Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol

See also: Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/patrolled pages for discussion on development of the special patrol page (inactive).

Deletion discussions marked as unpatrolled

Apologies if this has come up before, but it really seems to be a nuisance that new pages for deletion discussions (AfD and MfD) can be marked as unpatrolled. Yes, editors do occasionally err in creating these, but they're almost always legitimate. Is there any practical way to exempt such pages? I realize some degree of scrutiny may still be necessary, such as for misplaced new articles that end up in W space. --BDD (talk) 17:50, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps no one knows. I'm not watching this page any more, but please do drop me a line if you have an answer. --BDD (talk) 20:44, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

"Mark as patrolled" link not showing up?

Yesterday I tried doing some NPP for the first time since AFC was slow, and most all the articles I opened had a "mark as patrolled" (or "relue" since my default is French), so I could click that on pages that needed no other tagging.

However, today all of a sudden I see no such link at the bottom of any of the NPP pages, but on one of the pages I somehow clicked something and a gray menu bar popped up at the side of my screen, which had cartoony icons, one of which was again "relue" (patrolled), but I can't figure out why that popped up or how to do it again.

The NPP instruction page is good overall, but it is not very clear about how to mark "patrolled" on pages other than incidentally as part of using Twinkle to tag them.

I didn't change anything about my computer/account/browser, so why am I not seeing the "patrolled" link at bottom? Thanks for any clarity, MatthewVanitas (talk) 15:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

When you open pages through Special:NewPagesFeed, you will get the page curation sidebar which allows you to, among other things, mark pages as patrolled with one of the buttons. If you close the page curation toolbar (by clicking the minimize button first and then clicking the close button), the bar will disappear and the "mark as patrolled" link at the bottom will reappear. If you want to go back to the page curation toolbar after closing it, there is a link under the toolbox heading in the left bar. The mark as patrolled link has the same effect as the checkmark button on the bar (without the extra comment field, obviously).  — daranz [ t ] 16:54, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

A discussion is taking place at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission criteria. Participation is welcome. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Lack of patrollers?

The last two times I checked on patrolling, there was one editor patrolling, and today (11/29/13 03:14:59) there are none. 14,400 total unreviewed pages (oldest: 184 days). Only 677 pages reviewed this week; this is far too few considering the number of daily creations. Clearly some motivation is required, but what? A hat to collect? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:18, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, you could just message old patrollers asking them to come back; I suspect that some errors with NPF in July dropped the numbers substantially. Hats are unlikely to be helpful, although I try to give out barnstars where I see decent patrolling. Ironholds (talk) 04:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

In all honesty, page patrolling is a rather mundane task that, given the choice, I think most would prefer not do. That said, it is important, and I just spent roughly about an hour and a half knocking out probably 75 pages or so, but with a backlog this long, it is a drop in the bucket. The backlog is a self-perpetuating problem ... people see there is a long backlog, think there is nothing they can do, ignore it, and thus the backlog only gets longer. I am really not sure how to entice people to help out in reducing it, other than perhaps a blast on the major noticeboards pleading for everyone to take a half-hour and review 10-20 pages from either the NPP backlog or AfC. Maybe that would temporarily work, but I don't know ... short of somehow having an automated reviewing process, I just don't see enough willing reviewers to take on such a constant endeavor. I am the first to admit I do not always help out with backlogs as much as I should, preferring to write and improve articles, but ultimately, backlogs are a big problem that we, as a community, need to address, and I think the best way to do so is everyone chipping in what they can when they can. Go Phightins! 05:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I try to patrol when I have a chance, but frankly I often find that the limited time I have to work on Wikipedia-related endeavors is spent writing code, not reviewing new pages (due in part to the fact that I find programming infinitely more satisfying). I'll try to devote a bit more time to it, though. Theopolisme (talk) 05:43, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• I think what we may be looking at here is yet another example of the aging Wikipedian population - we have fewer newcomers, and experienced users who previously had time on their hands find they no longer do (I'm with Theo - writing code is more fun than NPP). As expected, in both cases the cost is felt in the most onerous and mundane areas. Ironholds (talk) 08:32, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I used to be very active in patrolling. I got sick of dealing with the complaints. From both article creators and random inclusionists complaining about deletionists. Plus, I hate the new (new? how old is the new now) method of patrolling. I should probably get back into it a bit more... --Onorem (talk) 08:43, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I do more RCP than NPP. JianhuiMobile ^talk 10:42, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I indeed was somehow put back last time there were problems (in July?), and before that I was doing several pages from the back of the queue per day. What actually can help is what we usually do for drives: An automatically updated (once per day, or more often) table showing the progress.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:15, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

You're probably right about there not being enough patrollers, but be careful when going by the toolserver tool. It seems to me like it's underreporting lately. I'm not sure what the deal with the Toolserver is these days, but whatever it is it seems to be the cause.  — daranz [ t ] 20:39, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there is any need for those of us who have done our fair share of patrolling to be self-recriminating, especially where we have found our niche in other areas. There has been a lot of research made into NPP, but apart from the creation of the excellent New pages Feed and the Curation Toolbar, the core issues have not been addressed. . What we possibly need to do is to get some new blood on board from among editors who are suitably experienced and who are as interested in NPP are as are, for example, recent changes and vandalism patrollers. AFAICS, those two departments seem to do reasonably well, but they do have hats... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:07, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

One thing I noticed yesterday/the wee hours of this morning was that many of the articles I came upon was that others, namely Fram on many occasions, that articles already had tags and some had been tagged by multiple users, but had not been marked as patrolled. Is there any way that automatically, once tags are on an article, it is marked as patrolled. As for a hat, maybe that would help ... I think perhaps one of the issues is lack of appreciation for NPPers - it is a thankless job, unlike vandal reversion, which someone is likely to see on a watchlist and often thanks the "reverter" with a barnstar or something, whereas on NPP, no one has the pages watchlisted, and as such no one seems to care unless the NPPer screws up, in which case, as I once experienced first hand over inadvertently patrolling from the front of the log and fixing a page that had a malformed title, edit conflicting with the author, all hell can break loose, and I was called incompetent and the like ... needless to say, that was not a terribly pleasant experience, so I found something to do with my on-wiki time that was more pleasant. I am not the only one who has had this experience, I'm sure. As has been said above, NPPing is not all that fun, or always that pleasant, or that glorious, or that appreciated. So you're right, maybe a hat would mitigate the negative aspects of it. It is not that bad, but there undoubtedly are unpleasant aspects, disproportionately more so than in other areas of the encyclopedia. Go Phightins! 03:27, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it's appropriate that articles can be tagged without necessarily being marked as patrolled - this demonstrates that the patroller is unsure but doing his/her best, and it ensures that there will be more eyes on the page.

I've resisted calling for a hat for patrollers for a long time, but it does seem to me that this may be one of the main reasons why so few are intertested in doing it. Reviewer and Rollbacker which effectively require much less knowledge and experience (and which are, I believe, mostly carried out by newer editors who haven't got ideas for content contributions on a large scale yet) do have hats. As a regular admin working at WP:PERM for a couple of years, I can't discount the fact that many applications for those rights come from hat collectors, but the admins are generally able to filter those out.

Perhaps NPP also needs to be more project-oriented like some clean up projects such as the WP:GOCE etc., and organised drives (without attracting less experienced editors to do things in a rush). Perhaps the feeling of being supported by an active project would be motivating. What we have at the moment is simply the main page at WP:NPP which is a tutorial, this talk page which only sees rare bursts of activity, and the WP:NPRSCHOOL which I created but never gets used.

The WMF gave us the New Pages Feed/Curation Toolbar (which was quite remarkable) and Oliver worked hard to coordinate its development - now is the time to see it being used more, used properly, and by users with the right experience. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:06, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Backlog elimination drives are not a bad idea, but whenever you have drives, quality is at risk, as people want to get the most, which is conducive to rushing. While I stipulate that not marking something as patrolled yet adding tags proves someone is unsure but doing his or her best, I have to wonder if someone feels strongly enough about something to leave a tag, yet does not feel strongly enough to mark the page as patrolled, whether they should be adding the tag in the first place? I am not sure, and would have to ponder that for sure. I agree with your last two points as well, but am a little skeptical of a hat. I don't know - hats draw hat collectors, and hat collectors are (often) for those more interested in collecting more hats than doing quality work, and doing quality work is crucial at NPP ... the kind of people we want reviewing at NPP are the kind of people who do not want/need hats for their own edification. Go Phightins! 04:30, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Glad to see you concurring but your last statement gives me pause although basically a relevant argument. There are indeed hat-collectors, and some who see the hats as stepping stones to higher office for their own edification (RfA sorts that out pretty well).

We're in the process of introducing a set of measures for minimum experience to review submissions at AfC which is a parallel process in almost every respect, except that the actual process differs, and the number of daily article arrivals at NPP is much higher. As side note, I would ideally like to see the NewPagefeed/Page Curation tool cloned (technically possible) for use at AfC on the new 'Draft' mainspace that is being created mainly for use at AfC.

Both AfC and NPP suffer from exactly the same problems: too few reviewers, too little experience, and inconsistency. It's kind of hoped that by introducing a permission will attract those who prefer to have some formal recognition for what they are doing, and as a measure of their competency. What we have to instill upon users however is that all these minor permissions or user rights are not a meritocracy system - except maybe for barnstars for exceptionally good committment. Difficult I know, but we need to look at the possible net benefit of a user right or a user permission. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:47, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm personally not seeing the net benefit of a userright. It'd be nice if we had some data on it (I don't think this exists, alas, but I can think of an obvious way for testing for it. Hmn.) Ironholds (talk) 18:46, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

So, what I'm thinking of, off the top of my head: we take two groups, anti-vandalism patrollers and article creators, and see how the granting of rollback or autopatrolled impacted the frequency of their work. The important difference is that rollback is an actual improvement in the speed at which you can do the task, and autopatrolled isn't, so we can normalise for tangible benefits of the right (it improves my ability to do taskX) versus non-tangible (I get appreciated). This would be useful baseline data, although it wouldn't solve for my main objection around a user right, which is that it excludes people from performing the task. FWIW I've seen some poor NPPers, but very few, and the data I gathered when this same issue came up last year suggests that there are very few of them. In such a situation social solutions (actually talking to them) are probably better than user rights. Ironholds (talk) 18:53, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that seeing how being granted Reviwer and Rollbacker has impacted on the frequency of those patrols by those users would be useful. I would rather leave Autopatrolled out of the equation because this is not a 'right' per se - although plenty of requests at WP:PERM for it clearly appear to suggest a misconception of it being an award of merit for having created over 50 articles.

Since late 2010 I have issued 435 social requests to editors (without being in the slightest bit bitey) to improve their patrolling and I believe this to be only the tip of the iceberg, especially as my results come mainly only from discovering wrongly tagged CSDs, or following up on inappropriate PRODS or AfDs. I certainly don't catch them all. I have a sneaking suspicion that the frequency/number of patrollers has actually dropped since the introduction of New Pages Feed/Page Curation Tool, and it would be a great disappointment if this were the case. There isn't a Category:Speedy deletion declined, but if there were, or if there were some way of recovering such stats, that may also provide some clues.

I would be interested in seeing some basic stats of who, and how often, patrollers have been patrolling over, say, the last 12 months. However, the ToolServer is now lacking maintenenace, and Scottywong who was extremely helpful in providing many of the stats for us in the past has now semi-retired. Gathering such stats seems easy enough to do for someone who has a good knowledge of regex and/or Toolserver/Labs access and I would do it if I could, but I can't, so I can't. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:39, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, you don't need regular expressions, you just need basic SQL; I can try and look into things if and when I get some free time. You may have misunderstood the point of the research, though.

If you're trying to measure whether userrights have an impact on the willingness and enthusiasm people have for a task, there are two factors to measure. The first is whether granting a userright increases enthusiasm, or grants some kind of status or responsibility someone wishes to live up to. The second is that sometimes userrights are simply required, or tangibly make the task easier, which of course is likely to increase the chances of someone performing that task. Simply using reviewer and rollback is a problem for precisely this reason: we could find that people given reviewer permissions are 30 percent likelier to review pages, or that people given rollback revert 20 percent more vandalism than they did before they had this right, but that's useless data for justifying a new user right because reviewer is a requirement to review pages and rollback makes reverting vandalism faster. Autopatrolled is worth including precisely because it doesn't make page authorship faster, or particularly easier: for people writing good articles it's merely a badge.

So what I'd do is take rollback (a right that grants a tangible benefit) and autopatrol (a right that doesn't) and look at a user's willingness to engage in activities associated with that right before and after gaining it, and see if there's a gain in enthusiasm with rollback that's independent of the fact that it makes reverting easier. If there is, there's an argument that user rights are valuable as a status symbol. If there isn't, then the only reason people might be more willing to do taskX after getting a userright is that the task is now easier, or possible, because of that userright (which is not an argument for introducing an NPP right at all, since NPP access is the status quo).

Gathering good statistical information about the efficiency of our current patrollers may be tricky. We could, perhaps, measure the amount of declined speedy deletions. We could also probably measure the amount of accepted speedy deletions (although that would mean dipping into deleted pages). How do we, however, determine whether the CSD tagging was done by someone trying to do new page patrol, or by someone doing something else? Another issue is, how do we statistically determine good patrol behavior, when it doesn't involve CSD? If an article doesn't get deleted, and someone marked it as patrolled in the past, does that mean they did a good job? What if the article had some obvious problems but wasn't tagged before being marked as patrolled? What if it was mistagged? For that matter, what if the article was deleted through AfD 6 months after being patrolled—does that mean the patroller did a bad job?

All of these problems make it difficult to gather hard data on whether or not we need a hat to control who gets to do NPP. Personal experiences are also problematic, as we're more likely to notice bad patrolling than good patrolling. We have no meta-patrolling in NPP, and rightly so—we can't even keep up with the new pages queue.

Of course, general data on number of patrollers may be useful, if only to serve as another "oh shit" graph.  — daranz [ t ] 12:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Agreed; I can look into that. Actually we do have some meta-patrolling (I've done it myself) but you're right - it's never going to be perfect until we've actually got the queue under control. How about this:

1. I get a list of patrollers who haven't patrolled in a while, filtered for recent activity level;
2. We message them and ask them to come back, asking them to drop us a note here if there are particular things that drove them away;
3. We see if that improves things. If it doesn't, we can talk about user rights or training schools or all the rest, but when the raw problem is "we don't have enough people", as Daranz astutely points out, we're never going to have the time for meta-tasks without leaving the queue to rot. Ironholds (talk) 18:47, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The list will be very informative, but I am not sure we want absolutely everyone who has previously done this patrolling to return, unless they have learned more about Wikipedia since they started. I strongly support Kudpung's repeated suggestion that the roles of NPP and AfC are very similar, and require the same sort and level of judgment. I am not at all sure which is the easiest, or where a person should begin, and I look forward to uniting the processes, where we give similar attention and advice to all incoming articles, regardless of the method. I'm not at all sure of the workflow pattern that will be best here, but the purposes are the same:

• keeping the one-third of acceptable articles while making sure they get the necessary attention for future improvements and for minor fixes of format and WP convention ,
• removing the one-third of hopeless articles that will never with any reasonable improvement, add to the content of the encyclopedia --while simultaneously trying not to alienate those who submit the articles in good faith
• the hardest part, showing the people who write the articles that will possibly or probably be acceptable with improvement how to improve them, encourage them to continue, and take care that even if they themselves do not, that the most potentially valuable article submissions that need rewriting get rewritten-either by competent editors here, of by some sort of requested article process.

The skills necessary for these are not just to know what makes an acceptable Wikipedia article, and the more difficult skill of knowing what to do to improve them with the necessary sources--any WPedian with a modest experience in article writing should be able to do these. It also requires the skills of being able to guide the users to actually do the work without getting discouraged by trivial or technical problems. Some people are better at this than others, but the skill can be developed. This is where we principally need more people, for nobody can do this properly for more than a small number of articles a day.

Where can the work of the most experienced people here with the best experience be most utilized? For some, it will be designing these processes. For some, it may be double-checking on key factors that require particular knowledge and experience, such as proper copyvio checking. For others, it will be not primarily directly working with the articles, but instructing the reviewers--not just to do basic review, but to work with the new editors. DGG ( talk ) 06:20, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, the quickest way to unify the workflows is to allow anyone to create a page, but somehow I suspect that'd be opposed. More seriously; while the above text is fascinating, we seem to be talking about two different things - how to help in the short-to-medium term, and how to help in the long term.

Obviously the ideal outcome is to have a easy-to-use, easy-to-review set of workflows that can handle both sets of tasks (really, this is the ideal for...pretty much anything on Wikipedia). Building that as an AfC/new article-specific thing is going to take a while; building it as a general system that can be applied to this specific area is potentially going to take longer (it would be dependent on Flow's workflow module, presumably).

Until that happens, they are two different skillsets because they're aimed at two different tasks. The task of a patroller is to identify truly unsalvagable articles and mark them as such for admins to review, identify articles that need improvement and mark them for other users (including the page creator) to review, and passing the remainder. AfC users seem to have the task (or been set the task) of making sure something ticks all the boxes before it even sees the article namespace This may be inaccurate, but that's certainly how it looks from the outside. There's added complexity and far more nuance in the interactions between a user and a reviewer. Obviously, if/when it does happen, we can synthesise the two areas and hopefully reach a nice middle ground.

In the meantime, we have the short-to-medium-term solution, which is try to encourage existing patrollers (through things like barnstars) and grab in people who have forgotten about the task, left with the outage in July, whatever. Obviously, as you say, not all of them will be people we want back, but it'd be pretty trivial to identify those people and exclude them from the messaging. It won't solve the problem forever, but it won't be on an uncertain (and long!) timeline, either. Ironholds (talk) 07:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

One of the problems getting users to patrol new pages may be related to the sheer complexity of the instructions at WP:NPP and Wikipedia:Page Curation which both need to be read carefully and understood; this may be offputting to some users who wish to dive in and patrol, but that may in fact in itself not be a bad thing - NPP is definitely not an area for new and/or inexperienced users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:02, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, but we can look at simplifying the both of them - and perhaps unifying them? If NPF is the recommended tool these days, it seems to make sense to integrate the two together. I wonder what would be required to have a guided tour of page curation... Ironholds (talk) 07:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

It does indeed make sense to combine them. However, I would like to see the sense of a supportive, active project not being lost. So there are still three distinct sides to it: The tutorial at NPP on how to treat new pages, the tutorial at page Creation on how to use the tools, and the support for patrollers. I rewrote a lot of WP:NPP a couple of years ago with a lot of help from Scottywong. When we were basically finished with it, looking back at it, we were both actually quite amazed at the amount of knowledge required to do it properly. It's hard to see how it can be slimmed down. Of course, anyone with sufficient experience and a near-admin knowledge of policies, deletions, copyvio, etc, would have learned it all over the years, just as we admins gained our knowledge without having to follow tutorials, but what we are looking at with many such semi-admin areas is one of those tasks that are traditional magnets for new and inexperienced editors.

Wading through all the instructions is something that perhaps younger users don't don't have the patience to do unless it were subject to the acquisition of a user right (or permission). IMO, anyone who does accept the challenge to read and learn it all deserves a hat to wear! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Not sure when we started talking about younger users; again, whether a userright has an actual impact on the willingness of people to work in an area is still an unknown :). I'll take a look at the documentation this weekend and set up a sandbox where we can play around with merging it. Ironholds (talk) 19:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there is any doubt that such activities as PC patrolling, vandalism patrol, and NPP are caried out by a significant number of younger and/or inexperienced users. These rights and/or functions apper to be clearly a magnet for many of them but of course i agree that tis would not be easy or practical to prove through stats alone. When looking for solutions, we have to assume that we will be addressing users of all cognitive levels and Wikipedia experience.

I would be happy to work with a rewrite/merge of all the instructions. It could be set up at, for example, Wikipedia:New pages patrol/instructions (development) and then moved when complete. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

There is significant doubt; we did a survey which showed that statement to be false. You should know - you helped write it. Again, it's very easy to prove through stats (I have a plan to test just that). I'll start work on the instructions tomorrow. Ironholds (talk) 02:26, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

The biggest problem with new pages

is the huge gap between what new editors create and what is needed. I try to educate with welcome templates. It does not seem to help. Is there a welcome template that is more successful than others in getting new editors past WP:BeBold and into WP:42? Dlohcierekim 19:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there is much to be gained for the improvement of New Page Patrolling by examining the welcome templates. As you know (because I have reviewed your recent edits), by the time new users are welcomed the damage is already done. There are several standard welcome templates offered by the Twinkle dropdown. These usually add a welcome when a user is warned for the first time and has not been previously welcomed. There are however dozens of user-created custom welcome template that may not be triggered by Twinkle. One thing we need to train NPPrs in is better use of the message feature that is built in to the Curation toolbar. This is especially important when new pages are tagged for maintenance issue; only deletion templates (CSD, PROD, AfD) leave a message automatically on the user's talk page.

I made a suggestion a couple of times a long while ago, that when new articles are tagged for maintenance by a patroller, the Curation tool should should leave this message: Thank you for creating [this article]. A page patroller has tagged the article for some things that need to be fixed. You may wish to return to the article and address these issues if you can. On the other hand however, this being to easy for the patroller would possible mean even less use of custom messages through the message box. A dilemma indeed; Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:59, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the answer to that is the answer to the question "are semi-automated messages better or worse than no messages at all?". If they're better, then in the absence of a willingness to consistently use custom messages, they should be preferred. Ironholds (talk) 07:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I suppose it could be tried if the software tweak is not too complicated; it would need to be automatically overridden if someone does use the message field. Although I suggested it, it doesn't mean that I'm wholly in favour of automated messages - I leave a lot of custom messages through the message box, but at the end of the day, I'm open to anything that will improve NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

. Kudpung, I think that's a good idea. Dlohcierekim 15:47, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

@Kudpung's idea is good one. Unfortunately, it won't help in my NPPing because I use Twinkle. If implemented, tt should probably be opt-out-able using nobots, or equivalent. - MrX 19:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

If it were available in Twinkle that would help me,, too Dlohcierekim 22:04, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

New Twinkle features can be requested any time at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:03, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

An exodus from Page Curation?

I've come across several users recently who say they are still using the old page feed and Twinkle. This raises the question if the amount of patrolling/number of patrolers is on decline because editors find the feed and the curation tool too difficult to use - or again, the instructions too daunting. I have always said very strongly that the the new system is one of the best things on Wikipedia since sliced bread, so I would be curious to know why not everyone is using it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:10, 4 December 2013 (UTC) not

I was using Twinkle long before PageCuration came along. It works for me and I'm to OCD/AS to change. Dlohcierekim 01:15, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I use the new feed, but several months ago decided to use Twinkle instead of the curation toolbar tagging. I vaguely recall that it was because there were some missing templates, or something like that. For the record, I do think the new system is very good. If the tool bar would stay where I drag it, I would give it 5 stars.- MrX 02:05, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

• Although I use Special:NewPagesFeed exclusively, I've only used the Curation Toolbar (to do anything other than "Mark as patrolled") once or twice -- when it was first introduced. Twinkle works for me, like Dlohcierekim, and I saw no need to switch. Theopolisme (talk) 03:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, guys. Any thoughts as to how challenging the use of the new page feed/curation toolbar might be to other users? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:39, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I find the new pages feed rather intuitive, particularly the fact that you can do everything without leaving the page you are patrolling (i.e. post a message to the writer's talk page). I cannot speak for others, but I like it. Go Phightins! 11:34, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the new page curation tool is very intuitive and easy to use. I can't imagine that many users would not understand how to use it.- MrX 00:24, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I am using the new one, it is easier for templating articles (in those cases I decide to template and not to expand).--Ymblanter (talk) 19:47, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to channge duration of WP:BLPPROD from 10 to 7 days

If you would like to comment, please see: Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people/RfC: Change duration from 10 to 7 days. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:14, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! VQuakr (talk) 07:54, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments on the NPP interface

OK, seeing all the above anguish about lack of NPPers I thought I'd come and do a stint of it, from the oldest end of the queue. I'm used to sorting stubs and doing quite a bit of cleanup where necessary, and I use Twinkle. Four things I've today found frustrating about the NPP structure:

• Tags which have different names here and in Twinkle: I look for "link rot" and find it under "bare url".
• No sign of "{{coords missing}}", which I often add for geog entities.
• No way to see whether an appropriate DEFAULTSORT has been added, short of opening the article to look at the code. I reckon it's worth doing at this stage (eg for "forename surname" people, or titles starting "The ", or titles with accented letters), but it's a hassle to have to open up the article as if to edit it, just to find that someone's already done the job.
• I can tick "Notable" but it doesn't then offer me the specific classes of (lack of) notability, as Twinkle does: I've just tagged an album but only been able to add the tag which says it doesn't meet the GNG. It would be more helpful for the editor if I could have easily added a link to WP:MUSIC for them to see why it doesn't meet those criteria.

But I'll try to drop back here from time to time and do a bit of chipping away at the backlog. PamD 18:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

There also doesn't seem to be a "BLP unsourced" tag available. PamD 18:16, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Specifically related to that point, WP:BLPPROD is what we use for unsourced BLPs these days - all must have reliable sources, and those that don't get deleted. Go Phightins! 03:56, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanking PamD for her feedback, I must admit that although I'm a firm proponent of the use of the new sytem, I also find my self often flipping back and forth to Twinkle to use more granular options. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:41, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Andrea Villegas

If you see an article about or referencing Andrea Villegas, check the references and creator nick carefully. You will likely find that none of the links or ref's add up, that it is a hoax by a sock of Katrina Villegas (talk · contribs) Dlohcierekim 18:18, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

It has been salted ten days ago.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:47, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

It's not just one article. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 05:58, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

But is there a pool of articles it tends to me? Salting may not be a perfect solution, but presumably it increases the barrier to block evasion and inserting such information. Ironholds (talk) 06:41, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

An unbelievable array of names. The common thread will be Andrea and Villegas in the name of a Filipina child star. The article at first blush will look amazingly notable. The sources will be dead links or to non related subjects. A real article may be tacked on to make the hoax article look more notable. She cannot use Andrea Villegas anymore. The latest I saw was the name "of an upcoming movie" starring Andrea Villegas. The article name may be a variant on the names of the accounts at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Katrina Villegas/Archive. The user ID may be a variant on those listed at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Katrina Villegas/Archive. Dlohcierekim 08:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

And the predicted hoax article has appeared tonight at Villegas Andrea. Thanks, Dlohcierekim, for confirming my suspicions about the article, though it was becoming increasingly obvious to more I looked at it that it was an elaborate construct and synthesis of other articles' copy, other people's accomplishments and utter nonsense. Dwpaul ^Talk 04:43, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

U R welcome. And thank you for placing your G3 rationale on the talk so others would uderstand. Dlohcierekim 04:50, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

As of today, I think we've managed to delete and salt all the articles and block all the accounts. But let's keep our eyes open.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:12, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

@Kudpung:eto na naman "This has all happened before. And it will happen again." Dlohcierekim 15:03, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I've just been directed here following a note on my talk page after I declined the speedy deletion nomination of Casey Da Silva, which was tagged as G3 with no explanation in the edit summary and a cryptic "WT:NPP" on the talk page which does nothing to explain the speedy deletion nomination to those people not familiar with the history of this user. The page is not, without the context provided by being aware of previous articles by this user, a clear example of vandalism or of a hoax. In future, I recommend mentioning in the edit summary and on the talk page why the page is believed to be a hoax, with an explicit link to where the reviewing administrator can obtain the necessary knowledge. Additionally nominating them under criterion G5 (creation by a banned or blocked user) is an explicit pointer that the creator's history needs investigating. Thryduulf (talk) 15:46, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

That seems reasonable; pointing admins to a talk page from the talk page is liable to lead to some confusion. Ironholds (talk) 23:32, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

reply Cryptic? Perhaps. However, all that was required was to follow the link on the talk page. I was reluctant to tell Katrina how I was able to recognize her work. Her pattern is shifting. Frankly, I never saw anything like it. Perhaps there are many such on Wikipedia and it's only because of the new tool that I'm aware of this one. She has the ability to recreate the thing shortly after we delete it. Salting only induces her to change titles, and the current one is unlike the one's I saw before. Dlohcierekim 17:17, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Apparently, we are now copy editing for her. Dlohcierekim 17:20, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

the user id is new. Dlohcierekim 17:25, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

this may be a hallmark Dlohcierekim 17:30, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Kathryn Bernardo's legit, well since she's well known in the Philippine showbiz scene (*cough* *cough*, *insert incessant tween squee*). It's the Villegas crap that's a complete hoax. Blake Gripling (talk) 03:18, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh and I forgot to note that Casey Bacayo/de Silva also appears to be a legit actress, as she's a cast member of the children's sketch comedy show Goin' Bulilit. Other than that and a few other roles (hxxp://www.starmometer.com/2013/06/05/ai-ai-delas-alas-goes-heavy-drama-in-mmk/), she doesn't seem to be notable enough to have her own article unlike the more top-billed ones like Xyriel Manabat. Same case with Bea Basa, who also appears to be a fellow GB cast member. Blake Gripling (talk) 03:34, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Kathryn Bernardo is legit. Adding content about her to Andrea Villegas articles is part of the pattern. Dlohcierekim 03:44, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

What I see just looking in the window...

I want to start by being very clear that I am only commenting on the instructional text on the project page, not on the project itself (which I actually think quite highly of)...

Hi. I am a long time lurker and relatively new editor. I recently learned about NPP and wanted to offer an observation from a new set of eyes: As I read the project page what struck me was that (A) this project is a vital function for Wikipedia, and (B) the project instructions leave a strong perception that they are heavily unbalanced against Deletion_is_not_cleanup. I make this bold statement by observing a simple hard fact:

• Count of the string "improv" on the project page: 15
• Count of the string "delet" on the project page: 82

I do realize that statistically NPP will most likely find abusive and/or garbage pages yet the "taste" (if I can use that word) that this project page leaves in one's mouth is that NPP is pretty much a place designed for WP:Deletionists to get their kicks work. Having also read the discussion on this very talk page it strikes me that perhaps, just perhaps, one of the reasons you are having trouble getting and/or keeping active helpers in this project is because of such an imbalance. Perhaps if the project page instructions are made more affirmative in promoting taking actions to improve new pages (and again I do understand the realities of what you encounter) and to improve (train) new users you might be able to see your ranks grow with some possibly here-to-fore alienated Constructionists. Just a thought to consider. F6697 ^{FORMERLY 66.97.209.215} _TALK 22:09, 4 January 2014 (UTC)