Wikibooks:Counter-Vandalism Unit

Counter-Vandalism Unit

This is the new homepage for the Wikibooks Counter-Vandalism Unit. This is a sister organization to the Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit.

The CVU is a WikiProject that monitors for and helps to repair vandalism. All Wikibookians are encouraged to help combat vandalism, not just the members of this WikiProject.

Who can join?

Anybody, not just admins, can join the CVU. Nearly all users can work to repair vandalism, but admins can go the extra step of blocking the offenders.

To join the CVU, all you need to do is add your userpage to Category:Counter-Vandalism Unit Members. You can do this easily by putting one of the following templates on your userpage:

{{User CVU2-en}}	This user is a member of the Counter-Vandalism Unit.
{{User CVU1-en}}	This user is a member of the Counter-Vandalism Unit.

If other users would like to create additional templates, post them here!

Joining the CVU doesn't get you any special rights or privileges. As a member, you are not "more eligible" to be elected as an administrator, bureaucrat, or checkuser. You don't have any extra authority on Wikibooks or any other WMF project, and your opinion is not more important in discussions. However, you will be helping to protect a great project, and you will be building a strong community atmosphere—that's reward enough. After all, admins would have more work if it weren't for you, then they couldn't take care of "admin stuff".

What do I need to do?

You can choose your own involvement in the WB-CVU: you can join all the IRC channels, monitor all the pages, and fight all the vandals, or you can sit back and watch all the action. Some things that are helpful are:

• Add Administrators' noticeboard to your watchlist.
• Join the #cvn-sw chatroom to monitor for, and report vandalism
• Join the #Wikibooks chatroom to monitor for reports of vandalism (and just to chat!)
• Report all vandalism in the IRC chatrooms or the WB:AA page
• Monitor the recent changes list, ether Special:Recentchanges on Wikibooks, or on the #wikibooks chatroom. Rapid account creation, pages moved to inappropriate destinations, and edits by anonymous users should all be examined for vandalism.
• Cleanup and revert all vandalism that you see, if you are willing and able. Sometimes a vandal may be long gone, but his vandalism edits might have not gotten reverted.

In essence, there are a lot of things that you can do, but there is nothing in particular that you need to do. If you want to help out, any little bit is always appreciated.

How to Spot vandalism

• Special:Recentchanges: The list of recent changes to the site. Suspicious edits (page moves to bad destinations, edits with obscene summaries, frequent edits by anonymous or newly created users) should be inspected.
• #en.wikibooks: the real-time IRC counterpart to Special:Recentchanges.

Here are some common things to look for in the recent changes list:

• Pages moved to inappropriate locations. For instance, a common attack involves a similar entry:

  (Page Main Page moved to Main Page On Wheels!)

  Pages moved in this style are often referred to as "WoW attacks".

• The creation of pages, or the movement of pages with the following words in the title: "Briefs", "Penis", "Nazi", "Banger", etc.
• Many quick edits/page moves from an anonymous account, or from a new user.
• New user accounts that are made to look like other, respected users. Keep in mind that an upper-case i, and a lower-case L both look the same on some fonts:

  User:Jimbo WaIes is not the same as User:Jimbo Wales, even if they look alike!

If you see an edit that looks suspicious, open up the history diff, and see what was changed, and revert if it is appropriate.

How to report vandalism

There are various places where you can report vandalism:

• WB:AN: The "Administrators' noticeboard" page. All CVU users should add this page to their watchlists.
• #wikibooks: The primary Wikibooks IRC chatroom. Come here to talk, and report vandalism.

Also, if you suspect that multiple vandal user accounts are coming from the same location, you can ask an admin with checkuser rights to examine them. With checkuser rights, an admin can see if multiple usernames are from the same IP address, and block that address from editing Wikibooks. For a current list of users with checkuser rights, see WB:ADMIN. To report such cases of sockpuppetry, leave a message on the talk page of a checkuser. Note that use of sockpuppets is not forbidden as long as they are not used to vandalize and gain advantage in votes and discussions.

Advanced tools

• Check WikiProject on open proxies regularly. Block new open proxies and unblock IPs removed from open proxy list
• Run your own anti-vandal bot like ClueBot
• Ask for rollback