This redirect was nominated at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion on 20 September 2024. The result of the discussion was keep.

One of the problems with Level-4 warnings, is that if not acted on when the vandal continues, the threat in it loses all credibility. If a warning states that the next time you vandalize, you will be blocked — well, the next time you vandalize, you should be blocked.

Now the actual blocking can only be done by an admin. So when I find one of these, all I can do is manually call whatever offender I bump into, to the attention of someone, usually the person who put the warning up, hoping someone will do what I cannot.

A far better system would be automatically to cause the Test4-n template to insert Level‑4 people or articles (the editors would be better, but the articles would work as well) in a Category that could then be swept by whoever is inclined to do so, just like the Stub template, etc.

I don't understand how the Stub template mechanism works, so am experimenting by porting the syntax from the Stub template, then attaching Test4-n to some tiny and presumably unfrequented articles and seeing what happens, etc. I'll revert these tests on the article pages, of course. Please bear with me for an hour or two; afterwards, no problem reverting unsuccessful attempts of mine; if successful, though, I'll probably stick up for them, and I hope others will, too. Bill 23:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That isn't necessary. If a user continues to vandalise after being warned a few times, you can report him for admin intervention at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism or on the IRC Freenode channel #wikipedia-en-vandalism. // Pathoschild 23:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted your additions; the problem with your idea is that level 4 vandalism warnings are substed on a talk page and remain there for several months before being removed. Warnings are not removed after admin intervention. Placing it even for a single hour would add dozens of user pages to the category, which would have to be manually edited to remove the by-then-redlinked tag. // Pathoschild 23:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, gimme a chance guys, can't even get this up for the number of edit conflicts! Not strictly necessary, no; but then neither is Wikipedia itself. It's darn convenient, though. I did figure it out, and since it seems to be working, I won't be the one reverting it. What I've just done is made it completely automatic, and thus free of personal bias: every person with a Level-4 warning is automatically put into the Category, and — as soon as we create the Category page — it will be available for checking by whoever is inclined. I suspect there are hundreds, probably thousands, of people who are being overlooked and who are currently thumbing their noses at the system. For each case to have to be individually reported is a huge waste of time and energy, and leads to uneven results. Bill 23:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(Again, edit conflict!) I can see the problem caused by the substing, you phrased it well. If, however, this idea turns out to be valuable, then maybe the substing might be made to bypass this particular template: surely in the bowels of the code for this stuff, it's merely a matter of insert an exception line. Also, a refinement to my original proposal: Level‑4 warnings are not properly the things one wants to track, but so to speak, Level‑5. If, having been slapped with a 4, the User realizes enough is enough, the Category, under my original idea, sits there endlessly and uselessly. What is needed is a system allowing any editor, admin or not, automatically to carry thru the Level‑4 threat, sort of by proxy: by sending the next vandalism violation straight to the Category page. Notice, though, that that's too little again, in that it relies on someone spotting a post‑4 vandalism and doing something. What might be ideal would be a sort of a "bell" that would "ring" when a User with a Level‑4 rating edited any article, no matter what.

I still feel that the basic premise of allowing unregistered editing is flawed, since it forces good editors into the position of wasting vast amounts of time and energy on all this stupidity. The Village Pump has the beginnings of a vote on this. And no, nothing is written in stone: as of a few days ago, because of the Seigenthaler mess, unregistered article creation is no longer permitted, at least in the main namespace. Bill 23:55, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is less time and energy involved in the current system. A user posts on the admin intervention page, an admin tabs the vandal's contributions and talk page, and applies a block. Under a category system, there would be no way for an admin to watchlist for new vandals, and it would become necessary to manually edit every instance of test-4 to remove the category tag when done. If you look into the history of the admin intervention page, you'll see that vandals are dealt with almost immediately. // Pathoschild 23:45, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vandals are not in fact dealt with almost instantaneously. I find many, many pages where someone bleats that "(text of Test4)" and there's been quite a bit of vandalism since, and nothing done. Worse, the next editor of the User Talk page finds nothing better to do than put a Test‑n and start over again! Bill 23:57, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Admin intervention almost instantaneously follows the report, not final warnings like test4. Although I commend you for trying to find a more efficient system, this template is very heavily used and substed; even in the small period of time before I reverted, your version found its way to several talk pages. I would suggest that you experiment with a sandbox or lesser-used template, or discuss at the village pump. // Pathoschild 00:04, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In the pages I track (I admittedly tend to steer clear of "big" articles like Jesus in favor of small articles like Cannaiola), I see far more un-followed-up Level‑4's than otherwise. I'm dropping the idea. Too much energy spent on it as is. At some point someone will find a system to take care of the vandalism problem; the simplest is to require traceable registration for editing. Bill 01:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To speed the blocks on these people, how about adding these links for admins to work off of? They would have to go at the bottom of the template. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU

Admin: block | unblock / Info: contribs | kate's tool | page moves | block log | block list

Personally I oppose that; Having the single {{s/wnote}} (from which this list is taken) with those links is less of a strain on the servers, is standardised in appearance and location, and is placed on first warning instead of last. See 204.113.91.19's talk page for an example of its use. On IRC you cite the potential confusion on the part of user's on whose page this would be placed. I think its position before the dated headers helps allay any such problems, although it could be reduced in size to lower visual impact. Feel free to make any suggestions about the template at the WikiProject on User Warnings' talk page. // Pathoschild 08:25, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As i was only suggesting adding this to test4-n, which should always being being subst'd anyway, how would this signifigantly affect server performance? xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 08:46, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The links work by parsing the {{PAGENAMEE}} variable seven times, once for every link. This is true even if the template is subst'd, unless you subst each occurance of that variable afterwards. With a single standardised template, there are seven per page and this has very little effect on server performance. However, if these links are repeated several times throughout the text, the amount of server resources needed to parse the page scales accordingly. // Pathoschild 09:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't we have the same problem of multiple parsings if the s/wnote template is used currently? As for repeating several times throughout the text, do you mean if they have multiple level 4 test warnings, because except for a few isp proxy addresses (a few aol) this would have to be a pretty rare occurance. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 17:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatley would jsut the Admin:block link be helpful, as often after placing a test4 on a persistant vandal I'm usually off to AIV with them anyway. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 17:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I added this template (although I forgot to subst it) to a user's talk page and the text that came up was that the user had been blocked for 24 hours. The article in question was not refered to in the text either, which is why I had used the -n version. --Mal 19:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind - my mistake: I had inadvertantly pressed the 5 key instead of 4! --Mal 19:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been changing inclusions of Stop hand.png to point to Stop hand.svg but couldn't do that here because the template is protected. – ∅ (∅), 17:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(cross-posted to Template talk:test4) For non-admins using this template, there is often a problem in that it loses all credibility very quickly. A test4 is placed on a user's page. They vandalize again, and are reported to AIV. If there's a backlog or no admins around, it may be quite a while before they are blocked, in which time other users can do nothing but repeat test4, each one saying they will be blocked next time, and the vandal by now not believing it at all. (As is mentioned in the talk above, but I have a different solution/idea). So, perhaps a better wording would be "If you vandalize again, you may be blocked without further warning". This still conveys the message that 1 more attack can mean a block, but it doesn't instantly lose credibility if they aren't blocked after their next attack, due to the above reasons. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 18:42, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Been a few days with no comments. I'm gonna be BOLD and just try changing it. Maybe then more people will notice, and if anyone disagrees, then it can be discussed here. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 03:25, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Haha, nope, the page is protected. Ok, guess I'll wait longer for some replies then. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 03:27, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • At that point you can try using {{bv}}. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • That seems like more of an alternate test1 or 2, for more severe first vandalism, to me, since it's "welcoming" them - not one for someone awaiting a ban. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 08:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Here's the wording I decided on, I made a template out of it in my user space, to use myself, since I think it works better. "This is your last warning. If you continue to vandalize, as you did to -, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia without further warning." I still think this template would be better off if more similar to that (though maybe someone else could word it better), but for now I'll just be using that myself. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 19:36, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other problems with the template is from changing IP AOL vandals, and vandals who stop for 24 hours, with their next vandalism usually not resulting in a block. The test3 wording has the same problem. Since these vandals are usually not blocked, we shouldn't say so in the test messages. -- Jeandré, 2006-07-07t11:47z

The line break change introduced on September 8, 2006 by Rossami is causing a problem with formatting of consecutive substituted test4-n templates. See for example, User talk:213.232.79.149. "This is your last warning" is appearing attached to the signature of the previous template instead of on its own line for some reason. Also, I find the line break to be somewhat extraneous as it leaves the first sentence dangling in mid-air and the following line (including most signatures) is long enough for most browser windows as to require wrapping only a few characters, breaking the signature poorly. I understand from the edit summary that it was added for some sort of icon wrapping, but there must be a better way. A suggestion might be to box test4/test4-n since it gives it a greater finality and helps prevent some of these formatting issues. ju66l3r 14:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]