CZ:Anti-vandalism procedures

Since we have stopped self-registration, some of this information is probably out of date.

Account blocking

Constables are able to block accounts for various reasons. Here is how and when.

Ill-formed names

Our binding policy on what names are acceptable and unacceptable is found on the create account page and New Account Review Procedure. A few extra notes for constables:

• We don't like it, but we will accept lowercase names, names written in CamelCase, and the occasional other weird variant.
• We generally block accounts created in the form "F. M. Last". But a good idea is to put something like this in your block explanation: "please contact constables@citizendium.org if you can show that you publish under this name".
• If someone happens to have the name of some famous person, or some other unlikely name, but which could be a real name, then the procedure is to ask the person for some proof that it is in fact his/her name.

The easiest way to block an ill-formed name is to look at recent changes or the user creation log and click "block," found next to the offending username. Occasionally (for whatever reason) you need to get to the "block user" page directly. That is linked above.

When using the block user page, we always give a reason for blocking, such as "Incorrectly created account (full name needed)."

We do not give warnings to people with ill-formed names. That's because the solution is simply to create a new account.

Vandalism

The main way to stay on top of vandalism is to monitor recent changes on a regular basis, and ban vandals as soon as they appear. We aim to have at least one constable on the wiki at all times as a sort of vandalism watch.

To block a vandal's username, simply click "block" next to the username as it appears in recent changes.

But if it looks like a vandal is creating more than one account to vandalize from, then we should block the vandal's IP address for a week. To do that:

• Look up the IP address. Go to check user, paste in the vandal's username (doesn't matter whether the username has already been banned), and click "Get IPs". It isn't usually necessary to fill out the reason.
• Then go to "block user" and put the IP address in "IP Address, email, or username," select expiry of one week, and press "block this user." Done!

Note that this is not always effective, simply because some vandals' IP addresses are shifting within a range, or they switch proxies. (We should be banning all open proxies if we haven't already done so.)

Troublesome users

There are many other reasons to ban people other than ill-formed names and vandalism.

See Constabulary Rules Enforcement Procedures for details.

Undoing vandalism damage

So far we've seen basically two kinds of vandalism: old-fashioned idiotic misediting of pages (e.g., adding insults or dirty words), and page moving. Our tech guys are at work making the latter more difficult.

"Reverting" old-fashioned vandalism is as simple this:

• Go to the vandalized page.
• Click the "history" tab.
• Click on the last legitimate version in the history.
• Click the "edit" tab (for that old version).
• Simply press save.

Or even simpler...use the vandal's user contribution page...

"Reverting" page moves can be done in two different ways. First, the hard way:

• From recent changes (or another list of changes), click on the page that was moved (not the page that it was moved to!). Notice "(Redirected from <page title>)" in small print near the top of the page? Click on <page title>. This will take you to page that was moved.
• On that page, click "history". Make sure there's just one edit there (i.e., the move edit). It there is more than one, ask for help from someone more experienced.
• Go to the page that the page was moved to.
• Press the "move" tab.
• Type in the correct name.
• Do check the "move associated talk page" box (if it comes up; it will come up only if there is an associated talk page).
• Press "move page."
• Finally, you have to delete the old page that was moved from. To do that, click on the page you want to delete, follow the "(Redirected from <page title>)" link, and when you get to the redirect page (which you just created), click the "delete" tab.

Second, the easy way:

• Go to the move log.
• Locate the page that has been moved. Click "revert."
• Delete the old page that was moved from. To do that, click on the page you want to delete, follow the "(Redirected from <page title>)" link, and when you get to the redirect page (which you just created), click the "delete" tab.