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Tip: When you see a page that appears to be obviously a commissioned work, take a moment to check the history. If it's a recreation of a page that has previously been deleted three or more times, please add the {{salt}} tag below the CSD tag to request that the responding administrator SALT the article. In addition, consider adding a note to the talk page requesting a block of the account per WP:SPAM. For more information please see this section and if you are still in doubt, don't hesitate to post a question here.

Franzi help

Hi, I have written Franzi page, but i see some issues. I want to understand what can i do :) For example i say that Franzi is one of the oldest italian brand in the luxury leather goods, because it was founded in 1864 and I know that Prada is from 1913, Gucci is fom 1921, Fontana milano is from 1915, Fendi is from 1925, Ferragamo is from 1927, Bottega Veneta is from 1966.. I know there are no sources that say the cronological order of the foundation of all the italian company to mention as a source, but it is an obvious deduction from the facts. Even more if we think that Guccio Gucci itself was an employee of Franzi. But since I'm new at wikipedia i want to understand if I went wrong using this deduction system and if yes, what can i do to do the things in the right way. A true thanks :) --Carlo ch (talk) 09:57, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@Carlo ch: hi, I apologise, but you will a lot better assistance at Wikipedia:Teahouse. Happy editing! —usernamekiran(talk) 13:11, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

NPP Noticeboard

I noticed someone post on WP:NPP/N on my watchlist today and it reminded me that we don't really use the page. Looking at the top of the page, it looks to have been designed as a dispute resolution arena for reviewers who might be having competency issues. Looking through the archives, the last time it was used for that seems to be May 2015 and before that, May 2014. Other conversations there tend to not get much feedback because this talk page has become the de facto project talk space for NPP.

The only reason I am bringing this up is that because NPP/N doesn't appear to be closely monitored and isn't being used for its intended purpose, it could be confusing for people who are new to the effort and they might post something that should be seen by more eyes there instead of here. Looking through it, it looks like every thread that was started there in the last year would have been better handled on this board. In the interest of having a place that is unambiguously the central discussion board for NPP, I think it might be best to official retire NPP/N. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:22, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd support that proposal. Looking at the head of this page the graphics point to 9 pages we're expected to keep an eye on. This (IMHO) is too many, issues get raised at multiple pages and it takes too long to find which NPR talk page holds the thread you want to cite in your latest discussion. A smaller number of more broadly targeted pages would be more approachable. For example the Tutorial, School & Help seem to cover pretty similar areas. Cabayi (talk) 06:29, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Same. We have the same issue at AFC, with at least five talk pages on which to keep tabs. It makes having centralized discussion difficult (and as mentioned, sometimes results in discussions in the wrong place. Just because we can have nine talk pages, doesn't mean we need them. Primefac (talk) 11:38, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I also agree. - MrX 15:23, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposal

Based on the above conversation and that there seems to be at least enough agreement for a formal proposal, I propose the following: NPP/N be marked as historical and the noticeboard link on the navigation template be retargeted to link to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers TonyBallioni (talk) 15:45, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

• Support as indicated in my comments above. Cabayi (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support as proposer. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:21, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I argue for the reverse: mark "reviewers" as historical and move conversations to noticeboard. The term "noticeboard" has meaning on wiki and it's counter-intuitive that we close a noticeboard because conversation formed somewhere else. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:33, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I'd be fine with either. I think keeping the centralized forum here would be easier because it is currently active and has high participation (70/70 watchers visiting vs 50/73). The noticeboard hasn't been used for its stated purpose in two years, and I think the NPR user right means that it is less likely that you'll have situations that need to be escalated to formal dispute resolution. My philosophy is that its easier to build brick paths where people walk than it is to force people to change the path they take, but whatever the consensus is, so long as we fix the problem of having two boards used for the same thing, I'd be happy. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:52, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose the concept of removing it; we have the occasional problematic patroller, particularly if they are too fast with the CSD button on articles one minute old...need someplace to complain. Montanabw^(talk) 02:37, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

And the difference in posting that complaint at NPP/R rather than NPP/N is...? Cabayi (talk) 09:36, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

• Support I started NPP/N, but NPP/R did not exist and we lacked a user right to give us any control over patrols at all except for topic bans. As noted above, the general discussion area is better populated, and simplifying the number of subpaged in the project is in itself a worthy goal. No exception taken to Chris Troutman's alternate proposal, though. VQuakr (talk) 06:40, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
• Support per proposer. - TheMagnificentist 16:45, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support as proposed. Yashovardhan (talk) 16:56, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog 20,425

Still growing. Fast.

• In the 5 months fron July - Dec it more than tripled
• In November when NPR was introduced it stabilised and slowly began to drop
• What suddenly happened in mid Feb and caused a 50% increase in just 9 weeks?
• Certainly not an equivalent growth in new articles.
• What's it going to look like by 13 July this year?
• What, if anything, is being done about it?
• Is ACTRIAL the ultimate solution?

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:03, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the solution is, but it seems that a higher rate of new articles are being created by new editors than even six months ago. The ultimate solution is to change our charter so that at least a minimal amount of experience is required before new users can create new articles.- MrX 19:24, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I've attempted to delete several but the respective creators are quick to remove the tag. Far too few that should be deleted actually are, including those that are totally unsourced. The inclusionists expect other editors to provide RS for those articles instead of deleting them. It's pretty frustrating. ^{Atsme📞📧} 14:59, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I've often argued for making new users go through AFC to create an article rather than just jumping in here. I guess there was even a proposal that reached consensus but was not accepted by the WMF. I'm not really sure about that though and my words should be taken with a big bag of salt (correct me if I was wrong here :). I'm still against allowing new users to create pages at least until they're auto confirmed. Yashovardhan (talk) 15:49, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Kudpung, perhaps we should ping the WMF and advise them they better get busy? ^{Atsme📞📧} 17:26, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Um... wasn't it discussed above that we don't actually need WMF's approval for an en-specific ACTRIAL? Primefac (talk) 17:30, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

ACTRAIL is discussed about every time there is a backlog update, and it's been pointed out here and in other locations that there are multiple technical ways to enact it on en-WP without WMF devs. There are several questions about the implementation though that are non-technical: what do non-AC article creators do (if it is AfC, do we have a functional AfC system in place to deal with the shift if backlog)? Does the community consensus still exist for ACTRAIL? If it is implemented technically, would WMF step in with an office action to prevent it? These all need to be thought about before we move forward on anything. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:38, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

What about the idea of switching the default in preferences from creating in mainspace to using the article creation wizard (which I assume would send everything through AfC)? Seems likely to be less controversial than ACTRIAL with the community and with WMF. Admittedly this will massively increase workload in the already-flawed AfC process, and secondarily at MfD, but on balance I still think it's better for the encyclopedia and new creators to work through issues outside of mainspace--much less visibility for unacceptable pages and for flawed but improvable pages, declining drafts is much less bitey than the deletion processes. Innisfree987 (talk) 00:05, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:ACTRIAL, Innisfree987 and TonyBallioni, was precisely that, but the background needs to be studied very carefully - it was much more than just stopping non-confirmed editors from posting new articles in mainspace and sending them to the Wizard. To soften the blow for new users, for ACTRIAL a whole system of templates with built-in logic was devised (which did not need any creative coding by the WMF) but which also required some minor updates to the Article Wizard. To soften the blow for the inclusionists who wrongly interpret ...the encyclopedia anyone can edit, to mean 'the encyclopedia anyone can spam and post unadulterated trash into' , ACTRIAL as its name implies, was to be a 6-month trial just to see if it would work. It would certainly greatly reduce the creation of unwanted pages and would therefore not impact on the workload at AFC - in fact it might even help reduce that too.

ACTRIAL as we now know (and this was our error in asking the WMF at Bugzilla to pull the handles) can be implemented by any one of several local script/filter that various editors have proposed and there is every reason to believe that that particular consensus is just as valid today as it was then. It just needs someone (or more likely a small team) bold enough to insert the scripts, the templates, the Wikipedia GUI notices, and upgrade the Wizard. What Scottywong and I developed between us 6 years ago in preparation for ACTRIAL going live, was not rocket science.

Without a technical implementation (and I don't mean waiting years for ORES to be perfected), this is a critical issue for which there are no philosophical solutions. The WMF staff has had an almost 90% turnover since then, and it would be a very short sighted move to reject ACTRIAL today, particularly in the face of the huge increase in organised spam, professors organising Wikipedia education drives to pursue their own agendas, and the huge increase in the number of inappropriate new articles from non-native-English regions. At the risk of sounding radical, I doubt that the community would give two hoots about an office action, which IMO would not be technically enforceable without blocking and banning anyone who tries: Imagine a world where all the new page patrollers went on strike - please remain seated with your computers on until Wikipedia comes to a complete stop. And that seems to be pretty much what they are doing already, because between them, the 390 patrollers could easily have gotten the backlog down to zero, but those few who have been patrolling regularly now see their work in the face of an exponentially growing 20,000+ backlog as a useless, lost cause - well, at least I certainly do, in fact it's as much as I can do to simply cope with all the articles that have already been tagged for deletion without actually reviewing and passing any others as OK for keeping. It would be interesting to see what DGG has to say on these issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:13, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

• What happened September 2016 - Feb 2017? I daresay it was User:Kudpung's flurry of activities that drew attention, and that the end corresponds to the completion of Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/Coordination#Coordinator_Voting_begins_now_until_23:59_UTC_Monday_06_March. Comparison with rearranging of deckchairs comes to mine. WP:ACTRIAL remains the only good answer I have seen, though I stop at agreeing with the word "ultimate". All processes require assumptions, testing, review, and improvements on the assumptions. It is a cycle, there is no ultimate. Both new page creation and AfC needs to require at least autoconfirmation. Newcomers with new topics should be advised to improve existing content before creating new orphan pages. An example of improvement to existing pages would be the addition of meaningful links to their new topic. If no mainspace page can be improved by creation of information linking to their new topic, then the chances of their new topic being a suitable topic for inclusion is very very slim. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:13, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Apart from comparing the shape of the graph with the dates of various events such as the roll out of a new user right in November (which indeed was followed by a slight decline in the backlog), or Kudpung shaking himself free in February 2017 of his self-inflicted attempts (partly with the help of The Blade of the Northern Lights, WereSpielChequers, and Scottywong) over the years to get NPP improved, there are still no hypotheses being posited on the how and why these things came to shape the graph.

By tomorrow, the backlog will have reached almost 21,000. At this rate by the end of the month it will be nearly 30,000 and by the end of the year, nearly 100,000 most of which will have passed the 90-day NO_INDEX deadline and regardless of their unsuitability (spam, attack pages, vandalism, COPYVIO) be indexed by Google. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

My hypothesis was that something stirred up the activity of the reviewers. Something dramatic happened, it's hard to precisely read the x-axis, around October 2016. I recall seeing you doing/commenting on things around then. It was probably this, advertised at WP:CENT on October 6. That activity stirred up other activities, such as this. The election for your replacement too. In February, is was all winding up, the discussions closed in early March. People then went back to their long-term behaviours. I guess this could be researched, but assuming largely true, my conclusion is a somewhat depressing: "The graph indicates that article creation exceeds the rate of review; advertising the need for reviewing can have a strong short term effect with no lasting effects". However, the last three data points are being relied upon very heavily. This is somewhat depressing, and it calls for something more serious to be done. Non-autoconfirmed newbies writing new orphan articles seems pretty obviously a flaw to me. Maybe there is no need to push this point. We can just wait until it becomes known that new articles are going live to google before being reviewed, and this will cause an exponential increase in spam dumping, and then we will more readily agree to delete all new orphans and turn off page creation by new editors. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:06, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

We would need some stats to prove that new page creations have increased so dramatically since last July. I don't think they have. What I do believe is that the WMF won't help because they rely on the gross number of page creations for boasting about growth - they put their hands over heir ears when we try to tell them that over 50% of these creatons get deleted sooner or later. And that's why they refused to allow ACTRIAL in 2011 and why they won't prioritise the development of a proper landing page for new users and why I assume (he won't tell me exactly why) Jorm was told back then to quietly shelve the Article Creation Flow project. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:41, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Surely they don't need to brag. Surely they understand the end of the phase of exponential growth? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:48, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

This says that new articles are indexed after 30 days, not 90. If this is correct (Cenarium added the information) it means that much of the backlog is already on google: Noyster (talk), 12:26, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK, Noyster, the page at Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing may not reflect the actual situation or be up to date. At the time of the roll out of the New Page Reviewer Right, knowing that there was a huge backlog already, the time limit was set at 90 days. The IIRC, actual manipulation was carried out by Caldari - please check with him. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:00, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

• The limiting factor is reviewers. The fundamental mind-set and skill for NPP and AfC review are very similar--the key differences are that NPP reviewers ar expected to tag problems as well as judging the basic acceptability with respect to copyvio, WP::V and WP:N, and that failure to pass NPP requires choosing and initiating the further deletion processes. There is relatively little to be gained shifting incoming articles to AfC if we do not have an adequate number of reviewers. ACTRIAL leading to AfC will just add more steps to the problem.

There is no way to deal with this that does not involve getting additional capable active reviewers and the only place to find them is by getting mroe of the experienced people involved.

Nor will ACTRIAL help dealing with undeclared paid editors--already they know to make a few edits first. The only thing that will help in the short run is more stringent decisions at deletion processes. The best way to achieve this is for people who care about the problem to participate more at AfD. It doesn't require elaborate analysis of referencing or arguing point by point with those who do not realize the harmful effects or mastering the details of argumentation based on the interpretation of the often ambiguous guidelines for notability . There are simply policy-based arguments--among those I have used are:

Borderline notability plus borderline promotionalism is justification for deletion.

Regardless of possible notability, promotional articles must not be allowed t stay in WP; the policy of NOT ADVOCACY can override questions of notability

Gross promotionalism should be deleted at G11--lesser promotionalism is cause for deletion at AfD if not immediately fixed during the discussion. The mere statement that it can possibly be fixed is as inadequate as saying copyvio can possibly be fixed. Userifying or draftification is acceptable for unclear notability, but promotionalism should be removed altogether.

The real reason for ACTRIAL is the greater opportunity for non-confrontional guidance of good faith beginners--sand this require real individualized focussed help at AfC--not just putting on a confusing template.

In short: there is no way to remove junk without doing work. There are no devices that will have any effect without significant skilled effort. DGG ( talk ) 09:17, 1 May 2017 (UTC) .

• ACTRIAL mustn't be allowed to send newcomers to AfC, it must apply equally to AfC. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:15, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Can we organize ACTRIAL ourselves in the following way: We ensure that BLP violations, vandalism, and spam articles are deleted promptly (which I believe happens anyway) and all other unreviewed articles are moved to draft automatically after 29 days to avoid indexation?--Ymblanter (talk) 16:44, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Moving unreviewed articles to draft automatically after 29 days would be far more discouraging for new editors than being forced to create in Draft and having their articles promoted to mainspace. It seems to mechanise a BITEy behaviour, and deprive the editor of the warm-and-fuzzy approbation of having their article approved. Just my 2¢. Cabayi (talk) 07:17, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Agree with that. 'Promote not demote' will retain new editors. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 14:29, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

If you want to ensure that BLP violations, vandalism, and spam articles are deleted promptly (which I believe happens anyway), Ymblanter, you will either have to dramatically increase the number of suitably qualified and/or experienced New Page Reviewers from its current 390 to around ten times that (chance would be a fine thing), or encourage the ones we have to use the tools they asked for. Only articles that are tagged for deletion are dealt with promptly, and that is by admins. The purpose of ACTRIAL is to make potential creators of inappropriate content think twice before wasting their time. This was supposed to be coupled with the creation of a proper landing page for new users whose intention was to create a page. AS DGG stated above: In short: there is no way to remove junk without doing work. There are no devices that will have any effect without significant skilled effort.. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:14, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

• 'Promote not demote' will retain new editors. New promotion spam editors amongst them. Increasingly.

Template:Welcome begins...

Hello, Example, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

• Introduction and Getting started
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

Notice how "How to create your first article" follows four points of six links of logically preceding things? Where did the notion come from that people would come straight to Wikipedia and write an article before even becoming orientated? Note for example Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#Stop_posting_discussion_on_AFC_draft_pages.2C_use_the_discussion_page_instead where I have learned that regular reviewers and experienced admins alike think its normal to facilitate article writing by newcomers who haven't even worked out talk pages. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:47, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog 21,032

As predicted, the backlog is now over 21,000. At this rate by the end of the month it will be nearly 30,000 and by the end of the year, nearly 100,000 most of which will have passed the 90-day NO_INDEX deadline and regardless of their unsuitability (spam, attack pages, vandalism, COPYVIO) be indexed by Google. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

• I think virtually everyone on this page agrees that ACTRIAL is the best option, the question really is: what are the next steps for us as a project and as a community to try to implement it (and yes, I am familiar with the background and have read everything at Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC).

  While its nice to post about how much we need it every time Kudpung posts the growing graph, moving forward requires more than just a project level conversation once a month. If anything the graph shows why we need both this and more reviewers. I'm not suggesting anything rash like what I shall call the ECTRIAL proposal someone put forth in February without consultation, but getting the the most important of the three items on the to do list moving should be an objective that we work towards with concrete steps (a sub-to do list if you will). TonyBallioni (talk) 02:23, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. Give us a set of steps required to implement ACTRIAL, and we'll say fuck it and just do it. Better to ask forgiveness. Primefac (talk) 12:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, let just move forward with it. I think six years of talking about it enough.- MrX 12:11, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: I'm not necessarily advocating a fuck it approach (see my comments in the thread above). If there needs to be an RfC on implementation, we should start drafting. If there are things that need to be worked out but can be done with simple BOLD editing, lets do that. If we need to reassess the previous consensus before figuring out how to implement, then start working on that. If we are confident the approach you described is the best option, then fine. Regardless, we should take the energy put into the monthly (or now biweekly?) "We need ACTRIAL" threads and begin working towards it. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:53, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I guess I meant more of the "being BOLD" part. The problem is there is no definite set of steps (at least, not all in one place) that would allow en- to activate ACTRIAL. As you say, there are probably a few bold things that can be done before an RFC to "officially" introduce the program, but I think the lack of such a list is one of the reasons why there hasn't been a larger push to get it implemented. Primefac (talk) 14:58, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I agree that getting a list together of first-steps is probably the best way forward. I also think hosting it as a subpage at WP:NPPAFC would be best. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:16, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

If ACTRIAL is going to prevent even making pages in draft space, then I return to my earlier position that it is a unconstructive step that will greatly discourage new users. People come here to write articles. I recognize very well the problem that half of them come here to write unacceptable articles, but if we discourage the good faith half also, who will be left? I suppose we can devise ways to get around it for events like editathons, but most new people appear to come on their own--many of them are even people who would only contribute if they could be anonymous. The life of WP depends upon new editors. Anything we can do to encourage them is worth doing, even going through the work of NPP. We can not afford to discourage new contributors. Either we must find a wayto encourage the potentially good ones only, or we must encourage them all, and sort them out later. DGG ( talk ) 04:08, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

DGG, I can only speak for myself, but I would agree with you on that, and I think its an important thing for us to keep as mind as we work to move forward on this. My statements here were only expressing that I think complaining about the need for ACTRIAL which often happens on this talk page is not especially useful unless we are taking steps to help prepare for it, and that includes thinking through how new editors would be invited to create new content. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:25, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

and about that, I agree with you completely also. DGG ( talk ) 04:47, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

How many good new editors couldn't wait ten edits to start a new article? DGG waited for his twelfth. And the were a lot more missing articles back then. Sending no-idea newcomers, unwelcomed, to draftspace, is not doing them any favours, and does not result in their retention. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I came with the deliberate intent of staying a while if I liked it, not in order to write a particular article. This is not the usual sequence, where people come to write an article and then decide to stay. If you think the development of my work here is typical, how does it account for the very small number of highly active editors--who do not in fact write the bulk of the articles. Most editors who write an article write only one. The WMF stats are lacking in main areas, but this is one thing they show--and would be expected to show, for it's the typical Zipf's law distribution of multiple participants in anything. Regardless of proportions it is more important to get new editors than anything else about WP. With new editors, problems can be solved; without them, deterioration is inevitable as people eventually discontinue editing. DGG ( talk ) 23:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

No, DGG, I never thought you "typical", but "good". I don't know the stats for article writing, but I did know that IPs write most of the content. I suspect that drive-by registrants also write a lot of content. I remain skeptical that many newcomers write quality articles (including article that subsequently become quality) starting within their first ten edits and four days. New editor retention is important, and one thing burning me is the new editor biting going on with AfC. They are patronised, treated like children, not treated like they are or will be part of the community of editors. Can we find stats for newcomers who start by: (1) edits in mainspace; (2) new page creation in mainspace; (3) page creation via AfC; (4) other? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:04, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

1. (edit conflict) DGG, SmokeyJoe, Primefac, and TonyBallioni, the actual RfC was at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles with a very detailed expert closure by RL0919. I doubt whether anyone who has not involved has taken time to read the whole RfC - it was indeed one of the largest in Wikipedia history to date, and has therefore forever established its importance and consensus forever. WP:ACTRIAL was the iproposal for its implementation, and taking into account the RfC, was precisely about encouraging bona fidae new users whose intention is to create good faith articles that might have potential for retention. Hence the entire background to the ACTRIAL project needs to be studied very carefully before jumping to conclusions - it was much more than just stopping non-confirmed editors from posting new articles in mainspace and sending them to the Wizard. To soften the blow for new users, for ACTRIAL a whole system of templates with built-in logic was devised (which did not need any creative coding by the WMF) but which also required some minor updates to the Article Wizard. To soften the blow for the inclusionists who wrongly interpret ...the encyclopedia anyone can edit, to mean 'the encyclopedia anyone can spam and post unadulterated trash into' , ACTRIAL as its name implies, was to be a 6-month trial just to see if it would work. It would certainly greatly reduce the creation of unwanted pages and would therefore not impact on the workload at AFC - in fact it might even help reduce that too. People just need to read up on what was prepared.
2. The next step is to read the pages TonyBallioni says he is already familiar with and get the various suggstionse for code onto one venue so it can be decided whose code or filter should be used.
3. Help to apply pressure on the WMF to get the new landing page developed that Jorm (WMF) started at our behest 6 years ago. It now at least gets the occasional comment at Phab but for some reason the Foundation still does not regard it as a priority and is only now looking for a volunteer to do it, and there is only a flurry of activity when I make one of my scathing comments there. MusikAnimal is well informed but probably does not have the required influence, particularly as the instruction to treat this with low priority come from very high up.
4. The backlog is still rising and only 1079 pages have been reviewed this whole week by a total of 390 possible reviewers. Time to get that NPP tool by Scottywong up and running again so we know in real time just who is truly active on the patrol front. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:09, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
5. Finally, the time is to act now, otherwise what Jimbo Wales, the WMF, and the Board do not realise is that in next to no time more of us regulars will be giving up on the 1,000s of hours (and sometimes $$) we have invested in this project, and their precious movement is going to be left with what is a slush of adverts masquerading as articles, hoaxes, terrorist propoganda, attack pages, other junk, and nobody doing the janitorial work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:09, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

• Kudpung กุดผึ้ง, I was one who was not involved in the RfC, and when I discovered it I read the whole thing. Maybe 2015? I don't re-read it often, so pointing out key points would be welcome.

No jumping to conclusions. I think it is a justified conclusion that there are too many no-hope creations, in mainspace and draftspace, by new editors writing orphan articles. No need to specify that most are promotional, which I actually don't like to do as there is no clear line between mildly promotional WP:CORP-failing and mildly promotional WP:CORP-passing.

ACTRIAL looks like an obvious thing to try. No expectation that it is the ultimate solution.

An alternative to ACTRIAL now/next is to first more clearly and forcefully advise newcomers to not start their Wikipedia career with the writing of a new article, but to improve existing content first. Add redlinks to their planned article, for example. The {{welcome}} template does this. I think that probably before ACTRIAL we should get the welcoming committee working again. Reconsider auto-welcoming new registrants. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:08, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Even I was not around when the RFC took place. I've read the entire closing summary and agree that It's obviously something that needs to be implemented asap. However, @SmokeyJoe: I'm not in support of auto welcoming new users without any contributions. Ya, the welcome templates do need a re design. Especially, since most new editors don't even go through the links. That's the least of our concern right now though. Let's focus on implementing the ACTRIAL. Yashovardhan (talk) 05:44, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, there is a history of opinion that new users shouldn't be welcomed before making their first edit. Why do the welcome templates need a redesign? I am disappointed at how many AfC draft page failures are associated with an newcomer who was never welcomed, and just has non-human templates populating their user_talk page. I disagree that the importance of ACTRIAL means forgetting easy things like welcoming newcomers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:50, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

• It is surprising that Registration doesn't trigger a User Talk Welcome message. Not only does that seem closer to registration site norms, but it could positively assist in opening the User Talk channel and pre-emptively providing the expectations about what should and shouldn't be done here. The current sets of Welcome and other notifications tend to be chasing a bus that has already left. They don't sit well as interactions, often not forming a coherent message sequence (e.g. a Welcome or Teahouse message after the user is already on final warning for removing CSD or maintenance templates). The WP:WC case based on server space is not one that is often seen, and anyway, if a new user desists from posting their autobiography, that could save a chunk of CSD to AfD storage. (That said, if someone has arrived with the sole aim of bigging-up themselves and/or their company, there is probably little which will affect that.) AllyD (talk) 09:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

• I don't actually think the Welcome message system was intended to be part of this discussion. It's not part of the NPP backlog or ACTRIAL issue. Most SPA drive-by page creators don't even know what a user talk page is and they ignore any messages there. I think somone must have got confused with this which is an entirely different concept - one which was supposed to be part of the registration page and which was to be the other half of the development of Page Curation. After all, why do most users register? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:22, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

• Unlike some of the statement above, ACTRIAL provides that "non-autoconfirmed editors would either need to submit new articles to Articles for Creation or create a userspace draft, preferably using an improved Article Wizard. " I doubt it would have been approved otherwise; there has to be a route by which newcomers can make articles. But once we do this, we are faced with the same problem: it is similarly difficult to review AfC and Newpages. In fact, going thru AfC requires yet another review, for we always check them at NPP. Kudpung was correct to seek a unified system, rather than to simply make a more devious route.

At this point, I do not see the benefits if we use the program as previously approved, and I do not think there is consensus without a route to articles. DGG ( talk ) 04:07, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

arbitrary break

Spelling it out

Basicaly, in the simplest possible, very basic terms so that everyone can understand, ACTRIAL was this:

Hi, welcome to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit. So you're about to create an account, yeah? Watcha gonna do with it? Choose below, then you can see how far you get:

1. I wanna correct some typos I saw and update the results of the World Snooker Championship.

A: Sure, that would be real nice. You don't even need to register to do that, but if you do, you'll get some extra privileges and maybe even some recognition for your work. Register and go ahead, but you won't be able to create an article just yet - but that's not what you wanna do anyway, is it?

2. I wanna create an article

A: Yeah, we'll let ya do that - maybe. Register, click here, select the kinda page ya wanna do and we'll explain right away if your article is likely to make it into the encyclopedia; if it shows promise we might even help ya do it! You'll need to be registered for 4 days and done 10 edits before your article goes live, but don't let that put you off, and if you're in a real hurry (why should you be that?), you can fast track it for approval through AfC.

(we don't tell them that it will probably take 4 months to get AfC approval). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:18, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

• Question: Do we have any stats showing how many articles are created by IPs or 1st-time registerees, and how many of those are deleted as a result VS those created/deleted by others? What about copy-edits - how many IPs copy edit VS vandalize? ^{Atsme📞📧} 12:45, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

  I believe its gonna be really hard to get these stats. Yashovardhan (talk) 13:39, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

  So there's no way to group only IPs? We already have "Articles created" for each (all) users, and redlinks for any that were deleted. ^{Atsme📞📧} 16:04, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

  What I found here just says that about 886 articles are created everyday. If we can somehow filter this big set of raw data, we might get an estimate. You forgot that IPs cant create articles really so we are left with only new users. So, it could be a really tough count, if at all its possible. Yashovardhan (talk) 16:52, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

  Interesting. For comparison, AFC gets between 160-200 new drafts per day. Primefac (talk) 16:56, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

  If I'm reading that data right, the correlation to the average number of articles per day matches the graph of the backlog roughly. In October/Novembe 2017, the right was introduced, and the backlog slowly declined a bit leveled-off. It increased a bit in December and January, dropped again in February when the numbers went down again, and now its back up. tl;dr, it looks like at this time, the max amount of articles that can be absorbed by the feed without adding to the backlog is ~750 a day.

  We're at around 100 articles a day above that, which would be 3000 extra articles a month, which easily explains the backlog. The easiest solution: recruit more experienced people who are willing to even do 5 reviews a day. 20 people who will do that could easily get us back to November/February levels. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:05, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

A temporary solution could be to conditionally grant the NPP rights to potentially less-likely-to-be-accpted editors on the condition that they patrol successfully X pages per month. I also heard that admins can now set expiry dates to user rights granted which makes it just right. Yashovardhan (talk) 17:17, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

No, I don't think that is the solution. I've been pulled in other directions recently, so I am less active at patrolling the AWB/Twinkle tagbombings, but Kudpung's longstanding complaint about incompetent patrollers is *more* than justified. There was a point a few months ago where I was cursing the existence of AWB because of the tagbombings that were frequently happening with it. I'd rather have a backlogged feed where I can go in, remove the uncategorized and generic cleanup tag, and fix the problems than have an orphaned article with tags on a notable subject sit like that for years. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

In that case, I withdraw my suggestion. I have just recently become a NPP so I am not fully aware of these discussions. I agree that a bad patrol is a lot more worst than a huge backlog. Yashovardhan (talk) 17:45, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

The last graph shows new articles created by reg, anon, bots. What articles would anon be creating? See: Wikipedia:Your_first_article ^{Atsme📞📧} 18:06, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Articles created in the draft/sandbox space that were approved and moved to Article? Primefac (talk) 18:09, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Exactly what Primefac said. I saw WP:Your first article and guess that needs a change. Just to confirm, I tried creating a new page by logging out and got:

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Testingcreation in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.

• Log in or create an account to start the Testingcreation article, alternatively use the Article Wizard, or add a request for it.
• Search for "Testingcreation" in existing articles.
• Look for pages within Wikipedia that link to this title.

So that should be fine. Yashovardhan (talk) 18:42, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Just to confirm, the article wizard leads you to afc (or a new unreviewed article for registered users). I guess that's what WP:Your first article actually means. Yashovardhan (talk) 18:48, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

See [1] which may explain why we have a growing backlog. I can't say for certain, but it must contribute in some way. ^{Atsme📞📧} 19:02, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I can't see how the cited new article has any relevance or impact on the backlog. But maybe I'm missing something. It seems to me to be a perfect CSD-A7 candidate for a biography that does not make any credible claims to importance other than a person 'defending' their PhD thesis. His books have not been prize winners. He might, just might scrape through WP:PROF, but that would require a disproportional amount of time for a new page reviewer or AfC agent.

IMO, the cause of the backlog is simple: the majority of the 401 editors who were granted the new page reviewer right are not reviewing new pages. The question we should be asking ourselves (or them) therefore , is why?

Everyone keep talking about stats as if they are going to be the panacea but nobody has come up with a convincing graph that the influx of new pages has any correlation to the backlog, and stats don't actually do anything, except perhaps precipitate a lot more talk about them.

Today's backlog: 21,476. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:10, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog 21,240

Backlog today: 21,240. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:24, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog today: 21,327. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:28, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog today: 21,476. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:11, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog today: 21,693. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:19, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog today: 22,003. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

So from those numbers it looks like the backlog is growing at an average rate of 75.5 articles per day. The question is what can we do with this information? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:32, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

• One issue that I'm seeing is that patrollers are "patrolling", per se, but not marking the page as patrolled. I can produce numerous examples, but to name a few:
  • Mark Nelson (Chicago artist): edited by 3 sysops (at least one was clearly patrolling), none marked it as patrolled.
  • Salzburger Kunstverein: 3 new page reviewers, 1 sysop, none marked it as patrolled.
  • AURO University: 2 new page reviewers, 1 sysop, none marked it as patrolled.
  • Jacques Rosas: a NPR marked it as unpatrolled, then left it for others to deal with. One sysop and two new page patrollers edited afterward, none marked it as patrolled.
  • Braxton Family Values (season 1): 1 sysop, 1 NPR
  • Sheppard Pratt at Elkridge, Richard Haine, George Washington Burr, and many others: NPRs edited these while patrolling (as evidenced by the time of the edits), but didn't mark them as patrolled.

Obviously marking the page as patrolled is a very important part of tackling the backlog! So what's the deal? Are people afraid? Are we so stringent about inclusion criteria that we often need second opinions? Every article cannot be perfect, but if you get it to an acceptable state, with or without maintenance tags (following WP:NPPCHK), I think you've done your job and it's OK to remove it from the backlog. I understand there is a delicate balance there, though, but I wonder why so many people are stuck on the knife edge? And what about pages that have been PROD'd or AfD'd? Doesn't that mean you "reviewed" them (Iaso Hospital, for example, where a sysop didn't mark it as patrolled)? Are there any software improvements we can make to help make it easier or remind users to mark pages as patrolled? — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:17, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm guilty of two or three of those today. I find that I can usually identify issues with an article, but claims of significance and notability are not always clear. Perhaps I should err on the side of marking articles as patrolled unless I'm certain they should be deleted. I'm open to advice on this.

It also occurred to me that perhaps articles should automatically default to reviewed after 30(?) days. That way, at least the backlog wouldn't continue to grow to soul-crushing proportions (thank you Kudpung for constantly reminding us ).- MrX 18:36, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

That's... kind of a terrible idea. If that were implemented a one-sentence unreferenced BLP could, in theory, be marked as patrolled even though no one has actually looked at it. Primefac (talk) 18:40, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not so sure, but I probably should have qualified my proposal: automatically review 30 day old+ pages that have been tagged, and that meet whatever other criteria are deemed necessary (number of unique editors, number of sources, number of inbound links, etc.). Failing that, we have to get more active reviewers, find a way to slow the influx of new articles, or both. I assume that those two factors (new articles and reviewers) are trending in opposite directions resulting in a queue that is roughly four times the size it was roughly a year ago. - MrX 19:05, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, we are supposed to only mark pages as patrolled if they correspond to the policy. If I made changes to the page but it still does not correspond to the policy (or I am not sure and need to investigate further) I obviously do not mark a page as patrolled.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:11, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: you said "we are supposed to only mark pages as patrolled if they correspond to the policy." Which policy is that? My understanding is that if we check the page and tag or fix issues or nominate it for deletion, we should mark it patrolled. Are you saying that you feel we should not mark it patrolled if it still has issues? Please clarify. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:31, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I mean the tutorial. Indeed, I believe that if the issues which are compulsory for a partolled article (such as the presense of categories) are not fixed the article should not be patrolled. Or BLP violations or copyvio should not be patrolled even if nominated for deletion - patrolling them would immediately make the article visible in search engines.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:41, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

But if you use the page curation toolbar to mark it for deletion it automatically marks it as patrolled. I seem to remember some talk about submitting a bug report to phabricator about that, but I think it was decided to leave it, but I don't know why. I'll see if I can dig up a diff. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 21:19, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Ymblanter I found it. Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/Reviewers/Archive_2#Comments_and_Questions. Basically, BLP violations and Copyvio are generally speedy, and those deletion templates transclude no index, so patrolling them with a CSD tag should not make them visible to search engines. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 21:35, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

And here's a list of all the templates that transclude NOINDEX. G12(copyvio) and BLPPROD are both on there. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 21:41, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

And then if say the article creator removes the speedy template?--Ymblanter (talk) 05:40, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Of course, and I didn't mean to point the finger at you and MrX regarding Salzburger Kunstverein :) I understand some people don't have time to fully evaluate an article, or think it's not up to code, but it seems that is a pattern here. I'm also seeing a lot of pages created by seasoned editors apparently fit to be autopatrolled. Perhaps we should devote some time to go through Wikipedia:Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege? — MusikAnimal ^talk 19:53, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually, every time I see a mature newly created paper, I just go and look at the contribution of the editor. If they have enough experience (say several thousand edits and enough tenure), recent creations are fine, and there are no obvious red flags at the talk page, I just make them autopatrolled.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:38, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

None of the points discussed here address the odd behaviour of the chart or investigate its possible correlation or coincidences with other events.

• in July 2016 long before serious discuss began on doing anything about it the number of unpatrolled articles Iegan to rise steeply
• It flattened off almost immediately Nov/Dec when the new user right was rolled out, and even began to drop.
• In February it suddenly began to rise again at is previous rate.

There are currently 401 accredited reviewers. Other, unqualified users are still allowed to tag pages (but not mark them as patrolled), (which, BTW, still does not avoid good faith creators from being bitten), despite which, 401 should be more than enough to not only keep the backlog growth down, but to significantly reduce it.

MusikAnimal, I do not understand why some people don't have time to fully evaluate an article. Either they patrol/review constructively, or they do not. It’s written big enough at the top of the feed: Rather than speed, quality and depth of patrolling and the use of correct CSD criteria are essential to good reviewing. and at the end of the day, a backlog is still better than an encyclopedia corpus full of spam and other totally unacceptable pages - most of which are reltively easily recognised for what they are, while articles made my genuine, but non autopatolled authors need only seconds to review and are not likely to be a cause of the backlog. Any articles whose deficiencies are not so easily recognised are precisely one of the main reasons why a group of sufficiently experienced reviewers was created. I suggest reviewers (and anyone else commenting here) try setting their filter on pages that 'Were created by new editors' and work on that this list for an hour and then they’ll see and fully understand the gravity of the situation. Increasing the number of editors with the autopatrolled flag, or any other suggestions being made here are only palliative, whereas restricting the creation of article to auto confirmed users would be a concrete, important step forward. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:33, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't think spending inordinate amounts of time evaluating individual articles is a good approach when there is such a huge and rapidly growing backlog. A triage approach seems more productive. Also, we still haven't identified any root causes for the current backlog. Is it that there are few regular reviewers; fewer reviews per reviewers; more new articles; more articles that depend on non-English sources; more articles with large lists of fake references; inconsistent feedback from CSD reviewing admins causing reviewers to second guess themselves; or any number of other reasons? I think most of us agree that ACTRIAL or something similar should be implemented, but it would also be helpful to understand how we got here.- MrX 00:01, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

I've just spent the last 1.75 hours reviewing new pages from the 'Were created by new editors' list and done 34 patrolls in that time - which included correcting a few poor patrols. I think that's about average for an experienced reviewer, and it's as much as I can stomach for a day on NPP. A triage approach might seem to be more productive (indeed, during development, the code name for Page Curation was New Page Triage), and without getting careless with my patrolling, I'm certainly no longer spending much time any more improving or rescuing any basically 'no hope' articles for authors who can't be bothered to read WP:My first article.

Triage, as you put it, MrX nevertheless needs to be done therefore with an accent on caution while probably leaning 'delete' (PROD, AfD, etc) rather than keep, which will unfortunately not find favour with the inclusionists. This won't matter quite so much at 'Were created by new editors' list where at least 80% of all the new article are created without the slightest consideration at all for what could even be broadly construed as 'Wikipedic'.

Yes, I agree it would be interesting to know how we got here, but talking about it without doing anything is not going to resolve it and like you and many others I agree that ACTRIAL or something similar should be implemented. The fears expressed by the WMF that it would lose us new editors are no worse than the new editors who are being bitten by the newbies and inexperienced patrollers who the community demanded should still be allowed to tag new pages. Fortunately, their patrolls now have to be checked by accredited reviewers, but a lot of the damage to good faith creators is already done. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:40, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

• IDK why pages aren't gettign marked as patrolled, by default, when you tag an article or CSD it, it gets accepted. I had a discussion with another patroller about this once because the logs looked liek I had accepted some pretty poor articles, but it was automatic. So either other peoples' Page Curator works different than mine, or some people are going back and un-accepting it after tagging it. I want a keyboard shortcut to advance the queue. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 13:44, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I think they aren't getting patrolled by default because people are either using Twinkle or manually tagging rather than using the page curation toolbar. Obviously if you manually tag it won't automatically be patrolled, and I don't think Twinkle automatically patrols, but as I don't use Twinkle I'm not sure. I'm also pretty sure some people are going back and unreviewing it after tagging it, and I have done that myself if I really wanted a second set of eyes on the article - but it's rare that I do that. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 18:16, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, 'patrolled' means that an article has been reviewed by an accredited reviewer irrespective if it is to be kept or deleted. Hence articles that have been marked for deletion have been patrolled. The confusion is the belief that the word 'patrolled' means 'accepted' and the NO_INDEX tag has been removed, which in the case of articles marked for deletion is not the case, the NO_INDEX tag remains intact. Only accredited reviewers can mark pages as 'patrolled'. The quality of reviewing by non-accredited 'patrollers' still leaves a lot to be desired. Although I am trying really hard to distance myself from all things 'New Page Patrol' except for patrolling new pages myself, I have had to ask at least half a dozen new users this week to refrain from tagging new pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:23, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

After steady increases to just over 22,000, we are now holding it at bay at just under 22,000. Do we know why it's no longer dramatically increasing? It's still not good, but it's very slowly going in the right direction and no longer increasing. Boleyn (talk) 18:23, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

The oldest unreviewed articles are not old

The oldest unreviewed articles are not old, but are new articles written over old redirects. [example]. Would it be easy to fix this, to date new article from their earliest non-redirect state? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:53, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't really consider it a bad thing, to be honest. A fair amount of people patrol from the back, so if the redirect was recreated as a bad article, it will get dealt with pretty quickly. Put it in with the rest of today's articles, and, well... 20,400 and counting. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:55, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

This is a recognised problem, and also results in the notification "I just reviewed your article..." going not to the author of the bright new article, but to the hoary-headed creator of the former redirect: Noyster (talk), 08:07, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I found most of the oldest ones today are userspace drafts I promoted. I appreciate the lightning fast reviews of these though :) Legacypac (talk) 06:50, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Formatting Help

Twinkle Messed up my AFD request here 1 and I am not quite sure how to fix it or what is the correct format. Help! Razer^{Text me} 09:07, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

 Already done by Noyster. Yashovardhan (talk) 13:28, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Lack of patrolling on the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespace

(Moved from ANI)

At 9:23 UTC, 12 May 2017, an IP user created Wikipedia talk:1337 with only "Leet!" in it. This page clearly falls under WP:G2 and WP:G8 but it had gone unnoticed for more than 2 hours until I speedily tagged it and was deleted. But that's not it, a WP:G11 page about the user themselves, was not deleted until 6 days later (I don't know about CSD that time by the way). There's a more serious case which a page that also falls under WP:G11 with blatant advertising content and also contain user's own biography, took more than 3 years to be listed in MfD and be speedily deleted.

This is clearly a major flaw in new pages patrol, since most NPP reviewers only concentrate on patrolling articles, but not the pages on the Wikipedia namespace. As such, attack pages, copyrighted content or autobiography can be created and stayed much longer than a normal article would. There may be some users that will take advantage of it. I think we need to take actions to prevent this. Any ideas? --QianCheng_虔诚 14:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

The backlog only seems to be to April 2017, so a lot shorter than the article backlog. I came across a great user page a couple of weeks ago that announced its support of Nazism and threatened 'death to all', so it is important and good that you are drawing people's attention to its backlog. However, as to what to do, I think there's nothing more to say, pursue ACTRIAL and/or look at increasing the pool of autoreviewers and patrollers, or making the reviewers feel valued and appreciated, which at the moment isn't happening as well as it could be. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 18:00, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

• What is wrong with a 2 hour delay? d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 18:37, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
• Not to underplay this, but Wikipedia namespace creations are on the bottom of the list of pages that need to be patrolled, IMO. You have to type the prefix in to find it from our search, which means the people who see it will most likely be one of 'the regulars'. We still have copyvios from 2005 in the article mainspace and poorly sourced BLPs/spam/any number of issues in NPP-Backlog-21K. If someone wants to take on the task of patrolling WP-space pages, more power to them, but as a project our focus has been on articles, and I think that is the right focus. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:00, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
• You mention user pages Boleyn, which of course are in a different namespace to Wikipedia namespace. Other than mainspace, user space is the only namespace available through Special:NewPagesFeed – to see new pages in any other namespace you have to use Special:NewPages. Unlike articles, user pages appear to fall off the back of both queues after 30 days, so many go unpatrolled. I see no guidance anywhere here about patrolling user pages, which seems to be a significant omission as many (including sandboxes) are blatantly promotional or in other ways unsuitable, and are in effect bypassing the patrolling that is eventually applied to mainspace articles: Noyster (talk), 19:42, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

• "clearly a major flaw" seems like an exaggeration. Content is the priority here, as in all things on Wikipedia. That's the point of the whole endeavor. Yes, that means sometimes terrible stuff in WP or user space will slip through the cracks. No, I don't think we need to "fix" that. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:55, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
• I don't think this is a "major" flaw, but this can't be ignored. The Wikipedia namespace doesn't have an indexing hold like mainspace, so if someone creates a new WP-space basepage it'll be at the top of Google pretty quickly. – Train2104 (t • c) 21:37, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

• Userpages that are more than a year old and tagged can be found here Category:Stale userspace drafts [2] where over 30,000 examples of copyvio, promotion, nonsense, spam and other violations need to be nuked so get your Twinkle out. Occasionally you find something to send to mainspace too. Legacypac (talk) 06:57, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Cheating way to cut down on backlog: remove extraneous stuff

The backlog contains all unpatrolled pages including

-user pages and subsets i.e. User:L3X1/CSD_Log, User:L3X1/CBNG, User:L3X1/satanic_rituals_keep_out_admins

As this is where many editors make drafts of new pages which will then go to be properly reviewed and tagged after being moved to namespace, there is little point in wasting Patroller Time with pages in these categories.

-user sandboxes

Again, anything being done here will either be moved to namespace or is will have to be checked again because it would have to be patrolled after every edit. If there are no Copyvios, there may be some tomorrow after all!

None of the above really belong in the backlog. I have stamped "ok" on some 60 wikiEd user pages back to back that had "This editor is a student in this class". Pages that don't need patrolling just add to the number which depresses the team. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 21:20, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Is the number cited above all pages or just articles? I often just skim through the feeds for the other namespaces, and if anything doesn't look like it should be there, have a look, but don't bother patrolling those that are fine. There's absolutely no need to patrol things like AFD's, tool-generated user talk pages, or talk pages containing only WP banners. A suggestion was raised at the Village Pump to have a bot handle certain cases of non-mainspace pages after a certain length of time, which sounds like a good idea. That said, I'm not in favor of automatically patrolling user pages/subpages, especially of non-extended-confirmed editors. I find a lot of spam, attack pages, and hoaxes there. – Train2104 (t • c) 21:36, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Are you referring to my 60 back-to-back or the multi-thousand number above this section? d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 01:31, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

The ones in the thousands. – Train2104 (t • c) 05:19, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe it is all pages, but I'm not entirely sure. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 23:49, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Extraneous stuff: If the backlog contains pages that are not articles in mainspace, why did the backlog suddenly being to grow rapidly in June 2016? Why was there a lull from November through mid February, and why is it suddenly growing fast again The stats I post here occasionally do generate a lot of comment but still nobody appears to be actually doing anything about it. In any case, it's now time to stop asking these questions and plough ahead with a concrete solution, otherwise, with Wikipedia now in sharp decline anyway, there soon won't be an English Wikipedia worth wasting our time editing and trying to improve.

Backlog: 21,240. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:24, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog: 21,327. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:28, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog: 21,476. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:11, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog: 21,693. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:19, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog today: 22,003. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Backlog: 22,204. Primefac (talk) 03:25, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

OK, here is a concrete solution: Have bots do some of the patrolling. Here are some reviewing tasks that could be handed over bots, or at least assisted by bots:

• Move unreferenced articles more that 10 days old to draft space.
• Check for copyright violations and mark them for deletion.
• Find G4 candidates and nominate for deletion.
• Automatically review articles that have at least one tag and have been edited by at least three extended autoconfirmed editors.
• Triage articles into categories (low, medium, high risk of being undesirable). This could be done by evaluating the number of editors of an article, number of other articles edited by the article creator, article title appearance in Google search, etc.
• Many more such rule sets could be defined to automate a significant portion of the the NPP queue.

Personally, I'm getting burnt out being a reviewer and seeing the queue continue to grow. If the community and WMF will not support a bolder approach to handling the net increasing influx of garbage articles, and instead continues to repeat the new editor retention canard and make other excuses, then I suspect other reviewers will give up as well.- MrX 16:54, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

MrX I don't know the technical aspects about how bots are made and operate, so If my ignorance is showing I'm sorry: I think that while the bot may cut down on some growth, human NPPers will still have to go cleaning up after them. I have worked in the shadow of ClueBotNG, and am in awe of the way it operates, but I have seen it make false positive, and fail to pick up vandalism.

For instance, I don't understand how you would make a bot to detect copy vios. It could operate the same way we do, copy/paste suspicious text into Google, but that isn't foolproof against slight changes and the fact there are a finite numbers of ways to right something. It would be highly annoying if dozens of good articles were yanked/flagged because 8 words strung together happened to find a match on some other page out on the web. The parameters would have to be defined sharply enough to leave good pages alone, but not so sharply it could onyl detect the most blatant (>90% of article exactly matches word for word no breaks another website, e.g).

G4. I would prefer they get flagged for human review, as sometimes articles are deleted for other reasons beside notability, and can stand to be legitamtley recreated. Also, salting takes care fo the most egregious cases. I would like there to be a CSD criteria for previously deleted article by CSD, it is annoying beyond belief to have a poor article's CSD declined because it doesn't align exactly witht he criteria, even though it has been deleted multiple times in the past. The other problem si us ordinary users can't view past deleted articles, so we and the bot have no idea how bad the previous versions were, and whether that should reflect on the new article. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 02:17, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

We used to have a bot that automatically checked for copyvio. It's actually quite easy. I don't know why it no longer operates. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:20, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Kudpung: We now have a website called CopyPatrol which shows possible copyright violations. Unlike CorenSearchBot, it checks all edits, not just new pages. —MRD2014 📞 contribs 14:36, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@L3X1: As Kudpung wrote, we had a bot (CorenSearchBot) that would check for copyvios, and my recollection was that it was very effective. I have no idea why it is not operating now. Perhaps because Coren has been inactive for about a year. Bots are fallible just like humans, but I would rather see a few false positives than have copyright violations remain in articles indefinitely. I guess I have an opposite view of G4. If the material is substantially similar (including sources) to material in an article that was previously deleted at AfD, then it should be deleted again. I imagine that a CorenSearchBot with admin rights could manage that. There is a bot that tags recreated articles on their talk pages, but it tends to lag and seems to miss some.- MrX 15:58, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@L3X1 and MrX:, I don't actually know when Coren stopped working - it's one of those things which one doesn't notice until it's mentioned, but, yes, it was indeed very effective. AFAIK, none of the even regular NPPers check each new article for copvio; I do sometimes but only when a page appears to be an obvious candidate for the additional control.

CopyPatrol is a very important development (incidentally with striking similarities to the New Pages Feed interface), but it's aimed at Recent Changes. I believe new page patrolling to be an equally important priority, if not more so because it concerns retaining good faith new, new article creators. CopyPatrol was developed in excellent collaboration± with some of our top admins and editors which is the way the most new software should be developed, but it is still being used only by the same 13 volunteer co-developers/testers and it is not widely known about (one of them, I can't remember who) developed a useful .js that all NPPers should know about.

In contrast, we have over 400 authorised New Page Reviewers and it still remains an absolute mystery why between them they are unable to reduce this 20,000 backlog. WE asked for 90 days before articles became indexed for Google, but now even this is not enough and some inappropriate articles and other junk is now leaking into the Internet at large which defies the WMF's grand aim of having a perfectly reliable encyclopedia by 2030. Now if that same team could focus their attention on NPP and do a similar job of working on the required upgrades to the New Pages Feed and the Curation dashboard, we might get more people interested in using it instead of Twinkle. Among other things, we would then get back the urgently need leaderboard (which was taken off) and some data resources (which we don't have) to provide stats and follow up. FYI: @Calliopejen, Crow, Diannaa, Doc James, EdJohnston, EdJohnston, MER-C, MRD2014, Sam Sailor, TonyBallioni, Sphilbrick, Bluerasberry, DannyH (WMF), and MusikAnimal (WMF): Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:01, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Copypatrol includes new pages. MER-C 02:34, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks User:MER-C was about to say the same thing. I guess the question is can we integrate copypatrol and NPP better? What we need to do is increase the size of the community tech team so they can help address more of the major issues facing our projects. Would be good to mention this in the strategy process. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:08, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, NPP was what led me to get involved with Copypatrol. If anyone else was familiar with the EJustice issue, you can basically see my views on plagiarism on their talk page. Its bad writing that most people with a university degree should be able to pick out the second they read an article, and with tools like Copypatrol and Earwig, it becomes very easy to deal with (except for those of use without the bit who have to manually transclude Template:copyvio-revdel, which is a pain.) TL;DR: I wish more people at NPP would use common sense here, and help with copyvio. If something doesn't sound like it is written in the voice of Wikipedia, just put it through Earwing and do a Google search of the worst writing in the article. Odds are, it was lifted from somewhere. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:20, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Glad to hear NPP is sending people to CopyPatrol! :) The technology behind CopyPatrol should make it easy to create a bot to tag the pages with copyright issues just as CorenSearchBot did. For this I've created phab:T165951. We have the data to not only check new pages but every edit. Does it make sense to tag pages after any edit that has a strong chance as being a copyright violation, or should we just do new pages? MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 09:53, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

The problem is, MA, that NPP is NOT sending people to CopyPatrol. Outside the Developer/tester group nobody is using it and few people have even heard of it. In fact for a New Page Reviewer to use it would double their work load. It's actually easier and quicker to paste a snippet from a suspect text into Google, and as previously mentioned, most new page patrollers, particularly the unlicenced ones, won't bother to do that anyway. COPYVIO will never be addressed from the New Page Review queue until CopyPatrol actually tags new articles as Coren used to, or at least shows an alert in th New Pages Feed alongside the other red alerts. It should be a clickable red link that sends the patroller to the entry in the CopyPatrol list for further action. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:07, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

The Copypatrol workload is being dealt with promptly and daily by a small cadre of editors. There is essentially no backlog; items reported yesterday will be cleared today. You can see who is working on this task by looking at the Leaderboard. Coren no longer edits, and his bot became redundant, since Copypatrol checks both new articles and all added text over a certain size threshold. It's still important for new page patrollers to check for copyvio as the bot will not catch everything. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 13:00, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree it seems CopyPatrol users are more or less keeping up with the backlog and catching many things NPPs are not. So I suppose we need not worry about sending more people to CopyPatrol. That being said, is it at all worthwhile to create a bot to tag pages, that goes off of CopyPatrol data? After all, Dianna will be there to take care of it before too long :) MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 13:27, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

A bot tagging the pages would be redundant as the items are being inspected already in a timely fashion via the copypatrol system. However I do think we need a few more experienced helpers there, as some days I am the only one, which makes for a very long day! — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 13:46, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

The advantage of a bot or closer integration between copypatrol and page curation (red text like we have now for orphans, citations, etc.) is not necessarily helping out with Copypatrol (though I'm sure Diannaa would appreciate it.) The advantage I see would be that it would get more NPP eyes on bad article quicker. Even if something is fine from a copyright point of view, a lot of the false positives you get on new pages are unacceptable for the encyclopedia in other ways, or are just plain bad writing. Basically, my view is that false positives on Copypatrol are often a red flag for other issues. Highlighting them would put more eyes on them more quickly. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:02, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

 Comment: I agree with L3X1. If not all, (non-article) pages created by extended confirmed users should be excluded. —usernamekiran(talk) 14:44, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree we need more autopatrolled users. APAT says A suggested standard is the prior creation of 25 valid articles, not including redirects or disambiguation pages. But how would we encourage people to apply to become autpatrolled? d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 15:39, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Nominate them yourself. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:41, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

No. I came across one APAT user in the long past, and one in the recent past. The recent one has created 100+ articles. More than half of them have notability issues, and should be deleted/merged. But somehow his articles went unnoticed even before he became an APAT. Instead of more APAT users, we need more reviewers. And like Tony said, one should nominate good candidates. —usernamekiran(talk) 15:58, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

TonyBallioni Do you know of any log, leaderboard, or WMFtoolslab where I can see the top current article creators? d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 17:18, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

@L3X1: See Wikipedia:Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege. We are going to work to improve the report by looking at statistics other than just raw article count, in an effort to surface users who are more likely eligible to be autopatrolled. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal (WMF): that's so great to hear, it'd incredibly useful to have a version that incorporated some more variables beyond articles created (perhaps, articles deleted; whether the user is active; history of blocks; or other factors). Question in the meantime: do you know if it's possible to have the bot run an updated report in current form? I saw last week that it tried to run but just blanked the page; and I had also seen a discussion on a talk page (I now can't recall where) that maybe it's getting automatically cancelled because it takes more than three hours to run, but if it were possible, it'd be great to have a current version even of this more basic list--AFAICT, the last report is from March 30 and at this point quite a few of the folks listed as "eligible" actually now have autopatrol, so it'd be so useful to have a refreshed list of those who don't yet. Understood if that's not technically feasible right now tho! Innisfree987 (talk) 03:50, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

@Innisfree987: Behold, the new and improved report! Let us know what you think at Wikipedia talk:Database reports#Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

• I think we need more gnomes in general, and admins, or admin-gnomes in these areas. Apart from the general NPP tasks, the copy patrol part is time consuming on the research, then when action is required (revdel, histmerge, or outright G12), that goes into the admin to-do-queue. As Doc James alluded to, I can think of a couple of tech gadgets that would speed up CV patrol, such as a tool link to automatically front-end the current page into Earwig in a new browser tab. (I do that manually now and usually get FireFox warning that any new tabs will slow down my experience, but I digress...), or a tweak to the NPP browser that lets you focus on a specific namespace (for the User page example above). Regarding the OP, I would not want to automatically mark user sub pages without eyes on them, as there is/was a rather Beansy reason for this, at least last year (may have been fixed by now). Just my ramblings... Crow^Caw 18:06, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that user subpages should not be automatically patrolled -- just have a look at my deletion log. MER-C 07:14, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I never thought much about user pages and sub pages until it was mentioned yesterday so I selected user pages in the Curation filter and had a look. Among the first 20 or so, so many were so bad I summarily deleted about 5 of them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:56, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

• I care about this issue but do not have so much time to address it. Here is where I am:

1. I just reviewed 10 new article drafts. I passed some and declined others, and wrote some comments. It took me about 20 minutes. I can commit to do at least this much every week for the next few months.
2. I read these discussions from time to time and am aware of a range of issues about articles for creation. If I had to summarize all the problems, I would say that there is a lack of leadership here. Despite the long-term guidance of some of Wikipedia's most practical and insightful policy makers in this space, there is a need for some paid-staff research in this space to ever sort through the 3-5 major challenges and the 15-20 smaller challenges which are inherent in the infrastructure of this review process. The kind of leadership required is someone to do the complicated task of listing all problems, getting opinions about the consequences of what will happen if the situation does not change, and cornering some of the high-profile decision-makers (especially key WMF staff) to either grant some of their special powers to help address what is happening here or otherwise divest their power to community volunteers to resolve the problem in a sensible way. It is not sustainable to continue the same behavior and expect different results in the future, which is the current plan.
3. The fundamental problem here is that for various reasons, volunteer reviewers' time is being wasted because of a combination of inadequate software, the fact that this process repeatedly puts volunteers into stressful social situations without providing them with the canned text extricate themselves from customer service to send implacable complainers on to somewhere else, and some wiki community isolation here in which volunteers lose time for sadness because despite the value of their contributions being here has a way of feeling thankless in the broader wiki community despite everyone depending on this service. I think that volunteer labor can address this process but some infrastructure development is necessary to leverage more impact from volunteer contributions. Lots of people here can name wanted infrastructure.
4. I think that this project has the reputation of the Wikimedia movement hostage. If this project gets out of control, then it could get negative media attention. When negative media attention happens, then whatever else the WMF is doing gets derailed and at great cost and in a scramble the problem has to get emergency patching. There are some fundamental values conflicts brewing here right now, like for example, there have been previous conflicts in which the community has proposed "no article creation by new users" or similar things. While there was WMF opposition to the community implementing these kinds of brand and policy changes, that kind of change is organically happening now as a consequence of the impossible backlog which is being created and which volunteers are not going to be able to address without drastic changes to the review process one way or another.
5. This is serious! It is beyond my capacity to do much here but I see what is happening and I feel that tensions are only rising. The most that I can do at this time is be aware and also review a little a week - perhaps 10 articles - because actually, 10/week is more than this community should expect out of anyone and ought to be a good standard of ideal participation. With the rising participation and current backlog, it is not feasible to expect that even high growth in participation by people who are great reviewers will keep this backlog in check.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I work on the WMF's Analytics team and want to add a couple of things to this discussion as a noobie volunteer / WMF employee. First, I'm reading up on what's required to help patrol new pages. I know one more noobie isn't going to fix the problem but I hope it will help. Second, we at the WMF take this very seriously. Toby Negrin (TNegrin, head of Product at WMF) and others have already replied and showed this but I just want to echo and amplify it. For this immediate problem, we have over a dozen people working on the report TNegrin mentioned. Long term, we have at least three teams I'm aware of thinking about the various community backlogs: measuring them better, making them into first class things that we can all have a discussion about, and in general giving them prominence like having them feature on stats.wikimedia.org. From my point of view on the Analytics team we have built dashboards and datasets that help answer questions about readers and editing but have not given backlogs of tools like NPP the attention they need. This became obvious to us over the past six months and we're making plans to address it. Milimetric (talk) 10:17, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Blueraspberry and anyone else who is interested in the meta parts of new pages patrol and moving it and AfC forward you might want to add yourself to this mailing list/project: Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC/Work group list. I plan on starting a conversation there next week about how to move forward with previously discussed reforms here, and being on that list will make sure you're kept aware of anything that is going on with that. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:58, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

A couple comments. 1) Am I supposed to just tell people on their talk page that they are eligible for APAT or am I supposed to go over and add their name to the request list? Currently, I have only written one editor on his TP. 2) I don't think banning new users from creating pages is a good idea. To me it sounds too much like the stamp-out-IP-to-solve-all-our-ills that surfaces from time to time. NPP exists to patrol New Pages. d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 00:29, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

1) Just nominate them for autopatrolled at PERM yourself. . 2) IPs currently can't create pages and haven't been able to since 2006. The question moving forward is about whether page creation should be restricted to autoconfirmed users, which there was conensus for in 2011. The other pages in the work group linked above give more background. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:51, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikimedia Strategy 2017

In case anybody missed the watchlist notifications, discussion is currently ongoing for the 2030 strategic plan. Comments can be made on Wik or via a Google Doc survey. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:04, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, they should start paying us. :) d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 15:20, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Now that will be a good strategy! Call me in when It's being discussed ;) Yashovardhan (talk) 16:36, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Reviewed by sysops but not marked as reviewed

Example: Cybereason - article was tagged by a sysop but it's still shows up in the NPR feed as not reviewed. I've come across MANY like this - tagged, but not shown as reviewed. Why are we duplicating this work? ^{Atsme📞📧} 15:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

See the discussion above at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers#Backlog 21,240. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:29, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

ONUnicorn, I actually have read that discussion but it's possible that I simply overlooked the suggested resolution. Are all sysops automatically NPRs who can use the curation tool? If not, can that be changed? ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe all admins can mark pages patrolled, the point in the above discussion was that many people aren't making them patrolled, often intentionally. (Although if you've done what you can with it you should mark it patrolled.) Sometimes it's because they don't realize that if it's tagged for deletion it won't be indexed. Sometimes they are concerned about people removing the tags. Sometimes they want someone else to look at it. Sometimes they are manually tagging or using Twinkle or something other than the page curation toolbar and they just don't think of it. I think the biggest misunderstanding is that people think patrolled=approved, and it doesn't. But they act like it does.~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 02:24, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• It pays to read the previous threads:

Strictly speaking, 'patrolled' means that an article has been reviewed by an accredited reviewer irrespective if it is to be kept or deleted. Hence articles that have been marked for deletion have been patrolled. The confusion is the belief that the word 'patrolled' means 'accepted' and the NO_INDEX tag has been removed, which in the case of articles marked for deletion is not the case, the NO_INDEX tag remains intact. Only accredited reviewers can mark pages as 'patrolled'. The quality of reviewing by non-accredited 'patrollers' still leaves a lot to be desired. Although I am trying really hard to distance myself from all things 'New Page Patrol' except for patrolling new pages myself, I have had to ask at least half a dozen new users this week to refrain from tagging new pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 9:23 am, 13 May 2017, last Saturday (6 days ago) (UTC+7)

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Ahhh...finally something that pays...per thread or hourly? Please be patient with me, Kudpung - I'm a work in progress. I'm sure the answer to my question is yelling at me in one of the threads you think I haven't read but it has eluded me, or perhaps it simply surpassed my critical thinking skills, and you can rest assured that I'm extremely critical of my thinking. What I'm not quite grasping is still: "Why are we duplicating this work?" Isn't there some way we can reduce duplicate efforts? For example, if a sysop has already reviewed a new page to the extent they tagged it as needing additional RS or categories or copy editing, etc., (which basically tells us it's not a delete candidate or the sysop would have tagged it for same), why does it remain in the NPR feed as not reviewed? If we also have to play the role of reviewers/copyeditors/researchers, we'll never reduce the backlog. If a sysop has the time to review new articles and can see where it needs improvement, why not have the sysop just move the article to draft space, or take the time necessary to fix it? I may be mistaken, but it sure appears to be wasted effort when a sysop reviews new articles and leaves the bulk of the work load for the NPR editor.^{Atsme📞📧} 20:29, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

The work is not being duplicated, Atsme; 400+ reviewers should be more than enough to reduce the backlog and keep it down. What is being duplicated is the patrolling by newbies and other inexperienced users that the community insisted on allowng to tag pages. They can't mark them as patrolled though and they are the ones who are creating extra work for everyone by getting it wrong by biting new users and not tagging for deletion properly. Generally, admins don't review new pages except the ones that are marked for deletion. I and DGG are among the few exceptions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:55, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah hah!! Now I get it. Thanks, Kudpung.  Self-whale... for when a trout just isn't enough - when a trout just isn’t enough. ^{Atsme📞📧} 17:04, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Keyboard Shortcuts

I use page curation (except for CSD nominations) but it would be nice if there were wiki-shortcuts for Accept and Advance-the-queue. Clicking the same 2 buttons over and over a dozen times of minute is not conducive to happiness while Patrolling or duration. Does anyone know how to implement this? d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 02:44, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Questions about marking pages as reviewed

Hello there.

I am a new NPR, and have read the entire tutorial and most sections in this project but I have five questions regarding the requirements of marking pages as reviewed. I understand that pages marked as reviewed would be released to search engines.

(1) What do you actually check on a page before marking it as reviewed?
(2) Do you simply check for the four main issues (like attack pages, blatant hoaxes, COI/promo and copyvio) or is there anything else?
(3) Is it a requirement for NPRs to see if the page is properly sourced?
(4) Would you mark the following pages as reviewed: Uncategorized pages, short pages, pages with minor grammatical/spelling errors and pages with no references?
(5) When you find errors on the page, do you fix them yourself before marking as reviewed?

Thanks. - TheMagnificentist 17:13, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Here is how I do it, TheMagnificentist: in addition to the 4 mains, I check to see if it is encyclopedic (as opposed to being written like an essay). (3) When I read through the page, I tend to get an idea whether or not it needs more sources. The page curation bar has a tagging function that allows patrollers to tag an article as being unsourced, needing more citations, or needing inline citations. (4 & 5) When you use a tag through the page curation toolbar, it will automatically tag accept that article under the assumption that once the problems which were identified through taggings are fixed, the article will be OK. For stubs, there exists Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types which is an advanced form of stub sorting, rather than just tag bombing. Per WP:DIY I do fix some of the problems I identify (the essay exaggerates a bit). Soemtimes I feel that tagging and let the "experts" take care of the results (Copy Editor's Guild, category gurus, people who have skills and enjoy finding citations, etc) rather than trying to fix everything yourself. There is no policy saying we can't fix problems, how often or how much I fix is dependent on how much time I have and whether I know what I am doing. Hope this helps, d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 18:55, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh, how about marking the articles you tagged as reviewed? - TheMagnificentist 19:20, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Thats alright for the most part. The are very few cases when I un-accept a tagged article and leave it for someone else, mostly because it is either under construction or I am unsure of something. There was a typo in my previous comment. d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 23:47, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

TheMagnificentist Yes. Once you have reviewed the article, mark it as reviewed. If you have nominated it for deletion it will not be indexed by search engines as the deletion tags all include a noindex tag. If you have tagged glaring problems like a lack of references and fixed what issues you can, but do not believe the article warrants deletion, then mark it as reviewed. Marking it as reviewed does not mean the article is perfect, or even "accepted". It simply means that at least one competent person has looked at this and marked or fixed any issues they saw with it. I also recommend working from the back or middle of the que; those articles are older, have fewer problems, and the page creator is less likely to immediately remove any deletion or clean up tags. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:47, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Automatically patrolled pages marked as reviewed?

Hi all, a mystery and a couple related queries I'd love some help with, as I've failed to turn up the answers in searching the instructions:

The mystery concerns pages like this one that have the green "reviewed" check mark in the page curation toolbar, but in the page's logs, no one is listed as having reviewed it. It does, however, list me as having patrolled the page (I think because I tagged it via Twinkle--I thought I'd adjusted my Twinkle settings so it wouldn't automatically mark pages as patrolled but evidently I didn't do so properly; I've fixed that now.) Does this mean it got marked reviewed because I tagged it? Should I unreview it? I'd purposefully used Twinkle for the cleanup tag so it wouldn't be marked reviewed--wanted a second set of eyes--and indeed it doesn't show up in my page curation log (just my patrol log), but I'm not sure how else to account for its being reviewed. For another example, see also Tremédica--I did go ahead and unreview that, but again, there's no log of anyone marking it reviewed in the first place.

Related questions--I actually don't know how to unpatrol those pages that I didn't mean to indicate as patrolled. I'm wondering how to do this--but also whether I need to? (I'm not sure what processes are still affected by pages being marked patrolled, at this point.) Additionally: I used to see the "mark this page as patrolled" button on some pages but don't anymore--was it phased out with the introduction of NPR or is it just a setting I've switched off accidentally?

Thanks so much for any advice. Innisfree987 (talk) 19:52, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

To answer your second question, Innisfree987, if you see the green check mark, just un-check it! It asks if you really want to unpatrol the page, and obviously you would click "yes". Primefac (talk) 11:35, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Primefac, that's clarifying because maybe what I'm asking at this point is--at this point, what's the relationship or difference between marking something reviewed (or unreviewed) and marking it patrolled/unpatrolled (if latter's possible)? Indeed I can uncheck and one bit that seems clear at this point: if there's no other reviewer in the log, then it's safe to assume it was reviewed green because of settings on my account and I don't need to worry I'm undoing someone else's work. Maybe I'm needlessly complicating things with these questions--I just want to make sure I'm not inadvertently taking something out of one queue or another when I don't mean to. But maybe a reason to pin down the answer to this is--are there potentially a lot of NPR reviewers out there in my same position, thinking tagging something via Twinkle means it stays in the NPR queue for another set of eyes, when in fact it's triggering an automatic check off as patrolled and reviewed? Maybe it'd be preferable not to have that be default setting? Innisfree987 (talk) 21:12, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

@Innisfree987: Marking a page as "patrolled" is the same thing as marking it as "reviewed" (from the software's point of view). "Patrol" is just the older terminology. You are correct that Twinkle can mark pages as patrolled/reviewed if it is configured to do so. You can always change how this is configured in your Twinkle settings or you can manually "unreview" a page via the Curation Toolbar (by clicking on the green checkbox). I'm curious though, why you would want to unreview articles that you have already looked at and tagged. It seems that a large percentage of reviewers are now reviewing articles, but not marking them as reviewed, which is why we have such a large backlog. Could you help me understand why that is the case? For example, in the case of Tim Hague (broadcaster) why do you want to keep it in the backlog? Do you feel like it's a borderline notability case that you want a second opinion on whether or not to nominate it for deletion or is there another reason? Kaldari (talk) 23:39, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Kaldari, thanks so much for clarifying about the software--so something winding up marked patrol has no other effect, if I've changed the Twinkle settings? Meanwhile that's a really good question vis-a-vis the backlog. Yes, looking back at some examples, it's largely instances where the sourcing in the entry seemed inadequate, but it didn't obviously (to me at least) qualify for a speedy criteria and I wasn't certain enough of the notability case to nominate for AfD, so I just flagged my concerns and left for someone who knows the subject matter better than I (or has more time/inclination/resources/language skills to conduct BEFORE thoroughly on them). Some other examples (and if you have any feedback on how to handle any of them differently, I'd be grateful for the guidance!): Richard Foster Baker, The Key (2001 book), David Freeman (journalist), Lewis Summers (Virginian), Tremédica, Robert P. Black, Hugh de Montfort, Lord of Montfort-sur-Risle. For what it's worth, this does not represent the majority of my reviewing--since I got the flag two months ago, my rough count is tagged-but-not-reviewed are about a quarter of the 120 or so pages I've read in the NPR capacity--but I don't know how typical or not I am. Would be interesting to hear from others. Innisfree987 (talk) 00:57, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Update from the WMF

Moved from Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol

 – TonyBallioni (talk) 18:23, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I wanted to give a heads-up on some work the Foundation has been doing on this issue. A bunch of us got together at the Vienna hackathon and started working on some data collection and analysis around the issue of the growing NPP backlog, particularly around the potential effectiveness of the proposal to limit page creation to auto-confirmed users.

We should have a report early next week with this and other data, along with some analysis and potential next steps. We are looking forward to getting your feedback on this and identifying ways the WMF can support the community here. TNegrin (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

TNegrin (WMF) is there a link where we should provide feedback? ^{Atsme📞📧} 18:53, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I think he means feedback on the report, which isn't published yet. BTW, we also did some NPP hacking at the hackathon. Here are some of the things we accomplished:

• You can now get a list of the top reviewers for the past day, week, or month from the API (so you don't have to scour the logs for this).
• Fixed T165891 - Special:NewPagesFeed shows users as blocked that aren't currently blocked
• Fixed T165738 - Number of pages in filtered list is not updated
• Fixed T44254 - List filters keep getting reset

Kaldari (talk) 19:38, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, they just reverted all the Wikipedias to the previous version, so none of the above changes are live anymore. They should be live again tomorrow. Kaldari (talk) 20:47, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Very happy to see the WMF working on NPP! Winner 42 Talk to me! 20:54, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes thank you on all of the above! Innisfree987 (talk) 21:11, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Sadly, they are delaying the new software roll-out until next week, probably Thursday :( Kaldari (talk) 00:15, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

• First off before I grump: Thanks!! Now, particularly around the potential effectiveness of the proposal to limit page creation to auto-confirmed users. So no user pages or sandboxes allowed until autoconfirmed? I fail to see what good that particular policy will do. I sincerely doubt that new users will spend 4 days reading up the MOS, RS, and BLP. d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 01:53, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

First off, L3X1, if you were to read up on the background before jumping to conclusions, you would be aware that ACTRIAL concerns only mainspace. Thank you. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me to ACTRIAL, I will read up on it and previous conversations on this page tomorrow. Above noob-ness struck. d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 02:28, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

L3: here is my explanation for the need during the WMF strategic planning process. That being said, I don't really think that this is the right thread to be discussing the merits of ACTRIAL (there are at least three other threads on this page alone where it can be done.) The WMF is responding to a proposal a very significant portion of the community wants and engaging with us about it. We should be thankful to them for that, wait to see what they have for us, and then move forward with the conversation after they present us with their report. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:26, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

New, unreviewed pages pages are now being indexed by Google again

Resolved

• New, unreviewed pages pages are now being indexed by Google again (e.g. London Swing Orchestra). Perhaps Kaldari can shed some light on this - or maybe there's something I missed? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:15, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
  • @Kudpung: I checked that page and it currently has noindex set in the source code. When I search Google for "London Swing Orchestra", it doesn't show up in the results as far as I can tell. Did someone report that it was getting indexed in Google? Kaldari (talk) 02:25, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Kaldari, my most humble apologies. When I Googled it I was sure I had seen a Wikipedia entry for it. I was wrong. After 6 years of trying to get NPP and New User issues improve without success, perhaps I'm getting paranoid about it. Especially since by some odd coincidence in February the backlog rose dramatically again when I stepped back from promoting changes and improvements to the system. All I basically do nowadays is spend up to 5 hours a day reviewing pages myself - and even that is not reflected in my Page Curation log because once at New Pages Feed, most of my time is taken up by the physical deletion of the 80% or so of 'articles' created by new users (a couple of things for TNegrin (WMF) to look at. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:49, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

No worries! Glad it isn't broken. Kaldari (talk) 03:03, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari and Kudpung: But wouldnt these "articles" be indexed after a particular time? 90 days from creation? —usernamekiran(talk) 03:43, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Usernamekiran, and that's what Kaldari and I decided on at the time, stupidly thinking that it would be more than long enough for 400+ reviewers to cope with, so it's my fault if now it's not long enough. As I've said many times, if everyone who asked for the reviewer right were to do just 50 reviews, the backlog would be gone in a flash, but for some reason, it ain't happening.

NPP has always been problematic, that's why the community reached a massive consensus several years ago to restrict the creation of articles in mainspace to autoconfirmed users (but was never enacted). Perhaps the jump from RC or Vandal Patroller to NPP is too intellectual. Most of the easier maintenance work appears to attract new, younger, and/or inexperienced users; there's nothing much we can do about that except make new user rights as we did for page patrolling, but the quality has not improved and the backlog is still growing a the same previous alarming rate.

I hope TNegrin (WMF) will come up with some answers, but most of us feel that the time has come, indeed long overdue, to trust the empirical findings of those who do the work and know best, and now make some physical changes very quickly such as rolling out WP:ACTRIAL. No one has ever summarised the situation so well and so accurately as Blue Rasberry in his recent post above. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:53, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Yes, I saw that issue on an admin's talkpage (it was through newsletter), if a patroller handled ~55 pages, the entire backlog would be cleared. And yes, I agree with you on vandalism attracting a lot of users cuz it seems to be easy. "Find (blatant) vandalism, revert it, leave a notice on vandal's talkpage". It is easy to increase the edit counter as well. There are lots of users who care about edit count. Most of these "vadalism fighters" dont even bother when it is not blatant. Taking care of sneaky vandalism, and poor/needy edits is a far away thing.

Then there is patrolling. Like you said, it is an intellectual task. It needs a very good deal of familiarity with wiki policies, patience, and consistency. After the hard work, the edit counter increases just by 2 or 3 points. No wonder why new-regular users dont want to do that. I have been reading wiki policies since last two years, and honestly speaking, I still stay away from articles of living people.

And no, I must disagree with you on that one. I have been watching this talkpage since last 3-4 weeks, and you are not at fault. Not at all. You have been trying your best. Thats what counts. We are humans. You cant, no one can possibly handle reviewing more than 50 articles per day, if one wants to do it with quality. You have been trying to change policies, trying to negotiate with WMF, and other things. When i requested NPP a week ago or two, I realised i can not/should not work on more than 5 articles per day. Handling 5 random articles from the feilds that I have no knowledge and/or interest of, then corroborating it with sources, copyediting, including new sources if required, tagging for maintenance if needed. Five articles per day would be more than a lot for me, and i wouldnt be able to work on 6th article proficiently; at least in the first few days.

Instead of blaming oneself, or some organisation, we should come up with an efficient strategy to handle this issue. —usernamekiran(talk) 06:09, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words,Usernamekiran, but I just want to emphasise that I meant 50 patrolls in the whole time since we created the user right. To do 50 in one session would demoralise anyone and be an affront to their intelligence having to deal with the fire hose of unmitigated trash that gets created nowadays as more and more regions get connected and get used to the Internet and smart phones. Reviewers are not expected to corroborate new articles with sources, and copy edit them. They just need to tag for maintenance if needed and inform the creator, or tag accurately for deletion. There are of course a few minor edits that can (and should) be done on the fly, but NPPers are not here to make silk purses out of sows' ears. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:31, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

lol. I know what you meant by 50 pages per user Kudpung. I was giving an example to explain that you shouldnt blame yourself. And yes, I am also aware of NPR's responsibilities/obligations, but if i had the right, thats how I would have done it. (That was my primary reason to request for rollback, so that i could access Huggle, and STiki to weed out "needy" edits. But now that I've got it, all of my computers are still down "fighting" vandalism was a secondary reason) And with 5 pages per day, it would be around 150 articles per month. And if only 100 reviewers do that, it would be like 15,000 articles within a month. —usernamekiran(talk) 07:02, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Idea: Bot to accept tags when Sysops Indef?

User:EncontreLiz & User:Edit king2 are two of many clogging up the system: User pages that have a user has abused multiple accounts and is indeffed. A large portion of these pages were created by the tag-placer, rather than having their contents replaced with the tag. Would it be possible to build a bot or a script that will accept these type of pages? d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 18:42, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

How to view un-patrolled pages created 5 days ago?

Hello,
I recently got the user-right. Before getting it, I used to look at the new pages at Special:NewPagesFeed (or maybe from somewhere else, I am not sure about it). I used to select "5 days old". But after getting the right, there are only two filters regarding dates, being "oldest" and "newest". Is there any way to filter the results in such way that I would be able to review pages created 5 days ago or older? It is a wise policy to review such pages, as it gives enough time to creator and other editors enough time to work on the article. It doesnt seem right to add maintenance tags to the articles which might be still under work. 5 days seem to be appropriate time. —usernamekiran(talk) 07:14, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Any suggestions @L3X1 and Kudpung:? —usernamekiran(talk) 07:14, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

 Comment: Found it. Special:NewPages —usernamekiran(talk) 09:20, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: how ?? Sulaimandaud (talk) 09:08, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Sulaimandaud: there is an option at the top. —usernamekiran(talk) 15:53, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Usernamekiran: can you explain how to use the option and exactly where it is at the top, because I have the same problem I only have sort by oldest and newest. Domdeparis (talk) 15:57, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I get it! Use the special:newpages and not the feed? Domdeparis (talk) 16:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Domdeparis: Yes. The option is available in Special:NewPages. But there is one logical problem with this: newpages shows only the pages created recently, where as the feed shows pages that are not marked as patrolled. So both needs to be used alternatively. You know, like one day this, and next day that; or fee pages from this and few pages from another. —usernamekiran(talk) 16:12, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Given that the original intention was to patrol from 5+ days, the fact that Special:NewPages caps at 30 days is largely irrelevant. An good difference to keep in mind, though. Primefac (talk) 16:16, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

That said if you use the double arrow after having tagged a page as having been reviewed it seems to go to the next non-reviewed article in the queue so the Special:NewPages can be used to start reviewing and the curation bar to move on from there. Domdeparis (talk) 16:24, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Domdeparis: Yes, thats a good idea. Inwill try it next time to observe which pages are brought up next. @Primefac: Yes, there is an option to view pages that were created 15 days ago. But like you said, as it is capped at 30 days, the 15 days is the last filter.

Tagging fairly new pages feels a little harsh/unjustified, and like tag-bombing even if they are just two tags. Doing it after 5 days, or later seems rational. But to chip away the backlog, both the feeds must be used. We really need experienced users to take this responsibility. I have invited two users so far, one of them was granted the user-right, the other one hasnt requested it yet. —usernamekiran(talk) 16:36, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: I tried it with a dozen pages and each was unreviewed and created a few minutes after the one before so it seems to work. Domdeparis (talk) 16:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Domdeparis: I did not understand "each was unreviewed and created a few minutes after the one before so it seems to work." :-| —usernamekiran(talk) 17:31, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

sorry not very clear ! I meant that each page that I came across was an unreviewed page and they followed each other chronologically. So when I was on page 1 created at say 10:05 it did not have the green tick and when I clicked on the double arrow button page 2 came up which was also unreviewed and had been created the same day at 10:07 and so on and so onDomdeparis (talk) 21:16, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Google referencing of unreviewed pages

Hi I had an interesting discussion with @Kudpung: who explained to me that unreviewed pages or rather pages that have not been ticked on the curation bar were not indexed by Google. I just started reviewing Okandé which was a translation of the French version Okandé. When created the article already had the tag {{Unreferenced|date=September 2012}} which seems to have been translated with the article. I thought I'd carry out a search and the okandé page in WP was the first result. here. What I don't understand is how that could be. I thought that maybe it was because someone had carried out edits and inadvertently unticked the box after referencing by Google. To see if this was the case I tried another unreviewed article Robert Savković that had 1 single edit on it that of the article creator who by the way does not have reviewer rights. When I carried out a search it popped up in first place here (I checked on my smartphone too to see if it wasn't the cache on my navigator that caused this and same result). Is there something I am missing? Domdeparis (talk) 13:28, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Did you notice, Domdeparis, that both of those articles were created on 21 December ? That said, the instructions recommend that we report bugs here, but since I no longer take care of NPP/NPR, nobody appears to be answering there or coordinating with the developers. The page header there recommends reporting issues directly to Phab, but pinging Kaldari might just get you a short cut to attention. If it's something he can fix he probably will. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:57, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I did notice that as I am working through the backlog from the back forwards but to be honest I didn't know if it was a bug or something I had missed. Thanks for your help. Domdeparis (talk) 14:13, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Domdeparis: I also noticed something. Bheemavaram, Khammam district was created by a bot years ago as Bheemavaram. It showed up in feed. After marking it as patrolled, it did not show up in my log. There were at lest 10 articles that were created years ago, I marked them as patrolled but they never showed up in my log. A little similar issue has been discussed above. @Kudpung: You no longer take care of NPP/R?! —usernamekiran(talk) 16:05, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I haven't been taking care of NPP/NPR or assisting with development since I resigned (very loudly)a few months ago from my self-assumed task as its coordinator over the last 6 years. However, each time I am pinged, I feel a moral obligation to respond. You won't have read about it in Signpost because that closed down too around the same time, coincidentally also the same time as the backlog began to rise dramatically again. Maybe there's a bell tolling a warning for Wikipedia - but as usual, people pretend they can't hear it. The other warning in red has been on my talk page for a year. There are a lot of cracks appearing in Wikipedia's walls. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:15, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I did not know that. And I agree with you regarding cracks appearing in the walls. Soon it might get out of control. —usernamekiran(talk) 16:28, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Domdeparis: NOINDEXing on English Wikipedia articles is explained at Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing#Indexing of articles ("mainspace"). Hope that helps clear up any confusion. Kaldari (talk) 19:22, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: thanks, it is now much clearer. Domdeparis (talk) 09:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

New autopatrolled eligibility report

Community Tech is pleased to announce we have a new and improved report on users who are eligible to be autopatrolled. Hopefully the added information can better help you identify users who are most suitable to get the flag, and hence lessen the burden on the backlog. A new report is generated daily. Feel free to leave us feedback here or at the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Database reports#Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege. Kind regards, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

It looks so much better and more useful than the previous report. Hopefully it'll run more reliably too. Thanks! Cabayi (talk) 19:53, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh wow. That's... actually really great. TimothyJosephWood 21:06, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

MusikAnimal (WMF), just from some random spot checking, I am seeing two accounts (out of four I checked) where it is reporting zero deleted articles despite the users having multiple articled deleted via PROD. (Read this not as a complaint, but as my making you aware) TonyBallioni (talk) 21:14, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Which accounts, if you don't mind sharing? Note also only deletions in the past year are counted MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal (WMF):Ah, that would be it. Out of bad habit I skipped straight to the footnote! The accounts I spot checked had no deletions in the past year. Sorry for any confusion. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:40, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Adding my kudos as well!! What a dramatic improvement, thank you SO much! TonyBallioni, to your question I'd guess what you're seeing (Ah edit conflict, I see MA has noted this as well) is that the "Deleted" column just shows the deletes for the past year, rather than all-time deletes--I noticed this as well and want to play around with it a bit to think about whether all-time deletes would be more useful, but in any case yes in no way a complaint from me either, this is a leaps-and-bounds improvement, and I'm very grateful for the work making this tool so much more useful. Thank you! Innisfree987 (talk) 21:29, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for the feedback, all! I wanted to point out that I've just added a "copyvios" column, that shows the number of possible user talk notices regarding copyright issues. This was something I did without discussion, but being an admin myself (MusikAnimal) I often find it tedious to check through the revision history for copyright warnings, which if present generally means they aren't ready to be autopatrolled. So hopefully this feature is welcomed and you also find it useful. Best, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Gosh, MusikAnimal (WMF), this tool really does make the process infinitely more efficient--I've done half a dozen in the last two days. It helps greatly to see who's even active, for starters, as well as block log right up front. Copyvio is a great addition. If you're still tinkering with it, I have a couple thoughts but so many thanks for this already-major upgrade!

1. I'm wondering about having a dedicated column on revocation versus just taking those who've had the right revoked out of the list of recommended candidates altogether? Not that they could never regain the right, but in the interests of generating a list that most efficiently identifies candidates likely to pass, as well as avoiding name-and-shaming where possible.
2. Along similar lines, I'm wondering if it's possible (or desirable?) to likewise remove candidates MusikBot would identify as having had a request declined in the last 90 days (just until the 90 days has passed)? Again not that they could never be accorded the right, but just in terms of generating a list of who'll likely pass now, and avoiding duplication of recently-performed work evaluating candidates.
3. I'm encountering quite a few accounts where the editor has no deletions in the past year, but it's mainly because they've only made one or two this year, while a large number of their prior contributions have been deleted. Possible to add an all-time deletions column?

In any event, big thumbs up once again from me. Report's great, and it's clear how useful it'll continue to be going forward, getting new lists of recently active editors. Innisfree987 (talk) 22:34, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

• It is very useful. —usernamekiran(talk) 21:45, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

WMF: New Pages Patrol Analysis and Proposal

Hi everyone, I've posted the report that Toby mentioned last week would be coming from the WMF. It's a collaborative report by several Foundation teams, including Community Tech, Editing, Reading, Research, Analytics and Community Engagement, looking at the current New Page Review backlog, and proposing some changes that we think would help reviewers handle the backlog in a sustainable way.

It's a long piece with a lot to cover, and I'm hoping that it kicks off some new discussions between the Foundation and the New Page Reviewers. We see new page patrolling as a really important job, and we want to help make it work better. While we were working on this proposal, we fixed some bugs and created the new database report that Kaldari and MusikAnimal mentioned above. We'd like to do more, in partnership with this team. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you. I've created a thread mentioning this report at Wikipedia talk:The future of NPP and AfC, alerting people who might watch that page but not this one of the reports existence. I also think that page might be a better place to have the followup conversation than here so as to keep this page focused on practical issues while giving the future and meta part of this project its own talk page. I wanted to raise the point to see what others think since we do have a project-space talk page devoted to the future of this endeavor. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at the talk page of the report, and I see that there are already a couple of new sections. I suppose WT:NPPAFC may be a better venue to keep the discussion centralized.- MrX 00:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

My thoughts were that the talk page of the report would be ideal for questions about the actual text and numbers, but that a project-space page other than the essay would be better for the "moving forward" bit. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:22, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Great, thank you both. I'm happy to have the conversation in whatever place(s) people want to talk -- I'll keep an eye on all of those places. :) DannyH (WMF) (talk) 00:37, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Would discussion at NPPAFC be a forum open to all comers? I had impression it was primarily intended as a narrowly-drawn working group. I think it'd be good to have this discussion broadly, and don't want to encroach on a space others set up with more specific purpose/parameters. Innisfree987 (talk) 01:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I think it'd be open there (all Wikipedia pages are), but WT:NPR (this page) is more visible. My main reason for thinking it'd be better to have the conversation in a project space other than the essay is because the conversation is going to evolve over time, and holding the larger on the talk page of a report that will become dated doesn't make much sense to me. I'm also open to any approach that works, just thought I would raise the question. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

• Innisfree987 one of the great things about Wikipedia is that it is collaborative and all its sub-projects welcome comments by other users even if the project has a small core of particularly active editors driving it forward.

Thus, here I assume this talk page to be the more general talk page for NPP/NPR, and any in-depth discussion about the development of the system would perhaps best be hosted at Wikipedia talk:The future of NPP and AfC which was created for that purpose. For one thing, it has lists of all the important previous discussions which people should visit if they want to be up to speed on the reasons why we created the NRR right in the first place, and why after years of silence, the community and the WMF are now finally taking the situation seriously. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Extension updates are now live

After a 1 week delay due to unrelated software issues, the aforementioned updates to the PageTriage extension are now live on English Wikipedia:

• You can now get a list of the top reviewers for the past day, week, or month from the API (so you don't have to scour the logs for this).
• Fixed T165891 - Special:NewPagesFeed shows users as blocked that aren't currently blocked
• Fixed T165738 - Number of pages in filtered list is not updated
• Fixed T44254 - List filters keep getting reset

Kaldari (talk) 20:04, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Kaldari. Is the page supposed to display a chart or code text? d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 21:13, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

All I see is code. I can understand it though. —usernamekiran(talk) 21:28, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

The API only provides JSON data. Perhaps someone could build a bot or Tool Labs tool to convert it into a regularly-updated table or chart. Kaldari (talk) 21:34, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

• This is excellent, Kaldari, thank you very much. The API provides the same information as a very valuable tool made by Scottywong (retired) which was never moved to Labs. It certainly needs a bot to keep it updated and something to display it nicely. It clearly reinforces some of the claims regarding the performance of the Reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:51, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

• @Timothyjosephwood: Half answer to your query is here. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:54, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari:--At the API sandbox; the last field for pagetriagestats--topreviewers displays Include the top 10 reviewers over the given timeframe.That should be prob. changed to--Include all the reviewers over the given timeframe.Cheers!Winged Blades ^Godric 16:14, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

JavaScript viewer available for stats & top reviewers

I spotted this thread in passing, and saw that it would be quite easy to convert the raw API into something a little more presentational, so threw together a quick script to do that. It's User:Murph9000/pagetriagestats-topreviewers.js. It's an early first release type script, works nicely enough for me, but no warranty, there might be the odd bug lurking. It probably isn't compatible with any version of MS-IE (but will probably work ok in MS Edge), as MS-IE's JS support was never up to date and I've probably used some newer stuff somewhere. Load it in your common.js using the following (or equivalent):

if ( mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Blankpage' ) {
	mw.loader.load( '/w/index.php?title=User:Murph9000/pagetriagestats-topreviewers.js&action=raw&content-type=text/javascript' );
}

Then visit Special:BlankPage via a special URL to run it:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlankPage?action=pagetriagestats&topreviewers=last-day
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlankPage?action=pagetriagestats&topreviewers=last-week
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlankPage?action=pagetriagestats&topreviewers=last-month

Output is live, although it suggests to the server and browser that the API data be cached for up to 5 minutes, to minimise server impact from frequent visits to the page. If you are not comfortable with JavaScript stuff, this might not be a good solution for you.

Murph9000 (talk) 19:45, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh.. yeah.. works great. [[File:Confused_dog_staring_at_computer.jpg|thumb]] TimothyJosephWood 19:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Spam bot creations?

I keep finding userpages like User:Mohamed kafi that follow a very specific formula. South Asian name with username being the first and second name. Then they make an edit to the userpage of First Middle Last name. These accounts never edit anywhere else that I've dound yet. I'm going to start collecting examples here and others can too. Legacypac (talk) 12:08, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac: erm... I did not understand you/your words. I mean, i didnt understand anything at all. Would you please elaborate? —usernamekiran(talk) 12:16, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

User:Harish Shahu User:Karan bhati777

I suspect new user pages are being created in large numbers automatically by a bot. I've started collecting examples here. Maybe if they all come from the same location that location can be blocked. Legacypac (talk) 12:23, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

lol. I had understood that much in first go. It can be a bot. I have come across such users too. But they never edited in a few months. In some cases, never edited at all. I am not sure if it is work of a bot, or if they are genuinely lazy users. I mean, if it was a bot it would have tried at least something, right? Either, advertising, or removal of content, or some sort disruptive editing. Harish Shahu, and Karan Bhati are legit names in India (first name, surname format). But these talkpages/userpages are edited in a very similar manner. In lots of cases, I have seen "name - location" format; similar to Karan Bhati - Nagpur. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:35, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Don't understand the benefit to someone setting a bot to make lots of userpages but then I don't understand the benefit to most vandalism. If some bot is auto creating bogus user accts that is vandelism. If it was humans we should see more random behavior. The odd test edit or whatever. Legacypac (talk) 17:28, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

When I am stamping user pages, I've noticed that some groups of users tend to think Wikipedia is some sort of Facebook or something, I never thought of it as being bot-work. d.g. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 19:16, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@L3X1: yup, I have seen a lot of inactive users who thought of wikipedia as a social networking site, when they realise other editors arent in that thing, they tend to give up.
@Legacypac: Not all the acts of vandalism are beyond understanding. —usernamekiran(talk) 19:49, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Hey that's an accurate but misguided post you linked!

A lot of the social media youtube etc link building is misguided but not useless for the spammer. Wikipedia is a powerful provider of link juice to your YouTube video. Legacypac (talk) 20:15, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac: I meant, that act of vandalism can be understood. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:45, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

For some articles; maintenance tag's date, and page creation date dont add up

Hi,
In some instances, I realised that these two dates differ. As in, maintenance tag's date precede the page creation date. In some cases I saw the difference in months, and in few cases the difference was 1-2 or even 3 years. These pages arent that old. In the history, there is no indication of being moved from draft-space, or being renamed. I am just puzzled by this issue. Anybody knows what is it about? Thanks. —usernamekiran(talk)(log) 19:51, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Usernamekiran, chances are someone copy/pasted the tag from another article, either the creator when they copied a "template" to work on, or a well-meaning newish editor who copied a tag from another page. You'd be surprised how often I see that sort of thing in the Draft space as well. Primefac (talk) 20:47, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: yes, that is possible. Also, I noticed there are lots of articles that had (appropriate) maintenance tags, but were not reviewed. I tried to find same users who "patrol" the new articles, but I never came across the tags put by same user. Do you think this would a good idea to find NPP/reviewers? What do you think @Kudpung: sir? —usernamekiran(talk) 21:05, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

A question from another user

One of my article Shakeel Ahmad Khan was reviewed by you, however it is doesn't show in google search. Is there any coding or indexing problem?
This was asked to me a few hours ago on my talkpage. As I didnt want to provide inaccurate info, I havent replied him yet.

Does anybody know the answer? Thanks. —usernamekiran(talk) 07:51, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Usernamekiran, we have no control over when or how fast Google indexes our pages. Generally new pages are indexed in a few hours, but I've seen it take almost a day. Primefac (talk) 13:02, 6 June 2017 (UTC)