User:Gwernol/WarningEditors

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Many valiant Wikipedia editors spend a lot of time reverting vandalism. To these editors, I say a big "thank you". Without your tireless, voluntary efforts Wikipedia could not function.

But I've noticed that many vandal fighters remove problematic edits, but don't subsequently warn the editors they have reverted. I believe warning is a vital part of the counter-vandalism effort. Here's why:

1. It's policy: Our vandalism policy is quite clear: the right way to deal with vandalism is to revert it and then warn the user.
2. It deters future vandalism: we deliberately give users several chances to turn away from vandalism and become productive members of the Wikipedia community. Having dealt with numerous vandals myself, I can attest that warning can be very effective. If people know their edits are being watched and reverted, many of them stop. Some of them start making constructive improvements to articles instead of messing with others' work. This is much less likely to happen if they don't receive a warning.
3. We can't block unwarned vandals. Admins generally won't block a vandal unless they have been properly warned. If you don't warn a user who is vandalizing, you let them vandalize more articles before they can be blocked. Help us to help you by warning early and often.

So in the long term you save yourself work (and Wikipedia a lot of vandalism) by warning editors if you find them vandalizing articles. The warning can be done very quickly, especially if you use a tool like TWINKLE which automates much of the process for you. I recommend it (I use a modified version myself)

Gwernol