Wikipedia:Dealing with coordinated vandalism
This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
On
Unfortunately, this opportunity was partially undermined by some over-reactions and ill-coordinated handling of the resulting influx of users trying to follow Mr. Colbert's advice. This essay discusses how to handle similar future situations; it is a collection of existing policies and guidelines and a discussion of how they apply in such cases, not an attempt to formulate new policy.
It is important, in order to deal with and to benefit from such potentially disruptive situations, to:
- Not bite the new users, and
- Present a united, organized, and calm front to deal with the problem, as our reaction may be subject to external scrutiny.
Here are some things that can be done to deal with the situation:
Monitor
The first thing to do is monitor the progress of the vandalism in a centralised place. Pages that are being vandalised should be categorised into frequent, medium, low vandalism, and monitored. An example of this for the Colbert situation is User:Centrx/Colbert. Perhaps a central page like Wikipedia:Mass vandalism with sub pages can be established.
Revert vandalism
If the rate of vandalism is low, all you have to do is
Get help!
A small group of editors may be quickly overwhelmed by a large influx of new users, so it is important to alert others to the situation before things get too stressful. Consider reporting the situation at some or all of the following locations:
- Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
- Wikipedia talk:Counter Vandalism Unit
- In real time at Wikipedia's IRC channels
Remember, it's better to err on the side of asking for too much help than not asking for enough. The faster targeted pages are monitored and/or protected, the less of an impact coordinated vandalism will have on the project.
Warn vandals
Warning templates may be used for warnings, and in cases particularly similar to the Colbert episode, {{Template:Uw-joke1}}, {{Template:Uw-joke2}}, {{Template:Uw-joke3}}, and {{Template:Uw-joke4}} may be applicable.
...then block them
If a user or IP is repeatedly vandalizing after being warned, use
Vandalism-only and "sleeper" accounts
Accounts that are clearly used only for malicious vandalism, and in particular those that have been created in advance to be used in evading
Protect pages
The fundamental goal of Wikipedia is to create and maintain an encyclopedia. If the users who are watching a page cannot keep it in good shape most of the time by reverting vandalism, then page protection may be appropriate. Non-admins can request page protection at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection.
...but don't over-protect!
Another fundamental value of Wikipedia as possible is that users can edit articles!
- Don't protect a page unless vandalism renders it inaccurate or unusable.
- If semi-protectionis sufficient to reduce the rate of vandalism to a manageable level, even if some vandalism continues, there is no need for full protection. Use semi-protection first. In addition to leaving pages editable by regular users and avoiding problems of accidentally protecting inaccurate information, this gives us a chance to force "sleeper" accounts out of hiding and block them.
- Don't protect pages preemptively, even if external coverage or vandalism on other pages gives you reason to believe they will need to be protected. From Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy: "Semi-protection should not be used . . . as a pre-emptive measure against the threat or probability of vandalism before any such vandalism has occurred." Full protection, as an even more drastic measure, is obviously not to be used for this purpose either.
- Unprotect pages as soon as possible. Try unprotecting after a couple of days, and reprotect again if the vandalism remains unmanageable. For full protection, try downgrading to semi-protection for a day or two first and see how that goes.
Communicate
Users dealing with mass vandalism, and especially administrators, should talk about strategies during ongoing incidents in order to avoid working at cross-purposes. Drastic solutions to ongoing problems should not be undertaken without discussion and consensus—when we are reacting administratively to a situation whose handling may be scrutinized from outside, it is best to be careful about
Keep talk pages usable
Article talk pages are for discussions of how to improve the article; new users directed to Wikipedia pages from elsewhere may mistakenly use them as a discussion board. If disruption to a talk page due to discussion about an external reference to an article (or related vandalism) becomes severe, consider creating a sub-page for such discussion and posting a notice that it is to be used rather than the regular talk page. (See the red box at the top of this version of Talk:Elephant, for example.) Ruthlessly remove any further comments to the sub-page, but be
If a large volume of new users and IPs are trolling and vandalizing the talk page, semi-protecting the talk page briefly may become appropriate. However, from
See also
References
- ^ Montgomery, James (3 August 2006). "Can Wikipedia Handle Stephen Colbert's Truthiness?". MTV News. Retrieved 4 December 2017.