User:Henna/VF

Vandal Fighter, as the name suggests, is a descendant of the original CryptoDerk's VandalFighter. User:Henna has been roped into taking over maintenance for it.

Brief description: Vandal Fighter is software that watches Wikipedia edits in real-time and has many built-in filters (multiple regular expressions can also be used) to allow users to specify exactly what types of information they would like to see. Examples: watching custom article watchlists, watching edits by non logged in (IP) editors, ignoring edits by people marked as "ok" (or, the reverse as well), and watching comments with the word "revert" in them are just a few of the almost limitless ways in which Vandal Fighter can be configured to produce custom output.

Manual
Download the topmost vf.jar file.

Upgrading
ALWAYS make a backup of vfdata.dat before trying out a new version.

Manual for using this page
Feel perfectly free to add feature requests, or bugs, just leave your name so I can find you if I need more info and you're not watching this page :). Please leave the hints and releases alone apart from editing. It's perfectly alright to fix links, language and such. Just leave them uncluttered :)

Getting Help
Leave questions where I can find them :), I regularly read these pages, my userpages on en: and my userpages on nl:. If you need urgent help, you can try irc. I'm usually found int the #wikipedia channel on freenode, as well as on #nl.wikipedia and a few others, I go by the name of henna, or hennaBED or variants. I might not be able to help immediately, I'm only human and in need of sleep, food, outside air&sun. I'm also on msn as hennawikipedia.be and email at that address is read.

How it works
Vandal Fighter connects to an Internet Relay Chat server where it reads the RC from Wikimedia's bots (which means it doesn't have to query the database at all). Relevant information is then added to a table (see screenshot).

Note: Though you can use any browser, it's probably easiest if you use a browser that supports tabbed browsing (e.g. Firefox 2+ or IE7) and set it to open links from an external program in a new tab.

Extra functionality
To assist in sorting the good from the bad, the following features are present


 * User whitelist and blacklist - whitelisted user edits do not show up in the table, blacklisted user edits are highlighted. Users can be autoadded to the blacklist if they are reverted by someone in the whitelist or if they created a page that is speedied.
 * Article watchlist - edits to pages on the watchlist are highlighted. You can auto-watchlist speedied pages, making it easy to see recreations, and you can also import your Wikipedia watchlist (go here to view your full watchlist).  Save that page as an html file and then import it into CDVF.
 * Regular expressions - allows you to watchlist, blacklist, or whitelist pages, summaries, or user names/IPs matching any regular expression. See the Java class for help on making regular expressions.  If you are having problems coming up with a proper regular expression, just ask on the talk page.
 * Basic examples:
 * Whitelisting the sandbox - Make sure the "Apply regexp whitelist to page names" option is checked and enter this regexp in the whitelist: ^Wikipedia:Sandbox
 * Whitelisting user talk pages - Make sure the "Apply regexp whitelist to page names" option is checked and enter this regexp in the whitelist: ^User talk:.*
 * Blacklisting edit summaries with the word "shit" - Make sure the "Apply regexp blacklist to edit summaries" option is checked and enter this regexp in the blacklist: .*shit.*
 * Easy access to edit data and user data
 * Clicking on the article name or the edit summary causes a browser window to open with the most recent edit. This works in both the table and the Watchlist.
 * Clicking on the user name causes a browser window to open with a list of the user's contributions. This works in both the table and the Whitelist/blacklist.
 * Clicking on the T causes a browser window to open to that user's talk page.
 * Clicking on the B causes a browser window to open to the block page to block the user. Or, if the option is set, will open up WP:VIP on en to report a vandal, if you're not an admin
 * Clicking on the X causes that row to be removed from the table.
 * Clicking on the Clear list button causes the entire table to be cleared, though the whitelist, blacklist, and watchlist entries will remain.
 * Clicking on the Pause button (or hitting Alt-A) pauses the feed. It can be unpaused later and resumed.  Edits can either be queued up or discarded.
 * Columns can be moved, sorted and resized so that you can easily view the information you want to see.

Additional behind-the-scenes functionality includes:
 * Special pages (Log/block, Log/delete) do not show up in the table. However, if a page that is in the table is deleted, it will be removed from the table.  This can be turned off.
 * Multiple edits on an article will only show up once in the table. That means if a vandal vandalizes an article, then someone on your whitelist reverts it, the row will disappear from the table.  This can be turned off.
 * All lists and options are saved, so they will appear next time without having to reenter them.

Usage
You will need the Java 2 Runtime Environment (J2RE, or JRE) version 1.6. If you do not know if you have this installed, you can attempt to run the program, but if it does not work, you will need to download the JRE. Here is a link to the latest JRE: click on Download Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6.

All that you need to do is download the 'jar' file, run it, and click the connect button. If you're using the command line, run.

Troubleshooting

 * FIRST: check your java version
 * If you are experiencing problems with Vandal Fighter, please check which version of the Java Runtime Environment you are using. Upgrading to the latest version may solve your problem, so please try this before reporting a bug below. The latest version can be downloaded from the java.sun.com website. If you only intend to run Vandal Fighter or other Java applications you should download and install the JRE 5.0 Update 9. If you also plan to develop Java applications, well you'll know exactly what to download.


 * importing watchlist
 * To import a watchlist first save the watchlist as an html file. Do not copy it, just FILE -> SAVE PAGE AS (or similar depending the browser).

Translation help
Want Vandalfighter in your own language? Translate the Messagesfile and send it back to me (hennar@wikipedia.be). The Messagesfile can be found in the .jar archive or at User:henna/VF/Translations, work it out (but maybe keep the English messages as well, easier when you have to change something later on) and send it to me, see above for contact details.

If you want, you can make the file on your homewiki somewhere or in subdirectories here, in which case you can copy user:henna/VF/translations as a startfile. (However, it is probably easier to use translating software to help you. Look further down the page for more info.)

3.5
''Went back to 3.3 to fix a bug (graying bug) which seemed determined not to be fixed. (12 Apr 2006)''

Development versions of 3.5 can be found at http://hekla.rave.org/vf/3.5 - the numbering scheme seems simple to me, but otherwise, the higher up the alphabet the newer. interesting additions, compared to 3.3: Vandalfighter 3.5b-3, maybe stable - August 2, 2006
 * English, French, Dutch and Italian vandalismchannel feeds
 * German translation
 * language chooser, and it will try to start with the language of your OS the first time
 * improved parser
 * tried to move the options screen to something a little more intuitive
 * fixed white/black/watchlists
 * textbased configfiles
 * fixed some small bugs
 * after opening the new version for the first time, you can move vfdata.dat to some safe storage or delete it. It's been replaced by vfdata2.dat & vfdata2.txt
 * fixed ip's only
 * managed to get the icon in there :)
 * fixed the non-ascii characters garbled bug
 * moved all configuration data to plain text configuration file
 * connect to several different channels in one go by entering the names separated with commas (eg #en.wikipedia,#nl.wikipedia)
 * Download does currently not work. Try to download beren.

3.3

 * fixed the links to contributions
 * fixed the import admins link, thx to User:That_Guy%2C_From_That_Show%21
 * fixed the importbutton (for sharing lists)
 * started localisation (finished setting up translation possibilities) (If anybody is willing to translate, it's just a simple file)
 * added Dutch anti-vandalism channel


 * Download vf.jar, Nederlandstalige versie
 * Download vf.jar, English version
 * Download vf.jar, version Française
 * Download vf.jar, versione italiana
 * Downloads currently do not work. Try to download beren (see below)

Previous versions
Previous versions and notes can be found on the previous versions page.

3.5b26 (beren)
Released 29-Nov-2006. This version is located here.


 * configuration page easier to use, add tree to break up sections

Latest source code
The latest version can be retrieved via anonymous SVN at:
 * svn://hemlock.ts.wikimedia.org/henna/subversion/VF/src

SVN can be obtained here. If you are using Windows a more user-friendly SVN interface (TortoiseSVN) is available here.

TODO

 * 1) fix the Logurls (fix ircstream (finished for now)
 * 2) refactor
 * 3) rewrite datatier (got it out of the main class, finished for now)
 * 4) rewrite uitier
 * 5) add errormessages
 * 6) add irc-vandalstreams  (started)
 * 7) localize  (started)
 * 8) save edittablestate
 * 9) improve the ircconnection (reconnect, multiple channels)

Userfriendliness

 * 1) import white/black/watch/.. lists  -> 2.4, currently rather unuserfriendly but functionality exists
 * 2) orange colored edits aren't completely colored
 * 3) ui for suspicious edits configuration

Feature Requests
If you have feature requests, please feel free put them in the discussion of the Vandal Fighter feature requests page.

Localisation

 * For translating the interface (when the internationalition is possible :)), OmegaT might be useful, especially to make it easier to translate newer versions. OmegaT supports Java property files for GUI localization and HTML files for Help files translation (among other file formats). It is GPL software hosted on SourceForge.


 * http://www.unicode.org/cldr/

French Translation
If you want to help translating VF in French, I started here --Effco 11:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * ✅ translation terminated, you can find it here. It would be nice to release VF with all the available translations and have a "Language" dropdown list in the "Configuration" tab so that user could choose its preferred language--Effco 21:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * is on the list of things to do, i'd just like to see if there's problems with the new bits first. atm, you can switch languages by starting the program 'java -jar vf33-english.jar langcode country' in a terminal (cmd). So for French in Canada this will be 'java -jar vf33-english.jar fr CA'. Will package and upload tomorow for French. Henna 23:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
 * moved (and corrected a bit) to user:henna/VF/French --Effco 18:22, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Italian Translation
I have added a draft Italian translation to User:Henna/VF/Italian (I didn't want to create a new page in your user space, but I think that a subpage for each language like User:Duesentrieb/CategoryTree would be a better idea). Feel free to modify it at will. --BrokenArrow 00:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * moved to user:henna/VF/Italian Henna 13:41, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Dutch Translation
nl:gebruiker:henna/VFvertaling

French Translation
✅ Translation OK --Effco 21:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Italian Translation
✅ User:Henna/VF/Italian

Dutch Translation
✅ nl:gebruiker:henna/VFvertaling

German Translation

 * nl:Gebruiker:Obarskyr/VFvertaling
 * de:Benutzer:Ca%24e/vfde

Russian
I have made Russian: User:Henna/VF/Russian. --ajvol 16:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Portuguese
Portuguese translation: pt:Wikipedia:Vandal Fighter/Tradução (based on User:Henna/VF/Translations) Mosca2 08:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Block requests

 * 1) en.wikipedia new request
 * nl.wikipedia new request
 * de.wikipedia new request
 * it.wikipedia new request
 * es.wikipedia new request
 * no.wikipedia new request
 * fr.wikipedia new request
 * sv.wikipedia new request
 * pt.wikipedia new request

Userbox
And now, a nice little box to put on your page!

Code:  

Bugs
Bug reports moved to here while preparing to include the fairly large manual in this article. Please use that page for bug reports.
 * &mdash;-- That Guy, From That Show!  (talk) 2006-03-23 14:08Z  ~

fr:Wikipédia:Vandal Fighter it:Wikipedia:CDVF nl:Wikipedia:Vandalfighter pt:Wikipedia:CDVF