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From Encyclopedia Dramatica

The three T's of Recent Changes.

Tools

Wikis provide a variety of tools and utilities that make watching changes to the encyclopedia as they occur quite easy. While sysops have a larger toolset than normal users, both groups have the ability to make a difference on site.

Normal Users

• Recent Changes Page - First and foremost is the actual Recent Changes page, found at Special:RecentChanges. Every edit and user or sysop action that occurs on the site is logged here as it happens.

A normal edit will show up as:

(diff) (hist) . . User talk:MysteryBot 10:44 . . (+104) . . WhiteMystery (Talk | Contribs) (Obey your master, slave.)

• The diff link shows the results of a diff on the most recent revision of the page.
• The hist link shows the complete page history.
• The first page link, in this case User talk:MysteryBot, is the edit's target.
• The timestamp shows at what server time the edit was made.
• The number in parenthesis is the number of characters changed by the edit.
• The second page link, in this case WhiteMystery, goes to the editor's user page.
• The links in parenthesis take you to the editor's talk page and contributions page, respectively.
• The optional text in the last set of parenthesis is the edit summary.

An administrative action will show up as:

(Plumbing log) 10:56 . . WhiteMystery (Talk | Contribs) (flushed "Bad Article")

• The first link in parenthesis, in this case Plumbing log, tells you what type of action occured.
• The timestamp shows at what server time the action was performed.
• The first page link, in this case WhiteMystery, goes to the editor's user page.
• The links in parenthesis take you to the editor's talk page and contributions page, respectively.
• The text in the last set of parenthesis displays the action taken, with an optional edit summary.

• Diffs - Diff stands for difference.

• Clicking the diff link for an edit will give you a side by side comparison of the second to last and last revisions of a page and a preview of the results of the action. Content that has been removed from a page will show up highlighted in yellow. Content that has been added to a page will show up highlighted in green. Diff is a powerful tool to quickly identify malicious edits.
• By using the radio buttons on a page's history, you can manually select what revisions the diff should be displayed between. This is particularly useful for seeing the net result of a series of edits.

• Undo - When you view a diff, there will be an (undo) link next to the title of the most recent revision of the article. Clicking that link will bring up an editable version of the page with all of the changes between the selected revisions undone. This is the fastest way for normal users to undo vandalism, but if you see a sysop already reverting someone's edits it's better to let them use their rollback tool, as described below.

• User Contributions - Clicking the (Contribs) next to an edit brings up a person's complete edit history. This is a great way to spot chronic vandals or instances of vandalism which may have been missed in the fray.

Sysops

• Rollback - Rollback is Undo on steroids. When logged in as a sysop, you will see a the link [rollback] next to the most recent revision of a page, both on a page's history and a user's contributions page. Clicking this will immediately roll the page back to the revision before the last editor. This allows you to undo all of a vandal's changes in exponentially less time than it took the person to make them.

• Check User - Special:CheckUser lets you get the IP of a user, all edits from a particular IP, or all users associated with a particular IP. As stated on the sysop guide, it's fine to have multiple accounts on ED as long as you use them for good. Someone abusing sockpuppets to vandalize articles or evade other bans should be given a block on the IP, but a normal ban will suffice in all other cases.

• Protection - Clicking the "protect" tab at the top of a page will allow a sysop to prevent all changes and/or page moves for a specified duration.

• You set the level of protection for those actions in the "Edit" and "Move" boxes by highlighting the desired level of protection.
• Cascading protection sets the same level of protection for all pages included in the protected page. Use this only in extreme cases as it has the possibility of unintentionally protecting a shit ton of pages and annoying users.
• Expiry can be any duration typed out in English (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, and so on) or "infinite" or blank, for infinite duration. Try to avoid infinite protection unless it's a policy page like Encyclopedia Dramatica:About or a template which, if changed, would reak havoc on the site like {{cs}}. A 24 hour "faggotry cooldown" is usually all that's needed for a page being repeatedly vandalized.
• Reason for protecting should be snarky or factual, because nobody likes boring edit summaries.

• Banhammer - Stops an account from making any edits until the duration of the ban expires. Banned users can still log on, change their settings, and view pages.

• It's best to give someone a warning or explain what they did wrong before banning them, since most of our users are illiterate and don't read the welcome message.
• While it's up to each sysop to choose ban duration, a good starting point is two weeks or a month for vandalism, and a much longer period for a second instance or big vandalism spree.
• You can ban by IP, but it's best to avoid doing this unless someone is abusing sock accounts or an open proxy. PROTIP: All of Qatar shares a single IP, which can be quite lulzy.
• You can ban a range of IPs, but you should not do so unless you know what you're doing or you've discussed it with the other sysops.

Techniques

There are no secrets to watching Recent Changes, but there are quite a few useful techniques for identify both good and bad edits, and taking action accordingly.

• Just Watching - It sounds simple, but watching trends emerge in Recent Changes can give you a great deal of information. If you see someone making many edits on a similar batch of articles, check up on them and make sure they aren't vandalizing an entire series. If you see someone making many tiny edits to one article, do a complete diff of their actions to make sure they aren't gradually blanking an article to avoid raising suspicion. If you see a large number of new accounts immediately start editing the same article, check up on their edits to make sure a page isn't being targetted from off site.

• Edit Summaries - The optional edit summary can also be quite useful.

• Automatic edit summaries are generated by the wiki for events like page blanking or replacing an article completely. If you see BLANKING IN PROGRESS or Replacing with "X", it's worth a look.
• Whether or not they realize they're being watched, many people like to make snarky comments when they're vandalizing. Edit summaries such as "FUCK YOU SHE'S A GOOD PERSON!!!!" should put up a red flag.

• Bytes Changed - Any time an article is edited, the difference in bytes between the last two revisions is calculated.

• Especially high byte count increases, over 1000 or 2000 bytes changed, are usually legitimate, but should be checked to make sure a person isn't dumping content on to the page or replacing one of our pages with a Wikipedia page.
• Especially high byte count decreases, over 1000 bytes removed, are almost never legitimate unless the person makes it clear that they are cleaning up the article, either on the talk page or through an edit summary.

• Warning - You can often put a stop to stupidity by warning a user. If a new user is making a series of bad edits, revert their changes and use one of the featured templates to explain what they are doing wrong. Most people who do something wrong aren't doing it intentionally and taking the time to explain makes a big difference.

• Userspace Moves - If a user creates a bad article but it looks like they put a lot of time into it, and it looks like it could be a worthwhile article in the future, make an identical copy in their userspace (i.e. User:Username/ArticleName) and use the {{userspace}} template listed below to explain what's up. Remember to flush the old page if you're a sysop, or mark it for deletion if you're not.

Templates

ED has a wide range of templates to supplement Recent Changes watching and communicating with users.

• {{dummies}} - The first weapon in your arsenal. A general catch all for new user mistakes, bad articles, and faggery daggery do.

Could you plz read How 2 EDit for Dummies. Its Learnings will give you a better idea of what is required of articles on the Graet Encyclopedia Dramatica 2.0 YOUR ARTICLES WILL FAIL LESS BECAUSE OF IT! THX!

• {{userspace}} - Moving a terrible page to a user's namespace allows them to work on it in peace. This explains the process.

Terrible Article Has Been Moved To ED:RC/Terrible Article.

---

Hey, you've made an article about Terrible Article that, unfortunately, doesn't meet our current standards. Please keep working on it here. Once you have worked on it, contact a sysop to see if you've improved it enough. If you don't know what to do, here are some tips:

• Do not recreate your article in the main namespace. Work on it here.
• Read ED:LULZ, ED:101, and ED:RR.
• Make it long enough to be worth reading (a few paragraphs, at least).
• Use headings and insert images.
• Link to a few sources. We appreciate embellishments, but frown on outright fabrications.
• Spare a few minutes and take a look at a tutorial written up by one of our seasoned writers. There's some great tips there that'll definitely improve your article making skills.
• If you require assistance beefing up your article, then hit up the experts in #wiki on our IRC.

• {{newarticle}} - Gives a new user important tips on writing articles fit for ED.

Your new article

---

Hey, you've made an article about anything at all that might have potential, but you should probably work on it or it'll get deleted. Want some tips?

• Make it long enough to be worth reading! Several paragraphs at least, and use section headers (using ==Headername==.)
• Describe Internet drama or Internet funniness related to the subject. Be funny! Remember that "OMG this is so ghey" is not funny. Keep it somewhat on topic.
• Put in a picture or two. Screenshots are your friend (Printscreen button on your compy, than paste with Ctrl+V into MS Paint, then save as a JPG). Upload pics in the bottom left of the sidebar. Help in formatting here.
• Add links to websites showing drama and lulz - may be examples, related online groups, whatever. Help in formatting here.
• Categorize it. God help you if it has no categories. Categories here.
• Above all else, make sure it's funny. Look here for help.
• Read How to archive the lulz and the style guide for extra tips.
• Read some of the featured articles to see what makes a really good article.

Sounds like a lot of work, but it's really not. Do these, and your article won't get deleted.

• {{baleetplz}} - Mark an article for deletion.

PLZ FUCKING KILL THIS ARTICLE.  If you think this is worth keeping, spam the goddamn talk page.

• {{deathnotice}} - Marks a page that needs to die unless seriously improved soon.

• {{internets}} - Mark an article that has little no to internet relevance and needs to be improved.

RC has no Internets connection ED articles need internets relation, and it's not hard to do. You can help by adding more info on websites/trolling about this topic and lulz/drama pertaining to them or this page could be deleted at any time. For help, see this and this This article has been tagged since {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTDAY}}

• {{links}} - Mark an article that appears to be nonsense or Uncyclopedia style humor.

WTF? RC is nonsense not yet worth lulz archiving. If it isn't written more on topic, it will be deleted. You can help by providing links to websites that discuss this topic or writing more facts. ED provides FACTUAL accounts of interesting, funny, sick, twisted or dramatic things related to the internets. Don't write nonsensical shit nobody cares about. Do write about internets/lulz/drama and things that relate to them.