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Single source articles that meet SNGs?

I've been noticing quite a few new articles with only a single reference showing up in the new pages feed, often meeting one SNG or another, and have even noticed a few that were created by autopatrolled users/admins. I usually tag these for 'more references', or in some cases add refs myself (if I remotely care about the topic and they are easily accessible; I'm not going to bend over backwards for the 4000th footballer article to be created this week). What is everyone else's approach to these sorts of articles? (Articles that have only a single reference but meet an Subject Notability Guideline)? If this is unnacceptable, as I believe it is (at the top level of policy it is contrary to WP:5P2, which requires "sources", plural) what should we do about admins and autopatrolled users who create articles like this? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:59, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I think that it depends heavily on the nature of the article's subject. 1-source article about a village that thus meets WP:NGEO or a historical subject that is likely to have been covered in history books (but not necessarily anything online)? Tag as needing more sources and move on. 1-source article about a song by an obscure band that charted for a week? Search for sources, then follow up with redirecting to the band or AfD as necessary. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:13, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Just to add on to Rosguill's comment. In history there are some well-known (in the field), authoritative biographical sources. For example, the Dictionary of Irish Biography by Cambridge University Press and the Royal Irish Academy. Although more than one source would be preferable, inclusion in one of these canonical reference texts should satisfy notability. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 11:32, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Rosguill, I understood your suggestion to tag as needing more sources and move on. But whether we should mark it as reviewed or tag without marking as reviewed? The9Man | (talk) 10:28, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

The9Man, in this case I meant tag, mark reviewed, and move on. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

AfD problem

Hi there. It's happened a couple of times. I've nominated a page for deletion using the NPP tool and it has placed the nomination notice on the page, notified the user, and added the entry to the AfD log, but hasn't created the AfD page. I've then had to re-write my reasoning through twinkle and re nominate before cleaning up the mess. Any help would be appreciated (Note: I let the process finish before pressing close, so it isn't me preventing it from creating the AfD page). Thanks, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

This may be yet another instance of T238025, a bug in PageTriage with AfD that I and several other users have experienced. ComplexRational (talk) 20:34, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd recommend relying on Twinkle more and the NPP tool less. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:51, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Which, Rosguill, is precisely not what we are supposed to be doing, but I do understand your frustration - particularly where the WMF boldly and proudly claimed 'mission accomplished' a couple of months ago. Time, perhaps, to put more pressure on the Foundation again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I think our next step is to get them to update the NPP code base. The lack of updates meant that that updating it proved harder than it should be and is also part of the reason it was not eligible to be made available to other wikis. And at some point this old code will prove an existential threat to NPP. So I think we need to get ahead of the curve on it even at cost of swallowing bugs like this for even longer. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:11, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

NPR, Curation, and the New Pages Feed, is a good system. It the only firewall against unwanted new pages, and it's all we have. It's so important and crucial to the very existence of a credible encyclopedia corpus that the system should be kept but the entire code behind it should be rewritten from the ground up. This reinforces the position I have held for 3 years that this goes far, far beyond a simple annual wish list for gadgets. There is absolutely no lack of funds to accord to anything so important, and by doing so they could have their Wikiagnistic project to boot. The bulletins the WMF proudly publishes about their plans for the distant future as a socio-political movement don't take any of these essential processes under the bonnet (hood) into account. But these are only, ::sigh::, my opinions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:27, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

We are just becoming a sports statistics website

I'm honestly just fed up with stuff like this: 2020 Fed Cup Europe/Africa Zone Group I – Pool B (Tallinn). Honestly. How the hell are we supposed to keep up with the flood of undersourced blatant fails of WP:NOTSTATS? I have no idea why people keep flooding the wiki with this useless garbage. There are plenty of sports statistics pages that people can go to for this sort of info, why should we be a web host for it? It's such a huge sink on editor and reviewer time. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 10:03, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if it is better or worse that the guy creating these is autopatrolled. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 10:05, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I've had similar frustration with User:Lugnuts. Thousands of poorly sourced BLPs simply containing sports statistics, and the user is autopatrolled... Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 10:43, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Willbb234, Lugnuts recently took me to ANI recently over tagging some of his articles recently... Did you know about that or is this just one of those coincidences? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 11:02, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere complete coincidence! Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 12:55, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Surely, if any group of editors has the sway/authority to request removal of autopatrolled user rights then it's NPP? As much as auto-patrol reduces NPP workload, it shouldn't be used to escape scrutiny. Cheers, Polyamorph (talk) 13:28, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Polyamorph, The main issue is that policy and guidelines don't actually strongly discourage this sort of behaviour. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 16:52, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

• i completely agree. Its not just these type of articles, but there are some other types too. What we need to do is to make the SNGs a little more strict than they currently are. At the top of my head, WP:TVSERIES is way too broad. It allows an article to any TV serial that has been released/went on air. As a result, there has been been spamming of promotional articles from Indian television. Sorry, I went off topic. But I think we (all the wikipedia editors) should update each SNG one-by-one. When they were originally created/drafted, enwiki did not have a problem with SPAs, and UPE among others to extent of current days. —usernamekiran (talk) 19:53, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
• The en.Wiki is becoming a sports statistics/sports biography website, a B2B yellow pages, a Bollywood database, and the South Asia Wikipedia in English. 'Nuff said. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

• It's been a sports statistics website for over a decade. Just look at all the crappy cricketer biographies of guys who played one game, whose full names we don't know, and whose articles that just consist of a match scorecard bloated into a grotesque imitation of prose and disguised as a biography. Reyk _YO! 15:25, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• My perspective on this issue at this point is that at least for sports, fighting this trend is wasted effort due to the significant amount of good faith sports editors who believe that notability guidelines shouldn't apply to them (or else have a ridiculously lenient understanding of GNG). If Wikipedia is a garden, and the editors working in the sports section insist over and over that they like the weeds, then I have better things to do than argue with them at AfD. My attitude is less laissez-faire when it comes to the business spam, which is actually harmful to the encyclopedia, and is not being added in good faith. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

  Rosguill, I agree. I pisses me off a bit but we need to pick our battles. Honestly these articles aren't really doing much damage though. They just get forgotten and ignored. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:04, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

BTW I was recently "informed" atWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lao Division 1 that there is an additional "General Notability Guideline" which is a sub page at project football which further expands the exceptions for sports beyond what the sports SNG grants. North8000 (talk) 19:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

FOOTYN being a guideline is a common misconception. All we can do is hope to educate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:42, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

• I agree that it is getting out of hand, something which has been going on for a long time. Unfortunantely, essays like FOOTYN are commonly used as a reason for keeping an article, when it isn't even a guideline. But WP:NFOOTY - which is a guideline - seems to set the bar for football players way too low. And when someone challanges the notability of a player based on a lack of independent RS with SIGCOV, NFOOTY is raised, even though (according to the SNG itself): "meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept". Such guidelines only show whether a player is likely to meet GNG, not exempt him/her of the guideline. However, this seems to have been forgotten as editors counter claims that a player doesn't meet GNG despite meeting NFOOTY with the argument that NFOOTY is sufficient. We can't do much about the problem, except for praying the Serenity Prayer and focussing our attention elsewhere. --MrClog (talk) 19:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

  The proposal for raising the floor of NFOOTY got some support when we had the big discussion last summer. If the broader wikipedia community thinks it's a problem it can change. If the community doesn't, well then it's not a problem so.... Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, I took a look at which websites get referenced the most in new pages. www.sports-reference.com is the third-most cited source. To base articles entirely on sports-reference, as we do on Victoria Umunna for example, is a copyright violation. It should be possible to G12 such articles. Vexations (talk) 20:41, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Vexations, hmmmm... i'm not sure that would fly.. perhaps we should ask about that on the copyright noticeboard? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, well, one thing to consider is that you have to deal with a user who appears, ahem... combative. I found over 3000 articles that only cite sports-reference.com, and they're almost all by the same author. I'm not sure that I'm willing to challenge them on copyvios. I'm pretty sure that databases are copyrighted. I you copy all the fields from a record, and then re-create that record, that's not "transformative use". So, no, it shouldn't happen. Vexations (talk) 23:16, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Vexations, then again; some statistics aren't copyrightable. There are only so many ways of displaying the same information in a table. Lugnuts I assume? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 00:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, Per https://www.sports-reference.com/sharing.html: "You are free to use this data anywhere, we would just ask that you include the citation at the bottom of the table as a courtesy to us for providing this service". I don't see a CC-BY license anywhere, and I do see "Copyright © 2000-2020 Sports Reference LLC. All rights reserved." so find that confusing, but I suppose a case can be made that we're free to re-publish their data. To me, it just seems pointless. Write a bot to import it to Wikidata and be done with it. Manually copying it to wikipedia in a format that is not machine-readable just seems like an incredible waste of time and effort. Vexations (talk) 00:38, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

More eyes

needed at Gold Derby Award for Best Drama Series please. I moved it to draft space and left a note for the author, but it was simply moved back. I don't want to get into a move war. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 19:40, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Will keep eye out looks like someone else has moved it back to draftspace. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 20:31, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Also: TCEC Season 1, TCEC Season 2, TCEC Season 3, TCEC Season 4 - duplicates of drafts so I cannot draftify them, CSD declined as not a valid critereon DannyS712 (talk) 00:15, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

DannyS712, per WP:NSEASONS (which sort of applies here) they should probably be redirected to the parent article if sourcing to expand prose doesn't exist. If you find sourcing in a search, dump it on the talk page and leave them be I suppose? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:17, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@DannyS712: The draft for Gold Derby Award for Best Drama Series was moved back to mainspace again then moved back to draftspace. After the mainspace redirect was deleted again I requested for the page to be salted until the draft can make it out of draftspace and my request was accepted. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 13:36, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Procedures

I had been vaguely aware of new page patrolling in the past, though not of this project. I recently created an article (not my first one) and, after wondering for a few days why it was not turning up in Google searches, I found on Quora (which may not have provided the right information) that WP articles that are not patrolled are not indexed by Google (unless they are 90+ days old). What I find confusing is why there are unpatrolled pages from before 2010 – it makes me wonder how priorities are determined. My article was not tagged for any potential problem, is not an orphan, etc. I suppose I could join the project instead of complaining, but I don't feel fully confident in my understanding of the CSD and would probably be overzealous in their application.

Anyway, feel free to delete this post if it proves unhelpful (which it most likely is). Toccata quarta (talk) 08:48, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Toccata quarta, hi there. The information you found on Quora is correct. While a few articles might show very old dates they only entered the queue recently. This is normally because they had been a redirect and then made into an article. Your new article will be reviewed at some point, hopefully soon. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 09:09, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Toccata quarta, adding to Barkeep's comments, it's worth noting that due to the high number of new articles (hundreds) that Wikipedia understandably receives every day, and due to the fact that the reviewers are all volunteers - just like you the article creator - there is a significant backlog. Volunteering for back-room work on Wikipedia is not everyone's cup of tea or aim, and I can tell you personally that after a decade or more doing New Page Patrolling and trying to improve the system, it is or can be pretty depressing and a lot of reviewers don't stick around. To get the full picture, take a look at Special:NewPagesFeed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:29, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Additional languages on Google Translate

Google Translate apparently just added five new languages to its service: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. While I can't say that I've ever come across an article with sources in Kinyarwanda, Turkmen or Uyghur, the addition of Tatar and Odia will likely be of use. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 01:39, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

References

A discussion

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Rethinking draft space which NPRs might like to see. Regards, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 08:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:59, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

what's the reason

I received this massage on 13 February, unfortunately now at NewPagesFeed the blue review button is not active for me. what's the reason?Saff V. (talk) 12:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Saff V., your new page reviewer rights were temporary and expired in January. If you wanted to make it permanent please head on over to WP:PERM/NPR to make a request. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:51, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

need more energy

• in the last day I did 6 reviews in contrast to my usual 3 reviews/day, unless we all raise the energy level the backlog will never go down, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:49, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

  We have indeed been struggling to get down below 5k articles in the backlog. There has been some support for a backlog drive. I have mixed feelings about such a drive for two reasons. 1) I think it can prioritize speed over accuracy. That should not be our way. Ever. 2) It can burn-out reviewers so progress gets wiped away after the drive. I don't know about how to address 2 other than not doing it. As for 1, I think if the drive perhaps focused more on # of days with reviews rather than total reviews we could incentive participation over just trying to do as many reviews as possible. Thoughts from others? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:20, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

  Barkeep49, mmm - that's a good thought - I believe the young people call them streaks. Awards not for the number of reviews, but for the number of days you can keep a 3+ (or whatever) number up. Might work? GirthSummit _(blether) 22:30, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

sounds good(for my part Ill make 6/day permanent), hope others will increase/day as well--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:36, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa, I'm running on an average of around 2 a day, though I've spent a good amount of time this week refining some queries to identify users that I can invite to join the project. Got a good 150 or so invites out so far, and PERM has seen an influx, so hopefully we will have a few more hands on deck soon. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:54, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

very positive--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:22, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Possible attempts to set up a pov fork of North East Delhi riots

DBigXray, one of our Admins,(sorry, experienced editor) was outed this week on an Indian website in part for their editing of this article. He was also threatened and has retired, which is unfortunate but sensible. The group behind this is having a discussion on the same page, now blacklisted, about setting up forks to tell the "truth" about the riots. It would be appreciated if any attempts to set up a nmw page on this subject was brought to either my attention, any of the other editors at User talk:Doug Weller#ECP for Talk:North East Delhi riots? or WP:AN. THey'd probably use the word Delhi in the title. Hopefully this won't happen, but I'm asking just in case I miss it. Thanks. Oh, almost forgot, I don't watch this page oso if anyone replies here please ping me. Doug Weller talk 19:09, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

And it occurs to me this might not be the best place to put this, so if there's another place better, please let me know. Doug Weller talk 19:12, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller, Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I'll keep my eye out. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 19:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller DBigXray is not an admin. 157.119.186.230 (talk) 11:01, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Oops, what was I thinking. He was a very experienced editor however, with almost 70,000 edits and 9 years here. Doug Weller talk 11:36, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Copyvio tools broken

I've recently found the copyvio tools to be unreliable and broken... Today I keep getting 502 Bad gateway from Earwig-derived tools. I also can't open Earwig's tool directly, so there seems to be an issue with it in general. What's going on? Anyone have a clue? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:05, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T245426

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Sorry I haven't been around much lately but there have been some issues with the tool. That link to Phabricator takes you to a similar issue with mentions to other issues with the tool that I know of. Curb Safe Charmer left a comment on 2/26/2020 getting the same error you did. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 21:29, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

today I reviewed just 1 article 3 articles, then it (copyvio tool) would not work...?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:00, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

If the NPP tool copyvio detector isn't working, try going to the actual website [1], and try searching with "Use search engine" disabled. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:29, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

yesterday I got 6 out of 6 reviews, however today I got 4 out of 6, even following the indications you placed above, Ill just try later again, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I cannot get the Earwig page to load this morning. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 08:51, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

505 gateway

getting the above response again only did 2 reviews today--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: I've been getting that a lot lately which is why I've been spending most of my time over in the edit request area helping out with the COVID stuff lately. Each time I go to try to review a page I can't get the copyvio tool to work. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 14:17, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Can you double check me on procedure?

I'm experienced at policy but brand new at page patrol. I'm about to reject my first one. Andrew James Hartsfield Someone else tagged it as suspected paid editing which is probably true. The user name has only edited this article and appears to have been created from the article subject's name. Obviously written by a much more experienced editor. Fails notability. None of the references cover him, they are just places that mention him or have a sentence about him. The big flow chart ends up at AFD. So should I AFD this and mark it as patrolled/reviewed? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

First a big welcome North8000. I have only do a quick check for sources but it seems like a reasonable AfD target to me and if that's where you ended up on the flowchart, yes go ahead and nominate it for AfD. After nominating it please do mark it reviewed - AfD will decide one way or another whether it should be included. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! North8000 (talk) 20:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I did it from the review page. Is the bot going to put my comments/ reasons that I gave into the AFD page or do should I repeat / do that directly? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 20:54, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, I generally use Twinkle for XfD nominations as that part of the NPP tool is a bit buggy. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:02, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks.North8000 (talk) 21:11, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Reviewer causing issues

Where is the appropriate place for me to suggest that a certain page reviewer is causing issues (although acting in good faith). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Somatochlora#Ways_to_improve_Somatochlora_meridionalis where the reviewer added tags to a page that don't make sense (including suggesting that the lead is an issue on a short stub without a lead). When I asked for clarification they seemed unable to understand my concerns and instead brought up some unrelated issues, including a suggestion that I replace a grammatically correct phrase with a grammatically incorrect one. And since then has not responded despite having made other edits. Not sure what I should be doing here but this does not seem appropriate to me. ThanksSomatochlora (talk) 20:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for raising this issue. I agree with your concerns and left a relevant comment on your talk page. I think any further discussion can be handled there at this time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

ThanksSomatochlora (talk) 21:19, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Adding short descriptions to new articles

Per WP:SHORTDESC, all articles should eventually have a short description template. It would be helpful to add that in the reviewing instructions. Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions provides instructions on how to add short descriptions. Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 04:06, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I've tried doing it. I've received help by experts at it, but I stopped. The problem comes when the short description conflicts with an incorrect description on Wikidata. There are ways of dealing with it, and I was shown them, but it required too much work to handle the necessary corrections on wikidata also. The need for corrections is very common--there are a great many wikidata descriptions saying no more than "a person" or repeating puffery from the article.Certainly, let those who want to cope with this do so--we do need to get the many errors and inadequacies fixed. But we have an even more pressing need to check new pages for promotionalism and notability and nonsense, and anything which slows this down detracts from the main task. We can mention doing it, but as an optional task for those interested. DGG ( talk ) 19:03, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Mildly promotional but notable topics, a solution?

Mildly promotional but notable topics are the current bane of NPP, and have been for a long time. We currently lack good tools to deal with them. I've thought for a while that suggesting a policy change to the COI guideline that supports stubifying new promo articles on notable topics would be a good idea.

Please see User:Insertcleverphrasehere/COISTUBIFY, where I have a bunch more explanation of why I think this is needed and a draft of the proposed section to be added to the COI guideline. Can I please ask that people provide feedback if they have any, good or bad!​​​​ Thanks. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:32, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Couple of comments:

• 'Demolishing' an article implies that one could be too lazy to do anything thorough about the problem and it can only be seen as aggressive from the creator's POV. We have enough trouble with editor conflict already and to 'encourage' reviewers to potentially increase conflict could be seen as a bad idea.
• We already have a trouble with stubs. They are created in their tens of thousands. We are looking for depth in content and this should be achieved through nurturing problematic articles into fleshed-out, neutral articles. Yes, it can be very hard to neutralise these articles, as you say, but simply reducing an article to stub status doesn't help the coverage that Wikipedia needs. And besides, stubs just cause frustration for editors who have more to watch; either delete it or keep it fleshed-out.

I think that this is a really great idea, but there could be some problems. Regards, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 21:13, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Willbb234, unfortunately "delete it" isn't always an option (AfD can be fickle when the topic itself is notable), and we certainly cannot expect a new page patroller to flesh out a new article themselves. The effort required in dealing with COI articles that are full of mildly promotional content, or content that doesn't mach the sources provided, or content that is filled with dozens of innapropriate links; These are the articles that waste a reviewers time and are bogging down NPP. They aren't quality submissions. The idea behind this proposal is that we are better off dropping back to a well sourced stub that can be expanded organically from there.

I'll try to expand the background section to explain this a bit better. I'll remove the word 'demolished' from the background section, but this isn't going to be part of the proposed changes anyway. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:37, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

IMO stubifying would be tougher / more complicated than it sounds.Maybe a real example of a mildly-promotional but notable one would be good for the discussion. North8000 (talk) 21:46, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, well, digging through the new pages feed the first example I found was: Perfect_Day_(company). Tryptofish (among others) spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up this paid editor's draft at AfC. It ended up as a Histmerge of two different pages created by two COI editors, and AfC was bypassed after the draft was declined by recreation in main space. All of this could have been avoided by stubifying it and informing the COI edtors to edit elsewhere when they tried to re-insert promo and poorly sourced material. Even after all of the above, it still reads like an article clearly written by someone with a conflict of interest. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:15, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it's a problem. I asked for an example to see if my "stubifying would be tougher / more complicated than it sounds" is founded. For example, I assume that the October 11th 2019 version is at it's "pre-effort" state. To me that looks like a big tough job to stubify. Selecting large amounts of material to delete which would also mean deleting a large amount of references. North8000 (talk) 03:08, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, I guess it comes down to this: Is New Page Patrol reasonably expected to check every reference for a new promotional article written by a COI editor? Even when it is clear from a cursory glance that some/many of them are junk and/or misused? Are we required to re-write every notable semi-promotional article? I would argue that no, we are not (The Draftify guide supports us, but it also derails us if they are smart enough to re-create it or move it). It isn't practical, and it contributes to editor burnout. As it is we are too shorthanded to be dealing with this stuff properly. I would guess that half of cases like this get some minor fixups and the most egregious 'bad sources' removed, then end up rubber stamped by somebody.

Perhaps I need a better way of framing the argument, but I think we should get the community's approval to stubify promo COI articles on sight. We don't delete them, because they are notable (Per WP:G11, this is preferred to deletion), but we remove the COI editor's contributions and replace them with the bare minimum required to meet A1 and GNG requirements. We need to find a way to process articles like this quickly, even if we have to throw some babies out with the bathwater. Otherwise the paid editors get to buy one, get one free and drain all of our already limited resources.

I guess the issue this causes is edit warring over the COI editor trying to restore their version. Posting at WP:COIN might help here, but I suspect that without something in place that actually stops the COI/PAID editor from editing the article, they'll keep going at it.

This was my first idea... maybe it isn't enough. I dunno. Suggestions? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 03:27, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I dunno. One idea would be to use your idea but a quick procudure to stubify it. Vs. the laborious process of selectively removing material. Like make it one sentence and choose the 1 or 2 best references to keep. Alternatively, maybe it should just get tagged and marked as reviewed. North8000 (talk) 19:32, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, Hmmm... maybe I wasn't more clear... That's exactly what I'm after. A community consensus to support instant stubification of mildly-mostly promotional COI articles, or COI articles that are problematic in other ways (link spam or just really poor writing). If you look at the 'procedure' that I linked above, it is literally to write a sentence, add two sources that meet GNG, add a reflist, and delete everything else (It previously said two or more sentences, but I think you are right, even one sentence is OK). I think we need to draft a proposal and refine a procedure. I think we need to discuss what appropriate rules regarding what the COI editor/author is allowed to do after the article is stubified:

• Are they allowed to revert it? (if so the entire thing is kinda toothless)
• Are we proposing that they not be able to edit the article at all? (a significant change from existing policy)
• Or do we just rely on listing articles at COIN and getting backup from other editors to retain the stubified version? (e.g. rely on WP:3RR as backup)
• In this case can we trust other editors to give us backup? (I think we probably can, but you will run into situations where some editors think that bad COI content is still better than a one line stub).
• If the author is allowed to edit the article, is the author allowed to slowly insert stuff back in line for line? (this can be fought by reverting individual problematic edits, but might end up in just as much or more work for reviewers, ultimately).

I don't have firm answers for all these questions. What do you think? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:36, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Ultimately the community either is or isn't willing to delete promotional material even at the risk of deleting material which is otherwise notable. If it is willing to do that, then AfD provides a nice forum. If it isn't creating alternative pathways that go against that community consensus aren't going to end well for those of us (and this includes me) that think being firm against SPAM is more helpful in the long run. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:33, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, AfD is not cleanup is the issue. People take that seriously. AfD is (in my opinion as well) a place to assess the suitability of the topic (usually the notability). In this case I'm specifically discussing COI articles on notable topics. In any case, this proposal is meant to be a way to REDUCE the amount of editor time wasted on these articles. AfD is not a solution that helps us do that; nominating articles there actually ends up creating MORE editor time wastage on COI articles. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:39, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, fair enough but I stand by my larger point - there needs to be community consensus that this is a topic worth handling differently than we do now and some way to determine that this remedy is the correct thing to do for a given article. I'm not convinced of the former and threw out AfD as a place for the latter. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:47, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I guess my purpose in bringing this here is to get feedback on what we can propose to the larger community. What would likely be accepted and what would not, in addition to what might actually work. An RfC will certainly be involved at some point if we decide to propose something. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:20, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't have the new page review experience to have an overall perspective. So I'm just using the example that you gave. I looked at the Oct 11th 2019 version of it. It has a lot of information and references in it. IMO the wording itself looks neutral, IMO the mildly promotional aspect comes choosing which areas to cover an in what depth to cover them. Being a declared COI, the editor was pretty cautious and open to input. Point being, I don't think that for that example a larger simple nuking of the material would get much support / get supported. North8000 (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I am skeptical that this will be accepted. I think you will have those who are supportive in principle but find enough to quibble about in practice (e.g. there has never been a community endorsed stubify before) and you will have those who are opposed in principle. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:33, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, yeah... that's my thought too... well back to the drawing board. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• Insertcleverphrasehere, I'm not against this idea in principle. If a clear COI could be established, then the user wouldn't be allowed to revert a stubification per our usual COI guidelines - they'd need to make edit requests to get anything changed/added to the page. The problem would be establishing a COI - all the author would need to say would be 'I don't have a COI, I am just a fan/user/someone looking to write my first article, and this subject looked interesting', and per AGF we have to believe them, or we'd have to go through the hassle of a COIN thread to get a consensus that nobody believes them.

An alternative idea popped into my head while I was thinking about this - I haven't thought this through thoroughly, so feel free to pull it apart, but I'm imagining an extra button we could give NPP reviewers to use at the end of their review. COI editors obviously want their page to be indexed by Google so it can easily be found by potential customers. If we see an article that is about a notable subject, but which is written in such a way as to be unacceptable, could we tag it in the normal way, and then get it off the NPP queue by marking it as reviewed and not to be indexed. This ought to be accompanied by a banner saying that the article won't be indexed until it is de-promotionalised, with a button in the tag that would add it back into the NPP queue for re-review after that work had been done. If the original author wants to get it indexed, they'd have to keep working at it, following the advice they've been given to improve the sourcing/remove the puffery/whatever, or alternatively other uninvolved editors might come along and do the work for them.

Just thinking out loud really - I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. GirthSummit _(blether) 12:08, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Just a side note, that would require an additional flag and status for articles, and new review process. Sort of a replication of the whole new article review and flagging process, but on a smaller scale. For "reviewed but not indexed" articles. North8000 (talk) 13:44, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Girth, I wonder if we could somehow add an instruction to the Template:Advert (or create a special tag for NPP only) so that it noindexes an article whenever the template is added. If it would work, we could probably create a few more templates with a noindex instruction for articles that are unsourced, or COI articles, and the like. When the tag is removed, the noindex is removed as well. Maybe RexxS would know if it's possible to incorporate it. There was such a lengthy debate over moving articles to draft space that something like or better than this may prove helpful. Just a thought. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 00:59, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Limit

Is there any limit per day when it comes to patrolling new pages per editor? 157.119.186.230 (talk) 10:59, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

No. However, we look for depth and quality reviewing so there is a limit on how many one can physically do in a day as a reviewer can't simply continually rubber stamp articles. Regards, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 19:16, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

There is a rate limit on approving articles, but it's absurdly high (as far as I can tell, you'd need to be near/exceeding 1 approval per second). The only time it ever becomes an issue is when patrolling redirects which often need little to no investigation. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:33, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Rosguill, Or when you do a bunch of reviews, queue up copyvio checks, and then check back on the copyvio reports and tick them off. I've run into the rate limit before when doing that. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:44, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Google Indexing changes?

Have there been any recent changes to when articles are released for search engine indexing? I created a new article 107 days ago (November 19, 2019) and though 90 days have passed, Google hasn't picked it up for indexing, and Wikipedia's policies regarding releasing an article for indexing seem, to me, pretty opaque and hard to find. --Canned Soul (talk) 18:03, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Canned Soul, for unclear reasons, the new page queue doesn't seem to cut off at 90 days anymore. Right now the oldest log day that has a significant amount of articles to be reviewed is October 22, 2019. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:23, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate the clarity, Rosguill, and for the work you do as a reviewer---the experience creating articles has made me realize the vital job of reviewers! I intend to join the group soon!

Applause Entertainment Private Limited

There is a request to have the article title Applause Entertainment unprotected so the article Applause Entertainment Private Limited can be moved there however after looking at the article I felt the article wouldn't have passed WP:NPR and it seems to have skipped WP:NPR according to the logs. I placed the article Applause Entertainment Private Limited back into the NPR queue for a second opinion. Just wanted to give a heads up on what I did. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 08:58, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a perfect example of a "mildly promotional but *perhaps* notable" topic discussed above. Brief mentions in Hollywood Reporter and Variety raise WP:NTEMP and WP:SUSTAINED concerns for me. I note that Applause Entertainment is part of Aditya Birla Group, so if not notable enough for a stand alone article, perhaps this content could be merged under "Telecom services" (perhaps rename to "Telecom and media"?)? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 09:09, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Autopatrol arb clerks

What do reviewers think about Arbcom clerks being granted auto patrolled so that case pages don’t need to be patrolled? Helpful? Not helpful? Thanks. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 15:49, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Levivich, I know it's possible to patrol non-mainspace pages, but I have yet to come across anything suggesting that such pages need patrolling. They don't get added to the queue, and my impression was that our ability to patrol them is just a code architecture quirk, not an intentional feature. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:22, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

+1 on that. Even if they did, I would think it could be done by whitelist/bot along the lines of redirect autopatrol (as ArbCom clerking a whole other skill set than writing articles, so should be handled as such) if they aren't already sysops (in which case any sort of patrol is unnecessary). ComplexRational (talk) 21:58, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I think user space/wikipedia space patrolling is largely obsolete but this opinion does not seem to be held widely among the community. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I would think that when it comes to what should be patrolled and who should be auto patrolled, the opinion of patrollers would matter most. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Unreliable sources highlighter

Reviewers may want to have a look at a recent Headbomb/SD0001 production: a script to automatically highlight various levels of unreliable sources. Very useful for getting a single glance impression of the quality of a reference section. It doesn't find all fluff, but it finds notorious fluff, which is already a big timesaver :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Elmidae, Very useful indeed. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 19:16, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Times of India reliability

A recent RfC on the reliability of the Times of India had an outcome of between no consensus and generally unreliable (RSP entry). It is a source that is used quite a bit for Indian subjects, particularly for films and actors. I'm generally not in favor of hunting down and purging old articles about non-controversial subjects when notability or source-reliability standards change, but new page reviewers should be aware going forward that we can be stricter about articles supported by trivial coverage in the ToI. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:49, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh my, that's going to be a carnival... there's plenty of BLPs where the only non-trivial coverage is from a ToI fluff piece. Hey-ho... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:31, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Sidebar

The sidebar when I was looking through pages has disappeared, how do I get it back? Govvy (talk) 22:17, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Govvy, do you mean the curation toolbar? When it's gone, an option appears under Tools in the left side bar to reinstate it (in the list that begins with "What links here"). Usedtobecool ☎️ 22:48, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Cheers Usedtobecool, that worked, got it back, much appreciated. Govvy (talk) 22:56, 14 March 2020 (UTC)