Forum:Question: Joining the War against Vandalism and other bad stuff

Forums: Index > Village Dump > Question: Joining the War against Vandalism and other bad stuff

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I want to help out around here by cleaning up and fixing articles Uncyclopedia, but so far I done very little, such as VFD, rewriting aricles, removing red links, and put rewrite tags on. But I want to do more. What should I do in order to become a good soldier in the War against Vandalism and other bad stuff? Any advice is helpful unless it relates to doing nothing--If you're 555 then I'm Talk What's it like to be a heretic? 14:28, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of good ways to help out, but some of the most helpful include:

1. Monitoring Special:RecentChanges for suspicious edits. Reverting vandalism on such edits (after using the "undo" button for a while, you can ask the admins for rollback), tidying up newly created pages, etc.
2. Reporting vandals, spammers, blankers, and general troublemakers to Ban Patrol, so that they can be dealt with.
3. Reporting newly created, poor quality pages to the QVFD (only pages created within the last seven days).
4. VFD stuff, as you said.
5. Also, monitoring Special:NewPages can help you find some of the newer articles that are of low quality.
6. You can also welcome users! You can do this by either A) Looking through recent changes for users whose talk pages are red links, or B) Going to Special:Log/newusers and looking for the red talk pages. Then get a template like Template:Welcome, or perhaps a custom user template (chances are there's one on your talk page) and put that template on the user's talk page so that they feel welcomed and have some information on contributing.

There's also this page, which I've never read, but lots of people seem to like it. I don't know. You can also join the IRC channel and its anti-vandalism counterpart to keep up with other active users and have a feed of recent changes, respectively.

There are other things too, I suppose, but those are all great things to get you started. Oh and voting on VFH and VFP. Wouldn't hurt to write an article or two either. -RAHB 15:10, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, wouldn't hurt to write an article, maybe, ah, just like the one you have featured on the front page today. Aleister 15:15 29 7

p.s. I've never looked at the user creation log. Lots of them every day. Why can't Uncy get more of them to stick around? Maybe we should all work on a standardized welcome template. I've felt that almost all of them are way too long and overwhelming for the average person to take in on their first visit here. Maybe a nice welcome without the baggage, just a little baggage, and then if they look like they may stick around give them the press kit.

Lots of useful info RAHB, thanks for that. And I agree writing an article or two wouldn't hurt like the fabulous article that was feature. I'm making another good article that hopefully would follow in Ol' Red's footsteps.--If you're 555 then I'm Talk What's it like to be a heretic? 15:35, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, in direct contrast to my advice, I don't pay much attention to VFH, so I had no idea you already wrote things. But good on ya, then! -RAHB 15:50, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

Good post, good ideas, but go easy on the "put a rewrite tag on." It's the easy way out to tag an article telling the author he should do his job differently. Better yet, rewrite it yourself, as this is a wiki; better yet, go directly to the author and tell him what you had a problem with. Your dissatisfaction with the article suggests there is a problem and, even if you find the author had something in mind when he wrote it his way, he (or you, or both) can improve it. Spıke Ѧ 11:25 31-Jul-10

May I also suggest having a wander through Special:LonelyPages - the pages not linked from anywhere - and either finding ways to link to the better ones or VFDing the crap ones? You can find all sorts on there. --UU - natter 20:54, Jul 31