1

Isn’t it pointless that we have to patrol other people’s messages? If someone gets an offensive message they can delete it themselves or tell an admin.

2

Patrolling recent changes means we review every single edit made on the site. By posting a message on a talk or discussion page, you’re technically editing the page, so we need to patrol that. It also goes beyond offensive messages. When we patrol messages, we may also come across spam, underage users revealing their ages, and even article feedback (on discussion pages) that we can use to improve quality.

3

@Savas_P I would say that because some people don’t know the wikihow policy and some people are on wikibreaks, so that would make them unable to patrol their pages accurately. Also, since patrollers and users can both look at the page that gives it a double chance of being accurate.

4

@Illneedasaviour and @Iliveunderawesomerock thank you for your important points, I just think that patrolling talk pages is a waste of a valuable lives, especially when just about 100% of the time the messages are okay, in fact the only time I had to undo a edit on a talk page was when somebody rolled back a message that was fine! Thanks again for your help. I am relatively new and still learning the ropes!

5

@Savas_P Remember that you can always click “Skip” when coming across edits you don’t understand or aren’t willing to carefully review. It’s always better to keep the edit in the RC patrol cycle for experienced patrollers to handle than to have it incorrectly patrolled.:slight_smile:

6

@Illneedasaviour Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!

7

@Savas_P You said:

I think that is because you weren’t here long enough (no offence), I started seeing my first “bad faith edits” in talk messages at about 2 months and when it rained it poured. Until then I had no idea why it was important to patrol messages. But people post inappropriate content all the time, so you have to be careful. I think you will see what I am talking about pretty soon.

8

@Iliveunderawesomerock Wow! That is so sad to hear, but thank you for the explanation! Things make so much sense now, I thought that people wouldn’t be nasty here in our wikiHow community where everybody are volunteers! Hopefully eventually we will live in a wikiHow community with no spam, vandalism or hate speech! And happy Thanksgiving to you too!

9

@Illneedasaviour I saw on your user page you have prefer the Windows operating system, in that case I presume you have a Windows Phone. Don’t you hate the wikiHow app for Windows Phone because I sure do!

10

@Savas_P Thank you and have a happy holiday. Wikihow will never be without spam and other “bad faith” edits. Humans are not going to change and as long as it is a wiki you will see a lot of bad edits. Sometimes people volunteer to do wrong and ruin things, you will see that.

11

@Savas_P My laptop is Windows, but my phone is an Android. I love Android and would never use another OS:slight_smile:

12

@Iliveunderawesomerock I hope you have a fantastic holiday too!:slight_smile:

13

@Illneedasaviour Aww… I thought you might be the second person I know who has a Windows Phone! Haha! Nah, they are becoming pretty popular and now, are actually really good!

14

Talk pages can have spammy messages or a troll. So we have them in patrol recent changes.

15

@RGDhruvParikh Thank you, your answer makes a lot of sense, but it think it should be everybodies resonsibily to look after their own page! Happy Thanksgiving!

16

If everybody wrote their own talk page, you might have a point. Last I checked? It was other users who write on my talk page.

17

@Loiswade42 Hahaha, but you know what I mean, like on Facebook people can post spam and harassment on your profile, but you delete and report it yourself! Happy Thanksgiving Lois!

18

I can understand why you feel that way, and sometimes I wish the same thing. However, the issue is that “living in a wikiHow community with no spam, vandalism or hate speech” doesn’t seem realistic, as the community can never be perfect. There will always be people who visit wikiHow to spam or vandalize us, or to make rude or spiteful comments. However, these are just my two cents and I understand that my point of view may differ from the opinions of other editors. It’s completely understandable if you grow too irritated by nasty actions, and in that case I would recommend taking a brief hiatus from the website to refresh yourself. That might be helpful. Another good thing to remember is that people who vandalize or spam us may not be doing so intentionally. Perhaps there could be someone who is trying to make a test edit to an article in order to see what happens. For example, there might be a user who removes all the content from pages in order to see if blanking pages is possible.

19

@Adelaide I like the way you said that! I definitely agree with you, but the point I was hoping to make was that we should look after our own talk pages! For example, I get lots of advertising and hate mail posted on my Facebook, but I just remove it.

20

Hey Check it, when I NFDed someone’s article he wrote some bad words on my talk page. The next day it was all gone and I never saw that message until I realized that a patroller reverted it. What would happen if I had came after 5-6 weeks and there is no patrol messages in RCP. That bad message would stuck there for that long time without anyone knowing it.