This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:New pages patrol. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.
Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]
In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).
While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).
Backlog drive
A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.
TIP – New school articles
Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.
Misc
There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:
Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 13829 articles, as of 00:00, 30 November 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot
There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
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Just realized we have a problem. When a page is nominated for AfD it is also tagged as patrolled, which means that NOINDEX is removed. So, assuming it ends up getting deleted, in the meantime an article unsuited for Wikipedia is indexed and shows up on all sorts of Wikipedia scraper sites. Is there some way to delay the patrolled flag until the conclusion of AfD? — rsjaffe🗣️14:42, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Because {{NOINDEX}} only applies to new articles, it protects against someone sneakily adding it to, say, United States and preventing indexing of long-standing and important articles. So I don't think the NOINDEX template should be changed in this scenario. DanCherek (talk) 15:33, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
It’d be nice if it could be programmed to apply NOINDEX to AfDs when the article already has NOINDEX, which would prevent sneaky acts as you’re describing while still allowing proper index hiding if the duration of NOINDEX for unreviewed articles is extended. — rsjaffe🗣️20:13, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
The documentation for NOINDEX says it only lasts 90 days. It appears to be separate from the PageTriage 90 day noindex (controlled by a different variable somewhere). –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:32, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
The NOINDEX for new articles addresses my concern. Looks like the current system works appropriately and my concern is unfounded. — rsjaffe🗣️15:38, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Possible copyvio – second opinion requested
I'd like a second opinion on 1970–71 AEK Athens F.C. season, an article that I initially marked reviewed after cleaning up a possible copyvio, though the creator has restored the potentially infringing text, removed the RD1 tag, and not taken lightly to its removal. Namely, the section Overview appears to be a copy-and-paste machine translation of [1], which AFAICT does not have a license compatible with Wikipedia. I have since marked the page unreviewed, and would like a second opinion to not escalate a dispute. ComplexRational (talk) 14:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
I recently AFDed a new article, which correctly marked the article patrolled/reviewed to remove it from the NPP queue on the assumption that the AFD would determine notability. This particular article was "soft-deleted" due to minimal participation in the deletion discussion, and subsequently restored via WP:REFUND - at which time it was back in mainspace but not in the queue.
This article was on my watchlist, but in general, there is no guarantee that a refunded article is on the watchlist of an active editor. I propose that either:
1. A undeleted article be marked un-patrolled if it was patrolled within 30 days prior to being deleted. This should catch the case described above where the patrol was via an AFD.
2. Just treat undeletes the same as recreation of a deleted article (i.e. they are "new") and have NPP take a look.
I'll open a Phab ticket for such a change if we can establish a consensus to do either. MB20:14, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
To be fair technically that page was in fact patrolled by a patroller. But if this can be done, I support it, its easier than teaching a thousand admins to unpatrol after undeleting. Happy Editing--IAmChaos20:24, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
Support - whatever works - BUT...isn't this along the same lines as to why I said we should not mark articles sent to AfD reviewed? If it was sent to AfD as unreviewed, got soft deleted and refunded, it would still be unreviewed, yes or no? OTH, it we mark it reviewed when sending it to AfD, and it's soft deleted and refunded, will it still be marked reviewed? Atsme💬📧00:39, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct. Fixing this loophole as proposed here solves the problem. Not marking them reviewed when sending to AFD would also solve it, but the current design is to mark them reviewed since there is nothing more for NPP to do with them and keeping them in the queue would just be clutter. MB02:10, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
I think you are mis-reading that. The discussion was specifically about CSD and PROD. Although a few people said "also AFD" in their comments, I don't see consensus to keep AFDs in the queue. MB15:44, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
MB, for clarity, articles that were CSD or PROD noms should not be marked as reviewed? Any article that we send to AfD should be marked reviewed, despite the potential of it being redirected/merged at AfD? New redirects show up in our queue, but what if that redirect is highjacked and/or a new or different article is created from that reviewed AfD redirect, will it be patrolled since it was marked reviewed, or will it show up as a new article in the queue? See the response by Wbm1058 on June 18, 2022. Atsme💬📧12:45, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, CSD and PROD noms should not be marked and AFDs should be. Leave it to the AFD process "finish curation" of the page. If you kept it unreviewed until after the AFD closed, then what? This is a moot question if the article is deleted. But if it is kept or merged/redirected, it can't stay in the queue forever. It has to be marked reviewed - there is no reason not to just do it upfront. Yes, a redirect can be highjacked. But this can happen to any of the millions of redirects. We have to rely on other mechanisms to prevent hijacking. I put redirects I am concerned with on my watchlist. I assume Recent Change patrollers are in a good position to catch hijacking too. MB17:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
a new or different article is created from that reviewed AfD redirect, will it be patrolled since it was marked reviewed, or will it show up as a new article in the queue? When a reviewed redirect is flipped to an article, the software unpatrols it. Great safeguard. This is why the back of our queue is 10 year old articles... this is folks turning redirects into articles. When an article is taken to AFD and someone tries to remove the AFD notice template, a bot puts it back. The AFD notice template also has NOINDEX built into it, so despite being reviewed, if the article is younger than 90 days, it still won't be indexed by Google. I 100% agree that we don't mark CSD and PROD as reviewed, but we do mark AFD as reviewed. I think it says this somewhere, but would be great if we could make it clearer, for example by putting it in the flowchart. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:24, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Support option 2 – undeleted articles should be marked un-patrolled. I'm surprised they're not already, sounds like a bug. – Joe (talk) 10:25, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Novem Linguae, I was planning to wait a little longer before opening a Phab ticket because, although there is clear consensus here, I had only recently listed this at WP:REFUND (which I should have mentioned here). I listed the Phab at the improvement page also for reference/tracking purposes. MB18:58, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Support option 2 as it is the simplest. For AFD and prod perhaps we need a different level of patrol, like patrolled for deletion, which when undeleted would change to unpatrolled. But that is a bit complicated. We also have some speedy delete reversals at REFUND (like G13's, G7's or other clearly wrong speedy deletes). But NPPers will get more work out of this! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:26, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Phab ticket declined - could a bot be used instead?
Since the phab ticket about this issue has been declined, it looks like a bot could be the solution to the problem. It doesn't seem that difficult -- all it would have to do is scan the deletion log for any pages undeleted into the mainspace, and mark them as unpatrolled. Thoughts? >>> Ingenuity.talk();03:11, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Let's be careful with our terminology. In my opinion, our phab ticket was not declined. A decline would be closing it as "wontfix". Rather, the Growth Team, a team of software engineers at WMF who has some responsibility for fixing major PageTriage bugs, has said they don't have time to work on this. However, a volunteer developer could still do it.
Indeed. I wrote a patch, which was just approved. It'll be deployed next week if nothing goes wrong. Taavi (talk!) 09:59, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Marshall Miller who now oversees the Growth team among a couple of other areas, has confirmed that this will be rolled out soon. Thank you so much Taavi for claiming this job and getting it done, and so quickly. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:23, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
NPP eyes, please
I came across the contributions of AslamMurmu, and while there are some pretty detailed city articles he authored that pass GNG, the bulk of the hotels are G11 and written as pure promotion. I notified the editor here. I tagged 2 more hotels with G11, Taj Hotel Patna and ITC Royal Bengal, and stopped there. This one was G11'd by an admin. I didn't want to be the one to G11 any further articles by this same editor because, as evidenced here, there will be quite a few more coming down the pipes. I've asked the editor to disclose if there is a COI. Atsme💬📧12:35, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Potential bug
I'm not a techie, so I cannot explain what took place in the following sequence of events, or why Nearlyevil665 is shown as the article creator:
Another way this can happen (article creators showing up different from what you might expect) is when someone starts an article that was originally a redirect. I've created a few articles that were originally redirects, which is why I know this. But yeah, DanCherek is right on what happened in this particular situation. This is actually why I asked my autopatrolled right to be removed before I became an AfC reviewer. Didn't like the implications of not having a second set of eyes, y'know? Especially since I'm still going through NPP school myself. But I think in general it's not the worst idea. Autopatrolled editors typically know what's notable and what's not. But then again, maybe they wrote all 25 of their articles on like charted music albums and don't know about WP:NCORP. There's nuance there. Clovermoss(talk)13:52, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
A good way to avoid this issue if you create an article over a redirect is to create the article in a different place (I.e. draft or userspace) and swap it with the no longer needed redirect. If you don't have pageswap you can request speedy deletion (t · c) buidhe16:31, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
I don't have pageswap, Buidhe. I'm not even technically a New Page Patroller, but I've had this page on my watchlist for awhile. Apart from not having to have a decent-ish article in the first revision (as creating it elsewhere could better for that if you need more time, I often start articles in draftspace anyways), would there be any point in doing this apart from having the person in question show up as the article creator? Nominating a redirect for speedy deletion when I could just overwrite the redirect seems like it'd just make more work for whoever's going though CSD nominations, but maybe it's not that big of a deal in the scheme of things. Clovermoss(talk)16:39, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing it up, regardless. I might consider doing it in certain circumstances, like when I really think developing a draft instead of immediately overwriting a redirect would be a good idea. Clovermoss(talk)16:44, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Buidhe - apologies for not being more clear when presenting the issue. The hidden page log for Umar Nurmagomedov shows @ 09:04, March 31, 2022 Felipe Scama created page Umar Nurmagomedov (Created by translating the page "Umar Nurmagomedov") – so why did NE665 show up in the curation tool as article creator, as well as in the edit history? It's incorrect and obviously grabbed the AfC history. Then when you look at Draft:Umar Nurmagomedov (fighter), it shows Felipe Scama as creator but the following is what shows on the log:
18:24, May 8, 2022 Cassiopeia deleted redirect Draft:Umar Nurmagomedov (fighter) by overwriting (G6: Deleted to make way for move)
11:20, May 8, 2022 15koa talk contribs moved page Draft:Umar Nurmagomedov (fighter) to Umar Nurmagomedov.
Something went wrong, and it doesn't look like something we should be repeating. I'm not quite sure how it happened but maybe one of our tech gurus can explain so we can avoid it from happening in the future. Atsme💬📧23:43, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Novem Linguae, Wbm1058, DannyS712 - sorry to disturb, but I was hoping to better understand the above issue and how to avoid it, hopefully before Wednesday because I may not have internet (or worse) on that day forward if the storm that's brewing in the Atlantic (potentially to be named Bonnie) traverses near or over this tiny island in the southern Caribbean. Atsme💬📧14:04, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Logs:
at 00:09, 6 September 2020 Vechtsport Fan created page Draft:Umar Nurmagomedov (←Created page with '{{subst:AFC submission/draftnew}} Umar Nurmagomedov Нурмагомедов Ома...')
at 17:54, 12 March 2022 Nearlyevil665 created page Draft:Umar Nurmagomedov (Has two bouts, very likely to be notable soon, if not already due to press coverage)
I didn't develop the curation tool and am not familiar with that code. But the above logs are sufficiently complicated that I'm not surprised if the algorithm got tripped up by unexpected editor behavior (creation of a content fork by creating a new article rather than moving the existing draft to mainspace) – wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Apparently there may still be some confusion so I converted my list above to a color-coded table to try to clarify. There have been three versions of this article created. The first version (color coded pink) was deleted and doesn't overlap with the other two. The second version (color coded green) was created in draft space 12 March and remained there until it was moved to main-space 26 June. The third version (color coded purple) is causing all the confusion. It was boldly created in article space while the other version was still in draft. Then it was moved to Draft:Umar Nurmagomedov (fighter), obviously to avoid stepping on the other version still sitting in draft at the base title. Then it was move-warred back to main-space and back to draft again. Where it remains today. Hope this helps. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:32, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, Sherlock - WOW, that's impressive investigative work. With the above in mind, it appears to me the Draft article can be speedied as a duplicate. Atsme💬📧13:14, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Proposal
I won't repeat the background and rationale and instead just make the following propsal:
At New Page Patrol, for topics which do not satisify a Subject-Specific Notability Guidline, we consider adding sources to satisify the sourcing General Notability Guidline to be a main part of starting a new article. A common NPP practice for those articles is to move them to draft areas so that sources to satisify GNG may be added if they exist
I'd like to let this sit for a day to elicit/make any tweaks and then gauge support / opposition here. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:35, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
What happens when the editor decides to ignore the draft and recreate a new version in mainspace which is allowed under current draftify policy? — rsjaffe🗣️16:43, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
PS. I strongly support your proposal. Just think we need an add on to it to deal with refusal of draftification. — rsjaffe🗣️16:45, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
+1 to rsjaffe. I believe this policy is well-intended, though I feel it gives too much leeway to those who object without a rationale and/or (signs of) active improvement. WP:DRAFTOBJECT in its current form appears to supersede WP:CIR. ComplexRational (talk) 20:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
Exactly - our work is toothless so why even bother? Something needs to change because without NPP, what happens? Who or what prevents the garbage from becoming part of WP? Atsme💬📧20:48, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
OK, so my revised proposal is:
At New Page Patrol, for topics which do not satisfy a Subject-Specific Notability Guideline, we consider adding sources to satisfy the sourcing General Notability Guidline to be a main part of starting a new article. A common NPP practice for those articles is to move them to draft areas so that sources to satisfy GNG may be added if they exist. If an article that was moved to a draft area on that basis is moved back to mainspace without addition of those sources, a common NPP practice will be to consider taking the article to AFD
Note that I said "consider" because we can't say that it will automatically go to AFD because WP:Before requires a GNG source check before doing that. This still leaves open some unresolved issues but IMO it's solid/workable, will reduce the problem, and also provide a tiny start on establishing that putting in GNG sources (when required) is a part of starting an article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:14, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
Agree. Probably will have to take more steps (e.g., remove WP:BEFORE for NPP), but this incremental approach allows non-involved people a good view of the issues. — rsjaffe🗣️22:55, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm liking this proposal so far. Removing WP:BEFORE and going straight to AfD would have the benefit of potentially drawing wider input (or if not, ending as an expired PROD), though this raises the question of how much are we willing to increase the backlog at AfD.
One possible step could be a type of modified PROD such that:
the article has no sources whatsoever that could potentially satisfy GNG (or, more strictly, no sources of any kind at all);
the content of the article is substantially identical to the draftified version and not undergoing active improvement – thus assuming good faith for works in progress and not slamming the door on improvement;
no objection in 7 days qualifies the page for deletion;
the creator of the page may not remove the tag, unlike PROD but rather like many CSD – so as to curtail stubborn, CIR, spammy, etc. behavior, but allow other editors/reviewers to easily object and start an AfD if they deem it appropriate.
However, I (hopefully) expect that there are only a small number of cases like this, so such a process may be unnecessarily convoluted. ComplexRational (talk) 00:50, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
I think you are dealing with the case where somebody duplicates a draftified article in mainspace. Without commenting on the prevalence or proposal, such would require changes outside of the purview of that of my proposal which confines itself to a statement of NPP norms, one that does not conflict policies and guidelines. In other words, something that we can actually get done, and relatively quickly. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:03, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, as that was mentioned above; it can be revisited at another time if necessary. On the short-term, your proposal is a good place to start, though. ComplexRational (talk) 01:11, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Support While I wholeheartedly support this, I would also like to see WP:BEFORE removed as a burden on NPP. I would also suggest an additional CSD for undersourced articles sent to Draft which are then moved to mainspace without amendment or going through AfC. Although I suspect that one might be pie in the sky... Best — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexandermcnabb (talk • contribs) 07:17, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
I agree with this in principle. However it is a bit verbose and lacks precision. I would suggest the way to get this implemented would be to add a bullet to WP:DRAFTIFY formally allowing draftification for poor sourcing. I attempted this back in July 2021 but was reverted. A good next step might be to workshop a one sentence bullet to add to WP:DRAFTIFY, then RFC it on the WP:DRAFTIFY talk page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:47, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
I agree in principal but have two problems with the wording.
"those articles" in second sentence at present refers to all topics which do not satisfy a SSNG, not specifying "without sources"
"we consider adding..." sounds as if we think about adding the sources ourselves: reading further corrects this initial misread, but it puts a wrong idea into the reader's mind.
So how about:
At New Page Patrol, for topics which do not satisfy a Subject-Specific Notability Guideline, we consider that adding sources to satisfy the sourcing General Notability Guideline is a main part of starting a new article. A common NPP practice for articles which do not satisfy a Subject-Specific Notability Guideline and do not have sources demonstrating that they satisfy GNG is to move them to draft areas so that sources to satisfy GNG may be added if they exist. If an article that was moved to a draft area on that basis is moved back to mainspace without addition of those sources, a common NPP practice will be to consider taking the article to AFD.
Or, more radically:
At New Page Patrol we consider that adding sources is a main part of starting a new article. A common NPP practice for articles which do not satisfy a Subject-Specific Notability Guideline and do not have sources demonstrating that they satisfy GNG is to move them to draft areas so that sources to satisfy GNG may be added if they exist. If an article that was moved to a draft area on that basis is moved back to mainspace without addition of those sources, a common NPP practice will be to consider taking the article to AFD.
I consider PamD's second version to be an improvement on mine and the best. I support the other things which were discussed but which are best handled separately. I hereby submit it for supports and opposes. We can also change it later, and "later" could be a week from now so I request that we review it as is:
At New Page Patrol we consider that adding sources is a main part of starting a new article. A common NPP practice for articles which do not satisfy a Subject-Specific Notability Guideline and do not have sources demonstrating that they satisfy GNG is to move them to draft areas so that sources to satisfy GNG may be added if they exist. If an article that was moved to a draft area on that basis is moved back to mainspace without addition of those sources, a common NPP practice will be to consider taking the article to AFD.
Right now this would just be a decision to be recorded here on this talk page. North8000 (talk) 14:10, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Feedback
Support As proposer, with credit to PamD. This is safe and will help in a key area but of course will not solve everything. Other good ideas were raised which should be pursued separately. It can be changed later (and "later" can be in 1 week) and suggest we review it as-is. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:46, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Right now, it would be just a decision recorded here on this talk page. But I plan to also propose or add a tab where NPP talk page decisions that have ongoing relevance be listed. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:07, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
And what will that list be used for? You and others are saying that this will "help" or "fix" something, but how does simply stating what existing practice is on a talk page do that? NPP is a WikiProject that implements existing community policy with regard to new articles. We've never issued 'resolutions' like this before and it could be seen as an attempt to maintain a parallel set of pseudo-policies... – Joe (talk) 14:51, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Joe, the article creator is notified, and anybody can go to draft and add sources when they have time. This process affords the article creator the opportunity to cite sources and establish notability which requires finding multiple secondary RS, so it really isn't a minute's worth of work for the NPP reviewer as some in other discussions have alluded to. Reviewers customarily offer a helping hand to new editors, and they end up staying with the project rather than hit and run with a half-baked single article. We actually should keep a record of it. Each case will be handled individually because they're not all going to be identical. It's not deletion of an article, it's triage, and that's a good thing. Atsme💬📧20:53, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Support – per above comments. Even if it's existing practice, I find it helpful to state a concise version of it, which then can be referenced and amended with future proposals. ComplexRational (talk) 15:15, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Support – and I want to share this link with all of you. It actually shows the intent of the "founding father" so to speak - it's kinda like the federalist papers that led to the drafting of the Constitution. Atsme💬📧20:44, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Support - Yes. I also suggest that we run an RfC to get WP:DRAFTOBJECT changed. We need to move in the direction of requiring new articles to satisfy the GNG to be accepted, not requiring NPP to do a WP:BEFORE search. Bad actors are common, and a drain on our resources. It is time to put a bare minimum onus of responsibility onto article creators. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)(or here)(or here)13:29, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Some folks have said that it is already standard practice. I'm thinking that what they mean is that it is already an available option. Because if it were already standard practice, then the bulk of articles sent to AFD by NPP on notability grounds would be ones already sent to a draft space by NPP and then moved back into mainspace without addition of needed GNG references. I don't think that this is the case.North8000 (talk) 19:16, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
If I know with 80 percent confidence that the topic is not notable, I do a quick Google then prod/afd. I'm more likely to draftify if I have no idea about the notability and it's hard /impossible to check quickly (t · c) buidhe19:49, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
The main way that it would help is, for a majority of articles needing but lacking GNG sources (including non-wp:notable article/topics) the reference search work will be done by the zillion editors instead of by the small group of overloaded NPP'ers. With obvious benefits here on our capacity/backlog. North8000 (talk) 19:16, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
I think this project needs to be careful so as to not run afoul of WP:LOCALCON. Given the somewhat inconclusive RfC on draftifying - whose close several of us didn't like but hasn't been challenged so it's still the most recent record of consensus - I don't think this wording runs afoul of the broader community consensus. But it comes close. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:48, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
We're probably too local for that. But this is narrower and with the scope of policies, guidelines and any broader scope RFC's. Also an option already clearly available and already used by some. North8000 (talk) 00:42, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
I don't believe this discussion infringes WP:LOCALCON. We're not debating a policy change here, most advice and guidelines are not policy, and the NPP community should be able to decide what's best for its process and practice (think of the current request at Phab to change the 90-day 'NO INDEX' to indefinite which the WMF is now doing its best to stall). I think this proposal probably echoes what many reviewers do anyway, at least those who process huge numbers of new pages.
IMO, draftification is under-used and reviewers should not be afraid to employ it far more boldly - NPP is not a 'fix-it', while AfC is the field hospital - where most users don't even appreciate the help and advice they get there anyway. It might be tough on the backlogs at AfC, but unlike NPP, AfC has no deadlines and although draftifiying should not be used as a backdoor step to deletion, G13 is an excellent policy especially while after all these years when new users register they are still not provided with any info about what is not acceptable.
Also, unlike NPP, AfC is still not an official process. If it were, more editors would join it - but because it isn't, the coordinator is almost certainly aware of the hat-collection phenomenon. and he doesn't need a mega RfC to remove the inactive participants. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:00, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
But what are we debating? The proposal above is just floating text; in reply to me above, North8000 says that he might subsequently propose copying it... somewhere, but doesn't say where or when. So what are those "supporting" above actually supporting? Just the sentiment? Amending an existing guideline? Creating a new guideline? If it's either of those last two, then we do have a local consensus problem, because what is proposed contradicts the project-wide policies WP:NOCITE and WP:ATD-I, whether it is the common practice of NPP patrollers or not. And if it's the first, then I don't really see the point. – Joe (talk) 11:29, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
WP:NOCITE is not a policy but a guideline. Nothing above violates it, "You may also tag the article with the {{unreferenced}} template and consider nominating it for deletion." is what the above says as well, which is comparable to "If an article that was moved to a draft area on that basis is moved back to mainspace without addition of those sources, a common NPP practice will be to consider taking the article to AFD". Basically, one of the possibilities given at NOCITE will now be claimed to be the default option for NPP (in both cases, it will be "considered", not mandatory). As for WP:ATD-I, I fail to see how the proposal (unsourced? Move to draft once) contradicts "Recently created articles that have potential, but that do not yet meet Wikipedia's quality standards, may be moved to the draft namespace ("draftified") for improvement". Fram (talk) 11:47, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Maybe contradict was too a strong a word. But they both outline what should be done with unsourced material, and the gist is try to source it if you can, tag it if you can't but think someone else could, and as a last resort remove or seek its deletion. So it at least needs to be explained how this proposal, which says that sending unsourced content to the black hole that is draftspace is a tool of first resort, is to be squared with that existing approach. The important part of WP:ATD-I is that draftspace must not be used as a backdoor to deletion. If the response to a contested draftification is to send the article to AfD, does that not imply that draftspace is being used as a slow deletion? Why not just send it to Afd in the first place? – Joe (talk) 12:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Joe, what concerns me most is the undercurrent that threatens to change our core content policies, beginning with WP:V, (see the TP), and based on my experiences, it is not for the better. What's being proposed over there will directly affect how NPP approaches unsourced articles, and based on what I've gleaned, will create a tidal wave of contradictions relative to other core content policies and guidelines, not to mention that it's based on a logical fallacy. See my highlighted text at V talk. The level of support for unsourced articles is rather disconcerting, and I can actually see how it would benefit UPE but it does so in a way that will cause harm to the project. What is being proposed at V appears to be the result of Use-mention distinction issues and does not reflect the context of our V or OR policies, much less foresight or common sense, but that's just me wearing my publisher's hat. The proposal above is basically reassurance that policy prevails, even if it does so in a rather oblique manner. Atsme💬📧14:02, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
An article sent to draft space on this basis simply needs the editor to look for GNG sources. If they exist, they add them and send the article back into mainspace. How is that a "black hole"? And the reason / difference is that for the majority of those, the zillion editors are doing the source search rather than a handful of NPP'ers who are trying to handle the ~700 articles per day that need manual review. Sincerely North8000 (talk) 12:25, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
That's the theory, but it rarely actually happens. In the vast majority of cases, articles go to draftspace to die. There certainly aren't a "zillion" editors waiting to save random drafts from CSD G13 (in fact as far as I'm aware, there's pretty much only one, DGG). But this is a well-worn debate that we're not going to settle here. The important question, which as the 'proposer' you've still curiously declined to answer, is what are you actually proposing? – Joe (talk) 12:35, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
@Joe What we are proposing is to make draftification without WP:BEFORE to be common practice at NPP. While Draftification is a useful tool, and many are using it already, it isn't written up as part of our current workflow in this way. We need some way to sidestep WP:BEFORE for unsourced or poorly-sourced articles because WP:BEFORE has become a drain on NPP resources that is unsustainable. We don't have enough reviewers to manually perform reference searches for every article under the sun, the onus on this needs to change to the article creator to add a bare minimum (WP:42, basically). Current policy doesn't allow deletion in such cases... well, for unsourced material, it logically should be supported by WP:BURDEN (and I have seen redirection used extensively in such cases, justified by WP:V), but for new articles that fail to demonstrate the GNG, but still include sources, draftification is our best option. You say that the vast majority go to draft space to die... the fact that new articles creators are too lazy to come back to their draft and copy and paste a couple of URLs is not our fault. NPP is not an orphanage that is required to take in and raise any unwanted infant unceremoniously dumped on our doorstep. Competence is required, and we can't afford to handhold every newbie through the process (in a perfect world it would be great if we could, but we simply do not have the manpower). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)(or here)(or here)13:52, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm really flabbergasted to hear such contempt for new editors coming from a former NPP coordinator. Not knowing our byzantine sourcing requirements does not make someone a child. You should know as well as anyone that there's a reason NPP's current workflow limits the use of draftification, because we have to work within the bounds of existing policy. If someone wants to change the policy, best of luck to them, but a subsectioned pseudo-RfC on WT:NPR isn't the way to do it. And in the meantime, I don't understand why we aren't content to just follow the instructions and tag unsourced articles. It's literally the fastest way to deal with them and it's fully supported by existing consensus. – Joe (talk) 14:16, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
I think a good reason to not do that is it just passes the buck to the ever growing backlog of 80k+ articles with {{blpsources}} or 350k+ articles with {{refimprove}}, where they will likely never have their sourcing improved, or any sourcing to show notability added. AfD isn't equipped to handle anywhere near the number of AfDs that would be created by actually AfDing all the articles that don't have any claim to notability, and NPP just tagging with {{refimprove}} and shrugging is just shoveling shit into a different pile that no one will ever be able to work through. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:07, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Sure, in an ideal world we'd have no unsourced articles. In an ideal world, NPP would do all the necessary improvements and we'd have no cleanup backlogs at all. But we're having this conversation in the context of an alarming backlog at NPP. So why on earth are we pulling our hair out over the difficulty of doing a job that nobody ever asked NPP to do? – Joe (talk) 09:01, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
I think this language flies in the face of an RfC which which closed yesterday that found a strong consensus against mandating such draftiification. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:36, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
This is the issue isn't it? People who don't do the work are happy to tell us how it has to be done. If we go on strike I don't think that the rest of the community is going to step up and do the reviewing of the 14,000 and raising backlog are they? Basically, we're fucked. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)(or here)(or here)13:57, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
That's a pretty common issue with anything that gets done on the wiki. People see a process they're not involved with and don't take part in and say, "but it would be so much better if it was done this way." And then you get a consensus from people who didn't do it to begin with that the people actually doing it have to put more effort in. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
As I understand, the RfC also discussed mandatory draftification of extant unsourced articles (some as old as 2007), which we're not discussing here. The pressing issue here is somewhat narrower in scope – namely the widespread creation of articles where the creator can, but doesn't, provide sources that might satisfy GNG, and that many times these articles are left unfinished or the creator stubbornly refuses draftification (also, in the latter case, I highly doubt a PROD would be uncontested). By filtering out such cases, the limited manpower of NPP can be better utilized elsewhere and there may be hope in reducing the backlog. ComplexRational (talk) 14:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes I agree that's the issue isn't it @Insertcleverphrasehere. I don't think we've done a good job of educating the community about our struggles and challenges and to be clear I deserve specific blame for this given my focus having changed from NPP to ArbCom. I don't know how much of the community understands just how little work is being done on reviewing new articles, and in fairness some who do understand don't find lack of new article review a problem. So I do think rather than rejecting broader community consensus - as I feel like we're flirting with here - I think we need to find ways to shape and harness community consensus. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:52, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
That RFC was about instituting a big list of mandatory, categorical and automatic rules including things like often forbidding moving articles from draft space to mainspace. I commented but would have never supported such a thing. IMO rejection of that is not related to this. North8000 (talk) 17:02, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
There can be no set of fixed rules for new contributions, because there are many different ways and degrees of problems. I've worked with various aspects of this at PROD and AfD and NPP and AFC for the 15 years I've been here; though there are repeating patterns, and unnambiguous cases, but for probably most new contributions there is no way of proceeding except to consider each contribution individually, and to choose the route that is most like to get potentially satisfactory material improved and accepted, and material which can be not made satisfactory removed.
The basis of the system is redundancy--decisions at any of the various methods are never final. For even the worst contribution it may be possible that new sources and a new editior -- and developments in the topic--may give the potential for an acceptable articles. For even what may seem an excellent contribution, it may happen that copyvio or paid coi may be uncovered, or tat someone more carefuly reading the sources may realize it it unsupported. AfC is intended as a screen: it works on the realistic basis that coi articles and articles by new editors are very likely not to be satisfactory in any of a variety of ways, and they can sometimes be handled summarily; the only alternative to using it is to deal with everything at NPP. It's not intended to result in finished articles, just in articles that have potential, and the basic concept still holds, that we should pass anything that has a reasonable chance of passing AfD where the community can look at it.
the purpose is not just getting articles; it's teaching editors. This is much more difficult and time consuming, and the existing templates do a notably poor job of it. As it may sometimes be our only chance to instruct a new contributor before they disappear, it rquires reviews with judgment not just of articles, but of contributors, and willing to devote the time to it. This is a counsel of perfetion--we have always had so many new articles that they cannot be handled properly unless a much greater number of experienced reviewers deal with them than has every been the case.
There is a real limitation of AfC that I have in the past not adequately taken into consideration--there is no point in using it to decline a draft unless the orginal contributor is still around, or unless the reviewer is themselves willing to fix it to a minimal extent.
As mentioned above, I have in fact tried to do this for a very limited range of drafts in my principal areas of interest, and several others have also tried in theirs. Unfortunately, I can no longer keep up even by limiting my areas, and, as I've posted at WT:AfC, I have found it necessary to abandon the effort except sporadically, and my disappointment in this has greatly affected my willingness to work at WP at all. Anyone counting on me as a backstop should be aware that I may not be available.
But with respect to sourcing--our quality has never been adequate. It has certainly increased since I joined in 2006, and a great many of the articles started then would never have been accepted today, and we are furthermore left with a legacy of at least a million inadequately sourced articles. This gives us choices, none of the really all that good: we can bring them all up to current standards -- which could only be done if we convince hundreds of editors to work on them, , or we remove the inadequate ones --even tho we will be deleting notable and sourceable articles, or we leave them inadequately sourced, but insist new ones be sourced properly. What we do not want to do is lower our standards back to what they were 15 years ago. DGG ( talk ) 18:19, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
Is it ethical to patrol your own pages?
Obviously, I'm not going to do it, but for the sake of curiosity as a newly appointed new page reviewer: Is it ethical to patrol your own articles/redirects/other pages? It is technically possible, which could make the new page reviewer right autopatrolled in practice. I'm going to assume no, but I just wanted some clarification.
Also, I'm asking this partially because I reverted some vandalism at А and Α, (the Greek and Cyrillic letters respectively) and the redirect I restored is still unpatrolled (I won't patrol it myself).
The software doesn't allow an NPP to patrol their own created pages. You would need to be autopatrolled to get around this. In the eyes of the software, editing an existing page is different than creating a page. As for the ethics of reverting redirect vandalism and then marking that patrolled, sounds ethical to me. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:41, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Agree with Novem when its vandalism. If it's a potential good-faith content dispute, I've left my restore un-patrolled so someone else can put eyes on it. Regardless, I have patrolled the two pages to get then out of the queue. Slywriter (talk) 00:48, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
So it's not possible to patrol any page you have created. Chnaging from redirect to article requires a new patrol, but you are not considered the creator. I usually patrol my own when reverting vandalism to an already patrolled page, but NOT when I BLAR or remove a redirect. Happy Editing--IAmChaos02:07, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm not so sure about it being 'earned'. It's not an award of merit and it has absolutely no benefits for the user, unless the are an abuser. IMO the right should be scrapped. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:38, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm not so sure about the second part either, sadly. We have no process for systematically reviewing autopatrolled after it's granted and it's rarely revoked. I'd also like to see it scrapped or significantly rolled back, but probably now is not the best time. – Joe (talk) 15:55, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
I think autopatrolled is a bad idea. Everybody needs a second set of eyes to look at it, and it's also a safety net for when the wrong person gets it or when a well-intentioned person goes awry. The benefit (less for us to patrol) is numerically small.North8000 (talk) 16:02, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. Earn means earn trust, and right means you have the right to use it but not abuse it as a trusted editor. It would not only be an open door to UPE/PE, it would eliminate doors. If we do eliminate it based on the reasons given here, we might as well eliminate administrator rights which are also based on community trust. Orange Moody, and a few other names come to mind. Give every editor the tools after they’ve had 500 edits. Atsme💬📧16:28, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Now is not the time to propose something that would greatly enlarge the NPP queue. We need to stay laser focused on reducing the queue. Let's stay focused, folks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:13, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae, Joe Roe, and North8000: there is no mention of anything new being 'proposed' here. On this page however (most) users are seriously concerned by 1). the continued stream of junk and other inappropriate new article submissions which has again reached pre-ACTRIAL proportions, and 2). our system (NPP) for controlling it.
The mention here is therefore an important wakeup call and no stats have been provided as to how disbanding autopatrolled would negatively impact the work at the New Pages Feed. I would assume, conservatively, that deprecating this user 'right', which has nothing whatsoever to do with being 'earned', would bring more benefits to maintaining a clean encyclopedia corpus than disadvantages to the role of the New Page Reviewers.
The increase in the discovery of abuse by holders of the autopatrolled and NPP rights is worrying. Removal of the right is not swift and there is perhaps a sign that there still exists a huge grey area here - detection is still not as frequent as it could be despite the massive 2015 OrangeMoody affair, and noises made in The Signpost in 2018. There is nothing to stop an incentive to thoroughly investigate 'autopatroled' once and for all, and it could possibly lead to an indication that the fate of 'autopatrolled' might well be slated for debate in the not too distant future. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:46, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
We should keep our focus on reducing the NPP queue, not enlarging it. We don't need to manually patrol thousands of species articles per year, for example. Where is the hard evidence that autopatrol is currently a net negative? Has there been a large quantity of autopatrol scandals lately that cannot simply be handled by putting the discovered UPE's articles back in the queue? –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:16, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: I think I more than adequately explained the situation in my rather long post above. There is no hard evidence, that's why a call for stats should be made before starting any debates on it: There is nothing to stop an incentive to thoroughly investigate 'autopatroled' once and for all. However, IMO 'autopatrolled' is too frequently abused. When I choose to select autopatrolled articles in the feed prefs, I almost always come across some infringement of the right. I fully understand your point about species articles, but as these articles generally come from mature, serious editors and scientists, plenty of whom are not autopatrolled (so I do know what they look like). The articles are therefore generally clean and are frequently very short. They can be patrolled very quickly. But as I also said, 'autopatrolled' should ultimately be the basis of another debate. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:34, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
I gave my opinion that it shouldn't exist but IMO it's not a pressing issue or high on my worry list. North8000 (talk) 02:15, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Proposal: Remove redirects to draftspace from review queue
I’ve noticed that a couple of the redirects left behind after draftification were marked as reviewed before they could be deleted. My concern is that, if the article gets recreated in mainspace or through AfC, it would not then go into the queue. Correct me if I’m wrong. Does speedy deletion of the redirect remove the “reviewed status”?
Even if reviewed status is removed by the speedy deletion, it’s still unnecessary work to have those redirects in the queue — rsjaffe🗣️10:53, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
A deleted article (or redirect) will be in the queue if recreated (an exception is if it is restored with UNDELETE as discussed above). I don't see a problem here; a redirect to a draft should be CSDed if found. These shouldn't be in the queue very long as CSDs are usually handled promptly. If the Draftification script is used, the redirect is deleted immediately - so I would think redirects to drafts are rare. MB15:55, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
I don’t have page mover rights, so a redirect is left behind with a CSD tag. And deletion takes a while, so I’ve seen the redirects in the queue and, as I stated above, some are getting patrolled. — rsjaffe🗣️16:03, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
I'd prefer they DO show up in the queue. I have come across some that were not already tagged for CSD and have had to tag them. This would allow those to 'slip through the cracks' as it were. I notice them in particular since I mostly patrol redirects. Happy Editing--IAmChaos16:30, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
I agree, that was my point when I said "should be CSDed if found". Having them in the queue is a good way for them to be found and tagged for deletion. MB17:05, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
In my opinion, this sounds like reviewer error. A mainspace to draftspace redirect will always get CSDd by the draftify script. Reviewers are not supposed to mark CSDs as reviewed. Perhaps we can let the folks who are marking these as reviewed know that they are not supposed to mark these as reviewed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:22, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Yeah if someone draftifies and it doesnt get tagged csd for some reason, i think we are supposed to csd r2 it and leave unreviewed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:55, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
P.S. On second thought, anytime a patrolled redirect is flipped to an article, it becomes unreviewed. So I dont think this is a loophole that can be exploited. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:53, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
By the script yes it will be tagged. IF (and only if) the mover uses the script, otherwise it leaves a redirect behind whoch should be left in the queue for someone to tag R2. Happy Editing--IAmChaos22:26, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
I asked for autopatrol rights specifically to avoid creating unreviewable redirects that need patrol by another NPP'er. I didn't get autopatrol but they gave me whitelist which was supposed to solve this. But it apparently hasn't. Someday I should ask for admin to solve all of these things. North8000 (talk) 22:10, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
@North8000: You asked for autopatrolled so that redirects you create when moving a page to correct its title wouldn't go into the queue, which is a different situation. The redirects-with-a-CSD-tag created by the draftify script are not technically redirects and therefore not affected by the redirect whitelist. But now that you're on the redirect whitelist, any regular redirects you create should be automatically patrolled by User:DannyS712 bot III. Is that not happening? – Joe (talk) 07:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
@Joe Roe: Thanks. I guess I was imprecise in my (mis)understanding. I thought it was to apply to all redirects created by me. But I saw that I was on the top of the list of people with the largest amount of un-reviewed articles (all of which were those redirects) and getting notices that other NPP'ers have been manually reviewing those redirects that I left. North8000 (talk) 12:58, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
A group of about 110 articles on entities in India by one editor that I think will need to get deleted
Further to my "100+ articles on departments/authorities within cities in India by Gardenkur awaiting review" post above and linked discussion on my talk page, I passed about 10 of the editor's open articles and I think about 110 need to get deleted. The edior has agreed to stop making these types of articles although I'm not sure that they fully understand.
If anyone is interested, I just took the first one as a test case to AFD which is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Burhanpur Municipal Corporation IMO the "Municipal Corporation" bundle is the most obvious one for not existing as a seperate article. The trickier part is avoiding any outcome which would require merging material which, for the reasons I detailed there, would never get accomplished and really has no material worth merging. North8000 (talk) 17:20, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
I worked it out with the editor and agreed to be a sort of pseudo-mentor on such things.North8000 (talk) 13:01, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
Sigcov in songs articles
Hello, it's been a while since I was an NPP regular. (8 years, maybe?) I looked over the tutorial and am pretty confident that I still understand the basic workflow but will probably occasionally solicit feedback on edge cases.
Speaking of which, I wanted to ask about Skinny Dipping (Sabrina Carpenter song). I did a WP:BEFORE search and concluded that the song passes WP:GNG, albeit barely. However, the sources I found that I believe constitute significant coverage devote most of their attention to describing what happens in the song or music video. (The equivalent of plot summary, basically.) I'm not sure whether others would agree that is actually sigcov and thought I should ask. —Compassionate727(T·C)15:14, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
I spot checked the Teen Vogue source. Seems pretty borderline. Tough call. For sigcov I usually look for 3 meaty paragraphs about the topic in question, that aren't quotations, aren't talking about a slightly different topic, and aren't based off a press release or interview. This source has about 3 paragraphs at the beginning talking about this song, and they are based off an interview. The caveat for interview-based articles (that have some prose and aren't just a giant quote) I've noticed is that if they're short, they tend not to be independent enough, but if they are long, they overcome this. Tough call. I'll let others weigh in. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:26, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
One could argue this is Wikipedian or not, but I try to go by what would probably happen at an AFD which had neutral participants. The fact that the artist is triply slam dunk wp:notable isn't supposed to matter but it does, if only as an indicator of likelyhood of more suitable sources. For the sources that are already in the article I'd call it an edge case. Even a quick search found other suitable-looking sources. My take would be "pass" along with the current tagging.North8000 (talk) 20:03, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
Phabricator vs NPP software requests
An important request has been flatly denied. The reason given on a linked page, is that Page Curation is a 'Non maintained project':
Projects that Growth team has no capacity to maintain and are looking for new ownership or have transferred ownership to another team and are listed here for historical reference. These projects don't have any dedicated resources behind them but are available for new owners who see a future in them and would like to take up the work of developing and maintaining them. Bugs and issues coming up on this projects will ONLY receive attention if the issue is urgent, affects a large number of users and needs to be unbroken immediately.
It is my opinion, though it might not be shared by everyone, is that NPP is the only gatekeeper against possibly inapropriate new articles, and as such is a crucial process for the quality of Wikipedia. Hence the New Pages Feed and its Curation tools need funds and a developer team allocated to their maintenance and improvement. Funds are certainly not lacking. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:52, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Agree 100%, Kudz!! It's a mess. There are bugs to be fixed, features & stats we need, & areas that need streamlining/automation, etc. How much would the average person tolerate were it a paying job, never mind doing it as a volunteer? After reading the this Signpost article, and WMF's laissez faire attitude about ill-prepared articles, PE, unsourced articles – let the volunteers fix it – and the lack of WMF support for the tools we need, it almost seems like they're purposely trying to rid the project of editors. Get back in the coal mine, and don't worry about the dead canaries![stretch] And while I don't begrudge the project earning money off the backs of our free labor, I do mind when they deny us the tools we need to provide the free work. To call it disheartening is an understatement. Atsme💬📧03:27, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Following the message I ledt at Phab, a dev has now claimed this particular task. Anyway, it looks as if some progress is being made. What is really needed however, is a dev team being drawn up to specifically rewrite the entire NPP code, which the WMF told me a few years ago (Ithink it was Kaldari) was unfortunately not compatible with later iterations of MediaWiki and therefore not Wiki-agnostic. Now is the time to do it. There is plenty of money - the WMF is wallowing in it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:20, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
enwiki and all WMF wikis run the latest version of mediawiki (a development version even more up-to-date than the official releases), because they use continuous deployment and release every week (WP:ITSTHURSDAY). I would hesitate to request a complete re-write of complex, working software, as the time to value ratio on this (or any rewrite of working software) would likely be low (ton of developer time, little new useful functionality). Rewrite (programming)#Risks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:07, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm aware of all this. I was told years ago when its original development had just been rolled out. It was explained again years later at here, along with a super log of all the requests that have been addressed, but they have discretely admitted that the whole thing should really be recoded. We worked long and hard on the design of the user interfaces in the best interests of the reviewers in order to try and make NPP a smoother and more appealing task, and later to embed some ORES functions in it but there is still some way to go. If all the features were to be included that we would still find extremely useful a complete rewrite might probably be the best way to get there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:40, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
IMHO has been flatly denied is not an accurate characterization. Patches were welcome (and actually a volunteer sent a patch), and the responsible team said that it's not something that the Growth team can work on any time soon. Software development in big projects involves managing priorities, and managing finite time. Of course, we can argue for prioritization, and make a case for a higher priority, but I think that triggering hostility against developers just because a ticket is not initially prioritized is just wrong. MarioGom (talk) 20:41, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Well, @Kudpung, @Wbm1058, something's different that happened quite recently. I just tried to create a user talk subpage for a NPP trainee exercise and got the following message: The page "User talk:Atsme/NPP training/[student name]" does not exist. You can request that it be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered. Not knowing what else to do, I bypassed it via a move leaving no redirect, which may be a better option anyway, but...I'd still like to know what changed. Atsme💬📧13:05, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Good morning, Joe Roe! I only substituted [student name] for this discussion in lieu of the actual user name. I was logged in, and the move went through without issue. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I just now tried to create another subpage using "Tank", and got the same message: The page "User talk:Atsme/NPP training/Tank" does not exist. You can request that it be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered. ???? Something has been changed. Atsme💬📧14:01, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Atsme, when you see this message on the "Search results" page:
The page "User talk:Atsme/NPP training/Tank" does not exist. You can request that it be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.
Oh, I see it now - so they changed the appearance - wow. It's a big enough change that I didn't notice I was able to create the page after clicking the red link. The first thing I saw was "Create a redirect from this page with Sagittarius" and "Start a discussion". Apologies for the side railing. Atsme💬📧14:57, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
If we can’t have the tools to patrol easily, I will just not bother. If I knew how to, I would make a tool myself. I’m just going to hope that the WMF develop the tools when NPP falls to its knees. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 14:07, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Every bit of help with patrolling would be much appreciated Zippybonzo. NPP is arguably the most important non-admin task on Wikipedia, and although the WMF has done a lot for it in very recent years at our requests, for several reasons they are reluctant to accord any priority to it. Nevertheless, the software we have today is pure luxury. You're very new here, some of us have been waiting a decade or longer for a perfect set of tools! This is what we used to have to work from, and there were no curation tools, tutorials or flowcharts. What we need right now are a lot more truly active patrolers - only about 10% of the 700+ are actually doing anything. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:48, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Request: Report of number of unreviewed articles, grouped by creator
I've noticed that when a creator has more than many unreviewed articles in the queue, they are mostly of the same kind (e.g. constituencies of russia OR frogs from south america OR ...) and either are are an easy pass, an easy fail, or there is something missing in all/most of them, which should be mentioned to the creator. Could someone create a report for this, at least once? If it seems useful to other NPRs, we can ask someone who runs a report bot to generate this report every 12 hours or so. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 11:53, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
There used to be a tool for this, Rentier's NPP browser, but it hasn't worked for some time. It would be really useful, also for identifying candidates for autopatrolled. – Joe (talk) 14:54, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. I've tried to create this query a few weeks back, but quite clearly, my SQL skills need brushing up. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 01:51, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
I’d be interested in a third column showing % of articles produced by the person in the last 90 days that are unreviewed (that is, number of articles in the queue divided by number of articles written in past 90 days). I suspect some of these article types are being passed over by reviewers. For example, I’ve been bypassing all those municipal corporation articles. — rsjaffe🗣️11:57, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
I also took a look at those "municipal corporations in India" articles. I also stepped back, not knowing what to do with them. IMO each would best make a paragraph or section in the article for the city that they are part of. But there is a lot of work there. Merging 100+ articles, including separating out the boilerplate material that is duplicated across them would be a huge job. As would separating out the "micro-happenings" material that makes up the bulk of the unique material and sources in each. I did leave the creator this note:
"First, most importantly, thanks for your work! Next, during new page patrol work I came upon a larger amount of articles on departments/authorities within cities These articles seem to consist of mostly general info regarding the type of department/authority (copied between many many articles) and then a smaller amount of content that is unique to the subject. Also much of the latter is about individual related events rather than being directly about the subject as a whole. If you are still making more of these, I'd like you to consider make them instead a paragraph or section within the article of the city which they are a part of. Thanks again for your work."
NB. Ss112 has been autopatrolled since 2016, those 65 are actually redirects he created that other users have then turned into articles. – Joe (talk) 12:39, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
Wikilove
If I were to criticise myself for my NPP performance (others will no doubt add more if I'm going too easy on myself!), it would be that I don't do enough 'Wikilove'. But the toolbar only has an option to send a message to the creator if you tag a page (which is generally not the best page to send love for!) rather than have a drop down under 'Reviewed' that allows you to direct a message to the talk page, the originator or another contributing editor (for instance, where a redirect has been later converted into an article). Noting User:Kudpung's historical involvement in the toolbar from the above discussion and their familiarity with this arcane Phabricator tickety thing, would others agree that might be a useful feature or am I, as usual, just missing something huge and basic staring me in the face? Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 06:41, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Extraordinary Writ Yes, but that's not sending a message to the editor's talk page. It only allows that if you tag the article. And that's my point - a message, a chococlate biscuit even, to the user is more direct, personal and - arguably - motivating??? Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 06:55, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
It does send a message to the editor's talk page (example). The message is "also" posted on the article talk page, but if you test it out you'll see that the message is indeed delivered to the editor's talk page. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:59, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
At the time, I didn't believe incorporating WikiLove into the Curation Tool was a particularly good idea. And I still don't. However, from the comments I've seen over the years, I'm sure the feed, its filter options, and the Curation Tool are underused. I'm convinced that newer reviewers still haven't fully explored and exploited all the features of the Curation Tool. If they did, and read the tutorial properly, there would be far less criticism of it and fewer claims that Twinkle is so much better. Those who requested the user right would then be more willing to use it rather than be another of the many inactive users among the 700+ reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:53, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Hello! I'm a new-NPP, and have encountered a bug with the Curation Tool not completing the AfD process. I was able to resolve this today by using Twinkle (and removing the Curation Tool notice). Am I doing something wrong or is the tool buggy? I've never had problems with Twinkle in the past, so I'm fine bypassing the CT for nominations. Feedback or advise would be appreciated, esp. if I am using the tool incorrectly. Thanks in advance! Netherzone (talk) 17:57, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Believe consensus is Twinkle is better for everything and NPP tool is mostly for wikilove and review checkmark Slywriter (talk) 18:19, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes (plus of course, also the page feed), it took me a while to learn that. We should write this up somewhere. North8000 (talk) 12:50, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
"Twinkle is better for everything and NPP tool is mostly for wikilove and review checkmark" is IMO a rather sweeping statement. In 10 years of using it and largely coordinating NPP I have found no evidence that such a consensus exists and we have always been mindfull of its improvement and maintenance. The Curation Tool was designed and developed in full collaboration between the NPP volunteers and senior WMF developers including many face-to-face meetings and it was specifically modeled on the features of Twinkle. That said, no one disputes that the learning curve for correctly reviewing pages is quite steep and therefore a detailed tutorial exists which is one of the most comprehensive but easily digestible user rights tutorials on Wikipedia.
In order to reduce subpar tagging and patrolling of articles through Twinkle, in 2016 a user right for NPP was created. There are nevertheless clear caveats that to be done correctly NPP requires an almost admin level knowledge of notability and deletion and that ' New Page Patrol is not a task for new or inexperienced users.' No other system provides as much information on each article both in the feed and in the tool to help reviewers decide what to do with an article; its function is fully described and illustrated here even including a video tutorial.
Bugs: The system is more stable today than it has ever been, and new features are being regularly requested. If there are technical bugs anywhere in the system, please report them here with as much detail as possible. A coordinator will follow up. Alternatively, if you are familiar with Phabricator you are welcome to open a ticket directly there, but please notify this talk page with the Phab tracking info so that it can be followed up. @Netherzone, Slywriter, and Novem Linguae:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:55, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
The problem is not with the bugs in the tools themselves, but with the lack of reporting them properly. There's no point in complaining and claiming Twinkle is better if the developers are not told that something needs fixing. That's one of the reasons why NPP needs a coordinator. Things got done when I, then Insertcleverphrasehere, and then Barkeep49 were looking after things. The NPP community only has itself to blame. Perhaps the admins who are regular reviewers such as @Rosguill, Joe Roe, Ymblanter, and Graeme Bartlett:, might like to comment, including MusikAnimal/MusikAnimal (WMF) who has an overview from all sides. AfC should be the least of our worries, it has a backlog of less than 3,000, a highly competent and active defacto coordinator and a group of over 600 active users that gets regularly pruned for inactivity. FYI: MarioGom. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:32, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
We'd need at least one example of failed AFD creation. Netherzone, do you have any example of an AFD that failed for you? Unfortunately, I can't find the one that failed for me some time ago. MarioGom (talk) 06:14, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
I tried to use the curation tool yesterday to nominate Swift Horses Sharp Swords: Medieval Battles which shook India for deletion (see these edits). It was able to tag the article, add the nomination to the daily log, and notify the user, but failed to actually create the nomination page (even after I had entered and saved my nomination rationale in the toolbar). I had to quickly re-type my nomination and manually create the page afterwards (Special:Diff/1096459998). It's the same behavior that was reported in tasks like phab:T238025 and phab:T239712 (h/t links taken from Joe's message below). DanCherek (talk) 14:04, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
MarioGom, here is an example of an AfD using Page Curation: the tool did everything except create the actual AfD Discussion page.[2] So I removed the Page Curation deletion tag,[3], and AfD'd it using Twinkle instead[4] which completed each step the process in full. I then noticed that the article creator received two deletion notifications on their talk page (one from Page Curation, and one from Twinkle) so I deleted the one from Page Curation because it did not have a working link to a discussion page.)[5]. This happened to me with three AfD's the first one another editor came along and fixed things, and the other two I cleaned up myself with the process described above. I hope that helps explain the difference between how the two tools functioned differently. Netherzone (talk) 15:56, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for this back-story, @Kudpung, it's always interesting to me to learn about WP history and I look forward to learning more about NPP looking forward and also understanding the past. Netherzone (talk) 02:43, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
I never use twinkle, so I cannot compare. I find the tools are over 90% reliable. The last problem I had was that AFD was nominated twice in a second. But simple to overcome that. I appreciate the AFD feature, as it saves a complex manual process. But I only patrol one or a few per day, and mostly they just need the tick of patrolled. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:22, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
I only use Page Curation for the green tick and the next button. I have done for years and I also thought it was the common practice. There are numerous outstanding phabricator tickets relating to AfD and Page Curation, the oldest of which was opened 10 years ago (phab:T239714, phab:T239712, phab:T238328, phab:T238025, phab:T44650). And bugs aside, last I tried it (which was admittedly a long time ago), the UI was far less polished than Twinkle. I think the initial design of Page Curation was good but it really should have been implemented as local Javascript gadget for enwiki, not a Mediawiki extension. Maybe another reason that AfC is doing comparatively well is that their toolis a gadget and it's actively maintained by local volunteers, not reliant on the WMF/MW developers for every fix or update. – Joe (talk) 08:49, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Joe, back in 2010-2012 NPP was already in crisis, no one here was going to offer to build a new system to replace the Special:NewPages to allow faster and smoother patrolling, and despite the huge turnout and massive consensus for WP:ACTRIAL, the WMF flat out (and with extreme incivility) refused to allow it to be implemented. As a consolation, they offered to build a new feed and the Curation Tool was part and parcel of it. Who were we to refuse such a 'magnanimous' offer? Years later after a total turnover of WMF staff, new devs admitted that building it as a MediaWiki extension was an error. Nevertheless, I had collaborated on the design of the GUI and the choice of functions, and although I say it myself, I find the system we have today a vast improvement on the old one - just like anyone who uses a Mac would never want to go back to Windoze.
I don't deny that you might be right about Javascript and Github, but I firmly believe that the way to go is to address the bugs and improve it. If enough of the right kind of pressure were to be exerted on the right WMF department heads (are there any?), I'm sure it would get done. After all, the en.Wiki is their flagship project and it would be in their interest to have a clean encyclopedia corpus. The old chestnut 'not enough funds' is just plain ludicrous as we all know.
AfC does well because they have over 600 active reviewers, a tiny backlog, no deadlines, and a coord who is highly experienced and constantly on the ball. The work is also less soul destroying and mind numbing soul destroying. The daily flood content of the New Pages Feed is basically a torrent of effluent. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:49, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Backlog chart
Is it just me or is the hourly chart not displaying properly, and does anyone more tech-y then I am know how to fix it? Courtesy link: [[:{{{1}}}]]sandbox Happy Editing--IAmChaos02:42, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
External link:Imgur. It is collapsed against the axis (only with the hourly parameter, the rest are fine). Happy Editing--IAmChaos17:20, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
I've been having issues nominating articles for AfD using the NPP sidebar tool the past couple of days. This type of malformed nomination has happened twice to me (PROD and CSD work fine, though; it is just AfD that has the issue). Is this a problem for anyone else, or am I just peanut-brained? Curbon7 (talk) 21:54, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae, I had the exact same problem as Curbon7 as detailed above. The Curation Tool did everything except making an AfD page. Thanks for looking into this! Netherzone (talk) 23:19, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Appropriate draft?
I am a relatively new reviewer, but I want to make sure that I am DRAFTIFYing articles appropriately. I drafted article Draft:William Taylour because…
@CollectiveSolidarity PMR doesn't help if there are multiple edits in the redirect's history. I tagged it for G6 (or R2 who knows what the deleting admin will click) so as soon as an admin finds it and deletes, you (or anyone) can move the draft back. Happy Editing--IAmChaos02:35, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
This article has not yet been reviewed. It is in Wikipedia mainspace but will not be visible to external search engines until it is reviewed to ensure it complies with core policies. Articles must be about a notable subject, be verifiable and not have copyright violations or be promotional. To minimize delays in reviewing this article, it should comply with these policies and have multiple reliable sources to establish notability of the subject (inline citations are preferred).
It appears that the NOINDEX until reviewed is going to happen. This is likely to cause more people to ask "why doesn't my article appear in Google?" To mitigate the extra work of answering this question, we could use a tag like this on all unreviewed articles. I'm not sure of the mechanism to add it automatically and remove it automatically, but before we worry about that, is this a good idea? 14,000 tags is a lot, but it is only 0.22% of all articles. There are that many biography notability tags alone, so it wouldn't without precedent. Thoughts? MB06:04, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
I like it. It forces people who are interested in getting articles indexed soon, to take notability and other tags seriously. 14,000 of these tags is a lot, but we are thinking of such ideas, with the end goal being a much smaller backlog. Mechanism of adding/removal: Some sort of hook when an article is marked as reviewed, possibly. A bot which runs hourly or so, is also good enough. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
It might be useful to clarify what exactly "Wikipedia mainspace" is. I know what it is, as do a lot of other active editors, but a newbie might not. Clovermoss(talk)12:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
While we're at it, it's probably useful to clarify that this process is different from AfC. Maybe in a linked FAQs section or something. Someone might try to remove the template in good faith because they think it's already been reviewed if it's an accepted AfC draft. Clovermoss(talk)16:04, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Another thing to keep in mind would be about the mainspace pages that go through NPP that aren't actually articles like disambiguation pages and redirects. I'm assuming a template like this automatically being added to the page would render the redirect useless, at least temporarily. Clovermoss(talk)16:26, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
I like it also for a second reason which is that it's sort of invisible whether or not an article has been patrolled (or =), But we need to make sure that we don't create another 800 new jobs per day for NPP'ers which is removal of the tags when the article is reviewed. Either need a bot to do that quickly (like maybe every 15 minutes) or add it to what the curation tool automatically does. North8000 (talk) 15:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
This does seem like a decent idea. I second the idea of a bot, and page curation can also remove the tag as well (no reason we can't do both). One drawback I can see is that it adds clutter, but at the same time could potentially draw more attention to NPP and possibly result in more members. I would also suggest adding a link to "mainspace" as the concept of namespaces may not always be understood by new users. I can also see a lot of page creators just removing the tag (as is a typical practice for some) which might create work for editors who will then have to revert and explain to others why they shouldn't remove the tag. ASUKITE16:06, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
This version removes mention of "mainspace" as suggested above, and includes a link to a page that can elaborate such things as
Removal is automatic after review; do not manually remove as (hopefully) a bot will just put it back
Differences with AFC review
Maybe a link that displays the date of the oldest unreviewed article in the "new part" of the queue to give an idea of how long it could take
A note that we don't really care if an article is indexed and if you do, that may be a sign that you are trying to promote something (this may be going too far, some editors apparently want articles to be indexed because they prefer to search for articles with Google instead of the WP search bar).
A link to WP:HELPDESK if there are still questions
As far as use on Redirects, it would not break a redirect if placed after the first line containing #Redirect, or there could be special coding the way there is on a redirect listed at RFD. But it's probably best to just not use it at all on redirects. The text is geared towards articles, and I don't think the issues are the same.
DABs in the queue usually don't stay there for long, and a DAB could be considered a special kind of article. I don't think we need to do anything special. MB21:27, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
@MB: Is there a way for it to exclude redirects? Like if a page has an rcat or a disambiguation template? Otherwise I think version 0.1 addresses all my concerns. Clovermoss(talk)22:41, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Probably should have some process to handle unwanted removal of the template. People sometimes remove maintenance templates without fixing the issue, so I could see that happening here. Perhaps a bot? — rsjaffe🗣️22:51, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
To be honest, after reading all of the discussion above I don't really see a need for this banner. "Why doesn't my article appear in Google?" is a pretty easy question to answer and I don't really expect these questions to be an exacerbating problem if the 90-day period is extended. Unlike other maintenance templates, which alert readers that someone has identified a concrete issue and invites them to fix it if they can, this one seems mostly informational and designed for the page creator, which means that it becomes the most prominent thing on the article for a whole lot of people who don't really need to see it and probably can't do anything about it. Finally, there are plenty of clean, notable, and policy-compliant articles in the NPP queue that simply haven't been patrolled because the backlog is so large and no one has gotten around to it. I don't like the idea of a bot repeatedly reverting anyone (especially an experienced editor) who tries to remove the tag on such an article. DanCherek (talk) 23:25, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
I think the idea of the banner is excellent. Kudos to MB for thinking outside the box and coming up with it. It's one of those no-brainer things that can be done without the bureaucracy of having an RfC for it (which has sadly become a new trend even to dot an I or cross a T). It should be easy for it to appear on all new articles except redirects. Due to the vast increase in Internet access and cheap smart phones in non-English L1 regions, its language should be short, free of WP jargon, and be ENGVAR agnostic. IMO This is all it needs for the required knee-jerk:
Of course, the best solution would be to get the WMF to finally create a proper landing page for newly registered users which they have avoided doing for 20 years. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:27, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Just noticed that the German Wikipedia has a slick way of doing this. First, they have a page explaining it [6]. Then, unreviewed articles have a small tab at the upper right of the article, such as this one: [7]. I like the unobtrusiveness of this method and the way that it says that quality control hasn't been done on the article.— rsjaffe🗣️16:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
Reopening unreviewed tag discussion
Just noticed that the German Wikipedia has a slick way of doing this. First, they have a page explaining it [8]. Then, unreviewed articles have a small tab at the upper right of the article, such as this one: [9]. I like the unobtrusiveness of this method and the way that it says that quality control hasn't been done on the article. — rsjaffe🗣️10:54, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
I agree that the German method of tagging this is good for clarity and transparency so that readers and editors understand what's happening. But it seems that this is associated with their use of Flagged Revisions and that's something that we don't have. It's not clear to me how they explain the difference between an initial review and a version review. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:50, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
I also like that button. On the other hand (I lived in Germany for nearly 20 years) the culture in the German language region is very pragmatic and they design good products and systems that are sometimes rather complicated. They are used to it. As an extremely multicultural Wikipedia sharing the English language, we're not. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:20, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
I see there are plenty of reports of the AfD bug and tracking in Phabricator, though lately I've also encountered issues with PROD (in the page curation tool). When tagging a page for PROD, the tag (subst:prod) is placed and the creator is notified, though neither message includes the PROD reason – [10][11] and [12] (page was later CSD'd) [13] – and so I need to copy and paste manually. (I could also PROD with Twinkle, but such nominations won't be recorded for the backlog drive AFAIK.) Has anyone else experienced this issue, and if so, is there already a Phabricator task for it? ComplexRational (talk) 21:18, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
Yeah. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that these were hoaxes. See User talk:LycanrocDusk134. Since then, all the other pages they developed have been deleted . A waste of time, but sort of an interesting puzzle for the pre-Pokémon generation. — rsjaffe🗣️19:40, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
I do recommend that all reviewers read that thread, especially newer ones and ones with high patrolling counts, because there are lessons in it for all of us. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:21, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
An editor has been taken to RfD for very many redirects yesterday (and today's log too). I started to look at their creations, as they are on WP:RAL, so not previously patrolled by us. I found a few more to nominate and another few that I bundled to a previous nom - I'm going to bed but if anyone wants to take a quick look to catch what I missed, I'd appreciate the second set of eyes, as mine are quite tired. Happy Editing--IAmChaos05:31, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
The editor who created Filipinos in c (and the large number of similar redirects) appears to have begun realising that these redirects aren't deemed helpful by the rest of the community, but their future creations will definitely need to start getting patrolled again. – Uanfala (talk) 10:40, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping User:Novem Linguae and User:Rosguill, I just saw this now. I had misunderstood the intention of redirects as being time-saving shortcuts, as with Google-search autopopulating remaining characters or even phrasing, but now I understand that in fact they are meant to hold more weight as a standalone moniker. It would have been nice if someone had mentioned this to me all these years instead of pointing out years of apparent misdirects years later all at once in a tsunami. But now I stand corrected and will be careful to make these fit this tighter criterion. Best, Castncoot (talk) 00:05, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
Hi User:Rosguill, I’m not sure what list is being referenced above. Whatever it is, may I please be instated on it..or alternatively what are the requirements for instatement..? As I mentioned above, I believe this was a misunderstanding that stands corrected now and going forward. Thank you and best, Castncoot (talk) 01:22, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
@Castncoot the list is the one linked by both myself and Novem Linguae, WP:RAL. The criteria is listed on the talk page: The criteria for this pseudoright is an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. To apply, you would use the talk page, but it would require 3 patrollers to agree with your request, which, with all due respect, may not be likely while all of your RfDs are so fresh they haven't been closed yet. Happy Editing--IAmChaos01:33, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
I notice a significant part of backlog is Asian television shows. Does anyone have a good indicator of reliable sources? or a general rule to follow - Channels that imply notability? I've approved some that at least listed ratings (though also discovered at least one "news site" regularly inflates, so even those require a deeper dive), prodded a few for only sourcing from promotional materials but been skipping the same ones for weeks now and wondering how we can cut down that part of the queue. Slywriter (talk) 21:27, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
I have noticed that the majority of the articles in the New Pages Feed are nowadays on Asian topics and that a great many of them either fail GNG or are in a state where they can't sensibly be put in mainspace. It would cramp the style of the native English speaking and/or non Asian reviewers to have to decide on the reliability of Asian sources of which there is often a plethora in some even short articles. Article creators who scrape the Internet's barrel for every website that has a fleeting mention are not being helpful, especially where around half the 750 holders of the New Page Reviewer right have never patrolled a page, and fewer than 100 reviewers are truly active. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:49, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
This is one of the reasons we need to stick closer to WP:NOT - WP should not be turned into the TV Guide, a tourist brochure, a schedule for sports broadcasting, a list for game scores, a venue for promoting new movies, etc. We have become the antithesis of NOT, and now that we've got new articles coming at us in uncontrollable numbers as translations from different languages and what not, we will either have to (a) develop AI to control it, (b) put a monthly limit on translated submissions or better yet, (c) have each language encyclopedia provide for their own English translations in their respective encyclopedias, most of which are governed differently from en.WP. For example, their articles can having various language flags at the top of their original article's translation, and keep those translated articles in their project pages. We either organize properly or who knows what will happen, but it doesn't appear to me that we're headed in a good direction if we don't make some preventative changes quickly. We simply don't have the workforce that can handle billions. ~ Eternal Optimist but fading rapidly12:31, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
Kudpung, until there's a shift in mentality, I doubt any of my ideas will get much traction. I'm an editor, not a content creator. I spend my time in counter-vandalism, AfC, NPP and patrolling contentious pages. I see the mission as curation and improvement at this point. Breaking news (really all new articles) should start as drafts, notability for celebrities/sportspeople should be ratched way up to cover those who actually make an impact in their profession, article should have locked sections for confirmed data that will never change, pending changes should be the default for new users. We should act like the go-to place for the world to get their information that we are, instead of hiding behind "Wikipedia is unreliable" and a "work in progress". Slywriter (talk) 17:10, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
@Slywriter: if you read everything on this talk page before some of it gets archived again (it won't take you long), you'll get a good overview of the challenges we are permanently faced with and what we are currently trying to do to get some of these issues resolved. You might also find some areas where you can help. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:01, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Regarding the Wikipedia articles (which require a lot more than just text. e.g. references) that was a human that did that. But the threat of fake articles is real. I once uncovered a set of dozens of them. Very technical looking, heavily referenced and very wikipedian looking, but which were actually gibberish. North8000 (talk) 14:09, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
Oops - should've made it a separate ¶. I miscalculated thinking "someone" in the headline would be the clue along with the username in the article. Regardless, my point was that if a human can slip-in hundreds, imagine what a Bot can do. In the interim, we're here and at a few other venues trying to determine whether to include/exclude (a) imperfect articles that have -0- RS or inadequately sourced, (b) moving them to Draft, or nominating them for deletion, and (c) what is or isn't notable. It appears minor when one considers the hazards of being swamped beyond human capability and the damage fraudulent (and flawed, unsourced, or poorly sourced) articles could do to the project's credibility if we don't work on prevention. j/s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Atsme💬📧15:01, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
We're probably particularly vulnerable on imported articles where there is less scrutiny in the wiki where it was developed and where all of the sources are non-english languages and non-arabic character sets. North8000 (talk) 17:16, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
North, some of our vulnerabilities are insurmountable without the proper automation/tools. If it takes a decade to discover a single troll editor, how many more have gone undetected? Mark my words - the bots are coming - in fact, they've already been here, and it's just beginning. (Sounds more like the title for a horror movie.) Atsme💬📧17:28, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
True that this is very concerning, but I don't see it as a separate problem as much as an extension of the current problem. We're always gonna be on the backfoot in the war against vandalism, whether human or AI; the determinant for us is just our capability to react. It's pretty easy to figure out historical or biographical hoaxes, but extremely difficult with regards to advanced sciences and maths. As North said, it's very easy for a vandal to portray themselves as a someone knowledgeable in a technical field (like a mathematician) and then create nonsense. Some reviewers might assume they're credible because they seem to know what they're talking about, and the topics involved are more complex than 95% of us can understand. I can only imagine how many of our articles on mathematics are complete fiction. Curbon7 (talk) 17:41, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
@Curbon7: Have you come across any highly technical hoax articles? Almost all the entries on Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia just seem obscure, not technical to the point where most people would throw up their hands, consider it abstract nonsense, and move on. For mathematics in particular I think there are enough keen-eyed editors and readers who can tell when something is bogus, like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Smarandache number. I think a more likely place of disruption is, like, obscure species; it'd be interesting to see if any such hoaxes have cropped up. Ovinus (talk) 02:08, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
Luckily, I don't think a hoax species article would get through. Part of the work species gnomes and species NPPers do is check databases such as Catalogue of Life, WoRMS, NCBI, Index Fungorum, iNaturalist, etc. Every species has a scientific binomial name that should be in one of these databases. If I ran across a species not in these databases while NPPing or running my SpeciesHelper script, I'd scrutinize the citations super carefully, and likely take action. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:11, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
I didn't think of that, that's really interesting... I wonder if other things with clear categorizations can be checked automatically. There was a book hoax AfD recently (can't remember the name, unfortunately), so it's conceivable that ISBNs could be checked automatically, although I'm not sure if there exists a free-to-access database of ISBNs. Ovinus (talk) 05:08, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
The big batch that I caught consisted of random pieces of copied text from random sources. So no one item was identifiable as bogus, but the whole article was random gibberish. Most readers would just figure that it was their own weakness that they couldn't understand what was being said. In technical areas outside of my fields I have some Platte river type expertise in many, and my "inch deep" knowledge was enough to spot it. North8000 (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
Interesting topic! Wikipedia's defenses against vandalism and hoaxes (and pretty much any bad edits) are multi-layered, like an onion. The layers from outer to inner are something like ClueBot -> Huggle -> recent changes patrollers -> new page patrollers -> watchlisters -> subject matter experts. The good news is that very few bad edits are able to get through all the outer layers. So the amount of bad edits that need a subject expert to remove them is (in my opinion) pretty low. Considering that we work with millions of articles yet Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia only has around 450 entries, and also that the scandal mentioned in the above newspaper article is from the Chinese Wikipedia, we may be doing OK. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:42, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
It took 10 years to discover the 100+/- articles by a single editor. We've had the wool pulled over our eyes more than a few times. I'm not quite as confident that (1) it isn't serious enough to be too concerned over, (2) that it isn't happening as I type this response, or (3) Bots aren't may be busy creating hundreds of articles in main space that we may not be aware of now or for quite a while into the future, if ever – we need certain tools to do the job. I realize that it's hard to be concerned over something that isn't right there staring back at us, or may be taking place in some other part of the project without our knowledge. Granted, luck and good editing skills have been our allies, but why discount the fact that we have serious problems that need automated tools to fix? The WMF is quite capable of getting techs together to write scripts for a crawler or other type of hound dog algorithm that can sniff out some of the problems. It's better for us to have 5,500,000 quality articles than 6,500,000 that include a million garbage articles. Funders donate because they are expecting some level of quality in what we publish. Either way, it's certainly worth pursuing, keeping in mind that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.Atsme💬📧00:22, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
We could have a CAPTCHA as a solution to the AI problem when a user creates a new article. The counter-vandalism effort will probably go on just as long as this conflict, but there are plenty of bots and users willing to help out. In regards to hoaxes, they will eventually be discovered. Sure, there are probably some 20-year-old hoaxes that still linger out there, but nothing that gets created will go unnoticed forever. CollectiveSolidarity (talk) 21:15, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
I've suggested captcha in the past, but the flood of articles tend to come from registered users who are proficient Bot users, and/or mass producing translations from already created articles in other languages. I've also learned that AI is capable of citing sources, paraphrasing, fact-checking and creating legible articles. See this article if you haven't already. As for hoaxes - maybe WP could have a "treasure hunt" to find the hoaxes and offer a cash reward. Atsme💬📧16:07, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
While patrolling, I caught and CSD flagged an article yesterday, Atsme, that I immediately recognised as a hoax (if I had admin tools I could have deleted it on the spot because it was potentially also a negative BLP). I am sure that it would not have been detected by a new(ish) reviewer. This intuition only comes from years of solid experience just like an older soldier's instinct for self-preservation on active service in an urban or jungle war zone, or and older doctor's skill for diagnosis rather than relying on modern med-tech. The problems as far as begging for AI solutions are concerned, is that the WMF (or more exactly the boss of Phab) is still claiming only yesterday, lack of resources for addressing even simple but urgent software bugs. I contend that as the WMF is awash with money, there is no excuse for not hiring more software engineers. The dilemma is knowing whom to escalate to in the vague hierarchy of the WMF when requests are denied or shunted into a holding pen by Phab. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:49, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
Kudz, I plan to attend the Trustee meeting next week with bells on, and a positive attitude. Rest assured that I am cautiously optimistic about making our concerns known and getting them escalated to priority status. I am also waiting for the next in-person WikiCon and Wikimania event where I can meet the people I need to meet to get things done. I recently shared some ideas with Bluerasberry re: a special project I was thinking about submitting to WMF, and he was receptive to the idea. I just need to put a team together to help me get it implemented. Oh, and I already submitted some of my written concerns with diffs for the WMF Trustees to review ahead of next week's meeting so they will be prepared for my questions, and if I'm lucky, they'll add it to the agenda. It certainly can't hurt.
A summary thought in response to what you described above: I do try to teach my trainees what to look for when reviewing articles, especially WP:NCORP and related BLPs, and to use their critical thinking skills when reviewing rather than simply approaching articles from a linear PAG approach. I am very pleased with the last few rounds of trainees I've had the absolute pleasure of working with - they are sharp, know what to look for, know PAGs, and while I haven't kept them under a microscope, I do try to read some of their discussions as reviewers from time to time. But like you, I'm concerned they will get burned out if we don't get the tools we all need to automate some of the mundane tasks. Atsme💬📧23:48, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
@Atsme, CollectiveSolidarity, Novem Linguae, North8000, and Curbon7: Maybe the NPP School I created 10 years ago is being underused. Perhaps most reviewers don't think they need further training but I remain convinced that many of them never bothered to read the comprehensive tutorial before asking for the right. Maybe others seriously need a refresher course. Around half the 750+ reviewers have never made a patrol while less than 100 are truly active. The tools we most urgently need are listed in the table on the Suggestions page and reviewers are being asked what they think the priorities are (see new tread below). But what we need now are reviewers who are genuinely interested in patrolling new pages, and among them, many more who have a thorough knowledge of Asian media. We are all very interested to hear the results of the Zoom meeting. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:21, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
@Kudz, they recorded the meeting, so you can watch it as soon as they get it uploaded. As you may have anticipated, it was more of a trustee vanity meeting where they provided updates of their accomplishments and introduced some of the programs they're working on, including the new Enterprise. I wasn't even given the opportunity to speak. The panel harvested and responded to a few text questions originating from the chat (YouTube?) portion of the meeting. The meeting chair (Elena Happen) harvested the questions and the respective trustees, or project leaders responded on Zoom. I thought it odd because a few days before the meeting, WMF sent us a request via the e-list to submit our questions in advance of the meeting so they could prepare, and get them worked into the agenda. One by one the agenda items were presented and discussed only by the trustees/project leaders. An hour+ later, I wasn't getting even a hint that my reason for attending was going to be discussed so I sent Elena a private text asking when the pre-submitted questions would be addressed. A short while later she responded and publicly referenced the presubmitted questions, but started and ended with mine, saying it was not an agenda item but went ahead and asked Shani Evenstein to respond. Long story short, Shani admitted that she knew about the NPP backlog, yada yada, but it appeared to me that she neither had a clue as to what I wanted to discuss nor did she seem interested in doing so. She ended by basically saying the issues at NPP are not in WMF'sBoT's purview, and that it was something the community had to figure out - discussion over. Elena moved to another topic, so I sent Shani a private text asking if I could discuss it with her via email, and she texted back with an email address. Atsme💬📧01:28, 15 July 2022 (UTC)strikes and edits made on 16:07, 17 July 2022 (UTC). See Shani's response directly following Kudz response below, which is also followed by my apology for misunderstanding the BoT's position. Stay tuned - there is more to come, hopefully with the help & guidance of our BoT's. We are already starting to get support from WMF techs - EXCITING!! Atsme💬📧
Atsme, Shani Evenstein is Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees and her home Wiki is Hebrew Wikipedia. Needless to say therefore that I am not surprised that she is not familiar with NPP and gave you a throwaway answer. NPP is very much in the WMF's purview - they developed it and nobody else can address the issues, nor can the local en.Wiki NPP community be expected to. The WMF is currently looking into some of the NPP issues at Phab but there are no signs of an ETA. User:Rosiestep is also a board member and it may be worth contacting her. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:44, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
Hello, @Atsme: and @Kudpung:. Thank you for all you do, for attending the last Open Conversation with the Board of Trustees (BoT), and for sharing your view in these posts. There's a lot to consider. Note, we might have different points of view, but I will do my best to answer in good faith and with the facts so people can have a full picture. A few points to consider:
The talk was live streamed automatically on YouTube. Here is a link. You can find the exact question mentioned at 1:09:45. Check what I said and if you share quotes, please ensure accuracy. I did not say “NPP are not in WMF's purview”, but rather “…not the BoT purview”. There is a big difference. I also stated the BoT does not deal with operations, but with strategy, and that such matters, such as NPP, are not related to Board work. I added that there is a true desire among WMF staff to help. I believe the Product department has already replied, as they are the ones with the expertise to do so, not the BoT.
In the past, the BoT was criticized by the community for being non-transparent, at times referred to as “Black Box”, the community not knowing what it does, and at times why it makes the decisions it makes. The fairly new Community Affairs Committee (CAC), which I serve as founding Chair of, has several goals (see Charter), one of which is as a platform to help the BoT be more transparent and allows dialogue between the community, WMF, staff and the BoT. Part of our efforts is conducting Open Conversations with Trustees; and opening askcac{{@}}wikimedia.org email, available for anyone. The BoT has never been as transparent and accessible as it is now. This is not a hoax, nor a publicity stunt, and certainly not coming from a place of vanity. We take our work very seriously. Various people, including Trustees (who are volunteers as well, BTW), spend many hours making these meetings as meaningful and inclusive as possible, with true commitment by the whole BoT, and our CEO and staff, to be as transparent as possible, to have honest and meaningful conversations (even if tough at times). We do our best to listen, address issues that have not been addressed (at times for years), and hopefully, also rebuild trust.
For the Open Conversations to be efficient, effective and inclusive, they have to be well organized in advance. We prepare for these meetings and send an agenda of main topics, and post it on Meta, a week in advance, and make sure to go through these agenda items. Not only Trustees and staff speak. The main agenda items are followed by a Q & A on the main topics (as opposed to general updates at the beginning). We also have 20-30 minutes in each meeting for open questions in the room (and on YouTube), or pre-submitted questions - not part of the agenda topics. We view it as the best way to run such meetings, but listen to feedback and make changes to make the format more effective almost every time.
If a community member does not like the format - they can let us know. There are proper channels to do that, like the CAC email, and the survey at the end of each meeting. We are on record for already changing multiple things to the request of the community. We’ll seriously consider a community member’s request to change the format, and answer questions in a timely manner.
Attendees were told they could write questions/comments in the chat or raise a hand and request to speak. Perhaps you hadn't arrived at the Zoom meeting when that was stated, so we'll remember to mention it more than once in future meetings. If the point is that it was important for you to ask the question live in your own words, then point taken. In future meetings an effort will be made to allow people to ask themselves, if they are in the room.
On a regular basis, the BoT receives questions from people in the movement on topics that have nothing to do with Board responsibilities. One of the goals of these Open Conversations is better informing the community what the BoT does and what it does not. Having a mechanism for pre-submitted questions allows the BoT to forward questions not within its remits to staff, to give more informed answers. Sending your question in advance, we were able to give an answer that included our Product department perspective. When any Trustee answers a question, these are official answers. They are usually checked and researched beforehand. I happen to know EnWiki quite well, including this issue and others, but even if I didn’t, I would not speak without checking first.
The BoT has limits to what it can do. “We understand, we care, but it’s not related to our work and here’s where you need to go for answers” may not have been a desired answer, but it is a legitimate answer nonetheless. It’s how organizations work - each part has a different role. This question did not touch a topic under the purview of the BoT. Does that mean the Board doesn’t care? Absolutely not. We care deeply, certainly enough to make it heard, ask staff to give more context and think strategically about longer term solutions. But the BoT does not have ‘magic’ solutions. Not always, anyway.
Trustees serve the WMF and the Movement as a whole, across all projects and all stakeholders. Any Trustee would have given the same answer, no matter what their home wiki is as the answer that was given was prepared in advance, after checking it with relevant staff. It may not have been the answer you wanted, but it was an honest answer. The BoT understands and cares about anything to do with our most important stakeholder - the volunteers who run the projects. We will continue to look for solutions and support the communities in our Movement in any way we can, even if we can’t fix everything, for everyone, right away.
Discussions do not have to be over when an Open Conversation meeting is finished. I ended my reply with an open invitation to share more details. I shared the askcac@wikimedia.org email (the proper channel to get in touch with us) multiple times. Atsme, you have also reached out privately, and I immediately responded that I am happy to continue this via email. And obviously, discussion can continue here. Hope this helps.
Hi, Shani (WMF), thank you for stopping by; it was a welcome surprise and very much appreciated. First, my apologies for any misunderstandings, and for my poor choice of words in the use of vanity, a word I considered as innocuous as vanity publishing (self-published). I'll try to be more thoughtful in the future. My initial expectations for the meeting were probably more wishful thinking than reality based, hoping there would be active discussions among attendees & trustees resulting in either suggestions or solutions. I take full responsibility for any misunderstandings I may have had in that regard. Perhaps after you receive my proposal via email, it will bring more clarity while providing the best approach for accomplishing what NPP needs in the way of tools, maintenance and improvements. I am happy to say that we have received some encouraging input from Johan (WMF) and a few other techs at Phab, but there is still a great need for a coordinated/designated effort to protect the efficiency of NPP/AfC and the quality of en.WP overall. I'm looking forward to further discussions with you! Atsme💬📧03:00, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Hey folks, a couple of things in the horizon which might be helpful here (and for others dealing with the same issues).
We hope that phab:T273220, StopForumSpam, should be helpful for combatting automated insertion of content, and might be relevant here. For the next step, at some point this quarter, it will be tested on a few wikis in report mode, so we can see that it works well in real-world setting.
Atsme is already involved in this ticket, but for the rest of you, one interesting way of detecting hoaxes might be phab:T312841#8075735 – see the conversation there. That's promising, but still fairly theoretical – difficult to say what will work and how yet.
Technical solutions to specific workflows is pretty far from what the Board of Trustees work on. Community Tech did a lot of New Page Patrol work in 2019. For specific tools beyond what's linked above, I think the Community Wishlist is probably the best realistic venue. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
Hello Atsme; it's been a while since we interacted last. Hope you're doing well! Thanks, too, for being so involved with NPP, including your mentee program. I imagine that's a lot of work. And, Kudz, thanks for the ping (Rosiestep). I won't try to paraphrase or readdress what Shani (WMF) has already said above in her thorough response. I see that Johan (WMF) responded yesterday in this section, and that is great (thanks, Johan!) as Johan is one of the WMF staff involved in this work so I think we're on the right track. --RStephenson (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
@RStephenson (WMF), Johan (WMF), and Shani (WMF): thank you all so much for chiming in here, especially Shani for her long and detailed response. Personally I am not a fan of live video meetings, or even Internet chat channels - which might all be temporarily necessary - and I don't participate in them. I look forward to the resumption of face-to-face meet ups, and conferences such as Wkimania, which is how I and two others were able to convince the WMF's VP and C-level devs to develop the new Page Triage system some 10 years ago. Better and more willing WMF support for the volunteer attendees at such conferences should now also be possible.
NPP is so important it definitely should be part of short, medium, and long term strategy if Wikipedia is to survive. We feel therefore that there is much the BoT could do to persuade the WMF to channel its focus. Unfortunately one of the greatest hurdles for the volunteer community to get its head around is understanding the (former) lack of transparency in the way both the WMF and the BoT operate, and the way the wealth of funds is used. This can and does cause misinterpretation of comments and jumping to conclusions by a volunteer community whose enthusiasm has been abused in the past by having to repair costly WMF mismanagement without thanks or compensation. The NPP volunteers are now nervous and jumpy and more than a few are jumping ship.
Also unfortunately, the rift between the encyclopedia communities and parts of the WMF's 550-strong staff seems to be still growing, especially since around 2013-2014 when with the mass exodus of senior staff and WMF leadership changed. Since then, and after the initial and obviously expected exponential growth of traditional content slowed, the Foundation's policy has come to be perceived as the growth in the number of articles is more important than the quality, and many volunteers feel that the WMF has lost touch with the grassroots of the organisation. As Atsme says: It's better for us to have 5,500,000 quality articles than 6,500,000 that include a million garbage articles. Funders donate because they are expecting some level of quality in what we publish.
The en.Wiki is the WMF's flagship project and New Page Patrol is the only mechanism that both prevents inappropriate articles from entering the corpus, and encouraging, as a field ambulance triage station, creators of articles with potential to improve their work. NPP is therefore crucial to upholding the quality of the encyclopedia and repairing its oft criticised accuracy and neutrality. This is why the encyclopedia needs a system that looks good, performs well, and encourages users of the right calibre to use it and to use it responsibly. NPP bugs and backlogs have become too much of a challenge for those who signed up for it. There are 700+ authorised New Page Reviewers, nearly half of them have never made a patrol, only a tiny fraction are doing all the work and some of these have burned out - it is unreasonable to subject enthusiastic volunteers to such stress, and guilt for not doing enough.
The 2018 ACPERM driven by NPP volunteers was an immediate success but 4 years later is now already negated by the mutation in new content (see my comment below: in Asian Media). A very significant and growing percentage of new articles are either inappropriate or not in a fit state for immediate inclusion, causing spikes in the backlog which our truly active patrollers are now unable to contain. The current backlog drive is having some impact but the backlog will rise again to untenable proportions when it is over.
The bugs and features listed at Phabricator (see our local list here) list are important and and despite successful campaigns with the Wishlist in previous years are now too serious to have to compete with the cosmetic and convenience gadgets that are traditionally requested at the Wishlist. We fully understand that the code base used by the WMF for Page Triage is not fully compatible with current iterations of MediaWiki; NPP is a WMF responsibility and its needs override the Wishlist project. The community therefore hopes that a team of developers can be assigned to addressing in a timely manner the technical requests that are either unfulfilled WMF promises or community consensus before the system collapses completely. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:30, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Kudpung & Atsme, thank you both for your replies and additional historic context. I acknowledge reading it. I cannot promise an immediate solution, but I can promise it will be properly discussed. To make sure expectations are realistic, I will add that this topic / issue / problem statement requires further discussions internally, both with our CEO and our new CPTO. As you may know, we have just hired a new CPTO, who will be starting in August. Whatever operational solutions WMF will come up with for this stated problem, it will have to include her. Till she settles in, and till we are able to strategize around this topic (and other related technologically-related topics) further in collaboration with staff, our Product department continues to be aware and continue to work on it to the extent they can; but I hope it is clear that talking about longer-term solutions, a bit more time will be needed to make sure this is properly discussed. Atsme, we look forward to further details you may want to share via email. Best, Shani (WMF) (talk) 11:02, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Asian media
Perhaps a NPP School template should be advertised on the main page for the project (WP:NPP). It could help alert users that they should come by if they want to join the patrol, or advise newer patrollers who need a refresher on the process. In regards to Asian media, maybe an essay can be written on foreign media to help native English speakers correctly patrol these pages. Not necessarily a policy, but some advice from an experienced patroller that has reviewed a lot of Asian media. CollectiveSolidarity (talk) 22:48, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
CollectiveSolidarity, essays get read far less often than you would imagine. The problem here is that the Southasian continent has a greater population than all the traditional English L1 speaking regions together. To write such an essay that would be helpful to the majority of NPPers, every one of the thousands of possibly reliable Asian sources would need to be tabulated. At least in the native English speaking world we are fairly clear about what constitutes a reliable source and even one of the best known mainstream national daily newspapers is banned as a source. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:12, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung. So that’s it then? More work expanding this massive list? It would undoubtedly just create an issue at WP:RSN. I wish that considering all the L2 speakers that have joined the project in recent years, we could have at least had a multilingual task force assisting with source assessments. I would’ve suggested translating source assessments from the Southasian language wikis, but they may have different processes for determining reliable sources. CollectiveSolidarity (talk) 03:58, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
I'm beginning to wonder if we're slowing the growth of other language encyclopedias by accepting so much foreign language material and sources into this English encyclopedia? It's becomes even more concerning when it's UPE and they're marketing a person, place or thing citing foreign language sources that we have no access to, much less are able to read. I realize there's a push for globalism, but we simply don't have enough resources to cover different languages coming at us from countries with populations in the billions. I've got a headache just thinking about it. Atsme💬📧04:10, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
@CollectiveSolidarity and Atsme: That's it, folks, we just don't have enough resources. All the Wikipedias are owned by the WMF but being responsible for their own content they operate very different criteria for notability and sourcing. The French Wiki, for example, is notoriously lax. The en.Wiki is extremely strict. I have often said (and I hope it won't get me into trouble) that en.Wiki is fast becoming the South Asian Wikipedia in English... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
I doubt many have given much thought to what a global democracy would look like, much less a global WP in English. It will become so large and unwieldy readers will lose interest. Right now, globalism seems like a great deal because most are focused on the low hanging fruit of a global economy and the $$ it will bring. What they probably haven't thought about is how things will operate once states and then entire nations lose their autonomy, and are forced into a global currency, global laws, and the mass majority will be governed by some form of global democracy wherein the majority wins. The important question then becomes: who will comprise the majority? It's hard enough to get consensus on WP, but just thinking about what could go wrong in a globalist democracy gives me pause. It appears to me that foresight is seriously lacking on all fronts. Atsme💬📧18:39, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
@Atsme: you've been reading too many dystopian novels. We all did as teens in the 1950s and 60s - indeed some of it was set reading for our exams, but I believe they are largely out of fashion now. If NPP isn't brought up to snuff very soon, within the next 20 years (after I am long gone) Wikipedia will either be gone, be sold to Elon Musk, or have become a government instrument of propaganda and Montgomery Street a prison for dissidents. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:40, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Kudz, I don't read novels – I wait for the movie to be released. I cut my teeth reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, and it still amazes me how many WP articles I can read/absorb in one sitting whereas attempting to read a novel puts me right to sleep. Perhaps my living 50 mi north of Venezuela adds to my wokeness about what can/does happen in a global context. I've also noticed how most people rarely think about dying, even though it's inevitable. I guess it's because we're too busy living. We're reminded how fragile life is when we lose a loved one, or barely escape what could have been a fatality. I've experienced both in the past 4 months. It's human nature to discount things we don't give much thought to...until we're personally affected by them. Atsme💬📧12:23, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Does anybody use Special:Log -> Deletion Tag Log (pagetriage-deletion)? I'm thinking about deleting it from the code. The code currently writes all deletion tagging to both that log and the main Page Curation Log (pagetriage-curation). Seems unnecessary to have two logs logging the same thing. @Tol, which log does your backlog drive bot use to check these (hopefully pagetriage-curation)? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
@Tol. Thanks for the reply. Yes would be great if you could change it to pagetriage-curation/delete. Quarry query. I think it's exactly the same log entries. If you don't set log_action = delete, would just need to make sure to ignore some other types of logs in there such as "USER tagged ARTICLE with orphan tag" –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:20, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
Hey @Tol. Just a courtesy notice that, as of Thursday, the software no longer writes entries to the Deletion Tag Log. If you haven't updated your bot, you may want to. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:14, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
What are the chances of making it a requirement for editors with under 5k edits to attend & graduate from NPPSCHOOL before they can apply for or be granted the right? Atsme💬📧23:03, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
I don't know so let me argue in both directions. Pro: We get a lot of people who are just hat collectors, and for folks serious about wanting to do NPP this is a great way to get them started and more likely to succeed. Con: NPP is 90% about thoroughly knowing the relevant areas of Wikipedia and only about 10% about learning NPP. Current NPPSchool isn't running 100% and lacks understanding / focus / training on what that 10% is. So it would be just another hurdle to getting NPP'ers and thus reducing the number that we can graduate into real NPP'ers and and then fluent/ big number NPP'ers<> North8000 (talk) 02:15, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
This looks like a good idea as otherwise the gate is wide to any comer, however clueless, but is there not a bottleneck in terms of the restricted numbers of sufficiently experienced NPPers willing to undertake the commitment of leading such courses? I remember when I did it that it was quite intensive and time-consuming, for the trainer as well as the mentee, and not everyone from the in any case short list will want to put aside that much time. But this not a suitable area for enthusiastic beginners. I can't agree that it's better to have lots of untrained NPPers rather than a smaller number of effectively trained and experienced ones - in the long run it creates more work in fixing the reviewing errors, and if the errors are left unfixed it detracts significantly from NPP's standing. Ingratis (talk) 08:23, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
It seems like a decent idea, but we should probably get more trainers before we try to action this or else we will have a trainee backlog too. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 08:48, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
I like the idea of NPP school for newish editors. It certainly helped me. Notability isn't something that can be cracked by reading the PAGs. The PAGs aren't kept 100% accurate compared to results at AFD, GNG is kept vague on purpose, and many of the SNGs are too detailed and cluttered with noise. Notability has to be painfully reverse engineered, or taught by someone experienced. I'm undecided on making NPPSCHOOL required, but I do like the idea of nudging more newish editors towards it. In the long run, NPPSCHOOL is an area where we may want to appoint a coordinator, and also standardize it. For example I notice there are two common curriculums used by trainers, and one curriculum takes a week, and the other curriculum takes 3 months. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:59, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
The NPP School was created in 2012 after the 2011 WP:ACTRIAL was disallowed by the WMF. The school was still underused and the quality of patrolling was low, so in 2016 a user right was created for NPP and the better performing patrollers were grandfathered into the new user group.
With a new official hat for collection the number of reviewers has grown to 804 . Almost half of them have never made a single patrol, and most of the rest have very low activity. In a last desperate attempt to stem the tide of junk WP:ACPERM was finally rolled in 2018. The quality of patrolling, while much better than pre 2016, still left much to be desired so a probationary feature was added to Requests for permissions.
The NPP software has been improved to make the task more streamlined and attractive to patrollers but it's still not possible to force them to be good at it or to prevent more hat collectors from signing up. Backlog drives have temporary impact but some prolific patrollers might be reviewing too fast (in some cases a review every 10 seconds). The deliberate misuse of the right is either on the increase or editors are getting better at detecting it, and the amount of it is causing concern.
Requiring all NPP candidates to attend the school is not a new an idea, but while it would put an end to the hat collecting and much of the deliberate abuse, it would discourage many editors of the right calibre from applying. Apart from the possibility of compulsory training and raising the bar for the NPP right, there are not many solutions. One compromise would be to put all new, accepted applicants on 3 months probation during which they must graduate from the school. Some editors might contend that such a measure would introduce too much added bureaucracy. OTOH if the candidates have already done their homework, they should sail through it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:49, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
I support this idea. I graduated from WP:CVUA and later instructed a couple students there. Just having the aspirant talk to an instructor is enough to suss-out who's just looking for a hat. Similarly, I graduated from WP:GARC to properly do GA Reviews. The tough part is having enough instructors to fulfill student need but I think such a process is invaluable. Beyond preventing new patrollers from making massive mistakes, the cadre of instructors help create a better sense of community shared standards as each student graduates in the mold of their instructor. This might help reduce the practical amount of variance in the project as (I suspect) many NPP'ers don't stick strictly to the flow chart. Chris Troutman (talk)20:57, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
I also naturally support the idea, but as I hinted above, it's going to need some workshopping before a solution can be adopted. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:17, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
I support your take on this, Chris Troutman. I am only a probationary reviewer, and have made several mistakes in the process even with six months tenure and a GA under my belt. Probably the only solution is to raise the bar with NPP, even if more than half the reviewers are kicked to the curb. It’ll be worth it if less substandard articles end up slipping through the cracks.CollectiveSolidarity (talk) 22:05, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
@CollectiveSolidarity: I've been here since 2018 and even now I feel like I've only recently started understanding notability as an overall concept, beyond GNG, within the last year or so. That had a lot to do with my (still ongoing) training at NPP school. I still don't feel like I'm quite there in terms of understanding everything, but my self-confidence wavers at times and I have minimal experience with AfDs so I feel like that makes sense. My point is that notability is nuanced and I think that more people could benefit from NPP school if they want to participate in it for that reason. At the same time, I'm not sure how I'd feel about making it mandatory for someone with less than x amount of experience or y amount of edits. Seems kind of like editcountitis that could lead to people trying to game the system. I think I'd prefer something along the lines of "it's strongly encouraged to participate in NPP school if you're an intermediate editor" with some description of what is meant by intermediate editor? Clovermoss(talk)23:02, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
@Clovermoss, I would think that intermediate in this sense would be more than 90 days and 500 edits to main space (the bare minimum for the right), but less than a year and 2000 non-automated edits to main space. Again, this proposal is a work in progress, so further suggestions to help refine it would be appreciated. If I was to propose something, I would add a template on WP:NPPR suggesting that prospective reviewers should sign up for NPP school if they want experience for the right. CollectiveSolidarity (talk) 23:26, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
@CollectiveSolidarity: Yeah, that sounds about right for a description of an intermediate editor. Where it gets complicated is that editcounts can mean very different things. Fixing thousands of typos manually (so technically not an automated edit) vs writing multiple GAs could lead to the former having a much higher edit count despite the latter potentially having a better understanding of overall policy. Also someone who's been a very active editor right from the start might have a better understanding of policy compared to someone who's been more casually participating for years. What I'm saying is that there shouldn't just be an arbitrary cutoff that prevents people that could be good new page patrollers from participating (at least beyond the minimum criteria that already exists, at least imo). There should be some amount of leeway even if there's general guidelines for when someone's ready for the userright, is what I'm trying to get at. Clovermoss(talk)23:35, 18 July 2022 (UTC), edited 23:41, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
Handing out user rights, as everyone here knows, is done through WP:PERM by admins. The minimum required activity levels are the basis and usually much more experience is required to be demonstrated. However, a lot of frivolous requests still get made at PERM, many perhaps in good faith by editors who 'think' they are qualified, many from non native speakers of English who just don't understand the rules, many who believe the 90 days and 500 are an automatic pass for the right, and of course there are the inevitable hat collectors. High edit counts are a poor metric for judging a user's experience, but most of the admins who view the requests for New Page Reviewer are familiar with the challenges of the NPP system and investigate further. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
Barnstars will be awarded.
Atsme 💬 📧 20:44, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Atsme 💬 📧 16:28, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
[stretch] And while I don't begrudge the project earning money off the backs of our free labor, I do mind when they deny us the tools we need to provide the free work. To call it disheartening is an understatement. Atsme 💬 📧 03:27, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
Atsme 💬 📧 14:57, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Courtesy link: [[:{{{1}}}]]sandbox Happy Editing--IAmChaos 02:42, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
External link: Imgur. It is collapsed against the axis (only with the hourly parameter, the rest are fine). Happy Editing--IAmChaos 17:20, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Atsme 💬 📧 13:30, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
Done. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 20:22, 22 October 2022 (UTC)