Countervandalism Network

Countervandalism network
About the network Bot documentation Server infrastructure Management Channel list Channel settings Verification Cloaks

The countervandalism network
is a distinct group. It is neither
affiliated with nor managed by the
Wikimedia Foundation.

The Countervandalism Network is an online community that aims to prevent or clean up vandalism on Wikimedia Foundation wikis and Fandom wikis. We develop and operate a suite of tools and services that help editors monitor changes in real-time, assist in the removal of vandalism, providing advice on dealing with vandals, and offering semi-automated coordination between members who deal with these same issues.

The network is managed by a volunteer group of staff selected from the CVN community.

Documented on this page are the general procedures for CVN users, including local channel operators, staff, and senior staff.

Local operators are generally trusted editors on a specific wiki project that are also active on IRC. They have the ability to grant new patrollers access to interact with the bots in CVN patrolling channels. Once a user is voiced in a CVN channel, they are able to command the bots. Some basic IRC knowledge is required of channel operators, including opping, voicing, and setting flags (information also available on Settings subpage).

Staff and senior staff are volunteers with operator access in all CVN channels. Generally, in respect to local authority, staff will not use their access when there are local operators available to act. However, if there are no local users available, staff may assign whatever access is required.

There is a central channel, #countervandalism^connect, which is the best way to contact staff directly. You can recognize them in the channel by the "voice" indication (e.g. "+" symbol). You may also use !staff to instruct cvn-clerkbot to ping all staff members in a channel. Basic channel operations (assigning channel flags, changing the topic, etc.), will be given to your IRC account. For advanced operations (anything requiring the +s or +F flags), you must log into the cvn-gc IRC account.

When staff modify access, it is important to verify that the IRC account requesting access is the correct wiki user. This can for example be done with a Wikipedia or Wikimedia cloak. This avoids the possibility of impersonation. If the user has no cloak or one that can't be verified, then ask the user to sign Countervandalism Network/Verification; the diff will then be used for any further requests.

Coordination for countervandalism users happens through Meta-Wiki. Important pages are: Settings, Management, Channels. See infobox for more links.

There is also the cvn mailing list.

The list is public and readable by anyone (subscribe to add messages, no confirmation needed), and is useful for updates.

The IRC channel #countervandalism^connect is also useful for real-time communication. Staff are voiced (+v).

A number of bots have been set up to run on the CVN related IRC channels to automate tasks and to perform maintenance. A list of the countervandalism related bots can be seen on the bots page.

Most of the applications run by CVN are hosted in Wikimedia Cloud VPS, including various web tools at cvn.wmflabs.org.