Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers

TutorialDiscussionNew page feed

• Sorted
• Easy
• Reports

Reviewers

• Resources
• School
• Top

Curation tool
SuggestionsCoordination

• Talk
• Awards
• Newsletter

• May backlog drive

NPP backlog

Articles

10476 ↓131

Oldest article

13 months old

Redirects

27293

Oldest redirect

9 months old

Article reviews

2344

Redirect reviews

3292

• There is a very large articles backlog
• There is a very large redirects backlog

NPP backlog

NPP unreviewed article statistics as of May 14, 2024

Crossing the 10,000 line

I see we've finally cross the dreaded frontier into the teens. Has this ever happened before? Mccapra (talk) 13:33, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Head to WP:NPPSORT, pick your favourite subject, and chuck chuck chuck. I am doing Computing right now. SD0001 (talk) 13:50, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I’m kind of doing ‘everything but sport’ for the moment as I’m too slow at that! Mccapra (talk) 14:54, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

That's what I did too. Just got through all of the astronomy list. Sam-2727 (talk) 03:42, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Mccapra, I believe it happened before ACPERM. But not great. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:09, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

It's noteworthy that this is happening at the same time as AFC is seeing a massive decline in the backlog - it's just ~1400 now. SD0001 (talk) 14:40, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Well that’s a hopeful sign. Mccapra (talk) 14:54, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Well in some ways that's promising. Hopefully we could get a pipeline of people from AfC to NPP as AfC gets more under control. But ultimately we need more reviewers active. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:49, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations at reaching a backlog of 10,000. I can only sit back in my retirement and laugh at myself for having been so stupid as to have dedicated 14,964 hours of my life to Wikipedia's content quality issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:47, 15 May 2020 (UTC) Kudpung, I understand why you've written this but the people here are not the ones who need this "congratulations". Barkeep49 (talk) 17:57, 15 May 2020 (UTC) Not cool Kudpung. Polyamorph (talk) 13:19, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Wiki-software operational meanings of out terminoloy

Is there anywhere that coverse the computer operational meanings of "patrol" vs. "curation", and "triage"? I recently got chasticized by somebody saying that I should have used "pagetriage" instead or article curation. North8000 (talk) 11:12, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageTriage and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Curation, I think. Vexations (talk) 11:38, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Vexations: Thanks! North8000 (talk) 16:31, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Book copies Wikipedia article

I was at first wondering if Semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror was copied from [1]. But it turns out to be the other way around, because that page was split from Fiber laser. The book doesn't attribute Wikipedia. Is there a place to report these kinds of things? Sam-2727 (talk) 03:51, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

You could probably report it to the publisher. It looks like it's a self-publisher though, so it's probably not a particularly reliable source, and they may not actual vet the content they publish. — Wug·a·po·des​ 04:15, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

That's what I was kind of thinking as well. The publisher doesn't seem very reliable. I will report anyway and see what happens. Overall, the book seems to be copied from a number of sources. Sam-2727 (talk) 04:30, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Update: I emailed them and I got an automatic reply asking me to send a letter to them. Definitely not going to do that, so I guess that's the end of the road. Sam-2727 (talk) 13:35, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Discrepancy in whether pages tagged for deletion should be marked as patrolled

There appears to be a discrepancy between Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Deletion and WP:NPPLOG. Whereas the former tells reviewers do not mark the page as reviewed when tagging pages for deletion, the latter asks reviewers to mark as patrolled Any page that is tagged for speedy deletion, proposed for deletion, or nominated for discussion. My gut feeling is that the former makes more sense, but I want to confirm here before making any changes. Thanks. --Dps04 (talk) 09:52, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Usedtobecool clarified this for me a couple of weeks ago when I had a similar question. The answer was consensus is not to tag PROD articles as reviewed. Mccapra (talk) 12:28, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Only articles at AfD or RfD should be marked as patrolled. CSD or PROD could be declined and thus need further attention. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:31, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Just adding that the reasoning behind the above practice is that RfDs and AfDs will receive extensive community review, usually including a final closure by an admin, and thus can be considered to be in safe hands once the deletion tag has been placed. CSD or PROD tags can be removed without such a process, so we want to leave those unreviewed so that they don't slip through the cracks. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:40, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. In that case, unless I am missing something, the information in WP:NPPLOG is outdated. Unless someone objects, I am gonna go ahead and correct it. A lot of pages link to WP:NPPLOG. --Dps04 (talk) 18:01, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Dps04, yeah that should be corrected. The part where it says that there's no "undo" for patrolling is also a bit misleading, since you can mark articles as unreviewed (although I think that if you're just looking at the patrol log specifically, the unreviewing may not show up). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:05, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Rosguill: Yep, I got confused by the no undo part too. I'll go ahead and remove that part as well. Hope this clears the confusion and prevents other reviewers from making mistakes like these. Cheers (Update: corrected) --Dps04 (talk) 18:15, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Attack

Hi Folks, What does it mean on the NPP dialog when it says Attack in the Possible issues field. It on Rule 3 adviser. scope_creep^Talk 11:54, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

see Attack page Mccapra (talk) 12:20, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

90-day limit on no-indexing

I didn’t realise till just now, but learned here that mainspace articles automatically get picked up for indexing after 90 days. Aside from articles where a redirect is removed, we have articles in the NPP queue back to 130 days ago. If we don’t catch up to less than 90 days, patrolling isn’t stopping bad articles being indexed. Maybe we need more people working the back of the queue? Mccapra (talk) 21:48, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I was wondering about that. I work the back of the queue about 1/2 of the time and it has happened dozens of times where I google the article title to check for sources and google comes up with the article that I'm reviewing.North8000 (talk) 22:00, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes that 90 day threshold is an important one as things do go live at that point in Google. A good reminder for us all. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:42, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Speedy delete severely flawed article added to mainspace while also exists in draft space?

What is the recommended way to handle severely flawed articles that have been created in the mainspace at same time a draft article exists? For example, Berkeley SkyDeck and Draft:Berkeley SkyDeck. If a draft didn't exist I would probably draftify the article but that is clearly not an option here. Is there some kind of speedy criteria in this situation or how should this be handled? Loksmythe (talk) 01:56, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Loksmythe, in this case it looks like the editor erroneously copy-pasted the draft article into mainspace rather than moving the page. I would suggest continuing the review as normal and either approve and tag the article, or start a deletion process. If you come to a conclusion other than deletion, file a histmerge request. I'm also going to leave a COI notice on the editor's talk page. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:31, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I ran into this problem too and Nnadigoodluck said any time it happened, contact him and he’d override the redirect. Mccapra (talk) 05:16, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Origin of the Harp

This article shouldn't belong to the encyclopedia, but wouldn't it be a stretch to call this an A1? The context is hard to ascertain, but it is certainly not a very short article, and although it's pretty much nonsense in the ordinary sense of the word, it isnt really total nonsense or a word salad under the strict definitions of "nonsense" in Wikipedia, as some of the sentences are understandaable with much difficulty. (I thought of the possibility of copyright violation, but then it seems not the entire thing is copied, so G12, which requires the entire article (or basically the entire article) to be copied, doesn't quite apply either). And the common deletion criteria (e.g. A7, G11) doesn't really fit here. It seems prod is the only correct option? --Dps04 (talk) 14:26, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Interestingly, the sole author of the article post the exact same passage in his user page. I suppose this is a U5? --Dps04 (talk) 14:29, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

It's a poem. Obvious nuke, and no way that it can be improved by "normal editing". I actually don't know whether that falls under G1, but I suspect any assessing admin who sees this would speedily delete it, and just pick some broadly applicable criterion. Thus I guess the current A1 note will do as well as any. $.02 --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:42, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Elmidae, The problem with using A1 here though, if we want to be strict about things, is that it is not a very short article. I do not really understand much of what's on there, but I do know it's English and it's more than 2-3 sentences long. This should disqualify the page from A1 (see Wikipedia:Why I Hate Speedy Deleters#A1). Sure, Wikipedia is not a place for hosting original research, which includes the poems or fictional works or whatever it is on that article, but Wp:NOT is itself not a speedy deletion criteria. That's why I think we have an article which is close to G1 but not quite, close to A1 but not quite, so by the process of elimination, WP:PROD seems the only likely option. Dps04 (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Dps04: well, let's see what happens with the CSD. But you might as well send it straight to AfD if an assessing admin can find no speedy criterion to delete it. This being a very recent creation, I doubt that a PROD would be of any use at all - it will never stick for 7 days. PROD is supposed to be a timesaver, but there's no time saving if the exercise is likely to be futile :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Elmidae, Indeed, someone went and declined speedy under A1. They briefly tagged for G1 until they self-reverted. (History: 1) To me this is where CSD fails us: clearly un-encyclopedic material which nevertheless gets to stay here for 7 days because it can't (properly) get CSDed. I honestly think I am wasting my fellow editor's time if I send this to AfD -.- -- Dps04 (talk) 19:03, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

 Note: Origin of the Harp has been listed at Articles for deletion. You are welcome to join the discussion. --Stay safe, ◊PRAHLAD^balaji (M•T•A•C) This message was left at 19:25, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Can't cover all eventualities :/ I don't think these cases are all that common, though. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:52, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

And in a twist ending it gets deleted as a G12. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, It could well be a G12, though for some reason I can't access the copyrighted material in the links post by the closing admin to see if there's really blatant copyright infringement (though there is no reason not to trust their judgment). As I said, this is clearly where CSD fails us: there's a unanimous consensus for this to be deleted, and yet it doesn't really seem to fit in any one of the CSD criteria (editors suggested A1, G1, and even A10 (!), A11 (!!, never thought of this :O)). It seems to be a mixture of some elements of A1 (difficult to ascertain context but not very short), G1 (barely understandable yet not nonsense), G12 (some copied phrases) and even possibly some G2 (in light of this), yet I am hesitant to say within certainty it falls clearly into one of them. The irony though, is when the EXACT same article was post on the's author's user page, there's no need to go through A1, G1, G2, A10, A11, G12 or AFD: it is a no-brainer U5 (and was deleted as such). Dps04 (talk) 04:36, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Sending curation messages to the right student editor

Currently, curation messages about articles created by Wiki Education student editors are sometimes sent to the wrong editor, because of a technical issue involving who initially created the student sandbox page. Can the page curation process or script send the {{Taggednote-NPF}} or other curation message to the Talk page of the student editor who actually created all of the article content in their sandbox, rather than to the Wiki Education content expert assigned to helping the student and who created a rump sandbox on their behalf with with a 33-byte template?

Wiki Education supports and collaborates with university classes whose students have assignments from their professor to write or modify articles for Wikipedia. These classes are monitored and assisted by Wikipedia editors associated with WMF known as "content experts", who (among other things) guide and mentor these new student editors in getting on board as Wikipedia editors. One standard procedure is for the content expert to create a rump sandbox in the student editors user space, consisting of nothing but {{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}} to get them started; for example, here. (This was formerly User:Iaguayo/sandbox, and then was expanded by student editor Iaguayo (talk · contribs) until it became this 15kb article.)

Then, a page curation volunteer like User:North8000 comes along and uses the page creation script in the context of curating Geri Montano, and the tool sends the {{Taggednote-NPF}} message to the Talk page of the creator of the page. Only under current circumstances, the message goes to the Wiki Ed content expert who created the 33-byte sandbox, not to the student who developed the 15kb article, as in this NPF message added to the Talk page of Wiki Education content expert User:Shalor (Wiki Ed).

Creation of a rump sandbox by a Wiki Ed/WMF content expert on behalf of a student editor is a normal procedure. (In this case, the student eventually moved their sandbox to main space after they were ready with it.) Given that the Wiki Ed content expert is not the one really responsible for the creation of the article, but only the initial sandbox, is there some way that the page curation process can assign the NPF note (or other page curation message) to the student editor instead?

I'm not too familiar with tags, but one thing that occurs to me, is that maybe it could be done via an edit summary tag. Upon sandbox creation via {{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}}, a tag could be added to the edit summary naming the student editor in the tag as a tag parameter value. If that is possible, then the curation process could detect that value in the initial edit and act accordingly. If it's not, then alternatively, the Wiki Ed procedure that creates the sandbox in the first place and which currently adds an edit summary like, "Created page with '{{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}}' " could be modified, either automatically or by conventional manual procedure, to instead add an edit summary like, "Created page with '{{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}}' on behalf of user=[[User:Example]]  ". The page curation process or script would then pick up the user from the summary, and use it to determine who to send the curation message to. Mathglot (talk) 20:40, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Adding User:Sage (Wiki Ed). Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I can't speak to the technical details, but I do question this statement, Given that the Wiki Ed content expert is not the one really responsible for the creation of the article, but only the initial sandbox.... Insofar as none of these students would be editing were it not for an assignment, and, in my experience, student editors are generally intimidated and overwhelmed by any message to their talk page, then should not the Wiki Ed content expert and the instructor of the course ideally take responsibility for whatever ends up published here? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 22:25, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Even if not full responsibility, shouldn't they be willing to receive and decide what to do with any curation messages? North8000 (talk) 23:38, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

In terms of what can be done with the page curation process this would need to be added to the wishlist for consideration next time we can capture some foundation programming time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Changing the edit summary could certainly be done. The normal pattern is that these edits get made with the account of the student editor at the time they join a course on dashboard.wikiedu.org, but for new users these edits don't always succeed because of edit filters, so Wiki Education staff will add them later on if they are missing. The editors writing the articles are definitely the right people to receive these messages, ideally... although as the talk page discussion related to the NPF example shows, if the new page curation happens several months after the page goes live, the student editor may not be active anymore. Anyhow, if there's a specific format of edit summaries that would be most useful for NPP scripts, let me know and I can make that happen.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:07, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Or just have the student editor create the page from the start. Give them the url and tell them to add something and save it when an empty page with the text box comes up. Is that so much harder? Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:28, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I always like low-tech solutions, especially when they're easy to implement, and just as good (or better) than high-tech ones. Usedtobecool's solution is the easiest, and best one so far, imho. Assuming Wiki Ed procedures could migrate to using UtbC's approach (Sage?), maybe the one I originally proposed could be kept in the toolkit on the back shelf for use when the (new) normal procedure couldn't be used.

And as far as "shouldn't it be the responsibility of the content expert anyway" question: No, it shouldn't. All Wikipedia editors take responsibility for their own edits; it's in a basic principle somewhere; I'll link it if I find it. Content experts are always watching over students, and of course they'll gently nudge or intervene when necessary. But they are not "responsible" for what another editor chooses to do on Wikipedia, however noob they be. Brand new student editors already create several subpages in their User space as part of their training and on-boarding process. There's no reason at all, that creation of their sandbox, couldn't be made part of that. Mathglot (talk) 19:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Having the student editor create such a page manually is the main way we've been doing it since the beginning of 2020. These days, we don't want students to use their default `/sandbox` page at all; the intended workflow is that students choose which article they are working on, and then they get a link to a sandbox that matches the topic name and start the page, without any template posted by either them or anyone else (example). If they do use the default sandbox with the template, it's usually either because their instructor has been doing this for a while and explained in class how to find their (default) sandbox page, or because they noticed the 'Sandbox' link at the top while on Wikipedia on their own; we don't have much control over what new editors see or do when they are on Wikipedia. The main purpose of the {{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}} template is to make sure students don't accidentally end up in the Articles for Creation process by following the directions of the default sandbox template.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:52, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I think that this particular article is a good general example of the topics being discussed, but not for the mechanics involved. Because.... I used the curation tool to tag the article for notability and it appears that no messages went to any user pages. Then I edited the talk page of the article and put that explanation and info in there. In this case I had two intended recipients. One might be anybody who is interested in the article to look for and add WP:GNG type sources, or at least feel that they were offered a chance and time to do so VS. a fast trip to AFD. Second, since I intended to leave it marked as un-reviewed (due to being close to the line on wp:notability) to get a second reviewer rather than taking it to AFD, I thought that my notes on the digging I did might be helpful to a second reviewer. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Copyvio Articles

User:Koushik Pain (currently blocked) created a series of articles about Ashoka Chakra awardees, most of them are cases of blatant copyvio (mostly copy-paste from external sources). I have already reported some of the articles and they are deleted. There are still a lot of articles.

1. I have read WP:SOLDIER, and most of the articles seems to fail it. Can someone confirm on this ?
2. Even if the articles are notable, after removing the copyvio content, no significant content remains. So, what should be the next step ? Sanyam.wikime (talk) 15:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

   The biographies of soldiers meet WP:NSOLDIER #1, as they've received Ashoka Chakra, which is India's highest award for valour. However, some of the receipients aren't actually soldiers, such as Chaman Lal. Not sure whether NSOLDIER can be used to justify notability for non-soldiers.

   Are the gallantry award citations actually subject to copyright? SD0001 (talk) 12:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

   @SD0001:, I was not sure about the WP:NSOLDIER as Ashoka Chakra is India'a highest award for peacetime courage only, but thanks for clearing me about that.

   I didn't get what do you mean by Are the gallantry award citations actually subject to copyright?, because the article just don't use the source as a citation, they have large amount of texts (like the complete story of the awardee's braveness) directly copy-paste from the copyrighted source. So, that seems as a violation to me.

   Can someone also suggest the future course of action.

   P.S. - I am the above user only, who started the topic (renamed). Zoodino (talk) 08:47, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Earwig

Is anyone getting Earwig’s copyvio detector to load properly at the moment? It keeps timing out for me. Mccapra (talk) 07:00, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be working again. Mccapra (talk) 07:59, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football#Single-source_stubs-Wrong_title

So, I have been a bit bolder in my reviews recently and ran into a single-source article (or two) that seems to meet SNG per the source which gives the wrong name. It seems I will have more questions for NPPR after I figure out the rest of it. So, in order not to split the discussion, I was wondering if interested editors could visit the discussion linked in the header, and chime in with respect to how to do NPPing in these cases. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 13:27, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Technical ideas related to NPR

Some new page reviewers may be interested in this village pump discussion. —PaleoNeonate – 11:05, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Could an experienced reviewer critique me on this one?

This is mostly about me learning how to handle borderline ones. LutosAir_Quintet has been tagged for notability since early April. It doesn't have and I can't find any in-depth independent coverage of them. Nor anything that makes them clearly meet a SNG criteria. Yet they appear to be very prominent and active, and there is a lot of coverage with short mentions of them. The have an article in the Polish Wikipedia, their home country. To me, between a preponderance of all of the above, plus guessing that this would almost certainly kept if taken to AFD, I would pass this one. Could an experienced reviewer critique me on this? Thanks North8000 (talk) 13:20, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• Slightly off-topic for your question, substantial parts of the article text (containing WP:POV superlatives) are probably close enough to the text on this web page to be a WP:COPYVIO. AllyD (talk) 14:02, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• I ran the comparison that AllyD mentioned and found it to be a COPYVIO eligible for deletion under G12 and have deleted it as such. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:22, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I had spotted wording that I was going to check for such but decided to ask about wp:notability instead. North8000 (talk) 16:04, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• Good question North8000. I have not done any kind of BEFORE so I am going off of what was present in the article and your description of what other sources have available. First it having an article on Polish Wikipedia is a data point about renown (which as we know is different from notability). Because each language Wikipedia determines its own standards for notability I find having an article on its home language wiki to be best for finding sources (which may indicate notability here) and second best as a data point for renown (which can tip the balance in a borderline case but isn't a determinant all on its own). I find it a bad sign if a music group does not meet one of the NMUSIC SNG. That SNG is not particularly onerous so your inability to find evidence that either their discography (criteria 1, 2, 3, 5, 11) or performances (4, 10), all of which are sourced and present in the article, meet notability under NMUSIC is a bad sign. The further fact that you can only find a lot of brief mentions might mean that they are good at publicity, which again speaks to renown and not notability. For me, the fact that you can't find enough evidence of notability yourself but also suspect that it would be kept at AfD is a reason to leave it for another reviewer (because unlike AfC belief about what would happen at AfD is not part of our evaluation matrix). They will either be unconvinced enough to nominate it for AfD (at which point you can find out if your suspicion about AfD is correct) or they will mark it reviewed at which point you'll have had a second unbiased opinion confirming with where you landed on a borderline review. Hope that's helpful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:22, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: Thanks! That is very helpful! One question When you said "...what would happen at AfD is not part of our evaluation matrix" is using Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes as a guide sort of an exception to that? Before when I took some to AFD that clearly failed wp:GNG and SNG the dialog there implied that my nomination was in error because "xxxxx type articles are always kept". For example, a small train station on a major rail line. I never tried it with a town, but a very tiny town in India would be another example. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:54, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

North8000, using OUTCOMES successfully is more an art than a science. OUTCOMES should absolutely impact possible nominations for deletion but needs to be done with care. First it really is important to remember what OUTCOMES is and isn't so I am going to quote it at some length:

Quote from OUTCOMES

This page summarizes what some editors believe are the typical outcomes of past AfD discussions for some commonly nominated subjects. This page is not a policy or guideline, and previous outcomes do not bind future ones because consensus can change. The community's actual notability guidelines are listed in the template at the right. Notability always requires verifiable evidence, and all articles on all subjects are kept or deleted on the basis of sources showing their notability, not their subjective importance or relationship to something else. All articles should be evaluated individually on their merits and their ability to conform to standard content policies such as Verifiability and Neutral point of view. As guidelines and actual practice change, this page should be updated to reflect current outcomes. Avoid over-reliance on citing these "common outcomes" when stating one's case at Articles for Deletion. While precedents can be useful in helping to resolve notability challenges, editors are not necessarily bound to follow past practice. When push comes to shove, notability is demonstrated by the mustering of evidence that an article topic is the subject of multiple instances of non-trivial coverage in trustworthy independent sources. This page simply attempts to summarize Wikipedia's common daily practice with respect to deletion debates. If you feel that an outcome common to articles like the one you are discussing does not apply, then give a common-sense or guidelines-based reason why it shouldn't apply. Avoid weak or illogical arguments, such as "Notability is only an optional guideline" or "We always keep these articles".

For the NPP it should advise rather than dictate your action. It is not a guideline and people should not attempt to use it as such. However, it is wise to have a strong argument (and in some cases a very strong argument), either way (marking something notable which OUTCOMES says isn't, or nominating something for deletion which OUTCOMES says is normally kept). On top of that people in some areas are more passionate/likely to turn out than others. Learning that is part of the experience of doing NPP. Hope that helps. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:11, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't know whether to take this any further, I don't want to be asking for a tidy world that doesn't exit, just trying to avoid doing anything that would be considered to be a mistake by NPP norms. When there is a pretty strong and direct conflict between between Outcomes and wp:GNG/SNG's, is going either way a mistake?:

1. One real example is a very small unincorporated village in India. There's one source which merely lists it so we know that it exists and where it is. Other than that no coverage and there's not likely to be any suitable coverage.
2. Another is a small train station on a major rail line. Coverage is info from train schedules and a mention in a newspaper article that it was one of the train stations that commuters were stranded at one day. Unlikely to be any suitable coverage.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:00, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

In terms of #1, OUTCOMES says Cities and villages anywhere in the world are generally kept, regardless of size or length of existence, as long as that existence can be verified through a reliable source. This usually also applies to any other area that has a legally recognized government, such as counties, parishes and municipalities. and NGEO says Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. I don't see a mismatch between OUTCOMES and NGEO. So that Indian village is likely notable and can safely be marked reviewed. In terms of #2 there is no actual guideline just an essay. OUTCOMES says Existing heavy rail stations on a main system (i.e. not a heritage railway) are generally kept at AfD. That has also been my experience. So do you think that this is an exception to that? Some reason it's different enough that it would get a different result? If yes, make your case. If no then mark it reviewed. If the answer is no but it bothers you try and start a discussion - though in the case of transportation I don't see that changing just given the number of editors we have who like our current standards. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:29, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

My attempt was to ask about 2 where OUTCOMES clearly violates the guidelines. I screwed up with my example #1 because I forgot that the same thing is in the SNG. On the latter I think there is such a conflict and I think your answer is that if outcomes is very clear on it, it's OK to follow OUTCOMES. Thanks. North8000 (talk) 21:00, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Potential proposal for AfC

I made a suggestion at ANI that was inspired by a GF user who creates lots of stubs and stubees. Most AfC/NPP editors are aware of the problem and that we are left with lots of work (and a backlog) because we have to expand and source those submissions before they will even meet the basic requirements of being an article stub. In the interim, the creator is credited for creating an article while we spend hours making it one as our backlog grows. I'm of the mind that we may be able to convince the WMF to automate the process by modifying how new articles are accepted upon submission (before they are actually created in mainspace), be it through AfC, draft space, or first created directly in mainspace. Sulferboy offered to help me put a proposal together so I'm pinging him now.

I was thinking an instruction could be coded to prevent article creation if the submission is:

1. - under a minimum word limit,
2. - lacks a minimum number of RS per stub or article size,
3. - contains multiple misspellings, and so on.

The program would return an error message with instructions for what needs to be fixed in order for the article to be published - not unlike submitting a form and having it rejected because you forgot to add a phone number, or the email address wasn't valid. Perhaps JS or Lua could accomplish this task? I'm pinging 2 programmers who have always been able to answer my crazy questions, RexxS, Wbm1058 and DannyS712, just to make sure that what I'm proposing is doable before we add it to our wishlist for WMF. I'm thinking that such a process will be a welcome addition because it will help eliminate the junk stubees and contribute to the reduction of the backlogs at AfC, NPP, and AfD. Your input will be greatly appreciated. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 12:35, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Fix ping Sulfurboy - ooops - ^Atsme _Talk 📧 12:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Atsme, hi! I don't believe we've officially met. I Usedtobecool and I believe that's at least two and a half programmers, possibly more. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:10, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Greetings, Usedtobecool - glad to meet you! Two and a half, possibly more - hmmm...well, I've never seen anything done by a half programmer but have seen things done half assed. So what I'm gleaning from your response is that it can be done, and that's great news which is worthy of jumbo text to garner the kind of attention it needs. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 18:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

IMO having a robot block articles is not a good idea. IMO there is a much simpler fix for this and many other problems. Make it a routine at AFC, NPP and AFD that it is the article creator's job to find and include wp:notability-related sourcing. It would no longer be the reviewer's job to do the research; they would evaluate sources based only on the included sourcing. North8000 (talk) 12:53, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

The program would not actually be "blocking articles" - it is asking the stub creator to fix the problems right there on the spot, and explaining what they need to fix. Why allow junk into our queue? ^Atsme _Talk 📧 13:08, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Minimum word limits are screened by Special:ShortPages. There are legitimate short pages such as Wiktionary redirects and set indexes that need {{subst:Long comment}}-tagged to whitelist them.

The spam blacklist is a control mechanism that prevents an external link from being added to an English Wikipedia page. A similar control mechanism could be used to stop misspellings but I think the misspelling list for such blacklisting would need to be maintained by administrators. Too many editors are obsessive about tagging things which are borderline legitimate alternative spellings as flat-out misspellings. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• Im fed up with experienced editors creating unsourced stubs, sometimes in a high-speed run, and leaving it to someone else to bother finding sources for them. I’m all in favour of being patient and helpful to new editors, but some lazy old ones really need to cut it out. If a new article has neither sources nor external links it should be blocked from mainspace in my view and diverted to draft space. No need to expect anyone else to spend time on it. Mccapra (talk) 16:55, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support for a minimum page size on the first draft of perhaps 1k bytes but it would only be enforced by the article creation wizard otherwise editors could game the system by slashing articles then deleting/moving them. Oppose spelling being a consideration as there are many good writers with poor spelling, also there are variations of English such as American/British. Also determining a reliable source is better left to human reviewers but there could be a requirement for at least one reference, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:31, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that spelling/language should not be a factor. Mccapra (talk) 20:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the program is alerting the content creator to fix those issues. Why not have the content fix them right then and there before the stub is published. I don't understand why reviewers would rather do the work instead of helping the content creator do the work. 😳 ^Atsme _Talk 📧 21:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• Well I made about three errors in my comment that I corrected and you've just made one Atlantic306 (talk) 21:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

  Well, at least the program would tell us which word is mispelled - my spellchecker isn't saying a word in mine, but 3 in yours. Ha!! Caught it but there you have it - the program would not have caught it, either - we do need reviewers but I'd rather review a real stub, and not have to create it for the content creator. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 21:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• I'm not sure about this idea. Here are my thoughts:
  • Do unsourced articles and tiny stubs really take up that much of reviewers' time? It takes about 10 seconds to see that an article cites zero sources and decline it (or draftify it). Same with a sub-stub that makes no claim of notability. Long articles with lots of references and unclear notability (e.g. typical COI/UPE articles) are much more problematic. I am aware of the issues with one editor's stubs that led to this proposal, but the issue is not really that their articles are stubs, it's that they create a massive number of stubs and resubmit them without substantial improvement. I looked at a bunch of drafts in the oldest AfC category, and I didn't see any stubs; they're mostly relatively long articles with a decent number of references.
  • A <1000 character sub-stub can be a legitimate article. For example: "Foo bar is a species of bar in the genus Foo. It was described by John Doe in 1900.^[2]" That would unquestionably be kept at AFD.
  • Bots do not understand context and cannot effectively determine what is a spelling error and what is not, or which sources are reliable and which are not. "John Doe studied literature at Harvard University" sourced to the New York Times is reliable; "Kombucha may be effective for treating breast cancer" sourced to the New York Times is not. A subject's own website or social media page is usually unreliable, but WP:BLPSPS describes how it can sometimes be an acceptable source. Y Kant Tori Read is not a typo. And so on.
  • Related, newbies often do weird things with reference formatting and it would be difficult for a bot to detect all the possible ways that someone can attempt to cite a source.
  • New users who struggle with writing articles need guidance, not a stock template from a bot (assuming they are trying to write about something marginally encyclopedic and not just spamming their autobio).
  • A bot to decline unsourced articles has been proposed before, and was not approved.
• All in all I don't see that the benefits outweigh the negatives. Spicy (talk) 21:51, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Spicy - if you haven't already, read this case, which is where this all began. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 23:28, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I have read it, as I said in my post. That ANI thread is about one user's conduct issues, which can be resolved by sanctioning that user. I don't see a case for placing these restrictions on all users. The average editor at AfC or NPP does not create 1,500 stubs. Spicy (talk) 23:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

See Category:All stub articles - may help put things in perspective as far as how many are created. I haven't found any stats that tell us how many are created in a month. The 2,261,992 number may not be current. I picked one at random St Anthony's Fire (novel). How long do you think it will take you to find all the stubs in that category that don't have sources or enough info to qualify as a stub?? And they keep coming every day. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 00:17, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

That article was created in 2006, when standards were much lower. If it were created in that state today it would have been draftified within an hour or two and G13'd if it was not improved. I dislike substubs and I agree that there are too many poorly sourced, non-notable, useless stubs on Wikipedia. But eliminating them is not worth implementing policies that will prevent the creation of stubs on actually notable topics and discourage new users (without even getting into the technical issues of how a bot can determine if an article is unreferenced or if a source is reliable). Spicy (talk) 00:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Responding to one note above, I don't know how it rolls at AFC, but at NPP and AFD, if reviewer has to prove a negative that suitable sources don't exist for wp:notability, that a tiny stub does consume a lot of time. IMO that's why I think it should be the editor's responsibility to the basis for wp:notability IN THE ARTICLE including sources if the basis is wp:gng. And the reviewer would review only the provided sources. North8000 (talk) 13:01, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• "Dalbergia latifolia is a species of plant." would be an acceptable stub. So, I am thinking the word limit would be 7, or 6 if we allow imperfect English. Less than a sentence can be G2'ed I think, so I am not sure how much we gain. Bots, I'm pretty sure, can't judge whether a source is RS, they can only work off a blacklist. One good source is enough to write a start class article on a non-controversial topic, so the limit there would be one. I would support stopping completely unsourced articles. In my experience, there are usually external links present though inappropriately, and I doubt bots could be made to tell whether an external link in article body is spam or an attempted inline sourcing. When I write Nepal-related articles, my chrome redlines almost all proper nouns, all words that are transliterated for lack of proper translations but have yet to make to the international dictionaries, and a fair few ENGVARs too, I think. So, spellchecking is probably impossible to implement with current technology. In summary, to properly discuss 1, we would probably need to discuss an actual proposed limit, for 2, the limit can't be more than 1 but the bots are unlikely to be able to judge its quality, and 3, I think would not work. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:46, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• Re: word count limits, I have created hundreds of sub-1K stubs, so I am not sure if it's a good idea to rely on word or character counts. Mind you, I would never, ever, move anything to article space that did not have enough sourcing to establish notability by one of our guidelines. I'm not patroller, and don't want to butt in here, but (pun!) I think source count is the way to go. Unsourced should be unallowed. Personally I would require two inline sources.If they are notable and you have one source, the second is not going to be that hard to find. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:13, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

AfD not working

Is the page curation's AfD function broken? I tried to AfD https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Are_Blytt&type=revision&diff=961115804&oldid=955312103&diffmode=source but no AfD page was created at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Are Blytt. This is the second time this has happened, I also had problems with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Artistic scandal, I ended up redoing that one with Twinkle. Vexations (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The "next" button in the curation toolbar doesn't seem to be working either. From my experience Twinkle seems much more reliable than Page Curation. --Dps04 (talk) 18:58, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I always use Twinkle. Much more reliable. Mccapra (talk) 19:23, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Dps04, next is working for me. Vexations (talk) 19:40, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Vexations, that's weird, but anyway I am not a big fan of page curation so I can live without it. Hope someone can look into the technical issue though -- Dps04 (talk) 05:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Curation tool broken?

I keep on getting this. [3]. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 11:14, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

It's working fine for me. This happens sometimes when another script malfunctions. Praxidicae (talk) 11:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

NPPSort not updating?

Hi all, it appears that User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting has not updated since 3 June. Is this intentional or is something off with the bot? I've found the tool very useful for finding articles to review.Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 00:24, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

• Ping SD0001. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 17:48, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I also just left them a message on their talk page. Incidentally, I just stumbled across the sorting recently, and if anyone hasn't used it before, I strongly recommend it -- I spend a lot of time when reviewing looking for articles that I am comfortable assessing, and having them sorted in various ways is incredibly helpful. --JBL (talk) 20:49, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Addendum: apparently SD0001 is on a wiki-break, but per the comment on their talk page I've sent them an e-mail, so hopefully this will be working again soon! --JBL (talk) 20:54, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be working again! --JBL (talk) 17:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

And now we are back to 10000 unreviewed articles again --Dps04 (talk) 06:16, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

IMO what's needed to catch up

Looks like we're solidly over 10,000 backlog. Elsewhere it's been written that the way that Wikipedia gets so much volunteer help is a combination that they enjoy it and of fulfilling a mission. I guess we get about 700 articles per day. Not counting admins I think that there are about 700 with the reviewing tool. Yet there only about 66 reviewers who average at least one article per day and only 40 who average 2 articles per day. So IMO what's needed is to help people become regular reviewers. IMO this is because it is so difficult to get fluent / comfortable / knowledgeable at this. In real life / business I'm a good trainer and writer of "dummies guide to....." because I have good empathy/understanding for the people who don't know the topic and what they need. Let's say that someone is an experienced editor, and is familiar with wp:gng, the SNG's and wp:not. They still have these big hurdles to learn:

1. How does wp:notability actually work?. I may have written down the decoder ring at Wikipedia talk:Notability#North8000's description of how wp:notability actually works right now
2. For the common reviewing tasks, which tools should be used and how to do the task. I've reviewed over 500 articles and still haven't figured this out. I figured out a hack to make new page curation work on AFD's and so I get by just using curation tools which folks seem to be saying "don't use" but I haven't found a "mark as reviewed" tool anywhere else such as Twinkle.
3. Some coaching so that people can have a thick skin when they AFD an article. Because on 100% of these there will be somebody there in essence arguing that you made a mistake by sending it there.

If anybody ever wanted to write more guidance to help in these areas I'd be happy to help. As a recent newbie here I still have the much needed "dummy" qualification. :-) North8000 (talk) 14:04, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I think advertising the sorted lists to reviewers would be helpful: I didn't know about them until recently, and they've made my forays into patrolling much more pleasant and effective. --JBL (talk) 14:26, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree a big part of the problem is AfD. Every day I see articles that look like junk but the burden of WP:BEFORE is just too great when it’s a BLP bombed with twenty online refs to sources I’ve never heard of in another language, and when the subject’s fans are going to pile in at AfD and push even more links to even more junk sites in an attempt to prove it’s notable. I guess others feel the same so these articles sit in the queue for months and get indexed after 90 days anyway. Anyhow many of the 700 might be persuaded to do two or three easy ones a day, especially using the brilliant new sorted list. That would push the total down even if it doesn’t help with the tough ones at the back of the queue. Maybe more new page reviewers with language skills in Albanian, Bulgarian, Hindi, Tagalog etc. would be useful too. Mccapra (talk) 15:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm of two minds - first, when done correctly, the work is time consuming and finding sources/citing quite laborious; second, we are now dealing with a growing number of paywalls. Not all of us have immediate access to a public or university library. Another disincentive is the time sink when taking an article to AfD. I would not hesitate to reject sloppy, uncited stubs and OR articles, and those that have slipped through the cracks, speedy delete them, but inclusionists have different ideas. Maybe we can recruit them to start citing unsourced content in our queue? ^Atsme _Talk 📧 15:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

lol Mccapra (talk) 20:50, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

In this section my focus was on an easy way to get more reviewers active. North8000 (talk) 17:04, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Ok I wonder if all 700 have received a talk page message about the new bot report which will save them a lot of time in reviewing and let them review what they’re interested in? That might encourage some to be more active. Mccapra (talk) 20:52, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I support that idea. I can set up the message/mailing list, if others like this idea. Sam-2727 (talk) 21:39, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Per my comment above, I also think this would be a good idea. --JBL (talk) 21:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that featuring it in a NPP newsletter makes a lot of sense. @Sam-2727: no need to setup a new message group as one exists.. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I am all for getting more editors to be reviewers. My concern is that our editor pool is relatively stable and a fair amount of that pool will have either done NPP and burned out or done it and decided it's not for them. The truth is that Onel was pretty much single handedly keeping NPP afloat and so we continue to feel his decision to leave the project these months later. By all means lets get more editors I just find myself failing to be completely optimistic that more editors are there for us to solve it but I also don't have a better solution so more editors it needs to be. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

It's been six months and the noms still keep coming. I wish all that needs deleting would be deleted in one go; the wmf tools give up trying to list their creations, so I have no idea how many even are there. We ought to make an effort to persuade them to come back, but I don't see how we could even think about trying that as long as the AFD notifications keep coming. I'd thought they'd be an admin by now; instead we've got this, and far too few seem to even notice that they were here and are now gone. Usedtobecool ☎️ 22:48, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The burden placed on NPPers is far too heavy for it to be sustainable without a compromise on one or the other aspect of how this works. AFD is basically a battleground where action you take on each, places you into one or the other camp, often concurrently. As things are what we have is the best we can get, and it is not that far from an ideal outcome as far as I am concerned. When an article has gone three months without being reviewed, it almost always means that the article is in the grey area where it fits none of the boxes, so it getting indexed would probably be the best outcome anyway, it will be taken care of when an experienced editor familiar with the topic comes across it, tomorrow or the next millennia. Like all processes, the quality of the work depends on the number of volunteers taking part in it and their skill vs the load. If we insist on judging our effectiveness by the backlog, we will require a fundamental reform as to what NPP is and does; I see two options: either we judge only on the sources given, which, if it had consensus which it will never have, will shift the burden to AFC and AFD and those process will start to feel the load (AFD is already severely undermanned, aside from being all other kinds of mess) or we stop judging notability and look only at whether it is spam, a complete mess or more A7 than GNG and leave the rest to posterity (the option I'd support; it's not like articles marked as reviewed have never gone to AFD and been deleted one, two, ten or fifteen years after). Usedtobecool ☎️ 23:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)