User talk:SandyGeorgia

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I usually respond on my talk page, so watch the page for my reply.

Please provide a link to the article or page you want me to look at; that will increase the likelihood of me getting to it sooner rather than later.

I lose track of those pingie-thingies; because I don't get along with them, I have converted all notifications to email only. A post here on my talk page is the best way to get my attention.

iPad typing: I am unable to sit at a real computer with a keyboard for extended periods of time because of a back injury. When I am typing from my iPad, my posts are brief and full of typos. Please be patient; I will come back later to correct the typos :) I'm all thumbs, and sometimes the blooming iPad just won't let me backspace to correct a typo.

TPS alert/rant: CCI work

Because of the User:Doug Coldwell situation that I happened across by pure chance, I am back trying to help out at CCI. After giving up in dejection the last time I tried that. And the time before. And so on.

This is demoralizing work; not a hobby, not fun, not relaxing, should not be done by anyone for free. Most of my TPS are used to working with fine content. When working CCI, you deal with pure crap; while trying to sort out if something is a copyvio, you have to do that with content that is poorly written and not even based on reliable sources often, and it's nothing but miserable unpaid grunt work and drudgery. And when working on one CCI, I discovered a whole 'nother serial copyviolator! Just makes one want to quit.

I have checked WP:PEREN and don't know where else to look, but I can't understand why the WMF doesn't hire people to clean copyvio. Why should any volunteer be doing such crap work for free? How does "hire people to clean up copyvio" not make it on to those wish lists thingies the WMF puts out? WhatamIdoing? Hats off to any CCI worker and copyvio admin who deals with this demoralizing content day in and day out.

And I just reread through all of the 2010 Grace Sherwood debacle, where FAC did do something about it, but why has nothing changed in two decades with DYK feeding the copyvio pile, and GA promoting more up the line. Who's checking besides Nikkimaria? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:20, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I believe that MER-C and Diannaa do a lot of copyvio-related work. If memory serves, Wizardman used to, but I don't know if he's still active in that area.

I'd like to see law schools, especially those that pride themselves on intellectual property, start summer internships (or similar programs) to evaluate copyright questions. Just reading the Commons discussions can be an education. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

We Need More Help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:40, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I've got a couple less-busy days due to a winter storm, so I'll try to take a look at some of the Appomattox ones. Hog Farm _Talk 22:02, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Hog Farm, I think you went through Battle of Ridgefield once? While looking at Ludington/Coldwell stuff, I happened across another unrelated big mess there, and waiting for the experts to tell me, what next. I hate how often I have to ping them when I don't know what to do next. It is such specialized work ... and they must be so sick of pings. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:06, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

When I looked through Ridgefield, I was mainly looking for patently unreliable sourcing. Hog Farm _Talk 00:04, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I know Hog Farm. I hope that didn't come across as me saying you missed something. I only happened upon it because of trying to sort the Coldwell stuff. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:27, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright problems: break

100% right, sadly. That's why I tend to go in spurts on CCI, sometimes I can close out 2 or 3 relatively quickly and other times I don't even want to look at it. Honestly the only thing that helps me get through it sometimes is spite; these serial violators wasted enough of the site's time so torching said content helps a little bit. Perhaps once I'm in another spurt I can get Hathorn resolved once and for all (yes, that's still being addressed a decade later...) Wizardman 23:22, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Hathorn came to my mind recently, when I was contemplating how many times we've been down this road ... but I held back, thinking it wiser not to start naming them all and all of the various debacles. But. What have we changed in content review processes to get it to stop, and what are we doing that encourages it ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

That anyone can edit, while it doesn't encourage it, it does to a degree enable it. A lot of people just flat out don't understand copyright and/or how to determine if something is public domain or not. And for those that do, there's a strong possibility they don't live in the US, so are only familiar with sometimes radically different copyright laws in their country/region.

I know I struggle particularly with images, partially because of the differing legal systems between the UK and US, and partially because the US system seems so counter-intuitive with respect to who owns the copyright of derivative works. I'm better with text based stuff, as there is similarities between the two jurisdictions, so I try to keep an eye out for copyvios on my watchlist, as getting them early (I hope) prevents long term problems arising.

Alas short of running every edit through a service like Turnitin, which is not without its own host of problems, I don't know of a way that we could solve it without fundamentally changing how the site operates as a whole. If there's a lot of copyvios coming from article creation, then having some sort of copyright detection training for new page patrollers might help, but it would still require editors to engage with a rather thankless task. However for editors who maybe just add a paragraph here to one article, and a paragraph there to another, that goes undetected and adds up over time, I dunno if there is a way we could handle that beyond what we already do, short of the Foundation hiring dedicated CCI people. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:50, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Npp/afc editors actually look for copyvio although they are always in danger of missing more subtle cases involving foreign language, offline sources, or a paywall. The highest risk of copyvio are adding content to existing pages, because it is often not checked at all. (t · c) buidhe 00:35, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Buidhe, a fairly well known NPPer had an article deleted this week for copyvio. And I was told today by an experienced editor that "the tools" at DYK and GAN pick up copyvio. No understanding that Earwig is useless when all sources are offline, and even when they are online, not very good at picking up too-close-paraphrasing. Look at the date on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. And then re-read the Grace Sherwood debacle. What reform has there been, outside of FAC?

Sideswipe9th, I was hoping someone would pop up here to explain to me why the WMF is not paying for this to be done. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:32, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Alas the Foundation's actions are as much a mystery to me as to most other editors I'm afraid. It might be worth starting a discussion at one of the Village Pumps though? Like if enough people recognise this is a problem, then we can at least as a community ask them to pull their purse out for some actual support on this. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

This is all very surprising to me. I first checked WP:PEREN, expecting to find it there. How is it possible it hasn't already been raised and repeatedly? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:49, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

How many editors actively think about copyvios? I suspect the number is quite small. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:51, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Sideswipe9th maybe we should list those who should be thinking about it!

1. New page patrollers (one who had been through NPP school had an article copyvio-deleted this week).
2. All DYK reviewers and admins who promote DYK queues. (The speed to get an article to a certain size is a driving factor for some whose motivation is the reward culture.)
3. All FAC, FAR and GAN reviewers. Never mind whether you must spotcheck sources; if you're suppporting an article, you should.
4. Anyone doing WikiProject assessments. I just saw a B-class assessment assigned to a brand new article with a four-sentence lead, two of which contained copyright issues.

What else ? Awareness needs to be raised about the miserable extent of this problem. Someone should rewrite and udpate the old Plagiarism update and ask the Signpost to run it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:19, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Commenting on yours in order:

1. NPP and AfC reviewers definitely. I know checking for copyvios is on the NPP flowchart, but I do have to query how many editors actually do it, especially when we have a backlog drive on and reviewers are reviewing articles pretty quickly.
2. I don't know enough about how DYK works to comment, but definitely seems sensible.
3. Yeah absolutely. Any editor doing a FA or GA review should be checking for copyvios as part of that process. I wonder if this could be more formalised into the structure of the review process, like some sort of requirement for the reviewer to say "I checked/I've not checked for copyvios", and for the FA/GA confirmation to be held until someone has done it.
4. This is a tough one, occasionally I'll use WP:RATER when sticking WikiProject banners onto talk pages, and it uses some sort of prediction when adding the banners. I wonder how many editors are just using that versus actually assessing it? For the later, actual assessments yeah that should have a copyvio check done as part of it.

And possible additions:

1. Any editor actively cleaning up the recent contributions of a blocked or banned editor should do a copyvio check on those contributions as part of determining whether or not they should be reverted. Like if the content is obviously disruptive, just revert it, but if it looks plausibly good, run a copyvio check on it.
2. Editors doing recent change patrolling should probably be checking for copyvios when reviewing the diffs, at least for the new contributions.
3. I'm tempted to say that WikiProjects should have dedicated members/teams for this as well, on a per project basis, whom are active beyond the assessment level. When dealing with specialist content, it helps to be familiar with the topic when determining if something is likely a copyvio. This would also fit in nicely with your #4, as there could/should be some overlap there.

The biggest blind spot though, at least with this sort of active encouragement, is the low traffic/low watchlisted article. The sort of article that someone creates, and then no-one really pays attention to until there's some sort of problem, either vandalism or with the original author of the article. While AfC/NPP should catch some of that, if the author has the autopatrolled flag and is inserting copyvios, who is checking their edits before they get hauled up to ANI and CCI? Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:47, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I actually think the biggest blind spot is DYK, because that is the specific area where almost every long-term serial copyvio abuser was born. That would be the place to initiate reform, and catch stuff early on. Most of the historical serial offenders are not the first-time editors or the non-English speaking, rather those seeking icons and rewards-- working too fast, not getting seriously reviewed, racking up rewards. Re #3 (FA or GA reviewers), I started pushing on this problem at WT:FAC several years ago, and got so far as to get 1f added to WP:WIAFA, but my proposals for more active source work were rejected. In theory, anyone entering a Support at FAC should be stating whether the article meets 1f. The weakness at NPP seems to be in the area of detecting too-close-paraphrasing, which is why I think the old Signpost dispatch pushed by the then-FAC regulars via the WP:FCDW should be updated and published broadly. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches.

5. Oops, one I forgot; add copyvio spotchecks to anything claiming WP:WIKICUP points. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:56, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The only other thing I can think of right now (tis late, my brain is derping and words are hard) would be to maybe have a conversation at Wikipedia talk:Contributor copyright investigations asking all of the regulars who investigate and clean up cases where they think the majority of problematic editors are coming from, and what process changes in those areas could catch this sort of thing early before multi-year long cleanup cases are needed. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Maybe after more general brainstorming here ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:02, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sideswipe9th: Late, sorry, I think the biggest problem atm is Autopatrolled users, either grandfathered in from 2011 or recently granted with a less-than-ideal amount of history review of articles. We can catch everyone else fairly quickly. AP users with cv issues tend to only show up when taken to DYK/GAN/FAC and a reviewer finds it there, or at copypatrol. Sennecaster (Chat) 03:51, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that WikiProject assessments should be especially concerned about copyvios. Every editor should, but this group only at the usual level.

CSD, especially for copyvios, is the primary purpose of NPP. I am concerned that every time we add some extra "little" thing to NPP's workload, their primary purpose gets more and more obscured. The NPP folks are talking with the WMF's Growth team about fixing up Special:NewPagesFeed. I'm not involved, but it's not unusual for this sort of thing to be a round of "give me more bells and whistles" instead of "strip this workflow to the most efficient, effective minimum". I gently suggest that we need less NPP attention on things like adding maintenance tags and tagging for WikiProjects, or even trying to determine notability, so that we can have them focused on speedy deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:04, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

My sense is that Barkeep is saying more or less the same ... WhatamIdoing have you looked at MER-C's suggestions below? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:09, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

EranBot and CopyPatrol do something similar to the "running every edit through Turnitin" thing, although they don't catch copyvios that are short, minimally paraphrased, translated, and so on. It's fundamentally easier to copy and paste random stuff from the internet than it is to detect and remove it, which means that the CCI backlog is unlikely to ever be resolved. I have to wonder about some of our current approach to copyright and how it would be viewed outside of Wikipedia. I've seen a few complaints on VRT from writers who alleged that Wikipedia had plagiarized their books. In these cases the content was appropriately paraphrased and no informed editor would conceivably argue that it constituted a copyright violation. But the authors were concerned that the Wikipedia page summarized every important point of their book, meaning that no one would have any need to purchase it anymore. That sort of thing strikes me as posing more risk to an author's livelihood than, say, someone copying and pasting a plot summary from IMDB. I'm not proposing that we rework our copyright policies because of this - I just think it's an interesting perspective. Spicy (talk) 00:56, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Interesting ... a whole 'nother problem. And then there's the guy out there on the lecture circuit profiting unscrupulously by using a page written 90+% by me, and nothing the WMF can offer in the way of tools to help me deal with it. So it works both ways ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:34, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

@Spicy 45.6.2.15 (talk) 14:15, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Copyright problems: brainstorming

Ok, have a clearer head now. What have we changed in content review processes to get it to stop, and what are we doing that encourages it? I think this is close to the right question we should be asking. While investing in and attracting more people would solve the current workload problems with CCI, it doesn't tackle the root cause.

For me right now, the question is What aren't we doing to catch this problem early? So there's two examples that spring to mind here that I'm surface level familiar with; Doug Caldwell, and Martinevans. Both are users with very high edit counts (70,556 and 206,311 respectively). Checking and cleaning up each of these editors will take a substantial time and editorial energy investment. While that needs to be done, the pertinent question from a prevention perspective is why didn't we catch this sooner?

So yeah, what is causing us to be unable to detect this sort of problem until we have editors with tens or hundreds of thousands of edits? What can we do to catch this earlier, so that a CCI case only has to check say hundreds of edits, instead of thousands? Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:40, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Great start. Some partial answers/ideas.

The GA process at least has a major drive underway right now for GA reform: Wikipedia:Good Article proposal drive 2023. I don't know if they're doing enough, but at least they're trying, and the new data that Mike Christie is working on should help uncover what reviewers may be pushing faulty GAs up the line without rigorous review.

To my knowledge, nothing has changed at DYK, it has been promoting copyvio for as long as I've been editing, and that isn't going to change unless the community takes a strong stand.

It might be worthwhile to ask Barkeep49 what might be helpful to get NPP or AFC more on board with too-close paraphrasing.

FAC has never been a source of extreme instances of copyvio as have GAN and DYK. I'd like to see stronger sourcing checks there, as in my proposals of a year or so ago, but it's just not a place where this problem needs more focus. The Rlevse/PumpkinSky situation was an oddity that was obscured because of a competent copyedit by another editor.

WikiCup has been at times a problem, but that can be solved by fixing whatever ails GAN and DYK (although It still would be nice if they contemplated adding copyright spot checks).

In summary, change needs to happen at DYK. Looking beyond that at individual cases (which I've been doing lately):

1. When trying to address the Coldwell CCI, one gets unpleasant pushback from DC associates. I'll be bringing forward some proposals when I get a freer moment. Of interest there is that an experienced editor told me that content review processes vetted for copyright, so someone somewhere needs to write up a good description of all the things that Earwig etc cannot detect. I continue to believe we should update and expand the Plagiarism dispatch written by our best IP people in 2009.
2. We should be catching new editor mistakes sooner. I'm up to my eyeballs right now on a situation like that (stop them early) and getting No Help From Anyone, and I'm sure that editor is beginning to feel hounded by me. Do we need a mechanism for getting more eyes on new editors sooner and helping them out? I am to the point of contemplating an ANI post just so I can back out and let someone else take that one on, as it's exhausting.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:23, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I think close paraphrasing is always going to be some level of difficulty to uncover. I think some forms of close paraphrasing are reasonable for a NPP/AfC reviewer to uncover. However, truthfully I think a lot of the kinds of issues we saw with Doug Caldwell require a more thorough version of a review than is reasonable to expect from an NPP/AfC reviewer. I do think it reasonable to expect a GA reviewer to be able to uncover such issues and for the DYK process (whether at the reviewer or at the prep builder level) to uncover. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:24, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

But Barkeep, the main wall that GA reviewers hit with editors like Coldwell is the one of WP:AGF on offline sources. Perhaps the review should require them to ask to be sent some offline sources, but I don't think stronger sourcing checks is passing their proposal drive. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:26, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

If the Caldwell paraphrasing would require a more thorough review than is reasonable from NPP/AfC then how do we detect it early? Not every article is going to be nominated for DYK, GA, or FA, and so that leaves a huge area for that sort of content to be left unnoticed until we have a ten/hundred thousand edit count CCI, which is a different kind of unreasonable. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:39, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

There are trade-offs to be made between the time a patroller spends on an article and the number of articles they are able to patrol. Copyright investigating and cleanup is a specialized skill for a reason. I think the NPP tutorial discusses the expectations in a reasonable manner. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:54, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Would revisiting WP:AGFC be useful? How long must we AGF once copyright issues have surfaced ? Why do we have to have an open CCI before WP:PDEL can kick in ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

What is the page name of that place where one can request access to sources (Nikkimaria)? Who are the regulars there; that is, are there editors who can be enlisted to help spotcheck sources in the other processes we're discussing above (DYK, GAN, AFC, NPP etc)? The reason I ask is that I just saw Ucucha popping back in to address an article at URFA/2020, and if Ucucha were still actively editing, I'd have someone I could enlist to help with the editor I'm now frustrated with. That Is. We've lost too many top content editors who have the ability and resources to deal with a growing problem. Another example is the loss of Geometry guy, a sorta kinds defacto GA process Coordinator in the older days, who would have put forward some sort of proposal to deal with this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:54, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

WP:REREQ is the place where you can request access to sources. There's a list of editors at WP:REREQ#Reference resources, but I dunno how up to date it is. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:03, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

WP:RX (it feels wrong to me to call it REREQ) is a great place, and people are jumping over each other trying to fulfill resource requests. That said, I don't think it's common to request that someone do spotchecks, rather than just cough up the source for the requester to then put in the work. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:40, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

So looking at WP:DYK, it seems like there's two strands to it; new articles, and significantly expanded articles. It'd be useful to find out if the copyvios coming out of DYK are predominantly from one of those two strands, or an even split from both strands. For example, if the copyvios are predominently from new DYK articles, then that could imply a problem with the copyvio detection at the NPP and AFC level, because new DYKs should also have gone through that review and clearly they missed something, unless the copyvio content was added after the NPP/AFC review but before the DYK review. However if it's predominantly from expanded articles, which are generally already NPP/AFC reviewed, then clearly that's where we should put more focus on the prevention side.

Looking at the DYK requirements, 4c states that Articles should be free of copyright violations, including close paraphrasing and image copyright violations. So at the very least, it is formally part of their workflow. The DYK checklist that gets attached to every nomination has a yes/no/? field for copyvios and plagarism. Looking at WP:DYKN, there are definitely some editors there running the articles through Earwigs. For example this nomination has been held pending since November due to some plagarism issues with public domain text/block quotes.

So I think I'd need some more data from approved copyvio DYKs before I could speculate more. Is there a specific DYK strand where copyvios are more or less likely? For DYKs that contained copyvios and were approved, was there a copyvio detected and handled during the nomination process? Or was the copyvio undetected for some reason? Or was a copyvio check said to have been done, but no check was actually done? Or is this not a DYK review problem, but instead a DYK effect? Is the review clear, and the copyvio text only being inserted after the DYK hook appears on the main page?

Do we need a mechanism for getting more eyes on new editors sooner and helping them out? Good question. I'd say yes on the principles alone. It might be worth looping Diannaa into this conversation? I know she does a lot of copyright cleanup, and issues a great many {{uw-copyright}} warnings every day. At the very least she may also be able to help you handle the hounding feeling. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:32, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I am hesitant to ping Diannaa because she (and all of the CCI people) are so overburdened already. Not sure if we should ping them or not. A few of them have already been pinged in this discussion, so they may be following anyway. I'll leave it to someone to decide whether to ping Diannaa only because I hesitate to wear out my welcome with the blooming pingie thingie. Maybe instead a post at the copyright talk page?

An educational writeup of the shortcomings of Earwig could help.

I'm not sure it matters if a DYK is new or expanded, because what drives the problems that come out of DYK is the reward culture -- the quick and easy "get my work on the mainpage" gratification. Efforts might be better placed to get the throughput at DYK to slow down. Featuring new content on the mainpage made sense in the early days, when growing the 'pedia was a goal. Does it still make sense to have so many editors working to populate DYK, and then so many more editors having to engage the problems at WP:ERRORS? Why are we still doing this? How many of those seeking rewards would stop committing copyvio if they couldn't get that gratification? One interesting bit of data I'd like to see is how many DYKs move on to FAs ... those are the editors who are adding substantial value. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:42, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

At some point in this, I think we'll need to get Diannaa, and all of the major CCI people involved, at the very least to hear where they think the major problem area(s) are for undetected copyvios. They may agree with you that it's DYK or some other reward driven process, or they may be seeing it from somewhere else that we've not considered. I wonder if brainstorming a brief set of questions to be asked on the CCI and/or CP talk pages would be a worthwhile exercise here?

I dunno if reward culture is just a DYK and WikiCup problem. I know when we run a NPP backlog, there's a similar leaderboard + rewards for contributing setup that if mishandled could encourage speed over accuracy.

As for the new versus expansion thing, I think it would be helpful to at quantify where the problematic articles are coming from. Those that are new should have had at least two reviews (NPP + DYK), so two sets of eyes looking at the same or similar content. If both of those sets of editors are missing something, beyond the close paraphrasing of offline sources problem, then that might help us track down why two different groups of editors are missing this. If it's primarily the expansion side, then that limits the pool of reviewers to just those involved in DYK, which might help us figure out if this is a process, tooling, or training problem specific to the DYK expansion side.

At the moment there's too many questions like "is DYK too speedy?", "is there a lack of training for DYK reviewers?", "does DYK's process encourage hooks over accuracy?", "is there template or process blindness behind the DKY review causing editors to skip over this step?", or "is this something else entirely?" to try and workshop possible solutions. More data from the underlying DYK process would help us pre-filter out some of these questions when figuring out solutions. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:59, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

SS, I just re-read and saw that Diaanna has already been pinged to this discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:02, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I am impressed with the format of Wikipedia:Good Article proposal drive 2023. If we were to start a list as you suggest in a new section below, would we head that direction? Or too soon? Need data first ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:04, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, too many conversation tangents here. Is this a list of questions for the CCI/CP talk pages? Or data gathering questions to more thoroughly figure out the problem spots in the DYK process? Or both? Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:08, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm asking you :) :) Do you think we can put together questions before we have data, or data comes first? And where would we get the DYK data ? Or should we not even be assuming that DYK is a big driver of the problem, as the CCI people may disagree? My sample could be biased, as I tend to notice the big CCIs that come from frequent DYKers (including some too frequent close paraphrasing that never resulted in a CCI on one frequent DYKer who basically closely paraphrased NYT obits into DYKs years ago). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:13, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Aaah, following now. For the CCI/CP talk pages, I think the questions are pretty generic, we don't need data to ask questions like "Where do you find the most problematic copyvio edits coming from?". A brainstorm for this would be to figure out the 3-6 important questions that the answers of would help direct us for further investigations. Ideally this would be a short set of questions that would only take maybe 5 minutes to answer.

For the DYK data, we'd be gathering it ourselves. I'd recommend workshopping a series of investigative questions that we could then apply to both the recent known historical problem editors (the "big CCIs that come from frequent DYKers" as you put it from 2022 or a 3/6/9 month period of 2022 if that's too many editors), as well as a snapshot of all DYK nominations over a short fixed period (eg 7 days). We should be looking at things like when was the copyvio detected in relation to the article being drafted/DYK nominated & reviewed/DYK live/post-DYK, were any red flags raised during the DYK review and if so how were these handled at the time, when was the offending text inserted into the article (pre-nom during article drafting, post-nom but pre-hook, during the hook, post hook), were there any DYK process steps skipped or glanced over because the editor in question was a regular, who was involved in the review (is there a specific subset of DYK reviewers that are operating in good faith but are just bad at copyvio detection?). Anything relevant that we can structure into something that we can then use comparatively across the dataset to figure out what (if any) patterns there are. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:35, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Great. On the first, how about a new section below on this page to begin gathering samples which we can whittle down before going to the next step? On the second, I hesitate to over-involve myself in the DYK data gathering, as I have been closely involved in past efforts at DYK reform, and feathers could be ruffled. Leaving that to others :) And separately, I was seriously exposed to active COVID a day and a half ago, so I might fall ill any day now ... just saying ! Gonna go get a ton of work in another area done right now as in making hay while the sun shines. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:51, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I think feathers have the chance to be ruffled regardless of how we handle this. But as long as we're clear and open about how we gathered the data, and the process used to analyse it, then I think we can keep that at a minimum.

Yeah sections below to work on the questions would be ideal. Or we could move this off to a subpage if you want to stop getting emails/notification pings every time someone replies or edits here. I've got other off-wiki stuff to do now though so won't be able to look at this for a while.

Oh no! Here's hoping that you get lucky and didn't get infected, or that if you did it passes swiftly and mildly. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:12, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

In terms of badly-needed DYK reform, I think efforts will be more productive if I am less involved.

For now, I think enough knowledgeable editors are following here that we might get the beginnings of a list here. I fear if we move off to a subpage already, we may lose a few.

Thanks, not so worried about me with COVID, as my 94-year-old dear friend who exposed me :( :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:33, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

One of the challenges with this work is that one person's "close paraphrasing" is another person's WP:STICKTOSOURCES. There are editors who think that if a sentence can't be credibly accused of a copyvio, then it should be banned as original research.

One of the general areas that I wish we were stronger in is briefly summarizing long passages. I'd love to see more editors summarizing whole book chapters into a single short paragraph. Doing that eliminates all concerns about copyright violations. But some RecentChanges patrollers and watchlist inhabitants, when/if they check an addition, have been known to object to anything that requires them to read more than a paragraph, and if it's the least bit contentious, they want to see close paraphrasing, and their actions put pressure on editors to engage in close paraphrasing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Mmmm. It's funny, I think there's definitely a subset of editors who see the ALLCAPS shortcut for that, and use it almost as a thought terminating cliche, conveniently ignoring the start of the second sentence that tells us to summarise in our own words. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:28, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Sideswipe9th, you'd think someone might write some essays about that kind of WP:UPPERCASE mistake leading to myths that we can't use WP:OUROWNWORDS. (I know WAID is perfectly aware of this mistake and was illustrating flawed thinking with a common example of flawed policy citation).

I agree with WAIDs comment about books, and wish it was easier for us to get hold of (and encourage using) professional textbooks like it is for some editors to get hold of papers. The worst example of plagiarism citing a single sentence in a single source came when I looked at student assignments many years ago. The students, who were taking a first-year university course (and so therefore knew nothing) were asked to find a research paper and insert its findings into Wikipedia. The lack of subject knowledge, the lack of variety of sources and authors, and the inability to summarise what is already just a sentence, meant it was nearly impossible for them to paraphrase, and those who tried often importantly mischaracterised their source. -- Colin°^Talk 20:39, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright problems: time spent

Ugh. I just spent two hours of my life rewriting Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, although I couldn't fix all the failed verification and have listed it at GAR for that and comprehensiveness/weighting issues. That one's at least partially my fault, because I performed a bad GA review back in 2020 when I was still newer to the process. The fact that those two hours will constitute most of my wiki time for this week is fairly frustrating, too. Between burnout from complex Yellow Book audits at work, some RL mental health stuff, and the knowledge that I'm at least partially responsible for the Coldwell situation, I feel heavily discouraged. Will probably return to my normal level of activity in mid-February, but at this point I can make no guarantees. Hog Farm _Talk 02:36, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Hog Farm Stop That (stern finger wagging). By the time you came along, the Coldwell Phenom (which is a culture) was already very well established. Hundreds of DYKs and a slew of GAs and people assume the editor is sourcing soundly. Not just you. More than a handful of very good editors. I have no use for blaming individual editors when there is an entire culture built around counting notches in belts. It's the culture that needs to be addressed. And WMF needs to pay people to deal with copyvio. Talk:Battle of Ridgefield-- editor rams through boatloads of cut-and-paste on 20 to 22 May, and it's on the mainpage at DYK in less than a week (28 May 2008). I don't see that anything has changed since Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism and copyright concerns on the main page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:40, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

PS, and remember, DC used offline sources, so policy forced reviewers to AGF. (That's why a stern FAC copyvio check asks the nominator to supply random bits from offline sources.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:42, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

@Hog Farm: Please don't beat yourself up over the Doug situation. You aren't responsible for his actions, or his choice to plagiarise offline sources. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

And by the way, I mentioned above that I hesitated to name all the past exact situations, but one old-time DYK serial problem is very much still active. That's a rub. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

I spent my entire morning on yet another one that I came across by happenstance. This is 13 years after we published the Plagiarism dispatch, pulling together all of our best IP people to "get serious". The culture needs to change and something needs to be done. This (no one looking closely) is how the DCs and Billy Hathorns (and over a half a dozen more I can name but won't) come to leave behind big messes that we don't enough resources to clean up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:31, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright problems: WMF

Could it be that the reason WMF won't employ someone to find and remove copyright violations is that that would break the claim that they are not responsible for it. They handle formal takedown requests and nothing more. Doing more could be a trap? -- Colin°^Talk 10:10, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

I was wondering if the logic was something along those lines (and I notice that WAID didn't answer my query :) Of course, assuming there is some logic may be a stretch here. There must be info out there somewhere on this that we're just not aware of. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:22, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) This would be my assumption too. WMF has never been responsible for the content on the servers aside from their legal liabilities under the DMCA. Any more moderation, and they'd run into additional responsibilities under Section 230. Given that Section 230 is being litigated in front of the Supreme Court this term, and WMF has filed an amicus brief in the case, I would assume that they won't comment any further until the litigation has concluded. In short, this is something that the community will have to resolve. Imzadi 1979 → 20:39, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah ha ... very interesting info ... thx, Imzadi ... now it all makes more sense.

There must be some sort of workaround involving grants or some funding to editors, not limited only to copyright, and as long as WMF isn't in a position to control edits ... ???? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Sandy, sorry I've been a bit slow on the DC related stuff, I've been pretty busy recently but should be able to get back to helping with that soon. I just finished reading this mega thread, I'm very happy that you've bringing these issues up and that there's an ongoing conversation about this here. Tomorrow I'll try and answer some more questions, but on the topic of the WMF, I think Colin has it right--employing people to take care of copyvios might make it more of an "issue" for them. Grants and funding are the way to go. But that has me thinking, it'd be nice if we had an advisor or community liaison for copyvio related issues, I don't think that's asking for too much.... Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 08:09, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Now there's an idea we can run with. Thanks for popping in, Moneytrees. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:48, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

More copyvio burnout.

A little good news: I had these software tweaks done: [1][2]. Hopefully temporary blocks for copyvios are less frequent. But that's only one problem fixed. There are the amateurs that just point and click at Earwig and say everything is OK. Our tools currently have too many false negatives, and this creates CCIs that can really only be dealt with using PDEL. There are also the plot summary copyvios, the subcontinental copyvios, and worst of all - the persistent copyvio sockpuppeteers, like Dante8. MER-C 19:22, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

That is truly bad news about Diannaa, but most understandable. I don't know how you all do it. I spent a couple hours this morning on one article only. It is not only amateur editors who misunderstand Earwig; a very experienced editor pointed me to Earwig on a Coldwell article containing copyright issues. It takes hours and hours to go back and locate these very old sources, which are hard to search in various formats used, and PDEL is the only answer when serial issues are found. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:39, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Even then PDEL isn't enough. I can deal with the easy PDELs in a few minutes each (the gadget Who Wrote That makes it easy) but (1) the sheer number means I hesistate to push more than five a day through WP:CP and (2) there are still an overwhelming number of complex cases. From experience, PDEL only halves the work at best. MER-C 11:03, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

So what can be done? Should we all convene in a sandbox somewhere for brainstorming? I have been working for days trying to nip another new one in the bud. And failing. It's exhausting and demoralizing and I'm too tired to write up the ANi now. There aren't enough of us. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:11, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Hooking Earwig up to machine translation would help reduce false negatives and tackle one broad swathe of difficult to detect copyvios. I don't see it being added to Copypatrol - it's another batch of API calls to some external service that will require money to access. MER-C 19:38, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

By the way, halving the work on Coldwell is a tonna work! And, it's the pushback that I find frustrating, which is why we need a consensus. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:11, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright problems: DYK datagathering questions

Ok, starting this section to brainstorm and hopefully format a set of questions that we can apply to known bad DYKs, and a snapshot of DYK nominations over a fixed period. Will fill in more momentarily. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:31, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Some basic structure first. This is mostly for convenience to quickly get to the relevant article revisions, DYK review, etc.

• Name of article: [wikilink to article name here]
• Date of creation: [link to first revision of the article here]
• Date of copyvio or close paraphrase detection: [link to revision where cv-revdel requested, or close paraphrase first removed]
• DYK nomination status: [approved/rejected]
• DYK Nomination Review: [link to archived completed DYK review of article]
• State of article at nomination: [link to diff of the article at or just prior to it being DYK nominated]
• State of the article after DYK review: [link to diff of the article immediately after DYK review completed]
• State of the article after DYK hook ended: [link to the diff of the article immediately after it left the main page]

Now some questions. Comments/explainers are in italics.

• Did the copyvio or close paraphrase exist prior to the DYK review?
  • This will let us quickly filter out articles where the offending text was inserted after the review
• Was the copyvio or close paraphrase inserted as part of the DYK review?
  • This is a very controversial question, and one I hope we maybe don't have to ask. But if we do ask it, it will give us more info on how the offending text was inserted into the article.
• Was there a copyvio or close paraphrase detected during the DYK review?
  • If yes, was the revision deleted?
  • If yes, was every copyvio or close paraphrase detected during the review?
  • If no, was there mention of a potential copyvio or paraphrase in the review outside of the DYK review template?
    • Note, the three above questions at the level 2 list are optional and dependent on the answer to the question at level 1
• How long after article creation was an issue confirmed and actioned?
• How long after DYK nomination was an issue confirmed and actioned?
• How long after DYK review completed was an issue confirmed and actioned?
• Was the copyvio or close paraphrase from an online or offline source?
  • This one might be difficult to ascertain. In theory it should be determinable from edit summaries that removed the content or the Special:Log entries that actually hid the offending revisions. Where an article had been tagged with {{cv-revdel}} prior to revision deletion, the output of the template should state the source.
• If known, how was the copyvio or close paraphrase detected?
  • Again this might be difficult to ascertain if revisions have been hidden. Checking the DYK review, article talk page, and edit summaries may help. Does copypatrol keep any relevant records here that would help?

That's all I can think of right now. Obviously formatting and phrasing is pretty far from final. And there's at least one question that I hope we don't have to ask, but might give us more insight into how copyvios are getting through DYK. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:06, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

That's a bit overwhelming :) Who would gather this data?

I was thinking more along the lines of "how many of Wikipedia's serial copyvio offenders were spawned by the pursuit of rewards via DYK and GA"? I'd rather eat nails than have to look at DYK every day to answer these questions. I just took a look at one queue and it has a DYK hook for a recent GA that contains prose that is gibberish. And the DYK hook is not only incomprehensible, it's probably untrue and it's probably a copyvio from Spanish sources.

At one time, I tracked DYK daily, because every queue had at least one (often more) instances of failed verification, copyvio, or incomprehensible prose. That remains true, 15 years later. I don't want to have to get down to the level of analyzing DYKs to try to figure out how we can stem the copyvio problem. Anyone who doesn't know it's a problem and needs data hasn't been following the main page. What we need to know is whether the DYK process is furthering the problem, or helping teach editors to prepare better articles.

In the article I just looked at, neither the DYK nor the GA review amounted to ... anything. Passed 'em up the line with scant review. Are NPP and AFC doing a better job of vetting articles? What process does a better job of educating editors on policies and guidelines and best practices? How can we reallocate more resources to what works? DYK doesn't; we have 549 Coldwell DYKs as one example. (Those of us who have been around long enough know of quite a few more.). He just kept on doing what he did, and DYK kept on passing them. How we can better focus resources so that we don't have gobs of editors promoting DYK queues so that another gob of editors can file ERRORS reports? And still not catch copyvio, 'cuz no one's looking.

So, I'm confused about who would gather this data as you outline, and what we'd do with it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:11, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

For data gathering, whomever volunteers. But at the very least I'm happy to do it, I'd just need feedback on what it is I should be looking for.

So the purpose of this set of questions is to figure out where in the DYK process copyvios and CLOP issues are being missed. If we were to go to them and say something like "Hey, you all have a problem with letting copyvios and CLOP through the nomination and review process. Can you fix that please?" we'd not get much traction, and maybe some heat. However if we can go to them and say "Hey, there's a problem with the DYK process resulting in copyvios and CLOP being undetected. It's coming from [this part of the DYK review process], here's the data that shows how this is happening and how you can replicate our findings. Can this be fixed please?" I think, or I hope we'll have a much more positive response.

I'm not suggesting we look at DYK every day for a set period. What I'm suggesting is that we take a set of known bad DYKs from editors who have been subject to CCI, say around a dozen articles, and use a set of questions like this to determine where the copyvio/CLOP issue originated, and how it was missed at the DYK review. Then we compare that against a sample of recent nominations that have recently fully gone through the DYK process, for example all DYK nominations from 1 January 2023, using the same questions, to see if the same problems exist.

It is my hope that from the two sets of data, we can figure out what it is in the DYK process that is missing these issues. Is it because as you say "no one's looking"? Is it because DYK nominations are getting non-rigorous reviews? Are there DYK reviewers who are AGFing a little too hard on supposedly good/well known editors (eg, "oh that's a Doug Coldwell nomination? Not much for me to check here. Approve.")? Do some DYK reviewers just not have the competency to handle copyvios/CLOP issues when Earwig comes up clean? At the moment we don't know why this issue is arising from that process. Analysing data should help us determine that. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:05, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright: Ideas so far

1. Summer internships for law students.
2. A WMF Community liaison for copyright issues.
3. Grants funding editors who work on copyvio.
4. Policy changes (WP:PDEL earlier and easier once a copyvio is found, things like that ... I have spent days trying to rein in a new editor)

   What policy changes might allow us to nip more in the bud ... sooner, easier?

   Are user right limits too lax ?

   Reform AGF? how much copyvio before we suspend AGF and shoot on sight content cited to offline sources.

5. More CCI admins Barkeep49 get the RFA nomination machine moving on copyvio types. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:17, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

   I've got a candidate with CCI experience who will hopefully run this spring. I'm also always open for recommendations. Additionally I know Moneytrees is active in CCI and is currently trying to do more admin finding. That said, as Money's RfA showed, I think CCI editors going for admin face the challenge that it's easy to be focused on keeping the negative out versus nurturing the positive. On the whole editors who have a story to tell about building, rather than defending, the wiki tend to have an easier go. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:50, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

   Money, a fine admin and fine person who got a thoughtful neutral from me, went to 'crat chat for the same reason a few others did recently: a nominator statement. Presentations which feel less than forthcoming are always a big concern (one wonders what else they don't know). That doesn't happen with your candidates. But I agree that building is the way to go! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:04, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

   Just a thought, and probably a very radical and wild one. What is it exactly that CCI admins need the tools for? Is it primarily for revdeling and blocking? Has there ever been any thought towards unbundling the revdel part of that to a new permission? I dunno what you'd call it, but in scope I'd consider it something like "CCI clerk", a trusted user who can handle some of the burden of actually suppressing copyvios from articles.

   I had this thought when I was looking at the edit filter helper and edit filter manager perms, which allow for trusted non-admins to see (EFH and EFM) and edit (EFM) private edit filters, both of which are actions that are otherwise restricted to admins. Obviously there'd need to be some checks put in place to ensure that the trusted editors who gain that permission don't abuse it in any way, but could this lighten the load on the current set of CCI admins in any appreciable way? Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:18, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

   I was granted NPR to bypass filter 856, which tags every removal of a copyright tag in mainspace. I was granted PMR after repeatedly pestering admins to move rewrites into place, and even then, I still need an admin to delete the page when I'm done. I run the risk of an admin outright undoing my work and calling it disruptive. There's also an incredibly high level of leeway granted to admins. I burnt out on copyright problems, but I handled a lot of the cases where MER-C's pdel couldn't. There is a much higher chance of me getting blasted on my talk page or dragged to ANI for disruption for removing content without a clear policy ground; the policy ground is that the cases are ridiculously complex or difficult to look into, so I stub it for probable copyvio. People don't take me as seriously as they would DanCherek, for instance, in a copyright situation, because I'm not an admin. It's unlikely to get revdel unbundled even for a highly trusted role; at that point, the scrutiny would just be as bad as an RFA one because it involves deletion. Sennecaster (Chat) 04:00, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

   More CCI admins would help. Even a bit of attrition means serious problems in an area that's already hard work for such a small crew. (I managed to close exactly one CCI in the past year, a process that basically burned me out despite being one of the easy ones!) But I see a few wicked problems the community will have to overcome first.

   First, we need a way to teach copyright to editors so they can develop proficiency and eventually become admin candidates. I don't think there are enough fast community-driven feedback loops in place to meaningfully guide editors. (If the community had a dollar for every time someone stopped at "my Earwig score is only 22%", well we could just hire all the copyright specialists we needed.) I’ve only gotten actual constructive feedback once or twice in the past eight years—this means I have effectively zero idea how I’m doing. Now, this doesn’t personally bother me all that much, but my level of comfort with VUCA situations doesn’t magic away the root-cause problem.

   We also need to get tools into folks’ hands somehow, and that can be challenging. Not sure the community will go for further tool unbundling, and as Barkeep points out RfA can be tough for behind-the-scenes specialists. I wonder if the community has any appetite for a novel approach. Back in 2017, I got reasonably close to submitting an RfA myself, and one thing I considered was de facto unbundling by promising to use the tools only for revdels, G12s, and copyvio blocks. I even drafted a recall process that would have allowed anyone in good standing to have me desysopped if I used the tools for a non-listed purpose. Seemed like one way to assuage potential fears about handing broad discretionary authority to a niche/specialist editor. I remain doubtful that it would have worked, and obviously I didn’t end up doing any of this myself, but if any lurking RfA nomination-writers want to give it a shot with a future candidate, the first "wiae idea" is free :) /wiae /tlk 14:30, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

6. GA/DYK reform: are they pushing more volume than they can handle?
7. WMF funding to develop a better tool for detecting WP:CLOP? Tedious manual work ...
8. Re-write, update, publish in Signpost Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches (the copyright pages are too dense for a new editor)
9. Noticeboard reform. Consider this comment (three lost years), these (untrue) claims, and the complexity of using Wikipedia:Copyright problems. (Aside: wow. Just wow. On the three years.) One can drop a problem at the COI noticeboard or the BLP noticeboard without a lot of work, but just figuring out how to lodge a copyright concern stumps me every time. If XOR'easter could have made a simple, "could someone look into this" post at a noticeboard three years ago ... yes, the CCI folks already have too much work, but would not an easier-to-use noticeboard encourage more of us non-admins to help out ?? The COINoticeboard has saved my sanity more than once. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:18, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

   Noticeboards are only useful if someone's there to respond to the plea for help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:13, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

   Hence, my point ... if it were easier, more of us would participate. I engage CCI reluctantly as I'm so afraid to make a mistake and the instrutions are so complicated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:17, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

   The instructions on copyright problems gives the information of how to handle copyright violations across the entire site. The policy itself says to refer to those instructions. I don't think there's a way to simplify the beginning stuff without a major major rewrite and restructuring. It's doable, but it'd take a while and the people that are most familiar with how the board works and how copyright enforcement happens 'round here may not get to it for months. Sennecaster (Chat) 04:03, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

10. Data for GA and DYK to identify QPQ problems. Editor interaction shows clearly which editors were pushing DC's articles through DYK and GA. Mike Christie's data will be helpful as well. When a nominator puts up a GAN or DYK, how to add Mike's data showing frequent collaborators. The trends with DC are apparent via editor interaction, so having this info incorporated into the review might discourage unhealthy QPQ. Some of DC's collaborators have CLOP issues themselves, and should not be reviewing at DYK or GAN. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:46, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    I posted this at ANI back in September: Not being familiar with CCI discussions I don't want to pontificate but I would have thought PDEL should be the default. If breaking copyright rules doesn't get you a scarlet letter, doesn't require you to fix your own messes, doesn't stop you from editing, and leaves your bad edits in place (since we don't have the manpower to clean most of it up), what is the incentive not to break those rules?. By "scarlet letter" I meant that the CCI page names are anonymized so nobody knows you're to blame. I think at least one of those four things should change. Has there ever been a case where someone unwilling to cooperate by fixing their own messes has continued to edit and been productive? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:12, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    By the time it reaches that point, the editor may already be blocked. Once blocked, they're usually faced with a choice between "volunteering" to clean up the mess, or staying blocked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    That sounds more than plausible, but do you think that happens because we don't bring down the hammer quickly enough? In other words, as soon as a CCI is opened the editor is expected to contribute significantly to the clean up, and if they don't they're blocked? They can edit elsewhere too at the same time, I'm thinking. If my kid were to take a stick and run around the garden lopping the heads off flowers, I'd make them help replant as necessary, and I wouldn't hide it from the rest of the family, give them the free run of the garden, and leave the damaged flowers on the lawn. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:25, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    When given a chance, they often demonstrate that they aren't able to paraphrase and summarize sources in their own words. Now, in the good news dept, I just investigated the editor I mention below. Arb sanctioned for other behavioral issues, failed RFA where I gave a copyvio example no one else picked up on (which was happening daily at DYK, but there was never a CCI), came to my talk page, I gave them a stern talking to, and current editing of the same type of articles from the same types of sources reveals ... no problem! There you go ... a success story ... not that the old stuff has been cleaned up, though. The problem with most of the editors who end up blocked, and same with DC, is that their friends defend them, and the stern talking to doesn't sink in. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:45, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    When given a chance, they often demonstrate that they aren't able to paraphrase and summarize sources in their own words.. Then I'd say they have no place editing here. If after Doug's first CCI we'd required him to fix his own work and found that he couldn't, and he'd been blocked as a result, there would be a lot less to clean up. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:51, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    That's a good question. The most prolific serial DYK offender I used to follow (a decade ago) is still editing, but I don't think there was ever a CCI. Need to do more homework to see if there were any sanctions and if the copyvio continues. People at DYK wanted my head then (there was daily copyvio on the main page, and then Rlevse happened, and the rest of what happened to FAC is history), so I solved my copyvio angst by trying to never again look at DYK. It would be nice if we could get a list of the serial offenders. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:16, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

11. Machine translation for Earwig. Probably on a single source basis at first to control costs. MER-C 17:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
12. A write up explaining the limitations of Earwig; too many content reviewers have no understanding of what Earwig canNOT detect. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:36, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Copyright issues: Other discussion

Hi, I just read through this conversation with interest - lots of food for thought. I've been chipping away at Martinevans123's copyright investigation, assessing 2-3 pages at a time out of tens of thousands, and it strikes me that I'm never going to make any sort of serious dent in it. Then there's the Edelmand case, which was only uncovered because I've got the same books sources as they use, and was shocked to discover wholesale rampant plagiarism which wouldn't be uncovered by automated tools - ever. I think that's hardly been looked at, because it doesn't involve a high-profile editor and I didn't raise the issue at somewhere like ANI before I set up the investigation. The backlog at CCI stretches back years, actually decades, people get burned out by such an unpleasant slog, that I'm really at a complete loss to suggest what to do. Meanwhile, the "free" encyclopedia is being made a laughing stock by hosting blatant copyright violations that nobody (broadly construed) can be bothered to get rid of.

Incidentally, the biggest problem with Earwig is on any established article, you're likely to find the top one or two hits to be Wikipedia mirrors, which will give you the impression that the article is nearly 100% copyvio and flag the entire screen in red. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:17, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Ritchie333, Earwig is useless in dealing with our serial copyviolators, and too few content review editors and processes understand its limitations. The DC CCI is progressing amazingly well (that is, at least compared to other CCI cases) in terms of the amount of content already looked at and deleted. Part of the reason we have been able to move so quickly is the AN consensus we got per WP:DCGAR. But we need to do more to prevent the next Billy Hathorn, DC, etc ... I have been socked in with IRL work for weeks, but am keeping this thread on the page as I intend to work on #Copyright: Ideas so far whenever I get a breather. For now, when I come home after a long day, I try to get six to ten DC articles looked at ... anyone who wants to join the effort, a) prepare to see some of the worst content you've ever seen, and b) dig in with us at the talk page of WP:DCGAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:36, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Any work to get rid of copyright violations on Wikipedia is good. The problem with Doug Coldwell is I've never interacted with him - I notice I called for an indefinite block at ANI last year, but that was in an uninvolved administrator role. I don't think I've ever read anything he's ever contributed to, at least not consciously. So I'm not sure where to start, if I'm honest. Martin's CCI is easier, as he's got overlapping interests to mine, such as British geography and music. I find it a bit easier to work on those as I can simply identify the relevant text and copyedit it, making any possibility of copyright violation moot. I wouldn't be able to do that with DC's articles as I'm completely unfamiliar with the subject matter. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:01, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Sandy – thanks for all of the work you have done recently in this thread, at GAN, and elsewhere regarding this issue. Regarding your suggestion above about writing up an essay about the limitations of Earwig in detecting issues, I had started to write up some notes and I have now stuck them in my userspace here – if you or your talkpage stalkers want to use that as the basis for something then feel free to have at it! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:52, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing issues

Following up from my FAC. Where can I find guidance on how to prevent close paraphrasing? Is there a common method for pulling info from a source that can avoid this? I read WP:FIXCLOSEPARA. It helps demonstrate what the problem is, but I find it really unhelpful with actually fixing the issue, primarily because it doesn't offer much guidance on how to combine sources while maintaining source-text integrity for each individual inline citation. Obviously there's an answer to this, but apparently this is an area where I struggle. I'm especially concerned because I have written eight WP:Good articles using these same sources, all of which passed fairly easily (lending credence to my theory that GA as a process is broken at a fundamental level). I don't want to burden you too much with all of this, but I'd like to know if there's a typical solution for this problem. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:07, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I was just trying to find just that for you ... someone recently typed up a very good summary that I've been trying to find. Maybe one of my TPS remembers. The gist being to read all your sources, then set them aside and write in your own words what you remember without consulting the sources (so you know you get your own phrasing), and then go back and doublecheck that what you wrote conforms to the sources, adjust from there. That is, don't write with the source in front of you; you've got to read, remove yourself from the source, get away from it to write, then come back to it to check. Please feel free to burden me all you like; I am always pleased to see an editor grow through constructive feedback at FAC. I'm going to keep poking around to see if I can find that summary I saw recently from a better writer than I am (well, that's pretty much everyone :) Back in my day, we wrote this, but it may not give the practical info you seek ... maybe a TPS will pop up to help. I used to be so fearful of paraphrasing that I tended to overquote, probably still do, so hang in there ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:15, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I take it back ... I had forgotten there are some practical tips in there; hope it helps. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:16, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I just finished reading the Signpost dispatch. I definitely see what the problem is and why it's a problem. But the description of how to write without paraphrasing just doesn't feel intuitive to me. Presumably my workflow of "read one source, add relevant facts from that source, move on to the next source" isn't viable. Overall, I'm just overwhelmingly frustrated with Wikipedia's philosophy of "keep doing it wrong without guidance until someone comments on it months or years later". I can't help but wonder how many other regular editors are doing this without realizing it, because GA reviewers never seem to know how to look for it and apparently it's not really something that's closely scrutinized outside of first time FACs. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:15, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Don't be frustrated .. sit on it for a day or two, do something else in the meantime, and come back to it. It will come together. It sounds like your work style is like mine: linear processing. I also tend to put one source on my desk in front of me, and chunk in everything I want to use from that source before moving on to the next one. But I've learned that I first have to have in my mind the big picture, an outline that is mine, not the sources ... perhaps that's easier in medical writing because we have such a well-defined structure. You will find your way through this, because you're determined. It's always good to be on a new learning curve, and the good news is you will now move beyond GA :). A good way to spend your learning time is reviewing other FACs, by the way. Sometimes you can spot things even if you're not sure how to fix them ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:33, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

With close paraphrasing, there is always a balancing act between not making the text overly similar to the source on the one hand, and the need to avoid writing original research, stilted prose and the fact that sometimes there is really only one way of saying a thing. In cases where you have a closely paraphrased text, some thinking about alternative formulations and then a total rewrite is a good approach. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:31, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia or any TPS: is there an efficient way to determine whether there's close paraphrasing in other articles I've written? I'm hoping that the issue is limited to the first lady articles that I've written (due to the nature of biographical articles and the sources that I've been using for them), but it's always difficult to tell when it's your own writing. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:43, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Will answer roll answer in below with Christine's query. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:56, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Larataguera, re your query here, moving discussion to here as the FAC has archived. I wasn't concerned enough about those instances to remove the text as copyvio; I can't say why-- it's just one of those "you know it when you see it" things. What was indicated by Victoriaearle was easily fixable and didn't seem to rise to the level of removal. The concern in this case is more related to getting a first-time FAC nominator on the right track. I also don't think of myself as any sort of expert in this area ... still learning myself :).

I love your username; it's poetic and musical and strong at the same time. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:29, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll second Sandy's suggestion about reviewing other people's FACs, or even just following along if it's something on which you have sources available, and seeing how that editor reworked the text from the sources into their FAC. It helps a great deal if you have a fairly well-defined structure to use as a base.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 12:40, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing has always been something I've struggled with as well. Would doing an Earwig check help with it? Perhaps comparing your work with it could be an easy way to make sure your work doesn't sound too much like your sources? Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 22:30, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

The answer to several queries above is a depressing, "no, there is no easy way". There are some tools that can help a bit, but no tool that will really pick up close paraphrasing, and not at all when the sources are scans like, for example, from newspapers.com. One should always run Earwig but recognize that it can't look at scans, and rarely detects too-close paraphrasing. Ditto for the duplication detector, although it might pick up a bit more if you set the word count low and remove quotes, but you have to check each source. But neither of these tools will pick up duplication of structure. The most egregious examples seen in the WP:DCGAR CCI are entire paragraphs where a few words are juggled.

As you can see, there's a whole big long rant and thread on this page at #TPS alert/rant: CCI work. Because after DYK let through more than 500 articles, and GAN let through more than 200, over more than a decade-and-a-half, we end up with WP:DCGAR, and that is by no means the first such example. That's why we have tried to put our heads together to come up with ideas above. Trying to read through low resolution newspapers.com scans to pick up too-close paraphrasing and copyvio that has gone undetected for years and decades is a miserable chore, and there are only about four very active admins and a few others trying to do it all.

So after spending a disgusting month in the bowels of some of the worst content I've ever encountered, and seeing the laxity in most (not all) GA reviews, I have to ask what purpose GA and DYK serve, if they don't serve to catch copyright issues early on-- before the problems become huge-- and these processes clearly do not. In fact, via the reward culture, they encourage editors to churn out content too fast for careful checking. And I wonder if the most active editors in those two processes really care ? There are several very active GAN editors helping in the cleanup, but almost no one from DYK. This situation might be understandable were it rare: it's not. DYK has been churning out serial copyright violators for as long as I've been editing, and not a thing has changed. We're still cleaning up copyvio from serial DYKers from a decade ago. After DCGAR, we know the same applies to GAN. And without Ealdgyth, one can wonder when the next FAC scandal will hit.

The answer to your query is all you can do is be aware, use what tools we have, go back and re-read your writing, and watch for same in all content review processes.

And don't beat yourselves up; it's something everyone struggles with, and it's those who don't care or can't change that we have to worry about. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Butting in, I mostly follow (although off-line and via text files) Victoria's habit of reading a load of sources and then memory dumping in own words. This is to me the ideal approach. Creating articles in the 400 to 1000 word count range usually takes 5 to 6 hours (although YMMV): imo if its taking less than that something is wrong. Ceoil (talk) 00:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Butting in: User:Victoriaearle/Tutorial is a different sandbox that might be more helpful. I dumped a bunch of links there some years ago when helping someone with the issue of writing in your own words and just added a quick step-by-step process. Basically it's always best to read a source thoroughly, walk away (so as to forget the specific wording in the source), take notes in your own words, then repeat with each source. Victoria (tk) 20:52, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Article history

I know FACBot handles the article history template on talk pages when an article is promoted to FA/removed at FAR—do you know if there is any other bot which can work the AH template on command? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:54, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

There are a few bots doing different pieces, but no one bot doing it all as GimmeBot used to ... what are you hoping to see and I can point you in the right direction, maybe. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:57, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Idk, I guess I was just hoping for a bot you can point at a confusing mess of failed GA nominations/peer reviews and have it sort it out for you. Hopefully someone creates it someday. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:47, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29, nope, but you can point me at it and I'll fix it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:21, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

At that point I might as well sort it out manually myself although SandyBot is an intriguing idea! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Samples

AirshipJungleman29 here is a weekly sample to more completely answer your question above. @Hawkeye7 and Novem Linguae: and I'm not sure what bot does GA closes. As you can see, we have multiple bots adding talk page entries and creating and correcting articlehistories, but no single bot doing what GimmeBot used to do, which was roll EVERY talk page template in to AH. In particular, I'm not sure any of the bots roll in AFDs. Another issue is that different bots are using different formats (when I intervene manually, I stick to the format listed at the template for consistency).

See Petscan 23807355. After I tired of manually correcting AH, 0xDeadbeef kindly created User:DeadbeefBot to roll OTD, ITN, and DYK in to an existing AH; most of the omissions below will be caught by DeadbeefBot, but it cannot automatically catch or correct all of these issues (for example, it won't roll in GANs or AFDs that got left out of AH). Occasionally, an individual editor creates the incomplete AH, and in some of those cases, DeadbeefBot will catch the omissions, but sticking to standardized format will hopefully help more editors understand how AH works.

• MilHist bot creates AH without rolling in DYK
  • MilHist bot creates AH without rolling in GAN or DYK
  • MilHist bot creates AH without rolling in GAN or DYK
• FACbot closes FLC without rolling in DYK
  • FACbot closes FLC without rolling in ITN
  • FACbot closes FLC without rolling in DYK
• GAR closer creates AH without rolling in OTD
  • GAR closer creates AH without rolling in DYK
  • GAR closer creates AH without rolling in DYK
• GAR closer all round ACK! After individual intervention, DYK and AFD are still not rolled in, requires manual fixing
• Individual editor adds ITN when AH exists
• Individual editor builds AH without rolling in ITN or removing old peer review

Deadbeefbot will catch most, but not all of these, on its next run; faulty GA closes will always be and have always been a problem, as they do not follow a standard format used by all other content review processes (that is, PR, FA, FL, and DYK, as I've discussed ad nauseum with Mike Christie). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:51, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

PS, what bot closes GANs? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:00, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe any bot rolls peer reviews in to AH. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

A combination of User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/GANReviewTool (optional) and User:ChristieBot, I think. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:31, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I can't find examples of GAN closes (we know GAR closer misses a few things). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe that the GAN closer tool does article history yet - [3] Hog Farm _Talk 17:01, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

You can find examples of GANReviewTool closes at User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/GANReviewTool/GANReviewLog.

GANReviewTool does article history only if {{Article history}} is already on the talk page. Code.

GANReviewTool doesn't currently fold in other templates. Code. This is a pretty complex job that would require a lot of code and testing to do correctly. For example, what if {{Article history}} already exists, and you need to insert {{DYK talk}}, but it needs to be inserted as like action #3 to get the chronological order correct, but there's already 5 actions? Then you need code to change a bunch of the action numbers. It sounds like an ideal {{Article history}} cleanup bot would also reorder all the params into an ideal order, also with different line break strategies to create visual "groups" of parameters. Probably needs a dedicated bot that just specializes in that. Perhaps DeadbeefBot can become that bot. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:42, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes (GimmeBot did all that) -- except in your example, DYK does not need to be inserted in chrono order, as it is not an action ... it is one time event that goes at the end of the template, similar to ITN and OTD. Your example is true for folding in old AFDs, peer reviews, GANs, etc, which I do manually in those cases that come to my attention.

If we can get more editors to understand the AH template, less work all around, because when someone creates an AH template, but leaves out a process, it is more work to go back and add it in, because of chrono order. (By the way, the template still works even when the actions are not put in chrono order.) All of these bots doing partial jobs (except Oxdeadbeef) are making the job harder, because if they just left FAC, FAR, GA etc templates on talk for one bot to fold in, that bot would be much easier to code as it wouldn't have to move action numbers. I suspect that's why GimmeBot could do it, and others can't -- the bots themselves have created a hard to code situation, whereas GimmeBot kept all talk pages and all templates in order, so rarely had to worry about action numbers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Any bot handling a template needs to read the template parameters. The T:AH actions need to be read and stored in some structure, then other templates read and added to the structure as other actions. Then everything gets sorted by date, which is an easy part. The complexity - even back then - is the logic needed to handle as many as possible of the variations people made. Gimmetrow 03:56, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

When I have time I will implement functionality that parses all parameters so they can be sorted and reordered when other templates (Such as {{GA}} and {{Failed GA}}) are folded. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 04:43, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

0xDeadbeef you are a gem. If you read on, you will see how many different problems are being created by different editors and bots, and IMO, it is the bots that are making this a very hard situation to code around. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Next samples

To look at how bot proliferation is creating the AH problem.

Petscan for GAs outside of AH  Done

• Talk:Battle of Berea
  • Individual editor passes GA without building AH and without providing oldid
  • Legobot adds oldid
  • Individual editor passes A class without building AH
  • MilHist bot adds AH for A-class without merging in GA (and places articlehistory above the talk header)
  • Individual editor who nominated A class updates status without correcting AH or indicating current status
    • Correcting AH then requires resorting the actions to add GA as action1 while moving A-class review to action2, moving AH to the correct place on the page, and updating current status
• Talk:TRAPPIST-1
  • Individual editor promotes GA without building in to existing AH
  • Incorporate GA to AH
    • This one was not difficult, but should this article next go to FAC again, then FACbot would have gone through and would not build the GA in to AH, creating a problem. Solutions are 1) train GA reviewers to build in to AH, 2) encourage nominator to build in to AH, 3) get FACbot to build in to AH, 4) write a separate bot to build in to AH before FACbot goes through and misses it, so that we can 5) get BACK to the clean talk pages that one bot could process because we didn't have all different kinds of messes.
• Talk:M8 Armored Gun System similar to Battle of Berea above-- problem caused by MilHistbot building AH without merging in DYK or GAN. Note also that narry a soul is respecting talk page order of items
  • Merge both DYK and GAN to AH; once again, multiple editor and bots intervened without building the AH. These include the nominator of both the GAN, DYK, and A-class, the GA reviewer, the A-class passing editor, and then MilHistBot. Should this progress to FAC, then FACBot would close the FAC without folding in the GAN or the DYK. Oxdeadbeef would get the DYK, but not the GAN. Multiple fails. SUGGESTION: MilHistBot is creating a bigger problem than it is solving by building incomplete AHs; if it would just leave the A-class templates on the talk page, one bot could be designed to build AH correctly, without having to re-sort the actions.
• Talk:Albert Luthuli offers both a PR and a GAN that haven't been correctly rolled in to an existing AH
  • Peer review is closed
  • Individual editor builds the AH correctly but does not remove old templates
  • Mike Christie passes GA but does not fold in to existing AH
  • Iamawesomeautomatic again (almost) correctly builds AH but fails to remove templates which were merged to AH, and fails to add |currentstatus = GA so the articlehistory template renders incorrectly
  • Because the AH was at least built by the nominator editor (hurray), when the DYK bot goes through, it does roll the DYK nom in to the AH. Had it not, Oxdeadbeef bot would have caught that part. CONCLUSION: at least one editor tried, and having the AH at least built avoids future need to re-sort action items.
• Talk:Hearst Castle AH exists, but AN was not rolled in and current status is not indicated, so template is rendering incorrectly
  • FACbot fails to add currentstatus after FAC archive
  • Two experienced editors (both the GAN nominator and reviewer) fail to a) add the oldid, or b) build the GA pass into AH.
  • At least ChristieBot catches the oldid
  • Fixing this one was relatively simple, but again, without this manual intervention, should this article next appear at FAC, FACbot would not roll the GAN in, and then actions would need to be re-ordered.
• Talk:Hanford Engineer Works -- same problem as two others above -- created by MilHist bot building a partial articlehistory without rolling in an existing DYK or GAN. Oxdeadbeef bot will catch the DYK, but not the GAN.
  • Two experienced editors nominate and pass the GAN without building the AH or providing the oldid: ChristieBot catches the oldid
  • Because the AH wasn't built, the DYK bot adds a template (which Oxdeadbeef bot will catch)
  • MilHistBot builds AH without rolling in GAN or DYK and fails to add currentstatus, so AH template renders incorrectly
  • Again, manual intervention is required, and is complex because actions have to be re-ordered. Should this article proceed to FAC, FACbot will not roll in the GAN, although Oxdeadbeefbot would catch the missing DYK on its next run. Same as above other examples, MilHistbot is creating the need to re-order actions, which makes further coding to catch all of these problems more difficult.

Looking down the rest of the Petscan list, I see many milhist articles, and suspect the issues will be the same on most of them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:37, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Checking one more I recognize as an WP:FFA and not MilHist: a GAN pass not rolled in to an existing AH. Should it proceed to FAC again, FACbot will not roll in the GA.

• Talk:Geology Hall, New Brunswick, New Jersey
  • I already had to clean the AH after it was archived at FAR
  • GAN was by an experienced editor
  • GA pass was by another experienced editor who did roll the GAN into AH, but failed to remove the GA pass template.
  • Mike Christie came along to repair faulty GA links (a separate matter and a BIG problem on talk pages caused by GA process being out of sync with every other process)

That's all for now, but a combo of inaction by experienced editors and well-intentioned but faulty bot edits are making the articlehistory something that will be very difficult for future bots to fix and creating a problem that did not exist in the past, when GimmeBot got it all, without leaving pieces out that later had to be re-ordered in. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:52, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

• A class is handled by the MilHist Project's MilHistBot and not the FACBot, although I maintain them both and they share a code base. The MilHistBot never had instructions to add anything to the article history except for the A class assessment result. It was simple enough to add this functionality though, with two additional instructions:

my $article_history = new MilHist::ArticleHistory ('parser' => $parser);
    $article_history->add_action ('WAR', '~~~~~', $assessment, $result, $revision);
    
    $article_history->merge (); # Merge in the DYK, ITN, OTD and GAN templates, if any, and
    $article_history->sort ();  # Sort ArticleHistory elements into chronological order

• I have implemented this change this morning, and A class will merge the DYK, ITN, OTD and GAN templates into the ArticleHistory template from now on. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:25, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

  Hawkeye7 awesome ... how about the occasional AFD ?? If we can get everyone on the same page, and then get one bot to process all the old GA and FailedGA templates, then it should be much simpler to code one bot to do everything else. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

  The ArticleHistory module also handles PR and AFD, but not {{Old Afd multi}} at present. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Noting: about 90% of the problems in this group were MilHistbot and A-class reviews. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:46, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Including, apparently, every single article I've recently taken to A-Class that isn't a FA. Hog Farm _Talk 00:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes ... the problem here was MilHist bot creating AH without rolling in GAN/DYK, etc. But only a few more to correct, and then Hawkeye7 has fixed the script, so this problem goes away. If the rest of the problems I've identified can be fixed, then it will be easier to write a bot to do what Gimme used to, so I'm chipping away at them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:24, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

By the way, the reason that many others that *are* FAs and FFAs aren't showing up on the Petscans is that I've been going through them manually *for* *years* doing the post-bot cleanup on FACs, FARs, and TFAs. We have errors being created in articlehistory by bot and multitudes of experienced users who aren't cleaning them up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:35, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

To do next

Petscan for FailedGA outside of AH SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:04, 17 April 2023 (UTC)  Done SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:36, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

And PR

And 348 Old peer review not built in to AH; writing a bot would be much easierr if all the old issues were cleaned out first-- if AH had been properly maintained in the years since Gimme left, there would be no need to re-order actions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

To fix

Mike Christie have a look at Talk:Problematic social media use; I'm not sure how to best fix that to accommodate your GA stats. The second GA was appended on to the first GA (and neither of them are even "real" GANs). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:55, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Another for you, Mike:

• Talk:Organ transplantation in China/GA2 appears to be actually a faulty GAR ... not sure how to build that in to AH. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Another for you, Mike:

• talk:Lacrosse

There are actually four GANs; do your stats work if they are left as is and GA2 rolled in to AH? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I think the main thing I'd say is to fix AH in whatever way makes the most sense; I haven't been too fussed about the stats missing odd cases. For problematic social media use, I'd just treat that as a single GA -- just because someone tacked on some extra comments doesn't force us to create an event to accommodate it. The organ transplantation one is weird, but it's structured as a GAN and I think there's no percentage in actualling reading 58,000 GAN pages to find out if they should be redefined; we should just leave it as a GAN.

The way the stats work is that I ran them up to a certain date, a month or two ago, and am not going back, except that the bot searches for moves of GA pages and reprocesses those cases (because (a) that might fix a mismatch that meant the GA was unfindable and (b) I want the stats to correctly track the GAs with regard to their current pages). So if you fix these, it won't change the stat unless I reprocess them. I might do that just to see if it cleans them up a bit, but it won't be soon as I want to get some other work done on the bot first. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:25, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Great, Mike; got all those done, 19 more to go. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:35, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

GA bookkeeping

Further information: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-24/Dispatches

And after all those errors are fixed, at least 6,000 GAs that have other process templates for which no bot has built articlehistory. More than ten years after we had a bot that Did Everything. Ridiculous. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:32, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

What caused GimmeBot to stop editing? Could we ask the bot operator to start it back up, or to provide us with the source code for task 2 so that someone else can start it up? I see the bot operator edited a month ago so might respond if we ask. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:56, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

If Gimme wanted to start this task again, he would have done so by now. What caused him to stop editing was incessant hounding by one of Wikipedia's most prolific sockmasters, who was aided and abetted by other socks and sock supporters and not deterred by certain arbs. That history ended up telling itself, but only after FAC was destroyed. Considering how Gimme was treated, I would never pretend to ask him to give anything back, because some of those doing the mistreating were the very prima donnas the bot served. And to tie a nice bow around that steaming pile, when I was FAC delegate, I frequently had to implore the regulars to thank Gimme for the work he did to keep the starred talk pages in shape (and he did EVERYTHING ... all talk pages of GAs and FAs were clean ... yet when a bevy of socks came after him, no one who benefitted stood up). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:28, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Sandy, did I do this manual GA article history cleanup correctly? Maybe not the nicest of me to rapid fail the same article at GAN twice in about 2 months, but I tried to clean up article history the second time. Hog Farm _Talk 23:17, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Very nice, Hog Farm; I keep hoping if people see me around cleaning up talk pages, they'll get the hint ... and now someone has! Looks good to me. The idea is that if the template action items are consistently sorted as they are in the documentation at {{Article history}}, the thing will be more readable, more logical, more consistent and start to make more sense to more of the "regulars" (GA, FAC, FAR, ITN, PR, etc). Who will then know how to fix issues themselves.

Separately, there are some folks over at talk page layout who insist Vital article should be moved up, while I think it belongs in the WikiProject Banner Shell, so I usually leave them where I find them. Cleaning up something I think doesn't even belong there is not my mission :)

But the AH part is perfect; thanks so much! Ping me anytime you want a doublecheck on article history. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:53, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

PS not listed works the same as failed on GAN result, and feels less ickey to me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:55, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

AH and GA

Sandy, I saw your latest ping. The GA instructions currently say to leave the {{GA}} template on the talk page and don't mention AH, so that's what I've been doing. I know AH is preferable, but I was under the impression someone was developing a bot to roll everything in to AH, so I figured that meant there was no harm in not building AH as it would get done later. I have looked at getting ChristieBot to do it, but it's a big job and I'm not sure I want to take that on -- it's a lot harder than what ChristieBot currently does. I don't think there would be support for changing the GA instructions to mention AH, since that's a lot more complicated than just pasting in the GA template. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 07:22, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Yep ... I'm trying to raise awareness that there is no bot, and there is no bot in development, and there are over 6,000 GAs that are not built in to articlehistory. I'm trying to at least keep up with those in the petscan queries at User:SandyGeorgia/ToDo. Yes, we need someone to replace Gimmebot to do everything, instead of the incomplete mess we have now with three or four different bots doing different things, but no one bot doing it all. I agree that you wouldn't get support to add AH to GA instructions, since anyone can pass a GA and few editors understand AH, but I'm pretty sure that most experienced editors are keeping up with AH. At least, experienced editors who submit articles to GA should at least be maintaining their talk pages themselves ... it astounds me that experienced GA and FA writers don't care when their talk pages are a bloody mess. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:10, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I thought 0xDeadbeef was planning a general AH cleanup bot? Per their comment further up this page? For myself I have to say I mostly ignore talk page header messes; I think they can be untidy but they don't bother me, perhaps because I never work on them -- I never do ratings or look at them, or add project banners or notices, so my eye just skips over them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:37, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I have been quite busy recently so development is pretty much stalled. I will take a look at this next week and try to make some progress. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 11:41, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

But even if OxDeadBeef can do a general cleanup, what about ongoing and rolling in everything as GimmeBot used to do ?

It's curious to me that some editors of top content don't worry about talk page messes, and I suspect (but wonder ???) if that's part of the luxury of working on pages that get few views or little feedback on talk ... which is the opposite of my experience with high traffic medical articles and pages (like schizophrenia or J. K. Rowling)), [4] where talk pages really benefit from being kept tidy.

Although the biggest single issue affecting talk page clutter (since the student editing templates were dealt with) isn't articlehistory items-- it's those pointless GA and DYK transclusions, which are duplicates of info already in AH. Thx OxDEADBEEF for the help! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:00, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Should we get a bot to start dealing with all the GA templates unincorporated into {{Article history}}, and once the "Vital" article mess on talk pages is cleaned up, my next WP:TPL matter is to ask that the duplicate GA and DYK transclusions on talk be removed when those are processed into Article history. SilkTork what say ye; do you agree these are the next biggest source of unnecessary talk page clutter? If PR, FAC, and FAR don't trasclude reviews to talk, why does the GA process need to clutter talk with one editor's opinion (which is not always relevant or useful), when that info is already easily accessed via the article history template? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:20, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

0xDeadbeef, thanks for working on it; I know it's a big job but it would be a major help if/when you can get it done. Sandy, I completely agree with removing those transclusions -- it doesn't even need to wait for AH, since there's a link from the GA template already. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:41, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Mike, there has been pushback in the past when I have routinely removed them, so I'm going to wait for the "Vital" mess to be cleaned up before pursuing this next step at WP:TPL. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:43, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

The transcluding has been part of the process in GA since I first got involved, though back then it had to be done manually. I've never given it much thought - perhaps it was considered better to have the discussion in a more visible location because it is an audit that is largely (though not exclusively) done by just two people - the nominator and the reviewer. Having the active discussion more visible would invite others to contribute if they could see mistakes being made, or something overlooked.

But once a review has been completed, and it has been placed in the Article History template, then there is no imperative need to keep the GA review transclusion on the talkpage. When I archive talkpages I don't copy over GA transclusions, nor do I copy over those External links modified posts. But I wouldn't set out to delete either of them unless I am archiving.

I do agree that where a transclusion is not already in Article History, then it would be very helpful to have a bot do that. SilkTork (talk) 12:48, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

It appears that there are no current pages that have both article history and GA. I think I will try rolling in {{Old peer review}} as a task that could make it easier to add support for {{GA}} in the future. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 08:02, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

0xDeadbeef that is because I have been following the four petscan queries at User:SandyGeorgia/ToDo and staying on top of those. Is it preferable that I stop doing those so you can have some test cases to work on ? My broader point has been that there is no bot rolling in everything; that is, AFD, old pr, and the 6,000 + GAs that don't fall in to the OxDeadbeef bot petscan query (by already having other templates on the page). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:30, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, optimally it should go through every talk page and roll in if there are two or more templates that could be covered by article history. I'm more trying to do a gradual expansion of the functionality of the bot, so if you want to continue go for it. I'll let you know if I want to test the bot on GA templates. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 01:32, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

TIL that early opposes at FAC are "poisoning the well"

No wonder there are not more opposes even when abundantly warranted! (for wikidrama see this FAC) (t · c) buidhe 06:14, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

1. I had to look that up.
2. I just spent three months of my life in the depths of boatloads of the some of the worst Wikipedia content I've ever seen, so my feelings about FAC might be overly optimistic right now, in spite of the long-standing absence of the much needed oppose button on every aspect of the criteria.
3. What comes to mind re that FAC is Rodney King. But on a more personal note:
   1. Ling will always be ling.
   2. Opposes and comentary on FACs by delegates in my day were very rare and reserved for extreme situations. Because you have to maintain a certain relationship with nominators. It has been a massive mistake to assign too many "Coords", and then let them recuse as often as they wish. This has blurred the lines of their job while turning FAC into an extension of MilHist.
      1. Has anyone noticed some of the level of (not) quality coming out at TFA of late? Is this a hill to die on considering some of the other stuff FAC is producing?
      2. Do/will MilHist articles get the same level of scrutiny Ling will get?

That's all I've got. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:09, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Actually. No, that's not all I've got. This is a good example of why FAC shot itself permanently and irreparably in the foot by firing the director. He kept out of the daily business of FAC precisely so that he could be called in as an objective and uninvolved person to settle disputes involving the delegates. And yet FAC and its drawer full of socks and their supporters (who coincidentally I was just mentioning in the section two above this one) fired Raul for ... appointing delegates and staying out of the daily business so he could be neutral. So FAC got what it asked for (elections have consequences).

But for the record, Raul would have stayed out of it, let you all have your go at each other, and then he would have restarted the FAC after you had spent your fury and give room for others to weigh in on a new FAC. If you have a personal issue with regular nominators, you should stay out of their FACs unless it is an uncontroversial close. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm basically not a coord anymore, I have a standing offer to step down in favor of someone qualified and willing to do more than I do (occasional noncontroversial closes).

I am not upset by this incident, more bemused. You're right, there are a lot of garbage FAs and articles that do not get enough scrutiny at FAC. And I appreciate your patience for DCGAR cleanup. (t · c) buidhe 07:27, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

But you really are a Coord, and if FAC had a director, and a nominator had an issue with one Coord, the correct route then would have been to approach the director and ask that one Coord stay out. Instead, in the absence of a director, Ling approached you personally, and then you felt it OK to bring that information to the FAC. The blurring of the lines is that your *first* *duty* as a Coord is to the process-- not to a nominator or a reviewer or an article, but to always act in favor of the integrity of and preservation of the (whatever good is left in the ) process. Since you are a Coord, early input *does* have an impact, and as a Coord, it is incumbent upon you to recognize that and act judiciously. My suggestion would have been to not be first in, rather to wait and see what others had to say. (Recognizing that rigorous review is no longer the norm, Hog Farm's post above being an example of a welcome exception.) Why not give it first two weeks to see what others find? Now we won't know how it might have gone ... and you're stuck with that. Restart comes to mind again. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:34, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Buidhe as a gesture of good will, and to help get that FAC back on track (not because any particular FAC or nominator deserves special treatment), if'n I were in your shoes, I would move the entire commentary and section initiated by you to the talk page of the FAC, and revisit only after several weeks and others have had a chance for review (only because your timing of being in first and bringing up controversy was unfortunate). There are MUCH bigger problems festering at FAC that can be better explored by not having one specific FAC become the focus of dispute and discussion. One star that you might disagree with does not the process ruin; allowing a long- and much-needed discussion to revolve around one FAC ends up giving us bad cases that make bad law. By putting FAC in a position where any discussion of the many problems will then revolve around that one FAC, the chances of a productive and successful discussion are lowered. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:54, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

For similar reasons to this, I won't review road articles anymore, after the archiving complaints at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ontario Highway 8/archive1, the source review mess at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ontario Highway 8/archive2, minor snark at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/U.S. Route 34 in Iowa/archive2, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M-144 (1937–1939 Michigan highway), and Wikipedia:Featured article review/M-28 Business (Ishpeming–Negaunee, Michigan)/archive1. It's a walled garden, but I suspect that me butting in there again is not going to be well-received.

I've been on the brink of resigning from FAC coord for months - I barely have the time to go through the whole list, and then you get editors using FAC nomination statements to complain about rules that they don't like. I'm running out of energy for the process ... Hog Farm _Talk 14:17, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I gave up on the process, both as a reviewer and as a coord. Too much flack and not enough actual desire to improve articles from some of the regulars plus a declining amount of time to devote to wikipedia meant that something had to go .. and FAC was easy to justify. I miss the older times, but I just don't have the time for that amount of devotion to anything on wiki any more. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

As someone relatively new to FAC still, and who joined Wikipedia after many of these events happened, I've found that unless you have massive social capital, trying to get reviewers is like herding cats - my current nomination has been up for close to a month now, and only has any reviews at all because I reviewed two FACs and their nominators did me a favor by reviewing mine as well. There's a shortage of reviewers, and what others have brought up above only makes it worse - no way in hell I would be asking someone not to do a source review! And with so few reviewers, I suspect people are reluctant to oppose since even one oppose will sink a nomination. GAN isn't much better, suffering from the lack of reviewers problem even more. Being a coord is a thankless job, because it makes you a target for angry nominators (I've been guilty of this myself at my first ever nomination).

Just look at the monthly review stats. There's essentially no opposes! Isn't it strange that FAC has a higher pass rate than GAN, and far more nominations fail on inactivity than on their own merits? How often are people engaging with the prose in reviews, beyond just grammar? We ran a proposal drive for GAN at the start of the year, maybe it's time to try FAC reforms? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:07, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

TAOT, given that a year or two back, there was opposition to adding WP:FACR #1f, I doubt that FAC reforms like what happened with the GAN proposal drive would go anywhere. Hog Farm _Talk 15:20, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes to everything everyone said, but the root of the problems remain as I've stated for years. We have an absence of leadership in one person whose job it was to make sure the overall process is working and to initiate and shepherd discussions on talk about the process. That has been replaced by leadership that has actively discouraged talk page discussions, wants to have their cake and eat it too (as both nominators, reviewers and promoters/archivers), and wants to self-select who follows in their shoes, at the same time that the "established" is now much more of a "dictatorship" than Raul ever (never) was, and has not had a healthy turnover rate or even attempted to promote constructive dialogue or helpful critique. (Hog Farm Don't You Dare Give Up; you are one who will listen.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:36, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

PS, Hog Farm, seriously, don't you dare resign. What has been long missing is a frank and open discussion about how Coords are selected, where those who dare speak up aren't chased out by the aforementioned (two sections above) prima donnas who are attached to their bling, followed by a well-crafted (not spurious and undiscussed as was the steaming pile of sock-driven shit that forced out Raul) RFC to reboot the entire process, which now reeks of all manner of stench. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Trainsandotherthings I have a VERY busy day or two ahead, but I have watchlisted your FAC and will try to get over there by the weekend. I am making a very big exception as these days I find FAC a most difficult place to be, but I do want to thank you for the help on the DCGAR. So I owe you :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Thoughts from the peanut gallery: I consider WP:Call a spade a spade a last resort, but walled gardens are massively detrimental to the project and need to be identified as what they are. As soon as a corner of the project thinks that it's exempt from sitewide consensus in favor of its own practices or that it should have any greater say over a certain area, it essentially breaks that section of the project. This applies to WP:FAC, WP:HWY, and any other area that isn't open to the broader consensus process. It actively prevents good faith contributions, and it frightens away who knows how many potential new editors. Walled gardens must be met with a sledgehammer if the project is to succeed. Anything less will not only tacitly endorse this sort of behavior, but it will allow it to fester and get worse over time. I'll gladly support any measure that has a good chance of countering walled gardens. I was workshopping a possible update to WP:CONLEVEL in my sandbox based on the input of a few other editors interested in this issue, but nothing came of it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:15, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but in what way does FAC behave like a walled garden in your opinion? (t · c) buidhe 02:06, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

I might have over-edited my comment and mixed a few of my complaints together. I was trying to say that FAC facilitates that behavior, not that it's a separate walled garden in its own right. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:29, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

FAC has turned into a QPQ. I'm not blaming anyone for this, but it is a statement of reality. Unfortunately, I don't know how to fix this either. Rschen7754 03:16, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Rschen7754, that has also been my sense since I (who have most certainly done my share at FAC) had to beg for reviews for dementia with Lewy bodies even after my efforts via User:SandyGeorgia/Achieving excellence through featured content to get medical FA content going again, along with all of my efforts to get pre-FAC peer review going again. Through that, I finally understood that FAC really has become an extension of MilHist, and the rest of us just don't have the means to drum up reviewers except via QPQ. And I don't know the solution but I do know all of the things that USED to be done but no longer are, and we just don't have anyone taking leadership on all the suggestions I've made over the years. Maybe because the MilHist regulars just aren't seeing how bad it is for everyone else. Other than that, I'm sorry for not weighing in more here; I have an awful lot going on IRL and come home at night too tired to do anything more than chip away at some articlehistory errors or the copyright contributor investigation. Real article work requires focus I don't have just now ... finding commentary here very interesting at any rate. Want to remind people of the importance of being kind to each other (probably 'cuz that's what matters of late in my real life). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:30, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Objectively, that is not surprising when three of the four FAC coordinators are current or former MILHIST coordinators. I don't fault them for that, but more subject diversity should have been thought of in the last selection process. Rschen7754 16:36, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I cautiously raised that point then, but it was difficult to state how strongly I felt there was a breakdown in how the selection process is working, as that would come across as criticism of Buidhe and Hog Farm, which I did not intend. But the process is not working, it is self-perpetuating, and the process took a decided negative turn over a decade ago away from the process Raul used, yielding paradoxically more of a "dictatorship" than Raul was criticized for. The process needs revamping before the next cycle, and it is time for some to move along and bring in some non-MilHist people who will promote discussion, diversity, new ideas, etc. along with bringing back the old hands who have been alienated. We are sadly missing Karanacs (literature and history), Laser brain (music and pop culture), Ucucha (biology), SG and Graham (medicine and biology), and so on and so forth ... I can no longer advocate that bringing medical content to FAC is worth the effort, when even I can't get reviewed in spite of my willingness to review any topic any time ... all of the diversity of interests and strengths we used to have has been exchanged for one reviewing model that may be working for MilHist, because it has so many members, but is not working for FAC, where there is a shortage now so critical that the bronze star risks becoming as meaningless as the GA icon. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:23, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

I would say more that the lack of reviewers is a chronic across the board issue rather than exempting MILHIST articles. People editing in the MILHIST space who don't have trouble getting reviews are often those who review frequently (not as QPQ, but I do prioritize reviewing articles when the editor is an active reviewer) and/or have a reputation for quality in their FACs making it easier to review. In the past I had trouble finding enough reviews for MILHIST related topics but there was no issue in certain non-MILHIST topics that I nominated such as Röhm scandal and first homosexual movement. I would be happy to step aside for another qualified coord who works in divergent topic area(s), but so far no takers. Since this is a volunteer position, that's kind of an insurmountable obstacle. (t · c) buidhe 19:12, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Fully agree about QPQ, and also about not seeing any easy solution. Not one of my FACs would have passed without de facto QPQ to get reviewers. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 13:18, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Place holder because, oh boy, I have thoughts and feeling about this --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 15:29, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

(I managed to tear my triceps surae muscle yesterday; sorry for the slow reply.) I think there are several interconnected problems here:

1. Some topic areas - MILHIST and ROADS come to mind - show up at FAC with reviewers that pretty much only review within their topic area. When people outside of it push back, mostly on sourcing, the reactions are not great.
2. Outside of those areas it is hard to get reviewers, so there has been a rise in QPQ-style reviews. I think some of it comes from mutual trust built between editors over months of working together. I will say that my reviewing stats show that I am more likely to review articles from people and wikiprojects that I trust to bring high-quality articles. I think my 50 reviews since my first FA in 2020 makes it more likely that people will review an FA a year from me. I do not dip my standards for anyone and I hope that editors would never dip their standard for me.

   Scrolling through FAC, something that jumps out at me is how few reviews some people do. It is sometimes hard to feel bad for people who have a reviews to nominations ratio below 5. (Transparency: Myself 17.7, Sandy 327.3, buidhe 29.1, Trains 3.3, Hog Farm 7.7, Rschen 8.9, Thebiguglyalien 2.0) The only way to fix this is for people to give back to the process.

3. FAC has become the new peer review because it is the last place left where you can get actual actionable feedback. My GA reviews are probably harder than they need to be because I know how bad it is out there. I conduct FAC source reviews for people who want it at GA because sometimes it is nice to catch problems early.
4. The dirth of opposes is worrying, but it is also related to the fact that any objection is an oppose even if you don't register it as one.

Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 15:59, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Thx for your thoughts. Hope your leg heals soon! (t · c) buidhe 17:04, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

While I certainly do not endorse the blatant incivility that Floydian left on his FACs, the political rhetoric here and here has left the impression that some (certainly not all) of the FAC delegates might not act neutrally in the subject area of highways. (In all fairness, HF did apologize for the second remark). I will also point to User:Rschen7754/FAQ for the other allegations. --Rschen7754 03:09, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

I've been a Sandy talk page stalker for many years, so I've been following this discussion, which is interesting. I've been thinking about the QPQ part of the discussion. One of my frustrations about bringing figure skating bios and articles to peer review is that the reviewers often don't know about the sport, so the same questions get asked over and over. Yes, I enlist fellow experts about a topic to help review the articles I submit, especially at GAN, mostly due to the long queue. That's not canvassing, or is it? I also push back when the non-experts who try and review the articles I submit get things wrong, even criticism about the sources. I mean, peer reviews in scholarly journals are done by experts in the field; why shouldn't we do that here in WP for FAC and GAN? The superior aspect of peer reviews here is that we get more reviewers than in scholarly journals, especially WP experts, and as a consequence, sources are checked more rigorously. Perhaps the solution, then, is to have both types of reviewers: topic experts and WP experts. Just some thoughts, folks. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 18:39, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

There's two sides to the coin of topic familiarity /expertise. One that the person actually knows about the subject to spot errors and notice omissions. Two, the walled garden effect where certain corners of Wikipedia may develop a local consensus that contradicts sitewide consensus. For example, they waive through a source that is perceived as accurate even though it cannot be proven to have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. (t · c) buidhe 19:45, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I've had to deal with this with trains (the main area where I am a subject matter expert), launching an entire RfC because a few editors decided that train stations were automatically notable just by existing and notability rules didn't apply, and forced their viewpoint through at a series of not well-attended AfD discussions. As it turned out, the broader community (and to be fair, most train editors) felt otherwise. I make a point of reviewing things outside of my wheelhouse and I think everyone should once in a while. At the same time, as someone who's been train obsessed since childhood I know a lot about this topic area and it has helped me catch errors or omissions when reviewing train articles. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:29, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Is the flippancy helping? Probably not. But there's absolutely no wrong statements made in that AfD or the FAR. I've talked about it for years at this point that few WikiProjects are good about cleaning up their own cruft, but it's hilarious to me that a project that deals with so much fictional topics like WP:VG is so much better about tending its garden than projects like Roads, where you're spearheading an effort to say "it's on a map, so I can not only just use the map to source an entire article, the fact it's on a map makes it notable." Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:28, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia Strikes Again

ANI has looked so depressing to me lately... so many users being the topic of discussion whom I've had such pleasurable interactions with... SN, Specifico, MaranoFan, ErnestKrause etc. Very disheartening to see; I feel like this site brings out the worst in everyone so often. – Aza24 (talk) 03:19, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I missed those instances, but have noticed a trend where not enough people are telling whiny editors to grow up or get a new hobby. I saw one of the rudest editors I've come across in recent history complaining at ANI about very minor incivility from another editor. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I missed their beginnings, but they're all simultaneously active threads, which is what worries me! I think you're right that the attitude has quickly become going to ANI far before attempting other solutions/dispute-resolution. I guess in these kinds of disputes everyone thinks they're the victim and the sentiment that "oh if everyone else heard about this they'd agree with me" arises. Aza24 (talk) 04:55, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Hmmmm ... perhaps I should clue in to ANI then. I only noticed one thread because I follow a most uncivil and disruptive editor, and noticed them ironically complaining about fairly minor incivility from another editor. Because I am crazy busy IRL and barely keeping up here, and am scarcely familiar with the editor being complained about, I didn't take the time to investigate further and haven't had a thorough look at ANI for weeks. I'm afraid that real life lately is such that I can barely keep up with trivial matters like correcting article history errors ... things that require no brain and no concentration. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:33, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

So, what I see happening at quite a few ANI threads is heavy participation from a somewhat newish but highly-active-at-ANI editor who has never impressed me, and who needs a heavy dose of Bishonen-style wisdom accumulated over the years. Some editors like Bish who would shut down the going-nowhere-but-trying-to-make-a-name-for-myself-at-ANI threads is missing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:04, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not involving myself in GAN matters, simply because that place remains a mystery to me, but ... if I were to compare it to FAC, I have always advocated that matters should be settled at FAC, so if I were to be consistent, I'd have to take that route. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:00, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

As the one who started the EK thread, I need to emphasize that other dispute resolution methods were tried first, and EK ignored them. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:35, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

It looks painful, TAOT; sorry to see that, but I didn't feel right weighing in on GA matters of that nature, so for once, kept my mouth shut. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:48, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Same–GAN is a whirlpool that I try to get in and out of quickly. I have huge admiration for the folks who keep it going though... urgh I need to get back to doing GAN reviews! – Aza24 (talk) 06:19, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't enjoy taking people to ANI, especially established contributors, but sometimes there's just no choice. I try to keep tabs on GAN along with a few other editors as somebody's got to be providing oversight. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:36, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

At least for me, GAN has become where I send things that I'd like to get a review on either as a pre-ACR or when there's clearly no chance to get it to anything higher with the sourcing that I have available/even exists (example being Battle of Snyder's Bluff, which is so reliant on Ed Bearss that I'm having doubts about even the GAN). And in a way, it seems GAN truly lives up to the "several rungs below FAC" in editor behavior as well. I've seen some bad behavior/egos as a FAC coordinator, but frankly GAN is often further down the gutter. Hog Farm _Talk 00:47, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

There's a certain irony in that FAC is actually lower-stakes than GAN. If your FAC gets archived, you can fix the problems and come back in 2 weeks. If your GAN is failed, even if you fix the problems right away you might not get another reviewer for 6+ months! Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:35, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

(←) GAN == "make an article not suck"; FAC == "make an article excellent" (or as excellent as a bunch of us know how). And the difference between FAC and GAN in terms of behavior is... well, they're actually pretty much the same, except the former is more polite and less obvious about it all... § Lingzhi (talk|check refs) 02:05, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

We also run into issues because GAN just has one editor reviewing. You may get someone who does a surficial review that doesn't fully evaluate the article against the criteria or someone who goes much more in-depth. At FAC, the requirements for multiple reviewers and the existence of coords allows more consistent application of standards to nominations. We really need to enforce completion of spotchecks for text-source integrity and copyvio at GAN if we want to improve the quality there. There's also of course the people who dump piles of nominations and refuse to review... it drives me nuts. I wish the community would collectively blacklist the people with 50+ GAs and no reviews. I haven't nominated anything at GAN in months as I'm getting quite discouraged seeing how long reviews sit (and I am at about a 1:1 review ratio which is better than most nominees). My one active nomination has been up since February. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:35, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Just started a GAN review of an article that's been in the queue for 6 months. If you ever start a thread about enforcing some generous limits on the free rider problem, ping me. I'll join the chorus... Maybe something like "You get 10 GAs with no expectation of a review, but after that, it's 1 nom for every 3 reviews". Or something. § Lingzhi (talk|check refs) 05:31, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Believe me, I've tried... people freak out and say you're stopping the promotion of good content. Take a look at Wikipedia:Good Article proposal drive 2023. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:42, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

There are so many people invested in the GA process that change isn't possible. Unfortunately, most of those involved there are not Ealdgyth. I have always tried to avoid the place, but after WP:DCGAR, it is a bigger mystery to me than ever. Some of the reviews I read during DCGAR were simply ... astounding. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:25, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

PS, what we should be more worried about is that, as experienced reviewers well versed in FA standards are fewer and farther between, and often chased out, GA standards are bleeding in to FAC based on the sheer numbers of reviewers who are accustomed to GA-level content and comfortable with it, and believe it to be more than "make an article not suck". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:28, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

So many of our problems boil down to not having enough editors, especially experienced ones. And I won't lie, the barriers to entry for newer editors at FAC are very high. I hate saying it but I don't have a solution at all. I don't know what we can do to improve things at GAN or FAC. WT:GAN is a revolving door of people reporting issues with reviewers, and there are surely many more that don't get reported. Even in my ~2 years here I've seen plenty of drama at FAC as well. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:34, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

You say you have no solutions, and yet your post just before this one points to the solution: If your FAC gets archived, you can fix the problems and come back in 2 weeks. FAC is not peer review, but under the current expectations, it has become peer review. The idea that archival is a bad thing has replaced my mantra, which was "archival and working off-FAC is often the fastest way to promotion". By allowing this to happen, the FAC Coords have effectively killed off PR as an alternative, and forced FAC to continue as the purgatory is has become, where articles are pulled through at any expense, with glaring items often unmentioned. They refuse to go back to a Support, Oppose or Comment format (even though that is codified in the instructions[5]), and allow lengthy PRs-- even encourage them-- at FAC. Before all of my attempts to help revive FAC were rudely rebuffed, I had begun work to reviving PR, and it was working. And I had begun reinstating the Oppose, which was also working. I can refer you to the FAC archives if you want to see how my efforts were received.

As to reporting issues with reviewers, that again is a Coord issue. My mantra was always that without reviewers, we don't have bronze stars. The hard-working faithful are much more valuable than the prima donna star collectors, who wouldn't have those stars without the reviewers. I had little tolerance for complaints about reviewers, as it was my "job" as delegate to overlook bad reviews and to know who the QPQ reviewers were and similar. It's not clear to me that the current Coords consider it part of the big picture to be aware of QPQ and the like, or to initiate talk discussions when there are problems, but we do know that very good reviewers have been chased off, which neither Raul nor any of the delegates I served with would have tolerated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:57, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm certainly cognizant of the fact that reviewer time is our most precious resource at both GAN and FAC. That said, there are times when reviewers behave poorly that should be addressed. There are certainly some problematic nominators too, though. Perhaps what needs to happen is it made more clear that archiving of an FAC is not a big deal. When my first attempt was archived, I was pissed, and knowing what I know now I shouldn't have been, because that archived nomination contained all I needed to know in order to improve the article and come back later with a successful nomination, which is ultimately what happened. Nowadays, opposing a nomination basically is seen as an attack and will attract complaints and/or vitriol. And so we see in the monthly stats nearly zero opposes. There certainly have been nominations where I was inclined to oppose but decided it wasn't worth the inevitable drama and simply abstained from commenting at all.

I think some of this comes from a lust for lots of shiny badges (look at Doug Coldwell as the quintessential example) and some amount of ego, as opposed to being motivated by improving the world's largest free encyclopedia. It's ok to take pride in your work (I certainly do), but FAC isn't something anyone is entitled to. Some nominators act like they deserve an automatic pass just for showing up. Lately I've been demotivated to participate at GAN or FAC, and the last time I nominated anything was over 2 months ago. All of these things are part of why I find I have less motivation. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 19:11, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

TAOT this is a great post (I hope my post before it did not come across as criticism of your ANI-- we just have to be able to have frank conversations if we are to move FAC out of the stall it is in ... sorry I am so swamped IRL that my posts leave openings for misunderstanding ... ) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:33, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I do think a contributory problem is that there aren't really any good non-FAC venues for a detailed article review. PR is very hit-and-miss; sometimes you get useful input but it's rarely at the level of a FAC review. Recruiting individual editors can work if you know who they are, but they aren't always available. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:05, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

GACR and FACR

This would be a bit offtopic for the RfC, so I thought I'd follow up here. I actually didn't draft that RfC (though I'm not trying to abdicate responsibility for posting that wording); it came from some earlier conversation on GA talk, and I just posted the consensus wording. The main impetus, in my reading of those discussions, was that experienced reviewers are already asking for citations for essentially everything, just like at FAC, and have been doing so for years. (You asked what the difference would be between GACR and FACR if we were to adopt the new wording; I would say there's not much difference in wording between the existing wordings of the two sets of criteria.) The RfC was intended to capture what's already happening. You make a good point that perhaps FACR is also out of sync with reality, but for various reasons I've mostly been engaged with GA for the last six or eight months, and hadn't even though about FACR. If someone were to propose an equivalent change to FACR I'd probably support that for the same reason I proposed this change. I would guess this RfC is going to fail, based on the trends. That won't really change GA reviews -- most GA reviews are already happening as if this wording is in place. If it fails, and I'm reviewing and ask for a citation and the nominator refuses, citing GACR's exceptions, I'll do as Thryduulf suggested and ask for the citation on WP:V grounds. I think it would be better to have the criteria reflect the practice, but c'est la vie. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:50, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: OK, thanks for the background, Mike; now it makes more sense. So the answer to one of my questions would be resolved by rewriting Wikipedia:Compare criteria Good v. Featured article to conform. So on the bigger question, I think the RFC was doomed by the approach. If the aim is in fact to tighten GA citation requirements to the same level as FA, then the citation criterion should just be the same as WP:WIAFA, else if there's a problem with the FA criteria, they should be rewritten. My personal view is that there is not a problem; where appropriate is generally a matter of editor consensus, and FA reviewers are generally doing what in my view they should be doing. (That is, there are very few instances actually of the sky is blue and nominators can push back if reviewers ask that bluesky be cited). I suspect one of the reasons you ended up with this flawed RFC is that there are more participants in the GA process than in the FA process, and they don't all take into account the inconsistency that appears to have been created. That is, they aren't all working together.  :). Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:07, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

The aim of the proposal is not to tighten GA requirements to the same level of FA, the aim is to reduce the gulf between the vague GA wording and how they are applied in practice. The entirely cliquey understanding of "where appropriate" to mean "almost everywhere" is understandably somewhat inscrutable for less experienced editors, and GA deals with far more less experienced editors than FA (FAC benefits greatly in this respect by having a GAN filter).

Regarding comparing the GACR and FACR, in terms of presence boths GAs and FAs expect the same level of citations. This is in line with the Wikipedia:When to cite essay cited in the FACR (and has the same exceptions). However, in terms of quality, the FACR remains higher. The GACR prescribe only that a source be reliable, not that it be one of the higher quality possibilities. I feel Wikipedia:Compare criteria Good v. Featured article already emphasises this by noting GA "sources are reliable" while FAs have "high-quality reliable sources". CMD (talk) 01:51, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Chipmunkdavis thanks for all this. I'm still trying to catch up on the backstory, but now have to go out to a meeting. I started here; will revisit WT:GAN as soon as I can. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Eyes at prostate cancer

Hi Sandy and hopefully some page watchers. Just an update to past promises I've now wrapped up the heavy text editing at prostate cancer. If you – or anyone watching the page – have time to read it through and let me know what you think, I'd be grateful. Comments large or small are welcome.

I haven't much touched the images yet, as I tend to struggle with what makes for helpful visual display. If folks have any ideas for that, please do let me know. Otherwise I'll try to work through them this week (time to make another map for the epidemiology section, *sigh*). My hope is to bring this to FAC whenever it's ready. Thanks for all you do! Ajpolino (talk) 14:14, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi Ajpolino-- awesome. I am drowning right now in terms of not being able to keep up anywhere, so I hope others will jump in, and I'll get there as soon as I can. Noting that I have a COI (husband) and think the USPSTF really missed the boat before 2018, which cost my husband a nasty time (although radiation treatment got things under control after a very miserable year). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

PS: one is six men will get prostate cancer, and yet it doesn't get nearly the attention of breast cancer, so I hope this article will get the attention it deserves. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:47, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I believe the prevalence numbers are much higher than that, with at least 80% of men in their 80s having slow-growing, localized prostate cancer. Given the expected lifespan of about 80, that suggests that at least 40% of men will get prostate cancer, and only a small fraction of them are getting diagnosed.

The breast cancer lobby has been a marketing powerhouse for several decades, but the public health difference is in the Years of potential life lost: 200K US women die from breast cancer each year, with a median age in their 60s. 150K US men die from prostate cancer each year, with a median age in their 80s. Breast cancer has about 5x YPLL than prostate cancer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC: La Patilla

Although still messy, La Patilla's RfC was continued at WP:RS/N (Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Reliability of La Patilla, in case you were interested in participating. Best wishes! NoonIcarus (talk) 18:32, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I have been watching as able (that is, I have been crazy IRL busy and having a hard time keeping up anywhere), but the POV warrioring by a few editors in there have made me not even want to weigh in ... WP:BLUDGEONing in action is discouraging, and it takes so much effort to refute ... <sigh> ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

For archival purposes, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:51, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Archive this too; NoonIcarus already pinged you to be involved in the discussion, though you defended them and said that you were not already notified. But you've been busy and might not have noticed. Sorry, that was the red flag for me. WMrapids (talk) 02:20, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I encourage you to read the top of my talk page; pretty much everyone knows I can't or don't keep up with pings. Especially lately. But thanks for sharing. You know what's cute? Removing all posts and attempts to discuss from your own talk page, and then coming to mine to continue discussion. If you don't want to discuss, then don't. But then don't bother others either.

And if I was already notified, along with everyone else, there goes your canvassing claim anyway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:22, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

NoonIcarus, this is why I stopped editing Venezuelan articles. It's exhausting to have to clean up endlessly biased editing, and getting no help because most of the information is in Spanish so others don't see what is going on. Re-engaging just one tiny article makes me remember why Venezuelan editing makes me not want to be here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:23, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

My experience luckily hasn't been so negative. It's been years since I didn't see a dispute go to such lengths, and I think that the last time was during the start of the presidential crisis, along with all the international attention and controversy (although admittedly it was a time where I think I could deal better with it, and those times weren't very pleasant either). I'm sorry to know that you've felt unmotived, knowing how valuable and experienced you are as an user. With the last exchanges I hope that the situation can improve. As always, please let me know if I can lend a hand. Kind regards and happy editing <3 . --NoonIcarus (talk) 21:43, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Having to spend hours and hours and hours cleaning up POV and tendentious edits, when the rest of the Wikipedia doesn't care (partly because they can't read the sources), is what made me give up before. The cleanup I had to do on one small article in the last 48 hours is just not a productive use of time; when you look at any article in the Venezuelan suite, they've all been biased by a small core of dedicated POV warriors, the cleanup needed is endless, and I don't have the time or interest in spending my days around such poor editing which is just depressing work because it's everywhere and feels unfixable-- even more so now that it has become so hard to find sources without old reliable sources like El Universal, El National, or Venevision. All I get as a result of trying to clean up is an article which shows me as the lead editor, but is still POV and not the kind of quality I want my name attached to. It only takes two days around Venezuelan topics to remind me of why they suck my soul dry. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

PS, maybe Ealdgyth can compare this to the Polish mess, which she ultimately walked away from, and give me some insights. I've walked away for years at a time, and got brought back in to one small article via an RFC ping, and it makes me want to not edit at all. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:04, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I admit that these issues have been the most frustrating for me. I've tried forgetting them, planning to fix them later and progressively, although accepting that it will take work over a long period of time, possibly years. If Ealdgyth has suggestions, regarding this, I would love to hear them. --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I am contemplating whether I have the fortitude to re-engage to at least make sure living Venezuelan persons aren't maligned and defamed, but this week has shown me that even that limited engagement could cost all my free time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Citation templates and autism articles

Hi Sandy, quick question: Could you please explain what you mean by this comment? Wikipedia auto-generates these citation templates, I'm never editing them manually. Thanks!--TempusTacet (talk) 18:00, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Hang on ... I have to dig around to find the places to explain it to you ... I'll be back :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:01, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, it's hard to figure out how to explain it, as much of the pages about the two citation styles on Wikipedia are written by technical people and aren't entirely digestible. But, there are two basic styles, upon which all the templates depend ... CS1 and CS2. (And I don't know which is which, but see Template:Citation for a starting place.) The general gist is:

• Almost all medical content uses cite journal, cite web, cite book etc (and almost none use the citation template), and
• Almost all high-level medical content uses cite journal templates generated by plugging a PMID into this tool, and
• If you edit an article that uses cite templates, or the Diberri tool, stick to that style, per WP:CITEVAR

One reason I added that edit summary is that because I am not well versed with {{citation}}, it often takes me three edits to get the cite book or cite journal template converted correctly. In this case, I had deleted Murray, thinking it was already in the article, when I saw it was a different Murray, so when adding it back, I wanted to also use the same style as the rest of the article.

Nikkimaria knows more about all of this than I do; which lousy auto-generate tool is giving you that stuff ? I always use Diberri, so am not familiar with those ... but {{citation}} is not commonly used on most medical articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:10, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm using the WYSIWYG editor ("visual editing") and there's a "cite" button that generates references. I've already learned a number of tweaks that are expected (eg removing the leading "PMC" in the PMC ID field, deleting the ISSN for journals) but I don't know how to control which template gets used. I also just copy references between articles so I don't have to do all the manual tweaking again and again, eg, I always copy the DSM-5-TR reference or the Encyclopedia of ASD reference when I need them, instead of generating them from scratch. (I wonder why Wikipedia doesn't properly auto-generate the citations?)

While I'm here and you seem to be on a "let's survey what's here and clean up the biggest issues" journey through the autism articles as well, may I direct your attention to Violence and autism? The discussion on the talk page has stalled and I believe that you might be able to shift the discussion in either direction.--TempusTacet (talk) 18:19, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I wonder why Wikipedia doesn't properly auto-generate the citations? Can of worms, much agida :) Don't get either Nikkimaria or me started on the topic of citation issues on Wikipedia :) :) I don't use the (really crappy) visual editor, so am unable to tell you if you can tweak a setting there to get cite templates. Since I mostly work on Featured articles, which must have a consistent citation style, I get buggy when style changes (or when I have an edit conflict, as you may have noticed a few days ago ... which reminds me that I forgot to apologize to you for flipping out after losing content in an edit conflict, so my sincere apologies now!)

I will add violence and autism to the list, but (sigh) I am so swamped that I am only keeping up with what hits my watchlist as it hits, and every time you link to Fred Volkmar or any other autism-related article I created, I get pinged ... and then get distracted to fix what I see before I forget ... and then have less time to spend elsewhere ... and so it goes! I have guests arriving for the rest of the day, and full-day meeting tomorrow, but having that link on my page will help me remind me. Thanks for the helpful info and cleanup work you have been doing; so many of us just gave up after Eubulides left, which was before DSM-5, and now the catch-up work is so daunting. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:27, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

PS, TempusTacet, I should warn you about what it's like to edit after me :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:32, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Sandy, if you don't want to get the pings for linking to a specific article you created anymore, I think there's a way to silence them on an article-by-article basis. Hog Farm _Talk 18:37, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I believe there is, and I've disabled some in the past, but in this case, I do want to get them. Volkmar is central to a lot of my Wiki-work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:39, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I can remove the Volkmar link from the reference to keep you focused ;) but it's my go-to reference if I need a first solid source to cite.

As you've probably noticed, I'm also cleaning things up and would actually have made some of the same redactions in the monotropism article as you have, I'm just way slower and going about it in a different order. I first fix up all references and, if possible, review them to understand the state of the content and then start removing or tagging things.

If you're interested in doing a more systematic review of the state of affairs of autism articles, I'd be up for it. Recently, quite some content has been split from Autism spectrum, leaving empty sections, and there seems to be a lot of confusion among editors about the status of Asperger's syndrome and how to distinguish pre-DSM-5 ASD (as in: the group of autism diagnoses in the PDD category) and the DSM-5 ASD (as in: the unified diagnosis) when writing about autism. Also, as is the case elsewhere on the internet, there is a strong bias towards the perspective of verbal autistic adults without marked cognitive difficulties. Plus quite a bit of self-promotion and bogus like autism spectrum in animals.

Have fun with your guests.--TempusTacet (talk) 18:46, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Ah, it helps to know your work style (which is better than my fire-fighting as I see it when I see it so I won't forget it and have to come back to it :). I do want to clean up the suite, but can make no promises until/unless multiple issues zapping my real-life time settle down. I suspect that the way to do it is the same way I approached J. K. Rowling at its Featured article review. By first dealing with the easier and non-controversial bits, we had brought everyone up to speed on FA standards, and had developed a comfortable style of working together, which served as well when we dug in last to the controversial parts. So we got through those bits without biting each other's heads off, and with everyone understanding how to keep discussions purely focused on sources. At autism, by cleaning up a lot of the sub-articles in the suite, we may bring more editors to a better knowledge of policies and guidelines, that will serve us when we take on the main articles. It is becoming clear to me that there is some very VERY novice editing going on there (and not by you!! :) How to deal with Asperger's has long stymied me; Eubulides would have known what to do there, so I regret losing them. But if we start small, we might get the job done. @Sideswipe9th: who worked on JK Rowling and has also offered help with autism. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:13, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

If we're going to keep an Asperger's article, it's probably best if it's kept as a historical perspective. The diagnosis itself doesn't exist anymore, having been subsumed by autism spectrum disorder in both the ICD11 and DSM-5/5-TR. Just skimming over it, there's a lot of content there that seems to duplicate content covered in more specialised scoped articles like Pathophysiology of autism. We could probably trim anything that's duplicative of more specialised articles, along with maybe anything to do with the actual diagnosis process itself, as that largely doesn't exist any more (countries/regions who have yet to update their diagnostic procedures notwithstanding). But given what I'm about to say below, we may want to leave tackling that article to closer to the end.

I think we might want to start by making a map of all of the sub-articles in the topic. The Autism spectrum template, outline of autism listicle, and Category:autism and its subcategories may be able to help get us started here, though we shouldn't rule out any articles that may exist and aren't linked in any of those places. After that, I like the idea of starting with a smaller article, so we can get everyone on the same page with respect to sourcing, figure out our working styles, and get familiar with any relevant policies or guidelines that we might be unfamiliar with. Sandy's right in that there's a lot of work for us to do, but I think if we take a methodical approach to this we should be able to get everything up to spec. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:54, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

The Asperger's diagnosis is no longer recognized by official bodies or professional associations, but it still exists in everyday conversations and as some people's personal identity. It's not entirely a part of history yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

AS is still diagnosed in healthcare systems operating under ICD-10, it's still contained in the 2023 version of the ICD-10-CM (see here). The ICD-11 transition period for mortality statistics is five years (2027) and as far as I know countries are allowed to take even longer to fully transition their healthcare systems to ICD-11. In the non-DSM-world, AS is still very much a thing, even though research into the specific ICD-10 condition has stopped about a decade ago.

I believe that High Functioning Autism might be a good starting point. It's not quite as complex as AS, it's definitely an outdated term/concept, and similar to AS there are competing definitions. Further, we have not only a "medical perspective" but political discussions within academic research, clinical practice, and advocacy circles, which should help us align on standards for selecting sources outside the immediate realm of WP:MEDRS (eg, how do we deal with editorials and commentary arguing for and against the inclusion of an HFA category in the DSM).--TempusTacet (talk) 10:10, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm thinking of starting at even a lower level than the core diagnoses ... things like History of autism, which is an utter debacle, and where editors responsible for that need to be reached and enlightened. It will be much easier to clean up higher-level articles if active editors in the autism suite develop a sense of high-quality sourcing, UNDUE content, summary style, encyclopedic tone, trivia, citation style, and all the rest of what's wrong in there ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I believe that this article is way too complex as a starting point, considering the vast amount of literature one would need to find, read, and summarize in order to cover over a century of history, with lots of changes to terminology as well as clinical practice and research standards. We recently had a discussion about the article after an editor split it up by decade (has since been reverted) about a sensible structure and an approach to slowly improve it. See Talk:History_of_autism#Very_long.--TempusTacet (talk) 18:54, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Au contraire, I believe the problems there are very easily addressed. But too tired to explain. Forest being missed for the trees. Perfect place to give an example of how not to write an ecyclopedic entry ... very similar to violence and autism, which now is really to a state that an article can be justified ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:31, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Ealdgyth considering the translation debacle uncovered in this thread at violence and autism, you might want to glance over this list. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

And this one. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:35, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

YOu probably want @Justlettersandnumbers: because I have little time for wiki stuff right now... summer garden, animals, and my own research/writing is basically eating all my time. Ealdgyth (talk) 17:12, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers is a horsey editor? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:32, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, though not a particularly dedicated one (and yes, Ealdgyth, also busy – garden/animals/cultural life and grandchildren!). I've looked at some of those articles, and haven't seen any great problems, though notability is questionable in several of them. French Wikipedia is light-years ahead of us on horse articles, and although I don't like they way they present the material, their pages are usually thoroughly researched and sourced and fully cited (which is a lot more than can be said of most of ours, I fear). I haven't noticed any particular problems with the actual translations either. Do you see any particular possible reason for concern, Sandy? Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:48, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers I had not looked at the horse articles, but was concerned about the translation of some really bad medical content; perhaps it is a matter that the translator from French to English should not have ventured into the medical realm :) Thanks for looking, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:52, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Autogenerating citations doesn't work well for a couple of reasons. First off, it relies on the source providing good metadata, which doesn't always happen. Second, there is no single required citation style - there are multiple citation template options alongside handformatted citations, multiple approaches to citation placement (eg LDR), and even if you settle on a single citation template there is room for variation (eg include publication location or not). That makes it pretty much impossible for anything automated to figure out how a citation should look to match an existing style. There is |mode= in most cite templates that allows switching CS1/CS2, but unfortunately it's not available via VE to my knowledge. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:11, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

There's two help pages on the differences between the styles, WP:CS1 and WP:CS2. With regards to the templates themselves, any of the cite series like {{cite web}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}} are CS1. The {{citation}} template is CS2. Aside from the template, the main difference is in its output to the reader. CS2 uses comma separation between elements like the citation title, author names, publisher, etc., whereas CS1 uses a fullstop. And CS2 omits the punctuation at the end of the citation unless overridden, whereas CS1 ends in a fullstop.

For autogenerated citations, I like to use Citer on Toolforge. It's pretty good with DOIs, and most newsorg URLS. Citer's most useful for me when I'm citing a journal paper that has many authors, as it saves a lot of time by just grabbing the authorlist from the DOI metadata. Sometimes it struggles with identifying books cited by ISBN, and you may have to go onto WorldCat to find an alternative ISBN for the book. Just make sure that when you do look for an alternative ISBN, that you're not getting an ISBN for an earlier or newer edition of the work, which may have the content in a different place or omitted entirely. Otherwise, as Nikkimaria says, sometimes the metadata can be wrong, so make sure to verify the output from any tool before adding it to an article. Mostly though I'll just type the templates by hand in the source view. I find the visual editor has too many issues with inserting odd <nowiki /> tags when dealing with templates. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:35, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of anyone except SandyGeorgia who still uses Diberri's (directly). VisualEditor (visual or wikitext modes) uses mw:citoid to autogenerate citations, and it can handle PMIDs, PMCIDs, DOIs, URLs (e.g., books.google.com), some ISBNs, and more. The 2010 wikitext editor uses WP:RefToolbar to autofill citations.

None of the citation fillers can do everything. For example, none of them are set up to handle chapter titles. But all of them can handle most information for most types of sources, and there are a few editors who specialize in repairing problems with citations, so generally I provide a reasonable level of information and then let other people sort it out. Sometimes (e.g., at Shortbread recently), I've found that trying to do things perfectly doesn't help. I provided two separate(!) page numbers for a book, and a convenience link directly to the first of them, and found an editor reverting half of it because he didn't notice that there were two page numbers listed, and apparently angry at me for pointing out the existence of the page numbers in the citation. The article now contains at least one factual error, but I've given up (and started citing books in other articles without providing a link to an online copy). Sometimes it's just not worth it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations!--TempusTacet (talk) 09:55, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

TempusTacet some further explanation on me (allegedly) being the only one "who still uses Diberri". First, that's not entirely the case. BogHog still goes through fixing CITEVAR breaches, and all recent medical FAs also use the vancouver format (and the easiest way to get the vancouver format is to use Diberri). A decade ago, WP:MED was one of the better WikiProject producers of Featured articles, and all used Diberri. So you'll still find what were once quality articles using that format-- the problem became that WP:MED got away from quality when it went through a period of over-focusing on leads to the exclusion of the rest of the article, for purposes of translating leads, and most quality at WP:MED deteriorated-- so now you find important article after article full of junk and mixed and incomplete citations. This is not a good thing, obviously, but the days of motivation to generate top content at WP:MED seem gone, with the exception of about five or six of us who still work at it. Also, almost every quality medical articles uses the vancouver format, whether or not editors use Diberri to generate that style. A big problem with other formats is that they don't always give a PMID, and PMIDs make access so much easier. So keeping the tool bookmarked will make your editing easier. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:27, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

PS, and if we are to clean up the entire autism suite, it will behoove us to use the standard across the suite, since the all the core articles do use Diberri. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:34, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Not true. The inbuilt cite feature will handle chapters from many online book repositories like Taylor and Francis, de Gruyter, Springer, etc. as long as the chapter has a separate url link. I rarely link books unless they are open access since it's unpredictable whether you can view a certain page, eg on services like Gbooks. (t · c) buidhe 17:24, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Polar bear peer review

Hi, would you be able to peer review the article? Thank you. LittleJerry (talk) 23:13, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Your vote at RfA

Where are those nerdy editors who keep RfA stats to tell us whether your vote is the longest ever written or #2 or whatever? Of course, I can't say it's an example of WP:TLDR because I read the whole thing. And nicely written, too, which is unsurprising. Hope all is well.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:37, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Nobody ever claimed that brevity was the soul of my wit :) I know it's long, but the gist is that all the different concerns reflect a pattern that adds up to ... something ... that is aggravated by the approach taken to GAN and RFA. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:54, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Being witless, I can be as brief or as long-winded as I like! --Bbb23 (talk) 22:45, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Clapton and Pavarotti

Immediate cause to click, thanks! Had no idea this existed :) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 01:09, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Glad you found it; although it's great at any time, I'm usually crying when I'm watching it :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

WikiLeaks edit

As an act of good faith, I wanted to inform you about this edit. After reviewing WP:BLP, I believe that I presented the information in a neutral manner while sticking to the sources, though I wanted to notify you to see if you had any concerns. Thanks! WMrapids (talk) 05:15, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

WMrapids, thanks for the note, but if that is an act of good faith, then you are mightily confused about both WP:BLP and WP:RS, as I explained here. As this has already been raised at ANI, where I suggested you should not be editing BLPs, I hope this won't happen again. You *must* take BLP policy seriously, and you cannot impugn a living person with statements coming from Venezuelan state media, which has been shown over and over and over again at WP:RSN to not be reliable, much less the quality required to make a negative statement about a living person. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:59, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

This is why I notified you! My intention was to place something sourced from the Venezuelan government/official in response and not just a nebulous "state media" opinion, so I hope you can recognize my effort at least. WMrapids (talk) 06:08, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

WMrapids I may be repeating myself from months ago, but you need to slow down. The minute you add something to Wikipedia about a living person, it is in history until or unless an admin WP:OVERSIGHTs the edit. You must be more careful about editing BLPs. I am willing to accept you did this in good faith, but you don't have a good grasp of BLP policy yet, so PLEASE suggest your edits on talk before installing them. Do you understand that lying is policy for Venezuelan state media? Have you read the sources explaining the censorship, distortion, outright fabrications, framing of people to force them into exile, etc? You have just installed another edit using a government-sourced Wordpress to refute four secondary sources. This cannot continue; please stop editing Venezuelan BLPs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The prize is government-operated, so this is directly from the organization itself. The source was also the only one that provided the years mentioning Bocaranda's participation. Sources often misattribute awards, especially if they were presented decades ago and there is little independent documentation specifying the details. If you could find additional information, it would be greatly appreciated, but this is the best that I have found so far.--WMrapids (talk) 06:36, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

It is a WordPress; not common for Venezuelan government sources. And the dates and titles you give aren't what I see in the WordPress, even if that source could be used. Please discuss on article talk. You are still not digesting that in Venezuela, the government controls all information, and archives at what once were real newspapers are gone. Rewriting history is the name of the game. You can't use a WordPress from a Bolivarian Government person to refute four independent sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:43, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

It's August

Can we please start a FAR for Minneapolis this week? We've worked on it for three years, and I would like to wrap this up. I am home now with my books. I can't explain the absence of the other Minnesota editors. (Elkman is overdue but busy at work.)

• Added to the parks section due to a visitor's comment and a new source.
• Enhanced the Guthrie Theater, and wonder about your comment, "I've spent my life in theatre". In what capacity?

Thank you. -SusanLesch (talk) 15:00, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

SusanLesch I will try to launch the FAR when I have a free moment, but I'm not in a mood to want to face the endless endless seen before; I'll need to review talk to see if it has stopped yet. I think generally all of the good Minnesota editors, who build the FA suite 15 years ago, have pretty much moved on. I don't have an interest in working on the Guthrie article ... Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Sandy, what I was trying to tell you is that the Guthrie deserved more than the sentence we had. Now it's a para with an image.

To your other point, I am certain that the stress has cost me years of my life (anything prolonged is bound to). Sadly, the net effect is about zilch (amounting to zero positive contribution). On the bright side, that sockpuppet is blocked. Everything is quiet now, and I hope neither one surfaces at FAR. Best wishes, SusanLesch (talk) 13:42, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how you kept going through that; at least I only had to peek in occasionally. I am (hopefully) nearing the end of dealing with some good stuff that kept me insanely busy for two months, and should be able to get to this before the week ends. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:10, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Osteopathic medicine in the United States

Osteopathic medicine in the United States has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.

Would appreciate your input. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:57, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Lovely, one of those gifts that keep on giving? At first glance, 15 years later, still giving! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Change in scenery?

Given our recent discussions on WP:BLP, was wondering if you wanted to take a look at this article? The whole situation is strange and unfortunate, but it could be a nice change in scenery for you? WMrapids (talk) 02:29, 11 August 2023 (UTC)