Hi, and welcome to your CVUA school. By the time you've completed the tests and tasks here, you should have a good working knowledge of Wikipedia's policies and processes with regards to vandalism, and should have no difficulty understanding and dealing with 99% of the the things you'll encounter in this area. You can ask me questions on my talkpage at any time if you aren't sure about anything here, and I also welcome suggestions for ways of improving this course.

Save for a few cases, there are generally multiple ways to answer the questions; not many of them have clear right/wrong answers. Although I'll always try and give a reason for each mark, the basic responses you'll see are:

  • checkY Good answer; interprets policy correctly and shows a sound understanding of the issues involved.
  • checkY Incomplete/insufficient answer; whilst partly correct, there are better responses to this question.
  • ☒N Poor answer; shows an inadequate understanding of the policies and guidelines concerned.

Have fun!


Vandals

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Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, not all the edits that are made are constructive - some, in fact, are deliberately disruptive and need to be reverted. Please have a read of this essay and this guideline, then answer the questions and perform the tasks below. There's no time limit for this, it's more important that your work in this area be accurate than fast. If you aren't sure whether it's vandalism or not, it probably isn't.


Good faith and vandalism

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  • Please explain how you would differentiate between a vandalism edit, a good faith edit, and a test edit?
  • Please find and revert three examples of good faith but unhelpful edits, and three examples of vandalism. Please warn the editors with the correct template and give the diffs of your revisions below.

Good faith edits

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1.
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Vandalism

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1.
2.
3.

Warning and reporting

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  • Please answer the following questions
    • Why do we warn users?
    • When would a 4im warning be appropriate?
    • What should you do if a user who has received a level 4 or 4im warning vandalises again?
  • Please give examples of three warnings that you might need to use while vandal patrolling and explain what they are used for.
  • Report a user to AIV and post the diff below. Be sure to follow the guidelines and only report users where necessary; do not report simply for the sake of this task.

Dealing with difficult users

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  • Why do we deny recognition to trolls and vandals?
  • How can you tell between a good faith user asking why you reverted their edit, and a troll trying to harass you?

Protection

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  • In what circumstances should a page be semi-protected?
  • In what circumstances should a page be fully protected?
  • Correctly request the protection of one page (semi or full); post the diff of your request (from WP:RPP) below.
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