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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used

Proposal: AFC submission and afc comments location on Draft namespace articles

There is a proposal on the table that as part of moving to the Draft namespace, all AFC submission banners and AFC comment banners on any AFC submission in Draft namespace should go on the paired talk page.

Support

1. I would support the general idea of having a slimmed down banner above the submission and moving all comments and decline reasoning on the talk page. In order for this to work, it would be necessary for the banner to clearly link to the talk page. However the proposal by T13 would not be the right approach and would be disruptive. The transition needs to be more gradual and considered, to minimise confusion to contributors and reviewers. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:30, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
2. Support and I don't even understand why we are still discussing it as according to mw:Draft namespace#Minimum requirements point number two there will be " an accompanying "Draft talk:" page for each Draft page, to facilitate discussion." and it appears from all of this opposition that now everyone wants to go back on that. Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 107#Proposed new Draft namespace also needs to be considered where there are at least a dozen mentions of needing to move content off of talk pages and discussion on to them. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 22:43, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
   • So you claim that Anne's reanalysis below is invalid regarding the "VPP/Archive 107" thread? Ok, I looked over it again and I agree with Anne's assessment. Furthermore the mediawiki proposal only says There is an accompanying "Draft talk:" page for each Draft page, to facilitate discussion. It does not call for us to relocate banners off the AFC submission portion of the draft to the talk page. Furthermore the discussions here on enWP superceede the overall scoping discussions at the mediawiki page. Looking through our archives and the "organization of Draft namespace" archives (WT:DRAFT) I see no consensus discussion to split the banners off into the talk page. Your attempt to push through a clearly contentious change as something similar to the other proposals that were not contentious shows that you either have a hard time evaluating consensus or are willfully trying to make a point. Hasteur (talk) 23:24, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
     • Yes, discussion needs to be facilitated on the accompanying talk page. Very clear, this means that talk belongs on talk and draft content belongs in draft. If we're not going to follow the minimum requirements for the namespace having been created, we should have the namespace deleted and go back to the status quo that everyone seems to want so bad. If were not going to change and improve the system, there is no point in having this broken system any longer. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 10:38, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
       • The leap from "facilitating talk page discussion" to "Move all the AFC banners to the talk page" is so large that I can only assume that you're having a WP:PRAM moment. I'm done debating with you as it seems that once you have an idea in your head that your way is the only correct way to do something even when knowledgeable and well intentioned users tell you otherwise, there is no room for compromise (see User_talk:Technical_13#Responding_to_protected_edit_requests and User_talk:Technical_13#Comment for some recent examples of this stubbornness). Hasteur (talk) 12:24, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
3. Support along the same lines as Martin. Ideally we should have clean drafts per T13's vision, but I do have some concerns about editors not being able to find things on the talk page without some kind of at least minimal notice on their draft itself. There's is plenty of room for streamlining things and I think that people should not get mired in the status quo just as a response to T13's more radical proposal and his hurry to implement it. I absolutely oppose the status quo of spewing what can be up to several pages of huge, redundant templates and comments straight into what is supposed to be a draft, and I think we need to make fixing that a priority. Gigs (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

   Gigs, you make a good point. We should consider this logically and find the best overall solution instead of just responding negatively to pressure. No need to shout, though. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

   I didn't consider it shouting, I just didn't want the most important part of my comment to get lost in the body. Probably should have just rewritten it to lead with the most important part instead. Gigs (talk) 16:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

4. Support - Martin sums up my thoughts well. I've always been a bit annoyed by the huge "Submission declined" and "Review waiting" banners. They take up quite a bit of space and can distract from the actual content of the submission (often, I catch myself scrolling down past the templates to get them off my screen). It would certainly be better on everyone's eyes if this is converted to a smaller banner directing users to the talk page, where extended discussion can occur. You know, now that I think about it, it may even be demoralizing for new editors to have big red declined templates taking up space on their submission. Editors would be more inclined to work together and understand what tasks should be done to get a submission accepted if the templates and comments are moved to the talk page - a dedicated area for discussing improvements. To address concerns about users not being able to find the talk page, as Martin proposes, a smaller banner on the draft page directing users to the talk page will suffice. Mz7 (talk) 21:20, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Oppose

1. I strongly oppose moving the AFC submission banner and AFC comment banners of the AFC submitted article.

   1. It will break a great many tools we already have including the AFC Helper (review tool), the various AFC bots we have running around, the definition of what CSD:G13 means, and the categorization scheme we have

   2. It will break the existing AFC workflow to require a great amount of re-writing of documentation to support this new functionality.

   3. To navigate to the submitted article, the user will need to make an additional click to get to the page. This also means that when a user does an action with respect to the submission, they will have to open up multiple pages for editing. I do see a case for the AFC comments banners being moved to the talk page once the submission has been accepted, but absolutely not before. Hasteur (talk) 20:57, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

   • These tools should have all been fixed to accommodate this minimum requirement of creation of the namespace before pushing to get all of the drafts moved into the namespace, which is still not ready. You have no-one to blame except yourself for hastily forcing all of these drafts into an unprepared namespace. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Technical 13 (talk • contribs) 22:52, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

     There's a difference between deprecating options (Changing there the AFC output goes, where the AFC tools template makes suggestions about moving submissions to) and totally breaking process. Please show how the changes I've proposed and gained consensus for actually break the process? Oh yeah, you can't because removing those options don't break the existing AFC process. Your proposal on the other hand drastically breaks process and from every point regarding this I see minority viewpoints for it, but no explicit and broad consensus for this. Changing the way the process works so drastically (and putting the cart before the horse with the way you want to do it) only leads to knee-jerk reactions against your solution. Hasteur (talk) 23:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

2. I see an entirely different issue: The authors themselves will have to be aware of (and check) talk pages, something we cannot take for granted with the new editors writing drafts. Having the submission template and, if necessary, the decline message and any reviewer comments at the top of the draft will significantly reduce the chances that they're overlooked. Huon (talk) 21:42, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
   • The reason for putting the submission template alone on the /editnotices page is so that they can be seen from the submission and the talk page in both view and edit modes. It's a simple technical adjustment to do so and should have been done before a bunch of submissions went into the namespace. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 22:52, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
3. (edit conflict) I think that templates (such as the submission-template) should be at the "submission-main-page", while comments should be made at the talk-page. (t) Josve05a (c) 21:42, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
   • If the submission template is on either the draft page or the draft talk page, it won't be visible on the other, by placing it on the /editnotices page, it can easily be accessed by both pages.
4. Here is what I envision: Anything that should be deleted when the article is accepted should stay on the submission page - the draft/submit/decline templates, and comments from the reviewers that are directly related to its acceptance. On the other hand, if a reviewer gets interested in a draft and has something to say that should not be deleted on acceptance (for example, suggestions for future expansion, advice on where to find references for that subject, etc. - the sort of thing that up until now has been put on users' talk pages), then those comments would be put on the talk page to be moved to mainspace along with the newly accepted article along with any posts by other editors. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:07, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
   • Nothing is really removed, it is just altered from being a WP:AfC banner to the banner of another WP:WikiProject, and those belong on the talk page. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 22:52, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
5. Agree entirely with Anne's post above - everything that is removed during acceptance should stay on the draft page. The proposed change will break practically all of AfC's current systems and processes. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:23, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
6. Agree with Anne. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 10:26, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
7. I am exited about the thought of having the ability to take *extended* discussions about the AfC draft to the "Draft Talk" namespace. However, I believe the banner, and generic comments, should stay on the "Draft" namespace. We want to make this easier for brand-spanking-new users, and I doubt their ability to intuitively navigate between the namespaces. I remember as a new user it took me a little bit to find the "talk" portion of Wikipedia. I may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but still... 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 12:22, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
8. Oppose moving the AFC submission banner and AFC comment banners per User:Hasteur and User:Anne Delong. The system is working fine as-is. No need to fix something that isn't broken. The talk page can still be used for extended discussion about drafts and moved to main namespace when submissions are approved. Also, new or inexperienced users may not know to check the talk page, which can cause confusion, "why was my submission rejected?" NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:34, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments

An editor (Technical 13) announced they were going to be making changes that implement the question at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Helper_script/Rewrite#Talk_pages.3F. 4 editors (Theopolisme—Josve05a—Anne Delong—Hasteur) disagreed with the change. Hasteur (talk) 21:05, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Fixing ping with a new signauture. (t) Josve05a (c) 21:07, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Anne Delong's analysis of the proposal to create Draft space

Technical 13 has announced HERE that he plans to “break the comments and AFC templates out of mainspace and put them in talk space like they are suppose to be next week”. When asked to provide a consensus that would justify this action, he provided a link to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 107#Proposed new Draft namespace . I have just finished reading that entire proposal, including all of the comments and !votes. Then I went through again using the search words "talk page" in case I missed something. It took over an hour. In that entire mass of verbiage, there are three mentions of moving the review comments and templates to the talk page: One editor was in favour, one against (me) and a third one mentioned both pros and cons. None of the many other editors gave an opinion on this, and neither was it mentioned in the proposal itself, which only said, "AfC would continue to operate the way it currently does". There were other mentions of uses for the talk page: placement of OTRS notices, posting of Wikiproject banners, and content discussions between editors wanting to help with the development of the draft. There was not only no consensus that the AfC comments and templates should be moved, there was barely any mention of this. I can see three possibilities here:

1. T13 read the proposal but was unable to understand it. – I reject this; his writing demonstrates a proficient use of English.
2. T13 read the proposal, understood that it didn't support his proposed action, and decided to waste other editors' time in reading a long involved piece of text by indicating that it did. – I reject this, because that would be trolling, and I prefer to WP:Assume good faith.
3. T13 didn't read the proposal, or read it long ago, and misremembered its contents. – I hope this is the correct interpretation.

In any case, please be assured that if this is the only justification for T13's plan to move the templates and comments on the existing AfC submissions at this time, before an appropriate consensus discussion here, then he has none at all. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:36, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

• RE: Anne, this very much feels like an ABF post, and if you've gone through and read all of the discussions scattered all over Wikipedia, MediaWiki wiki, and Bugzilla, then you would have found the point I made above where using the talk space was minimum requirement point number 2 for creation of the namespace. There are also dozens of mentions in the proposals supports in archive 107 saying that this is something that needs to be done. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 22:46, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Why, no, Technical 13, I haven't read every posting on every talk page on Wikipedia, and the other two places you mention, as far as I know, are not concerned with creating consensus about AfC. If you have a specific diff (not an entire discussion) you'd like to point out, fine. Otherwise don't intend to go looking again for evidence to back up your point of view. As for assuming good faith, that's the reason I spent the time reading that whole giant discussion that you said would support your intentions. I kept thinking if I just read a little further, surely I would come to the evidence you said was there. It didn't happen. The above posting is an expression of my disappointment at having my time wasted, and a desire to see that others don't have the same experience. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:22, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Can't we just drop this debate and start working on a consensus solution to address the problems? It seems we have roughly developing consensus that we need at least a little something on the main draft page, to give users a hint that they need to look at the talk page. Lets work on a sleek and minimal template that shows them their submission status, and links them to the talk page for further details. Gigs (talk) 21:55, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Gigs I'd love to drop the debate and start architecting a solution, but when one editor has announced that they intend to start breaking the process this week coupled with the fact that the editor in question has also become questionable at taking advice and reading consensus, we must have this consensus discussion to explicitly say that the proposed change is not endorsed by consensus. You don't have a philosophical debate about the uses of an axe when someone has an axe to your head. Hasteur (talk) 23:32, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I guess the point is that there's plenty of wood that needs chopping, so we need the axe back. Gigs (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Research

I just found out that AfC is going to be discussed in the Research and Data showcase today. In case it's of interest: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics/Research_and_Data/Showcase#May_2014 I've been participating in AfC with my researcher-hat on and would be happy to discuss further (& especially to receive your feedback!) Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 16:40, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Jodi.a.schneider, for bringing this to our attention. Do you mean you will discuss it here, or there? —Anne Delong (talk) 17:12, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh dear. Will slides or a non-video summary be available? Thanks for letting us know! --j⚛e decker^talk 17:20, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Anne, that's the monthly research call, on livestream video (generally archived later). meta:Research_talk:AfC_processes_and_productivity#Discussion would be the most obvious place to discuss. (Sorry there's not much there at the moment, I didn't know about the call till the announcement went out today.)Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 18:35, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi j⚛e, Looks like Aaron's slides are here. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 18:35, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Much appreciated! I've reviewed them (I saw them posted before), and will watch the video and give myself a day before responding. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:37, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

There is a major flaw in your assumptions, Jodi, that every "survived" article is desirable. Tens of thousands of articles that we probably shouldn't have are currently in mainspace. Put another way, our processes of scrutiny for new mainspace articles are not as good as you assume. We are pretty good at catching blatant vandalism and blatant spam, but there is a whole lot of other stuff that makes it in. I clicked random article a few dozen times. Joyce Muskat and BridgeHead Software with very marginal notability and Stan Valchek which is apparently part of an article series that includes pretty much every major fictional character in The wire, written "in-universe" on top of the notability issues. If I took these to AfD, most would not survive or be merged. I found this stuff in just a few minutes of searching. I would estimate probably 3-5% of main article space wouldn't survive an AfD, based on my quick random sample. Gigs (talk) 18:40, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

We used surviving article rate more as a signal for the creation of quality articles than as an assertion that all surviving articles are good articles. While I appreciate that you can find a few counter-examples, that doesn't suggest that it is a bad metric. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 02:22, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, it does suggest it's a bad metric. It is my experience, and you are welcome to present data that refutes this, is that a *lot* more actively problematic crap (in particular, spam and copyvios) makes it into mainspace via live creation than AfC. Perhaps the reason more articles survive direct creation than AfC is a combination of (a) more experienced editors know how to avoid AfC, so the populations entering each creation method are simply different, and (b) more articles survive direct creation because more copyvios and advertisements survive. (Very few other types of problematic content are so frequent as to be material, I don't consider non-notability to be "deeply problematic" by itself.) -j⚛e decker^talk 17:54, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Article lifetime for deleted articles. The density of time between creation and deletion is plotted for deleted articles created between 2008 and 2013 in the English Wikipedia.

I think we're talking about different things here. I understand that there are many problematic articles created in the main namespace, but most of them don't survive even a few minutes (m:Research:The Speed of Speedy Deletions). By filtering out the articles that are deleted in a reasonable amount of time, I'm getting rid of most of the articles that ever will be deleted. See the methods section here: m:Research:Wikipedia_article_creation#Successful_articles and the figure to the right. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 20:31, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

"The Speed of Speedy Deletions" is cool research, but doesn't really get you to the conclusion you draw from it, since it never examines the question of how many articles which should have been deleted never were.The limitation of samples to users who have received a message from another user on their talk page (something that is true almost always for deletions which do happen) is also a source of selection bias with respect to the conclusion you attempt to draw from it. It is interesting, but I don't find it compelling at all, I've spent some time tolling the "dark matter" of the encyclopedia to believe that there isn't a serious weight of unaddressed problems -- largely undetected copyvios and promotional issues. (Contrary to some panic, I don't think we have much of a problem with biographical attack material in the "dark matter", however, as least in terms of frequency. I expect some of the work that's been done on searching for keyword to find attacks has been effective.)

If I believed we caught the vast majority of problems, I'd be satisfied. Those we do catch, I agree we catch quickly. Do you know what fraction of pages are never reviewed at NPP, but just fall off the end? That would an interesting (imperfect, I'm sure, but I think interesting) metric. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:01, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Epoch, your graphs show that the average lifetime of "bad" articles has significantly shortened right along with the rise of AfC. Seems like your data supports my point more than yours. Gigs (talk) 16:53, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Reading those slides, I think the 65.5% of reviews happening within 24 hours number might be misleading. While this may be true, a great proportion of the reviews that occur in this period are failures of obviously hopeless drafts (this will include almost all the times blank pages are submitted accidentally etc.). It would be interesting to see the corresponding histogram only for drafts that get accepted. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 18:41, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Having watched the presentation, it seems the histogram on slide 49 kinda has 2 modes, a first bump which is probably the "quick fails" which peaks at a few hours, and a second mode of "serious" reviews with a peak at about a week. Turns out this data is 2009-2013 (I asked on IRC). My guess is a histogram of the last few months would show longer average wait times. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 19:57, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

This is a fair point and something that I might be able to account for by fitting a mixture model to the graph (e.g. m:R:edit sessions). Thanks for the feedback! --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 02:27, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Reasearchers (Halfak (WMF)—Jodi.a.schneider): If I read the slides correctly (mainly because I'm at work and can't watch the video) the premise is that AFC fails because we can't solicit editors interested in helping the candidates for submissions from the general populace and proposes to provide those extra eyes by having some sort of indicator on pages that the user tried to access in main space that there is one or more Drafts that they might be looking for? Hasteur (talk) 19:46, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

That's the gist, yes. I was borrowing some of the ideas (mockups) designed by the WMF design team for the Drafts namespace to make the point that there are ways forward. Another example of a way to bring attention from potential collaborators to drafts is including draft articles in User:SuggestBot's postings. We've already been discussing this possibility with User:Nettrom, the bot's maintainer. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 02:25, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I quite like this idea. There's a natural tension between wanting to avoid broadly publishing unreviewed drafts (which provides a fertile attractant for SEO experts) and trying to encourage collaboration, and your indicator idea (and SuggestBot idea, too) cuts directly to the crux of it. Lovely, really. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:56, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

In terms of future efforts for Wikipedia, let me also say that the environment in which AfC reviewers do their work is probably part of any problem that exists. 9 out of 10 (a statistic I completely pulled out of my anatomy, but probably not far off) drafts entering AfC are not going to pass muster for, by Wikipedia standards, very simple reasons: Either a simple copyvio, directly promotional text, or a lack of sources evidencing notability. We lack functional automation that can even detect if a draft is *blank* and reject that before a reviewer has to work with it, never mind automated detection of articles without sources, or improvements to the copyvio-detection automation that does exist. CorenBot/MadManBot are great, but that nobody has approached Google to allow them to work together (Google and the bots, that is) is very unfortunate.

If better automation were in place, and/or if the page creation workflow actually educated writers that they needed to write in their own words, that they need to produce to reliable sources for each article at a bare minimum, that they have to actually write something.... *before* they created an article, we could spend less time on the 90+% of article drafts that were never ever going to become articles, we could easily spend more time on the less than 10% that could, and, as a bonus, the process would be more pleasant, probably attracting more hands to the task.

Unfortunately, the Foundation strongly opposes educating users before they create articles, to the extent that they oppose research which would demonstrate whether such an approach were effective. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:25, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean like this, which was proposed here and languishes in my sandbox? —Anne Delong (talk) 14:55, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh my, yes. Yes! Yes!

See also meta:Talk:Article_Creation_Workflow/Design#Interactivity_and_editor_retention has some thoughts on this from 2011, and if my memory were better I'm pretty sure I could find some other longer thoughts on this point, but .... yes. I believe that handing a new editor the ability to create a new article is the metaphorical equivalent of putting them in a field of landmines. Until we stop doing that, everything is going to suck. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, I don't know that that's something we can change. "Everybody can edit" appears to be a pretty basic part of Wikipedia, and the whole purpose of AfC is to help new users create articles. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:07, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Sadly, "Anyone can edit" is being badly gamed. I don't think it prevents anyone from editing to have to click through a handful of screens to learn "Write in your own words", "Don't talk crap about people without a reliable neutral source", and "This isn't a place for your corporate boilerplate." The idea that that is somehow at odds with "anyone can edit", to me, feels needlessly pedantic. (I don't think you're being that way, but I do think it's where the "Anyone can edit" slogan begins to fail.) --j⚛e decker^talk 21:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Also, isn't AfC itself a failure of the "Anyone can edit" principle? --j⚛e decker^talk 21:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't around when AfC was set up, but I'm presuming that there was some kind of problem that it was designed to solve - maybe thousands upon thousands of COI, silly, blank, test, copyvio, essays, attack pages, etc., flooding the main encyclopedia faster than the experienced editors could discover and remove them. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

indeed! Don't get me wrong, I'm predisposed to like the AfC concept. But the idea that "someone must approve your article before others can se it in the encyclopedia" seems, fundamentally, more at odds with "anyone can edit" than "you have to take a quick introduction to Wikipedia basics, in ten screens, before you edit" would be. I guess I was just saying I'm not strongly persuaded by the idea that "Anyone can edit" should be taken as an absolute. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:34, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry I'm late to the conversation—I was away in late May. Anyhow, from my reading of the history, the original reason for the AfC project was that in December 2005, Wikipedia changed its policy to allow only registered users to create articles directly. AfC was designed to allow IPs to submit drafts which would then get some extra eyes before going into mainspace. By the Spring of 2007, a huge backlog had built up, so WikiProject AfC was created to draw in editors who could start tackling the backlog systematically—from which gradually developed all the templates, scripts, "rules", etc. Then the Article Wizard was developed and started shunting even registered users to AfC with no option to put their finished article directly into mainspace. That's where all the problems started. The backlogs got even bigger, the reviewing was rushed and often poor by inexperienced editors, with even experienced ones lacking the subject matter expertise to adequatelly assess drafts in certain subjects. The original idea to save newbies from being discouraged when their articles got quickly proposed for deletion in mainspace, was exchanged for discouraging newbies by having their articles languish for ages at AfC before they got reviewed, followed by inappropriate declines by a lot of very poor reviewers, and no possibility of real help or collaboration on their drafts. In fact, in my experience, drafts on truly encyclopedic subjects with zero COI suffered (and continue to suffer) the most in that respect. So Aaron (EpochFail) and Jodi's findings don't surprise me. Some of those problems have been or are in the process of being ameliorated, and the Article Wizard now gives editors the option to go straight to mainspace (albeit strongly discouraging them) but progress is slow, and a lot of problems remain. Any proposal to make the drafts more visible outside the walled garden of AfC would be welcome, and frankly, I'd make AfC the less preferred choice for registered users on the Wizard. Voceditenore (talk) 09:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Reminder: Purpose of AFC/Drafts

Reminder: The purpose of AFC/Drafts is to give editors who need some assistance with improving their submissions. Not to decline once and then run off immediately to have the submission declined deleted. We're only supposed to use the MFD route to get rid of troublesome submissions when the editor is not making improvements and there's no hope for the acceptance after multiple attempts. Hasteur (talk) 00:21, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Hasteur, did you mean, "and then run off immediately to have the submission deleted"? (As opposed to "declined")? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:29, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Demiurge1000 yep. If you want some context, take a look at my recent commentary at MFD and you'll see why I was venting Hasteur (talk) 01:38, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

There's another route than MfD, with a different purpose: Speedy should be used to remove not just outright copyvios, but also outright advertisements that could not be rewritten, though the criterion should be much more flexible than in mainspace.We should also be using the G2 "test page" speedy criterion to remove material that is hopelessly unencyclopedic and could not conceivably be made into an article regardless of how much work might be done on it. I also do not completely rule out the use of MfD for other reasons. DGG ( talk ) 18:33, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Michelle Schmitt Suggestion

Can anyone help with the category coding of this AFC and remove it from "Content Policy" ? See Category:Wikipedia content policies. I can't find the code in the article, sorry, and thanks. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

done --_nonsense ferret 16:10, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

General note regarding the June 2014 AFC Backlog drive.

I want some too!

This is the first drive to use the Draft namespace so I would like to ask everyone to be extra vigilant in regards to the score count that AFCBuddy calculates. A few issues popped up so far, most notably me forgetting to add the draft namespace as a namespace AFCBuddy should check. Besides this there appears to have been an change in the Mediawiki API and a change in the summary for the AFCH Rewrite version of the review script that caused some undetected \ uncredited G12 deletions. In other words: The usual startup problems at the start of a new drive.

Since we're currently on the second day of the drive the amount of reviews is still limited so anything odd should still be somewhat easy to spot. If you notice anything strange in your score count or listed reviews, please let me know. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 18:35, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Excirial I need more points. Can you help with that /sarcasam Hasteur (talk) 19:19, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Why don't you mass review 700 reviews? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

InceptionBot now searches Draft space – Whooppee!

Just a note to say that InceptionBot which alerts subscribing WikiProjects to new articles potentially within their scope now searches Draft space as well. This is a real boon both for subscribing projects and for AfC. I monitor the WikiProject Opera new articles list frequently and today found a recent draft that was very promising. I fixed it up, referenced it and moved it to article space. Since all the major WikiProjects subscribe to the bot, it perhaps relieves AfC from tagging draft talk pages with project banners, which I gather from above might be problematic. Inception Bot uses the User:AlexNewArtBot page where you can find out more information on how it works and which WikiProjects subscribe to it. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 09:27, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Voceditenore Did you say Inception? Cue the Inception Horn! ;-) Hasteur (talk) 11:58, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Mark as patrolled?

If a draft is declined, but is clear of copyvios or other CSD-worthy content, should I also mark the page as patrolled? --LukeSurl ^{t c} 11:08, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

In draft space, I'd say yes -- if there's something truly serious, it should be headed toward deletion, if not, I don't see the need to put more work on the limited hands at NPP. Just be mindful that nothing slips in-between "CSD" and patrolled, maybe serious BLP violations could get past the attack CSD, I don't care if you mark them as patrolled, but make sure they're blanked and/or MfD'd. Those are rare, though, most of the truly serious stuff here is either copyvios or egregious promotion, and CSD and blanking are a broad enough toolbox for those. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:48, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

• Even when tagging something for deletion, I still mark it as patrolled, always. There is no reason to ever not mark anything that isn't in article space as patrolled as long as you are taking appropriate action on it. If it needs deletion, tag it for deletion and mark it patrolled, if it needs ce, tag it for ce (or just do it) and mark it as patrolled, etc.. you get the point. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 22:19, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

  I think your wording is clearer than mine, so, I'll just add that I agree. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:49, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Does copying a Wikipedia article count as a copyvio?

If an draft is copy-and-pasted from an existing Wikipedia article and does not give any form of attribution to the source, should this be dealt with as a copyvio? --LukeSurl ^{t c} 00:17, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

It merely has to be correctly attributed to avoid copyvio. However, if the article is the same, it can be speedy deleted as G^, duplicating existing article; if it is used as a basis for modifications, it should be declined and the contributor advised to instead edit the affected article. Unfortunately, follow-ups show this is rarely done, and we lose the material unless some other editor does it, just as if a draft that could potentially be an article if improved sufficiently is declined and not improved. But if it is used as the basis for an altogether superior and very different article, it should be history-merged, but doing this is difficult: there is no clear way to handle this, but I normally accept it asunder a slightly different title, and then make a redirect from the existing inferior article, leaving a note on the article talk page. The redirect serves to provide attribution. The guiding principle is NOT BUREAUCRACY. DGG ( talk ) 00:27, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Over 100 potentially spurious reviews in 1 hour

Before his name was removed from the Active Participants list by an administrator earlier today, an editor who had just come off a block "reviewed" and declined over 100 drafts in the space of an hour. I have rescued the following three which he declined for completely false reasons: Washington State Auditor, Standard Theatre (Philadelphia), and Rainer Schmidt (landscape architect). Here's one rescued by another editor: Welcome Chinese. From the comments on the editor's talk page, those 4 are just the tip of the iceberg. In my view, every one of his declines should be reverted and resubmitted for a new review. But even there, the damage to the editors he declined with spurious advice on their talk pages cannot be completely undone. These are the ones that need checking and/or wholesale reverting:

• Reviews in Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation space

• Reviews in Draft space

Voceditenore (talk) 16:59, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I fixed your "Reviews in Draft space" link. DMacks (talk) 17:38, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• Voceditenore, I'm assuming you mean Bonkers The Clown (talk · contribs · deleted · filter log · SUL · Google) • (block · soft · promo · cause · bot · hard · spam · vandal)? I'm guessing this is just a heads up to re-review those reviews? Did you want to start a discussion of whether or not those reviews should be excluded? Excirial, can the AFCBuddy be adjusted so that it only counts reviews be those actively on the participants list? This would make it real easy to fix these kinds of issues by simply removing them from that list. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 17:21, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• @Technical 13: AFCBuddy only reviews editors who are on the drive's participant list - removing anyone from that list will result in them being removed from the leader board, user totals list, re-review list and so on during the next AFCBuddy run. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 17:31, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• It may be a good idea not to take away the reviews from a removed editor's drive page, because all of those on the list should be re-reviewed, and the drive page is good for ke eping track of which ones have already been checked and also the result of the re-review. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:35, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• @Anne Delong: it won't remove reviews listed on the editors drive page - it just won't update that page anymore. If required AFCBuddy can generator a drive page for any editor, participant or not (It just needs to be told to do so). So if we ever need an overview of an editors reviewing between a specific time period, AFCBuddy can easily generate it. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 18:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Technical 13 that's who I'm referring to. The links above are to all the reviews he did today. They were done while his name was still on the Active Participants list. I'm simply saying that all those drafts on the lists need re-reviewing, and pronto in my view. I'm not sure what you mean by "excluded". If it's what Anne's referring to, I agree that the drive page should be kept. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Voceditenore (talk) 17:45, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• Cool. Excirial, I've removed him from the drive's participants list per your clarification. Anne, I don't see any reason to delete his drive page, and that would take an admin to delete it, which I'm not suggesting. We're all fine. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 17:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• Well, it seems that since Bonkers only reviewed the submissions very recently, there is no drive page for him yet because the AfC Buddy hadn't had a chance to run since the reviews were done. One would have to be deliberately created so that re-reviews could be done. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:58, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• Actually the log page does already exist - Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/June 2014 Backlog Elimination Drive/Bonkers The Clown. BTW I hope to join the drive soon, within the next day or three. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:28, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
• All of the reviews he did after that page was created can be found in this chunk of his contributions. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 18:32, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• The contributions page is entirely up to date now - technically it already was since Bonkers did not edit after 11:40 while the page itself was created at 17:19. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 19:05, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• Sorry, I did look for Bonkers' drive page and didn't find it; maybe the search engine index hadn't been updated. At any rate, I'm glad that's sorted out. I am remembering that Bonkers declined my first article... —Anne Delong (talk) 19:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• Note: The search index is broken, and the developers have marked the bug on this WONTFIX. Template:Bug --j⚛e decker^talk 20:12, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• @Anne Delong: Aww, I feel somewhat guilty now you felt a need to say sorry (I just wanted to mention that the page existed, no accusation or similar intended). That said you might want to give CirrusSearch a whirl - it can be enabled under the Beta Features section of the user preferences. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 10:26, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• Bonker's drive page can now be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/June 2014 Backlog Elimination Drive/Needs re-review per request. I have personally already ensured every review that wasn't immediately rechecked has been undone, and left apologies for people who got bad messages on their talk page. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:17, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks again Thaddeus. While they all seem to have been reverted, there are many that haven't subsequently been reviewed again. Those people already got notices, and although you may have apologized for that, I think it is only fair to them that those draft do in fact get reviewed as soon as is reasonable possible... I've started and taken out a chunk of them. I'll go through in a bit and try to finish up as many as I can, and I'll remove the "done" ones from the list. Happy reviewing! — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 15:01, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• I can't say that I understand all of this leaderboard and stats talk, but I think at this point the main concern should be to mass-rollback his reviews and notifications. Better to have something unreviewed than to offend contributors by having it potentially improperly declined. Any thoughts on this? Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 19:09, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

  I'm going to immediately revert the ones that haven't been edited since, folks should sort out the remainder. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:14, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

  I've done as I've said. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:23, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

  Thank you! Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 20:35, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Observation: Only 5 days into the drive and we're already had our first case of review rigging. This is indicative in my mind that once this backlog drive is done, no more backlog drive should be commenced until we put better safeguards in place to make it more difficult for individual editors to disrupt the purpose of the drive. Hasteur (talk) 19:13, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

If I might, can we clean up the mess first? I don't disagree, but perhaps there are better places to begin. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:14, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

@Hasteur: What measures would have have been capable of preventing this particular incident from occurring? Bonkers passes the criteria set for the AFCH tool, and unless we would manually review every reviewer upfront i don't see how this could have been prevented (And even if we did review upfront, would we have declined Bonkers on the basis of his recent unblock in the first place?).

For me this highlight another concern though: During a drive we add a competitive element and keep tabs on the various reviewers involved trough peer reviews. If we catch so many instances of bad reviewing during a drive, what indication is this quality-wise for non-drive periods? We don't peer review each other as actively (or at all) outside the drives so these issues might not be limited merely to the backlog drives. The competitive element may be partially responsible for these incidents, but i think it is safe to conclude problematic reviews happen outside the drives as well - they are just not caught as readily. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 19:38, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Not all "completely false reasons" as alleged

Does anyone seriously believe that it is "completely false" to suggest that a submission is "written like an advertisement" when it has the following text making up a substantial proportion of the lead:

The mission of the office... The mission supports the vision... The goal of this mission is to help governments ... Better government is the bottom line.

That's Washington State Auditor as declined by Bonkers.

His review of Rainer Schmidt (landscape architect) was still wrong, as the problems were much more minor, but that review can't reasonably be described as "completely false" either, as the submission as declined contained not only a massive list of twenty-seven projects and fourteen "publications", almost all of them apparently non-notable and none of them supported by inline citations to independent discussion of them, but also text like;

This inspired him to... major professional concern is to work comprehensively by holistic and multi-disciplinary approaches... This implies synthesis of cultural and natural sciences with artful and skillful application...

I'm not suggesting there aren't a lot of bad reviews here. In fact, I think Bonkers should stop reviewing for now (can't we deny his use of AFCH, these days?). And of course more than one review per minute is highly inappropriate. But I think we need to keep a sense of proportion about the scale of the problem. These look to be good-faith, if problematic, reviews. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:00, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

More or less, they either need to be rereviewed, or they don't. I felt the problems were bad enough, from the few I looked at, to put them in the first category, but you're welcome to revert my mass reversions if you disagree, I won't edit war over it. As far as "completely false" or whatever, I sort of feel like that's not really very relevant at this point. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:09, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Considering that the editor in question recently came off a Indefinite block using the Standard Offer argument, had been banned from DYK for one reason or annother, had a DYK nomination turned down because of the ban, could not help but comment on the DYK after they were reminded that even commenting about the DYK might be read by hard nosed admins as violating the ban, and then going on a poor quality review streak, I think using some of the less GF terminology to describe this user is well within reasonable discretion. Hasteur (talk) 20:13, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the mass reversions (my thinking being that, if the clown had declined or accepted a submission and you revert, in either case that means the submission will be queued to be reviewed by someone else instead; which doesn't damage anything really.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:47, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:21, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Just my two cents, but surely reviewing at more than one per minute means that there is no opportunity to follow the workflow, check for copyvio etc. Even assuming good faith (which, per Hasteur, I don't), this cannot be anything but gaming the system to get shiny Barnstars. BethNaught (talk) 21:17, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

What makes you think that most reviewers follow the "workflow"? I certainly don't. I doubt JustBerry did/does either. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

What I meant is that some things must be done, such as check for copyvio, and you can't reasonably do that, plus clicking all the decline buttons and so on, in less than a minute, so clearly he didn't pay attention to the submissions. BethNaught (talk) 07:14, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• Bonkers has been blocked indefinitely for disruption. I support rolling back all his "reviews" and will now also remove the talk message sent to the users, which are likely more damaging than the poor reviews themselves. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:20, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• Better to strike then explain, as they will likely get an email - including section headers - saying that the clown and then you commented on their talk page, and will thus be potentially very confused. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• I think that's right. I've also let a few folks know at #wikipedia-en-help, which has gotten at least one question on it already. --j⚛e decker^talk 22:19, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• I have now removed, striken, replaced, and/or apologized for all the clown's talk page edits. I have also reopened 10 or so AfCs not caught in previous reverts due to intermediate edits by other users. It took me about 2:15 just to undo the edits, and that was with most the the AfCs themselves already being fixed. That gives yet another idea of how much attention the clown was giving to the "reviews". --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:54, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• this one pretty much proves Bonkers wasn't even looking at the articles - the entire content was doubled and a declined message was already at the top of the page, but bonkers just happily declined the second notice (in the middle of the page). --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:15, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not following your logic. Why would the presence of an existing previous decline template, or duplication of content, imply that a reviewer should not act on a new submission template on the same page? Or that they had done so without reading the content? LinkedIn and such sources as were provided are certainly not what I'd term "reliable". --Demiurge1000 (talk) 07:20, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Demiurge1000, obviously some of Bonkers's declines will have been be appropriate by sheer probability, since the majority of submissions are basically advertisements written with a COI and/or with completely inadequate references. However, you don't decline a draft which is basically encyclopedic for one or two infelicitous sentences. You look at the references carefully and assess the suitability of the article for mainspace and the degree to which any infelicities can be fixed by normal copyediting. In the case of the landscape architect, there were two books devoted to his work (not written by him) and several more with large sections devoted to it (with page numbers given). In the case of the Washington State Auditor, not only were there adequate references, you are talking about a major elected executive office in a US state with dozens of incoming links. In these cases, you move the draft to mainspace, remove the sentence, tag for any other clean up as necessary. It takes a minimum of 10-15 minutes to adequately review and assess a draft which is on an obviously potential encyclopedic topic with multiple references (albeit not optimally formatted). He took less than one minute. He declined the Standard Theatre (Philadelphia) which had multiple references to reliable sources and whose former site has an historical marker because he didn't like the alleged "informal tone". I'd bet my bottom dollar that he didn't even notice that where it did occur it was primarily in clearly marked and referenced quotations and paraphrases. And failure to adhere to neutral point of view? Again, not remotely a pervasive problem in that article. In my view, his reasons for declining the three drafts I re-reviewed were completely spurious. Voceditenore (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• The implication is that a person actually looking at the article attempt would see the duplicated content and template placement and fix it. No one would act on a template in the middle of a page if they were actually paying attention; a script, however, doesn't care where the template is. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:13, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• No, if I were declining that submission because I believed it appropriate to do so, I would do the exact same. It is only if I were accepting the article that I would remove the duplicate (and the AFCH script would remove the templates for me). I think you'll find that in fact the vast majority of AFC declines are carried out using the AFCH script, so your point remains completely obscure, to me at least. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:02, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'm rather baffled that someone would intentionally leave the entire article text duplicated... In any case, another one I just saw was declined as "non-notable person" and wasn't even about a person... Is there really any doubt the Bonker's made no effect to actually review anything? He was clicking buttons as fast as he could to get points, with zero regard to what the declines would mean to anyone else. The fact that he sometimes clicked the correct button just means he guessed correctly sometimes, not that any actual effort was exherted. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:47, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I've had a look at a few of the reviews Bonkers did, and the problem with all of them is that they were a boilerplate AFCH template message, with no other comment. Even if he believed a decline was the correct response, he failed to indicate why and we are not mind readers. This is not acceptable - if you decline something, you must give the submitter something that will help them, and ideally praise the areas they did get right eg: "this one news source you've found is great - can you find anymore like that? We should be able to pass this then". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:34, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I believe the majority of declines use the boilerplate messages from one of the options on the AFCH script, without further comment. (Some of mine do and some don't.) Some have argued that shouldn't be the case, but such arguments are not having much impact on the reviewing yet. If that was the biggest problem with the clown's reviews - and I don't believe it was - then it's a problem that affects AFC as a whole. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:02, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussions at ANI and on Bonkers' talk page

There are discussion at ANI and on Bonkers' Talk page that look like he might be allowed back in under certain conditions. I have posted at both topics that he will not be welcomed back here at AFC. Unfortunately I phrased my comment in a way that looks like I was commenting on behalf of AFC and someone has already objected to the way I said it, (while I was already busy typing this post!) so I'm here to get a consensus on whether we are willing to welcome Bonkers back here as a reviewer. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:52, 7 June 2014 (UTC)Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

There's no chance of the clown being unblocked anytime soon, so looking for reasons to badmouth him yet again here, in order to export that "verdict" back to his talkpage and to other places in order to get him banned or keep him blocked, is bad taste and quite frankly repulsive. Find something better to do with your time. I am beginning to see why people from the "global south" mostly don't bother trying to contribute on Wikipedia. The reason is behaviour like yours. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:03, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Someone has proposed unblocking him, I have a right to express my opposition to that proposal. BTW I'm South African, so don't try to preach to me about the "Global South" ok. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Without wishing to be rude -- yes your background kind of shows. Sorry. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:21, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Can we please keep on topic and avoid personal attacks! (t) Josve05a (c) 11:04, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we should. Declaring a person "not welcome" is about as deep into personal attacks as we can go. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:07, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Demiurge1000 When an editor causes so much disruption that we would be better off without their contributions is the basis for a Topic Ban. Declaring them Persona non grata is exactly what making them non-welcome is. In this case how many volunteer hours have been wasted on rectifying Bonker's mistakes. I do endorse the below rehabilitation plan (6 months incident/drama free, then a gradual/controlled return to reviewing AFC submissions). Hasteur (talk) 14:09, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

• I have no objections to letting him review drafts, under a certain set of conditions that is. First, he needs to go 3-6 months incident free onwiki being productive in other areas (there are so many, this should be relatively easy). By this I don't mean he can have disputes or disagreements, just that he needs to stay calm and resolve them appropriately without getting blocked. Second, if at that time he still wishes to come back and review drafts at AfC, then he needs to limit himself to 5 a day to start, all of which need to be rechecked by another reviewer, if this goes well for a couple weeks, the limit can be raised upon AfC community consensus. For each of his reviews, the answer that he gives should include a comment (unless blatantly obvious for things like copyvio, in which case he needs to make sure he lists the URL for checking), and this comment should be clear and concise as to what the editor needs to do to get the draft accepted on the next try. He will be banned from participating in any BLDs until he has exhibited competence in reviewing. I agree that these requirements are fairly stiff, but I think it is warranted. I'm willing to consider other ideas as well on the topic. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 11:34, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

• 5 per day is a not unreasonable limit, though 10 might also work. I also agree wholeheartedly that we would not want to let BLDs get out of hand. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:07, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Reza Ghorbani

Hello. A bit new to this. I've been attempting to go through some of the older articles, and have approved/rejected several today. However, I attempted to approve this article, since it now has some notable, reliable and independent sources, but after clicking on the "approve article" button, it simply says it's moving the article from the draft to the real article, but never finishes the move. Am I doing something incorrectly? Onel5969 (talk) 18:49, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

No, the move is failing because an admin protected the Reza Ghorbani article after repeated attempts to create the article, presumably in some problematic way. You might want to ask the protecting administrator, whose name you can find here, if they'd be willing to unprotect the article. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:11, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Joe Decker, will do that. Onel5969 (talk) 00:46, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Reza Ghorbani. No article should be created about this person without addressing the issues raised in the AFD or, in the alternative, going through WP:Deletion review. By the way, the reason for the salting probably has something to do with this user's behavior. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:16, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Help desk changes

Hey everyone, I've been working on improving the flow of our very own help desk... I've created {{Lafc}} to be used on that page as part of our new preload template which is activated when ever someone new clicks on the big:

Click here to ask a new question.

link at the top of the page (of which this is a working copy of). I've also taken a moment to add to the lower left corner of the screen a static box that holds links to the very top of the page, the TOC, today's requests, and the very bottom of the page. I think this will make navigation much simpler.

What I'm looking for now is feedback. Do you like the new changes? Are there things that need to be fixed (I'm sure there are use cases or things I didn't test for)? Would you like other things added I hadn't thought of before? Any feedback is welcomed here. Happy reviewing! — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 20:37, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, saving and sitting back, I'm reminded of the other thing I wanted to talk about. I find that only archiving once a week is resulting in a fairly long page. How would everyone feel about shortening that to once every five or even better in my opinion three days? I'm also thinking that we should have the "regular" archival bot archiving the page instead of scsbot. The reason for this is that using scsbot, everything gets archived (even active discussions) if they were started more than a week before the archival run. I'm thinking if we switch bots, cut the threshold down to three days of inactivity, then the page will be shorter and active discussions won't be getting archived for one.

The other reason I bring this up is that the new {{Lafc}} uses Template:(pf)ifexist: which is an expensive parser function. This means that if for some reason we get more than 83 or so requests that have draft pagenames in them, then the template will quit working for any subsequent uses and we will get dumped into a bad place. I do not expect this to happen, even with the current setup, but archiving only the inactive requests more frequently should pretty much ensure it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 20:44, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Update: I've also just updated {{AFC submission/declined}} to use the new setup for asking a question on our help desk... I was confused where all of the old style questions were coming from until I figured it out. Because I wanted to autopopulate the draft page name from all questions incoming from that link (which will make it easy to tell how people are asking questions), I created a custom preload template for that (which may end up being moved if I find further use from it, is there a link on the pending template? Hrmm. I'll have to look into that)... Anyways, it is currently located at Template:AFC submission/declined/HD_preload and I encourage people to try the link out with show preview (not actually saving help requests) so we can try and make it as easy to read (and follow the instructions) as possible. Thanks again for any feedback you can offer. I'm going to bed now, but look forward to a tone of notifications of me being mentioned to give opinions and advice (and I know you all have some, so don't be shy). :D — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 02:35, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Since someone decided that WP:BRD really means BRRD, I'm bringing this here. Do we honestly need a parade of arrows that puffs the Template:AFC submission/declined/HD_preload and when someone attempts to create a new Help Desk thread? I think WP:CIR means we shouldn't baby people who are using the help desk, therefore I ask if there is consensus to re-establish the change described here. Hasteur (talk) 14:12, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not impressed that you decided to start this as a personal attack against me. You were bold in changing "part" of the template, I reverted you, we're here discussing it. Seems pretty BRD to me. Anyways, does the chain of arrows for new users pointing down to where the Save page is that they have to click in order for their request to be saved is hurting anything? All of the comments and instructions are wrapped in {{subst:Void}} templates so that none of that extra initial instruction is left on the page for anyone else to have to see. You think WP:CIR means we shouldn't baby people who are using the help desk and I say that not babying them a little for things like Help Desks and the Teahouse and other new editor places is being too WP:BITEy. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 19:57, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I disagree, your BOLD statement was wishing this template into creation, my action was reverting the addition of nonsense to make it more compact, your action of undoing my removal is a SECOND revert in contravention of BRD which you blithely decided to quote at me as justification for your revert. So, because you reverted without starting the discussion I get to frame the discussion. Now as you are well aware having content like your happy arrow pattern in the page is wasteful and could cause previews to fail because there's so much template parser data in it. I'd hope that any editor who created a AFC submission, and went to try and get feedback about their submission being declined (which is the only case this pre-load is being invoked from, would be able to know how to hit the save button (something they demonstrated the capability of before). But apparently we need to treat them like toddlers... Hasteur (talk) 20:08, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Very good, I created a template, and you BOLDly changed it, I reverted your change, and here we are discussing it. (If you had reverted my change, there would have been no template, simple). Now, what on earth are you talking about template parser data? That would only apply here if the entire comment wasn't wrapped in Template:Tls:Void which means that it isn't transcluded once they hit save. It has zero residual impact once they hit save page. There is no waste there at all. Some of these AFC draft creators don't even have an account, or they do have an account and they are so new that it's their first day here and this may in fact be their second or third edit, ever... I have no crazy expectations that they should understand exactly what "You have to hit the save page button, which is at the bottom of this window, that you may not be able to see without scrolling down (I know I have to scroll down to see it with standard wiki settings)". For all you know, some of them may actually be toddlers, as there is no minimum age to edit Wikipedia. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 20:20, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
  • In addition please read the "Editing beyond your means", "Lack of Technical Expertiese", and "Newbie" sections of WP:CIR. If they were able to save a page before, why should we patronize them by drawing a arrow to the save button, which might be even more WP:BITEy. Hasteur (talk) 20:16, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
    • It may very well be their second or third post, not everyone is as adept as you are Hasteur. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 20:20, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I think the chain of arrows is unnecessary; it will add a scroll bar to the text box for presumably most editors (unless their browser height is very tall with respect to their font height), causing them to scroll down looking for where the arrows point to, only to find they don't point to anything in the text box. Also, since there's other UI widgets between the text box and the "Save" button, it's not very evident that the "Save" button is being pointed to. I think this is more confusing than helpful. isaacl (talk) 14:29, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

A step-by-step guide like Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/How to edit with a video and screenshots illustrating the editing steps would be good to help complete newcomers. isaacl (talk) 14:40, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree with User:Isaacl that the arrows are unnecessary: they've pressed the save button previously. A reminder in words may well be appropriate to jog the memory, but, again, the arrows could be more confusing than helpful, given how thick the bottom of the edit box is. BethNaught (talk) 21:45, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Merge?

What do you think about this? Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:52, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Aaron Belz

Hello again. Sorry to be a pain in the butt, but I have another question regarding this article. With coverage from organizations like The Atlantic, HuffPo, and Writer's Digest, I think the editor has raised this poet to a sufficient level of notability. However, the citations are all incorrectly formatted. I had another one like that today, but I declined it, because all the citations were from obscure sources, or had been written by the subject of the article. I can't in good conscience decline the article based on sourcing, since the sources do seem to indicate notability, but their formatting is problematic. What action should I take? Onel5969 (talk) 00:57, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

You really have two choices, accept the article and don't fix the reference formatting, or accept the article and fix the reference formatting.  :) Sometimes I'll leave notes on the talk page with suggestions, e.g., the two links to disambiguation pages on that page, and the reference formatting could be one of those. But yeah, don't wait for great reference formatting. --j⚛e decker^talk 03:02, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

You might try adding a {{Format footnotes}} tag, too. I didn't know we had one of those. Look out, world! --j⚛e decker^talk 03:05, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again Joe Decker! Will do that last option. Onel5969 (talk) 12:36, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Looks like somebody beat me to it. And declined it. Not sure. It's no longer on the list, and it doesn't come up as an article.Onel5969 (talk) 12:40, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Orange is the new black...

Wooo!!!

The backlog counter just dipped below 1000, revealing a fetching shade of orange we haven't seen for quite a while! Still a fair way to go, but well done to everyone who's helped get it this far! --LukeSurl ^{t c} 22:39, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Change to Template:AFC submission/draft

A template-protected edit request has been submitted at Wikipedia_talk:Article_wizard#Template-protected_edit_request_on_7_June_2014. As it is a AFC based template and request please feel free to express your viewpoint on this request. Hasteur (talk) 21:02, 7 June 2014 (UTC)