Hello Vwilding, and welcome to your Counter Vandalism Unit Academy page! Every person I instruct will have their own page on which I will give them support and tasks for them to complete. Please make sure you have this page added to your watchlist. Your academy page has been specifically designed according to you and what you have requested instruction in - for that reason, please be as specific as possible in your answers, so that I know the best ways to help you (and do not be afraid to let me know if you think something isn't working). If you have any general queries about anti-vandalism (or anything else), you are more than welcome to raise them with me at my talk page.
Make sure you read through Wikipedia:Vandalism as that's the knowledge which most of the questions I ask you and tasks you do will revolve around.
This page will be built up over your time in the Academy, with new sections being added as you complete old ones. Each section will end with a task, written in bold type - this might just ask a question, or it might require you to go and do something. You can answer a question by typing the answer below the task; if you have to do something, you will need to provide diffs to demonstrate that you have completed the task. Some sections will have more than one task, sometimes additional tasks may be added to a section as you complete them. Please always sign your responses to tasks as you would on a talk page.
There are several sections of the training course. In some of them, will be asking you to do perform practical exercises; in others, I will ask you to read certain policies and guidelines, and then ask you some questions about their content. To be clear, it is not a problem if you give the wrong answer to any of the questions - making mistakes and discussing them is a crucial part of the learning process. For that reason, it is important that you do not attempt to find previous users' training pages in order to identify the 'right' answers to give: all your answers should be your own, so that we can identify and address any misconceptions that you might have. There is no time pressure to complete the course: we will go at whatever pace works for you, and you can take a pause or ask questions at any point along the way.
Counter-vandalism work can result in very large watchlists, which can make it more difficult to monitor pages using that alone. For this reason, I will ping you whenever I update this page with some feedback or a new task; I would also ask you to ping me when you have completed a task, so that I get a notification telling me that it's ready for review. See WP:PING for details on how to do this if you aren't sure.
I see you've already started using Twinkle to revert vandalism and warn users. There are other tools out there, which we may discuss later on, but Twinkle is what we will use for the majority of this course - it's enormously useful.
When patrolling for vandalism, you may often come across edits which are unhelpful, but not vandalism - these are good faith edits. It is important to recognise the difference between a vandalism edit and a good faith edit, especially because Twinkle gives you the option of labelling edits you revert as such. Please read WP:AGF and WP:NOT VANDALISM.
When you use Twinkle to warn a user, you have a number of options to choose from: you can select the kind of warning (for different offences), and the level of warning (from 1 to 4, for increasing severity). Knowing which warning to issue and what level is very important. Further information can be found at WP:WARN and WP:UWUL.
OK - onto the next task - please ping me once you've filled up the table. GirthSummit (blether) 07:46, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
# | Diff of your revert | Your comment (optional). If you report to AIV please include the diff | Trainer's Comment |
---|---|---|---|
1 | [7] | No faith assumption, though from the content of the edit, likely attacking an individual the editor knows offline. | Agree that it was probably vandalism, someone making fun of their friend. Your warning was appropriate, and I see the IP has been blocked for three months now. |
2 | [8] | ClueBot beat me to one of thise user's other edits, so I checked their contribs and found this. Their username suggests they're trying to hide their vandalism | Well done - yes, always take a look at the contribs when you see unpleasant stuff like this, clean up whatever mess they've been making. That's the kind of thing I'd give a 4im warning for, and I see they've been blocked already. (I agree with you about the username - that's probably a policy violation in itself, and so you could have reported immediately to UAA - we'll do more about this in shortly in a future section). |
3 | [9] | AGF - not necessarily vandalism | Yes - random characters, first edit from that IP in almost a year - could feasibly be a test. I'd probably have given an 'Editing test' warning rather than a vandalism warning for this one, but no big deal. |
4 | [10] | Changing of names with an edit summary of "fixed typo" = deliberate vandalism | Yep - if they'd done that without an edit summary, I'd have AGFed and given a test edit warning; with the edit summary, it's obviously deliberate messing about. |
5 | [11] | Should've made this one good-faith and given a summary for disruptive editing | Hmm - I guess someone protesting about a WMF banner asking for donations? Vandalism is fine for this, I can't think of any way that this is intended to improve the article, or test their ability to edit. |
6 | [12] | I really need to stop automatically clicking the vandalism button - this is unsourced and should refer the user to WP:RS. | Agreed - that's probably a good faith attempt to add information, but as it's unsourced it needs to be removed. AGF revert, edit summary along the lines of 'Unsourced', level 1 warning for adding unsourced information (unless it's not their first time, in which case escalate as appropriate). |
7 | [13] | Deliberate and persistent name change, and with a history of vandalism, reported to AIV and user subsequently blocked for 1 month [14] | Yep, nice job. |
8 | [15] | No faith assumption - user previously added unsourced information without a warning (and is likely writing about themselves). | Yes, and correct warning notice. |
9 | [16] | Agree | |
10 | [17] | The same article as above! Perhaps the user has switched to a logged-in account? | Possibly - disruptive anyway, so revert/warn appropriate. |
11 | [18] | Persistent vandalism, user was already given a level 4, so was reported to AIV | Yep, user has been blocked and the page has been protected (more on that later). |
N/A | [19] | I see you beat me to it! | Yes, that was a strange one - user was making some silly comments in the article. I started out with a good faith test edit warning, but switched to vandalism as the continued. They seem to have stopped now. |
12 | [20] | I assumed good faith... | You were generous! |
13 | [21] | ...but realistically, this is vandalism. | Yes. They were just being silly and messing about, nothing offensive, but it's disruptive nevertheless and could not possible be intended to improve the article, so it is vandalism. |
14 | [22] | I'd have probably given a test edit warning for that - I agree it's probably vandalism, but it could be someone just seeing whether they really can edit the page. | |
15 | [23] | Blatant vandalism | Yes - clear case of vandalism. |
Having reviewed your recent contributions, it's clear that you've got a pretty good understanding of what is and is not vandalism already, so I think this might be a good time to discuss Rollback.
The rollback user right allows trusted and experienced vandalism fighters to revert vandalism with the click of one button, not unlike the "rollback" button that you've already been using in Twinkle. This would give you a new rollback button in addition to the three you've been seeing in Twinkle. The new rollback button is faster than the Twinkle rollback button, but more importantly, having rollback gives you access to downloadable counter-vandalism software like Huggle and WP:Stiki.
If you're interested, take a look at our rollback guideline at WP:Rollback and feel free to answer the questions below, then we can look at applying for the permission (you apply at WP:PERM, and I would add my recommendation to your application.) To be clear though, Rollback is not an essential part of this course, so if you're not interested, feel free to skip this section and we can just continue using Twinkle (which is still the tool I personally use more than any other in counter vandalism work). GirthSummit (blether) 18:07, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Protecting and deleting pages are two additional measures that can be used to prevent and deal with vandalism. Only an administrator can protect or delete pages; however, anyone can nominate a page for deletion or request protection. If you have Twinkle installed, you can use the Twinkle menu to request page protection or speedy deletion (the RPP or CSD options).
Please read the protection policy.
Hey, sorry I've been AWOL for the past few days, I've been revising and trying to be productive! I'd love to give STiki a try, recent changes patrolling can be a bit fast-paced, and I'd like to be able to make higher quality edits. vwilding talk 20:02, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Hopefully you'll have seen that you have been given access to Stiki now - I'd suggest that you install that and have a play with it. If you have any questions, put them up in the Stiki section and ping me from there - I'll add the next section of the course below and we'll continue in there. GirthSummit (blether) 17:42, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Please read WP:CSD.
In past iterations of this course, students have been asked to go out and actually tag pages for deletion, but with the introduction of WP:ACPERM, the amount of straight vandalism that gets created directly in mainspace has reduced dramatically. As such, I'm going to ask you to say how you would act in a set of hypothetical scenarios. What would you do if you saw the page listed in each scenario? Note that not all scenarios may warrant speedy deletion.
A user with the username "BobSucks" creates an article called "John Smith" that contains solely the following text:
John Smith is the worst elementary school teacher on the planet.
A user with the username "GoodTimesLLC" creates a user page with the following text:
'''Good Times LLC''' is an organization dedicated to helping your children get the highest quality education at an affordable price. Visit our website at goodtimes.info and contact us at 123-456-7890.
A user creates an article titled "Edward Gordon" with the following text:
'''Edward Gordon''' (born July 1998) is an aspiring American actor and songwriter. So far, he has starred in many school plays and has published two albums on SoundCloud. He has over 5,000 subscribers on YouTube.
A user creates an article titled "Bazz Ward" with the following content:
Bazz Ward was a great roadie and I wish he was as well known as Lemmy. Cheers Bazz.
(Attribution: Ritchie333 came up with this scenario as a question to an old RfA candidate. I've borrowed his example here. Hint: Try Google searching a few key terms from this short article.)
A user creates an article that was clearly copied and pasted directly from another website, which states "All Rights Reserved" at the bottom of it. Would your answer be the same if it didn't state "All Rights Reserved" at the bottom?
A user creates an article, but you can't understand any of it because it's in a foreign language.
A user creates an article, but shortly after creating it, the same user blanks the article by removing all of its content.
A new user creates a user page with nothing but the following content:
Jlakjrelekajroi3j192809jowejfldjoifu328ur3pieisgreat
How would this scenario be different if the page was created in a different namespace?
@ Girth Summit: I think the above's correct, as always your advice is appreciated. By the way, thank you for your post on my Rollback application, should've asked you for that anyway :) vwilding talk 10:47, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Hi, and sorry for the short hiatus - the next section is below. By the way, I see that you've done a bit of Huggling since getting the rollback right - Huggle isn't formally a part of this course, but if you have any questions about it please feel free to ask. (I don't use it much myself, Twinkle and Stiki are more within my comfort zone, but I know my way around it and should be able to point you in the right direction if needed.) Cheers GirthSummit (blether) 12:56, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Please read WP:Revdel and WP:Oversight.
Occasionally, vandalism will be so extreme that it needs to be removed from publicly accessible revision histories - the criteria for these are described in the articles above. Revision deletion hides the edit from anyone except admins; oversight provides an even greater level of restriction, with only oversighters able to see the comments. The threshold between the two is quite fine - I've been on the wrong side of it a few times. If you are in doubt as to whether revdel or oversight is required, the best bet is to forward it to the oversight team - whoever reviews it will be able to make the decision and act on it.
@ Viljo: Next section below - what was with the username change by the way? You don't have to answer that - it's entirely your business, I'm just curious/nosey ;) GirthSummit (blether) 21:58, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a policy which details the types of usernames which users are permitted to have. Some users (including me) patrol the User creation log to check for new users with inappropriate usernames (note that you can set this to view 500 users rather than the default 50 - I find that easier to scroll through quickly, and the link on my userpage takes you there directly). There are four kinds of usernames that are specifically disallowed:
Please read WP:USERNAME, and pay particluar attention to dealing with inappropriate usernames.
I hope this never happens, but as you participate in counter-vandalism on Wikipedia, it is possible that you may come across a threat of physical harm. In the past, we have had vandals submit death threats in Wikipedia articles, as well as possible suicide notes. The problem is, Wikipedia editors don't have the proper training to evaluate whether these threats are credible in most cases.
Fortunately, there's a guideline for cases like this. Please read Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm carefully and respond to the questions below.
emergency@wikimedia.org
immediately with the diff of the edit, and to ensure it's dealt with, I'd probably hop in IRC to the revdel channel.@ Girth Summit: viljo talk 11:59, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
Occasionally, some vandals will not appreciate your good work and try to harass or troll you. In these situations, you must remain calm and ignore them. If they engage in harassment or personal attacks, you should not engage with them and leave a note at WP:ANI. If they vandalise your user page or user talk page, simply remove the vandalism without interacting with them. Please read WP:DENY.
Sometimes during your patrolling for vandalism, you'll come across an edit that removes most, if not all, of the content from an article or section. It's easy to simply revert, warn, and continue on, but actually, these kind of edits usually require even more attention than the average malicious edit. Accidentally reverting helpful blanking is one of the main pitfalls that newer vandalism patrollers can fall into, so in order to avoid this situation, please read the following pages and answer the questions.
Before you answer these questions, it may be helpful to read WP:BLANK, WP:CR, and this user essay.
How could a blanking edit be helpful?
What are some of the main things to look for in an edit that blanks a lot of text?
Please find three examples of an edit that blanks content, and explain why they are either good or bad.
Hello Vwilding, and welcome to your Counter Vandalism Unit Academy page! Every person I instruct will have their own page on which I will give them support and tasks for them to complete. Please make sure you have this page added to your watchlist. Your academy page has been specifically designed according to you and what you have requested instruction in - for that reason, please be as specific as possible in your answers, so that I know the best ways to help you (and do not be afraid to let me know if you think something isn't working). If you have any general queries about anti-vandalism (or anything else), you are more than welcome to raise them with me at my talk page.
Make sure you read through Wikipedia:Vandalism as that's the knowledge which most of the questions I ask you and tasks you do will revolve around.
This page will be built up over your time in the Academy, with new sections being added as you complete old ones. Each section will end with a task, written in bold type - this might just ask a question, or it might require you to go and do something. You can answer a question by typing the answer below the task; if you have to do something, you will need to provide diffs to demonstrate that you have completed the task. Some sections will have more than one task, sometimes additional tasks may be added to a section as you complete them. Please always sign your responses to tasks as you would on a talk page.
There are several sections of the training course. In some of them, will be asking you to do perform practical exercises; in others, I will ask you to read certain policies and guidelines, and then ask you some questions about their content. To be clear, it is not a problem if you give the wrong answer to any of the questions - making mistakes and discussing them is a crucial part of the learning process. For that reason, it is important that you do not attempt to find previous users' training pages in order to identify the 'right' answers to give: all your answers should be your own, so that we can identify and address any misconceptions that you might have. There is no time pressure to complete the course: we will go at whatever pace works for you, and you can take a pause or ask questions at any point along the way.
Counter-vandalism work can result in very large watchlists, which can make it more difficult to monitor pages using that alone. For this reason, I will ping you whenever I update this page with some feedback or a new task; I would also ask you to ping me when you have completed a task, so that I get a notification telling me that it's ready for review. See WP:PING for details on how to do this if you aren't sure.
I see you've already started using Twinkle to revert vandalism and warn users. There are other tools out there, which we may discuss later on, but Twinkle is what we will use for the majority of this course - it's enormously useful.
When patrolling for vandalism, you may often come across edits which are unhelpful, but not vandalism - these are good faith edits. It is important to recognise the difference between a vandalism edit and a good faith edit, especially because Twinkle gives you the option of labelling edits you revert as such. Please read WP:AGF and WP:NOT VANDALISM.
When you use Twinkle to warn a user, you have a number of options to choose from: you can select the kind of warning (for different offences), and the level of warning (from 1 to 4, for increasing severity). Knowing which warning to issue and what level is very important. Further information can be found at WP:WARN and WP:UWUL.
OK - onto the next task - please ping me once you've filled up the table. GirthSummit (blether) 07:46, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
# | Diff of your revert | Your comment (optional). If you report to AIV please include the diff | Trainer's Comment |
---|---|---|---|
1 | [7] | No faith assumption, though from the content of the edit, likely attacking an individual the editor knows offline. | Agree that it was probably vandalism, someone making fun of their friend. Your warning was appropriate, and I see the IP has been blocked for three months now. |
2 | [8] | ClueBot beat me to one of thise user's other edits, so I checked their contribs and found this. Their username suggests they're trying to hide their vandalism | Well done - yes, always take a look at the contribs when you see unpleasant stuff like this, clean up whatever mess they've been making. That's the kind of thing I'd give a 4im warning for, and I see they've been blocked already. (I agree with you about the username - that's probably a policy violation in itself, and so you could have reported immediately to UAA - we'll do more about this in shortly in a future section). |
3 | [9] | AGF - not necessarily vandalism | Yes - random characters, first edit from that IP in almost a year - could feasibly be a test. I'd probably have given an 'Editing test' warning rather than a vandalism warning for this one, but no big deal. |
4 | [10] | Changing of names with an edit summary of "fixed typo" = deliberate vandalism | Yep - if they'd done that without an edit summary, I'd have AGFed and given a test edit warning; with the edit summary, it's obviously deliberate messing about. |
5 | [11] | Should've made this one good-faith and given a summary for disruptive editing | Hmm - I guess someone protesting about a WMF banner asking for donations? Vandalism is fine for this, I can't think of any way that this is intended to improve the article, or test their ability to edit. |
6 | [12] | I really need to stop automatically clicking the vandalism button - this is unsourced and should refer the user to WP:RS. | Agreed - that's probably a good faith attempt to add information, but as it's unsourced it needs to be removed. AGF revert, edit summary along the lines of 'Unsourced', level 1 warning for adding unsourced information (unless it's not their first time, in which case escalate as appropriate). |
7 | [13] | Deliberate and persistent name change, and with a history of vandalism, reported to AIV and user subsequently blocked for 1 month [14] | Yep, nice job. |
8 | [15] | No faith assumption - user previously added unsourced information without a warning (and is likely writing about themselves). | Yes, and correct warning notice. |
9 | [16] | Agree | |
10 | [17] | The same article as above! Perhaps the user has switched to a logged-in account? | Possibly - disruptive anyway, so revert/warn appropriate. |
11 | [18] | Persistent vandalism, user was already given a level 4, so was reported to AIV | Yep, user has been blocked and the page has been protected (more on that later). |
N/A | [19] | I see you beat me to it! | Yes, that was a strange one - user was making some silly comments in the article. I started out with a good faith test edit warning, but switched to vandalism as the continued. They seem to have stopped now. |
12 | [20] | I assumed good faith... | You were generous! |
13 | [21] | ...but realistically, this is vandalism. | Yes. They were just being silly and messing about, nothing offensive, but it's disruptive nevertheless and could not possible be intended to improve the article, so it is vandalism. |
14 | [22] | I'd have probably given a test edit warning for that - I agree it's probably vandalism, but it could be someone just seeing whether they really can edit the page. | |
15 | [23] | Blatant vandalism | Yes - clear case of vandalism. |
Having reviewed your recent contributions, it's clear that you've got a pretty good understanding of what is and is not vandalism already, so I think this might be a good time to discuss Rollback.
The rollback user right allows trusted and experienced vandalism fighters to revert vandalism with the click of one button, not unlike the "rollback" button that you've already been using in Twinkle. This would give you a new rollback button in addition to the three you've been seeing in Twinkle. The new rollback button is faster than the Twinkle rollback button, but more importantly, having rollback gives you access to downloadable counter-vandalism software like Huggle and WP:Stiki.
If you're interested, take a look at our rollback guideline at WP:Rollback and feel free to answer the questions below, then we can look at applying for the permission (you apply at WP:PERM, and I would add my recommendation to your application.) To be clear though, Rollback is not an essential part of this course, so if you're not interested, feel free to skip this section and we can just continue using Twinkle (which is still the tool I personally use more than any other in counter vandalism work). GirthSummit (blether) 18:07, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Protecting and deleting pages are two additional measures that can be used to prevent and deal with vandalism. Only an administrator can protect or delete pages; however, anyone can nominate a page for deletion or request protection. If you have Twinkle installed, you can use the Twinkle menu to request page protection or speedy deletion (the RPP or CSD options).
Please read the protection policy.
Hey, sorry I've been AWOL for the past few days, I've been revising and trying to be productive! I'd love to give STiki a try, recent changes patrolling can be a bit fast-paced, and I'd like to be able to make higher quality edits. vwilding talk 20:02, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Hopefully you'll have seen that you have been given access to Stiki now - I'd suggest that you install that and have a play with it. If you have any questions, put them up in the Stiki section and ping me from there - I'll add the next section of the course below and we'll continue in there. GirthSummit (blether) 17:42, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Please read WP:CSD.
In past iterations of this course, students have been asked to go out and actually tag pages for deletion, but with the introduction of WP:ACPERM, the amount of straight vandalism that gets created directly in mainspace has reduced dramatically. As such, I'm going to ask you to say how you would act in a set of hypothetical scenarios. What would you do if you saw the page listed in each scenario? Note that not all scenarios may warrant speedy deletion.
A user with the username "BobSucks" creates an article called "John Smith" that contains solely the following text:
John Smith is the worst elementary school teacher on the planet.
A user with the username "GoodTimesLLC" creates a user page with the following text:
'''Good Times LLC''' is an organization dedicated to helping your children get the highest quality education at an affordable price. Visit our website at goodtimes.info and contact us at 123-456-7890.
A user creates an article titled "Edward Gordon" with the following text:
'''Edward Gordon''' (born July 1998) is an aspiring American actor and songwriter. So far, he has starred in many school plays and has published two albums on SoundCloud. He has over 5,000 subscribers on YouTube.
A user creates an article titled "Bazz Ward" with the following content:
Bazz Ward was a great roadie and I wish he was as well known as Lemmy. Cheers Bazz.
(Attribution: Ritchie333 came up with this scenario as a question to an old RfA candidate. I've borrowed his example here. Hint: Try Google searching a few key terms from this short article.)
A user creates an article that was clearly copied and pasted directly from another website, which states "All Rights Reserved" at the bottom of it. Would your answer be the same if it didn't state "All Rights Reserved" at the bottom?
A user creates an article, but you can't understand any of it because it's in a foreign language.
A user creates an article, but shortly after creating it, the same user blanks the article by removing all of its content.
A new user creates a user page with nothing but the following content:
Jlakjrelekajroi3j192809jowejfldjoifu328ur3pieisgreat
How would this scenario be different if the page was created in a different namespace?
@ Girth Summit: I think the above's correct, as always your advice is appreciated. By the way, thank you for your post on my Rollback application, should've asked you for that anyway :) vwilding talk 10:47, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Hi, and sorry for the short hiatus - the next section is below. By the way, I see that you've done a bit of Huggling since getting the rollback right - Huggle isn't formally a part of this course, but if you have any questions about it please feel free to ask. (I don't use it much myself, Twinkle and Stiki are more within my comfort zone, but I know my way around it and should be able to point you in the right direction if needed.) Cheers GirthSummit (blether) 12:56, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Please read WP:Revdel and WP:Oversight.
Occasionally, vandalism will be so extreme that it needs to be removed from publicly accessible revision histories - the criteria for these are described in the articles above. Revision deletion hides the edit from anyone except admins; oversight provides an even greater level of restriction, with only oversighters able to see the comments. The threshold between the two is quite fine - I've been on the wrong side of it a few times. If you are in doubt as to whether revdel or oversight is required, the best bet is to forward it to the oversight team - whoever reviews it will be able to make the decision and act on it.
@ Viljo: Next section below - what was with the username change by the way? You don't have to answer that - it's entirely your business, I'm just curious/nosey ;) GirthSummit (blether) 21:58, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a policy which details the types of usernames which users are permitted to have. Some users (including me) patrol the User creation log to check for new users with inappropriate usernames (note that you can set this to view 500 users rather than the default 50 - I find that easier to scroll through quickly, and the link on my userpage takes you there directly). There are four kinds of usernames that are specifically disallowed:
Please read WP:USERNAME, and pay particluar attention to dealing with inappropriate usernames.
I hope this never happens, but as you participate in counter-vandalism on Wikipedia, it is possible that you may come across a threat of physical harm. In the past, we have had vandals submit death threats in Wikipedia articles, as well as possible suicide notes. The problem is, Wikipedia editors don't have the proper training to evaluate whether these threats are credible in most cases.
Fortunately, there's a guideline for cases like this. Please read Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm carefully and respond to the questions below.
emergency@wikimedia.org
immediately with the diff of the edit, and to ensure it's dealt with, I'd probably hop in IRC to the revdel channel.@ Girth Summit: viljo talk 11:59, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
Occasionally, some vandals will not appreciate your good work and try to harass or troll you. In these situations, you must remain calm and ignore them. If they engage in harassment or personal attacks, you should not engage with them and leave a note at WP:ANI. If they vandalise your user page or user talk page, simply remove the vandalism without interacting with them. Please read WP:DENY.
Sometimes during your patrolling for vandalism, you'll come across an edit that removes most, if not all, of the content from an article or section. It's easy to simply revert, warn, and continue on, but actually, these kind of edits usually require even more attention than the average malicious edit. Accidentally reverting helpful blanking is one of the main pitfalls that newer vandalism patrollers can fall into, so in order to avoid this situation, please read the following pages and answer the questions.
Before you answer these questions, it may be helpful to read WP:BLANK, WP:CR, and this user essay.
How could a blanking edit be helpful?
What are some of the main things to look for in an edit that blanks a lot of text?
Please find three examples of an edit that blanks content, and explain why they are either good or bad.