Sactage's blog

Introduction to the VSTF

2013-04-10T20:51:50Z

Hi everyone!

My name is Sactage, and today I am guest blogging on the staff blog so I can introduce you to Wikia's Volunteer Spam Task Force, or VSTF for short. We're a group of users who have volunteered to help make Wikia a better place for readers and editors alike. In order to effectively perform this task, we have access to several global tools, such as global blocks and global spam filter, as well as the ability to delete pages and block users on most Wikia wikis. However, we do not have any authority over local wiki tasks like an administrator does - I usually equate our responsibilities to that of a janitor. We are here to help, but aren't the leaders on the wikis we visit.

What we do Edit

The VSTF can be thought of as friendly janitors who help to keep your wiki clean of vandalism and spam.

Added by Sactage

As VSTF, our primary job is to keep Wikia clean from spam. Most of this spam is the product of automated programs known as spambots, and it usually takes the form of pages that have no relation to the content of a wiki and blatantly advertise a website or product. When we find a spambot, we block its IP address globally (and user account if applicable) and delete any of the spam it has created. When we begin to find obvious patterns of spam, we can also block common phrases and links globally using our global spam filter.

Our other responsibility on Wikia (arguably the one we are known best for) is helping to revert and prevent vandalism, often on sleepy or inactive wikis. Most of the vandals we block only perform a few edits on one or two wikis, but there are times when organised attacks are executed on wikis or when one user is vandalising on many wikis at the same time (this is known as cross-wiki vandalism). For organised attacks, we have the ability to restrict local editing privileges for small period of time so that essential cleanup can be done without further interruption. We also have access to AbuseFilter, which we can use to deter serial vandals on a per-wiki basis. We usually deal with cross-wiki vandalism by blocking the perpetrator for a small amount of time, but with extremely complicated cases we will ask for advice from Staff and our other members.

Contacting us Edit

By this point, I'm sure you are wondering how you can contact the VSTF if you need help or want to report some spam or vandalism. There are a multitude of ways you can contact us, but here are the methods that are usually the fastest:

The VSTF Wiki: This wiki has a multitude of pages where you can report spam, vandalism, and other important things. It also has a few in-depth pages on our group and our policies.
Our message walls here on Community Central are another great place to contact us. We cannot always respond right away, but we make an effort to get to your messages as soon as possible. We also watch each other's walls, so a message you leave for one member may very well be answered by another!
IRC: This is the fastest way to contact us in an emergency. IRC is a live chat room, much like Wikia Chat, where most of the VSTF reside during the day. You can get our attention by saying !vstf YOUR MESSAGE HERE, but please only do this when absolutely necessary. If no one happens to be around, please leave a message on the wiki.

However, there are some things that we don't deal with, and should be reported to staff or other users. To avoid any future confusion, I'll outline when you should and shouldn't contact us below:

When to contact us Edit

You notice a wiki without any active admins is being vandalised, and the offender(s) should be dealt with.
You find a spambot! These should be reported with the utmost haste at our spam reporting page.
You find a wiki being attacked by several vandals at once!. The sooner you notify us of the issue, the sooner we can prevent any further damage.
You find a cross-wiki vandal. They should be reported to our vandalism reporting page.
You find a wiki that is made only for spam: Many spambots create wikis just for this purpose. They can be reported to our wiki reporting page.
Your wiki is being terrorised by a persistent vandal. The VSTF will be happy to look into serial vandals and make recommendations about what can be done. We may direct you to contact Wikia staff if we feel it needs special attention.

When not to contact us Edit

You were blocked by an administrator on a wiki you love, but you think the block was unfair: Social issues like these should be brought to the attention of staff via Special:Contact.
There's a vandal on one of your wikis, but the local administrators are active: Most vandals will give up after you revert enough of their edits and can wait to be blocked by a local administrator.
You think you've found a sockpuppet (alternate account) of someone on your wiki and you want a Check User performed: VSTF do not perform Check User requests. Social issues like these should be brought to the attention of staff.
You don't like a particular user and want to get them banned from a wiki/globally: Social issues like these should be brought to the attention of staff.
An administrator is abusing their powers on a wiki: VSTF cannot demote administrators or bureaucrats. Social issues like these should be brought to the attention of staff.

Please note that the above list is only an outline - there may be other situations where you aren't sure if you should go to the VSTF or to Wikia staff for help. As a general rule, VSTF deal with vandalism and spam, and staff deal with all social issues.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to any of us or leave a comment below!

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Technical Update: August 28, 2012

2012-08-28T16:34:26Z

Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Wednesday, so we’re posting this on a Tuesday to give you advance notice. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

New FeaturesEdit

The Search interface is updated with a new look! The filter options are now listed vertically on the left side. New filter options are "People", for searching the User namespace, and "Blog", for the Blog namespace (when enabled). The little-used "Help and Project pages" filter has been removed. The filter labels "Content Pages" and "Multimedia" have been changed to "Articles" and "Photos and Videos". Ads, when seen, will now be on the right side.
In the Wikia Mobile skin, the WikiNav drop down's height is now variable and will not take up any more space than is needed.

Major Bugs FixedEdit

The Monobook skin will no longer attempt to load the mini-editor for article and blog comments. The feature was not designed to work in that skin and thus was not functioning properly when it accidentally found its way into the skin.
Article comment links from contribution pages were not linking directly to the proper comment.
The "number of videos on this wiki" figure was incorrect.

Other Notable ChangesEdit

You may have noticed new files on your wiki with "Wikia Visualization" in the file name. We kindly request that admins leave these files in place, their purpose will be made clear later this week when a new wiki promotion tool is formally released, one which we are very excited about.
3,500 more wikis were upgraded to MediaWiki 1.19 this week. The total number of wikis on 1.19 is now at 33,500.
We need your input! If you use or are interested in using mapping services on your wiki, please visit this page and participate in the discussion.

Select Known IssuesEdit

WikiFeatures logs are not showing up in Recent Changes.
The "Search" option in the floating user toolbar has stopped working.
Maths formulas (<math>) have white backgrounds. They should be transparent.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave them below. And if you have additional bugs to report, please send them to us via Special:Contact.

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Technical Update: July 31, 2012

2012-07-31T16:33:32Z

We're back with weekly technical updates. Sorry for the early summer holiday, but as many of you know we have been working hard on a project to update all our wikis to MediaWiki 1.19, which has meant that other changes have not been happening as frequently. Now that most of the upgrade work is complete and we're focusing on fixing related bugs, we're ready to bring back our weekly Technical Updates.

Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Wednesday, so we’re posting this on a Tuesday to give you advance notice. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

MediaWiki 1.19 updateEdit

We started migrating wikis to 1.19 towards the end of June, and here we are at the end of July with around 12,000 individual wikis now on MediaWiki 1.19. The update script, now up to full speed as the biggest issues have been resolved, will continue to operate until all of Wikia's wikis (more than 200,000) are on the 1.19 platform.

As many tech-savvy users have noticed, upgrading from MediaWiki 1.16.5 to MediaWiki 1.19 has been a bit bumpy. While any upgrade is bound to lead to a few bugs, ResourceLoader (introduced in MediaWiki 1.17), the introduction of HTML5 (1.18), and a number of renamed functions made this upgrade especially difficult. As if it couldn't get any more fun, MediaWiki 1.19.1 was released due to a security bug, so we had to apply that patch as well.

All told, our engineers have fixed over 500 bugs affecting performance, functionality, and design. Our entire engineering team is pulling together right now to annihilate the remaining 1.19 bugs.

We will list some of the major known 1.19 bugs below. As always, please make sure bugs are reported properly to Wikia Staff, which usually means filing a quick report at Special:Contact