UDWiki talk:Administration/Policy Discussion/Better Vandal Data

Opening

Let us use this space to develop our ideas for improving the current system for handling vandal data. We can all agree that the vandal data is important to the wiki and that it is suboptimal.

If you want to point out a specific problem or propose a solution, please create a new == header so that the discussion can remain orderly. Please refrain from editing this opening section.

In general, A/VD should achieve the following:

• Organization - Escalation history, edit history, and the location of users should be organized
• Ease of use - It should be easy to check the history of specific users
• Automation - Making escalation/de-escalation more automated, reducing errors.

--_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 13:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

remove deescalations

Get rid of deescalations? They only confuse the issue, and encourage career vandals -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 13:27 30 November 2009 (BST)

^^^ Cyberbob  Talk  13:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

But I don't think anyone actually suggested that... --DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION-- 13:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

+1 --Haliman - Talk 13:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Your intentions? At the moment, your intentions seem to be for the community to devise it for you. How righteous. Not reactionary and unfounded at all. --DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION-- 13:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I am all for removing descalations if the maximum amount of time a user can remain banned is reduced to a week. After the fourth time the user is banned for a week sysops are allowed to start a simple perma vote on the user. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 16:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

no Cyberbob  Talk  16:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Surely the whole point of the policy, especially deescalation included is to reform vandals, how would the policy work without this? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 16:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear by this point that the de-escalation system does nothing to reform vandals - quite the opposite in fact, as it more or less allows them to keep on trucking indefinitely as long as they're careful about it. It's a messy, complicated and incredibly dramagenic system that really hasn't achieved much beyond the aforementioned enabling of smart longterm vandalism. Cyberbob  Talk  17:12, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Separate Pages

Just a quick ideas to get us started. How about organizing vandal data into different pages alphabetically? So there would be "Administration/Vandal_Data/A", "Administration/Vandal_Data/B", and so on. And there would be an alphabetical listing on the main A/VD page. This would make it easier to track changes by checking the history of a given page, instead of having to pour through months of data to find the history of a specific user.

Similarly, the pages could be organized like encyclopedia volumes, Aichon - Boberton, Cyberbob - DDR, etc., since certain letters of the alphabet would have more users.--_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 13:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

i think i suggested once that we should have a separate page for each user, but people complained about the complexity of this. Store it on user:Username/Vandal Data and protect it so only sops can edit it after vandal cases are ruled on. It would make a hell lot easier to see how many times a user was brought to A/VB and how many warnings he got. Sure it add another layer of work, but at least we have an easy access to all this information --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 16:07, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No then, no now. History wipes pretty much invalidate everything that an individual-page-policy has to offer. Please stop posting Hagnat, you're not particularly smart. Cyberbob  Talk  16:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

im not saying we should retroactively archive the vandal records... but starting on the moment this policy gets approved. And even we did retroactively, what history wipe have to do with all this ? Its a simple case of copying specific headers from the current A/VB history into another page... i think you are more worried about what this user-archive would reveal about yourself... --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 16:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

If it's not about page histories, what the hell is it about? The current system offers literally the same amount of info as a separate-page system once you remove the history factor. By the way: that hilarious attempt at poisoning the well is, well, hilarious. The gory details of my vandalism history are already where anyone can see them - here, I'll even link it for you. You're even dumber than I thought, to be quite honest. Cyberbob  Talk  16:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Your vandal data record only shows WHEN you was warned, not WHY and all the other cases you were reported but not found guilty of vandalism. This later cases can be used by sysops to identify a trend and punish a user for constant idiocy or something. And i reckon i am not in my high moments, but i have booze and three months of party to blame... what is your excuse ? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 16:30, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a simple matter to add a quick "Impersonation" or "Page blanking" or whatever note next to a page entry without having to create such a stupendously more complicated system. It already happens to some extent - escalations from breaking arbitration rulings and from misconduct cases get their own notes to distinguish them from the others. Oh, and if you're drunk you really shouldn't be on the computer. That's just about the lamest thing I can possibly think of anyone ever doing short of becoming a camwhore. Cyberbob  Talk  16:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration and misconduct warnings are noted because they dont actually count in your vandal data in vandalism cases. I can have a month long ban for misconduct, but if i vandalize - and i only had two warnings - all im supposed to get is a 24h ban. That is noted because a sysop can be banned for a period of time different than the one specified in his vandal data, and arbitration violations punish users like they had at least two warnings, even if the user had a clean records. And i stopped drinking and wikiing a loooong time ago... nowadays i only wiki when i get bored, and that only happens when i am sober :P --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 16:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No fucking shit Sherlock - what was the point of going into such pointless detail? You answered absolutely nothing about why my suggestion about adding notes to regular escalation entries might be a bad idea (probably because you can't think of anything). Cyberbob  Talk  17:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Breaking it into multiple pages merely decentralizes a system that should be centralized, and I'm afraid I don't see an immediate benefit. Currently, checking changes to a user's data seems relatively simple: just list the last 500 edits, run a text search, and then manually check any unlabeled ones. Iscariot's case is an odd one, to be sure, but the circumstances that led to it could occur with any system, so we shouldn't let it drive policy, necessarily. Plus...I don't have any vandal data (yet?). —Aichon— 16:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

"History wipes pretty much invalidate everything that an individual-page-policy has to offer." Hmm, that's a good point. How often do these history wipes take place?--_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 17:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Every few months. It varies, I think. Cyberbob  Talk  17:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Right, well in that case breaking the vandal data into separate pages wouldn't be helpful at all. Skip that idea lol.--_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 17:23, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Watch - it'll take like two more days for Hagnat to drop it. Cyberbob  Talk  17:24, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

IIRC, there have been three history wipes in the whole UDWiki history. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 17:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm almost positive that you are wrong, and the frequency is irrelevant in any case. The fact that they can and do happen negates the utility of a system that is entirely dependent upon one not happening. Cyberbob  Talk  17:48, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Last edit and link to the ruling

I've noticed two minor items that might help clear up future questions:

1. A link to the actual ruling mentioned in the data
2. A link to the last edit the user made before the ruling (i.e. where their "250 edits" count begins)

Basically, I'd suggest that each entry in (or modification to) the data contain a link to the ruling that led to that edit, rather than just a timestamp. So, if a user was warned, the "warned" text could be a link to the archived case, and similarly, if the ruling was overturned due to misconduct, the "misconduct" text could be a link to the archived A/M case. Even though it's possible to fact check using the timestamp, adding a link would make it easier.

I'd also suggest that the last edit the person made before the ruling be recorded, that way if there are any questions over when de-escalation should occur, it can be checked without having to do as much cross-referencing. If you want to keep A/VD clean, you could simply make it a note in the text of the ruling itself.

Neither of these is especially burdensome, but they would help to clear up occasional questions that arise later. —Aichon— 17:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The first of those would work, the second would not because of history wipes. Cyberbob  Talk  17:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

How are de-escalations currently handled in those cases? Perhaps we should start from there and work backwards. —Aichon— 18:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Well for starters the whole de-escalation system is a load of crap and needs to be ditched... but up until this point it hasn't been a problem as most of the time it doesn't operate over long enough timespans to fall afoul of a wipe. If a wipe happened tomorrow though it would be boned pretty hard - we'd be able to tell how long it had been since an escalation was given easily enough, but we'd have no way of determining how many edits a user had made in that timespan. Cyberbob  Talk  18:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

In that case, I guess the logical choices are to either ignore the problem with history wipes, as seems to be the case now, or else change de-escalations somehow (e.g. make them time-based only). —Aichon— 18:33, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflicted, it's like you read my mind) - What if we started linking to the vandalism case in the vandal data? This would provide more relevant info to the vandal data and make it easy to check on cases with a glance. So for example, the vandal data would look something like this, but linking to the archives rather than open cases, obviously:
User:Thaedracy

• Warned 23:44, 27 Nov, 2009.

User:Xzsd

• Banned 01:46, 29 Nov, 2009.

--_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 17:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep, that's pretty much what I had in mind. —Aichon— 18:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

You know, this is more or less what I had first thought up of when I saw the Misconduct case on DDR, especially since I couldn't make heads or tails of Iscariot's altered 48h ban-cum-warning. Was it the same as the previous ban (and thus a copy) or a separate case (and thus a second warning)? I promptly got lost searching up the references, although I grant the dates are right there.

I would offer, as a more complicated option, this:

User:Rudolph

Date	Result	Comment
01:23, 01 January 2009 (UTC)	Warned	Struck Feb 28, 2008, 250 edits.
12:34, 03 March 2009 (UTC)	Warned	Impersonation of User:Easter Rabbit.
12:34, 06 June 2009 (UTC)	Warned	Vandalism of RRF Page
00:01, 25 December 2009 (UTC)	24h Ban	Personal threats against User:Dancer and User:Prancer.

-Wulfenbach 20:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's got more code, but I like your idea Wulfenbach. It's easy to read and it has the links to cross-reference the actual cases. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 22:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC)