made by blacklisted users, etc.)
- Young Orphans is a tool made by Interiot to find newly uploaded orphaned images. This is useful for finding various copyright violations and people who are using Wikipedia merely as an image hosting service.
- ShadowTool is a lightweight RC patrol application for Linux.
- Mike's Wiki Tool - An RC patrol tool for Windows users.
- Wikipedia Vandalism Watch is a Windows program that monitors specified users' contributions pages for top edits.
- Huggle is a Windows program which parses edits from users not on its whitelist. You must be running Windows 2000 / XP / Vista and have .NET 2.0 installed for this program to function. You will also need to be in possession of the rollback right.
- WatchlistBot is an XMPP bot that sends messages in realtime when articles are modified. Users with a Jabber account (note that Google Talk is an XMPP service) can subscribe to the bot and watch both articles and users.
- WikipediaVision is a web-based world map visualization of anonymous edits to the English (and the German, French, Spanish, Swedish) Wikipedia, almost the same time as they happen.
Rollback scripts
Administrators and users who have requested it get a rollback button when looking at diffs in order to revert articles to their previous versions. However, non-administrators and users without the permission can emulate such a button using several tools.
- RC patrol script gives non-administrators revert, filter, and popup tools while using the (default) monobook skin.
- Godmode-light is a Javascript program to give non-administrators a rollback button.
- Navigation popups are a set of utils that appear when hovering over wikilinks. Particularly, hovering over links of old versions provides a "revert" link.
- Twinkle gives non-administrators (and administrators, for that matter) three types of rollback functions. Other functions include a full library of speedy deletion functions, user warnings, pseudoautomagical reporting of vandals, and more.
Special pages
Task Force
IRC channels
Note that these are not operated by or affiliated with Wikipedia.
Other
Vandalism information
Low to moderate level of vandalism. update
7 RPM by Huggle's stats. 04:11, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
- Template:Vandalism information, a tool used as an indication of the current overall level of vandalism that is taking place on Wikipedia. On the page, click the edit button below the vandalism meter to change its level from 5 to 1 and/or add a short comment; 5 indicates very low levels of vandalism, and 1 indicates extremely high. You can add the vandalism information template to your userpage to stay up to date. See Template talk:Vandalism information for different styles.
- Counter-Vandalism Wiki (Not owned by, operated by, or affiliated with Wikipedia.)
- Wikilink scripts enable you to double click on [[wikilinks]] within IRC clients. Useful if doing patrol on the IRC channels.
- There are other scripts that may be handy while doing cleanup (not necessarily vandalism cleanup). Check them at WikiProject User scripts/Scripts (WP:JS)
- Arnon Chaffin has built a wonderful page made just for vandal fighting and warning.
