Wikipedia:Vandal fighters

For general information on fighting vandals, see Wikipedia:Vandalism and Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism.

Vandal fighter (or vandal stopper) was a proposed user right designed to allow established and trusted users to fight vandalism without becoming an administrator. It was proposed to allow users with the right to soft-block unconfirmed users and IP addresses, and protect pages, for a specified maximum duration of time.

In November 2014, renewed discussion regarding a Vandal stopper user right took place at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab). The proposal was then made by User:Oiyarbepsy at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) in January 2015 but it failed to obtain consensus.

The salient features of the revised proposal, vandal fighters could:

• Block non-autoconfirmed user accounts and soft-block IP addresses for a maximum duration of 48 hours.
• Place semi-protection and Pending Changes 1 levels of protection on pages for up to 48 hours.
• Unblock users and unprotect pages blocked or protected by other vandal fighters.

Vandal fighters could not unblock users or unprotect pages blocked or protected by administrators. Administrators can turn vandal fighter actions into administrator actions to prevent them from being undone by vandal fighters. As per the proposal, vandal fighter rights would be granted by administrators upon request at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions. Rights would only be granted to users who meet the requirements for both Rollback and PC reviewer rights. The right would only be used for obvious spam and vandalism.

This proposal first originated from a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship on 16 August 2010.

History

At a time when the successful requests for adminship are at an all time low, there was much speculation regarding why. While the debate still rages on, VF was designed to assist vandal patrollers, who do not want or probably would not be able to obtain, admin rights. This allows administrators to focus on continue writing articles and helping Wikipedia in other ways instead of being the "cop" while systematically granting trusted users a version of the tools to fight obvious vandalism. The VF right therefore allows users to block IPs in accordance with the blocking policy, Vandalism-only accounts indefinitely and indefinitely block obvious user name violations.

The VF user right is also intended, in accordance with WP:DEAL, to lower the often characterized harsh RfA process while still unbundling some of the admin tools to be given out to established users, similar to rollback's unbundling.

Discuss details of the proposal

Blocking

Non-autoconfirmed accounts

The original proposal allowed users to block non-autoconfirmed accounts, for any time period as well as indefinitely. However, the 2015 proposal alllowed blocks for a maximum period of 48 hours only. Vandalism-only accounts are still a big problem on Wikipedia; administrators usually block them before they become autoconfirmed (4 days and 10 edits after creating an account). By restricting this user class to blocking non-autoconfirmed accounts, there should be no accidental disruption of Wikipedia, nor hasty blocking in edit conflicts. Editors with this user right should, of course, be well versed on the blocking policy.

IP addresses

Users with VF rights would be able to block IP addresses which have done vandalizing edits and been properly warned, in accordance with the blocking policy.

Rights granting process

This right would be granted only to editors who have a clearly established, good reputation as a vandal fighter, have not abused their rollback ability, have a good history of assuming good faith, and have not evidenced any reason why the community should not have a high level of trust in them.

Applications should be posted on a page similar to how editors apply for the rollback privilege.

Decision by a bureaucrat

Any bureaucrat may approve a request for this privilege, recording that approval on the application page.

Removal process

To be decided.