Wikipedia:Editor review/Guide

Reviewing another user can be boring, but the results of your hard work will pay off in the end and your review, however short or long it may be, will help the requesting user enhance their experience on Wikipedia by taking on board your criticisms and feedback. Don't be negative, but also don't be afraid to point out mistakes, after all, we are all here to learn and how can we if believe what we're doing is right when it's wrong?

Reviewing a user

When reviewing a user, try and look for five things:

1. Edit summary usage - Edit summaries are absolutely important as they help other users get a basic idea of what was written, without them it can be painfully annoying for other users as they will have to check the page "diff" in order to ensure that the material inserted wasn't defamatory, discriminatory or otherwise plain vandalism. Edit summaries should also be descriptive and never provide inaccurate information about the edit itself.
2. Contribution analysis - Analysing the requesting user's contributions helps the reviewer get a better understanding about the interests of that particular user and what areas of Wikipedia they are familiar with and like to work in (e.g. the Administrators' Noticeboards, Village Pumps, Usernames for administrator attention, Administrator intervention against vandalism etc.)
3. Project Participation - Does the user participate in collaborative projects such as WikiProject Articles for creation? Do they work in Abuse Response or Long-term abuse? If so, consider these three questions:
   1. How well have they done and what progress has been made?
   2. Have they made many mistakes, if so, were they quick to learn from those mistakes or did it take some guidance before they got back on track or were they stubborn and refused to accept help?
   3. Have they been keen to contribute new ideas to the projects which they partake?
4. Logged action analysis - Analysing the requesting user's logged actions is also helpful in understanding their familiarity with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and what external work they do such as on the Internal Account Creation interface, which involves creating accounts for those that cannot do it themselves (all account creation is done ON Wikipedia), file uploading and their knowledge of image user policy and page moving based on consensus and discussion.
5. Civility - Is the user bitey, uncivil, pointy, or bad faith assuming? A reviewer should check to see if the user stays cool in disagreements/arguments or when dealing with vandals or clueless newcomers, the user assumes good faith, is always polite and respectful towards others and encourages WikiLove. Reviewing the civility of a user goes hand-in-hand with Contribution analysis.

Questions to ask yourself

1. How can the editor I'm reviewing improve their editing?
2. How are they interacting with others, are they friendly, calm and approachable?
3. Are there things I would have done differently?
4. Is this user helpful to others?
5. What is my impression of the user?