Grand Theft Wiki:Patrolling

Revision as of 00:27, 8 January 2012 by Gboyers (talk | contribs) (New Page: "{{policy}} On Grand Theft Wiki, '''Patrolling''' is where every edit is checked to ensure it is not spam, vandalism or counterproductive. All staff and the [[Project:Groups|Trus...")
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On Grand Theft Wiki, Patrolling is where every edit is checked to ensure it is not spam, vandalism or counterproductive.

All staff and the Trusted Users group now have the right to patrol the edits of all other users. Edits made by people in these groups are automatically marked as patrolled, so it's only edits made by 'normal' users which require checking.


How Patrolling Works

There are three ways a staff member or Trusted User can patrol an edit:

  • Going to Special:Patrol to check out some edits that require patrolling
  • Looking through Special:RecentChanges to find unpatrolled recent changes
  • Looking at a diff or a new page that has not yet been patrolled

With each of these edits, the user can choose to:

  • Mark the edit as patrolled (endorse it)
  • Undo the edit to return the page to an earlier version (revert it)
  • Endorse the edit but correct a mistake/problem (fix it)
  • Mark the page for cleanup, moving or deletion (tag it)
  • Report the user to staff for spam, vandalism or other offences (report it)

A patrolling user should try to look through Special:Patrol and patrol a few edits every time they're on. Also check unpatrolled recent changes in case any edits don't show up in Special:Patrol

Regular users can not see which edits have been patrolled.


How to Patrol

All of these steps are visible only to users with the patrol right.

In Special:RecentChanges, an edit that has not yet been patrolled will show with a red exclamation mark:


This is how an unpatrolled diff will show, with the "[Mark as patrolled]" button visible:


This is how an unpatrolled edit will show in Special:Patrol:


This shows the diff, and provides three buttons for endorse, revert and skip:

  • If an edit needs fixing (not reverting), you should fix the page then endorse the original diff, even if it's not perfect. If you leave the diff unpatrolled, it will stay in the system even though it's not the latest revision of the page.
  • If an edit needs completely reverting, you must ensure the reason is clear. If it's not obvious, you must leave a summary explaining why. If it's controversial, or you're not sure whether it should have stayed, you should leave a message on the article's talk page explaining your actions and inviting other users to comment.
  • If you Skip an edit, you will not be presented with it again, so don't go around doing this to lots of edits, otherwise someone else has to patrol them as you can't (unless you go back to the diff some other way).
  • If you need the page to be deleted, you should go to the page and add the deletion tag - there's no need to endorse the edit in this situation.

After you've endorsed or reverted