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This page in a nutshell: While cleaning up vandalism manually, look for suspicious hints in the recent changes feed, such as change in page size, edit summaries, and tags. Don't check every single change. |
This article gives advice on how to clean up vandalism manually through the recent changes feed, also known as the "old school" way of cleaning up vandalism. Sometimes you need to do so when Huggle or STiki fails, or you have problems installing them, or any other reason. There are several things to check for, such as change in page size, edit summary, and tags. Do NOT check every change. Due to the high volume of edits per minute, checking every diff link will waste a lot of time, and you won't have time to check them all before new entries come in. Choose suspicious entries to patrol, which will be covered in the following sections.
A recent changes entry looks something like this: