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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used

Wikidata

I have just reviewed and published Donald Mackenzie (advocate). Having entered the biographical details for its persondata, projects, categories and so on, it occurs to me that I had supplied enough data to start a Wikidata entry (or, at least, to pre-populate one for further editing before saving). I don't have the coding skills, but if someone who does is interested, I'd be happy to work through the necessary steps and do testing. This might also be something for the forthcoming hackathon.

Alternatively, perhaps we need a more generic "make Wikidata from Wikipedia" tool, that reads infoboxes, persondata, categories and projects, then offers a pre-populated creation template for editing? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:50, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I think there's already been discussions on importing the persondata templates into Wikidata. I don't remember where though. Gigs (talk) 17:18, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I've seen a few other requests for a way to gather information from infoboxes or persondata which got me thinking about a userscript that would allow a user a convenient, easy to use interface to edit those items. When I create such a script, I could possible add the ability to read from and edit Wikidata entries as well. I'm wondering if there are any existing scripts that do any of the parts of this that I can look over and adapt, and if anyone knows of any such scripts, please do note them here, on my talk page, or in an email.. Thanks — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 17:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

More general issues

While I have no objection to Wikidata gleaning any and all information it is interested in from infoboxes or persondata or any other template or source within this project (seems to me that's one of the *points* of Wikidata), I would encourage the Wikidata community to think about how they will deal with changes to information from enwiki (e.g., if a field is added/removed/data changed on an infobox), and how frequently they would "recheck" the information. How will it deal with referenced material? Perhaps more importantly, what will it do when there is conflicting information from two different projects? As I say, this is a Wikidata issue, not a Wikipedia one: the information in this project is freely available for data mining by Wikidata or any other organization. From the technical perspective (about which I have absolutely no knowledge), I think the only reassurance that the Wikipedia community needs is that there will be no effect on Wikipedia's performance if bots extract information; my guess is there's no impact on this project. Risker (talk) 18:32, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

You raise a good point, but your concerns will exist with or without the tool I propose, and are not relevant to it. That said, the ultimate intention is that the data will (usually) reside in Wikidata, and be transcluded into this project (and others). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:35, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I have my doubts as to whether that mission can ever be fulfilled, or even whether it's a good idea. Gigs (talk) 18:40, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Please comment about General References vs Inline Citations

Dear editors: Over the past month or two I have had several discussion with editors at Afc about the subject of general references and citations. Afc's purpose is to help new editors get their articles into good enough condition that when moved to mainspace they will not be deleted under CSD or through an Afd discussion. We are definitely not supposed to keep articles here past that point, because they will be read and improved by more editors once they are in the encyclopedia and added to categories and Wikiproject lists.

One of the things that we need to know in order to do this job properly is what the minimum expectations are for both citations and general references once the submissions are let out into the wild. Here is my understanding, based on WP:MINREF and WP:GENREF:

• General References (that is, ones that are typed into the reference section, usually as bullet points, are acceptable and useful in developing articles. They help to show the notability of a subject, and can be used to expand the article and/or turned into citations at a later time. They can also be used to verify non-controversial facts in the article. A short article could be supported totally by general references as long is it doesn't contain certain material mentioned in WP:MINREF and listed below.
• Inline Citations (that is, ones that are placed in ref tags after specific information) are needed in developing articles only in the following situations: (1) direct quotations, (2) personal information in biographies of living people, and (3) to support controversial information that has been or is likely to be challenged (for example, an editor writes that a soccer player is the best defender in Europe, or that cold fusion is a practical source of energy).

If a submission has sufficient quality references of either type to demonstrate the notability of the subject, and has inline citations for the special cases, then it won't be deleted at Afd for referencing problems, and so it should be accepted (unless, of course, it has other problems not related to the references). WP:Notability and WP:DEL#REASON only require the existence of reliable sources, and even Help:Referencing for beginners agrees that general references are acceptable.

Please comment about this, because if my understanding is wrong, I need to change my reviewing behaviour, and in any case a discussion will help us maintain reviewing consistency.—Anne Delong (talk) 21:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Comments

• Comment In the nearly year and a half I have participated in AfD, I've never seen an article on a notable topic deleted solely because it lacked inline citations. While quotes and controversial facts require inline citations, if they don't get them, that may be removed, but the article itself is not deleted. BLP may be another story; I don't know. So practically, general refs that show notability and are actual sources for the article, seem to be good enough. That said, we should probably encourage inline citations without it being a showstopper. --Mark viking (talk) 21:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
• Comment Agree that I'd rather not see editors and contributors turned away that they added some amount of referencing (even if bare URL in a block) and told that's not sufficient. The only immediate inline cites that should be needed are on direct quotes, and there even a bare URL works fine for later cleanup. --MASEM (t) 21:30, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
• Comment The only problem with general references is they don't do enough to adequately address the material. (An article about an unknown subject, references list all the books in the El Paso County library.) 99% of the time this won't come into play at AfC or AfD. Your understanding of the guidelines matches mine. If you have specific examples, I'd be happy to see them. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:46, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

• I have been checking over the db-g13 eligible submissions, and although I didn't keep them separate, so I can't find them immediately, I have over the past months many, many submissions that were declined for lack of inline citations when they had a number of general references. The reviewers who declined them likely thought that the editors would change the references to citations and resubmit. Some do, of course, but many otherwise excellent editors have trouble dealing with wikicode, and the result is a big pile of abandoned submissions which would likely have had their references fixed up by more experienced editors by now if they had been passed into the encyclopedia. The reviewers are so busy with the backlog that most don't have the time to go back to check on the progress of the articles they decline. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:20, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, that's a shame. Certainly the reviewing guidance specifies that new articles can't be refused simply because of reference style. I would question the reviewers about why they would do such a thing. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:11, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Inline citations are much better, yes, but at least general refs are something. Usually it's easy enough to go to the sources and add in inline ones even if you don't know anything about the subject (assuming the refs are cite web, which in my experience are the most common ones by far), so it's just a minor annoyance more than anything. Stub-class articles aren't usually very long, so the creator might not think inline ones are even needed. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 23:06, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
• Anne Delong, I think you're exactly on target. It is unfortunately true that almost WP:Nobody reads the directions, but you clearly have not only read them, but spent a long time thinking about them and sorting out how to apply them. I wish we had a thousand more editors who have done what you have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:35, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
• Comment: I do not require inline citations unless it is a BLP. Your understanding, as noted above, is well thought-out. If there are sources, in any shape, that clearly demonstrate the subject is notable, then I think the article should pass. 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 03:10, 18 March 2014 (UTC) (p.s. listening to a 1957 Osborne Brothers 45rpm in your honor, Anne.)
• Comment As others have already pointed out above, inline citations are better than general references, but definitely not a necessity, when it comes to an article being accepted or declined at AFC. I personally would like to see the inline citation decline itself being removed altogether so the long wait followed by the bad reviews do not turn more of our newcomers away. If the article does not have references, there is another appropriate response for it. As long as the newer editors have included the reference somewhere in the article, it seems logical for reviewers to look at them than force the newcomers to jump through all the unnecessary hoops. Soni (talk) (Previously TheOriginalSoni) 08:08, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
• I fully agree with Anne's position. Has a BLP ever been deleted only because it did not have inline cites? I really don't know if the lack of inline cites in BLPs really are the "non-negotiable deal breaker" that the Reviewing guidelines suggests it is. I will now post a notice about this topic at WT:Inline citation so that editors who watch that page can also participate here. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:47, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

If it happened at AfD, unless there was a dispute about where facts were in an offline publication, the in-line citation argument was likely part of a WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument. Meanwhile, I have growing concerns that editors who claim to be AfC reviewers are just rubber-stamping "decline" to make the backlog go away. But as everyone here is indicating, general vs in-line is a topic for GA criteria, not for simple existence in wiki. I am a big fan of inline and my user page says so. Chris Troutman (talk) 10:24, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

@Chris troutman, according to WP:MINREF BLP articles must have inline citations - I don't understand what you mean by "the in-line citation argument was likely part of a WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument" - it seems to me you might be confusing inline and online - there has never been a requirement for references to be from online sources but that relates to WP:V and is irrelevant to the matter we are discussing here. AfC's reviewing workflow includes a requirement to decline BLP articles that do not have inline citations, based on the understanding that WP:MINREF is a mandatory precondition for accepting a draft. Some reviewers feel it is too onerous to expect newbie article writers to comply with it before their drafts can be accepted and that WP:MINREF is a problem that can be fixed after accepting the article into mainspace. (BTW The review checking process we use during Backlog Drives actually shows that "rubberstamp reviews" is not a common occurrence at all. We have developed criteria for "qualifying" reviewers in an attempt to reduce bad faith or incompetent reviewers, the implementation of the standard seems to be bundled in with a whole list of procedural and structural changes that need to be developed for moving the entire AfC process to the new Draft namespace. Please let us not discuss it further here in this thread, keep this one focused on-topic.) Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:40, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

@Dodger67: I misspoke; I should have specified unless inline citations were required. The argument Hasteur makes about a "great big ball of references at the end" is the problem I was envisioning. I agree with MINREF but from what I've read from Anne, it sounded like this was more of a style issue than a MINREF problem. I'm certainly not confusing in-line and online. I participated in the CORE contest in a failing effort to provide in-line (though not online) references to Eastern Front (World War I). I wouldn't have rejected the article at AfC because it didn't have in-line citations, as difficult as that makes verification. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:28, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment Ok, I guess I have to present the contrarian viewpoint in this groupthink. If there's not one cited fact in the submission, how do we know that the submission isn't made up? Having general (or end) references only shows that there's something related. If the reference really backed up a claim on the page, it should be inline cited. Passing sub-standard articles out from AFC only teaches new users that they can put a great big ball of references at the end and someone else will come through and clean up their problem. I was under the understanding that our purpose here is to both review and teach new users how to submit content so that it won't fall afoul of the submission guidelines. In addition, by passing out submissions that have a mass of general references but no inline citations, we only create work for other established volunteers in cleaning up the mess that we didn't work at fixing. My view is that the submission should have 1~2 inline citations per paragraph of content and the general references should be generic information and strongly discouraged. Hasteur (talk) 13:32, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Hasteur, your standards are not only higher than in the Afc reviewing guidelines, they are higher than in the general Wikipedia policy pages. I agree that if general references are so general that they don't support any of the information on the page, that's bad. However, that's rarely the case, and when it is, a decline is appropriate. When there's no backlog of submissions, and the submission is reviewed the same day as it's submitted, there may be a net benefit to requesting improved formatting, provided that you leave an encouraging note about resubmitting, and then check back after a few days to see what the problem is if nothing happens. I doubt that you'd have time for that. However, when the giant backlog means that a submission isn't reviewed for weeks, often the submitter has lost patience and gone away, and there is no one to teach, just another declined submission on the pile, which may be well written and on a perfectly notable topic. Maybe you could achieve your teaching goal more effectively by not declining the article, but instead explaining on the submitter's talk page about the inline citations, while leaving the submission in the queue. That way if they aren't listening, or aren't up to dealing with the formatting, or just won't do what you want, the submission will not be lost to the encyclopedia but instead improved later by someone else.—Anne Delong (talk) 14:00, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment Remember, our acceptance criteria is 50% chance of surviving AfD. In my AfD experience, articles do occasionally get deleted for being a mess. The rate is quite low and many AfD reviewers appreciate that deleting these articles is to be avoided if possible (better to improve than to delete). Completely unreferenced articles on notable subjects also routinely survive AfD as AfD reviewers are required to search for evidence of notability before supporting deletion. References are often added to the article in this process. If we take the 50% AfD criteria seriously, all of us are declining far too many submissions. I've personally had only one article I accepted even nominated for AfD. None have been deleted. If I were truly working to the 50% criteria, statistics say that dozens should have been deleted. ~KvnG 16:18, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, I have to admit (and this is in agreement with something Hasteur said in a previous discussion) that I wouldn't want to have my username associated with dozens of articles which were dragged to Afd, so I am rather conservative in what I accept - sometimes I feel guilty at passing the buck by reading so many submissions and then leaving them neither accepted nor declined. On the other hand, there are many articles in mainspace which really should go to Afd but that no one has noticed or had time to deal with, so more Afc graduates could be nominated in the future. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:50, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I guess I got a bit off topic there at the end. If reviewers want to go with some number greater than 50% I think they should be allowed to. My review history so far indicates that I personally do.

I feel strongly that reviewers should not be rejecting submissions based on how references are presented. Even if no references are included, but it is straightforward to demonstrate notability, there's a very good chance the submission would survive AfD. Unreferenced articles like this can arguably be accepted as-is if 50% AfD is our primary acceptance criteria. ~KvnG 18:36, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

@KvnG you appear to be flatly rejecting WP:MINREF. If so then you are rejecting part of the WP:BLP policy, and policies are not optional. Maybe we should be looking at MINREF itself (and the part of BLP that requires it) rather than just debating how MINREF should be applied here at AfC? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:21, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

I interpret the 50% AfD criteria as saying that an article only needs to be half viable to get out of AfC. That means that necessary but less crucial improvements can be made once a submission is in article space. The inexperienced editors and backlogged AfC reviewers are not the best people to be doing these improvements. I look for BPL issues and other controversial statements and promotional material but we're not going to catch all of that here at AfC. As a reviewer, I do not take sole or primary responsibility for the content of submissions. ~KvnG 12:21, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment Ordinary inline references are fine. Manual conversions from an "additional reference" or "external link" are rather annoying, but still better than no reference at all. So far I failed to grok the convoluted syntax for foot notes in different groups, especially if the same name is used for different references, but not destroying an article where this works is possible. –Be..anyone (talk) 16:43, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Be..anyone, I'm not clear on what you find annoying. Is it the format of references which have been manually converted which is bothersome in some way, or is it the time involved in doing the conversion that you don't like? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:56, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

The time for {{Sofixit}}, getting all details right in {{cite web}} can be tricky, doing it for other contributors is boring, and at the end of the day somebody not understanding that YYYY-MM is a perfectly valid variant of YYYY-MM-DD specified in international standards including RFCs will claim that it's a CS1 error. –Be..anyone (talk) 17:10, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: If notability is not immediately obvious from reading non-contentious parts of the submission and not obvious from looking at the first screen-full of online general references, then I'm going to assume it's not obvious to most readers and there is a good chance it will at least be nominated for AFD. If I can easily remedy the problem, then it's my job to do so. If I can't, then it's my job to either reject the article, comment on it without rejecting or accepting it, or if I accept it without making the notability obvious, add a note to the article talk page that I'm accepting this "on the assumption" that notability exists despite lack of obvious evidence that it does. As part of this talk-page comment, I will explicitly state that the normal, unspoken/implicit understanding that articles that have survived AFC have been reviewed for notability does not apply to this article, so as to encourage others to improve the article and not discourage people from PROD'ing or AFD'ing the page or tagging it with {{notability}}. The bottom line: It's the author's job to demonstrate notability. The less accessible the sources are or the less obvious it is the sources demonstrate the subject's notability, the more likely it is that someone will challenge the article on notability grounds and the more likely it will, justly or not, fail at AFD. Because of that, we at AFC have a duty to give the creator a chance to beef up the article before accepting it, or at least alert the community that we are accepting it without the usual implicit "stamp of approval" that comes with the AFC review process. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:08, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: You need to use your best judgement when reviewing AfC submissions and not rely on blanket criteria. An article on a 19th century landmark that has a "further reading" section listing six books with detailed information on each can pass. An article on a 21st century pop musician full of puffery with six local fanzine references, with the same level of formatting as the previous example, probably won't. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:46, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

"Contentious" or not?

Breaking this out because it's a largely separate sub-issue that hasn't been addressed above. Anne's understanding, based on WP:MINREF, is that "personal information in biographies of living people" require an inline citation. Thus, Bob was born in 1989, Bob was born in Wolverhampton, Bob was born in England, Bob is right-handed, Bob married in 2009, Bob attended Wotnot High School, and Bob graduated from Oxford University would all require an inline citation. Unless someone has killed Bob in the meantime, or he's died some other way. Right?

Well, WP:MINREF does not actually say that. It says "Contentious material, whether negative, positive, or neutral, about living persons" requires an inline citation (my emphasis). None of the above statements are contentious, therefore do not need an inline citation, according to that information page about citing styles.

If one writes about Bob having had romantic and/or sexual relationships with a number of people prior to his marriage, that meets the requirement of being contentious (albeit possibly neutral) and thus, in a BLP, requires an inline citation; even though it may (or may not) fall short of being "likely to be challenged".

Following this interpretation, i.e. not ignoring the word "contentious", there are actually very very few cases where an article should be declined under WP:MINREF due to being a BLP, where it wouldn't already fall foul of the "likely to be challenged" criterion. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:20, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Demiurge1000. I should have worded that more carefully. It seems to me that the reason for the citations in BLPs is to prevent doing damage to people's reputations through publishing incorrect information. It's hard to know, from case to case, what piece of information will be a problem for which person. An incorrect birthplace for most would be just something to fix, but, for example, it could be a problem for someone whose job requires them to be a citizen of a certain country if an employer takes it seriously. An athlete may compete in specific competition classes and older people apply for pensions dependent on their birthdates. So it seems that we need to be as accurate as possible, and try to think out which parts of a biography might be controversial and need extra verification in specific articles, rather than saying that certain types of data are always non-contentious. But for the most part I agree with you that every item of routine information shouldn't need a citation. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:03, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

AIUI, at the bare minimum, a person's claim to notability is ipso facto contentious and thus needs an inline cite. If a "claim to fame" was not contentious the whole WP:Notability policy would be unnecessary. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:27, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Bob currently holds the Wumpzy Chair of Mathematics at Manchester University. Makes him notable per WP:PROF I think. Imagine a lengthy bio with that and all the above-mentioned more trivial facts, where the only source provided is a non-inline citation to his University of Manchester staff page. Are you going to decline it per WP:MINREF? You shouldn't; holding that academic position is not a contentious claim. Or per something else?

If his claim to notability is merely "Bob is one of the world's leading mathematicians" then yes I'd expect an inline citation, and to an independent source. But that's different. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:23, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

One of the major complaints that Academia has with Wikipedia is there's no quality check on if the subject actually exists. With that complaint in mind I think MINREF is grossly underserving the end consumers of this content, the readers. It's my understanding that we are supposed to take quality very seriously and by passing articles that don't have any inline citations we require the reader (and reviewers) to go to the end of the page and sift through multiple "general" sources to determine if the subject of the page actually is represented elsewhere. Having an inline citation makes it supremely easy to go instantly to that reference and see if it actually says what the ref claims it does. Hasteur (talk) 12:33, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Articles can and should be improved to meet this reasonable quality goal. I don't believe they should be required to meet such standards from the outset. ~KvnG 12:42, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Hasteur has a good point, but I don't think it's one that can be solved in Afc. New articles are marked "unassessed" until they are tagged for their weaknesses, and that helps. It's impossible to guarantee that any Wikipedia article doesn't contain misinformation, because even if it's completely correct at one moment, someone could change it the next. It can't be used as an academic reference for the same reason - the content of articles changes. However, anyone who considers him/herself part of "Academia" and believes an article they read on the Internet without checking to see if it's properly supported by reliable sources had better give back his/her diploma. Wikipedia articles are only suitable as a source of general information for curious people. For serious scholars, its only uses are as a survey of the general consensus of people around the world about a topic, and as a handy collection of references to reliable sources in which to do their own original research. Since Afc is just a small part of Wikipedia, proposals or discussions about tightening up the citation standards are more likely to be effective if hosted at one of the general discussion boards such as WP:VPP, and I would be interested in taking part if the subject should come up. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:22, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

If the particular point you're willing to leave for later improvement is actually a minimum standard required at the outset, and as a consequence of deciding that it can be fixed later in mainspace, the article is speedied ten minutes after acceptance into mainspace, then it is a black mark against the reviewer who has failed to properly assist the newbie who's initiation into Wikipedia editing consisted of seeing all their work getting chopped even though a reviewer said the article was acceptable. The wording of MINREF, and even its name, strongly suggests that it is such a non-negotiable minimum requirement. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

You have something to stand on for the specific cases outlined in WP:MINREF (we have discussed that in more detail further above). Reviewers should definitely not be declining articles that do not meet "Academic" standards. According to the AfC acceptance criteria, reviewers do not need to be more than 50% worried about accepted submissions being subsequently deleted. ~KvnG 15:30, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

• Take a look at this example. A clearly notable building complex (UNESCO-recognised, no less!) wrongly rejected by what seems an inexperienced reviewer. I notified the relevant WikiProject, and they resorted to creating a stub instead. All that information's lying there to end up being deleted in a few months' time, when it should've been accepted in the first place. Wikipedia's ended up poorer thanks to somebody who shouldn't have been reviewing in the first place. It's outrageous. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:56, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

• Absolutely appalling! FoCuSandLeArN, I'll leave you a message on your talk page as to how we can fix this. Voceditenore (talk) 16:01, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Can't one of us just resubmit this on behalf of the authors? ~KvnG 16:34, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Easier and quicker to merge and thank the author I believe. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:42, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Rather misses the point of it being a worrying example, don't you think? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:05, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I have boldly reverted the invalid decline, accepted and moved the draft to Papaverhof complex and then tagged both it and Papaverhof to be WP:Merged. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:52, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

If an Admin with the know-how is reading this, please do a history merge of Papaverhof and Papaverhof complex as soon as possible, make this problem go away. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:25, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

• There is always going to be some disagreement about which submissions should be accepted, but in cases where a reviewer has obviously not followed the reviewing directions in declining, I think that another reviewer should feel free to resubmit and accept a submission, and the first reviewer should be prepared to have this happen. The problem is, in most cases once an article is declined, if the original submitter doesn't resubmit, nobody notices, and the article goes stale and is eventually deleted under db-g13. Several editors, including myself, have been combing through the six-months-stale submissions and saving some, but there are really too many for a few people to fix up. I would wish for some way for reviewers to add some kind of category or searchable template or something that would put particularly promising submissions on a list to be checked after a shorter period of time, maybe a week or two, to see if the submitters are making requested improvements. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:01, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

• Would it be easier to just accept every submission declined under WP:MINREF, and move them all to mainspace, and see whether we thus move closer to the objective mentioned above, of 50% of all accepted articles being deleted at AfD? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:04, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

That would be going too far. They should at least be checked first and not just automatically accepted. Some articles really do contain quotations and contentious material and were properly declined. Also, some articles that were declined for lack of citations may have been declined by inexperienced reviewers who may have failed to mention other problems further up the chain, such as copyvios, NPOV, or lack of any references of any kind. There are nearly 2000 articles in Afc right now that have been declined for this reason:(Category:AfC submissions declined as needing footnotes) in case anyone wants to browse through and see the range of acceptability. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:29, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Reading this whole topic it seems we are reaching a point where the validity of MINREF as a decline criterion per se is questionable, that enforcing it should happen in mainspace, not at AfC. I think we need a formal RFC about a "Proposal to remove WP:MINREF as a decline criterion, and subsequently to delete it from the AFCH, the Reviewing instructions and the Reviewing workflow chart". In general anything that streamlines the review process by reducing the number of steps in the workflow is an improvement - but not at the cost of reducing the quality of reviews.

On the other hand, reviews are supposed to fail half the time! However, I'm not prepared to prostitute my personal integrity by intentionally screwing up half my reviews just so that 50% of the articles I pass can be deleted. I find the idea that I am required to deliberately lie to half of the draft submitters when I pass their work into mainspace, offensive and a grave disservice to the newbie editors we are supposed to be helping. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:14, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree about that; also, we get 200 or so submissions a day. If we passed out an extra 30 or 40 each day that needed Afd discussions, we'd clear our own backlog, but just transfer the work to Afd. Right now at Afd the editors make a serious effort to improve articles' referencing before calling for deletion; if they were swamped the process would deteriorate. I look on the 50% as a lower limit, rather than an average. Notice, though, how we are echoing some of Hasteur's arguements, just to a lesser degree. It's so hard to find the perfect balance. —Anne Delong (talk) 08:13, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

The trouble is "contentious" is so subjective and based on opinion. For example, I always treat a date of birth as contentious, and while I won't normally remove it from a new submission, I will always tag it as "citation needed" without a source. Celebrities have lied about their age for decades, if not centuries - see the big "DATE OF BIRTH" box on Talk:Elisabeth Sladen for a good example. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

50 (per) cent rulez

Now that y'all mentioned it, I'm curious - where was that 50 number coming from, I seem to remember thinking it was 'likely to survive at AFD', which seems a lot more sensible. It isn't easy to explain to a contributor why the article that someone approved is now up for deletion, does anyone have any tips about that? --_nonsense ferret 20:15, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Answering my own question sort of but now I've found this seems to be the first edit that refers to it on the guidance page diff - I can't immediately lay my hands on the discussion that led to this change - @Bellerophon: do you remember perchancey? --_nonsense ferret 20:33, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure where it comes from but it is one of the AfC-haters' favourite sticks they use to beat us. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:34, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I haven't noticed any reviewers actually accepting a lot of articles on non-notable topics. I have had one deleted out of hundreds. If every reviewer is in fact passing only those which have a much higher that 50% chance of surviving an Afd, is this tantamount to a consensus that the 50% estimate needs to be changed to a higher number, say at least 80%? —Anne Delong (talk) 04:56, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think a number needs to be stated at all. Every reviewer does their best, expecting anything less is an insult to our personal integrity. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:31, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I believe 50% is a synonym for likely - have a look at WP:LIKELY. I am not opposed copyediting guidance to use likely instead of a percentage. ~KvnG 16:24, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

to my mind 50 percent is more a synonym for 'maybe' or 'possibly, could go either way' - I've been bold and changed it since as a rule of thumb it is causing more confusion than it helps to resolve. 'Likely' makes more sense to me. Of course if there was a consensus for the 50 percent figure, please revert forthwith. --_nonsense ferret 21:25, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

People have before gone into great length discussing what likely means.[1][2][3]  —Mysterytrey 21:49, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Myself, I'd prefer "reasonable" to "likely", to indicate that it's a matter of judgment. (I terms of percentages, it might depend on the type of article--some are always accepted if they meet certain basic criteria, and people working with such can be expected to accurately predict. Some are very variable, and any one reviewer should not really impose their judgment, but let it be taken to the community. AfD may sometimes be almost random, but it's nonetheless the best decision process we have. (My own standard depends also on whether I'm just approving it to go into mainspace (where it might correspond to 66%) or whether I've also worked on it to fix or improve it. I have a higher standard for anything I actually work on. more like 90%. But in practice almost no AfC I've ever approved has been deleted at AfD. DGG ( talk ) 01:07, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

RFC on the application of WP:MINREF to Articles for creation

Proposal to remove WP:MINREF as a decline criterion, and subsequently to delete it from the AFCH, the Reviewing instructions and the Reviewing workflow chart. Rationale - The above discussion has reached the point where a consensus seems to be emerging that enforcing the WP:MINREF rule during AfC reviews is a impediment to the intended purpose of the project - assisting new editors to create acceptable articles. This RFC is to determine whether the enforcement of MINREF should continue to be done here at AfC or it should happen after an article has been accepted into mainspace. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:19, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• I agree with deprecating Minref, but only to the extent that a higher standard be created to replace it. Otherwise we'll only be relying more heavily on the "Not adequately sourced by reliable sources" which I have been nagged about several times (validly or invalidly) as not really the appropriate method to indicate that more references are needed. Hasteur (talk) 13:35, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
• Have it be done here at AfC, because it is quite important for mainspace articles with challenged statements to be verifiable. AfC shouldn't be accepting an article and giving it the AfC nod of acceptance with WP:V or WP:BLP policies issues.  —Mysterytrey 15:24, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose removal of MINREF here at AfC for the reason that things that fail to meet the criteria are more likely than not to fail an AfD which would violate the "at least a 50% chance of surviving an AfD nomination should be accepted and published to mainspace" threshold. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 15:44, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Technical 13, I assume you mean "fail an AfD". WP:MINREF is not normally a valid reason to delete an article so I don't think this is a good reason for opposing. ~KvnG 16:20, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, and I've corrected my typo. It doesn't need to be a valid reason to delete an article of its own, it just needs to lower the threshold to below 50%. Most of the times when I use it, it is because the sources that are used are extremely weak and I believe that the likelihood of the draft surviving an AfD is below 50%; however, if the same sources were used in-line and I knew what they meant and where referring to, it would increase my assessment of the draft from <50% to 60%. This means, that if not for the failure to meet minref, the draft would not have been <50% chance (which of course is an arbitrary number being discussed elsewhere). — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 16:44, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

If MINREF is by itself not a valid reason to AFD an article then AFC should not be compelled to enforce it. The commonest criticism of AFC is that we hold on to drafts too long by declining them for trivial or unimportant problems. Our critics want us to approve articles more easily, even with less serious problems. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:25, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• By the reason of by itself not a valid reason to AFD an article then AFC should not be compelled to enforce it then we have no reason to decline at all (Or possibly only G11 and G12 stuffs if you want to include CSD reasons in with AFD reasons). As articles only need to have sources available in some form, A claim that the person is using an offline source such as a book (whether or not anyone else can find a copy or not) would require we accept any draft because I've seen AFDs fail (or be lost in no consensus land) because of a claim that an off-line source exists. The fact the it can be a contributing factor is enough to enforce it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 18:14, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• Support WP:MINREF is not clearly part of the decline criteria. It is discussed in General standards and invalid reasons for declining a submission. I don't think these mentions (added in 2011) were intended to alter policy. ~KvnG 16:20, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose - as I understand it, to remove this decline option would be effectively to encourage BLP drafts to be accepted which have contentious material about living persons which is not properly referenced inline. The wisdom of this does not seem obvious to me --_nonsense ferret 21:31, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
• Support I;d like to keep it in if there were any chance id would consistently be used correctly. But too many people have been using it where it does not apply, thus causing confusing. What we need an exact citation before approving is anything obviously contentious or that amounts to negative BLP, Otherwise, inadequate references can be fixed later, just like with all articles; and, like all articles, if not fixed can be discussed at AfD. I prefer a community decision in such cases than that of a single reviewer. DGG ( talk ) 01:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• So then you would oppose its removal if it was allowed to be used as one of multiple reasons? Adding the ability to have multiple decline reasons has been asked for many times and is quite frankly a great idea which I support. I do believe that it shouldn't be too hard to add as part of the re-write for the script (and I know that the template can be adjusted to allow it {which I should go back to spending some time working on again...}). — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 16:04, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• Question - If articles are added directly to the encyclopedia which have unsourced contentious information about living people, what is done with them? Are they:

(1) deleted? In which case, we really need to keep the MINREF decline.

(2) tagged? In which case, we could tag them ourselves and pass them out.

(3) trimmed to remove the contentious material? In which case the situation is a little more complex; we could trim an article ourselves and pass out an article otherwise okay, but in practice the user would likely just add the material back later, so a MINREF decline might be better, giving the editor a chance to cite the contentious stuff rather than having it deleted. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

See WP:BLPREMOVE which I think rules out (2). --_nonsense ferret 00:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

• The only two parts of MINREF that really apply here are direct quotations and contentious BLP info. We shouldn't be accepting articles missing citations on either of those, and we should be deleting the contentious unsourced BLP information on sight, not just declining the submission. If they add it back, that merits a warning or further action. Gigs (talk) 18:47, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose MINREF isn't a high bar and any article that can't pass it doesn't belong in the main namespace. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:12, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose As Chris says - MINREF isn't asking too much of editors and in fact is helping to train new editors to create articles meeting what I think we should expect (as a minimum). Dougweller (talk) 10:23, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Heads up

The infobox requested template is up for deletion. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:51, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting about that here! —Anne Delong (talk) 11:56, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

The discussion was closed today as keep. DGG ( talk ) 01:44, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

RFC closed

Hi all, A few days ago, I closed the Latest RfC. I left the following comments:

A number of points can be drawn from the discussion. There appears to be (rough) consensus for Anne Delong's 6 point whitelist-only approach, however there is some concern that the word "banned" in point 3 is a bitbitey, and imprecise as we aren't talking about WP:BAN, and rough consensus to change that to something softer. No particular consensus on the exact softer wording, but that could be worked out later. Consensus to have a separate blacklist was not reached, as de-whitelisting is effective as a blacklist with less social stigma.

All users involved seem to recognize there's no technical way to enforce this in any real sense at this time, but the AfC helper script could be modified to not function unless they are on the whitelist. No current technical means will stop users from installing a "hacked" AfC helper or just manually moving pages. There is no consensus to use editfilter for technical enforcement at this time.

A point was raised that a negative userright such as "denymove" could be used for technical enforcement, but even the proposer suggested that was something that would require a new community-wide discussion and would likely be controversial, so as such, should be considered out-of-scope for this RfC, however a secure means of enforcement is wanted.

. --Mdann52talk to me! 14:29, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Mdann52, for taking the time to summarize the posts. Aside from not using the word "ban" (perhaps we can just say "requested not to review", or "by consensus should not review at this time" or some such thing), it seems that the proposal was generally accepted.

It seems to me that the first step here would be to create some prominent wording above the list of reviewers, asking those whose experience doesn't meet the criteria not to sign up. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:03, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Glad to see this is happening. Anne Delong, if you can keep me in the loop about developments with this (i.e. when a list has been assembled), I'll work on implementing whitelist support in the helper script. Theopolisme (talk) 22:45, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

The existing list is at - WP:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants, that page should be adapted to suit the criteria and script requirements. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:37, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, how about this for a prominent notice to be added to the top of the reviewer list page:

Notice to prospective Articles for Creation reviewers

Editors wishing to take part in the Afc process as reviewers, and who meet the criteria listed below, should add their usernames to the list of reviewers below.

Criteria:

AfC reviewers must have:

• a Wikipedia account at least 90 days old.
• a minimum of 500 undeleted edits.
• thoroughly read and understood the reviewing instructions.
• a good understanding of the policies mentioned in the reviewing instructions, including the various special notability categories.

PLEASE NOTE: Usernames of editors who do not meet the first two criteria may be removed from the list by any editor. Usernames of editors who do meet the criteria may nevertheless be removed after a removal discussion. Editors whose usernames are not on the list are strongly cautioned not to review Afc submissions.

If you are interesting in becoming an Afc reviewer, but do not yet meet the criteria, please do not sign up now, but do come back later when you qualify. In the meantime, you are welcome to familiarize yourself with the process by browsing through the submissions and help pages and observing the work of the reviewers. The reviewers will gladly answer any questions you may have, both before and after you sign up.

—Anne Delong (talk) 10:03, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

As a side note, the "participants" page is full protected to act as a AFCH whitelist. We should place a notice on it ASAP. My suggestion (with working button!) is the following --Mdann52talk to me! 13:51, 21 March 2014 (UTC):

Notice to prospective Articles for Creation reviewers

Editors wishing to take part in the AfC process as reviewers, and who meet the criteria listed below, should add their names to the list below.

Criteria:

AfC reviewers must have:

• a Wikipedia account at least 90 days old.
• a minimum of 500 undeleted edits to articles.
• thoroughly read and understood the reviewing instructions.
• a good understanding of the policies mentioned in the reviewing instructions, including the various special notability categories.

PLEASE NOTE: Usernames of editors who do not meet the first two criteria may be removed from the list by any editor. Editors whose usernames are not on the list are strongly cautioned not to review AfC submissions.

Only users listed on this page will be able to use the AfC helper script.

If you are interested in becoming an AfC reviewer, but do not yet meet the criteria, please do not sign up now, but do come back later when you qualify. In the meantime, you are welcome to familiarize yourself with the process by browsing through the submissions and help pages and observing the work of the reviewers. The reviewers will gladly answer any questions you may have, both before and after you sign up.

          Ask us a question!          

nice one - just one tiny query for clarification - is that 500 edits in any namespace including talk or article space only, or is it articlespace and AfD. --_nonsense ferret 20:39, 21 March 2014

500 total in mainspace what the RfC seemed to support. --Mdann52talk to me! 20:45, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Suggest a slight tweak to the wording. Change: "Anyone listed on this page will be able to use the AFC helper script." to a more explicitly restrictive statement: "Only editors listed on this page will be able to use the AFC helper script." Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:20, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with this. The other doesn't say what it really means. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

• I would like to point out that the RFC proposal, which was well supported (except for the use of the term "ban", which it was felt was too strong), did not call for the list to be protected, and in fact suggests that users will sign themselves up after reading the criteria, and that the Afc script installation process include checking the list. The proposal allowed regular reviewers to remove names from the list if the users didn't meet the two criteria - how can they do that if it's protected? In the proposal, admins would only be involved if there was a problem. Is the process now going to be that each person is vetted by an admin? I can't see any other reason for an up to 24 hour wait. If you don't want the person to add their own name to the list, can't the helper script installation procedure check the 90 days and 500 edits and then both install itself an add the username to the list? What's the point of having proposals and developing consensus if people just go off and do something totally different?? I would like to remind everyone that the proposal had 13 supports and one oppose. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Anne, the list should not be protected and no admin intervention should be required unless there is a problem. The idea that this would become another "hat" to collect was very strongly rejected everywhere the idea was discussed. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:03, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

If you wish to get the actions reversed, feel free. I may have been a bit quick on that.... --Mdann52talk to me! 07:12, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

User:Mdann52 "Feel free" to what? You protected the page, you created the "click here to apply" button, so you are the one who knows exactly how to undo it, so please do so. There was never any intention to involve administrative processes, except to deal with non-compliant or willfully bad faith reviewers. Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:43, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

@Dodger67: I'm not an admin.. ..

Can an admin action the above request please? (page in question is WP:WPAFC/P. --Mdann52talk to me! 08:37, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• I have removed protection from the page. However, I shall contact the admin who placed the protection, in case he knows of some reason why the protection is needed. Really, it would have been better to have contacted him rather than asking here. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 09:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Redeclined but not Resubmitted?

Hi, I made an AfC a little over a month ago, and it was turned down a few weeks later. I've made a few small changes since then, but not enough for me to resubmit it, and I come in today and find that it's been declined again. How's the Resubmit button work if they get reviewed again anyway? (It was initially turned down by User:Makro FWIW, who seems to be a current topic of conversation here.) Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 01:22, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Mdann52 submitted it in this edit. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:39, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Thanks. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 03:20, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Replay Edits tool

You may be interested in a new tool being developed to quickly see the development of an article. It's called"Replay Edits", and you can try it here: http://cosmiclattes.github.io/wikireplay/player.html

It's quite interesting to see the edits go by visually in an active page (try "Banjo", for example - you can watch all the vandalism being reverted), and it also provides a little timeline so that you can see how frequently a page is edited, and whether the edits are additions or removals. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:09, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Modest proposal for the next week

So, there is officially a week left in the drive. I know that we have knocked down the total to something managable, but would people be interested in lowering the pages in the category down to something under a hundred? My fear is that it will quickly back right up if we continue at this level, and lowering the total would give us some breathing room in the future. Thoughts? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:18, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

What category do you mean lowering under a hundred? Category:Pending AfC submissions? Or some other category, because that would be a lot of progress.  —Mysterytrey 01:30, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

this always makes interesting viewing progress --_nonsense ferret 01:34, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that one. Per the image, it looks like we may have reached a point of apathy, as the initial drive was a success, but now we have leveled off since then. Although it's not necessary to completely clear the backlog, it would help make us speedier and more efficient in the long run. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:44, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

It would be wonderful to see the backlog down around 100. However, sometimes during these drives reviewers, in their eagerness to get through the backlog and add to their tallies, review too quickly and don't take time to leave comments explaining secondary decline reasons. This leads to drafts being resubmitted while still containing problems, which has a rebound effect on the size of the backlog as well as being frustrating for the new editors. Slow and steady wins the race... (I just made that up...) —Anne Delong (talk) 11:08, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

There does seem to be something sticky. When we get down to 1000, it seems hard to get further. Going forward We need to do some combination of the following: ~KvnG 17:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• Change our backlog goal - a longer backlog, reviewed in FCFS order, should naturally discourage resubmissions (and perhaps initial submissions too)
• Change procedures so reviews can be done more quickly
• Change procedures so as to discourage excessive resubmits
• Recruit more reviewers

As much as I'm for declaring success, we've not really cleared the backlog... Category:AfC pending submissions by age still shows submissions in the "Pending for more than 4 weeks" category. We still have over 25% of our submissions in the coalesed categories that are pending over 20 days. @Ktr101 and Anne Delong: Even without me participating in this Backlog jihad we still haven't reached the stated goal of this drive (To have a clean backlog). @Nonsenseferret: And that chart shows quite clearly what the problem is (We don't have enough maintenance level reviews being conducted on average to stay even without backlog jihads (April, July, October, December-January, March). I say again Before any more backlog drives are conducted we need to figure out why we can't maintain a reasonable length of backlog without a backlog elimination drive. Hasteur (talk) 12:11, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hasteur is right that backlog drives aren't a total solution, although I believe that they do help. Backlog drives increase the number of reviewers taking part in straightforward reviews, but don't attract knowledge specialists to help with the reviews of sophisticated topics. Some reviewers have been leaving messages at Wikiprojects to attract the attention of these editors, but this is time consuming. Hasteur, I know that you have been taking an interest in the new Draft space, and one of the differences is that the drafts have talk pages. Has anyone been adding Wikiproject banners on the talk pages? If so, has that had any beneficial effect? Placing banners might be a more efficient way of attracting specialist reviewers, and more than one banner could be added if appropriate. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:27, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me that reviewing would be a more attractive proposition if we categorized drafts in some way, either by triaging or by building something into the wizard that selects a sub category of draft. One problem that cant be easily resolved is that from the perspective of a wiki project, almost all of the drafts would probably be assessed as low importance, so the time of their members would logically be better spent on high priority subjects. That is unless they think that by helping here they will recruit new members. It isn't clear to me whether our goal is churning through a lot of drafts for the sake of processing them and reaching a number target, or of trying to work out who the potential editors are that are worth coaching and encouraging. It might be that one goal is very much to the detriment of another.--_nonsense ferret 13:44, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

This ideas has been brought up a number of times, but so far nothing has been done about it. We have two new processes on the go - the Draft space (which allows talk pages for submissions) and the new AfC Helper script being developed (which could have new features if technically feasible), so this may be an opportune time to have something like this implemented. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:40, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Currently I'm using a snippet of code from User:Hasteur/common.js (The MoveToDraft function) to pre-populate the Move page template so that I can get these moved over in a clean manner. Originally I tried to calculate the page name, but this works better and handles Userspace submissions. If there is consensus, what I can do is use the AutoWikiBrowser in automatic mode to apply a maintenance category to every AfC submission in the Draft namespace to flag for verification that the associated talk page has all the appropriate project banners on it to help recruit interest/expertiese for the draft. Is there a consensus to do such a task? Hasteur (talk) 13:50, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Hasteur, can you explain what you see as happening here? Is it (1) all Draft article talk pages are flagged, and (2) someone reads and checks a submission for appropriate banners, and (3) then the editor removes the flag? Or, as often happens, am I misunderstanding what you have in mind? Another possible way to deal with adding Wikiproject banners would be to tap into the Afc Helper Script code that already does that when accepting submissions, and if the submission is in the Draft mainspace, present the same option on its reviewing menu. If people like Hasteur's flagging idea, the script could have an option to remove the flag. However, one thing that comes to mind is that these banners affect other editors who don't normally work on Afc submissions or drafts; has there been any discussion in a wider venue about whether adding them to drafts is a good idea? (I think it is, obviously.) —Anne Delong (talk) 16:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: I think you have this confused. I'll step through so it's clear

1. I search for every page that has the {{AFC submission}} template on it that is in the Draft namespace
2. From that list I open each page to see if there's a Category:AFC submissions in Draft space needing project banners category on it. If so skip the page and move to the next page. If not...
3. If the category is missing see if there's a talk page. If no talk page exists, create it (with the WPAFC banner), apply the above mentioned category to the Draft page, and move on to the next search result. If yes...
4. If the talk page has at least one wikiproject banner outside the WPAFC banner move on to the next search result from step 1. If not edit the Draft page to add the above mentioned category.

Once the categorization is complete, those editors who are looking for something to do can patrol the category, adding the appropriate project banners to the talk page, and removing the category from the Draft page. By adding the project banners (as long as they're there) we won't be re-categorizing the page. It wouldn't be a banner template, but a hidden category (that the AFCH tool would have to be programmed to ignore when disabling categories)Hasteur (talk) 17:54, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Hasteur your second explanation is much clearer. My thoughts:

• To have the category be as up-to-date as possible it might be good to have your routine triggered as part of the same process that adds the submit template, as well as any periodic "grazing" you were planning.
• It would be nice, as I mentioned above, to have an easy way to place the banners built into the Helper script, which would then also remove the hidden category. However, there will likely be people who add banners manually and aren't regular Afc helper script users. Will they be able or know enough to remove the hidden category, or would it just be incorrect until the submission was checked again?
• And by the way I support this idea. I can't see any downside, and the presence of the category could allow useful features to be added to the script in the future. Adding the banners is also a good way for people who don't want the responsibility of accepting or declining drafts to contribute to Afc, so even if the script developers don't pick up and use the category, willing editors could look through a list of only the submissions needing categorization and place the banners manually. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:31, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

• I mostly support this proposal, I am just wondering what you have planned for drafts that are about a topic that doesn't fit neatly in any of the existing WikiProjects. Are they removed from the category? If removed, will they be re-added on the next pass? Should they be tagged with a category or hidden comment to let AWB know that they have been checked? — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 18:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

  Are you saying that the Philosophy link is no longer valid? If an editor who is working the list can't come up with at least one project to tag for the draft, it's my opinion that they should leave the "Needs a Banner" category and another volunteer should get a crack at it. Sometimes you have to be creative with how you would tag into categories. Hasteur (talk) 20:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

  Don't people in most WikiProjects not like tags being placed on AfC submissions? I thought that was sort of the reason AfC articles use colons in the beginning in tags like [[:Category:7th-century philosophers]].  —Mysterytrey 21:16, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

  @Mysterytrey: I think you're confused. This is not a maintenance template, this is a category to indicate to AFC members that we need to take maintenance action. Much like Category:AfC postponed G13. The only thing we'd have to do is suppress the AFCH tool from commenting the category out. Hasteur (talk) 12:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

  I'm not talking about the Category:AFC submissions in Draft space needing project banners itself, but, as I understand it, the whole purpose of that category is so that an editor can add some mainspace category or project banner onto it. Is that supposed to be done when the article submission were to be accepted, or is the submission supposed to stay in AfC space for however long with a regular project banner on it?  —Mysterytrey 15:25, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

So, it seems clear that people want to fix things. One idea brought up above would be to make the process simpler. Within that regard, would anyone be against coding a bot that would auto-review anything that is either blank or without references, which would cull a portion of the reviews for us. I always wonder if we have an apathy level where we just hit a number and since there isn't a major issue with reviews (becoming the new "normal"), we stop reviewing. Right now, the count is down to 980, which is the lowest I have seen in awhile, but from the looks of it, there are people dedicated to keeping it from reaching the next 100 level, so that is why we haven't jumped up that much lately. So, that being said, if we did a final push and knocked off 150+ reviews from where we started the day before, we might be able to clean it up in no time. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:06, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

IIRC, we've looked at bot reviewing before and the problem was that there was so much potential false positives (and declines for trivial reasons) that it was shot down. In addition we the volunteers commit as part of the AFC review to give every submission a once over. That once over might be 5 seconds in the case of "My dog, Mr Wiggles, chases his tail around" to 1~2 minutes in the case of a seemingly blank submission (runaway HTML tag, unterminated comment, etc.) to 20~30 minutes to carefully review the "Just on the border of being accepted" drafts. Sometimes it's easy to determine how much time you should invest into reviewing, but you run the risk of being disapointed at what you discover is a COI/Advert job. Hasteur (talk) 20:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I think I may have made an error reviewing

Regarding my review of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/List of Aam Aadmi Party candidates in the Indian general election, 2014, the submitter made a good point on my talk page about equivalent articles existing. Can someone else have a look at this please. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 13:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• Well... I'd like to point out that other stuff existing is no justification to add more wrongs to the wiki. I concur with your original assessment. I also see that the drafter is trying to over justify some stuff that is just not that important with cite bloat and that would need to be cleaned up before acceptance as well. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 14:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I've declined a similar one about the 2014 election in the state of Goa, with the criteria that there's an article about the Indian elections already. I don't think there are articles on the general elections for all 28 states, nor should there be, when they're national elections. I dunno, perhaps we should wait for the WikiProject India folk's input, as I already notified them about the aforementioned article.FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:23, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Having reviewed that twice, I am cool with someone accepting it and immediately nominating it for deletion, if they continue to badger us to have it accepted. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:16, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

When there are serious BLP problems in drafts?

This is somewhat related to the MINREF RFC above. WP:BLP pretty much applies to all of Wikipedia not just article space, and I'm wondering what to do when encountering a draft which is very problematic from that point of view (not ones that simply make unreferenced claims to fame) yet are not such clear attack pages that they can be speedily deleted. In one current draft, I removed a claim about a third party and have sufficient concerns about the remainder of the draft's contents and two of the linked "references" that I've brought the issue to the Biographies of living persons Noticeboard. Although AfC drafts aren't indexed by Google, they are picked up by mirrors. See [4]. Voceditenore (talk) 16:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

If it's just a small part of a draft that's inappropriate, it can be removed, but if the whole article is full of BLP problems, can't we use WP:MFD? I'm afraid it's often too late to avoid the mirrors - sometimes they pick up drafts within minutes. The move to the new Draft space will help, because at least then the mirror pages won't start with the word "Wikipedia". —Anne Delong (talk) 17:12, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

On the advice at BLPN, I've just gone through it and removed a whole swathe of material [5] per WP:BLP. Even though this is probably an autobiography, unreferenced or poorly referenced assertions re the subject's DoB, parents' names, his sexuality, criminal charges brought against him, alleged malfeasance by the named mayor of his hometown, accusations against him on internet forums, etc. etc. and the two problematic "references" all went. Hopefully, there will be no attempts to restore it. Voceditenore (talk) 18:04, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

An administrator has now nominated the remainder of the draft for speedy deletion per WP:G11, which would probably be the best outcome. Voceditenore (talk) 18:22, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

That's pretty much the right thing to do, delete the info, send it to BLPN. I would not send it to MfD, that's just increasing the exposure and the damage that BLP is meant to mitigate. While the CSD is narrowly construed on attack pages, largely negative BLPs that are poorly sourced can be deleted by any admin, even if it falls outside the CSD technically. Just remember, the focus must be on mitigating the potential damage the article is causing, so any process that increases the exposure of the material is not the way to go. Gigs (talk) 18:55, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree re MfD, not only because it merely increases the exposure, but also because it seems crazy to go through what is basically an AfD before the draft is even an article. It's just make-work for everyone, especially in light of the lengthy and tendentious comments from the draft's creator who claims to be the subject's friend and most recently an IP claiming to be the subject himself at the AfC Help Desk here and here. Note that in this case, it wasn't largely a negative BLP, only about half of it. Even after I removed all the BLP violations there was still considerable text—multiple completely unreferenced "positive" claims about the subject's career and fame. Hence the use of G11 as the rationale. Voceditenore (talk) 19:33, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

@Gigs: There's a reason that {{db|reason=insert good reason here, invoking the policy known as WP:IAR if appropriate}} is a valid speedy-deletion reason. However, like any time anyone - especially someone with a mop - invokes "Ignore all rules," the editor must not only be right but they must be obviously right should anyone challenge them on it or he may find himself called on the carpet or even sanctioned for it. I haven't been following this particular case but from the looks of things, the right thing was done and if anyone asks why, "IAR" may be the best policy to cite. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:43, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Where is the "accept" button?

I enabled the script (Preferences → Gadgets → Yet Another AFC Helper Script: easily review Articles for creation submissions and redirect requests.) And I still don't see an accept button. There's a "Move" which looks like a standard move (which I'm afraid to to for fear of messing up the AFC system) and "review" seems to be to just leave a comment. Don's see any "accept" button which the instructions say to use. Where is the "accept" button. Thanks. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:35, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Select "review" and more options will appear. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 01:48, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The "accept" and "decline" buttons only appear if there is an active submission template (yellow box or possibly blue if you've placed it under review. If you only see the comment and clean options when you select "review", the draft hasn't been submitted. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:54, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. After that first attempt to help me (before your post) I went fishing around. The only choice that it could possibly be under was "submit" and so I tried that, which was a mistake, it make me the submitter. I did a simple revert of my edit on that page. I hope that nothing else got messed up (article is "tepad"). Thanks again. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:59, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

It is annoying if you want to accept an article declined or not submitted as the script stubbornly refuses to give you an accept. I then do a shoddy job with the move button. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:14, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

If it isn't submitted for review why do you want to review it? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:28, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Could someone comment here?

Resolved

I'm having a bit of a burnout today. User_talk:FoCuSandLeArN#Decline_of_the_article_about_ShopYourWay. Appreciated, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:28, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

• Multiple editors have opined at the AFC submission and on F&L's talk page. Hasteur (talk) 15:07, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:24, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Behaviour

Hello again! Just stumbled upon this IP and was wondering what the deal was. Is this IP being used to submit several AfC submissions, or is one IP user for some reason submitting all of those entries, most of which are quickly declined for various reasons? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:06, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I haven't done much investigation, but it's probably an IP who doesn't want to register. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:26, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Ktr101 I'd disagree... Based on Special:Contributions/82.43.182.178 I'm seeing an IP editor who has a specific agenda of submittins drafts that are most definitely not ready. Also based on the own mantained "IP Hopper" table and spot check of those IPs I'm seeing the same behavior. I'm inclined to broad base disable the submission templates from this "user", block all the IPs to force them to register, and treat them as a disruptive sockpuppeteer. Hasteur (talk) 19:46, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Again, I never said that I did an in-depth look, but it could also be that they happen to be on an IP that changes every so often. In terms of their reviews, we probably should have a talk with them, as I see no reason why that couldn't happen. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:12, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

It certainly could be, although I find it highly unlikely that all the people who got that particular IP submitted poor AfC drafts. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:42, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Backlog drive - Unusual rereview count.

While generating the March AFC Drive statistics I've noticed something unusual i feel i should raise for other reviewers to consider. Over the past few days I've noticed a huge increase in the amount of rereviews done by Makro. I have not checked the quality of these reviews and therefor i am not casting any judgment as to their quality but i would note that ~700 rereviews in a single day causes a fair amount of suspicion as to their quality from my side.

Some points to consider in this matter:

• On the 26th of March on 18:31 Makro posted a re-review of about 200 reviews done by FoCuSandLeArN. At that same day on 18:59 (28 minutes later) another 254 reviews were done. If the reviews were done in this timeframe that would account to 9 reviews a minute, or less then 6 seconds for each re-review.
• Practically every review accepts the review done using the exact same comment with no personal note or sidenote attached in any of them.
• Two of my three re reviews match a page Makro reviewed (See here]). In both cases i felt the reviews were clearly in error thus i declined them with a comment - Yet the rereviews by Makro only contained the stock "Agree with review " accept.

I would also note that I've seen the same issues yesterday when i noticed the same fast review rate (9 reviews done in 4 minutes). Despite noticing the consistent "Agree with review" style reviewing i decided to assume good faith for the moment. However, the steep increase today raises a very clear red flag for me that needs looking into. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 19:10, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Coupled with the above section on them blanking the questions on their talk page, I think we should start a serious discussion about whether Makro knows what they are doing, as there is no reason to do so many reviews in one day. I have maybe one review for every 100 reviews I have done, and there really is nothing gained by doing it like this. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:31, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I just noticed this hit the Wiki as well. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 19:50, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The way i review pages is done in accordance with wiki rules.Makro (talk) 20:25, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I would also like to added another reviewer user:aggie80, signs all there revews with concur and nothing more. And user:belshay also uses the same "agree with review" as me in their reviews. User.78.26 doesnt even include a reason.Makro (talk) 20:36, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I think if you do look at my reviews you will see that I don't use "Concur" on all of them, it is my standard, but I often make additional comments on them. And a few seconds a review and that they were second reviews of existing ones indicates that the time to take a look at what previous reviewers had looked at and that the articles were not even opened to see and review.

Again, that means nothing if you are doing hundreds of reviews in a short period of time. I am experienced, and even then I could never do that many reviews even though I have a good grasp on everything. Don't drag down others in an attempt to justify something if you aren't addressing one of the main issues that was brought up above. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:18, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

@Makro: Re-reviews were added to the backlog drive to ensure various reviewers weren't doing a sloppy job - either because they were unaware of a certain rule or because the competitive nature of the backlog drive caused them to review fast rather then accurate. Eventually the scoring mechanism changed to reward users who took the time to recheck others edits as well, to ensure these editor received acknowledgment for their work. Having said all that: A rereview is intended to be a full review of another editors review with the intent to spot errors or assist other editors with commentary as to why one believes a review is incorrect.

To be specific on what concerns me:

• Statistically speaking 5-10% or so of the re-reviews would be a decline, yet all yours are accepts.
• Using the exact same commentary everywhere suggest mechanical work over manual work. Using the same comment 500 times without deviating is odd - again statistically speaking so many reviews should have resulted in at least one or two reviews one wants to elaborate on.
• If my calculation is correct you would have 6 seconds to review each page which is barely enough time to load a page, let alone read and re-review it. Normally a re-review will take at least half a minute, and the average will be higher. Even if i count half a minute for a re-review (By assuming you added them to a text file and placed them in batch later on) those 700 reviews would still represent 6 hours of work without a break at the very least.

Re-reviews without specific commentary are fine, though I would note that the majority of 78.26's reviews seem to have a custom comment accompanying them (I cannot shake a NOTTHEM vibe from that comment though). To make absolutely sure my concern and thoughts are clear i am going to strip it of every layer of sugarcoating and state it as blunt as i possibly can: I believe your reviews are done with speed over quality in mind, and your speed is of such a magnitude that i doubt each article was actually loaded and read (Let alone subjected to a decent rereview). Furthermore i suspect this is done to artificially raise your backlog drive "score" in order to end higher on the ranking - something that these drives were NOT intended for in any form or shape. There you go - i put all my cards on the table and this should explain precisely what i am thinking at the moment. I DO apologize if these conclusions are incorrect and i would note that the bluntness is only to make sure you known what i am thinking in order to allow you to counter these concerns if you so intend. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 21:32, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Accept means that i accept the review to be correct. All the rereviews i have doen are correctly reviewed so i do accept to say that. You use decline when you disagree with a reviewer.Makro (talk) 21:44, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I guess we are just amazed that you can bang through these so fast without sacrificing quality and amazed that, statistically, you are a bit away from "the norm" in pass/fail. I can think of one plausible explanation: You only bothered to re-review those reviews which were so obviously correct (i.e. not only did you agree with the outcome, but it was immediately obvious to you that there were no serious flaw in the reasoning that led to the outcome) that they could be re-reviewed in a very short period of time. This is called "cherry picking" and, while it might be considered "gaming the system for" by some, it doesn't impact the quality of the individual re-reviews. However, it does hurt the overall quality of the re-reviews by making things look better than they are. They also do not provide much in the way of useful results to the reviewers if all they get is "good news," while the lower-quality reviews the person doing the cherry-picking skipped go un-re-reviewed. So, either you are much more efficient than most of us and are able to give quality reviews much faster than everyone and, perhaps by sheer chance, you happen to be agreeing with the outcomes of everyone you re-review, OR you are cherry-picking, OR you are not doing a proper job of re-reviewing and a reviewer seeing dozens of "pass" re-reviews and 0 "fail" re-reviews should not assume that all of those reviews actually deserved a "pass." While I hope the answer is "the first one" I hope you can see why some of us think this is not the most plausible explanation, at least at first glance. The second explanation is plausible but if it is true, I would ask you to consider doing some more challenging re-reviews. If it's the third explanation I would ask you to consider finding reviews that have previously either failed or which have been passed with some form of criticism and ask yourself "why did the re-reviewer fail or criticize the review, and do I agree with the re-reviewer" rather than contuining to re-review un-re-reviewed reviews. Studying other's feedback will make you a better re-reviewer and a better reviewer. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:27, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry for being blunt, but it is obvious. The user just did this to got to the #1 place in the leaderboard, to got the awards. (t) Josve05a (c) 22:36, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

As an example, the acceptance of Ron Baratono and the contribution at the deletion discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ron Baratono makes me think that this user does not have enough knowledge of what is notable and what isn't to be doing reviews, never mind re-reviewing other people's reviews in any meaningful or helpful way. --_nonsense ferret 22:41, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm thinking that we should invalidate any of the reviews that have the same language on them. The fact that he did so many reviews in such a short period of time is frankly an insult to anyone who has put many hours into reviewing articles and providing useful feedback to users, even if it is a pain in the butt to do and they won't listen to you. Per the above observations, there is no way that you can do a re-review in six seconds (even a normal review takes far longer), as that means that you are just opening it up and closing the page immediately, without regard for input. What I think happened here is that Makro spent that time formatting the list, and nonsenseferret's comment above shows that that is probably the case. For a user who doesn't have a clear grasp on the English language, as evidenced by the numerous spelling errors that they have left, I doubt that they truly know what they are doing. As we mentioned a week or so ago, Makro just seems to be doing the reviews and ignoring anyone who asks questions about said reviews. I hate to make this observation, but this page pretty much sums up how I think Makro views this drive. I hope I am proven wrong here, but Makro has previously had issues conforming to the rules and norms on this project, and this issue is just another example of this Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:55, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Unless there is some rebuttal that clearly alleviates these concerns i concur (And i sadly believe there won't be any). I would suggest a few actions though if the other reviewers concur:

• Makro is removed from this drive as a reviewer and cannot rejoin this drive or a future drive without demonstrating that they can make decent (re)reviews outside a backlog drive .
• All rereviews done by Makro are to be removed from the drive pages.

I doubt we need a precedent for the removal from the drive but i would note a removal was already sanctioned once during a previous drive. As for the categoric removal of the reviews: Even if some are decent we cannot be sure which ones were well done and which ones were just a formatted list pasted on a page. Leaving these re-reviews around would effectively clog our entire re-review process - It is nigh impossible to see which reviews were already passed by a reviewer and which ones still need to be checked (or re-checked if a single reviewer fails them) due to the clutter these reviews cause. I understand that time has been spend on these reviews and that some might have been decent. I also acknowledge that this might have been a case of misguided enthusiasm rather than intended malice. Even so this particular situation and the earlier concerns over non-communication towards new editors results in a net negative influence if all is summed up.

Aside from this matter i suppose we should encourage regular reviewers to spend a little time reviewing small chunks of reviews and doing double checks on rereviews on a semi regular basis in order to catch these problems early on (By checking 5 reviews and 5 rereviews a particular user made before moving to the next editor). Perhaps it may be an idea to extend the proposal stating "The script won't load for users with less than 500 edits and 90 days of activity" to include a fully protected blacklist for users who cannot use the script altogether (Akin to Huggle's, which will not load if a specific user CSS file is fully protected). That way everyone can sign up without wait while still supplying a method to deal with problematic cases. I suppose we need to aim some puppy eyes at Theopolisme for that though. Seems like i keep drawing people here by mentioning them - shall we just pitch a party tent and have drinks while we are all here anyway? Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 23:39, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

*pitches tent* I've implemented whitelist support in the rewrite script. Err.... we could also probably do some sort of blacklist as well....it follows the same principles code-wise)...although personally I'd like to avoid it... If users continue adding themselves after they've been removed or whatever then it seems like we've got a WP:CLUE issue, not just a need for more bureaucracy and covering up of the real issue...WP:CIR. Just my 2¢ though, I'm happy as always to work with everyone to figure out the best solution. :) Theopolisme (talk) 23:56, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

@Josve05a: And this is why I hate scored backlog drives. People learn the scoring system and try to come up with creative ways to game the system so that they can win any awards. IMO, I my ideal outcome would be to see Makro stripped of all their points for this drive, stripped of their AFC barnstars, disfellowshipped from AFC, and for them to spend ~2 months under the tutalage of one of the luminaries of AFC (Anne Delong, DDG, Excirial, myself, etc.) so that they learn the right way how to review and how to conduct themselves in a review drive. I know this is a burn to the ground viewpoint, but we have too many critics from outside the project pointing at the slipshod reviews we pass out already. We don't need further detractors like Makro. Hasteur (talk) 23:16, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Hasteur, although this goes beyond what I advocated, I am going to have to agree with you here, as Makro has only 69 reviews, and 1390 reviews. This number is not only a mirror image of most experienced Wikipedians, but it also is concerning because someone with so few of those reviews should not even be attempting that large number of re-reviews, mainly because you need a lot of experience in reviewing before you should even be attempting re-reviews. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I dont care about the points i do it to help the backlog. And so what if i cherry pick the quicker an article can be passed failed the better wiki can improve and expand.Makro (talk) 23:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

If that was true, then you wouldn't spend your time on re-reviewing other's work. As pointed out above, 90-95% of the reviews are correct in their actions, so performing almost 1,400 re-reviews means that you should in theory be 70-140 disagreeing with the initial reviewer. Not only did you not do that, but you spent valuable time confirming what we already knew instead of tackling the greater problem of over eight hundred waiting reviews. I'm sorry, but I do not see you being a benefit to this project at this time, as you should be focusing more on doing new reviews, instead of essentially confirming what we already knew. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:57, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Now isn't the time for half measures. I want to see Makro dragged in front of ARBCOM and booted from the project. Many of us raised concerns at the outset about Makro but a lot of hand-wringing on this page accomplished nothing. Now the chickens have come home to roost. While I know many users are willing to tolerate gross misconduct, otherwise "victimless" editing like this hurts this WikiProject and tarnishes the image of Wikipedia for new users worse than it already had been. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:23, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think this is a matter for ARBCOM, as we really don't need to be bothering them with our internal affairs, especially when we can easily deal with this by locking them out of the reviewing process. That being said, the less people know about our drama, the better, as bringing this to ARBCOM is a bit heavy-handed, and would only serve to feed not only the detractors, but create unnecessary burdens to many people on the project. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:34, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

@Chris troutman:I don't even think AN/I needs to be involved. Just defellowship, AfC barnstar stripping, and points removed will probably be effective enough, as Hasteur suggested.  —Mysterytrey 00:45, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

@Chris troutman:I partly agree with Mysterytrey: This is too trivial a matter for ARBCOM and assuming Makro sees the handwriting on the wall and admits, at least to himself, that he's doing the project harm by his seemingly-robotic "pass" re-reviews and that he accepts whatever training/education we can give him and accepts whatever short-term sanctions we deem appropriate, there's not even any reason to get administrators involved. I disagree with mysterytrey in regard to some of the sanctions he mentions. Disfellowshipping (kicking him out of the project) will only be necessary if he continues to act as if that he's not willing to listen to and learn from the AFC community. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:26, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

• I guess we should go over all of the user's reviews. As a side note, I've noticed several "Participants" who don't fulfil current requirements, I don't think they're very active, but keep an eye out. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:47, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Like i have said. I dont care about the points or awards i do it to make sure wikipedia has the best information possible being accepted.Makro (talk) 01:14, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Section break

So, now that it seems that people can agree that Makro should be removed from the project, who wants to remove his re-reviews? In terms of the actual reviews, there is probably no rush on that (or the re-reviews for that matter), but it might not be a bad idea to start implementing the white list in order to prevent misguided actions like this from happening in the future. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:28, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Slow down - if Wikipedia's concept of "consensus" were "universal consent, or abstension" (which it is not) I would be prepared to "block consensus" on any call to boot Makro out of the project altogether. That said, there may be a Wiki-Consensus within the AFC reviewer community to do so, but I will speak up and make sure it's not "unanimous consent."

Having said that, I do think Makro needs to step back and realize that his standards of what makes an acceptable review are significantly more relaxed than the rest of the team's are (that's the most WP:AFG/charitable reason I can think of for him to give a nearly-100% "pass" rate) means that his en masse re-reviews are not only not helpful, but they have become a distraction that some would have, in their own way, called disruptive. The fact that we are having this discussion is in itself a disruption of normal AFC activities.

I hereby call on Makro to

• publicly step away from doing re-reviews for this backlog drive and limit his re-reviews in the next backlog drive to no more than 1 for every review he completes and no more than 10 per day.
• announce that he will not object if his re-review information is removed from this backlog's pages and the points removed from his scorecard.
• announce that, for at least the next 10 submissions he reviews, that he get a 2nd opinion before accepting or declining any article that isn't speedy-deletable (i.e. an obvious copyvio, attack page, etc.), and that he will continue to ask for a 2nd opinion until he has 10 consecutive reviews where the 2nd opinion indicates that, had this been a "re-review" situation instead of a "2nd opinion" situation, it would have been a "passing" re-review.

I hereby ask the AFC editor community to train Makro into becoming a quality reviewer by, among other things,

• Actively helping him when he asks for help or a 2nd opinion
• Actively encourage him to make use of the {{afc comment}} section and participate at the AFC Help Desk, and to politely correct any misconceptions about AFC or Wikipedia that may be revealed by his use of AFC comments or by his participation at the AFC Help Desk.
• Encouraging him when he shows signs that his competency in AFC matters is growing
• Remove all restrictions when it is obvious that his competency is at the level needed to fully participate in this WikiProject. This does NOT mean he has to be perfect, only that he has to be sufficiently competent that the cost to the project from his mistakes doesn't outweigh the benefit of his full participation in this project (i.e. we aren't perfect and we shouldn't expect him to be either).

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:17, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

This is a good idea, but what do you propose doing with the almost 1,400 re-reviews that most likely weren't actually completed and goes against those who have actually done reviews? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Oops, I just re-read that, and realized my mistake, so I am completely for everything you outlined above. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:44, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

• I felt a little unsure of my concerns I posted here previously about encouraging game-like behavior, but here you have it, it is an actual problem. Regarding the re-reviews, I wouldn't overturn them. They are only re-reviews, and if the sole intention is to "take away his points", isn't that engaging in exactly the same sort of behavior that encouraged him to do this in the first place? The more we treat it like a game, the more we'll have these sort of problems. Gigs (talk) 18:18, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I cannot accept that all of the ~100 of my reviews that Makro re-reviewed are passes - I'm simply not that good! Six seconds (or even 15) is not enough to check for copyvio so unless Makro is clairvoyant and managed to only selected my "declined as blank/hoax/nonsense" reviews to check, I would expect at least a few fails. So, how do we remove these invalid re-reviews? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:44, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Gigs, if he had been doing all of those reviews over the period of a month, then I would have no problem with having them there. My problem is that he claims to have done seven hundred re-reviews in a day, which is insane even for my reviewing standards. It is one thing to do a review and deal with the people who question why you have done it, as that in itself is work. It is another to make a mockery of the people who have done it and have such a lopsided total that you are somehow granted the reviewer award over those who have done the hard work instead of gaming the system. In terms of what Roger said, it is also unlikely that we are that perfect, as even the best of us mess up every now and then. Regarding the taking out his accomplishments, if {{User link|Excirial}] agrees with this idea, I am more than happy to remove the recent reviews, as Makro didn't help anyone when he confirmed what they had just done. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:59, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

While we're here, we should also discuss Belshay's contributions, as they just agreed with 484 of Makro's supposed re-reviews in this edit, where they just stated that they agreed with the re-reviews. That edit aside, there are multiple versions of them either just cherry-picking the reviews, or not even bothering to do them (here, here, and here for example), as the only time that I have seen them put declines on was when they reviewed my page. I have no problem with the declines on my page, but the 484 agreements with Makro is concerning, as well as the fact that in my brief investigation, those are the only declines that I saw. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:51, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

At the risk of hammering the point home, the 484 reviews were supposedly done in 32 minutes, much in the same style as Makro. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:59, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Redux - What to do now?

I suppose we still have two situations on our hands:

1. What, if anything, should be done regarding the re-reviews suspected of being fake?
2. What, if anything, should be done about the rereview scoring mechanic as a whole, seeing as it might be exploitable?

If i summarize the above thread i think we're leaning towards an "Remove the reviews" stance and a generic "We need to do something about the mechanic as well" stance. Correct me on that if i am misreading things though. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 15:38, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

(I changed the * to #, I hope you don't mind)

On question #1, the suspected re-reviews should be removed.

Regarding what we should do with the system, I think we can discuss further, until the next drive is. (t) Josve05a (c) 15:50, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Joseve05a on both counts. On #1, we all know what's going on, that golden wiki will be awfully bitter-tasting when he finally gets it. I know I be embarrassed to display that on my user talk page or /Awards sub-page if I got it under such circumstances. On #2, we do need to discuss it before the next drive. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:47, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced these users did anything "wrong" per my comment in the #Still running wild section below. What I suggest, is that the users that misunderstood what "re-review" means go through and remove all of there re-reviews that aren't actually that, but instead a quick glance to see if the original review was reasonable. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 22:12, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
• I'm going to have to echo Technical's observation on that, as I don't think Belshay was doing anything implicitly wrong. Makro was just testing the boundaries of the system, but when you apply the assumption of good faith onto this, no one was explicitly causing harm. That being said, the fact that both of them have a combined two and a half thousand reviews and did many of them in short periods of time is concerning, and should be cause for removal. This is mainly because there is no way to re-review 484 articles in half an hour without having multiple screens (the typing aspect alone should just take that long). In terms of what we should do with re-reviews, maybe we could set up a system where your re-reviews cannot go more than a certain percentage above your actual reviews, or put a cap on them. Of course rules are against many of the things we do here, but it might help motivate people to do more initial reviews in the long run. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 06:17, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
• Let's be straight here, even if we assume all the good faith in the world, it is empirically obvious that Makro has not been the the most useful person in this drive (which is what the little picture of a trophy is for, right). Indeed this discussion, has likely expended reviewers' time to the tune of a few hundred reviews - and the re-reviews clearly have evidetly nothing towards their intended purpose of giving confidence to the AfC process. I would say WP:IAR to any technical implementation of the drive's scoring system that awards these suspicious re-reviewers the trophies. Let us award these prizes to the people who have actually done the most work to clear the backlog. Otherwise this is massively unfair to those deserving people. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 11:05, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
• I have removed Makro from the Participants list - thus removing thier ability to use the script. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:53, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

• Why have Makro's stats not been removed yet? Who is the clerk of the March drive? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:56, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Using deliberation in the review and re-review process

I initially wrote this to be part of the section above, but it's worth it's own section.

Except in very obvious cases, a quality review should take at least a few minutes, and some take a lot longer.

Except where the review was obviously spot-on - that is, it was an obvious accept or, if it was a decline, it obviously found all of the problems and only the problems - a quality re-review should take at least half a minute.

In my past experience with re-reviews, maybe 10-30% of the reviews I'm re-reviewing had "minor issues" such that that even if I wound up agreeing with the review on the whole, it took me a few minutes to decide if I would pass the review with or without comments, fail the review (with comments of course), or abstain from the re-review process for that particular review. In the case of an abstention, I had to decide if I wanted to take other action, such as adding an afc comment to the submission (or edit the article or its talk page, if it was accepted) or drop a note on the reviewer's or primary editor's talk page. All of this takes time. The other 70-90% were close enough to obvious "pass" or obvious "fail" situations that it didn't take a lot of "thinking time."

The bottom line:

• To be useful to submitters, reviewing a submission should not be done in "let's get this done as fast as possible" fashion unless the person is in a "clear out the easy parts of the backlog" mode, cherry-picking only the obvious cases and skipping those that would give him the slightest reason to have to think (hint: If the submission is more than 1-2 days old, someone has probably looked at it and left it alone, so assume it is NOT an obvious case).
• To be useful to reviewers, re-reviews must always be done in a thoughtful manner, not a rapid-fire manner. But for the need to prevent duplicated work and for scoring (both of which are valid concerns), there's not really any reason to mark a review as "passed, no additional comments." It doesn't help the reviewer find where he needs to improve.
• It's actually better for the project to skip over reviewers who you know you will just blindly "pass" without comment. If you are re-reviewing a particular reviewer's submissions and it's obvious after you do 10-20 that they are all "spot on," it's time to say "okay, this guy knows what he's doing, let me find another reviewer's work to re-review."
• When doing re-reviews (which I haven't done this go-around), I usually select reviewers who

• have few reviews and need them all re-reviewed,
• have many reviews and have less than 5-10% (or less than a total of 10-20) re-reviewed already, or
• those with a relatively high number of "fails" (sometimes I will re-review ALL reviews that have already been "failed" by one other editor and not re-reviewed by a second editor, so it can be scored as a "fail/pass" or "fail/fail" for point adjustments).

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:57, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been doing this informally for about a year now. My method is to see if I can spot what appears to be a significant error, and investigate further, the same way I look at submissions of someone who has written a very unsatisfactory article. I recognize that for purposes of the competition this is unfairly negative, which is why I usually comment outside of it. DGG ( talk ) 04:45, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure that "passed, no additional comments" is not useful. I spend nearly as much time going over a re-review as I do on a review. Sure, it doesn't help as much as a fail, but since I've spent the time, why not let the original reviewer know they did a good job? I know that when an editor I respect (and that's most of the AfC regulars) gives me a "pass", I go back and check so I know what it was that I did right. The rest of davidwr's comments I agree with. 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 20:12, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that's what they mean. What they mean is that 700 rereviews -in such a swift manner- shows an obvious lack of due dilligence. Of course a Pass is just as valuable as a Fail, at least it is for me (and assuming the rereviewer is competent). Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:48, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I go at it in a similar manner. I may try to do all of a user's if it is less than 20 or so, but tend to go for about ten for a single person, sort of spreading the reviews. I don't want anyone to feel like I am picking on them. I like keeping the numbers even. I am a very fast reader and a fast typist (80+ words a minute). I take advantage of every shortcut and tool I can to do things. My biggest bottleneck is the time it takes a page to load. And then you have to scroll to see the real article, as the change comparison shows up at the top. Fifteen seconds a page would be lightening fast. I would guess that my time takes about a minute a page, and that is after getting them loaded. Many reviews are pretty straight forward and given that most of the people doing the initial review are seasoned and extremely competent, there should be few failures. And there is absolutely no reason someone should re-review and article unless it is a Fail.The Ukulele Dude - Aggie80 (talk) 01:01, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Addition to the standard "non-notable" decline reason

I have seen several cases where an editor writes a draft about some non-notable topic, and it gets repeatedly declined for that reason. The decliner's suggestion is always, "add more references to reliable sources to get this accepted." Unfortunately, not every topic will have reliable coverage, and when this happens, many editors will start adding unreliable sources such as press releases and company websites, and repeatedly resubmit based on those sources. The reality is: there is nothing you can do on Wikipedia to overcome a notability issue, and if a topic does not have any reliable coverage, it probably isn't suitable for Wikipedia at this time. Therefore, I propose we add the following text at the end of the usual "nn" decline reason (minus the emphasis):

This submission's references do not adequately evidence the subject's notability—see the general guideline on notability and the golden rule. Please improve the submission's referencing, so that the information is verifiable, and there is clear evidence of why the subject is notable and worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. If no reliable sources can be found for the subject, then it may not be suitable for Wikipedia at this time.
What you can do: Add citations (see Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners) to secondary reliable sources that are entirely independent of the subject.

--Mz7 (talk) 00:14, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

perhaps we can use sometimes an even stronger wording for such cases as an alternative decline reason. saying simply:

"It is very unlikely that we will consider this sufficiently notable for an encyclopedia. Please do not submit again unless you can find substantial reliable published sources independent of the subject. I have been saying this manually both at AFC and NPP for several years, and most people understand very well, and do not persisst further in futile endeavors. I sometimes add. "if you cannot, please consider withdrawing the afc by placing {{db-self}} at the top." DGG ( talk ) 04:27, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Current wording of canned decline messages mostly encourages authors to continue. That's not always the best course. I think it is a good idea to mention the possibility of failure in all the notability-related decline messages. Proposed wording looks good though I'm not sure a link to WP:TOOSOON is the right link to use. Adding a separate reviewer assessment of notability potential when it looks like the gap may be too large to span is also a good suggestion. I will start doing that. ~KvnG 04:50, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Don't use the personal and subjective "unlikely that we will consider" - rather use impersonal wording such as "the subject of this draft seems unlikely to be notable" - remember that notability is a characteristic of the subject, not of the draft/article. The draft either demonstrates the subject's notability or it doesn't. All the decline templates contain an invitation to try to fix the problem, some should clearly say "this is never going to happen" and "please try writing about something else". The sometimes misleading encouraging text is in the pink "frame" of the template, so it seems to be a part of the "fixed" content of all decline templates rather than part of the "variable" content in the grey box (just my guess I'm no code writer!). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:08, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

We should avoid predicting the future. The subject who "seems unlikely to be notable" may well become so. An unsigned garage band may top the chart, next year. The humble local councillor may one day be Prime Minister. "...seems unlikely to be notable at present" would be more reasonable; "...seems unlikely to meet Wikipedia's notability criteria at present" is less pejorative. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:26, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I've been checking through the old db-g13 eligible drafts, and I have come across quite a few that were declined as non=-notable in 2011 or 2012, but since then have played for international sports teams, won Juno awards, been elected to office, been given a prestigious appointment at a university, etc. The articles were just submitted a little prematurely, before these things happened. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:46, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

WP:TOOSOON may be appropriate advice for some situations. Some subjects are never going to be notable and, without attempting to predict the future, I think that possibility should be recognised in our advice to authors. ~KvnG 15:15, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. This is extremely common and although we don't want to sound bitey, it needs to come across firmly. Perhaps as you mentioned, a recommendation to work on something else would be appropriate. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 21:57, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Mz7's text at the top of this section is a good improvement. While I would prefer the option of stronger language, there is enough controversy with DGG's suggested text to defer it for now. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 01:36, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Recommendation: We go with Mz7's text for now and we ask the script developers to add a "custom additional text" field to all decline reasons, so that what would be a custom-decline reason or an additional AFC comment will appear in the pink box after the "canned" decline reason. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 01:36, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

The proposal is for notability delines not all declines. I don't think we need to kick the can down the road as far as the text goes. I think we're close. How about:

This submission's references do not adequately evidence the subject's notability—see the general guideline on notability and the golden rule. Please improve the submission's referencing so that the information is verifiable, and there is clear evidence of why the subject is notable and worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. If adequate reliable sources cannot be found for the subject, then it may not be suitable for Wikipedia or may not be suitable for Wikipedia at this time.

~KvnG 14:28, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

This is okay, it's neither better or worse than Mz7's text from where I stand, either one would work. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:38, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

I've felt for a while we needed more of a "not now, probably not ever" decline, so I support these efforts. Gigs (talk) 17:14, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with davidwr, it's neither better nor worse, but I don't really think it's necessary to say "may not be suitable for Wikipedia" twice. Mz7 (talk) 00:54, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

[Mark as patrolled] with script by default?

Per the discussion between Hasteur and myself on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Helper_script/Rewrite#Make_the_script_patrol where a request was made by Josve05a and myself for the AFCH to automatically patrol pages as they are being reviewed, we seem to have agreed that there should be a poll as to what the default behavior of the script should be. There has also been discussions about this concept on GitHub, which you can read https://github.com/WPAFC/afch/issues/176 https://github.com/WPAFC/afch/commit/1d4e95874be245b3abeda0719e49ec0ac0e9fbf5 https://github.com/WPAFC/afch/issues/215 — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 23:04, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: AFCH script should automatically mark pages as patrolled.

• Oppose As I understand it, AFC review and page patrol review have different goals. AFC Reviewers shouldn't have to copy edit things or tag them for cleaning up, they are merely confirming that the page would not likely be deleted. Reviewers also make mistakes. --_nonsense ferret 23:19, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

• What exactly do you think those different goals are nonsenseferret? Why do you think that editors that are trusted to create articles that do not require patrolling do have their acceptance of a draft patrolled by someone else? Why do you think that new page reviewers (that is what we are doing at AfC, reviewing new pages), should have to have to have their worked checked by another new page reviewer? — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 23:39, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose, but not quite about what nonsenseferret said. I like to be able to have others check any of my edits to wikipedia, and I'd assume that others do too, considering the openness for rereviews during the drives. So, I think marking it as default would be a bad idea, unless I didn't quite understand this, but I'd like to hear others opinions.  —Mysterytrey 00:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, as indicated in the interior discussion. The script should not surreptitiously be making this change. To quote a recent discussion "just because the behavior was not noticed when it was introduced does not give it carte blanche for it's approval". The rubric for AFC reviewing is vastly different than the NPP rubric from vast personal experience. Because any edit conducted by tool is supposed to be done with the user's authorization I strongly oppose

  the script automatically marking pages patrolled

  the script by default marking pages patrolled

  the script evaluating a mark page patrolled by evaluating the user's other rights (autopatrolled, admin, buerecrat, etc.)

I do however endorse making a checkbox on the "Page Accept" only to give the user an option to patrol it when the user accepts it out of AFC space (but would strongly discourage users from using it). I do endorse providing a configuration option so that the user may choose to have the "Page Accept patrol" be activated by default (with the same strong discouragement from using it). Hasteur (talk) 00:25, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose - Afc reviewers are busy enough trying to keep the backlog down; in order for a page to be properly "patrolled", NPP editors spend a considerable time becoming familiar with the various improvement tags and selecting specific ones that are appropriate when a page is patrolled. Not all Afc reviewers know how or care to be involved in this. If Afc accepts are to be marked automatically as patrolled, we wouldn't be able to pass out any until they didn't need any tags, which is not in accordance with Afc's reviewing instructions or the consensus among Afc participants. After a page is accepted, an Afc reviewer can always use the Page Curation Tool if he or she wants to do some patrolling, but a second set of eyes is usually better. —Anne Delong (talk) 10:07, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Button broken

Resolved

Click this button
to review
an AfC submission

erwin85's user account has expired on the toolserver. ~KvnG 20:25, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Toolserver is expired. Any idea what the script did? Hasteur (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Asking me? It takes you to a submission that needs to be reviewed. ~KvnG 00:02, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

• I've just BOLDly fixed the button... — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 12:09, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Technical 13. Works a lot faster now too. ~KvnG 15:36, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Technical 13: Do you think you can fix Template:Random page in category?  —Mysterytrey 15:57, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

•  Done — Mysterytrey, it has lost a little functionality, but the template has been fixed and does the most basic part of it. I've also updated the documentation as such. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 20:55, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Still running wild

Can anyone explain why users such as Makro are still on a reviewing rampage after all we've discussed and decided? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:40, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I just noticed his (and Belshay's) sudden placement at the top spots of the drive's leaderboard is just the Buddy reflecting all his (their) fake rereviews. Shouldn't he (they) be taken off the chart and Participants page (until he's rehabilitated; although a block looks imminent if he turns out to be a sockpuppet)? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:32, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced Belshay isn't actually doing the re-reviews (see my AFCBuddy results page for example where they have failed a couple of my reviews and given detailed reasons). Also, I'm not convinced Makro did anything wrong other than misinterpret what "re-review" actually means. If I'm to AGF, I'd be led to believe that this user may have simply misinterpreted that to mean see if the declined reason used is reasonable and either agree with it or disagree with it without actually reviewing the article completely (which would have led to more "I would have declined it as X instead of Y, but Z is okay too I guess" type replies). Looking at drafts and the existing decline reason and saying yes or no that is reasonable can be done extremely quickly (especially with the use of multiple tabs) and someone doing it that way would only edit the check page once with the results. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 20:54, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

IEG for a more lightweight approach to mentorship

Hi AFC reviewers. I just wanted to inform you that there is an Individual Engagement Grant proposal related to creating a new approach mentorship. We intend to review current programs and create a pilot to test a more lightweight approach to mentorship. Feedback is helpful for the grant committee in guiding their decisions, and so if you are interested, we look forward to hearing your feedback on our proposal. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 21:50, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

@JethroBT: do you mean meta:Grants:IEG/Reimagining Wikipedia Mentorship? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:57, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Hah, somehow the G got lost in Grants. Thanks. I've fixed the link over to meta. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 04:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

WHERE is the "accept" button??

To accept an article, I am told to click on the "accept" button. Where is that button? I find no evidence that it exists. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:36, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy: I had a look at your Monobook.js and Vector.js but i cannot see any instance of the Article for Creation Helper Script loaded in these. AFC reviews are pretty much only done using that script as there are just to many templates, tags and pages to update every single review to do so manually. A single accept needs a pagemove, a cleanup of the AFCH page to remove AFC templates, several tags on the article's talk page, a note to the editor who posted it their article was reviewed, an addition to the recently reviewed articles list and so on and on and on.

If you add the script to either your vector.js or mono.js you should be able to select "review" when looking at an AFC page. From there on you can press the accept button and the script will take care of all the technicalities for you. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 12:15, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Helper_script, it says:

"To install the script, navigate to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, click on the check box next to "Yet Another AfC Helper Script", and hit "Save". Then you must clear your browser's cache. After that, you should be ready to go!"

I did all that and I still don't see an "accept" button. Michael Hardy (talk) 13:50, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

• Excirial, Michael may have Preferences → Gadgets → Editing → Yet Another AFC Helper Script: easily review Articles for creation submissions, Files for Upload, redirect and category requests — and if so, wouldn't have added any code in their skin.js or common.js but would have the script available. The most useful offer I can suggest is to follow the instructions on AFCH. Also, note that in the near future, you will need to be listed on our participants list by an administrator to use the script and review drafts. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 13:39, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Just need to point out that as the author of a draft you cannot review and accept your own submission. I'm not sure why an editor with your experience submitted a draft to AFC at all. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:03, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

@Roger (Dodger67) : I have never submitted any draft to AfC. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:27, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Michael Put me down under the "Confused" list ;) Meanwhile I have figured out why the AFCH script isn't working for you - you must be listed on the Participants page it is the whitelist to activate the script for qualified reviewers. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Michael, do you see the drop-down menu on the left of the search bar? When you point to it (or click it) when viewing an article for review, it has the choice review.

Danielh32 (talk) 21:45, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

SURVEY: AFC use by people with conflicts of interest

For years I've recommended that editors with WP:COI use AFC as a way to start articles in which they had conflicts of interests. I didn't come up with this idea myself, it was already in use at AFC when I picked up on it.

In User talk:Chris troutman#COI and AFC, Chris pointed out correctly that there is "no exception in WP:COI for AfC" in the COI behavioral guideline.

Before I start an RFC on this in Wikipedia Talk:COI and cross-advertise it to here and Wikipedia talk:Drafts, I wanted to make sure I wasn't completely out in left field.

So here is a poll for all seasoned AFC reviewers:

• Have you seen evidence that it's been okay to allow AFC to be used by COI-impacted editors to get otherwise-acceptable (or otherwise-acceptable after cleaning up as part of the AFC process) new articles into the encyclopedia? Have you reviewed such articles with the understanding that AFC was the right place for COI-editors to submit draft artices?
• Have you seen evidence to the contrary, that is, have you seen COI editors get the message that "this submission is okay (or "this submission has potential"), but since you have a conflict of interest, you are not allowed to use AFC to submit drafts?" Have you told COI editors as much on the understanding that what you were doing was the right thing to do?
• Or, have you just not seen much evidence one way or the other?

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:00, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

There's no exception in the WP:G11 rules for advertising, but yet AFC has endorsed a consensus that marginal cases that would be speedied in mainspace are given the benefit of the doubt when they're under the auspices of AFC. IMO I treat COI submitters the same way that I treat advertising... If when I read the submission I get the distinct impression that the submission is being written by an author with a conflict of interest to the subject but is attempting to follow our rules/procedures/guidelines I'll give them a little more leeway over a editor who pastes boilerplate overly promotional content. If the editor attempts to force the issue I go from soft opposition to diamond opposition. If it's clear that the user is attempting to use WP in a manner inconsistent with NPOV then I take the very hardline and terse response path (including starting deletion proceedings for the submission). Hasteur (talk) 16:17, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that COI editors should be directed to Afc, but at the same time cautioned that they should not add promotional material to their drafts. All of us have non-neutral opinions about one subject or another, and it's proper to have a second or third set of eyes make sure that none of that gets into mainspace. About half the time when I discuss NPOV with these editors, they seem to get it and the adapt their submissions to the policies. Some of these people go on to become good editors. Others, though, are dedicated promoters and have no interest in doing anything else. This becomes obvious after a while and the six months-without-improvement of db-g13 is IMO too lenient for these articles. Having COI editors go through Afc has several benefits (1) A large number of totally promotional articles don't get into mainspace, (2) Editors who are willing to follow the policies have them explained in detail, and (3) Articles which are accepted and then have the promotion, copyvio, etc., added back afterwards are on the watchlists of some of the Afc reviewers, and so the problems may be noticed sooner. I had the experience of declining an article about a software product, only to have the editor complain that he was just replacing an older version of the article, which was a direct promotional copy from the company website and had been there for years unnoticed. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:36, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Question 1: WP:COI tells editors with COI to take major/controversial changes to the talk page. To a certain extent, I consider AfC to be the talk page for creating a new article. Therefore I have always thought AfC is the correct place for an editor with a potential COI to take their article they want created. Question 2: I won't say I haven't seen it, but as noted above, I have not applied it in that manner. Question 3: not applicable. 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 19:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

They really should disclose their COI prominently. Maybe we could add something to the templates or wizard they use? Gigs (talk) 20:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not particularly active over here, but the AFC-for-COI idea is definitely good, for the reasons that 78.26 gives. It's especially useful for the good-faith user who wants to create an article about a topic with which he's closely connected. For example, I've run into enough solid independent publications about my church (e.g. community histories, architectural studies of the area) that I expect that it would pass WP:N, and I've written enough stuff in general that I believe I could produce a neutral article comparable to what any of you would write if you had the sources. However, if I ever get around to doing that, I'll send it through AFC just to ensure that it's neutral and that it lacks signs of having been written by a member. Nyttend (talk) 03:53, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Only users listed on this page will be able to use the AFC helper script

Hi. I have to confess that I declined Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/August Capital before I looked at the "participants" tab. I now realise I should not have used the script. However, if it's true that "Only users listed on this page will be able to use the AFC helper script" there must be a problem somewhere. I'm not listed but I was able (technically if not intellectually) to use the script. Please accept my apolgies for leaping in.--Northernhenge (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

• No worries, Northernhenge. That is a feature that is currently only in the re-write script which won't be live for another month or two most likely. You did nothing wrong, and there is no existing restriction from using the script, yet. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 23:02, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks :) --Northernhenge (talk) 10:07, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Templates

Over at WP:AN, there's a proposal to ban an editor from creating pages in mainspace and templatespace, but the proposal specifically permits the editor to create those pages through AFC. Are templates ever created through AFC? Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Template:Generictemplatenamehere? I'm just not sure whether this kind of thing would work. Nyttend (talk) 03:59, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

We do have Wikipedia:Article wizard/Template and templates are created in the Draft namespace, e.g., Draft:Template:Infobox nebula --Mark viking (talk) 04:11, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I've seen categories for creation at WP:AFC/R, but never noticed anything about other namespaces. Nyttend (talk) 04:29, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

If the editor is technically or socially restricted from creating pages in specific namespaces, AFC is a great way to have a outside set of eyes review it. I know I've sorted through navbox templates and other proposed templates before to decide if it does make sense for the creation. Hasteur (talk) 12:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

• We only have a couple template AfC reviewers, but yes it is done and not a bad idea. I'm going to look into this more today and see if there is a way to make these TfCs and MfCs more distinguishable and easier to find by adding some categorization to the AfC submission template... I'll work it up in the sandbox of course and we can discuss it before implementation. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 13:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
• See Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Template:Unix internals. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

• For symmetry, will someone be writing a man page for Wikipedia internals? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:40, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Back in square one

As we all can appreciate, we've started to let the backlog spiral out of control again. We can't be in a permanent drive, so how are we going to tackle this? PS: Has Wikipedia changed its font all of a sudden? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:57, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Regarding font, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-03-26/Op-ed 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 20:02, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

It makes me dizzy! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

If anything, the drive worked for the first two weeks when we halved everything, and then just kind of stalled and slowly diminished from there as people either got sick of reviewing or were suddenly faced with an influx of questions from people. In term of the future of this project, I honestly don't know what to say. We could shut it down, but that would be counterproductive. In terms of dealing with people who ask really questions based on the fact that we have some vague decline templates, maybe we should focus on rewording them and doing a better job discouraging people from writing articles. I say that last part because if we apply a very strict mindset to the project, it would help lessen some of the "Haha, I am awesome." crap that we get each day, as well as many of the unnotable persons and organizations that appear here. These are just some ideas, but I really think we should change something so that we aren't having to run a backlog drive each month in order to deal with a month and a half long backlog. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:34, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Not even 3 days in and the backlog is trending upwards again. It's very simple, we need to have people doing enough quality reviews so that # reviews out is greater than # review requests in. If that means we need to actively and pervasively canabalize other projects (or NPP) to do it, then that's what we need to do. If it's to lower the standards of AFC so that anything but the most patent fails gets immediately rubber stamped into mainspace so that someone else can deal with the problems which I strenously oppose then we do that.. If it means giving less leeway on submissions that are repeatedly submitted with no appreciable improvement and pushed over to MFD/CSD then that's what we do. Hasteur (talk) 20:57, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree, we need permanent quality reviewers. How do you suggest we cannibalise them? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 21:02, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Massive PR outreach? It sounds silly, but I wonder if we could target some mailing lists and let people know that we are fun or something. In terms of MFD/CSD, pages like this can easily dissuade reviewers, as there are people who will viciously attack others who try to delete their domain, so it would be good if we could recruit more hardliners so that people would stick by their decisions (nothing against the reviewers, but we need people to say "no, there is no way your submission will ever be approved, as they are not notable.") and do the dirty work without fear of retribution. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:31, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

A well written piece in the Signpost could serve a number of purposes... first, to address the problematic misconceptions about AfC, and second, to explain what goes on here and how people can get involved (and why it's a good thing for Wikipedia to do so). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:30, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Demiurge1000 Would you be interested in co-writing this, or at least providing input if I do something to this effect? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:23, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Interested in co-authoring it, but extremely busy at present, so you may have to be very patient. (That said, we've had this problem for years, so a few weeks may do no harm.) New sub-section forthcoming below... --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:48, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

What about a system of asking submitters to categorise their article when they create it or submit it for review, with the lists available for the relevant WikiProjects to have on their pages? For example, someone writes an article about a video game, and when they're going through the article wizard or after they click submit they're asked to choose a category that best describes the article subject; in this case "Video game". An automatic list or category could then be generated for "Video game articles for creation", which can be linked or transcluded to the WikiProject Video games page/subpage. Sam Walton (talk) 17:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Are you talking about categories like what we have for AFD? It might be a good idea if we could keep the options small, but that also means we would have a lot of biography articles which may make things more interesting for those projects. It's a good idea though, so I would encourage you to continue pursuing it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:41, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

How the Signpost might be able to help - feedback wanted

Above there was some interest in putting forward something for the WP:SIGNPOST, with the following aims:

1. Address misconceptions and criticisms of AfC.
2. Recruit additional AfC reviewers/helpers.
3. Provide accessible "where to start" guidance for such additional reviewers/helpers.

I've been thinking about the best format for this. The Signpost has a regular feature where multiple members of a WikiProject are "interviewed", with what I believe are mostly standard questions. This has the advantage of being easy to administer and collate, and of being a standard format. Having read quite a number of them, though, I think they may not have the impact we are seeking. It's absolutely routine, for example, for questions like "what problems does the project have?" to receive answers like "not enough participants", and I'm really not sure that giving such answers really helps to recruit more participants. (I also think presenting AfC as a WikiProject in its own right is not always the best approach - really it's just a mechanism that aims to help other WikiProjects by taking care of the sub-basic tasks required in introducing new material which they presumably welcome for their own subject area.)

I'm therefore thinking that a more effective approach would be to have an "Op Ed" in the Signpost instead, explaining the perfect storm that Wikipedia is facing; a endlessly growing flood of WP:COI article creators, a lack of sufficient volunteers at both AfC and WP:NPP, and huge numbers of potential new (non-COI) contributors being driven away (or at least, given totally the wrong welcome) as a result, while still not doing anything to halt the COI problem. This could lead into explaining why AfC handles COI submissions the way it does, why AfC is not happily hand-in-hand with COI editors encouraging them (as some view it), and also - the absolute other side of the coin - why AfC's reasons for declining articles are not as capricious and deletionist as some see them.

I'm thinking of writing this (which will take me several weeks at least), but I'd like any feedback on whether this format is the best way, whether other approaches would be better, and so on. In addition, I will also need plenty of feedback as I write it (and perhaps there will be some disagreements at certain later points), just to iron out a consensus on whether my rather twisted view of AfC is actually what we want to be presenting. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm willing to help, as I would be more than happy to write up some of these issues. Also, I am friends with Ed in real life, so I can easily discuss maybe modifying the interview questions if you wanted to. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Demiurge1000 I like your approach. I've previously commented that our rejection templates encourage non-notable companies to re-submit with evidence of their notability, when in most cases no evidence exists. I've talked to companies where the PR rep was being forced by their boss to re-submit to AfC 10-20 times, since they never got a flat "no". It's a waste of both the PR rep's and the volunteer's time. I've submitted articles to AfC with a COI and I find the process to be hyper efficient, the WikiProject active and the queue well-manned compared to other areas of Wikipedia. We definitely need fewer submissions rather than more editors. CorporateM (Talk) 00:42, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

One of things that happens on a drive is that more articles get reviewed in a short period of time. And the ratio of Declined to Accepted is heavily on the Declined side. In most cases, the first thing many people do is attempt to fix it and they send it right back to the queue again. Some of these people will re-submit several times during the drive, often without even reading the referenced rules and help pages, just taking a wild stab in the dark at what is wanted either hoping that another person will pass it or that they fixed it. So it is probable that a third of the declines will be re-submitted within a day or so of the initial decline. I don't have any viable suggestions, but it is one of the challenges of the drives, we end up re-reviewing many of the submissions multiple times. Perhaps dividing the submissions from initial, second, third or more categories would be helpful. The Ukulele Dude - Aggie80 (talk) 01:19, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Per the above, I strengthened the wording in the template to discourage more than three submissions, but I don't want to go so far as to write "your X is probably not notable" as there is no need to discourage people. In terms of what Aggie said, I am also willing to add that people re-submitting should take 48 hours and read the reasons, otherwise we might decline it again if no genuine attempt was made to improve the article. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:25, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

This edit adds on to what I said before, so feel free to tweak it if needed. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:52, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

AfC templates in user space

There is a question at WP:VPT#Bad_links_in_.7B.7BAfc_decline.7D.7D about using {{Afc decline}}. It looks like the problem part is handled by {{AFC submission/location}}, but there is also a |full= that may need to be used in userspace cases. I'll leave it to you AfC experts to sort out. Cheers! —PC-XT+ 07:56, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• It's been on the known issues list for quite some time. It will be fixed as part of the move to the Draft namespace. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 11:18, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

blank sandboxes?

I know because I searched that this question has arisen before, but the discussions were among experienced reviewers and I couldn't figure out the answer.  :) Do I decline blank and/or clearly experimental sandboxes, or do I leave them alone? valereee (talk) 11:29, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I would decline them, but not before checking to see if they have hidden the text by accident (it used to be more frequent, so I don't know if users do it as much now). When reviewing, I have found that they will resubmit these blank submissions, so it may be just that they don't know they've submitted them, and telling them this helps them out. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 14:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Make it easier to move userspace AfC submissions where they go

As you all know, a large number of AfC submissions are created at pages with the format "User:<username>/sandbox". This makes the automatic move links that appear not work right, since a sandbox already exists in AfC space. I've created a modification to deal with this problem. It requires a software change which won't be live here until the 17th, but it can be tried out at [6]. On pages where the subpage name already exists in either AfC or draft space, the links are replaced with input boxes requesting a new subpage name. This is less error-prone since the prefix is autofilled, so this should mean less newbies accidentally move their page to mainspace or somewhere else it's not supposed to be while trying to move it to AfC space. Thoughts? Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, the old template did a pretty good job with submissions that already had a title, so you are right that mainly what's needed is a better way to move sandboxes. Your template says "Sandbox" in the input field, but since that's never correct, could it say "Your title here" or something like that? Then the actual titles "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Your title here" and similar draft title could be salted so that the move wouldn't happen if the editor didn't type a title. Also, saying "Afc space" may not be accurate, because Afc submissions can now be found in both Wikipedia talk and Draft, but likely the new users won't understand the distinction, so it may be okay. I was unable to actually try the process; it tells me I don't have an account. Wouldn't the new users and IP submitters have the same problem? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:25, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

The logic actually triggers the new input boxes whenever the page already exists in AfC or draft space, regardless of its title, so in some cases the title may be almost correct. Should I special-case the "sandbox" title? (By the way, if the title doesn't exist in AfC or draft space, it uses the old form still). I'm not opposed to renaming "AfC space", but what should I call it? "Wikipedia talk space" seems like it would only add to confusion. Also, since new and unregistered users can't move pages at all anyway, it doesn't really matter they can't use the input boxes (if they tried the old link, the same thing would happen). Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:00, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorting Articles for Creation into categories for use by WikiProjects

I mentioned this in a section above but thought I'd make a dedicated section for discussing it. What do you think to asking article submitters to categorise their article such that they are automatically placed into a category which can be accessed by WikiProjects in order to generate a list of articles that members of that project will have the knowledge and interest in reviewing? My example above was someone writing an article about a video game is asked in the article wizard to choose from a drop down list 'What describes your article subject best?' for which there would be an option of 'Video game'. This would then add the category "Video game articles for creation" to the page, listable on the video game wikiproject page in the same way that AfDs or requested articles are. I could see this increasing the number of reviewers by making AfCs as integral to WikiProjects as AfDs for example. The other benefit would be allowing reviewers to find AfCs that interest them, rather than clicking random or sorting via date. Sam Walton (talk) 11:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

• As part of the move to draft space, I have no problem with assisting new page creators to add appropriate WikiProject banners to the talk page, but this has been heavily discussed before and adding it to WT:AfC/ project space was consensually determined to be a bad idea. This seems to be one of this projects perennial proposals. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 11:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, any chance you have a link to previous discussions on this? Sam Walton (talk) 11:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I understand that there is a new search engine under development that will search within templates. When that comes into general use, Wikiproject members will be able to add a custom search to their pages that will find all submitted drafts that contain, for example, the word "Physics" or "Football". Right now they can search by namespace, but can't select active submissions from declined ones (unless this is something that has recently become available? I hope?). That would be a simpler solution for those projects that want to keep an eye on the queue. (Someone please add a link to info about the new search engine - I am not finding it right away.) —Anne Delong (talk) 12:37, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: Cirrus search? --Mdann52talk to me! 12:48, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm... Mdann52. after looking at that page I am still uninformed. Is there a better explanation somewhere else? —Anne Delong (talk) 14:36, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

@Anne Delong:: try this mw:Extension:CirrusSearch.  —Mysterytrey 15:29, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

@Samwalton9:Question: So you want the newest editors who are using the training wheels of AFC to know the convoluted structure of our Category Hierarchy? I'm sorry but even as an adept Wikipedian, I still have difficulty figuring out which projects a article belongs to. In addition Mainspace categories are not supposed to be used on "drafts" so as to keep the category listings clean. In addition if we were to create a "Draft articles for Wikiproject X" category for each project we would have a balooning of categories that were used rarely leaving the tools that handle AFC submissions to cramble and create great lists of categories to ignore. Therefore the best solution is the WikiProject banner tagging on the talk pages and to allow tagging the talk page with the banner at any time. I did make a proposal that would help us categorize ones that were missed Hasteur (talk) 13:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't see it being that difficult - a simple drop down list which has "Science, Biography, Organisation, Video game, Musician..." etc. is all that would be necessary, the category being added could be an automatic thing. The editor themselves wouldn't even need to know it was happening. Sam Walton (talk) 13:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any real problem with adding Wikiproject banners; the members of the project can always just remove the banner if they feel it's inappropriate. Categories are another thing - endlessly complicated the subject of many discussions over time. The other problem, already mentioned above, is that readers of the encyclopedia, if they click on a category, would then be directed to pages which haven't been accepted into the encyclopedia and could have serious problems whith NPOV, accuracy, etc. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

If the "class=Draft" parameter would be properly implemented for all WikiProjects, instead of being optional and thus ignored by all except a handful of projects, we wouldn't even be discussing this issue. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:37, 6 April 2014 (UTC)