Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/December 2013 - January 2014 Backlog Elimination Drive

(Comment)

Yay! A two month drive so that everyone interested can participate! Technical 13 (talk) 12:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Very quiet.

It's been one week and not much progress has been made: so far we've only had two major reviewers. And many participants haven't done anything: I'm worried that with all the change of dates some users aren't aware it's already started. Should we probably notify the users who haven't done any reviews yet? -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 03:00, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

@Technical 13:,@Mdann52: just thought I'd ping you here. :) -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 03:01, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

That may not be a bad idea. I'll look through the history page for the individual drives and use EdwardsBot or the new system message thing and send a little notice on Monday as I'll have no time Sunday. I'll be starting to review myself probably next week or the week after. I have one week in between semesters the last week of December, and will plow out as much as I can without compromising quality of review. Technical 13 (talk) 04:28, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry that I haven't done much to help. I don't feel that I can leave the G13 backlog right now - I keep finding material that should be saved and will likely be gone in a day or so. I'll try to set aside at least a few minutes each day for reviewing. —Anne Delong (talk) 07:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

My attention has been "hijacked" by the death of Nelson Mandela. I'm one of the WikiProject South Africa regulars and the workload there has exploded. I hope to be more active here soon. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:24, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I didn't even know this drive was happening until today. Did nobody think to notify the participants in the last drive? -- Ross Hill • Talk • Need Help? • 03:37, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

@Ross Hill: I sent an EdwardsBot notice to everyone on this page. You may want to add yourself for newsletters/notifications etc. --Mdann52talk to me! 08:16, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

We need more sweeping improvements than just "drives"

We either need a more deliberate recruiting of reviewers, or/and a more streamlined process to prevent some of the many small frictions which drag out this process.

• We have to identify the "little quirks" of the AFCH that cause novices aggravation: the bright red "USERSANDBOX SHOULD NOT BE HERE!" warning, the "Awaiting Review" yellow boxes that list at the bottom of the page causing novices to think they haven't submitted and they hit Submit a dozen more times, allowing folks to submit to AFC as "Sandbox" (which also confuses other templates like their Decline notice), not automatically identifying and declining blanks (thus killing another 30sec of reviewer time each).

• The Decline notices need to be even more "dummy proof" then they are now. A novice should have to be absolutely incompetent to miss a "THIS IS WHY YOU ARE DECLINED AND WHAT YOU MUST DO" notice, rather than the current ones that confuse (or somehow slip by) even well-meaning submitters. The term "Notability" is absolutely not helpful, and I really regret that WP ever chose that technical term because it immediately causes folks to bristle: "How dare you say my favorite band/actor/company is insignificant, unimportant, and not notable!" I literally almost never became a Wikipedian (who has written hundreds of articles) because one of my very first articles was killed by NPP for lack of "Notability", repeatedly, and I was enraged and ready to quit WP until I read the "fine print" and realized I needed explicit footnotes.

• I strongly think we need a little "dummy proof" checklist before submitting, something in the Wizard that absolutely hammers home the point: "Are you writing about a band? Okay, good, do you have footnotes? Do those footnotes clearly show what the band is "famous" for? Are those footnotes from serious sources like major news media or music industry journals?"

• I enjoy AFC, I think it's a good way to keep junk off of WP, but the process could be way easier with a customer (new editor) friendly review of our procedures to minimize confusion, and WP technical jargon and intimidation. And yet ideally softly point out to folks "no we don't want an article about your garage band, 2-person tech startup, or new podcast until such point as it gets third-party coverage".

Just a mini-rant, I think symptomatically addressing this through "drives" is just a finger in the dike until larger issues about AFC are addressed. MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:26, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I've suggested one improvement at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Helper script/archive%%0#Proposal to add a new checkbox and button to the decline process at Afc —Anne Delong (talk) 20:17, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

That's certainly one small help, but I think a larger review of how AFC/AFCH needs improving is needed. No knock on the many devoted programmers trying to make it better, I just think we're shrugging off a lot of "quirks" in the programming and in our SOPs that are making this Project far harder than it has to be, thus adding to our backlog, frustrating reviewers, and probably alienating a lot of novice submitters that would otherwise become productive contributors. It's absolutely egregious that a huge This sandbox is in the Wikipedia talk namespace. Either move this page into your userspace, or remove the {{User sandbox}} template. is considered "okay" and not unwelcoming to a novice. It is really so impossible to make it so that message doesn't appear in AFCSpace? MatthewVanitas (talk) 22:00, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and if you decline an article not in AFCspace (like a User sandbox), the "Your article is declined, but you find it at..." usertalk message has a broken link since the template only works with AFC space, so probably who-knows-how-many new submitters think their article is deleted instead of just declined, because the "here is where it is" is a redlink. I mean, just really basic stuff that makes this process not work right for the 100+ people per day who come here trying to get an article through for the first time. MatthewVanitas (talk) 02:45, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

It was never intended that articles be declined when not in Afc space. It's easy to move them before declining. It also cuts down on the number of abandoned stale drafts left for years in userspace. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:13, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, but submitters are putting them there, and since I do a lot of the "sandbox" cleanup it adds a cumulatively large chunk to my workload to transfer each one, particularly given that many are unquestionable Declines or even deletes. It would be easieest if the Submit process forced the submitter to choose a title and dropped it into AFC space. MatthewVanitas (talk) 18:33, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

HERE is a discussion about this topic. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:13, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Re-review of my review on AfC

It looks like Demiurge1000 failed one of my reviews for Jo Boaler, giving the reason that I did not respond to the submitter's query on my talkpage. However, the re-review directions state that the review should be failed if and only if the review was "found to be not done properly or done poorly". It does not seem to mention the reviewer's behavior in following up on the submitter's comments. Furthermore, the submission, which ended up being created anyway and which Demiurge1000 called a "godawful mess", already had a comment from me on it about the sources.

My question is: can (and should) a review be failed like this (i.e. for not following up on user talkpages about the submission)? APerson (talk!) 03:19, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. Failure to reply to reasonable talkpage questions about one's actions is a key indicator of a lack of reasonable care towards good faith article submitters.

And if you lack reasonable care towards good faith article submitters, you should not be reviewing articles at AfC.

That behaviour - failure to respond - was the major sign of reviewers who eventually proved too problematic to be allowed to continue. I'm thinking of Arctic Kangaroo. If you're not prepared to reply to reasonable questions directed to your talk page, then please don't go around failing submissions. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:52, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Postscript: I'm glad that you've changed your problematic behaviour as of 19th December. Keep it that way. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:56, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Problematic behavior? Have I not demonstrated a history of talkpage queries, many of which resulted in the articles in question being created successfully? APerson (talk!) 04:02, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

What proportion is that? (One of those diffs is from 19th December like I just said... another is from nearly 6 months ago.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 04:10, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

A significant majority of my reviews. By the way, what "problematic behavior" do you keep talking about? APerson (talk!) 03:24, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

(replying to APerson's msg of 03:19, 21 December 2013 (UTC))

In general, this is a grey area and falls under the re-reviewer's discretion.

The purpose of "failing" reviews is to improve reviewer's future reviews and, in the cases of a reviewer who is making more than the occasional bad review, to alert all reviewers that all of this reviewer's reviews need a second pass.

In this particular case, the submitter asked reasonable questions. In a similar case, I probably wouldn't have failed the review but I would have contacted you and nudged you into replying or, failing that, "strongly suggested" that if you were too busy to reply you might be too busy to do additional AFC reviews.

Having said that, if you had a good reason for not replying (e.g. you knew you couldn't help this person, or you knew you only had a weak competency in this area), then I would either volunteer to take on those questions myself or, if I was unable to do so, "strongly suggest" that you ask your fellow team-members to help this editor out.

If the questions the submitter asked aren't moot points by now and you want me to try to help this editor, let me know and I'll do what I can. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:42, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

The issue with the review should not have been that I completely failed to give any guidance whatsoever on the article beyond slapping a decline template on it; I left a comment on the article about improving sources and such, which raised perfectly reasonable objections to the sourcing of the article. The article still has big issues with sourcing: the "wwwords" reference, which I specifically mentioned in my comment, has yet to be removed. It also cites self-published sources and websites which don't even mention the subject as sources. Therefore, it is clear that my decline of the article for sourcing was justified. APerson (talk!) 20:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Sign me up!

Hi. I was on Wikibreak for December, but now it's January and I'd like to sign up. Please add me, and AFC Buddy and all that please :) --LukeSurl ^{t c} 01:24, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Barnstar 2.0

--The bellow is copied to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation by Josve05a--

I suggest that we change File:AFC-Barnstar-2.png with File:Articles for Creation Barnstar Hires.png, since the second one is a Barnstar 2.0, as the rest of the barnstars. -(t) Josve05a (c) 20:49, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Josve05a Rather than propose the change on an individual drive, it might be a better idea to propose this change at WT:WPAFC. Hasteur (talk) 21:07, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

--The above is copied to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation by Josve05a-- (t) Josve05a (c) 21:40, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

OK that's fine. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 23:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Totals

I've reviews 93 articles at last count but my name does not appear in the totals section. Is there something else I need to set up? ~KvnG 18:01, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

It's there now! —Anne Delong (talk) 13:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

What have I missed?

I had so many other things to do that I was absent from Wikipedia for two weeks: is there anything substantial (not necessarily related to AFC) that I've missed? I only ask because the last time I was absent I missed out of the drafts namespace thing. Thanks :) -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 02:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

RfC closed and Discussed on Jimbo's talk is the main AFC related stuff; AFAIK, all else has been [fairly] normal... --Mdann52talk to me! 13:54, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The Kafziel arbitration case is moving along to the final stages with some members of the committee seeing actions by members as being more covered under WP:OWN. Hasteur (talk) 14:01, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Seemingly inexperienced reviewer

I saw this. The editor only has around 200 edits total, only 85 (as of this writing) of which are to articles. It doesn't seem like this user has enough experience. Comments? APerson (talk!) 04:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Sure Aperson, not enough experience. Am in wrong place then. I will remove my name from the list. Didn't know that to review one must edit/write a lot. Mehedi (talk) 04:37, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not that, it's just that at 200 edits total, but you've just recently come back from a extended wikibreak, it might be best to review the Policies/Guidelines/Best Practices before jumping into a sensitive process again. Hasteur (talk) 04:53, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Someone help!

I don't know how to add my reviews on to my list!!Fremantle99 (talk) 03:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Instructions are on the page. If you want it done automatically, sign up for AFC Buddy as described on the same page. Welcome to the fun! Chris Troutman (talk) 05:04, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I can't make sense out of the instructions. #tooconfusing. Fremantle99 (talk) 21:15, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Barnstar?

I appreciate the effort the organizers of this WikiProject in general and this AfC drive specifically have made. That said, I'm still somewhat new to Wikipedia and was really eager to earn a new barnstar, which is the primary reason I participated. It's been almost a week since the drive closed and nothing yet. Chris Troutman (talk) 08:18, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Seems a bit slow this time. :/ -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 06:36, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The October drive barnstar was awarded halfway into November, the July backlog drive barnstar was awarded halfway in August and the January 2013 drive medals were given out near the end of February that year. I'd say the current drive awards will likely be handed out somewhere in the next two weeks or so. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 07:13, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for letting me know. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:28, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

All awards have been sent

I have sent all of the the awards to participants of the WikiProject Articles for creation/December 2013 - January 2014 Backlog Elimination Drive.

• Teamwork barnstars for re-reviewers who reviewed at least 25 entries (recipient list)
• Brownie awards sent (recipient list)
• Invisible barnstars sent (recipient list))
• Working Wikipedian barnstars sent (recipient list)
• Tireless contributor barnstars sent (recipient list)
• Articles for Creation barnstars sent (recipient list)
• Bronze, Silver, Gold and Content Review Medal awards have been sent to FoCuSandLeArN, Aggie80 and MatthewVanitas, respectively.

The awarding process is now completed. Thanks to all of the participants to the drive. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:37, 26 February 2014 (UTC)