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I've started up a discord channel for us to use between us patrollers. You can get there by simply clicking on this permanent link. If you create an account ('claim account') with the same nickname as your username, it will be easy to keep track of all of us. You can download the discord app, or simply run it as a tab in your browser, both work fine.
This is not any kind of replacement for this message board; anything that is relevant to all patrollers should still be brought up here first and foremost. I just thought it would be nice to be able to chat with each other, and perhaps aid in collaboration between reviewers to be able to have a real time chat or voice chat venue. Discord seems the best for this purpose, as the room will stay open indefinitely for our use. Feel free to join or not. I'll be on in the next hour or so, and then again in about 10-12 hours from now. Cheers. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)15:07, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Myself and Mduvekot are on the chat now and are going to make a push for the NOINDEX point. We currently have 272 indexed articles (from November 26 to December 6th), we are going to push to review them and will be on the discord chat for the next few hours if anyone wants to join us. Consider it a mini-editathon. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)00:03, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
We also already have a Freenode IRC channel (which should be linked on the top of this page.) If people want to do live chat, that might be better to use as Freenode IRC is the de facto chat platform for Wikimedia projects. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:15, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
No voice chat availability on there though, and also, there are people watching. A bit creepy to have so many WMF people hanging out in the chat room. The number of indexed articles is now around 220, but I've burnt out for the day. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)01:42, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Heh, they created the channel for us a while back, and most of them are users who are idling (and who are also community members) who are present in other channels such as #wikipedia-en, #wikipedia-en-help (AfC's de facto channel) and for those who have passed RfA, #wikipedia-en-admins. Nothing against using other forms of communication if people want to, and I still believe in emphasizing the importance of on-wiki communication, but if people do want to use an off-wiki chat type thing, I think it is likely best to use one that already has a significant portion of the community using it. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:48, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
@Tony and Kudpung. I'm sorry guys, but how is freenode a good solution? I feel like I'm working with MSDOS levels of technology. The browser based chat room absolutely sucks, constantly timing out and forcing me to login again, and when I do, it wipes the chat history, doesn't give notifications, and generally no features expected of a modern chat service. As far as standalone clients for IRC go, I've just spent half an hour trying to follow the instructions at Wikipedia:IRC/Tutorial and set up mirc, BitchX or Pidgin and failed with all. Some advice on how to set it up would be appreciated, but I can already tell you that the user experience with freenode is very lacking compared with the discord chat room I set up, where you literally just click on the above link and enter in a nickname, and downloading the standalone discord client takes a couple of clicks. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)02:39, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
It’s the standard that AfC uses for their live help and already has the framework of all the other Wikimedia channels. I just think it’s probably best to use a platform where you can easily interact with the rest of the community through various channels, and where it’s easy to get admin assistance if needed. @Oshwah and There'sNoTime: are both familiar with the various clients and the like and can probably give more input than me. People are free to do whatever they like off-wiki, but if there is going to be a semi-official off-wiki communication method, I think it’s geberally better to use the main one used by the rest of the Wikimedia movement. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:52, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
busy ATM so if someone wants to decide if thsi should be indented and appended on the above converstaion feel free IRC Is lame, FWIW. Some of my pals who work in the customer support, student-interaction world use Slack, and sing its praises. I understand Discord is easy, but should we be using slack instead? Discord does allow you to have more interesting features… L3X1◊distænt write◊03:00, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
All that I can say is, and which may come as a surprise, in all my Wiki time and 7 years as an admin, I have never used Wikipedia's Freenode IRC and have never considered I have a need to - in fact the one time I tried to log into it I found it was a pain. In fact I even rarely use email except for issues that cannot be discussed publicly. I occasionally use other comunication media for some private disscussions with users who are personal friends, and Skype for video conferences with the WMF. The personal discussions are nothing more and nothing less than the typical conversations that one would have with friends at a meet up or Wikimania. I think users should stick with what is officially available for Wikipedia business for the time being. To change it all would probably need some important RfCs. As a Mac user for 30 years, I'm not sure I even remeber what MSDOS is ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:46, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
This one plain baffles me. Do we field articles about a city's bid for an expo? Is this bid per se an event that's notable? If yes, then this seems well sourced. But to me it feels like a bit of a non-event that shouldn't/wouldn't get an article. Anyone have some precedents in the bonded storehouse of their knowledge? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:55, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
NPP backlog, number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Green is less than 30 days old, orange is between 30 and 90 days old. Red arrow indicates the 90 day index point.
The backlog is currently at 3350 articles, and we have managed to review everything older than the 90 day index point. We need to work on reducing the number of articles in the backlog, as it is still unacceptably high, however, we don't need to focus on the back any more. Please feel free to review the front, back or certain types of articles from the middle using the new page patrol browser, whatever is most convenient and efficient for you. The key here is to continue quality reviewing, and to reduce the number of articles in the backlog.
ACTRIAL is ending in a couple days, which means that we will have at least a month and a half or so during which data will be collected and reported and the results from ACTRIAL will be discussed. We can expect 300 or so additional articles to be submitted each day during this period (this was the excess before ACTRIAL started), so we will all need to do some additional reviewing just to keep up. While we have no guarantee that ACTRIAL will be made permanent, so far the community has regarded it as a resounding success and preliminary data generally indicates positive results. I will post more updates with information once a formal discussion begins.
...because the ideal system would be to check every page twice: a quick once-over at the moment of creation to spot anything speediable, but then wait maybe 7 days before releasing it to the world, to see if (a) the creator develops it further, (b) some big controversy blows up quickly84.13.190.60 (talk) 21:45, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
Many articles are obviously encyclopedic in content at the moment of creation, which eliminates a lot of them with a a simple tick off. I agree that it shouldn't be zero, but there is no reason why we shouldn't target a shorter backlog of 30 days maximum. I actually think I'd be in favour of reducing the index point to 30 days once we have the backlog reduced to below that point, to incentivise us keeping the backlog short. While I generally agree with Tony's comment that he made previously about the number of articles not mattering so long as we are within the index period, it is also important to keep the backlog within a manageable size such that it can't build up to the point that it becomes unmanageable to the relatively small group of regular reviewers. In short we should target the smallest number possible, but so long as we don't hit the index point again, we should be happy, and in general I'd like to target a 30 day limit for max age of articles in the queue. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)22:05, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
ACTRIAL ends Wed, research report coming Tues
Hi everyone. The six month ACTRIAL period ends on Wednesday March 14th, so Community Tech will be switching off the ACTRIAL code, around 10:00am Pacific time, aka 17:00 UTC.
On Tuesday (tomorrow), we'll publish the final research report written by Morten Warncke-Wang (aka User:Nettrom), based on the data collection and analysis of the first two months of the trial. There won't be any big surprises for anyone who's been following along on the Research page on Meta; it's a summary of those findings, with suggestions for further discussion and study. We're planning to post it as a subpage of the Wikipedia:ACTRIAL page, and post links in various places so people will come and check it out. The intention is for those findings to help inform the post-ACTRIAL discussions and decisions.
Thanks very much for coming by to let us know. Is there any plan to analyse the data from subsequent months of the trial? NPP's activities in December and January were wildly different compared to October and November (in terms of progress made). I am also interested in how H10: "Number of active patrollers will decrease." was affected by the recruitment drive that I ran in December (inviting 400+ very senior editors to NPP) and also how this was affected by the backlog drive run in January. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)00:35, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi Insertcleverphrasehere, the December-January backlog drive is included in the discussion of the backlog and the quality control process. For things like user retention and content quality, two months is enough to see whether there's an effect or not. But clearly you all did a ton of work beyond those first two months, and there'll be a chart of the backlog over the six month period. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 01:03, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Post-trial Research Report
Hi everyone, I'm happy to tell you that the ACTRIAL Post-trial Research Report has been published on Wikipedia as a subpage of WP:ACTRIAL. This is the result of a collaboration between the New Page Patrol reviewers and the WMF Community Tech team, and we're excited to publish the findings as a contribution to the ongoing discussions about the trial. We're looking forward to hearing what you all think about the findings, and being part of the conversations from here. Thanks -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
I posted a longer reply from my main account at VPP that discusses some of the things that have evolved since ACTRIAL, but I did want to say here briefly, a thanks to Danny and his team. The report really is great, and fair, and I think that their efforts here have gone a long way to build trust with the community. I'll also say what I've said at VPP and elsewhere: we'll have an RfC within the next few weeks on this. There seems to be a desire to get it out of the way sooner rather than later, so hopefully it can be up by the end of March. I do want to wait at least a week to see the differences (and it will take at least that long to make sure the RfC is ready to go anyway). Regardless, I think this has been a great success. Thanks to all involved. TBallioni (talk) 02:18, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
I would also like to thank DannyH (WMF) and his team. With regard to the en.Wiki community and its users who are active in maintaining a clean encyclopedia, this has been the most important, objective and helpful piece of research provided by the WMF in recent years. I echo TonyBallioni's comments and look forward to a closer collaboration with the Foundation in the future. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:11, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
Next steps
The conclusion to the reoprt strongly reiterates our long-time on going requirements for the NPP and AfC processes to be improved. Within minutes of the trial being switched off, the Curation feed was swamped with inappropriate creations and users are being blocked already. This is now the moment to continue to collaborate with DannyH (WMF) and his team to bring the entire Curation system up to date by making a firm commitment to addressing the list of requirements to the excellent suite of tools the WMF developed for Curation. The conclusions also make some strong recommendations for AfC. The place to discuss these issues initially is here where those interested in helping actively can also elect to join the work group force. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:56, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
they neither have my size, nor my <confidential> address lololol. Jokes apart, I commented there. —usernamekiran(talk)19:29, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Increased submissions, backlog raising, and some stats.
Just sharing some numbers that I crunched for those that are interested. I've noticed the backlog raising over the past 5 days or so, since ACTRIAL ended, and I can't say I am surprised. The backlog was steady before but has begun raising as a result of the 200 or so pages created each day by new users. The overall rate of page creation has increased by a commensurate amount. I have compared the reviewing rate of the 5 days before the 14 March (2836 reviews), and the 5 days since the 14th of March (2806 reviews) just to check that our reviewing rate hasn't dropped for some reason, and as you can see they are virtually identical. If we want to keep up with the influx of new articles, we are going to need about 90 more reviews per day over what we are currently doing. Note that the backlog was dropping before ACTRIAL ended, so it would currently be dropping by 100 or so articles per day if it wasn't for these new articles. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)09:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
My take on this is that our new page reviewers will simply give up in exasperation. And I wouldn't blame them. They have made extroadinary efforts to clear what was a huge backlog, (including the trash that would have been indexed by Google after 90 days if not patrolled) which will now grow again unless ACTRIAL is permanently implemented. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:10, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
New data indicates that we are reviewing slightly more than before ACTRIAL ended, (3986 in the week before and 4027 in the week after). However, the backlog has risen by 800 articles in 1 week, indicating a very unsustainable situation that we are in at the moment without a lot more reviews being completed. We should count our lucky stars that the RfC for ACTRIAL is going so well. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)01:13, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
This is just an observation (not based on stats), most of the articles being reviewed from "slightly more than before ACTRIAL ended"; are CSD worthy ones. —usernamekiran(talk)01:38, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
NCORP has been rewritten
This is just an update to all new page reviewers that WP:NCORP has been substantially rewritten to strengthen the sourcing requirements for corporations and organizations (with the exception of non-profit educational institutions, religions or sects, and sports teams). It is probably worth a read for all new page reviewers. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Draftify - leave redirect?
I just applied for and got page mover rights to make the entire draft moving business a bit easier, and I'd like to ask some advice here such as not to screw up immediately. I just moved the promising Post - 1500 Southeast Asia Archaeology to Draft:Post - 1500 Southeast Asia Archaeology for some further improvement. To enable the user to move it back out themselves when cleaned up, I did so without leaving a redirect (which would ordinarily block the move). Question - is that kosher? I don't quite know what the stance is on the necessity and/or desirability of mainspace redirects when draftifying. Cheers --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 10:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
@Elmidae: Generally, if CSD is applicable to the leftover redirect, then yes it should be suppressed (more at WP:PMRC). And redirects from mainspace to other space should always be removed/suppressed, except for the special circumstances. Also, Andy's script is very helpful round-robin moves. —usernamekiran(talk)11:11, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
An incidental query. After seeing it in action, I grabbed Evad37's MoveToDraft script, which is a handy beast indeed. Now this script just goes ahead and deletes the main-to-draft redirect in the course of draftifying, as seems proper. I was just wondering, does that only work for me because I have page mover rights now? Or does this script just enable anyone to delete such redirects? Seems a little surprising, seeing as the right is only given out after (a small amount of) vetting. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:56, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Looking at the code, it actually just tags for speedy deletion. That appears to translate into moving w/o redirect if right is present(?) - Not worried, just curious. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:00, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Trying to enjoy my now 12-month retirement from pushing on the NPP rope, I see that I'm still one the top 20 or 30 who incidentally are still doing something like 95% of the work out of a supposed 500 or more patrollers. I'm only doing this to see first hand what the feed now looks like since ACTRIAL was switched off. I am therefore staggered to see the number of non-English articles (usually in one of the languages that use Arabic script) simply being shoved off to WP:PNT. This is plain sloppy and lazy patrolling. Most of these 'articles' fall under one or another of our CSD criteria and can be immediately dealt with. All it takes is a few seconds to dump the the article lede into Google Translate to find out what it's about and then tag it with an appropriate CSD. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:12, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Why does it automatically mark as reviewed after editing?
I'm sure it was implemented to save time, but does anyone else find it problematic that articles are automatically marked as reviewed when edited by a patroller? For example, if someone CSD tags an article, believing it will be deleted, it's a waste of time to check the rest of the article just in case the CSD is declined. The problem arises if the CSD is declined, the article is still garbage, and it's been automatically marked as patrolled. Why does tagging an article automatically mark it as patrolled? Natureium (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Seems like a sensible effort-saving arrangement - otherwise every patroller would constantly encounter articles in the queue that already have been assessed and tagged. It sounds like what you want is rather for an admin who declines a CSD to unreview the article. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
There was a consensus that reviewers should mark CSD and PRODed articles as 'reviewed' and then check back on them via their CSD and PROD logs to check for removed tags/declined by admin. If you are using Twinkle, you should set up a CSD log, but using the PC tools you can find it HERE. There is a big thread several pages back in the archives of this page outlining the discussion that decided this. If there is another reason that you don't want an article reviewed after you perform one or more patrolling actions with the page curation tools, simply click the check mark after tagging etc to unreview it. However, I highly recommend completing reviews fully before moving on the the next article. Otherwise this creates duplicate effort for the next reviewer that comes along. If you are unsure whether a review is complete or not, run the article through the NPP Flowchart; if you have any questions, asking on this page is probably more constructive than simply leaving it unreviewed (so that we can all learn from odd border cases). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)22:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
That is helpful, but if it's PRODed, anyone can come along and remove the tag, and probably wouldn't know (or care) to un-patrol the page. Natureium (talk) 00:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
That's why it is a good idea if you keep track of your PROD log. I have suggested that Removed PROD and CSD logs should auto-unreview, but this didn't go anywhere. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)01:04, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I find that useful. It happens only with auotamted tools. So when I CDS something (article/draft/userpage), it gets reviewed, gets added to my csd log, and also in my watchlist. In case somebody removes speedy tag, i get notified. In case i might not be around for few upcoming days, or i get a doubt based on article/creator history, i unreview it just after tagging it. It also happens if you tag them with anything. I have added {notability|biography} tag to a few articles manually, just cuz i didnt want to mark them as reviewed. —usernamekiran(talk)22:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Yeah… I miss the CSD/PROD logs maintained by TW. With PRODS I like being able to look back on the original reason I PRODDED the article and check up on it. I also like having things broken down by deletion process. It lets me see if my judgement is aligning with community expectations and if there is a type of article I systematically make errors on. When I first stated out I annotated my TW CSD log to record the comments made when the tag was declined and I found that tremendously helpful. That is a learning tool which is not available to new NPR and I think that their learning suffers from it. The more well maintained and granular a log is the more use it is both as a tool for self-improvement and as a method of auditing performance of others. Jbh Talk17:23, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Technical Question How does ((NOINDEX)) of new pages work? If an article is reviewed, which removes the noindexing, is it again noindexed if the article is unreviewed again? I will often review an article and place tags and then un-review it again. If this causes it to be indexed I would consider that a problem. Also, since deletion tagging marks as reviewed does it also remove the noindex, or is there an exception which prevents deletion tagged new articles from being picked up by Google? Jbh Talk17:23, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
cryptocurrency scams
Here's an another example of an article about a financial product/institution/app based on blockchain technology. Now that virtually all major outlets have banned adds for such stuff, we seem to be dealing with a lot of submissions. Is there some other way to deal with them? Blacklist the sources? Do have we a speedy criterion for scams? G3 doesn't seem to apply. These are not pure vandalism and blatant hoaxes; they're rather sophisticated, actually. Mduvekot (talk) 19:47, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Apologies if this is somewhere and I missed it (I spent some time looking for it) but I stumbled upon Deir ez-Zor airstrike. What is the protocol for reviewing disambiguation pages? Thanks and Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:04, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
CSD A7/A9
Why are the CSDs for no indication of importance so specific? How much of a stretch is allowed? For example, Nathdwara Railway Station. The only text in the article is "It is located 20 km from Nathdwara on Nathdwara-Mavli road NH 162 Ext." Is a train station a company or organization? It belongs to a company, no? Why is unremarkable place not one of the criteria? (talk) 17:47, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Natureium, they are that specific because that was the way the community was comfortable giving our admin overlords the go ahead to bi/unilaterally delete things without prior community discussion. A7s for literally every other imaginable category of thing that exists, and several that do not yet exist, have all pretty much been suggested and failed.
Nathdwara Railway Station would generally be treated as a place, and not a company, and therefor ineligible for A7. ...And anyway should probably be redirected to Nathdwara rather than nominated for deletion at all. GMGtalk17:54, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
I've now seen several articles about rail stations in India. Some don't have a logical article to redirect to, e.g., Darekasa railway station can't be redirected to Darekasa, and these articles don't even seem to make sense. "Darekasa railway station is a railway station connected with Mumbai- howrah rail zone in South east central railway is situated near amgaon taluka. It is a village surroundings with temples.." What? How hard would it be to get a new A7 criteria for places? Is it worth trying, or is there likely to be a lot of pushback? Natureium (talk) 19:17, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
All railway stations and places are almost always notable by default. If you wish to see a proof, try taking one to AfD.So, CSDing is pretty out-of-world. ~ Winged BladesGodric19:23, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Why would a railway station be notable? What sources would you find about a rail station other than an official directory, which isn't used to establish notability. Natureium (talk) 19:26, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
If I have intentions, I can pretty much well-source every IR station, barring the ones in the last two decades or so. If you're doubting that a 150-year-old railway system and it's associate acts hasn't been enough covered by books, (many of which are solely devoted to the topic) and other media, well.... Barring carsheds etc., my reading tells me that there are almost always troves of offline resources that could be exploited. ~ Winged BladesGodric19:30, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
@Natureium: Many of the cruft articles from IPA editors (villages, stations, etc) may contain English which is barely comprehensible to many of us. If the article is on a 'nearly always notable' topic I rewrite it in simple, declarative sentences and remove anything which I can not make a reasonable guess about what it means. I also try to place it in one of the states/regions. If I can not do that then it gets tagged no context. I have a couple of databases in my workspace which can help verify the existence for Indian places. In your example I would cut it to Darekasa railway station is situated near the town of Amgaon in the Indian district of Gondia. If I could confirm that there is a "South East Central Railway", "Mumbai–Howrah rail zone" or "Howrah rail zone" I would add that material too. Since this type of stub is usually completely unsourced it is important to be conservative when parsing the information provided by the author. Jbh Talk22:42, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
This seems to be the relevant section:
Buildings, including private residences and commercial developments may be notable as a result of their historic, social, economic, or architectural importance, but they require significant coverage by reliable, third-party sources to establish notability.
Artificial features related to infrastructure (for example, bridges and dams) can be notable under Wikipedia's GNG. Where their notability is unclear, they generally redirect to more general articles or to a named natural feature that prompted their creation, e.g., to an article about the notable road it carries or the notable obstacle it spans.
I assume this falls under buildings/commercial developments, but "significant coverage by reliable, third-party sources to establish notability" just isn't there. Where are we deriving notability for rail stations? Natureium (talk) 01:14, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Mainly from a sincere desire not to cross the aggressive enthusiasm for all things related to trains that inhabits WikiProject Trains nor its kin – the single minded desire which lurks in WikiProject Roads — The night is dark and full of terrors and all that . Seriously though, most of the 'enthusiast'/'fan' WikiProjects have managed to parlay WP:NEXIST into automatic notability regardless of the likelihood of a given article ever evolving beyond a sub-stub or even having a realistic chance of ever being sourced. Probably more than half of Wikipedia's articles are the result of groups of people who want articles on every 'something' be it train stations, people who play (sport) or Pokemon characters. The people who curate that stuff enjoy doing it. The articles are generally benign, if of limited interest outside of each particular community of editors and readers. Beyond that, even though my opening comment is intended to be humorous, there is no way I would ever want to be the one to tell those projects they must separately document GNG for each article in their chosen area. Trying would result in a mauling, and succeeding would probably be worse. They are walled gardens but as far as I have ever seen they are Mostly Harmless™Jbh Talk03:13, 7 April 2018 (UTC)Last edited: Strike. I am in an inappropriately fatuous mood tonight. 05:26, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Notability_(Railway_lines_and_stations)#Stations -- as GMG notes the expectation would be that there would be sufficient offline coverage. Even if there weren't, the big picture is that Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia, but a hyperlinked encyclopedia. The usefulness of something that can be linked to nicely from multiple articles outweights concerns about low notability at the margins (WP:V is a policy but WP:N is a guideline - though a strong one). As others have indicated, you'd not get consensus for a deletion on a station -- at most you would (or at least should) get consensus for a redirect as WP:ATD applies. If a railway station were part of only one rail line, then you could boldly redirect it to an anchor/capsule on an article for the line -- but you'd still want the station's categories on the redirect, and you couldn't do this if the station were part of more than one line. You could similarly capsule the station at a larger location such as a village if that were appropriate but again you'd want categories on the redirect and that isn't particularly appropriate if the station is separate and serves multiple locations (as this one apparently does). So in at least some cases an article would be best even if it were to remain a permastub, and in the other cases there probably isn't a win in not having an article. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~03:45, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Question...
When a user creates an article using the Article Wizard, does it automatically get tagged for review and loaded into the NPP queue before it's indexed for mainspace? I happened across Trump and JCPOA which was created using the wizard - it's tagged but I don't see it in our queue - there is a tag suggesting it be moved to user space, and copyedited. Considering the importance and sensitivity of the topic, I would think it would be a priority to make sure the article has been properly reviewed before it ever saw the light of day. It appears English is not that particular user's 1st language, and it appears their interest focuses on the interactions of the US & Iran. Based on what I've seen on the TP, the editor is a proficient article creator, has done good work, and participates in DYK but not without the need for "intervention" and/or outside copyediting. I was Just curious... to know if, in this particular case, the Article Wizard was the best option, and if not, would it be appropriate to recommend a different option to that editor? Also, would it be appropriate for a NPR to go ahead and move that article to Draft? Atsme📞📧16:17, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Shows as reviewable to me and is findable on nppbrowser; I don't think it'll be appropriate to draftify unless there are severe problems with the article that I'm missingGalobtter (pingó mió) 16:24, 7 April 2018 (UTC) Actually, the more I read it, the more I can't understand what it's saying.. Galobtter (pingó mió)
How do you find all these cool tools? I didn't know we had nppbrowser. Is there something similar for AfC? Re: the article - yes, it's a mess...spelling, grammar, the title...see the TP where MelanieN made suggestions. I'd rather not be the one to move it so I'm passing it along because it does need work. Atsme📞📧17:08, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Atsme, there is a comprehensive list of tools at WP:NPP and the NPP Browser has occupied a specially prominent place in the NPP page intro since the browser was created. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
Kudpung, thank you for your admirable diplomacy and steadfast patience. It motivated me to actually read what I should have read when I was first "anointed" as a volunteer. I hope WMF recognizes what an asset you are for the project. Atsme📞📧01:39, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
9 April Backlog Update
NPP backlog, number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Green is less than 30 days old, orange is between 30 and 90 days old. Red arrow indicates the 90 day index point.
The backlog is currently at 4622 articles, up from 3350 at my last update on 14th March. Given that ACTRIAL has been turned off during that period, I think we can say that we are doing well. The backlog is still looking in good shape, with us holding off the index point by about 1 month. Not much more to say about it, as the graph above is very similarr to the one I made a month ago, which is quite good given the circumstances. Good work everyone and keep it up. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)06:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
Since that page is less often used, I'll suggest here. Would people be in favor of merging the page for talking about page curation with the page for talking about the tool for page curation? Neither are highly trafficked, and there is considerable overlap in topic. Natureium (talk) 00:32, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
curation tool error: failed to apply tags the page
Has anyone noticed a popup with the text "failed to apply tags the page" when tagging an article using the page curation tool? It happened to me when I tried to tag Dilip De for deletion with a G4 tag today, and yesterday when I tried the same on Dilip K De. Vexations (talk) 15:02, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
And again, just now on Ellen Roth Deutsch, where it created two entries for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ellen Roth Deutsch, which I didn't notice until I went to Twinkle and inadvertently created at second AfD. Vexations (talk) 16:43, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I just tried to CSD tag an article, and I got that failed message, but it marked the article as patrolled anyway. Natureium (talk) 17:26, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I was unable to tag Miltiadis Karatzis for speedy deletion today, and I find that I seem to have reviewed it four times in my attempts. I finally nominated it by the long method. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:59, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I have also encountered this issue while reviewing pages. It seems to differ based on the type of speedy deletion and based on the article, as I have been able to file some G11s and A7s on some pages while on others I have encountered the "failed to apply tags the page". Like Natureium, articles that I failed to tag for deletion/curation were marked as reviewed. SamHolt6 (talk) 05:54, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Cool. I just edit conflict-ed you trying to figure out where we should put this. VPT seems ok. I honestly don't know who the person is who's supposed to maintaining the curator. GMGtalk16:31, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Filed as phab:T191656. (Please do file reports in phabricator for software problems! There are many dozens of pages for each of the extensions, sometimes across many hundreds of wikis, and it's impossible for devs/etc to efficiently watch them all, especially with the tangential discussions. Phabricator is the best centralized place to go, once a bug is confirmed as reproduced/reproducable.) Please add links/examples/screenshots/steps-to-reproduce there. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Anyone following the discussions will know that for some reason the WMF are reluctant to maintain this software they developed. Every time we report a bug, they tell us to put it on the Xmas wish list. When we do that they tell us it's not their department. The way to find out how to get repairs like this done is to search around the NPP project pages.
Shortcut: Report the bug to Phabricator. If you don't know how to do that, the place for technical discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Page Curation, where it is stated that the people concerned with this software, as mentioned repeatedly by Kaldari and can be verified at mw:Developers/Maintainers is the Collaboration Team (recently renamed the Global Collaboration team), which as informed to us by DannyH (WMF), is headed by JMatazzoni (WMF) - but don't hold your breath, the WMF don't even maintain their own staff list.
As mentioned in the Phabricator ticket, I haven't been able to reproduce this bug. It would be a huge help if we could find out more information from the people that are experiencing the bug, like what browser they are using, which tags, etc. See Wikipedia:Reporting JavaScript errors. Thanks! Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 20:07, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Well I use almost exclusively chrome, and curator is nearly unusable for CSD at the moment. There's been no noticeable pattern as far as the type of tag affected goes. It seems to be a general problem. GMGtalk16:38, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
I use Firefox. The curation tool works perfectly satisfactorily for me with the exception of attempting to nominate an article for speedy deletion for G12 (I haven't tried any other speedy deletion criterion recently). Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:04, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
I only use Chrome, and for a few days I had repeated problems with CSDing with the curation tool, but yesterday I used A7, A3, A10, and G11 with no problems. Natureium (talk) 14:43, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Change listed qualifications to reflect what the actual qualifications are
"Users applying for the New Page Patroller flag at WP:PERM are expected to have been registered for at least 90 days and to have made at least 500 uncontested edits to mainspace articles."
Change that to 500 edits within the past 90 days or something to that effect. Jadeslair (talk) 17:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
There is currently an activity level of sorts required, under the revoking conditions it says "has been inactive for 12 months or more". Given this, and your activity level over the last 12 months being near zero, I think that Kudpung was declining for this reason and merely pulling a number out of his hat that definitely would mean that you were active enough again for the NPR flag (link to the comment at PERM), though I think that he could have been more clear about it. 500 mainspace edits in 90 days isn't a requirement, but the comment should indicate that given your very low activity level over the last few years, the earliest you should apply is in 90 days with around 500 more mainspace edits (I think most at PERM would be happy if it was 5 or 6 months and 500 edits though, if that makes sense). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)20:55, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
The above items are guidelines and numerical compliance alone does not constitute a right to the user group. An administrator may also grant page reviewer rights to users they otherwise deem competent or may request experience above and beyond the above criteria. Those criteria are basically quick decline criteria. Someone who has no recent experience on Wikipedia is not likely to be granted any user right (i.e. to use an extreme example someone with thousands of edits from 2003-2004 is unlikely to be given rollback if they request it with no recent experience). TonyBallioni (talk) 20:58, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Apart from some minor minor formatting and removal of vandalism, the guidelines have remained unaltered since they were created in my user space and were open for discussion and improvement for a couple of weeks before the user right was finally rolled out.. It allows for plenty of admin discretion, and it would be inappropriate for non-admins to to disrupt PERM by challenging any admin decisions that are clearly not an abuse of privilege. PERM is strictly admin territory, MusicAnimal created the bot of which one of the main functions was to help prevent any 'clerking' by non-admins and/or attempt to turn there process into an RfA-style mini election. I already included the phrase: It is very possible that regular reviewers from the AfC team will apply for New Page Reviewer, and with their expertise, it is highly desirable, hence no recent comments on that front are new, original ideas. AfC reform and the idea of merging it with NPP have been on the table for years and I don't believe that it originally came from me.
Ok, thank you. I guess I did not look it over enough.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jadeslair (talk • contribs)
Excuse me but I missing something here. Why isn't the recent activity requirement in the documentation? I don't have a problem with the requirement or that I was denied. It is perfectly reasonable to expect a certain level of participation from people with the perm. What isn't reasonable is to go around the project asking people to join who don't qualify and have no way of knowing that they don't qualify because the qualifications are posted anywhere. How do we fix this? --AdamF in MO (talk) 15:37, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Proposal
Personally I would support changing the guideline for granting #2 (bold indicating changes):
2. The editor should have made 500 undeleted edits to mainspace in the last 12 months that clearly demonstrate knowledge of page quality control. Edits and/or user status on other Foundation projects are not taken into consideration.
500 edits over 12 months is very huge. If there are policy changes, the candidate might not be aware about it, and assessing admin has no way to find that out. I think 500 edits in 90 or 180 days would be good. —usernamekiran(talk)23:09, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Some very experienced reviewers may have a baseline edit count well less than 500 in 90 days (remember we are counting only mainspace edits). Policies do not change that often, and editors with most of their edits in the previous part of that year can simply be reminded to check relevant policy pages for changes when they are given the right. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)23:39, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
It's important for candidates for all additional rights to understand that thresholds in numbers, such as 500/90, are only a starting point and not the key to access to the right. Admins at PERM generally do sufficient due diligence before according rights and it is within their discretion to decline if the user has not demonstrated sufficient recent activity on Wikipedia, or appropriate activity in a related field. This is probably what we fail to make clear enough. In the recent spate of applications, several (perhaps a handful only which is insignificant where we have over 600 reviewers) applications have been declined on this basis, particularly where users haven't edited, or have made very few edits for a long time..
Policies and guidelines do change frequently these days in line with new challenges to the integrity of the encyclopedia. The New Page Reviewer right itself was only created only just over a year ago in a deliberate attempt to ensure that users are adequtely qualified for the task - and still many of them get it wrong or are not doing it properly. Many users who were grandfathered adn/or obtained the rights at 500/90 are doing a good job for sure; of greater concern is the very large number of users who have been granted the right who are not using it at all, or extremely rarely. The downside to this is that people are led to belive that with 600 revieweres we have nothing to worry about. We do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:47, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
@Kudpung: I agree with all of that, and yet we have criteria that says that you need to have done 500 edits, and have had your account for 90 days as the minimum number. Given this statement, and the absence of any 'recently active' criteria, it is reasonable for someone with 34,000 edits, and who has had their account for over 12 years to think they are all good to apply, even if they haven't been particularly active in the past few years. This is why I am suggesting that we simply make this much more clear to applicants by adding a 'recently active' requirement it to the criteria. I think that 500 mainspace edits in the last 90 days is too high, 1 year is Ok to me, but others seem to think it is too much; perhaps 6 months might be ok.
As for inactive NPR reviewers: people get user rights all the time and don't use them, this isn't new and it isn't going to change. Most admins are barely active too, very few pagemovers use their rights regularly, etc. I personally am on the 'active' AfC list, and yet have only done 16 reviews this year, most on a single day for stats purposes. The key is to ensure that users are qualified for any rights given to them and that they won't abuse them. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)01:18, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
This is surely an autobiography. This actress is desperately trying to get herself on Wiki. One editor tagged it for CSD but it got declined as there seems to be no CSD criteria for this. There is also Draft:Elnaaz Norouzi which is written by someone else. My judgement says we should keep the draft for AfC and delete this COI article she created herself. What should be done in this case? Dial911 (talk) 06:17, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Since the change in article creation requirements I'm seeing a lot of articles coming through which are "orphan" and "no citations", many of which are being created from or are overwriting previous redirects. Often these pages are written by enthusiastic admirers of the subject and do not have an encyclopedic tone. I'm draftifying a lot of these but I'm starting to feel tentative about doing so. I'm therefore creating a list of pages I draftify on my user page so that anyone who has a different perspective on how to handle these pages can offer input or reverse these actions if necessary. Edaham (talk) 07:20, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
OK I was coming back to make that list, but it looks like I don’t have to. Presumably I’m not the only one encountering this issue, so is there a way to look at all pages draftified by NPP reviewers? That way I can get a feel for what other people are sending to draft space. At the moment my concern is that I might be being too trigger happy in my assessments. Edaham (talk) 09:26, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Someone has overwritten a redirect at Budhia with a BLP. the two links cited don’t work (even with a VPN - I’m in China) I PRODded it, but besides that it looks like its been created on top of a redirect, the name of which has nothing to do with the actual subject of the new article. Edaham (talk) 10:14, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Help with reviewing recently created cupcakke related articles
A user Jusipher(talk·contribs·deleted contribs·logs·filter log·block user·block log) has recently created some new articles on songs by Cupcakke. I'm not convinced of the notability of these articles per WP:NSONG. But regardless of that, many of these articles contain excessive quotes, as identified by earwigs copyvio detector. So these excessive quotes need to be removed really and where the songs are not notable in themselves, redirects created to the artist/album. Can anyone help with this? Polyamorph (talk) 20:00, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I've added copyvio templates on several of the articles. Can an admin take a look? The copyvio's come in mainly in the Critical reception sections the user is creating. Polyamorph (talk) 20:16, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
List of Natsume's Book of Friends characters
The article List of Natsume's Book of Friends characters is just copied and pasted from sources such as this. I suspect the sources have compatible licenses but was unable to confirm this. What is it best to do? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:21, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
I see no compatible license like the CC BY-SA 3.0 on that website and no attribution on the article. That's two problems. First, the source is protected by copyright. Second, even if the blog post had a CC BY-SA 3.0 license, then the article still should provide attribution. That's a clear copyvio in my book. Unless, of course, the blog post is an unattributed copy of a correctly licensed source. Vexations (talk) 11:43, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
possible hoax page
Draft:Avogadro:_Quest_for_the_Mole
I cannot find anything at all about this page on an obscure game. I can't believe that not one source about the developers or game etc exists, but a search of various combinations of key words reveals nothing. As its a new page I initially wanted to give it time to survive in draft space, but now after searching for three minutes I want to speedy it. Please advise. Many thanks Edaham (talk) 23:51, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Well, it certainly fails all VideoGame SNGs, for its age and lack of distribution, plus being "ported" on an emulator for a "rerelease" translates to being someone's pet project. I cannot find any thing for it, but John Dalton fighting an Italian chemist sounds interesting. L3X1◊distænt write◊02:33, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
It’s also full of sneaky mathematical references, Avogadro’s number - a Mole (unit of measurement) being a couple, making me think it’s someone’s idea of a clever joke. Edaham (talk) 03:04, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
Pretty sure it's a joke. Like most hoaxers, they couldn't leave well enough alone and lost it in the final sentence. Shame :p --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:08, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it that will be of interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. All Wikipedia editors are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the editorial board for the next issue.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:15, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I tagged the first 2 with ((uw-agf-sock)), also the third pointing back to the first two. With the fourth, and I'm sure I've not been the only patroller to encounter these articles. I wonder if there's a course going on somewhere that's (incompetently) using wikipedia as a tool. Any thoughts, ideas, evidence? Cabayi (talk) 11:55, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Bhaswinik was on a different (though geographically similar) ISP, which is why I missed him/her - thanks for the info, they are now blocked. I think I've taken out all the copyright violations; there were a large number of sandboxes that I had to delete. However, if anyone spots any I've missed, please tag 'em and ping me or let me know somehow. There are some I've left deliberately since they seem to have been copied from here, which is CC-BY (although none of them have done the actual attribution required by the licence, so they should probably be deleted as well...) Yunshui雲水14:18, 26 April 2018 (UTC)