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User:Looie496/Watchlist pinging

While strolling around Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coordination, I came across a see also link to this very interesting essay. This indeed sounds like a good way to allow patrollers to follow up on an article after some days. What's interesting is that this can be implemented as a user script (almost exactly the way it's described in the essay), following the same general architecture as another script I recently wrote – User:SD0001/T-Watch which lets you watch pages for a specific duration (check it out!).

So, are folks interested in this? I guess it would take me about 2 hours of work, which I can devote if there are at least 2 interested editors. SD0001 (talk) 19:04, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

SD0001, I would definitely be interested in this. You should be aware that the foundation is looking into time-limited watchlist entries but this would be useful in a very different way. I hope someone else joins me in expressing interest. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:18, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

SD0001, I'm not a patroller (I just watch the page) but I would find that functionality very useful. Right now, I either rely on the watchlist to track articles I should follow up on, or I add a "to do" link to my user page. Schazjmd (talk) 00:13, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I also would be interested. With over 7200 pages on my watchlist, most only need to be watched for a week or so. The Wikimedia project Barkeep49 mentions can be found HERE. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 00:16, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware. But then, this is the WMF. Who knows how many months or years it's going to take them before it's a reality? BTW, even IFried (WMF) checked out the T-Watch script. SD0001 (talk) 23:58, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes please, would be very useful. I've also been hoping that time-delimited watchlist entries would become available soon; until that finally rolls off the line, I'll have to check out your other script... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 01:11, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

This idea would be great if implemented. I would suggest highlighting the 'ping' in a different colour so it doesn't appear like any other item on the watchlist. Cheers, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 09:19, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

 Done see User:SD0001/W-Ping. Any feedback is welcome. Please report any bugs/issues if you find any. SD0001 (talk) 23:58, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

SD0001, talk about turn around time. I have just installed it and look forward to using it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:29, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

SD0001, any chance 1 day could get added to the quick do? I'm finding myself using it as a reminder to reply to something that I didn't have time/energy/or just wanted to contemplate to do when I first read it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:39, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

done. I should perhaps also make those buttons user-configurable. SD0001 (talk) 09:36, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Old Deletions

I recently reviewed an article that said "previously deleted" in the Page Curation tool. I wanted to find out why but could not find an old AfD nomination for the topic, so I assume the previous deletion was Speedy or PROD, but I do not know how to search for those. Is there a way to search for old Speedy Deletions and PROD's? Thanks. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 20:12, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Doomsdayer520, what's the article? Sometimes previously deleted can be triggered by revdels. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:13, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Funky Dee, for which I did a full AfD today. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 20:14, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Doomsdayer520, it was a A7 speedy. You can tell that by looking at the log, a link to which is on the top of the history page for the article. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:16, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, that log is what I was searching for in my original question. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 20:19, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Doomsdayer520, I use User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/deletionFinder.js for easy access to previous AfDs and other kinds of deletions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:19, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

NPP Source Guide progress report and next steps

For those of you who don't know, I and a few other editors have been compiling a source guide, primarily for NPP, which is over at WP:NPPSG. The purpose is to help combat systemic bias in NPP by providing baseline, consensus-backed reliability information about sources for all topics and geographic regions. The main differences between it and WP:RSP are that NPPSG is sorted by topic, and that it has a much lower bar for inclusion on the list.

I started out this project by first transcribing all of the RSP entries to the list, and then further expanding it by keeping tabs on RSN discussions as they are archived. However, this reliance on just monitoring RSN means that while there's still some useful information at NPPSG (and more importantly, useful information that would not belong at RSP), we're not closing our systemic-bias blindspots at anything faster than a glacial pace. Barkeep49 and I were tossing around some ideas for how to proceed here, but the crux of that discussion is that we should move to start having regular discussions about regions that are underrepresented on RSP, possibly using RfC format, and inviting editors from NPP, relevant WikiProjects and other language Wikis, and the broader Wikipedia community to participate. Given that the close for the recent RfC about moratoriums at RSN included language about not having RfCs about sources that have never been discussed before, we may have some bureaucracy to push against in order to get community buy-in from this proposal. Thus, I'm raising this discussion here to get feedback from new page reviewers, with the intent of workshopping a proposed process for evaluating sources from underrepresented regions, and then either going straight to RSN or to the Village pump (either to Ideas or Proposals). It is my opinion that a lot of the pushback against reliability RfCs was from editors who were alarmed that these were being used to aggressively deprecate sources; I think that by identifying the purpose of this project as fundamentally being about addressing systemic bias and as being disinterested in producing consensuses for deprecation, we can possibly gain the support of editors who have been vocally opposed to reliability RfCs in the past.

Here is a draft of what a regional source discussion RfC could look like. Barkeep wisely pointed out that some editors could object to the amount of background summary provided; I would be amenable to cutting down the introduction to a list of links to relevant RS and Wikipedia articles, and to leave only completely uncontroversial statements in the sections for individual sources (any further relevant information I, or whoever else sets up a discussion, can always just add in a signed comment in the discussion section).

So, what are people's thoughts? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:16, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Courtesy ping to Newslinger, who has also been involved with work on NPPSG. I'm also mulling over if it's appropriate to reach out to WikiProject Reliability and WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias at this time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:19, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

• Let me add-on a few thoughts. First I think Rosguill has done amazing work already and what's present now is a great resource for all NPP - I know I've already been using it. The limitation is making this truly global so as to be useful in a wider variety of contexts. So it would be useful for people to weigh-in on these three things:

1. If you're as excited as I am about this as a tool (and if not that's fine - all the more recent to make your voice heard)
2. To say whether they think the method that Rosguill and I are suggesting is the right way to complete this guide (and if not - what could be?)
3. If this is the right way forward, does the format presented seem right?

If this recieves support, after what I hope to be a bit of further brainstorming here and among other projects Rosguill mentioned I think the next step would be to go to VPP for wider buy-in before a first actual RfC. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:59, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

I think it is a great resource to reviewers, as for the RfC process, are you going to do it by country (like the Turkey example) for each and every country in these under-represented regions? That's a lot of work, but might be worth it in the end.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:13, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Short answer yes. Long answer is that we would do one of these at a time and wait at least a week and maybe more after the close of the previous one (depending on how long it stays open). We need to not burn out those who would be inclined to participate, though Rosguill's idea of reaching out might draw in editors who only participate in one of interest rather than do so in an ongoing manner. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:01, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

One thing I'd add to this answer is that we're also considering including topic-oriented discussions as well (e.g. anime, a topic whose sources I personally often feel lost evaluating).

Another is that while I admittedly used a lot of systemic-bias language above, as things stand there's a decent amount of regions that we wouldn't consider as canonically subject to systemic bias for which we nevertheless have very little in the way of source guides (e.g. France, Germany). Maybe these are less of an issue based on the current skillset of our NPP team (I for one am familiar enough with French and German sources such that I wouldn't really need such a guide...but I'd still appreciate help for say, Northern Europe or Iberia). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:45, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

• A1) I am very excited about this resource. I haven't used it before - you've probably pointed me at it in the past BK, I must have overlooked it. It looks like it will be of great benefit already, and its worth developing further. Huge thanks to Rosguill for all that work. A2) I think your proposed method seems fine, so long as these RfCs get advertised in the right places - the WikiProjects suggested above look sensible, plus presumably the project for whichever part of the world we're looking at for any particular RfC. I know what Onel means about it taking a long time to go through each country individually; then again, if we break some places up into large chunks (e.g. do West Africa as a single RfC), does that risk introducing an element of systematic bias into our attempt to rid ourselves of systematic bias? A3) The RfC template looks straightforward and easy to use - I think it's a goer. GirthSummit _(blether) 14:07, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

  Regarding the suggestion to break up regions in chunks, I think it depends on the region, and ideally we'd have an editor (more) familiar with that region take point on setting the bounds for that discussion. For instance, I think that a West Africa RfC would likely not be productive, as there are many highly populated countries and a fair amount of language diversity in the region. However, it could be appropriate to bundle say, South Africa with Eswatini and Lesotho, or to do the Gulf States (or at least some of them) together. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:50, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

• One question; the way the sample RFC for Turkey is structured, (and this may be an artifact of using WP:RSP as a starting point) the impression is that we're only interested in establishing reliability for news sources. However, with the amount of predatory publishing out there, especially prevalent in some regions,  we should probably also be looking at academic journals. Also, there are problems with some historical sources, such as those produced by the British Raj in India and various other colonial powers. If our object is to address systemic bias by collating reliable sources for underrepresented regions and topics, we may want to ask specifically what academic journals and historical sources exist for a given region that are generally regarded as reliable, as well as what news sources exist and are reliable. On the other hand, if our purpose is merely to have a guide for new page patrollers to use in determining if they should AFD an article because the poor quality sources used fail to demonstrate notability, then news probably constitutes the bulk of sources we'll be evaluating. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:59, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

  I think that the top priority here is getting consensus evaluations for sources that new page reviewers are going to come across, and I think you already identified why on your other hand. This is not a campaign to rid Wikipedia of unreliable sources once and for all, it's an attempt to level the playing field in the article creation process and to make sure that new articles are properly assessed for notability. Now, if two or three years from now we've finished evaluating news sources for almost the entire world we could consider what sorts of sources are worth tackling.... _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:20, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

  I agree with Ros and will just add that judging something for notability can be different than judging something as a best source for information. So inclusion of a book in Spark notes is a good quick way to say that a book is probably notable. But we shouldn't really be using spark notes for cites in well done articles. Some of the sources ON points out might be good indicators of notability even if they're not our ideal sources for information. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:10, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

I am not sure I have time and patience to write a part of such guide about Russia but I volunteer to answer questions about Russian sources (and, to some extent, on sources coming from former USSR countries). May be it could be mentioned in the guide.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:49, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

This regional sources RfC format is a wonderful idea. Regional sources are indeed underrepresented on the perennial sources list. Less popular sources are typically given the benefit of the doubt if they have an editorial team, and haven't been the subject of a reliability dispute. However, in many cases, the lack of guidance around regional sources causes new page patrollers to skip articles that are based on these sources, especially if the sources are in a foreign language. As a result, articles based on these regional sources receive less attention, and aren't vetted as rigorously as articles that are primarily based on international or English-language sources.

Supporters of the proposed moratorium on general reliability RfCs mentioned two things that I'm going to address in the context of this discussion:

• Some editors pointed out that the term generally reliable could be misinterpreted as an endorsement of a source for topics outside of its areas of expertise. To address this, I've renamed generally reliable to generally reliable in its areas of expertise in WP:RSPLEGEND. In a regional sources RfC, it would be appropriate to ask editors to specify which areas a source is generally reliable in, if they elect to use that term.
• Some editors opposed the concept of deprecation, which allows for the possibility of implementing technical measures (e.g. edit filters and auto-reverts) to discourage editors from citing deprecated sources. A regional sources RfC can bypass this objection by simply not listing deprecation as an option. If an editor thinks a source should be deprecated, they can submit another RfC to gauge consensus on the reliable sources noticeboard.

The results of these regional sources RfCs would allow new page patrollers to become less hesitant with reviewing articles based on regional and foreign-language sources. I like how the main goal of these RfCs is to identify reliable sources from media landscapes that were previously undocumented in Wikipedia discussions. This discussion does appear to be in the scopes of WikiProject Countering systemic bias and WikiProject Reliability. A notice on the reliable sources noticeboard would also be helpful. ​— Newslinger talk 03:15, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

• Since conversation seems to have died down and people here are generally in favor of the prospective proposal, it seems like taking this to VPP is the natural next step. I'm considerably busier this week than the last two weeks, so I'm probably not going to be able to start the conversation myself (although I'll be able to participate some). If other editors feel inclined to take the lead on moving this along, by all means go ahead. Otherwise, I'll hopefully have the bandwidth to take care of this in a week or two. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:26, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

  found some time, discussion has been started here. Pinging editors who participated here Newslinger, Ymblanter, Barkeep49, ONUnicorn, GirthSummit, Onel5969 _signed, Rosguill ^talk 04:51, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

fix pingGirth Summit _signed, Rosguill ^talk 04:52, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

New Pages Feed today

I don't actually do much patrolling these days but I do scan the New Pages Feed almost daily to see if anything unusual catches my eye. What caught my eye today was that we have finally reached the point where a majority of new pages now appears to be about South Asian topics, themes, and culture. This creates a problem for those of us of the traditional Anglosphere background who don't know much about Indian politics, people, religions, Bollywood, etc, although we're nevertheless pretty good at recognising spam when we see it.

What is needed are a lot more reviewers from that region. 'Nuff said. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:02, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Whichever of the WikiProjects India, Pakistan, Bangladesh exist, could be alerted, requested, posted to, maybe? Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 17:54, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree Used. I know Kudpung has done this with India. It doesn't look like Pakistan or Bangladesh are active but I have posted to both regardless and also Malaysia and Indonesia. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:53, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

I left a notice on the Vietnam WikiProject as well. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 07:51, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree. I run into many troubles with the South Asian articles as I have little knowledge of that area. Wikiproject India is one of the best wikiprojects, but I struggle to see many committed editors who would be willing to review who are from that area. Although I see some experienced south Asian editors, there aren't that many and its certainly disproportionate to their population. Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 12:32, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Sidebar links

The sidebar link 'curate this page' appears to have been removed. Also the recently added 'add this page to New Pages Feed' has gone again. Does anyone know what's going on? @Barkeep49 and Insertcleverphrasehere:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:52, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

No idea. IFried (WMF) any ideas? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:04, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49 and Kudpung: It seems to be working for me. However, it only loads on specific pages such as your user page. ___CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 15:32, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Good point. It does seem to be pretty page dependent in terms of placing it on the queue and curating this page. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:04, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Per this discussion, "Curate this page" was simply renamed to "Open Page Curation". This happened about a year ago. They do exactly the same thing (open the toolbar). If it's confusing, we can change back to the old wording. No need to go through a developer either, just edit MediaWiki:Pagetriage-toolbar-linktext as desired.

The "Add to New Pages Feed" link should match the behaviour described at phab:T207485. It is shown for pages that aren't already in the feed. Clicking this link adds the page to the feed, which then makes the toolbar accessible. Can you give an example of when "Add to New Pages Feed" isn't being shown, when you think it should? — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:37, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

MusikAnimal, Example: HCGS. "Add to New Pages Feed" is showing. It's "Curate this page/Open Page Curation" that's not working. This is particularly important because opening Curation on a page is also the quickest way of looking up meta info for the page, such as who created it, who tagged it, who patrolled it, etc. without having to load histories and/or waiting for X-tools. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:39, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Wishlist

Just a gentle reminder to everyone who is following up on Phab (a minefield to me), and new required features, that the WMF poll for wishes for Santa has begun. Note that the rules have changed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:54, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung,actually they have announced that they will only be taking non-Wikipedia requests for 2020 so they can finish the 2019 wishlist and give improvements to sister projects. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:04, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of that - sadly. But at least the Community Tech team has changed. We did rather monopolise last year's poll, but depending on what we still need and what still needs to be addressed and completed, I think their new exclusionary format is rather OTT. IMO if that's the route they want to go, they should have created two polls. There is no excuse for not investing in a larger Community Tech team. Be interesting to know who was behind the decision for the changes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:09, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, it only increases, for me, the urgency, in trying to get a 2020 item passed that sets us down the path of modernizing NPP. I worry about how long the wishlist will even be an available process. I'm generally a lot more favorable to the WMF than you but one way to make me shake my head is how few resources are devoted to community desires. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:12, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

I think you understand why over the years I have become cynical, skeptical, and critical of the WMF, but we have certainly got a lot of good work out of them this year, and I bet they were furious about it. Like you, I am also not sure how long the Wishlist will continue to exist, I wouldn't be surprised it it gets binned for 2021 - that's what the WMF does when the volunteer community starts to get what the WMF believes to be too much of a good thing, although a mega constitutional crisis this year should have been a kneejerk for them. I suppose IFried (WMF) has taken over from the Horn of Plenty who we managed to tame somewhat, but I guess he has been promoted and is somehow still in overall charge (Hi DannyH (WMF)! )Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:28, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

With the top 10 wishes from last year's list showing just 1 done, 3 "In progress" and 6 still "Pending investigation" it's sad to say that the practical effect of excluding Wikipedia from this year's campaign may well be zero (or close to it). Cabayi (talk) 14:25, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

All I Want for Christmas Is A New Page Patrol Feature. CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 19:28, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

CAPTAIN MEDUSA, Well, they are still working on the features we asked for last year, so we will continue to get them :D — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:32, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

To be fair,Cabayi, this is the page you should be looking at. Nevertheless, with all its surplus of funds and the ED and her support department costing well over $½ mio. a year in salaries and travel, constraints of budget and personel - the arguments they frequently use - are no reason for not increasing development resources. Perhaps Toby Negrin, DannyH (WMF) and IFried (WMF) have an answer to that. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:26, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Or perhaps we as a community should be more pro-active at the next Board community elections.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:35, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

And I'm still praying that they make Special:NewPagesFeed a feature on all projects. Vermont (talk) 23:52, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Specific Acts of Vandalism

Sorry if this has been discussed before. I saw today that certain types of vandalism to long-standing articles causes them to appear "new" and then show up on our list awaiting review. See the recent histories of Porcelain and Figurine. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 14:29, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Doomsdayer520, yep that happens. No real avoiding it - we want articles that are created from redirects to show in the feed. When it does happen it's always a quick thing to mark as reviewed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:39, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Yup, I don't think there's a day that goes by that it doesn't happen. When I'm patrolling the back end of the queue and there's an old date on an article, the first thing I do is check the history. That way I can quickly ascertain if it's been corrected vandalism, and can check the reviewed box and move on.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 15:24, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Page Curation AfD Nominations

The fix to allow second (and third and beyond) nominations at AfD from the page curation toolbar is live. Can someone verify that it's working as expected? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Francis E. Dec (3rd nomination) DannyS712 (talk) 02:37, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Hooray! That fix was a long time in coming... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:29, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Ratelimited

Hi. As a followup to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 32#Ratelimit, I have recently been coming across the ratelimit more as I try to do some more patrolling of redirects (while looking for potential tasks for DannyS712 bot III). Would other reviewers object if I asked for account creator rights in order to avoid the rate limit? I agree to continue patrolling responsibly. Thoughts? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:28, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

I would have no issue with that.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 23:26, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

I keep on coming cross the ratelimit more frequently.CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 12:20, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I have no objections to this. I actually find your bot very handy Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 03:42, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

But if I understand this correctly it's not for the bot it's for Danny. If that's right well I admit a bit more trepidation as even for redirects the ratelimit seems high enough to be a good limit on making sure thought is being given to what's patrolled. But I'm obviously in a minority here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:44, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: well, I sometimes come across a bunch by the same editor, etc. - the feed shows the redirect target in the snippet, and so I open those that are okay and then patrol them as a group. The ratelimit is 1 page (or redirect) every three seconds, and so it limits such batch patrolling. DannyS712 (talk) 03:59, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

So, does anyone object and/or can an admin take a look? DannyS712 (talk) 09:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter November 2019

Hello New pages patrol,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.

Getting the queue to 0

There are now 803 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.

Coordinator

Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.

This month's refresher course

Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.

Tools

• It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
• It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.

Reviewer Feedback

Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.

Second set of eyes

• Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
• Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.

Arbitration Committee

The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.

Community Wish list

There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.

---

To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Reviewer of the Year

It's that time of year again. It is time to award the New Page Reviewer of the Year trophy. Several newer editors have done a lot of work with Rosguill, CAPTAIN MEDUSA, and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) all being new reviewers since this time last year. Onel5969, Boleyn and JTtheOG were in the top 5 the last two years, so congrats and thanks very much for your continued service. And thanks to all the others who reviewed so many articles (The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here).

Top 10 Reviewers over the last 365 days

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	Onel5969 (talk)	45,542	Patrol Page Curation
2	Rosguill (talk)	38,856	Patrol Page Curation
3	JTtheOG (talk)	11,858	Patrol Page Curation
4	Arthistorian1977 (talk)	5,638	Patrol Page Curation
5	Boleyn (talk)	4,499	Patrol Page Curation
6	DannyS712 (talk)	4,081	Patrol Page Curation
7	Cwmhiraeth (talk)	4,013	Patrol Page Curation
8	Ymblanter (talk)	3,719	Patrol Page Curation
9	CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk)	3,676	Patrol Page Curation
10	Wgolf (talk)	3,373	Patrol Page Curation

The top of this year's list is even more extraordinary at the top than in the past. I would like to nominate Rosguill as our reviewer of the year. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in November August 2018, they have managed to nearly keep pace with the always invaluable Onel (last year's Reviewer of the Year), been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:37, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

• With 2 months still to go, aren't we jumping the gun a bit? There is also a raft of other awards to be worked out and accorded. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:19, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

  Kudpung, Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coordination#Awards says for the Reviewer of The Year Cup: Awarded on 5 November of each year to mark the anniversary of the roll out of the New Page Reviewer right. Awarded after scrutiny by two coordinators or consensus of the NPP community at WT:NPR. so I was either a day early or a few days too late. My plan is to give out awards themselves closer to the end of the year - around the time of the December newsletter - whose contents will include a top 10 for the year. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:14, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, ah, yes, that sounds very much as if it's something I would have written. Forgive my lapse of memory! Go for it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:01, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Endorsements

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• As nom. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:37, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
• support--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:59, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
• Seems like a very good editor maybe needs the mop. CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 22:06, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
• Sure. Not to take anything away from Onel5969's powerhouse performance, but that's an amazing ramp-up! --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:45, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support - excellent contributions. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 23:16, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support - Definitely a key contender for this award as Rosguill deserves this. Rosguill has been on full flow since 2018. I can even endorse both Rosguill and Onel5969 to share the award. No wrong about it. Abishe (talk) 00:51, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support - for an invaluable new member of the team. While of course Onel5969 deserves just as much credit for their ongoing work, how Rosguill has risen from zero to hero in just a little over a year is remarkable and deserves to be celebrated. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 03:22, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

6th November Backlog Update

NPP backlog, number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Orange represents older than 30 days, red represents articles older than 90 days, past the index point.

I haven't done one of these backlog updates in quite a while, but it seems that it is needed at the moment. Currently the backlog stands at 5946 articles. There are also a further 6516 redirects which are unreviewed.

Currently there are just over 200 unreviewed articles in the backlog which have passed the index point (red in the above graph). This is a significant worry, as these articles have been freed to be indexed by Google but have not yet been ticked off by a new page patroller.

We need more reviewers reviewing the backlog at the back; oldest first. These articles are usually more difficult to review, often having been passed over by more inexperienced reviewers. So if you have the skills, please consider setting your New Pages Feed to 'oldest' first.

For others please continue to review what you can, and consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox to your user page!

This user has taken the pledge to review 2 new pages a day. Help us bring the queue to 0!

— Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:35, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, thanks for adding this ICPH. Great to have this up again. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:36, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I find it useful to have a visualisation of the backlog; so that we can see the beast we are facing. I'm sure it helps others just as much. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:38, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Given your note about the redirects, I'd like to revisit Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 33#Initial thoughts - autopatrolled redirects, now that the bot does indeed run via toolforge. I won't have much time until next week, but something along the lines of "...consensus among new page reviewers that the redirects created by specific established editors that would not otherwise qualify for autopatrolled rights can be safely reviewed by a bot...", with the specific editors being discussed later (i.e. who would be autopatrolled when it comes to redirects). DannyS712 (talk) 06:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, There seemed to be a lot of support for it last time you brought it up. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 09:28, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Thanks. I've started a draft proposal at User:DannyS712/Redirect autopatrol - can you take a look? Note that the survey isn't open yet. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:34, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, Seems great. I'd be happy to support it. Kudpung should have a look, as he is usually pretty good at identifying proposal pitfalls ahead of time. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 08:22, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

• More reviewers? We have 750! What we need is fewer hat collectors. I have been campaigning for months to get the user right pruned. It's ridiculous that so few are genuinely concerned and having to do most of the work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:06, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, What I meant is that we need more of the reviewers that we currently have to be working on the back of the backlog. More active reviewers would certainly be a good thing. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 09:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, some users should be feeling pangs of conscience by now if they read the newsletters. Oh well, it doesn't matter what we say or do, it doesn't look as if it's going to get any better. Make my Xmas though if it did. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, we'll sort it out. The carrot works much better than the stick in my experience. Back when we had that 22,000 backlog, a bunch of newsletters exposing the growing problem did nothing to slow it down. But the combination of factors that finally made the difference were more 'positive' than 'negative'; ACTRIAL, advertisements to get more people involved in NPP, a concrete plan, and a backlog drive with an atmosphere of camaraderie are what finally allowed us to crush it. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

My .02, for what it's worth... in a total volunteer project, the stick is rarely effective. Except in those instances where you've volunteered for something in the first place. There are over 700 folks listed who have the reviewer right, but only 63 who average over 1 review per day. 41 who avg 2, and 33 who avg 3 or more. So, in reality, we have 41 or 33 true NPP reviewers. The other 700+ dabble in reviewing. And there's nothing wrong with that, every review is one less that those who do the bulk of the work must look at. To me, the true cut-off point should be 5 per day. Using that, there are 21 NPP reviewers. So I understand the comment, "we need more reviewers", but I interpret that to mean we need more active reviewers. I got involved with this project back when the backlog was much higher than it is currently. And I took my share of criticism that I wasn't careful enough. At this point, I think my body of work speaks for itself. I think we need to get more folks involved, whether they currently have the NPP right or not, who are willing to commit to reviewing at least 5 new articles per day (not counting redirects - which is a different animal entirely, and Rosguill has an excellent grasp of. For me, personally I've decided to mainly focus on the back of the queue, and I will review 15-30 per day. But there needs to be more of a commitment from other editors to focus on the back of the queue. I know there are editors who feel folks might simply be "hat collecting" (and honestly, I didn't know what that meant until about 6 months ago when I bothered to look it up), but perhaps there might be some benefit to giving accolades on those reviewers who focus on that aspect of NPP (I don't know if there's a way to track that, but if there is, we should use it).

Yes, it's important to patrol the front of the line. Getting your articles reviewed is a great shot of adrenaline, and should be given as soon as possible, and I'm not suggesting that folks shouldn't do it. What I am saying, is it would be great if we could develop a cadre of 5-10 reviewers who looked at the end of the queue and resolved to review 5-10 of those a day. I admit I haven't done the math, but I think that would help with the articles that pass the mark which go on Google without review.

With all that, we also have to worry about quality of reviewing. I have been a bit dismayed recently by seeing articles "reviewed" with zero, or a single reference, when those articles, with that level of reference, clearly didn't pass GNG. In a couple of instances, there were articles recreated which had been turned into redirects by AfD discussions, and the articles where basically identical to the article which had been through AfD. That should be concerning to anyone who takes NPP seriously. Okay, I think this is the longest commentary I've ever put on WP. But the key is the end of the queue. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:38, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

This November is personally an hectic schedule for me as I am taking part in three contests and also working on page reviewing as well. But I am happy to continue the patrolling work as I am accountable to do that as a NPR. I too accept the fact that I have reviewed few biographical articles about sportspeople which are only supported with single source. But I know sportspeople generally pass the GNG so I review those bios. Other than this, I never review articles with only one source in general. Abishe (talk) 02:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• We should start by removing the bit from the 'reviewers' who have removed their names from the mailing list. If they're not interested in the newsletters, they are not interested in using the right. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

No, please don't do that. Some of us might be taking a break. Some of us don't care for newsletters (or guilt trips).- MrX 🖋 12:36, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, that's a false equivalence. I review regularly but I'm not interested in being harangued via newsletter for not reviewing enough. Cabayi (talk) 13:01, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

This is where we need to be careful as a volunteer project. As Kudpung is right to point out we do have some number of reviewers who have the PERM as a hat. However, it does seem to me that care be taken not to insult people like you who help out on occasion - which is also valuable. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:44, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I think it should be clear after all the postings I've made since I created this user right that I'm not insulting any particular individual, It's not something I do on Wikipedia without extraordinary good reason. It's my bad for creating yet another a right for the hat collectors to swarm for, but if the cap fits...

New pages arrive here in the thousands, and I'll say again, it is nonsense to claim that we have 750 reviewers when only ten of them are active in any way - it gives a totally false impression that we are a strong, functional team of patrollers. Those who do only 1 review a year, we can do without. Really - just as we do admins and AfC reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:06, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I have reviewed thousands of articles, but I stopped doing it for the most part because a couple of anti-CSD admins kept declining my nominations, one going as far as to suggest that I shouldn't be reviewing articles at all. That was after years of doing it with very, very few declines. I think you know who I'm talking about. It's thankless work to begin with, but it's intolerable when people operating well outside of the norm intentionally subvert your efforts. - MrX 🖋 17:45, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@MrX: I don't have a clue who you mean - we have several hundred of them many of whom gnome away at just such areas without coming into the limeilight. That said, we ought to be informed if there is anything causing concern, we admins are not immune from peer-to-peer requests to improve our work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:49, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

I have to admit I haven't been an NPP editor with a high reviewing rate. But I think I am getting the hang of it much more than before. I'm surprised to "hear" myself say that. I'm a very experienced editor, but this has been somewhat of a challenge. I think there is skill involved to be able to review at a decent rate. This is of course just my opinion. Also, I would like to add, if only we could get the 700 + New Page Patrollers to review just 10 pages this week, or over two weeks, we would be down to zero. (If only...) As an aside, I just now started on the back of the queue, to help out there. My overall experience comes in handy at the back of the que. Regards, ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:20, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Steve Quinn, glad to have you aboard. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me personally or the community as a whole if you have questions. I'll also put in a plug for the IRC and Discord channels as a place to ask questions. IRC was very helpful for me when I was starting as TonyBallioni would answer questions which had very established answers that weren't easily findable onwiki anywhere. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:38, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Well maybe we should look at the reviewers who currently are blocked first. If someone is on a self-requested block they stay but for the rest that have been either indefinitely blocked/banned they have the reviewer right removed. Granted its a very small number but its a start somewhere and one I don't think would be a controversial reason. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 04:34, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, Users that have the right are those users who are trusted to review articles, should they choose to do so. They are under no obligation to do so. I also think it really doesn't help to pare the list. If we have 750 people with the right (those trusted to have it) but only 50 are 'active reviewers' by some arbitrary metric; then that is just the situation. If any of those 700 'inactive' reviewers decide to start reviewing more, we will welcome it.

If somebody is on the list who is no longer trusted, then they should be removed (per guidelines with regard to user permissions) but it should not be seen some kind of 'reward' for completing some arbitrary number of reviews per year/month/whatever. And I also don't think anyone is actively bragging that we have "750 reviewers" or whatever. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 01:33, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It's my fault the policy does not have a 'use it or lose it' clause. I just didn't think to include one at the time. The actual wording of the policy was never a topic of debate, but unfortunately to change it now would need to be. At least we're not according any open ended PERMS now, 750 is really is a totally misleading number. It's in the policy page because it self updates. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:47, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

But so long as the reviews aren't bad (which would mean losing the privilege with cause), what's the point of chopping off the long tail? It's only of any relevance if someone reads more into "750 reviewers" than the claim merits. Cabayi (talk) 10:21, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

• Note that the back of the queue is very nearly been brought back to the index point (currently it is about 1 day beyond the index point). A little bit more of a push is necessary but we are getting there! — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:42, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
• We are now a few days ahead of the index point. Keep up the good work! — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:45, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Bot patrolled redirects

As a follow-up to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 33#Automatically Patrolled Redirects, I propose that the following rules be added to DannyS712 bot III's patrolling:

• Where the difference between the redirect title and target is the use of U.S., US, USA, or U.S.A. (eg I just created [1], which shouldn't be controversial to patrol)
• Where the difference is the use of & vs and

Any objections? --DannyS712 (talk) 21:29, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

These both make sense to me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:50, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps also include UK / U.K. ? PamD 22:39, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Other examples where this comes up frequently is FC/F.C. and SC/S.C.. For that matter, is there any example where string X.Y.Z would not be an appropriate redirect to XYZ or vice-versa? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:46, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Rosguill: not sure, but its probably safer to have an explicit list of what can be patrolled DannyS712 (talk) 09:36, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree we should err on the side of what is allowed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:33, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

If there are no more comments in the next few days, I will file a BRFA that automatically patrols:

• US vs U.S.
• USA vs U.S.A.
• & vs and
• UK vs U.K.
• FC vs F.C.
• SC vs S.C.

Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:19, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Filed as Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DannyS712 bot III 63 DannyS712 (talk) 05:26, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

An AfD of interest

I'm thinking this AfD might be of interest to NPP editors [2]. Regards ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:33, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Tagging for deletion not marking as reviewed

Why is a page not marked as Reviewed when I tag it CSD using page curation? Am I missing something?

The tutorial [3] says “ Any reviewing action done through the page curation toolbar by a reviewer marks an article as reviewed (adding maintenance tags, nominating for deletion, etc.)”

However, when I tagged Samson Tijani it didn’t show as Reviewed until I manually clicked the green tick a few minutes later. Lineslarge (talk) 22:30, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Per the flowchart, while articles nominated for AfD should be marked reviewed, PROD and CSD should not. The reasoning for this is that if an article is nominated for AfD, it will necessarily go through a thorough review which will establish whether or not the article should be kept. However, if a CSD is declined or a PROD is removed, that does not necessarily mean that the article should be kept; it just means that it does not meet the specific deletion criterion specified (in the case of a PROD, it's that the deletion is not uncontroversial). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:05, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! I now see the tutorial text for PROD and CSD was updated to say that about a year ago too. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen different advice given in the past (to avoid multiple reviewers looking at the same page that has been marked for deletion as you can’t tell from the feed who marked it). Anyway I’m happy to follow this approach so thanks for explaining. I might look at updating the wording I quoted to remove ambiguity. Lineslarge (talk) 09:01, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

One other thing that's changed relatively recently is that now we can autofilter articles with deletion tags out of the queue, so if you don't want to see tagged articles you can just tweak that setting, and the concern that it gets in the way of editing is thus less pertinent. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Bugs when marking for deletion

When marking pages for deletion, the curation toolbar failed to complete the nomination, once for an RfD and another for an AfD. Upon submitting, I was shown a series of error messages in popup windows, before finding that it made a mess on the log pages, requiring several manual edits and self-reverts to correctly complete the nominations.

• When I tried to nominate a page for RfD two days ago, this happened. Neither the original target nor the rationale was copied to the log.
• Similarly, when I tried to send an article to AfD earlier today, a mess was created and I had to manually undo the nomination before using Twinkle to properly complete it. I think I missed a step, accidentally submitting before adding details (the rationale), resulting in the AfD subpage not being created and transclusion of a then-nonexistent page in the daily log. I then tried again, making sure I added the details, but this too failed to create the subpage. Notwithstanding my oversight, I don't think this should happen, or perhaps an attempt to submit an incomplete nomination should be blocked. (I cannot provide diffs as the AfD subpage now exists and I made sure the transclusion was correct.)

Are these known bugs? To replicate (or perhaps reveal an error on my part), use the curation toolbar to send a page to RfD, and similarly send a page to AfD before providing details. Sorry in advance to inconvenience anyone. ComplexRational (talk) 15:42, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational, I'm not sure if Page Curation is designed to handle RfDs. I admit I've never tried this. DannyS712 or Rosguill can you weigh-in? As for AfD the foundation just did some work on this and so it's possible something broke. What was the article where you experienced this? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:27, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: The article is Ilsenburg Factory, and the AfD is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ilsenburg Factory. The page history says it all. ComplexRational (talk) 17:46, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational, Barkeep49 I just use Twinkle for all of my deletion nominations. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:01, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Rosguill, have you ever tried and/or encountered bugs like this, or did you use Twinkle from the very beginning? In light of these issues, I likely will stick to Twinkle as well (at least for now). ComplexRational (talk) 18:45, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational, as I remember it, the page curation deletion tool wasn't working at all when I first started, so I've been using Twinkle the whole time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:39, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational, Just so I understand this was caused by a single use of the toolbar? I have not experienced that bug and will be happy to file a phab report once I confirm that's the issue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:20, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, those were two separate taggings (two uses of the toolbar). After the first tagging with the toolbar did not create the AfD subpage, I tried again from the beginning and made sure I did not omit anything, but this second attempt did not complete either (leading me to rollback and use Twinkle). I am wondering why neither attempt created the AfD subpage – if anything, that part is most important for phab. Thank you. ComplexRational (talk) 18:45, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I've reported this issue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:53, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T238025

Barkeep49, Thanks Barkeep. As for me, I will continue to use Twinkle for deletion nominations until they enable CSD Log functionality of the page curation tools (one of the as-yet unaddressed wishlist items). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:06, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Barkeep49. ComplexRational (talk) 21:47, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Proposed Redirect autopatrols and bot

Please take the Neelix episode into consideration. Some users here might not remember it.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:43, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Indeed - that may need to be addressed (for those who don't remember, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive904#Dozens,Thousands upon thousands of unnecessary redirects, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Neelix, and WP:X1) DannyS712 (talk) 11:46, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, yeah, obviously your name being included on the list should not be regarded as a blank check for mayhem. Just as being autopatrolled should not for articles. It should be said that it is advisable that some of these users' redirects be checked periodically (DannyS712 is it possible to code the bot to leave out a few every once in a while?) — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:39, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: probably; can we keep the discussion to User talk:DannyS712/Redirect autopatrol for now? DannyS712 (talk) 21:40, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

NPP Flowchart and paid editing/COI editor checking

The NPP step-by-step flowchart

Something I've been thinking about for a while is that the flowchart that I made a while back doesn't really make any consideration for checking who made the article and if they have a COI/are a paid editor. This is a difficult one, so I guess I'm asking you guys if there is a way we can incorporate this into the flowchart in some way. But also more broadly want to discuss how we deal with paid editor submissions and identify paid editors.

Advice on how you guys identify paid editors? In my experience it seems largely a "I know it when I see it" situation, which isn't really ideal as this is difficult to explain to new reviewers.

Certainly If you can identify a paid editor there is one extra thing that isn't shown on the flowchart at present; you can unilaterally move the page to draft regardless of the state of the article, as all PAID new-article submissions are required to go through AfC (per WP:PAY). However, it isn't really clear what to do when they re-create it in mainspace (as they often do). Normally when you draftify something, and they re-create, you are kinda required to pursue other channels to review the article (per Wikipedia:Drafts#Requirements_for_page_movers). With paid editors, they really aren't allowed to be creating the article in the main space at all, but I don't think repeated draftification is really a solution. AfD isn't really a solution either, as the issue might not be with the topic itself (it may be notable) but more to due with non-disclosure and subtle promotionalism (blatant PROMO can be CSDed), which is why they are required to go through AfC in the first place.

I do think checking for paid editing should be represented in the flowchart above, but if so, where should it fit? And what form should it take? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:15, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I guess the other thing is that there should be a step where you check for automated 'issues' that have been flagged, and I guess that should be around the same time you check for paid editing (at least in terms of the flowchart progression). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:16, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Random comment: Doesn't 10 minutes seem a bit quick? And given that there's almost always a backlog, why not pick up with articles 24 hours (or more) old and let the younger ones age a bit? Because I do see complaints here and there about articles strangled in the crib before they've had a day's chance. EEng 05:44, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Strong agree, with the exception that stuff like attack content, copyright violations, etc. are always unacceptable.

  On a related note, I think an addition that the flowchart needs (that I think also touches on the issue that Insertcleverphrasehere has identified) is a step 0 which is "check the page history". _signed, Rosguill ^talk 06:11, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  EEng, 10 min is based entirely on the CSD criteria requirements. I could add 'at least' if you want. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 09:48, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Well, it's based on a somewhat tepid footnote in the criteria. My point remains: if we (and I say we somewhat loosely -- I haven't done any patrolling in years, but I'm behind you guys all the way!) make a habit of patrolling pages that new, two bad things happen: (1) if it's under the 10-minute cutoff you have to abandon the review, without marking the page as patrolled, and whatever review you've done (earlier in the flowchart) goes to waste; or (b) you sometimes tag a 11-minute-old page that, indeed, someone really was working on, causing gnashing of teeth and tearing out of hair. So my point remains: except in those golden, fleeting moments when the backlog is almost gone, why not start with pages an hour or a day old, so the 10-minute issue doesn't come up? EEng 16:08, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  EEng, it's tough because we need people patrolling at the front, to catch attack pages, hoaxes, copyvios, etc early. We need people at the back patrolling the tough ones that everyone else passed up. Patrolling from 24 hours down is a third spot, and currently all the tools don't really make it that easy to patrol from there (You basically would just have to manually scroll down the new pages feed). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:07, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  I figured that was it. In that case I'd suggest that those skimming the front of the queue -- looking for A2,G1,G2,G3,G10,G11 candidates as you describe (these being the first two decisions in the chart) -- I'd suggest that they stop after those checks (maybe plus the G7 check) and leave A1/A3, and everything else downstream, to those who will re-patrol later. If these different modes of patrolling (some doing limited checks at the front of queue, others doing full checks working from the middle or end) are well established then you might think about integrate these subtleties into the chart. To you, or whoever did all the work on this chart: good work, very useful! EEng 20:00, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Insertcleverphrasehere, with the new date filters it's fairly easy to start 1 day in which isn't quite 24 hours but close enough. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:02, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Barkeep49, That's true. I forgot about that new feature. Wishlist is finally pulling through!

  I'm all for waiting a bit (and next time I update the flowchart I'll change it to 'at least' 10 min.), but trying to mandate something like waiting a day for A1/A3 to be a pretty fruitless endeavor. Likely instead somebody else would delete it, or it would get lost in the queue until it hit the back and got deleted (honestly, not the worst situation, as blank/nocontext articles are not really that big of a deal so long as they are not indexed). Even if it were enforced, it creates a lot of duplicate reviewing, where multiple reviewers all see the same blank article and pass it over until the 24 hours pass. All in all, the current situation isn't that bad; worst case the new editor re-creates it with a bit more context/content. If anything, I'd say the correct approach is to try to get consensus on reworking the A1/A3 templates to be less scary, and be more of a "Sorry, but not sure if this was what you meant to do, if you want to delete this message and expand the new article, feel free to do so!" — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:32, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Is it even proper to attempt to check for undeclared UPE/COI authorship?

See Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Paid editing disclosures and deletion. If UPE is not a deletion reason, what basis is there to hold back an otherwise OK draft due to suspected COI? If there is basis, if the community every agrees that UPE is a deletion reason, then how can you objectively tell? I suggest discussing at WT:DEL, as discussing here is premature. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:29, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, Well, I didn't say to draftify based on a suspected COI, I said when you can identify a paid editor. For example, I recently found a company article where the author had written his name as his user name. A quick search later found his Linkedin and showed that he was an intern at said company. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 10:51, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, let's assume you identify a UPE. Are you sure? What do you do about it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:07, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Policy seems clear: "f you believe an editor is conducting undisclosed paid editing as defined by this policy, please report it to the Administrators' Noticeboard (Incidents) or the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard if it does not involve revealing the private information of an editor. Otherwise, please email paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org with why you believe an editor is engaged in paid editing and there is private information. You may also email a member of the CheckUser team directly.". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:00, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, In this case I moved the page to draft and ultimately took the matter to WP:COIN. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 17:51, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• On the 'where to insert it' question, that's a tricky question. Suspicions are usually raised quite early on in the process - around about the 'Is the article patent nonsense... ...or exclusively promotional (G11)' stage. However, if you can't quite convince yourself that it's exclusively promotional, but it whiffs of UPE, you'd still do the stages like a copyvio check to see whether other CSDs would apply, or whether poor sourcing would indicate a draftification or nomination to AfD. So, on balance I think that the right place for this would be on the 'Yes' path coming out of the 'Does the article have two or more references...' box. Basically, if there aren't grounds for deletion based on the standard procedures, but you suspect subtle promo/UPE, that seems to me to be the stage at which I'd be digging deeper to see if there were any other grounds for concern. GirthSummit _(blether) 20:19, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Girth Summit, So somewhere down at the 'tagging' stage, where you would add the 'UPE' template and send a notice to the creator. I could add a specific box here to help indicate that this needs to be addressed. Along with a step zero of checking the user/history details (as suggested by Rosguill), this could go a long way towards making the flowchart a bit more complete. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:37, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Topics of assumed notability

Whatever the deletionists contend, there are exceptions to the requirement for sources. New Page Reviewers are an elite force and are expected to know about them. Human settlements, for example are presumed notable, and indeed sources can usually be found in seconds rather than simply placing an ugly 'Needs more refs' tag on an article. Reviewers are reminded once more that rather than speed, quality and depth of patrolling are essential to good reviewing. See: Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:11, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, Yes, but there are also exceptions to subject specific 'presumed' notability. As is sometimes the case with sportspeople who might technically pass the WP:NFOOTY guideline for example, but only because they got subbed in for 20 min during a single obscure game. When you can't find sources, especially when the subject is contemporary (from the internet age), it is kinda awkward what to do with these articles that will never get expanded because there aren't any sources available. If there really are no sources to satisfy the GNG and you take it to AfD it is often a coin flip whether people agree to delete or just parrot "Meets NFOOTY". — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 02:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

There are no buts when it comes to Geo which is what I am talking about here, and which is quite specific. I don't throw these comment in lightly. I have mentioned it because too many reviewers are wasting other reviewers' time by incorrectly tagging articles that are presuned notable. Footy is a completely different issue, and it happens to be a personal bone of contention considering the hoops that academics and scientists are expected to jump through. Firstly because they get an an article based on the flimsiest of notability from their footy SNG which their project insists overrides GNG which, if for example the school deletionists are to be believed, SNG do not override GNG. WP:FOOTY get their own way because due to sheer numbers of editors for the word's most popular sport, they will win every argument. There are no such numbers to defend articles about researchers and scientists who have made made grounbreaking discoveries in all the major sciences and medecine - remember there was a kerfuffle recently about a female scientist about whom an article was only hurriedly cobbled together when she won a Nobel prize. I don't think a 17 year old footballer who has played in only one league match is in the same league. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:11, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, Yeah that is a bit of a bone of contention for me as well, but like it or not, we have to base our coverage on reliable sources, and scientists often keep a low profile and don't exactly make the news, where sports figures are the exact opposite. I don't mind so much, but yeah the rabid group of fans can sometimes be annoying when they !vote opposite of the GNG even in the complete absence of sources. I recently decided to test the waters with an AfD on one such figure (A sports figure from a second division footy league that was submitted with only links to stats pages). Despite literally nothing that can be found to support the GNG, I received nothing but opposition in the form of "Meets NFOOTY - presumed notable". — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 03:32, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussion of possible interest

See WT:UP#Drafts on a users main user page for a discussion of an issue possibly of interest to this project. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 05:13, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Another NPPer blocked for spamming

• Meeanaya (talk · contribs)

Meeanaya, someone who had NPP and AFC rights, has been blocked for UPE. It appears they have been corruptly reviewing articles - suspicious patrols/AFC accepts include Hafeez Rahman, Kred (platform) and Draft:Jayride (I was suspicious of this user for unquarantining this draft). A review of their patrols is warranted. You may find this listing useful. MER-C 12:29, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this MER-C. It's not the first time and I suppose it's inevitable with a bloated 750 pool of reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:48, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Good work for all involved!!. scope_creep^Talk 13:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Would it be helpful to mass-unreview the pages, and put them back in the feed? DannyS712 (talk) 17:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)