Wikipedia:IRCMonitor

IRCMonitor

Developer(s)	AutoWikiBrowser project
Stable release	1.0.1.1 / 2007-09-15
Operating system	Windows
Type	Wikipedia monitoring and anti-vandal tool
License	GPL
Website	sourceforge.net/.../autowikibrowser

The IRCMonitor is a tool that monitors recent changes and logs on Wikipedia and assists in handling it. It has features of quick reverting, issuing warnings to users and reporting vandals to WP:AIV. IRCM is a daughter project of AutoWikiBrowser.

Rules of use

• User of this software must have a thorough knowledge of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, especially those that deal with vandalism.
• Don't use simple revert function to revert anything that is not simple vandalism or blatant spam.
• Assume good faith.

Repeated abuse of these rules will result, without warning, in the software being disabled.

Versions

See Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/History

Using this software

(1) Register

IRCMonitor shares its user list with AWB. To request approval, add your name to the requests for registration if you would like to use the software. For security reasons, only registered users (see the list on the check page) are able to use IRCMonitor.

Anyone can be registered, but only if an admin approves your registration by placing your name on the check page. As a general rule only users with more than 500 mainspace edits, no history of edit warring and recent blocks will be registered. You will probably not be contacted when your registration has been approved, so check the page periodically for your name. Note that admins need no approval to use this tool as they are already trusted enough by community.

(2) Download

After you are registered, or if you just want to examine the software, you may download AutoWikiBrowser package that contains IRCMonitor from SourceForge. Note: This is a development version!

IRCMonitor requires Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or newer (Unicode doesn't work properly on Windows 98/Me). It also requires Version 2 of the .NET framework (download .NET framework).

If the software doesn't work, it probably means that you're not registered or that you don't have the correct .NET framework installed.

(3) Get started

1. Start IRCMonitor. Go to the options tab, and under "channel", select the channel you want to monitor from the drop-down menu (for the English Wikipedia, #en.wikipedia). Then click the "Connect" button at the top and return to the Edits tab. After a couple of seconds, you should see a live feed of recent changes.
2. Click on edit you'd like to check (because list items are moving downwards pretty fast, you can improve your aiming by clicking "Pause" button on toolbar). IRCMonitor will pop up the context menu for this edit. Select "Load diff" and IRCMonitor will switch to browser view that will load diff.
3. If you see vandalism in this edit, click "Revert" button. It will bring up some options:

   Revert and warn

   after reverting this edit (and probably other edits of this particular user to this page) IRCM will display talk page of user you've reverted so you could see what's going on and issue him a warning for his edits.

   Revert and report

   after reverting this edit IRCM will open appropriate section of Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism page for editing and add the entry for user you've reverted. You can optionally leave a brief comment on this user and click "Save page" to submit your request. Please read instructions on AIV page before reporting there!

   Revert

   simple revert, without further actions.

Having problems?

• It uses the Internet Explorer core, so if you have problems, make sure your IE is working. Make sure you have logged into Wikipedia using IE. If you have altered any settings regarding scripts, first use Tools > Internet Options > 'Advanced' tab > Click on 'Restore Defaults' and then try AWB again.
  • If you have made changes to monobook.css (or whatever your theme is) that require CSS 2 or 3, they may not appear properly in IE and thus in AWB.
• A buggy monobook.js can often cause IE to display blank pages or crash IRCM. This javascript problem can be avoided by disabling Active Scripting in IE INTERNET OPTIONS - SECURITY - CUSTOM LEVEL.

User manual

This section will explain what all the bits and pieces do, please help!

The basic process is this:

Make IRCM log in as a user.

Watch live RC feed of edits, new pages or log entries.

Login

• IRCM uses the Internet Explorer engine, and uses the IE login. If you have different accounts, you'll have to log out of Wikipedia in IE and log back in as your other account. If you want to run IRCM and do manual edits at the same time using 2 different accounts, use IE for vandalfighting and do your manual edits in another browser like Firefox or Opera.

Edits tab

This tab is displayed when IRCM starts. It displays live feed of recent changes in a table that has 5 columns:

• Page - title of the page
• User - username of the user who modified it
• Minor - contains "M" if this edit is marked as minor
• +/- - difference in characters between page content after this edit, and prior to it. Please note that sometimes a buggy IRC bot may give a positive value, when in fact the page has undergone massive content removal.
• Comment - edit summary

All edits are color-coded:

Edit by anonymous user

Edit by registered user

Edit by whitelisted user

Edit by blacklisted user

Edit to watchlisted page

Checked edit

All colors can be redefined on Options tab

Getting the sources

See Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Sources

See also

• Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser

External links

• Project home on Sourceforge
• Browsing the sources on Sourceforge
• Regular Expression Language Elements from the .NET Framework Developer's Guide in the online MSDN documentation of Microsoft.