LIMSWiki:Monitoring and resolving vandalism

The act of monitoring and resolving instances of vandalism falls on every editors shoulders. Finding vandalism, warning the offenders, and monitoring for additional instances of vandalism is vital to the continuous operation of the wiki. And of course, if a vandal continues to disrupt the wiki, that vandal can be blocked from further mangling the wiki.

Monitoring for vandalism

The best tool for monitoring for vandalism is the page Special:Recentchanges. Note the filters at the top of the page. If you've made a lot of edits, you can make looking for vandalism easier by filtering out your own edits by clicking the "Hide my edits" links.

Note that some people stealth their vandalism by putting a very realistic comment. This sometimes makes it difficult to spot the vandalism. This typically happens from an IP address (someone who hasn't created an account), but occasionally those who register an account will also vandalize. In those cases nothing but an analysis of a page and its history will catch vandalism.

Resolving vandalism

Here are some tips:

1. Go to the new changes.
2. Look at some of the changes by pressing the diff link to see the changes. Look out for anonymous users - most vandals contribute with just their IP address rather than a user name.
   1. If it is a new page and the page title does not fit within the content of LIMSwiki, report the offending page to an administrator.
   2. If it is not, revert the page.
3. Warn the vandal by putting a warning template on their talk page. While you can use level 1-3 vandalism templates, LIMSwiki takes a very strict position on vandalism. Vandals are given one warning, and if they do it again, they get banned for one year. For that, enter the following code into the vandal's Talk page:

{{subst:uw-vandalism4im|Talk:Main page|You'll be banned for one year if you vandalize LIMSwiki again.}}<br />~~~~

Be sure to change "Talk:Main page" with the name of the LIMSWiki page that was vandalized. Also note that the vandals may have vandalized other pages before, so check their changes by clicking the "changes" link next to their username on the 'history' tab. If it is an anonymous user, you can click on their IP address.

After issuing a warning

Continue to monitor Special:Recentchanges regularly to see if the warned individual has vandalized again.

If the warned vandal continues to vandalize pages, report the vandal to an administrator. If there is no administrator online to block the users, try to contact them through their other talk pages if they have one, or through the e-mail links on LIMSwiki:Administrators.

A list of blocked users can be found here: Special:BlockList