Wikipedia talk:Administrator intervention against vandalism/Header

The Testt2b template is now a particular case of the *-n templates. (It corresponds with Test2a-n) -- (☺drini♫|☎) 05:10, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

On the side

The alignment of the template to the left really makes all the alerts crowded IMO. It was really easy to follow with all the alerts below. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 21:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The solution is to make the banner less wordy and giving it less width then. As it stands, at least for me and some people who check it every once on a while, it's annoyiing having to scroll just to check for new notices -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 03:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

also,, the main thing on the page are the alerts, not the big green banner that one reads once and nver pays attention anymore. -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 03:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I liked the old one better, the squished reports are harder to read and work with. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua^?!? 14:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Blast it!

Protected again!—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.39.174.238 (talk • contribs)

Concensus on the AIV talk page

According to concensus on the AIV talk page, I'm about to make some slight changes to make it clear that "username is a blatant violation of policey" is not good enough when report to AIV. If there are any problems with this change then please AGF and revert it, but keep in mind that I've had no objections to this on the AIV talk page. SGGH 10:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

But it's not ALWAYS wrong to report without warning, is it?

I'm wondering about the bit in the header where it says to administrators: "If users make an invalid report, consider letting them know using template {{uw-aiv}}." I think there are cases where it is appropriate to report vandalism immediately without giving a warning — for example if the new vandal account or IP is an obvious sockpuppet of one that was blocked a few minutes before for exactly the same vandalism, or if the vandalism is particularly egregious. I've seen it happen on numerous occasions that a brand new account vandalises Jimbo's user page, and is blocked immediately, without warning. The kind of vandal is on a completely different level from the kind that just inserts "Hi John" into an article, and might even self-revert after seeing that the edit really did work.

I'd like to reword it to say something like "If users fail to give appropriate warning before reporting, consider letting them know using template {{uw-aiv}}." I think that allows for the possibility that it's not always inappropriate to report without warning, just as it's not always inappropriate to block without warning. The kind of vandalism that requires familiarity with Wikipedia (page moves, changing of images, etc.) indicates that the vandal is not really a clueless newbie. ElinorD (talk) 09:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of not paying attention to the level of warnings, but instead the types of edits made. If someone's first two edits are to blank or vandalize an admin's user or talk pages, screw the warnings, just ban them right then and there as a vandalism-only account (it's painfully easy to spot them sometimes). We're not a bureaucracy, and forcing people to go through a strict "level one through level four" warning process smacks of stupid. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Level 1 through 4 is actually useful a lot of the time though, and you don't need to use templates to do it. (good grief, there's so many!) I agree you should use common sense though. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

I think this box should be more noticeable; so I am proposing an alternative (here). I think it will reduce the number of false reports. GDonato (talk) 20:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with the slight wording changes, but the new color makes it more difficult to read. Something a little calmer would be nice. - auburnpilot talk 15:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I've reverted the background colour back to what it was. If anyone want's to play around with the colour I'm fine with that, but it has to be at least as easy to read as before. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 16:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Please add shortcuts

{{editprotected}}

WP:AIAV and WP:RVAN are also shortcuts to this page and should be added to the {{shortcut}} template. It Is Me Here (talk) 18:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

 Done for WP:AIAV, as that's an abbreviation of the page's title - no problem.  Not done for WP:RVAN; I know it's probably some obvious acronym, but what does RVAN stand for? UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 20:20, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

 Done for WP:RVAN, which apparently stands for "Report VANdalism", according to the Wikipedia:Department directory. No problem. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 20:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Alright, cheers! It Is Me Here (talk) 21:45, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

div wrapper

I'd like to wrap this in a <div class="aiv-header"> tag so folks can hide the header by putting div.aiv-header { display: none } into their monobook.css. It won't affect the apperance for anyone who doesn't do that. I've read the thing, and I'm lazy enough that not having to scroll down is appealing. :P Does anyone object to this or can anyone think of any problem that this might cause? Or can I go ahead? delldot ∇. 04:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Well apparently no violent opposition so I'll go ahead. If it causes any problems feel free to let me know or fix it yourself. delldot ∇. 03:30, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

• No opposition from me. Just interpret the silence and be bold. ;) It seems like a good change. Anthøny (talk) 11:58, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Sweet, now I'm off to bask in the lovely absence of the green box... :P delldot ∇. 01:36, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Wording

The header as currently worded discourages the reporting of <recent page move> vandalism, and leads to editors reporting in an innappropriate place (e.g. ANI). A recent discussion there suggested changing the wording to avoid this situation, and the change was implemented, but has now been reverted. DuncanHill (talk) 14:53, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

It was quite clear that such vandalism (i.e. page-moves and such) should be the only kind of vandalism reported if there have been no warnings. I can't see what the problem with having the text there is. – amicon 15:21, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Page move vandalism of this type is rare, especially compared to ordinary vandalism. It is highly unlikely we would miss a page move vandal anyway - most of today's rash were blocked within seconds. So the page's main function, for the other 99% of the time, is to receive reports of ordinary vandalism.

Now, our younger and less experienced members tend to be itching to report test edits as vandalism. We turn down lots of reports because they follow the first or second edit of a user and little or no warnings have been issued. It's now common for people to final-warn and report at the same time (and sadly common for us to block at that point, too). This means we need clear, unambiguous instructions at the top of the page, otherwise the usefulness of the page declines as the signal to noise ratio increases.

If we start adding vague "there are exceptions to this rule" lines to the header, it brings two problems: the header is less likely to be read (TL;DR - and the attention span for these notices is that of a gnat as it is) and reporters are more likely to revert admins removing wrong reports (leading to more blocking after fewer edits by new editors).

We may wish to deck every hall here with shrubbery in fear that unless, everything, is, explained, painfully, slowly, and, in, full, detail, it, will, confuse, people, but I don't think we should. Legislation made from exception is always bad legislation and page move vandalism is the exception. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ a sweet and tender hooligan 15:39, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I put this on ANI earlier regarding my reasoning for taking the page-move vandalism there: "My resoning for coming here. AIV is only used to alert Adminstrators of a vandal. Once they are immediately blocked, the bot then removes them off the AIV page as in the bots view it's "finished". Yet with the page move vandalism - despite the fact the user is no longer on AIV the page move vandalism is still in place and thus administrators needed to be alerted quickly to fix it as it was done to a huge number of pages. I was only posting here to get people's attention to revert the vandalism - not to stir up trouble as such. AIV only serves to block vandals, not to revert the page move vandalism they have done." - D.M.N. (talk) 19:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Despite the (ill thought out, IMHO) opposition to your posting to ANI, ANI was exactly the right place. As you say, AIV is for vandals who are active now and they lapse off the page by necessity as soon as they are blocked. I'm old enough to remember when we had to clear our own AIV blocks: get on a blocking roll and you'd get back to AIV with 10-15 reports on it, most of them dead with other admins wasting time on them. AIV is for dealing with active vandals now. The clean-up needs to go to a not-quite-as-urgent-board - ANI - and strategy for prevention in future to a not-urgent-at-all-board - AN. Nethertheless, adding shrubbery to the header to document the exact exceptions to these rules (vandals must be active now but not a missed serious vandal and vandals must be warned but not a rapid page-move vandal and vandals must be blah blah blah except when they're chunder chunder chunder) is unhelpful. It's not rocket science to tell the difference between urgent-block (AIV), urgent-not-block (ANI), not urgent (AN) and not admin (VP). You got it right. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ a sweet and tender hooligan 20:19, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and the argument put to you of "we all saw it", suggesting that not reporting it all would have been better, was ridiculous: even though "we all saw it" and it was announced, a grand total of about 4 of us did all the clean-up. I suspect it would just've been me if you hadn't've appealed for help! ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ a sweet and tender hooligan 20:22, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. Actually, I was looking at my watchlist... seeing three/four accounts all coming up as page vandals - normally bots catch it and revert on the spot, but that for some reason didn't happen... D.M.N. (talk) 20:41, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Some changes

I've been working AIV for a good year and a half now, and a lot of reports get rejected because they're concerning an IP which has been warned multiple times in the past, gone quiet, and then made one recent vandal edit. I'd like to suggest changing current wording to specify that a full set of warnings has to be issued on the day of the offenses, and if multiple days have passed, the process is to be repeated; obviously, this is waived if the IP is clearly static.

Example:

Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism

This page is intended to get administrator attention for obvious and persistent vandals and spammers only (see Guide to administrator intervention against vandalism). For other types of vandalism, or problematic usernames see the links at the top of this page. You can use {{AIV}} to add notes to reports. Important! – your report must follow these three points: The edits of the user you are reporting must be considered vandalism. The user must be given sufficient recent warnings to stop. Unregistered users must be active now, and unless the IP is static, warnings should be redone in full, even if they been issued in the past. You can subscribe to a web feed of this page in either RSS or Atom format.

If anyone has any other suggestions feel free to throw 'em at me. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :D} 22:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Clarifying instructions?

I just got an email from a user who tried to report vandalism here but saw his report vanish without comment (because it didn't use Template:IPvandal, but he didn't know that). I know that I for one don't usually expect important information to be explained only in source comments. What about changing:

Important! Your report must follow these three points:

1. The edits of the user you are reporting must be considered vandalism.
2. The user must be given sufficient recent warnings to stop.
3. Unregistered users must be active now, and the warnings must be recent.

to

Important! Your report must follow these four points:

1. The edits of the user you are reporting must be considered vandalism.
2. The user must be given sufficient recent warnings to stop.
3. Unregistered users must be active now, and the warnings must be recent.
4. The report must be formatted as described in the source for this page.

Any objections/suggestions? If not, I'll make this change later today. Canderson7 ^(talk) 14:44, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Not a bureaucracy... Surely the right solution is to stop making nonstandard-format reports vanish?--Kotniski (talk) 15:21, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 September 2019

please change {{vandal |Example user }}Your concise reason (e.g. vandalised past 4th warning). ~~~~ to * {{vandal|Example user}} Your concise reason (e.g. vandalised past 4th warning). ~~~~
please change {{IPvandal |192.0.2.16 }}Your concise reason (e.g. vandalised past 4th warning). ~~~~ to * {{IPvandal|192.0.2.16}} Your concise reason (e.g. vandalised past 4th warning). ~~~~ 83.24.55.100 (talk) 17:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

 Done Danski454 (talk) 19:48, 9 September 2019 (UTC)