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Another NPPer blocked for spamming

• Meeanaya (talk · contribs)

Meeanaya, someone who had NPP and AFC rights, has been blocked for UPE. It appears they have been corruptly reviewing articles - suspicious patrols/AFC accepts include Hafeez Rahman, Kred (platform) and Draft:Jayride (I was suspicious of this user for unquarantining this draft). A review of their patrols is warranted. You may find this listing useful. MER-C 12:29, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this MER-C. It's not the first time and I suppose it's inevitable with a bloated 750 pool of reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:48, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Good work for all involved!!. scope_creep^Talk 13:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Would it be helpful to mass-unreview the pages, and put them back in the feed? DannyS712 (talk) 17:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Maybe. The new reviewer needs to know the context about why the previous review was annulled and treat the page accordingly. MER-C 17:28, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I have gone through and unreviewed pages that are common topics for UPE/COI and for which there was not a clear SNG pass. I accidently unreviewed a couple that should have stayed reviewed but think I have fixed those at this point. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:23, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I don't see them in the feed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, I didn't review pages created by Meeanaya, merely pages reviewed by them. Do you see Belleville Cop in the queue? It seems to be in the queue for me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:19, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, it seems to be in the queue. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 19:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Would it be a good idea as we go through these, to unreview even those which should remain reviewed, and then mark them reviewed, so other NPPers will know that it's been "touched" for review? Onel5969 ^{TT me} 19:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Onel5969, I went through literally every review he did. Many of them are patently uncontroversial ones - e.g. passes WP:NGEO. It's possible I missed a COPYVIO or some other non-notable topic marked as reviewed but I think it unlikely that I missed potential paid editing related reviewing. I took a pretty broad definition basically unreviewing any BLP, NCORP, and MUSIC related article as well as a few other potential topics. But I would welcome someone to check. That said I already received pushback from one editor for the spam effect on Meenaya's talk page that I did so I would say to anyone considering doing what Onel suggests to keep that in mind. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay, Barkeep49, cool. Although I'm not sure why anyone would give a flying... about messages on a banned user's talk page. I reviewed about 15-20 myself before I got busy in the real world, and you're right, most were pretty easy to mark reviewed (geo features, political parties, etc.). Thanks for the response. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 00:33, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49 and Onel5969: I may have overreacted a bit at the time, but I just wanted to ensure that you were aware of the messages and weren't doing it unintentionally. The only reason I noticed them was because I was the person who welcomed Meeanaya originally. Even though I have not had any contact with that user since then, I still feel I have an obligation to them in some form. Regardless, whatever the community wants to do, it should do. (edit conflict) –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 00:39, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi MJL - hope you weren't taking that as a personal attack, because that's not how it was intended. I have issues with UPE's, and banned editors, simply because the amount of extra work they cause folks who actually contribute to the project. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:20, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

@Onel5969: You're good! I actually had that comment already typed out before you responded, and we edit conflicted. I am not particularly fond of UPE either, but I do feel like it is the job of a person on the welcoming committee to steer newbies into the right direction. I clearly failed to advise Meeanaya in that regard. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 01:45, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Spammers like Meeanaya ruthlessly exploit our AGF policy. Meeanaya never had any intention of contributing to this project constructively. There was nothing you could have done. They were acting suspiciously from day one. Their first edits were the usual ACPERM gaming seen in UPE editors, but they posted an article about an Indian temple. Their purported crackdown on spam deflected scrutiny, served to entrench their articles and aimed to remove the articles of their competitors. MER-C 08:42, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Well said MER-C. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 09:09, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Yuck. Thanks for calling attention to this, MER-C. I'd be interested in a larger discussion on how to catch this kind of thing, but I suspect that the answer will be "it's a case-by-case evaluation." creffett (talk) 01:24, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Most certainly. This discussion needs to be held off-wiki for OPSEC reasons. MER-C 20:26, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Double Kill!

• Ceethekreator (talk · contribs)

Yunshui strikes again! This one's created a slew of spam pages and, as far as I can tell, accepting AFCs created by socks (Sadaharu Yagi). I haven't checked the patrols yet - see [1]. MER-C 15:30, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, but I mostly just pushed the button on that one - the block was the result of an impressive bit of evidence-gathering by GSS, the details of which I am obviously not going to post publicly. Suffice to say, it's a slam-dunk. Yunshui ^雲_水 15:45, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I am really happy that I can finally see some evidence of action against undeclared upes. Up until this point I thought it was an unsolvable problem, on one side the mad dash for content, on the other upe editors who game the system. I sincerely wish there was a standard process we could follow to identify and report them and attempt to increase the number that are identified. Well done!!. scope_creep^Talk 16:15, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Would that be paid-en-wpwikipedia.org? MER-C 16:50, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

A quick glance at their patrol log suggests far more potential for other NPP related issues than with our last one. I don't have time to go through now but there's a good chance their entire record of reviewing will need a double check for another reviewer. *sigh* Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:17, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I'll start on it now. So it looks like just a case of keeping an eye out. scope_creep^Talk 17:34, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree - pretty much all of them are about spam-prone subjects and need to be reviewed. I also quarantined Soul Jah Love and Tatenda Mahachi, which were created by the blocked spammer Hurungudo. MER-C 17:58, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I have now gone through their patrols. Most again looked fine though the ones that might be UPE raised more eyebrows for me than with Meeanaya. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:10, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

NPR Qualification Standard

Perhaps the NPP permission needs to be tougher with a longer period before qualification so that more time is available to identify socks, and upes, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 20:06, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• @Atlantic306: Currently our qualifications are aligned with WP:WPAFC/P for the most part. However I wouldn't oppose increasing the 90 days to at least 6 months which is similar to WP:PAGEMOVER as it could have prevented the first case. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 21:10, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I'd be in favor of moving it to at least 6 months, if not a year. But I think the more important thing is training (and I also feel this way about AfC, but am no longer that active there). I think that every new NPPer should go through training, and oversight by an experienced NPPer. I know we have a program in place, but am not sure how many folks avail themselves. And that program is not a precursor to getting the NPP right. Many times I leave my NPP feed up as I get involved in real world stuff, and then when I go to click on my next review to find it's already been reviewed. I'm a little frustrated how often I'll come upon an article marked as "reviewed", with only a single citation, or 2-3 citations which are not in-depth at all. I know that if it's a village, or a member of a state senate, or even a tv show for a major network, the article's notable... however, often it's a book, or a song, or a fictional character, or a bio. Many times these are not only marked reviewed, but aren't even tagged for needing more references. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 21:32, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Agree, also the AFC and NPP permissions both need toughening in my view to at least six months as they are the areas targeted by upes and sockpuppets such as Orange Moody and this latest two. Another area targeted is autopatrolled editors who are specifically recruited as upes , imv Atlantic306 (talk) 22:23, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
      • As much as it probably would help our general effectiveness as NPP to have more people take NPP School lessons, I'm not sure that training is really going to help much with UPEs, as they would presumably be smart enough to perform well in school and then start letting through promotional articles only once we've stopped auditing them closely. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:37, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree mandatory training only helps us with good faith new editors - UPE going to UPE. Now higher qualifications might help us slow down UPE. I think there's an interesting discussion to be had around minimums and around expectations - that is should the expectation really be above that minimum. As a person who has been doing a lot of work since I got the bit at PERM/NPR I have no trouble turning people down for lack of experience but once they pass the minimum I would have a hard time turning them down because they've only been around for 3 months rather than 6. So if they don't have experience I can latch onto to show an notability and deletion they're going to get declined no matter what. But honestly I have been looking for reasons to say yes to a person - we want the help after all - and to normally doing that through a time limited initial grant. Now even with that mindset I end up turning down a lot of people - though I normally try to offer a path to a future yes.

I would welcome feedback from the reviewers here who aren't sysops (and thus can't act directly) about what how free or tight I should be with the PERM, but would also suggest if we think 6 months (or 12 months, which on first pass I would be opposed to) is the right minimum we should plan on changing that through RfC rather than just through admin discretion. But we should do all this while balancing our desire to stop UPE from getting the PERM with our overall desire to have an active review corp. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:15, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

• History: As the quasi founder of the NPR right I think I should explain for those who are not aware, what NPR currently is as it is today, and why. The NPR rules and user group policy are fairy lax because knowing the psychology of RfC, it was first and foremost a question of ensuring that the proposal for the NPR right would reach consensus in a climate where it is difficult to get new user groups created. Many editors oppose such RfC based purely on bureaucracy-creep without even considering what is being proposed, while others support because they like collecting hats. I therefore set the bar fairly low at that time, more or less inline with rights such as Rollback. I was also aware that an NPR right was going to be crucial as a precursor to my anticipation that ACTRIAL would sooner or later win through. My main regret, which I have voiced many times, is that at the time, I did not make enough provision for the removal of the right. The recent introduction of the timed user right feature is a godsend but with already 750 'reviewers' it was rather closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. Thus my claims for pruning that number are based not solely on getting rid of the inactive reviewers and hat collectors, but also on maintaining a strict quality of reviewing.

I understandably don't do much reviewing myself these days, but I do scan through the feed every day and while I'm disappointed that little can be done to address the totally unacceptable backlog and the poor quality of a lot of the reviewing, I'm too tired of it all now to do much about it - I get flak for being a lousy, newbie-biting or pontificating admin if I as much as dare to open my mouth, indeed one user has stomped off the project recently because I very politely and timidly pointed out that mass creating dozens of AfD is contrary to the spirit of AfD even if the AfDs might be partly justified.

What we do have nowadays since the creation of the NPR right is this vibrant talk page maintained by truly dedicated and concerned reviewers; before the right was created, this talk page got fewer postings in a year than it now does in a week. I will support any suggestions that fall broadly within my line of thinking (not that I am always right), and there are some good ideas being brought to the table. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:51, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

• Do we have any numbers on how long most new reviews have been here before they request the right? We need to balance the need for a short enough period to interest new people while they are still excited about WP, with keeping dishonest reviewers out. A truly dedicated upde will wait even 12 months--some of the rings have been at it for years. It's inevitable that the better we get at detected upde , the remaining ones will be the cleverest--frankly, with our open editing system we will never be able to solve this problem --all we can realistically aim to do is to remove the worst, and discourage -- we'll never prevent -- new ones from getting started. DGG ( talk ) 06:40, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

As a regular at PERM for many years (Beeblebrox too), it would be impossible to deny that there really is a lot of hat collecting going on. This is mainly evidenced by the fact that many editors wait until they have exactly 30 days and 500 edits when they apply for permissions. They believe that these threshold criteria are an automatic access to these user rights which of course they are not - the decision is always at admins' discretion after having examined he user's history in detail. A significant number of these applicants do not even read the conditions or even fully understand what they are asking for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:56, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

It seems like the only way to catch dedicated UPEs would be to institute a second iteration of reviews for articles about UPE-prone subjects, but with us barely managing to keep the queue in check I'm not sure we have the resources to dedicate to this. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 09:24, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

agree w/ Rosguill--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:52, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

At the very least, if you suspect UPE or COI you should either nominate for deletion or draftify. MER-C 11:14, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

• A thought: might there be an argument for having some kind of NPP training wheels? So, for example, when you are first assigned the PERM, you are explicitly told that you're not allowed to review BLPs, articles about companies, and any other areas of concern. After a suitable period (three months and 200 reviews, or similar), an admin reviews your work, and either (a) removes the permission, (b) tells you to keep the training wheels on for a while or (c) tells you you're allowed to review anything you want. I don't think this would need any changes to the PERM system - before an article is reviewed obviously we don't know whether it's a BLP or not, so we couldn't automatically prevent someone from working on them in the first instance, but if a user starts reviewing BLPs when they've been told not to, they either lack the competence for the PERM or they have dubious intent, so immediate removal of the PERM without any discussion would be justified. GirthSummit _(blether) 13:55, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Just to expand on why I think this might help - first, it would significantly raise the bar to entry for abusers, while allowing good faith users to help out in NPP while avoiding contentious areas. Also, the review of their work at the 3 month (or whatever) stage might help identify people who are slapdash in their approach, obviously trying to build up their numbers in order to get over the bar. (Perhaps we could actually engineer it so that we have a disproportionately low minimum number of reviews compared to the time period - maybe 50 reviews and six months - getting to 50 reviews and then stopping to wait for the time period to lapse would raise eyebrows.) GirthSummit _(blether) 13:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I like this idea, although UPEs may be able to figure out some of the traps given time.

Do we have a sense of how many of the UPE page reviewers were also sock puppets? Instituting CU checks for NPP editors may be a way of locking out long term experienced editors trying to subvert the review system. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:54, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Rosguill, A CU check is a good call to my mind. GirthSummit _(blether) 18:29, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

+1 to both the "training wheels" suggestion and the CU recommendation. As someone who just got the NPR right a month or so ago, I'm willing to be a guinea pig if needed. Also, I'd be interested in there being a formalized procedure for voluntary CU checks (if there isn't one already).creffett (talk) 03:41, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Rosguill: Strongly oppose - we shouldn't CU check anyone as a matter of practice - there needs to be something suspicious DannyS712 (talk) 03:46, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712 Is there a policy-based reason for this? There are some areas, like OTRS, where you have to declare your real-life identity and sign confidentiality agreements. A CU check would be a lot less intrusive than that, and I don't see why it would put people off, but I'd like to hear your views on this, maybe there's something I haven't thought if. GirthSummit _(blether) 09:13, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: OTRS doesn't require your real life identify. Wikipedia:CheckUser extends Meta:CheckUser policy, which says "There must be a valid reason to check a user." DannyS712 (talk) 09:18, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, I'm confused - why do I remember being asked to provide my real-life identity when I joined the OTRS team, and why did I do if if I didn't have to? I certainly got the impression it was required, but it was a while ago now, maybe I've forgotten some details. I'd need a CU's opinion on what constitutes a valid reason for a check, but I don't see why a self-request, in order to obtain a particular permission, couldn't be valid. It's not like we'd be forcing anyone to submit to this. GirthSummit _(blether) 09:37, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: "identification" for OTRS currently just constitutes a valid email address. Per Wikipedia:CheckUser#Grounds for checking, On some Wikimedia projects, an editor's IP addresses may be checked upon their request... Such checks are not allowed on the English Wikipedia and such requests will not be granted. --DannyS712 (talk) 09:39, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, hmm. I certainly gave them my real name, and signed the confidentiality agreement using it; I believe that's what most people do, but you might be right that it's not a strict requirement. Also from the document you linked to: Checkusers are given discretion to check an account...... in order to prevent or reduce potential or actual disruption. Would you care to expand on your thinking on why this would be a bad thing, or is it just that you think it's not policy-compliant? GirthSummit _(blether) 09:57, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: No one needs to know my IP or who I am - I should be judged solely on my on-wiki contributions. It doesn't matter if I'm from India or Istanbul, from Ontario or Argentina. It also doesn't matter if I use chrome or firefox, or internet explorer. The data returned by a checkuser query (if I'm not mistaken) isn't going to be very helpful. Also,  CheckUser is not a crystal ball,  CheckUser is not for fishing, and, my favorite,  CheckUser is not magic pixie dust --DannyS712 (talk) 10:04, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712Fair enough, I can respect that position. I feel slightly differently, because we are dealing with a user permission that is actively sought by abusers for financial gain, who intentionally game their on-wiki contributions in order to gain it - as we have seen with at least four accounts that I'm aware of in just the last three months. If these accounts are commonly socks that could have been picked up by CU, I'd be in favour of using it as a bar to entry; if, however, it wouldn't help detect them, then I agree it would be pointless. This has nothing to do with where they are, or anything else. GirthSummit _(blether) 10:19, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Ratelimited

Hi. As a followup to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 32#Ratelimit, I have recently been coming across the ratelimit more as I try to do some more patrolling of redirects (while looking for potential tasks for DannyS712 bot III). Would other reviewers object if I asked for account creator rights in order to avoid the rate limit? I agree to continue patrolling responsibly. Thoughts? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:28, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

I would have no issue with that.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 23:26, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

I keep on coming cross the ratelimit more frequently.CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 12:20, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I have no objections to this. I actually find your bot very handy Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 03:42, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

But if I understand this correctly it's not for the bot it's for Danny. If that's right well I admit a bit more trepidation as even for redirects the ratelimit seems high enough to be a good limit on making sure thought is being given to what's patrolled. But I'm obviously in a minority here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:44, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: well, I sometimes come across a bunch by the same editor, etc. - the feed shows the redirect target in the snippet, and so I open those that are okay and then patrol them as a group. The ratelimit is 1 page (or redirect) every three seconds, and so it limits such batch patrolling. DannyS712 (talk) 03:59, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

So, does anyone object and/or can an admin take a look? DannyS712 (talk) 09:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Just ran into this again - @Barkeep49, Kudpung, and DGG: would any of you be willing to take a look? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:31, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

normally giving a bot special rights is a question for the bot approvals group. DGG ( talk ) 10:08, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

@DGG: The bot isn't having an issue, and bots already have no ratelimit rights - this is a request for me (DannyS712) to have account creator rights so that I personally am not limited by the ratelimit. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 10:42, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Problems with filter options

This may be a stupid question, but the green 'Set Filter' button disappers when I try to press it, becoming hidden behind the bottom grey bar on the New Pages Feed. Please help, thanks Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 19:15, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Willbb234, it seems to be working now. Are you still having the problem? ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 12:42, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

@CAPTAIN MEDUSA: I think the problem was that I had the CTRL+F bar open meaning the green button moved down a bit so it was hidden. The problem is still there, but I will remember not to open the bar. Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:19, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

An AfD of interest

I'm thinking this AfD might be of interest to NPP editors [2]. Regards ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:33, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

As I am guessing I am not the only editor who frequently comes across Eurovision articles this AfD may be of interest to editors here with experience and opinions on the topic. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:50, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

New NPP help with merge/redirect

Hello everyone, I am reviewing Battle of Firmum and in its current stub/single-sourced form it would, in my opinion, be better to merge the content with Social War (91–88 BC) and leave behind a redirect (Battle of Firmum could be a stand alone article--actually it was a siege I think--but would require access to some good databases/libraries). I've read the tutorial and the flow-chart but I am a little unsure on how to proceed. Do I nominate Battle of Firmum for merge through this process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proposed_article_mergers ? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 12:27, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

AugusteBlanqui, you can feel free to just boldly complete the merge yourself. If it's undone or otherwise contested then you can follow the merge procedures. If you use Twinkle there is a merge option in tags for you to use. One caution: If the topic is notable it's OK for it to be a stub and doesn't have to be merged. I am currently creating a some 3 sentence single sourced stubs for Caldecott Honor books in the hopes that other editors will help expand them. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Comment: This would make a perfectly okay stub based on notability and sourcing. Consequently, whether to merge is an editorial decision and not something that falls within the review ambit (i.e., the workflow won't direct you in this). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:49, 2 December 2019 (UTC

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to add some more sources/content to this tomorrow. It may make more sense to redirect it to Siege of Firmum based on what I have found. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 19:02, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Concerning bug: recreated articles persist reviewed status

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T239661

Today I noticed that Masoom Shankar came up in my Watchlist. When I checked the page, the page curation tool was opened, and it showed that the article had been reviewed. However, when I checked the logs, the only person to mark it reviewed was me...6 months ago, as part of an AfD nomination where it was ultimately deleted. If I'm correct that the bug here is that review-status persists after article deletion, then we would appear to have a glaring loophole where an article could be deleted, recreated, and then escape notice. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:59, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I've filed a bug report. If I'm right about the nature of the bug, one stop-gap solution would be to stop marking AfD-nominated articles as reviewed. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:04, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Rosguill, I think DannyS712 got it right on the phab ticket. It was marked as patrolled because a sysop Missvain accepted it from AfC. Anyone with autopatrol, which includes all sysops, will have the page marked as reviewed when accepting an AfC draft. I don't think there's any bug here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:28, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Mexican women footballers articles by Secondral

Please be very careful with these articles. In the selection I checked two of the three references are fake, and some information is not confirmed by the remaining one source. I will now reach out to the author, but care needs to be exercised.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:36, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:00, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

6th November Backlog Update

NPP backlog, number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Orange represents older than 30 days, red represents articles older than 90 days, past the index point.

I haven't done one of these backlog updates in quite a while, but it seems that it is needed at the moment. Currently the backlog stands at 5946 articles. There are also a further 6516 redirects which are unreviewed.

Currently there are just over 200 unreviewed articles in the backlog which have passed the index point (red in the above graph). This is a significant worry, as these articles have been freed to be indexed by Google but have not yet been ticked off by a new page patroller.

We need more reviewers reviewing the backlog at the back; oldest first. These articles are usually more difficult to review, often having been passed over by more inexperienced reviewers. So if you have the skills, please consider setting your New Pages Feed to 'oldest' first.

For others please continue to review what you can, and consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox to your user page!

This user has taken the pledge to review 2 new pages a day. Help us bring the queue to 0!

— Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:35, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, thanks for adding this ICPH. Great to have this up again. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:36, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I find it useful to have a visualisation of the backlog; so that we can see the beast we are facing. I'm sure it helps others just as much. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:38, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Given your note about the redirects, I'd like to revisit Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 33#Initial thoughts - autopatrolled redirects, now that the bot does indeed run via toolforge. I won't have much time until next week, but something along the lines of "...consensus among new page reviewers that the redirects created by specific established editors that would not otherwise qualify for autopatrolled rights can be safely reviewed by a bot...", with the specific editors being discussed later (i.e. who would be autopatrolled when it comes to redirects). DannyS712 (talk) 06:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, There seemed to be a lot of support for it last time you brought it up. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 09:28, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Thanks. I've started a draft proposal at User:DannyS712/Redirect autopatrol - can you take a look? Note that the survey isn't open yet. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:34, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, Seems great. I'd be happy to support it. Kudpung should have a look, as he is usually pretty good at identifying proposal pitfalls ahead of time. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 08:22, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

• More reviewers? We have 750! What we need is fewer hat collectors. I have been campaigning for months to get the user right pruned. It's ridiculous that so few are genuinely concerned and having to do most of the work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:06, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, What I meant is that we need more of the reviewers that we currently have to be working on the back of the backlog. More active reviewers would certainly be a good thing. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 09:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, some users should be feeling pangs of conscience by now if they read the newsletters. Oh well, it doesn't matter what we say or do, it doesn't look as if it's going to get any better. Make my Xmas though if it did. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, we'll sort it out. The carrot works much better than the stick in my experience. Back when we had that 22,000 backlog, a bunch of newsletters exposing the growing problem did nothing to slow it down. But the combination of factors that finally made the difference were more 'positive' than 'negative'; ACTRIAL, advertisements to get more people involved in NPP, a concrete plan, and a backlog drive with an atmosphere of camaraderie are what finally allowed us to crush it. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

My .02, for what it's worth... in a total volunteer project, the stick is rarely effective. Except in those instances where you've volunteered for something in the first place. There are over 700 folks listed who have the reviewer right, but only 63 who average over 1 review per day. 41 who avg 2, and 33 who avg 3 or more. So, in reality, we have 41 or 33 true NPP reviewers. The other 700+ dabble in reviewing. And there's nothing wrong with that, every review is one less that those who do the bulk of the work must look at. To me, the true cut-off point should be 5 per day. Using that, there are 21 NPP reviewers. So I understand the comment, "we need more reviewers", but I interpret that to mean we need more active reviewers. I got involved with this project back when the backlog was much higher than it is currently. And I took my share of criticism that I wasn't careful enough. At this point, I think my body of work speaks for itself. I think we need to get more folks involved, whether they currently have the NPP right or not, who are willing to commit to reviewing at least 5 new articles per day (not counting redirects - which is a different animal entirely, and Rosguill has an excellent grasp of. For me, personally I've decided to mainly focus on the back of the queue, and I will review 15-30 per day. But there needs to be more of a commitment from other editors to focus on the back of the queue. I know there are editors who feel folks might simply be "hat collecting" (and honestly, I didn't know what that meant until about 6 months ago when I bothered to look it up), but perhaps there might be some benefit to giving accolades on those reviewers who focus on that aspect of NPP (I don't know if there's a way to track that, but if there is, we should use it).

Yes, it's important to patrol the front of the line. Getting your articles reviewed is a great shot of adrenaline, and should be given as soon as possible, and I'm not suggesting that folks shouldn't do it. What I am saying, is it would be great if we could develop a cadre of 5-10 reviewers who looked at the end of the queue and resolved to review 5-10 of those a day. I admit I haven't done the math, but I think that would help with the articles that pass the mark which go on Google without review.

With all that, we also have to worry about quality of reviewing. I have been a bit dismayed recently by seeing articles "reviewed" with zero, or a single reference, when those articles, with that level of reference, clearly didn't pass GNG. In a couple of instances, there were articles recreated which had been turned into redirects by AfD discussions, and the articles where basically identical to the article which had been through AfD. That should be concerning to anyone who takes NPP seriously. Okay, I think this is the longest commentary I've ever put on WP. But the key is the end of the queue. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:38, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

This November is personally an hectic schedule for me as I am taking part in three contests and also working on page reviewing as well. But I am happy to continue the patrolling work as I am accountable to do that as a NPR. I too accept the fact that I have reviewed few biographical articles about sportspeople which are only supported with single source. But I know sportspeople generally pass the GNG so I review those bios. Other than this, I never review articles with only one source in general. Abishe (talk) 02:28, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• We should start by removing the bit from the 'reviewers' who have removed their names from the mailing list. If they're not interested in the newsletters, they are not interested in using the right. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

No, please don't do that. Some of us might be taking a break. Some of us don't care for newsletters (or guilt trips).- MrX 🖋 12:36, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, that's a false equivalence. I review regularly but I'm not interested in being harangued via newsletter for not reviewing enough. Cabayi (talk) 13:01, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

This is where we need to be careful as a volunteer project. As Kudpung is right to point out we do have some number of reviewers who have the PERM as a hat. However, it does seem to me that care be taken not to insult people like you who help out on occasion - which is also valuable. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:44, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I think it should be clear after all the postings I've made since I created this user right that I'm not insulting any particular individual, It's not something I do on Wikipedia without extraordinary good reason. It's my bad for creating yet another a right for the hat collectors to swarm for, but if the cap fits...

New pages arrive here in the thousands, and I'll say again, it is nonsense to claim that we have 750 reviewers when only ten of them are active in any way - it gives a totally false impression that we are a strong, functional team of patrollers. Those who do only 1 review a year, we can do without. Really - just as we do admins and AfC reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:06, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I have reviewed thousands of articles, but I stopped doing it for the most part because a couple of anti-CSD admins kept declining my nominations, one going as far as to suggest that I shouldn't be reviewing articles at all. That was after years of doing it with very, very few declines. I think you know who I'm talking about. It's thankless work to begin with, but it's intolerable when people operating well outside of the norm intentionally subvert your efforts. - MrX 🖋 17:45, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@MrX: I don't have a clue who you mean - we have several hundred of them many of whom gnome away at just such areas without coming into the limeilight. That said, we ought to be informed if there is anything causing concern, we admins are not immune from peer-to-peer requests to improve our work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:49, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

I have to admit I haven't been an NPP editor with a high reviewing rate. But I think I am getting the hang of it much more than before. I'm surprised to "hear" myself say that. I'm a very experienced editor, but this has been somewhat of a challenge. I think there is skill involved to be able to review at a decent rate. This is of course just my opinion. Also, I would like to add, if only we could get the 700 + New Page Patrollers to review just 10 pages this week, or over two weeks, we would be down to zero. (If only...) As an aside, I just now started on the back of the queue, to help out there. My overall experience comes in handy at the back of the que. Regards, ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:20, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Steve Quinn, glad to have you aboard. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me personally or the community as a whole if you have questions. I'll also put in a plug for the IRC and Discord channels as a place to ask questions. IRC was very helpful for me when I was starting as TonyBallioni would answer questions which had very established answers that weren't easily findable onwiki anywhere. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:38, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Well maybe we should look at the reviewers who currently are blocked first. If someone is on a self-requested block they stay but for the rest that have been either indefinitely blocked/banned they have the reviewer right removed. Granted its a very small number but its a start somewhere and one I don't think would be a controversial reason. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 04:34, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, Users that have the right are those users who are trusted to review articles, should they choose to do so. They are under no obligation to do so. I also think it really doesn't help to pare the list. If we have 750 people with the right (those trusted to have it) but only 50 are 'active reviewers' by some arbitrary metric; then that is just the situation. If any of those 700 'inactive' reviewers decide to start reviewing more, we will welcome it.

If somebody is on the list who is no longer trusted, then they should be removed (per guidelines with regard to user permissions) but it should not be seen some kind of 'reward' for completing some arbitrary number of reviews per year/month/whatever. And I also don't think anyone is actively bragging that we have "750 reviewers" or whatever. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 01:33, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It's my fault the policy does not have a 'use it or lose it' clause. I just didn't think to include one at the time. The actual wording of the policy was never a topic of debate, but unfortunately to change it now would need to be. At least we're not according any open ended PERMS now, 750 is really is a totally misleading number. It's in the policy page because it self updates. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:47, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

But so long as the reviews aren't bad (which would mean losing the privilege with cause), what's the point of chopping off the long tail? It's only of any relevance if someone reads more into "750 reviewers" than the claim merits. Cabayi (talk) 10:21, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

• Note that the back of the queue is very nearly been brought back to the index point (currently it is about 1 day beyond the index point). A little bit more of a push is necessary but we are getting there! — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:42, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
• We are now a few days ahead of the index point. Keep up the good work! — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:45, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Hi, here are some thoughts from someone that is not part of the NPP (but discovered the community as I wait for my new articles to be reviewed); I hope it helps to solve this backlog issue. Over in Explain XKCD, which seeks to add an explanation to each published XKCD comic, there was a huge backlog of comics without an explanation that the site was seeking to eliminate. Though each incomplete page was marked as such (similarly to our NewPagesFeed), the backlog was decreasing slowly, if not stagnant. Ultimately this issue was essentially solved when there was an "Incomplete Explanation of the Day", in which one incomplete page was highlighted to users, who then went in and edited it to completion. The initiative decreased the activation energy to add explanation, since users focused on a particular page, rather than being intimidated by the queue. Taking a cue from this, perhaps a tool/page could be added here where a review can simply get a page assigned a page to review, rather than having to choose one from the ever-growing list. Thoughts? --Canned Soul (talk) 21:41, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  Canned Soul, my initial thought is that Wikipedia's coverage is much too broad in comparison. 99% of users here would rather not get a page related to Nepal, while I'd rather review those first. The AlexNewArtBot catches a few. So, what I would really like is a good filter. There used to be a link somewhere that said "use this browser/whatever to better customise what you get to review". It was dead when I first saw it, it's probably buried now, cos I can't find it. There is no way I am going to review a chemistry or maths article, so what you're proposing would require that filter too. Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 21:58, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

  Canned Soul, Thanks for your thoughts and sharing the experience of xkcd. We have seen some similar progress with a backlog drive. Definitely worth considering whether the time is right for another such drive. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:20, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

NPP Related Userboxes

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Current logo

Revised

Revised

CASSIOPEIA has been doing some great work at NPP School and has now designed some userboxes for graduates. As part of that they also drafted a possible new NPP logo. Thoughts on sticking with our traditional logo (top) or the newly designed logo (bottom)? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I will support that new logo because of CASSIOPEIA's commitment. Abishe (talk) 06:17, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose — Just by looking at this new logo it just feels odd. It wouldn't be consistent with other user rights logo. The image is JPG converted into PNG with a white background. The image quality is poor. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 06:25, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose- I prefer the old logo. Andrew Base (talk) 10:30, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose – I appreciate the effort but the new draft looks a bit too much like something that an actual cabal would use. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:07, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
• FWIW I've no strong opinion on using it for our official logo (I think I can lean towards the current but could be easily convinced otherwise) but I quite like it as the logo of NPP School and would expect even if consensus continues that we would use it for that. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:11, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - Thanks for putting in the effort! But I would suggest that we should avoid using an emblem that (at least to me) gives off "police force" vibes. NPP actions tend to get a lot of pushback already from people who feel that we are assuming more authority than is actually vested in us (which, beyond clicking that one check mark, is really very little). I'd be happier if we could stick with the clipboard-carrying, making-factual-annotations icon. - No issues with appropriating it for the School :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:18, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
• No ∯WBG^converse 17:42, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC on autopatrolling redirects

Please see Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Redirect autopatrol#RfC on autopatrolling redirects. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 01:31, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

...the RfC was just snow closed with consensus in favor DannyS712 (talk) 07:51, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, how should we go about nominating people for this status? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 08:53, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rosguill: here on this page would probably be best. Discussions should be open for at least 48 hours. DannyS712 (talk) 20:26, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I would suggest we do like AFC where we setup a page for listing those who have the psuedoright (which would be fully protected) and then use the talk page for requests. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:36, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: okay, no objections from me DannyS712 (talk) 20:50, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and created a draft of the list page and the request page. Both could no doubt be improved - especially the request page. However, since we still have a BOTREQ before this starts happening I figure we have some time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:09, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: BRFA is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DannyS712 bot III 66 DannyS712 (talk) 21:17, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712 how did you decide on the "minimum" closure time? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:51, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: I'm not comfortable using my bot to patrol users with less than 48 hours of discussion, so I used that as the "minimum" - did you want it longer? DannyS712 (talk) 00:52, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

To be honest I haven't given much thought to the mechanics of how NPP would add someone to the whitelist. My first blush would be consensus of at least 3 NPP no sooner than 24 hours after the request (a nom from an NPP rather than a self-nom would count towards the three). I would imagine some percentage of people added to the whitelist would go via the traditional route of being added by a sysop. I also think we should use Template:rfplinks or something similar for candidates. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:47, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: sure, that works - I was about to hop off, but if you want to update Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist that'd be great DannyS712 (talk) 03:58, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

I have created a new template that will display information relevant to these kinds of requests. I have also added in language about 24 hours and at least 3 patrollers in consensus. Additionally I am thinking that we set some sort of autoarchive - if 3 patrollers haven't come along (or a sysop acting in their discretion) that the requests are archived after X time. I threw out 2 weeks as a starting point but would welcome suggestions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:48, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: Bot task has been approved at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DannyS712 bot III 66, once there are some users listed please ping me and I'll have it up and running DannyS712 (talk) 02:00, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, I have added two users to start. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:10, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Questionable Wiki Ed course

While patrolling today, I came across articles created through participation of the Wiki Ed course Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/UCSD/IPE Money and Finance IMF WB (Fall 2019). My impression from sampling several of the articles created through the course is that they largely fail to include any sources that are not affiliated with either the World Bank or the IMF. I'm a bit perturbed by what is essentially a mass production of articles that portray only the World Bank's own perspective on its operations throughout the world. Something is going wrong if an article like Morocco and the World Bank gets a peer review that says that all of the sources are from reliable sources and there is more than 6 sources used. Most sources are online sources coming from empirical organizations. I'd appreciate input from other NPP reviewers as to what to do in this situation. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:01, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Rosguill, sorry I had missed this message before. In general WikiEd courses frequently create issues at scale in new articles. While I just recently came across a couple of excellent WikiEd new articles that's the exception. The peer reviews that are offered by other students reflect that everyone is a novice at Wikipedia editing. As such your experience as a veteran editor matters. The Morocco articles has had issues for a long time and is the kind well suited to WikiEd improvement; sometimes this happens in this case it appears it did not.

As for the nw articles I would handle them the way I would with any other new article, assessing them for notability and if notable tagging them as appropriate. If you see wider issues and problems it can frequently be worth getting in touch with the WikiEd expert assigned to the class which in this case is Shalor (Wiki Ed). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:07, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, thanks for the input, I'll reach out to Shalor when I have some spare time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:25, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Essays or guidelines about evaluating source reliability?

I was hoping to give an NPP school pupil a primer on how to evaluate whether a source is reliable or not, and went looking around for relevant essays or guidelines on Wikipedia. However, while I was able to find some very subject-specific pages (WP:MEDRS of course, plus the essays WP:SCIRS and WP:HISTRS), I wasn't able to find anything that introduces a reader to the process of evaluating the reliability of a typical secondary source. WP:V and WP:RS touch on it a little, but I don't think that the information there is really a sufficient guide to assessing an unknown source. Does anyone know of any useful essays or guidelines that I've missed? If we really don't have any, one should probably be written _signed, Rosguill ^talk 04:23, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rosguill: I found a few pages, mostly essays in userspace, that go into some greater detail:

• User:Pgallert/On reliable sources
• User:Aude/Reliable sources (this one is very old but still looks reasonably accurate)
• User:Teblick/Reliable Sources
• And of course, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources when I need to double-check something.

I would definitely support consolidation of resources such as these into an essay supplementing WP:RS; I don't know of anything more generic, or anything specifically aimed at assessing unfamiliar sources. ComplexRational (talk) 20:57, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational, thanks for the links, although I don't think this was quite what I was looking for. I was thinking something more along the lines of a step-by-step guide of what to look for when evaluating a source (e.g. check the About us page to see if they have an editorial board, check if other reliable sources cite them, etc.) _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:31, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Ealdgyth/FAC,_Sources,_and_You#What_makes_me_go_"Hm..._this_doesn't_look_reliable" is intended for FA-level but may still be useful. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:15, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, thank you, this is more along the lines of what I was looking for. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:35, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

There are quite a few essays linked at WP:RS including WP:APPLYRS WP:RSE and WP:RSVETTING that could be useful in this context. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:35, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I'm not sure how I missed RSVETTING, I think that's more or less what I was looking for (although it is still missing info that should probably be communicated to new NPPers, such as the more relaxed standards for reliability when it comes to pop culture reviews, etc). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:41, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Moving articles from Draftspace to Mainspace

I have seen an activity a few times now doing NPP, where one "new" editor is trying to get their non-notable/refused draft article published into Mainspace, and another "low edits" editor comes along and moves it for them (bypassing AFC). The most recent example being Bobby-C, which, per the talk page of Libdolittle, was an article that has been re-created numerous times post various AfD/CSDs.

My question is whether the protections that we have over "new accounts" creating WP articles is consistent with the permissions regarding who can move articles from Draft into Main, AND, whether regardless of these rules, we need stronger rules for page moves? I am sure this issue has been debated here before, but I could not find the relevant discussion - sorry. thanks in advance. Britishfinance (talk) 13:40, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance the protection we have are New Page Patrollers doing the work as you did here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:22, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Barkeep49. Shouldn't there be some kind of control regarding "new"/"low edit" editors moving articles from Draftspace to Mainspace? thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 16:05, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, the community has decided that confirmed users are able to move pages, including drafts. Changing this would be a discussion that would need broad community consensus. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:07, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, do you think it would be folly to ask the community to re-think this for movements from Draftspace to Mainspace for new(er) users? thanks. (sorry if I am repeating a previous conversation at NPP). Britishfinance (talk) 16:11, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, is your concern mainly about declined AfC submissions that are subsequently moved to mainspace by a non-reviewer? If so, I'm not sure if such a restriction is technically possible. As Barkeep49 says, I suppose only NPPs can flush these out then, but move or creation protection may also possible for specific repeatedly recreated bad articles (are there a few such instances?). ComplexRational (talk) 17:19, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure it would be folly but I anticipate that it would be an uphill struggle. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:30, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

(ec) Now that I think of it, even if there was a control on moving article from draft to mainspace, it could be bypassed easily by cut-and-pasting in any event, which would negate any effect it would have? thanks for the consideration. Britishfinance (talk) 17:33, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational, here is an example that I see often at NPP - draft refused several times at Draft:Eric M. Mandl, that then appears in Mainspace as Eric Mandl, which is now in AfD, and per AFC's guidance, is heading for deletion. It is a major time-sink of scarce editing resources, and yet the authors are well able to "game the system"? Perhaps if we had some kind of a bot that looked for permutations of topic titles (e.g. Eric M. Mandl was changed to Eric Mandl), that were declined at AfC, but re-re-appeared in Mainspace, which would be automatically deleted, that might work? Britishfinance (talk) 19:10, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

And another case today. Failed AfC Draft:John F. Barry III, by-passed to MS, but now an AfD at John F. Barry. I find lots of these at NPP. Britishfinance (talk) 20:24, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, Confirmed users have the right to move pages bypassing AfC, even if previously declined. This is (in my opinion) a feature, not a bug. AfC has a bad reputation because often only a single reviewer can essentially soft delete an article by declining it, even if it would otherwise pass AfD. Moving to main phase even after a decline is a user exercising their right to not use AfC (which is only mandatory for paid COI editors, not all new editors). Then it is put into the NPP queue. If we still think it isn't appropriate, we can nominate it for CSD, tag it, or take it to AfD. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:41, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

(ec) Insertcleverphrasehere, thank you for that. In the above case, the COI editor just changed their username and went to mainspace. If AfC can be so easily bypassed, then what purpose it is serving? Is AfC a "test-audience" for prospective articles, but ultimately, the author can just ignore the feedback and go direct to mainspace? Is this an efficient way to manage ever scarcer editing resources, OR, is the feedback-aspect still very useful (and in most cases followed)? I am surprised that there is not more integration with NPP and the AfC process? Seems like a lot of duplication (and time-sink) is happening? thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 20:55, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, IMO, AfC doesn't serve much of a purpose to be honest. It wasn't meant to be a gatekeeping measure, but it seems to be being used that way. AfC was meant to be a way to help editors learn proper writing for articles, but the process is so slow that even good faith editors often lose patience and abandon the process (either skipping straight to main or, far worse, abandoning the wiki altogether in frustration). Honestly with wait times sometimes in the multiple months, you can't blame them. I would never, EVER, recommend a good faith or even reasonably competent editor use the AfC process. While sending good-faith users there that simply lack competence is something commonly done, I fear it does more damage than good. It's only remaining purpose is sending COI/PAID editors into a black hole of waiting and hoping that they lose patience. This isn't ideal either, as we should (IMO) simply have stronger policies on paid editing (a ban and a CSD criteria), but this has been shot down in the past. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:42, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, really appreciate the honesty of the reply above - that clarifies a lot for me. I sometimes think, in my tours around WP, that we struggle to make bigger/more decisive changes. Ideas/processes seem to die very slowly in WP, even when the majority have long given up on them. thanks again for explaining the situation to me. Britishfinance (talk) 21:48, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere, Britishfinance, Praxidicae, and ComplexRational: this is an extremely strong statement about AfC. And a lot of it is true. No one actually knows the true extent of UPE, because in spite of the tell-tale signs, when articles pass notability and are neutrally written, they are here to stay. It's an uphill battle , especially when even the WMF staff cannot be trusted to not dabble in earning a few bucks on the side. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:55, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

• Britishfinance This is also a common tactic of paid editors who have sleeper accounts that don't edit for months or even years. I have found several requests on freelancer, fiverr and those types of sites with people requesting a user who has AC/EC to simply move their draft into mainspace (and they pay them for it!) Praxidicae (talk) 20:51, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Praxidicae, Well, paid editors ARE required to use AfC for new articles (per WP:COI), so if this can be verified you can send it back to draft. If they recreate it, you don't really have much choice but to take it to AfD unless some CSD criteria applies (there is no CSD for paid editing). If you can verify paid editing though, AfD is historically pretty reliable for deleting a submission on the grounds of being a violation of the terms of service (often regardless of notability or quality). Actually verifying paid editing is often the difficult part as often you generally only have an idea of COI, which isn't enough to start the above chain of events as unpaid editors with a COI are not required to use AfC. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:56, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Just a note that while I agree we really should be deleting UPE work, I have often found that AFDs do not work in favor of deletion even when paid, especially if that's part of the nomination. However the AC/EC afc bypass is a HUGE part of paid editing, I'd link to several examples but I don't want to fall afoul of outing. I have sent several emails to the paid queue about some other articles this week though. Praxidicae (talk) 21:00, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Whether notable or not, deleting UPE articles is not going to make the encyclopedia of 6mio articles any poorer. It should be the default procedure. The point being that if they had not been paid for, their non-existence would not be missed - such articles rarely enrich the corpus. The issue is however that the subjects of the successfully paid articles and edits certainly will and do benefit from the SEO it affords them. The other issue, and which disturbs me most (but unfortunately not most people) is that paid editors are exploiting for profit a platform that has been built and maintained by the work of wholly unrewarded volunteer work by people who often get badly treated to boot.

Some users have ostensibly joined Wikipedia with the sole intention of making a career out of it, and judging by their users pages, they are even proud of it. The only real way to meet paid editing head on is to outlaw it completely - zero tolerance - but there are those who will argue that banning it would drive it more underground, but most of it is anyway.

If the AC/EC afc bypass is a HUGE part of paid editing, then it's up to New Page Reviewers to be more vigilant and recognise the signs. We have a few - just a few - very prolific patrollers, They do commendable work despite the backlog still growing steadily, and I wonder if they realise just how important their work is - especially as they are doing it for the rest of the 'supposed' 750 reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:35, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree, UPE should be outlawed. Would definitely support a movement to get that done. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:51, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

(ec) Very interesting points Kudpung (and also per your comment above). I have seen what I think as UPEs doing very good work on things like Film articles which, regardless of the UPE, are definitely notable, and worthy of an article. What is a time-sink however, are the BLP/CORP UPEs who seem very adept at gaming the system and exploiting the gaps of Draftspace(AfC) and Mainspace. Yes, proper patrolling and use of CSD/AfD (and G4) is very helpful, however, sometimes, I feel like we are very "low-tech" in our tools/rules for handling them. For example, we should have a bot scanning for G4 BLP/CORPs, and particularly scanning for permutations of the BLP/CORP subject name (e.g. UPEs are good at changing the BLP/COPR name to avoid G4s by adding middle initials/or plc etc.), that would propose bot-G4s (like bot-AIVs). Most UPE seems to be BLP/CORPs; a bot that stops new BLP/CORP articles of past AfD'ed/CSD'ed/PROD'ed BLP/CORP articles without admin approval, would be a huge problem for UPEs in my view. Britishfinance (talk) 01:52, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

These are some interesting ideas. I'd think to perhaps do it with an edit filter (if technically possible) instead, because NPPs will have to approve in any case, yet they will be helped if potential problem articles are flagged for easier identification, and admins will not have to get involved unless G4 is clear-cut. I also had the idea of a filter (again, if technically possible) to detect newly created articles with the same titles (also close variants such as a middle initial, alternative spelling) as AfC drafts, specially those that were previously declined as drafts or deleted as articles, to flag possible cut-and-paste moves or attempts to "smuggle" unapproved content from possible UPEs into mainspace. I don't want to create a larger backlog at NPP or for admins than already exists, though. ComplexRational (talk) 02:11, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational. An edit filter could work also. I think something like a "Cluebot" for G4s/turned-down AfCs, would be a great long-term solution here (e.g. avoid any intervention by editors and admins alike, and the author is forced to go to an admin to resolve). I am new(er) to Wikipedia, but I sometimes feel that the technological development of the platform stopped a while back? Given the ever-increasing ratio of artices-to-established editors/admins (much of which is because our article base is growing faster than our editor base), we need more long-term technology options here? Is much of the WMF income spent on the technology state of the platform? Britishfinance (talk) 10:30, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a case for ORES. But how ORES works I haven't a clue. It probably has to be fed with a set of criteria - that shouldn't be to hard. It will mean creating a Phab, and then keeping fingers crossed that someone will pick it up. Maybe MusikAnimal could take a look> Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)

For the record, I have seen this multiple times. I block the accounts on sight as sockpuppets. In fact, I was browsing [3] today and quarantined five articles, none of which were flagged by my usual means. Regarding some of the ideas here: there is no API for searching deleted titles, and there probably won't be for another 8 years (or however long it takes for the WMF to actually care about it), so there cannot be a bot that flags reposts. The lists of likely spam pages I post on WT:WPSPAM are about as close as it gets. MER-C 14:19, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Another "sleeper editor" today, with a few very mechanical edits over 5 years, and then drops a 5,000 character promotional BLP in a topic area they never touched. Britishfinance (talk) 17:41, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Forgot to complete my comment. MER-C 20:11, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Appreciate the clarity of the response MER-C; seems crazy that in fundamental things like the policing of new pages that the WMF is so disinterested? Per my other suggestion below re a "New Article Wizard" (that would be mandatory for all editors), over 100,000 new articles have been patrolled "by-hand" in the last year alone. Seems very asymmetric (and crazy), that the owners of the IT platform (e.g. us), are using a stick-and-stones approach when we should have far more bots/automation.

Also, thanks for that NPP check tool - never saw that before? Britishfinance (talk) 15:34, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

I wrote about this in the latest Signpost. When crude, manipulated (to the point of fraud) metrics of success go down in Silly Con Valley, difficult questions will be asked and money dries up. Can't let that happen, can we now? MER-C 17:08, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Wow, that was an interesting read. With two (amazing) editors doing 90% of NPP, it is only a matter of time before this collapses in Wikipedia and a major line of defense against UPE/SPAM is dropped. The WMF should be an organisation dominated by tech people + librarians; however, I don't think this is the case? Crazy that even basic IT fixes (like your example of adding a check-box to delete the Talk Page), are not possible with the WMF. Britishfinance (talk) 17:28, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

New article wizard

On thing I find is a time sink doing NPP is tidying up the article for basic issues:

No talk page (especially for bios)

No References section and/or no “reflist”

Confusion on External links, and that they are not citations, and should not have bare URLs

No stub tagging

No basic categories (especially for people bios)

No lede (and basic formatting problems in lede)

No Default Sort or Authoirty Control for bios

All of these things could be solved by having a “New Article Wizard” that runs through a check list/questionnaire with the author before publishing (eg is this bio of a living person). We could also add the controls to the Wizard of not allowing an article to be published whose “reflist” is empty (eg stop the problem of a bare url in the EL as being satisfactory), and automatically fixing bare URLs etc. Has this been discussed before? I feel like we are ver low-tech in this area? Thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 15:06, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I can't remember a comment in WP space I agreed with more. Usedtobecool ^TALK ✨ 16:07, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Our entire NPP strategy relies on 2-3 editors who do amazing work patrolling huge amounts of new articles (and their error rate is tiny for such huge volumes); however, this is not a long-term strategy. Whatever about the debate on volume of experienced editors/admins in Wikipedia, the trend in volumes of new articles hasn't really stopped – it just keeps on rising relentlessly and will overwhelm us without a stronger technology solution? Britishfinance (talk) 16:12, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

The longterm viability of NPP is a constant worry for me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:14, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

It has to be a technology solution; we are victims of our own success, but this flow of daily new articles will eventually drown us without technology solutions? Britishfinance (talk) 16:18, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

How many new articles are really being created by the wizard? I mean all of what is proposed here is cool but I don't know if a tool was rolled out how many would use it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:14, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

It wouldn't be a choice - every editor (even admins), creating a new article who have to go through the "New Article Wizard" when they hit the "publish" button on a new article. I can see that over 100,000 new pages have been patrolled in the last 365 days on the NPP list - they should all being going through a NAW engine? Britishfinance (talk) 16:17, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Ahh gotcha. Well to that I'd have to give more thought. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:19, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure that if we developed a NAW, that over time, with further development, it would be able to make credible predictions on problematic new articles and ones that are likely fine (e.g. like Cluebot for AIV). It is the only long-term solution I can see for NPP and would make the human checking of new articles faster and more efficient. It should be something that the WMF is concerned about too? Britishfinance (talk) 16:23, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I mentioned Britishfinance's list quite recently somewhere. NPR is definiltely not a clean-up process and reviewers should not be expect5ed to add these missing elements although they often do - so do I but I find it quite annoying. What could be done is to leave a message for the creator and leave the article as unpatrolled: 'I have reviewed your article submission, but it cannot be referenced and indexed until it is complete with...' '['

A software solution should be something the WMF should be forced to pay for, but with no wish list this year, and such requests subject to a wish list however important they are, I do not see a particularly friendly reception from the devs for new requests at this time. Our only ally is MusikAnimal, but he has done so much for us already in his free time. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:00, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

The free-form nature of wikitext makes this extremely difficult to enforce with software, if not impossible, given not every article is expected to have the same format (disambiguation pages don't necessarily need references, for example), and every language/project has its own policies and guidelines, and you as an editor aren't required to address all of this on your first edit (I certainly don't). Better I think would be to use preload templates to provide a boilerplate for different types of articles, similar to how WP:WIZARD currently adds a references section for you. BLPs would have preloaded text like Jane Doe (born 1 January, 1950) is an English mathematician..., etc., with example sections, and Category:Living people at the bottom. That is trivial to set up. — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:03, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

I would like to thank MusikAnimal for the explanation and suggestions. Not everyone who edits or maintains Wikipedia is an IT expert and his elucidations are critically important to those of us (like me ) who aren't deep code programmers. The idea of providing squashable templates for different kinds of articles is excellent and shows how dumb the rest of us are for not thinking of it ;) In anticipation of ACPERM, I spent many hours rewriting all the pages of the Article Wizard (I am a communication scientist), complete with their functions, but someone who has hardly edited at all for two years went and threw it all out with not so much as a murmur and replaced it all with something which IMO is far too simplistic and defies the object of the purpose which was to encourage new editors to use it and adhere to its advice.

I haven't seen any instances of the Article Wizard being used since ACPERM was rolled out - there used to be a tag on such drafts and they included lot more preloaded elements than the wizard provides now. Perhaps template:AFC submission/draftnew means just that and it's a new feature I missed, but the text needs to be changed ever so slightly. What we need are some quick stats:

• How many drafts are being created per month on average?
• How many are created through the wizard?
• How many are sent to AfC on 'move to draft' from the NPR queue

So if the wizard is indeed being used, I'd be happy to get the Article Wizard back up to date again - based on what we know now since ACPERM - and create the sample pre-loaded templates (which even for me is easy enough). We could then discuss making the wizard mandatory for all editors per Britishfinance (at least for non autopatrolled users), but I fear that there would be a lot of resistance from the community to such a suggestion. Nevertheless, even since ACPERM, a lot of junk - or at least inappropriate articles - are still being created by autoconfirmed users, and with an NPP backlog that has increased by nearly 50% in just 10 weeks, we cannot continue to rely on the work of our famous '750' reviewers.

I realise that a lot of this is possibly strictly AfC domain, and perhaps Primefac would like to chime in here, but we have to think how we can reduce the flow of useless articles through NPP which nevertheless are not covered by a deletion criterion or rationale, and in doing so, relieve both AfC and NPP of a lot of work.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:47, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Thank you for the kind words :) WP:WIZARD as far as I know only goes to the draftspace now, but before ACPERM it was being used for the mainspace. I don't see why we can't do both, though. We could rework it to take advantage of some CSS magic and templating, so that articles from unconfirmed users go to Draft, with the appropriate AfC template intact. For both unconfirmed and confirmed users, you get the same series of buttons that we set up for common types of articles, each having it's own preload template (except AfC's would have deactivated categories, or what have you). I'm sure AfC would appreciate this, too. I don't think any of this would be difficult either, just a lot of busy work. — MusikAnimal ^talk 05:44, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

I'll have to do some checking using one of my non autoconfirmed alt accounts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kudpung (talk • contribs) 06:34, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

The Wizard preloads a Reflist section and {{reflist}}. If we really wanted to know how many pages per month were created via the Wizard I suppose I could add in a subst'ed hidden category that timestamps it so we know how many per month are created via the wizard, but if you haven't guessed from the length of my wishy-washy explanation it's not exactly something that would be high on my priority list. What I do know is that we get about 250-300 new drafts submitted per day, and as a wild-ass guess with an average of about 2k pageviews per day I think most of the newly-submitted drafts were created via the Wizard (I also base this anecdotally on the number of "Inline citations" comments I see in the References section). Primefac (talk) 00:25, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, and if you attempt to create an article as an unconfirmed user, you see Wikipedia:New user landing page, which offers WP:WIZARD as the only way to create an article. So I would wager the vast majority are through the Wizard. — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:09, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

What I was actually looking for rather than the actual number of submissions was

1. How many pages in the Draft namespace are being created per month on average?
2. How many are created through the wizard?
3. How many are sent to AfC on 'move to draft' from the NPR queue

Unconfirmed users are directed to to the Wizard which is exactly what since ACPERM is supposed to happen following what I and others campaigned for in ACTRIAL, so I guess MusikAnimal is reasonably correct with his wager. Many submitted drafts are from users who are already confirmed, but most of these are either not ready for mainspace or are not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Few submissions appear to be from IP users.

Thus, arguably, anything that does not first come through the NPR feed is less work for reviewers and helps to keep the 7,000 backlog down, but it does not help AfC. How many submitted drafts actually make it back to the NPR queue? There is of course a clear distinction (or should be) between declined drafts and rejected drafts. Is there somewhere I can find a category of rejected (not declined) drafts? I found one here but it only has one entry in it.

I am specifically working on some ideas that may significantly reduce the backlogs of both NPR and AfC queues but which would not put off genuinely motivated new users from contributing to Wikipedia and which may encourage others not to abandon their drafts. The length of time it takes to get a new article or draft reviewed is perhaps even more bitey than some of the comments and templates that new(ish) users are subjected to. I would be grateful if anyone (Primefac for example) could help by pointing me to some of the stats I need if they exist already. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:50, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

• Category:Rejected AfC submissions (1,496). Will comment more later. Primefac (talk) 12:53, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Be careful what you wish for; you might get it

Templates that take care of all the usual boilerplate are an obvious idea; word processors have had these for decades. But we already have an Article wizard and it doesn't actually help new editors create articles. Instead, it puts most of its effort into deterring or preventing its users from creating articles. I suppose that's because its development was influenced by the AFC/NPP folk who tend have a similar negative philosophy of preventing people from creating articles, rather than helping them.

So, if we create a wizard that makes it easy for new users to create articles which look superficially presentable then the natural consequence will be that you will get a lot more articles and so the flood will rise rather than sink. The trouble is that it will then become more difficult to sift the wheat from the chaff. Patrollers would have to focus more on reading what the articles say and check whether they make logical sense; that their sources stand up and so on. This tends to require subject-matter expertise and perspicacity and that's more challenging. For example, see English clause element which I found when reviewing Rosguill's work. I'm not convinced that this is a sound topic or a topic that we don't do better elsewhere. It may actually be subtle spam; designed to promote the particular grammars which it features. But because the article is superficially presentable and is written in a difficult but plausible style, it got past NPP. See the list of scholarly publishing stings where papers have been accepted when they look superficially ok but no-one takes the trouble to check that they actually make sense.

You get this type of issue when students are asked to create articles – see Wiki Education Foundation. They tend to produce articles that are half-baked and that's, of course, because they are students; they are still learning their subject. I recently helped out with an activity at a London college in which a horde of students were being turned loose to create a WikiBook on the general topic of Interdisciplinarity. This was an absurdly wide brief and, while the students might have got something out of it, their output was unlikely to be useful. Many PhD theses and academic papers have this quality because they are written for effect in the publish or perish setting of academia. More is not necessarily better.

Me, I'm going to be cranking out a stack of articles soon as we approach the 6 million milestone. I know what I'm doing and so have already selected a rich seam to work. But consider what happened last time. One person created a stack of articles about camera lenses such as Samyang 10mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS CS and they are still there. Another editor did Turkish villages while the winner did Australian shrubs from a large genus. You see the problem; you risk creating lots of Rambots.

Andrew🐉(talk) 16:31, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

There's a lot going on here Andrew. I certainly agree the article wizard isn't designed to make new article creation frictionless. And that's because in Wikipedia's history, in mainspace pre-ACPERM and now in draft space, the majority of people who are attempting to create articles are doing so on topics that are not notable. The idea of trying to get the user to self-reject rather than us rejecting and also trying to help the users who do go through with creating an article to create the best possible version hardly seems in-conflict or something we need to be careful about wishing to get.

That said this is twice now you've criticized Rosugill for English clause element and here you suggest that this failure could demonstrate systemic failures of NPP. NPP can and should improve and I work hard to improve my own reviewing and the reviews of others. But the idea that English clause element is subtle spam is mystifying to me. You are suggesting it was created to promote three books written over a span of 17 years (the "newest" of which is 17 years old) by three different publishers and with 10 credited authors (one of whom is credited twice, but none of whom are in common across all of them)? Books that are not mentioned by name in the body of the text, let alone the LEAD (which is honestly all I ever expect the majority of readers ever get through in any article of mine). You might be right that we handle this topic better in other places and in other ways but the even if that's true I don't think this article making it through NPP review represents any sort of failure of NPP. Our charge is not to make a perfect encyclopedia but to "address common unwanted content such as spam, copyvios and nonsense, and also to encourage good faith new users" which I think was done here.

That said I think you'll find many editors here in complete agreement to the criticisms you level at student editors (whose incentives do diverge from those of the same age who are here "naturally") and of the stacks of articles that can be made on specialized topics (one of the few specific unpleasant experiences on Wikipedia I can recall was with an editor about a camera article). But would helping these articles which are going to get made regardless be made better harm the encyclopedia? Or does it mean that the stuff that makes it through our processes are fixed by the people investing the time to make them, and who may not be around for the longrun, rather than an already overworked and overburdened editor base? I suspect that there are ways, including with these templates, that we can nudge these editors uncommitted to Wikipedia beyond whatever they're trying to write about to do a better job and if so that helps the encyclopedia as a whole. This strikes me as exactly the sort of thing we should be wishing for. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:56, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, Honestly my opinion: the current article wizard was made in a pre-ACTRIAL world where we were being swamped with inappropriate submissions. I can think of a few options that would improve things though. Below are some ideas I have been mulling over in my head.

After the usual stuff asking about COI and shunting them off to AfC if so (something the existing article wizard does reasonably well) we need to make it clear that the topic needs to meet WP:42 before creation, so I think ideally the "Article Wizard" should ask the user if they are creating a standalone article (as opposed to a list or dab page or redirect, which aren't subject to WP:N in the same way). If they are making a standalone page, the wizard would have a brief discussion of the requirements of WP:42, followed by two 'required' fields where the author drops in a URL in each, with a tick box saying "to the best of my knowledge this topic meets the requirements of the general notability guideline, as evidenced by the two sources provided". If they don't add two URLs, or if the URLs share a domain address (not independent), or if they are on the blacklist, it will prompt them to fix the issue and won't let them proceed (similar to most web forms out there). These two sources would then automatically be added to the article, formatted as references using the ref autofill, and also added to the talk page to a section "I as the author present these two sources to demonstrate notability". This would make it SOOOOO much easier to separate notable topics from non-notable ones if each user was prompted to submit this with their entry.

Obviously, users would technically be able to bypass this step by creating an article from a blank page directly, but if they didn't, NPP's job assessing notability in theory becomes much easier. Anything that runs through the article wizard would at least a a couple links that you can click on first and go... "Yup, meets WP:GNG" or "nope, I guess I need to look at the rest of the article sources in detail and check relevant SNG criteria".

Following that page, the user would be prompted for a bunch of steps asking them what type of article they want to make, biography, geography, species, etc. and then for each they would be given a series of fields that autofill a pre-generated template (there would be different templates for different types of topics, and we could approach each of the major Wikiprojects to ask for their input on a template for articles in their area (i.e. biographies, companies, species, schools, books, films, songs, albums, etc, etc.). It would then create a draft, which would have a unique template at the top, which basically would have two options for submission: 1) "I need more help" (which puts in the AfC queue), and 2) "I think it's ready for other people to read" (which moves the page to main space and sends it to the NPP queue). If they don't meet the requirements to move a page to main space (IP or non autoconfirmed), it would instead link them to an info page explaining why they can't yet move the page, offering AfC instead, but warning them that there would be a considerable wait.

This would be my vision for an "Article Wizard". — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:16, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

I like a lot about the vision you suggest there ICPH. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:51, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

+1 with Barkeep49 on that. This is a no-brainer tool for Wikipedia, that if not developed, could be onerous for the long-term viability of NPP (imho). We are managing one of the biggest websites in the world with shovels and spades – we need excavators and pile drivers. Britishfinance (talk) 10:58, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

• All the theories about where the current iteratiion of the Wizard came from are wrong, and this comes from not reading the thread from the beginning. Here's what I wrote again: In anticipation of ACPERM, I spent many hours rewriting all the pages of the Article Wizard (I am a communication scientist), complete with their functions, but someone who has hardly edited at all for two years went and threw it all out with not so much as a murmur and replaced it all with something which IMO is far too simplistic and defies the object of the purpose which was to encourage new editors to use it and adhere to its advice. That editor breezed out again almost as quick as they breezed in and what we have is not a Wizard at all - it doesn't provide any help whatsoever. What I have been attempting to describe in this thread is that the Wizard should be something that deters the creators of obviously non encyclopedic material and spammers, while actively helping those who are trying to make a genuine good faith article. It's not rocket science but what we are heading for - possibly because I said I was already working on something - is a lot of talk about picks, shovels, and backhoes - stuff we already know is is wrong with the current system, and stuff like Insertcleverphrasehere's suggestion which is exactly what I have quietly been working on in my idle moments. So, yes, be careful what you wish for; you might get it! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:55, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

New pages feed not loading redirects bug report

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T241165

I've filed a bug report at Maniphest to address this issue. I suspect that some new redirects have been created that have some weird formatting that is breaking the new pages feed. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:03, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Seeking guidance on articles for upcoming events

Hello, apologies for adding another item to the talk page but I would be grateful for some guidance from NPP veterans. I have run across a number of new pages for upcoming events, movies, etc. For example this one: Slovakia at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics. It certainly seems that this article will turn into an appropriate, even valuable, encyclopedia entry in line with WP:EVENTCRIT once the Winter Youth Olympics start and no doubt the page creator is saving time creating this "shell" article to update later. However, at the moment it is basically blank (although maybe not an A3?). I have tagged it for references and categories. What would be the best way to treat this article and similar ones? Thanks. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 10:52, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

AugusteBlanqui, the general procedure for articles about scheduled, recurring topics that are almost certain to be notable once they occur is to convert them to redirects until they are ready (and leave an edit summary making it clear to the initial editor that they can undo the redirect once it's more appropriate to create the article). As the article has completely unsourced information about living people, I would not hesitate to convert this one to a redirect.

That having been said, it's not uncommon for there to be quasi-routine coverage about subjects like this leading up to the event. With only one month to go until the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, I would consider letting an article like this stay up if it actually had some citations attached. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:06, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

+1 with the above. Some editors get a kick out of creating the page for the next major event. Regardless of lack of sourcing, if the event is definitely going to be notable, then Redirect is best, and CSD and AfD are unsuitable. If you Draftify (eg if it is full of empty tables etc), most will replace it back in mainspace immediately. Empty tables aside, if they are making improper/unsuitable statements you can also delete them (and if they persist in restoring them, you can take further measures). Hope that helps, Britishfinance (talk) 22:54, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 08:13, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter December 2019

Reviewer of the Year

This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.

Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

Top 10 Reviewers over the last 365 days

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	Rosguill (talk)	47,395	Patrol Page Curation
2	Onel5969 (talk)	41,883	Patrol Page Curation
3	JTtheOG (talk)	11,493	Patrol Page Curation
4	Arthistorian1977 (talk)	5,562	Patrol Page Curation
5	DannyS712 (talk)	4,866	Patrol Page Curation
6	CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk)	3,995	Patrol Page Curation
7	DragonflySixtyseven (talk)	3,812	Patrol Page Curation
8	Boleyn (talk)	3,655	Patrol Page Curation
9	Ymblanter (talk)	3,553	Patrol Page Curation
10	Cwmhiraeth (talk)	3,522	Patrol Page Curation

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

Redirect autopatrol

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.

Source Guide Discussion

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.

This month's refresher course

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.

Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:11, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Maria Canals (pianist)

Hi Folks, does anybody know how to submit page to draft. It is this: Maria Canals (pianist). Thanks. scope_creep^Talk 13:42, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Scope creep, Click on the move page. Then click (Article) which will bring a list, on the list select "Draft". Then uncheck "Leave a redirect behind" and press the move page button. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 13:47, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Scope creep I see you have User:Evad37/MoveToDraft. Go to more near the View history at top of the page. Then click on "Move to draft". ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 13:49, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks.:8) scope_creep^Talk 13:51, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

I just realised i've done it dozens of times. I must be because its a rescued article as opposed to a junk article. Different mindset. So weird. scope_creep^Talk 13:53, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Scope creep, If you have any trouble moving the page. Let me know, I will move it for you. Thanks. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 13:54, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

First NPP Source Guide Discussion

Rosguill and I have been discussing having our first Source Guide discussion sometime in early January. The question is where should we go first. I have collected data on a couple of occasions and found the following countries while doing a search using the NPP Browser:

Country	11/20 count	12/9 count
China	38	42
Ghana	54	50
Indonesia	26	27
India	338	352
Iran	52	61
Malaysia	27	31
Pakistan	47	47
Russia	70	84
Turkey	9	12
Vietnam	8	10

I would suggest we either do Turkey first (despite being the least, Rosguill has already done the prep work for the RfC) or Ghana which has the advantage of being a country with English language sources without an overwhelming number of articles (ala India). Any thoughts from others? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:23, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

What's a Source Guide discussion? ∯WBG^converse 17:42, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric, good question. See here for a complete explanation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:51, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

One additional thing we should consider is the extent to which these countries are already covered by WP:NPPSG. For example, China has 12 entries (several of these countries have zero), although most of those are admittedly in the "no consensus section". I think I would personally vote for prioritizing Ghana at this time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:11, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

• The idea that sources can be classified in a crude, blanket way as reliable/unreliable by means of a straw poll of Wikipedians is quite mistaken. It contravenes numerous policies, not least that Wikipedia is itself not a reliable source. Reliability has to be judged on a case-by-case basis, depending on the context and, ideally, by reference to multiple sources. Here's a fresh example.

Today I started an article about an RAF pilot, Maurice Mounsdon. I checked a variety of sources and so am quite familiar with the details now. I just listened to a news report about the subject on BBC News and immediately spotted two errors. They said that he "shot down at least seven enemy aircraft" when the confirmed figure of kills was not so high. Then they said that, after being shot down himself, "he never flew again". That's quite wrong as there's a first hand account in a book which makes it clear that he still flew light planes like the Magister and Tiger Moth and was a trainer. Other news media, such as the Daily Mail, didn't make these mistakes. So, in this case it's the BBC which is unreliable but the NPP source guide claims that it's reliable.

The correct approach is to treat all sources as potentially unreliable and so seek confirmation for anything which seems controversial, unlikely or error-prone. And this doesn't just mean journalism, which is naturally hasty, deadline-driven and prone to sensationalism and story-telling. It also includes peer-reviewed scholarship, which is also likely to exaggerate or get things wrong when trying to claim an impressive finding or theory. See the replication crisis for numerous examples of systemic failure.

Andrew🐉(talk) 00:38, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Andrew Davidson, the purpose here is not to provide a be-all end-all for reliability, it is to provide a quick reference that can be used as part of the triage process which is NPP. The alternative to having a list like this is relying on new page reviewers who may not have any proficiency or background with a particular country/language/region/etc. to use their gut on whether a source is reliable enough to contribute toward meeting notability guidelines. To continue with the example you gave, the reviewer's role is simply to identify that enough content has been written about the subject in possibly-reliable sources like the BBC, and flag implausible claims as needing further attention. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to comment Andrew Davidson. I share a lot of your worries and shared some of them a few weeks back at the related (but distinct for reasons I'll write about in a moment) WP:RSP. It could be that this is a misguided effort for the reasons you outline. But I don't think it is. Right now I feel that New Page Patrol's error rate with articles coming in certain areas is too high. This effort is designed to reduce that error rate. To return to your BBC example, for NPP purposes, the fact that Moundsdon was covered by the BBC is what's important. It's an indicator of notability. Ultimately that's what someone in the midst of NPP is attempting to perform - an assessment of notability. No NPP is going to be an expert on all content areas and able to spot incorrect information as you did. But I also don't want NPP to be nominating for deletion notable topics simply because they don't know what sources to trust or have other cultural competencies necessary to adequately assess notability. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:05, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I take Barkeep49's point that BBC coverage is a good sign of notability. I'd use a different R-word for a publisher like that: renowned, reputable or respectable. They can still make mistakes and so it's dangerous to call them reliable but they have a good reputation and so would tend to be accepted for notability purposes. Perhaps it's just a matter of how we describe such sources.

Another concept which might help has another R-word: the journal of record. Each country will have one or more papers which print official notices or otherwise have such standing. They may be government-controlled and so full of propaganda but we still have to acknowledge them. As you're organising this list by country, you should incorporate the table from that article.

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:25, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Andrew Davidson, may I suggest that we be very careful with that. For example: The "generally accepted newspaper of record" in the Netherlands is NRC Handelsblad]. It does not print official notices Until 2009 the newspaper that did that was the Staatscourant, which has been replaced with a website, https://www.officielebekendmakingen.nl/. The designation "newspaper of record" in the Netherlands is an entirely subjective evaluation of quality. And even though I have been a reader for as long as I can remember, and have friends who work there, it is absurd to elevate NRC to a level of trust that we deny other Dutch newspapers. Many of those are just as reliable given their very similar editorial policies and reputation for fact-checking. I think it is problematic to establish anything like a list of "preferred sources". For context, I should perhaps explain that when I did NPP, I maintained a list of sources to check new articles against that I updated with information about their independence, reliability, (inter)national/regional scope and a link to the Wikipedia article. That helps quickly identifying articles whose sources consist of a list sources whose names sound like real newspapers, but are actually fake sources. For triage, such an approach can be successful. For anything else, especially AfD, it is useless and dangerous. Vexations (talk) 14:12, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I think that this is a good initiative (and understand the problem, having NPP'ed myself); however, I think that the best outcome would be that this is integrated with the general community. WP:RS/P, is a great tool, but it should have the RSP's for a wider range of countries. In addition, we should have a WP:RS/Journal of Record (per Andrew Davidson), which are considered largely good sources, but not RSPs. Given the "core" of WP's mission is chronicling content from RS, I think this issue, which is a real problem in NPP, is also a wider weakness that now needs fixing. Why not conduct this exercise at the WP:RS-level – E.g. have a workshop that gets agreement on unambiguous RSPs for a wider range of countries (e.g. The Hindu in India, The Irish Times in Ireland etc.). After that, do another workshop for the JoR's? This is not just an NPP problem, but a real weakness of en-Wikipedia, and should be addressed at a community-level? thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 13:30, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, I'm certainly open to having this be a broader discussion, and I want to make clear that the intent is for the actual source discussion to take place at RSN, with full community participation. My original thought process was that by limiting the scope of this initiative project to NPP, we could avoid concerns that this was trying to create an authoritative list of reliable sources (as expressed in Andrew's first comment here).

The idea of prioritizing analyzing the top sources of multiple countries at once, rather than a deeper dive into a specific country/region is interesting. I'm a little concerned that a side effect of presenting it this way could actually end up encouraging people using the resulting source guide to ignore sources that didn't quite make the cut, similar to the scenario Vexations laid out above. Still, we'd probably more quickly create a broader net of vetted sources, so it may be a method worth considering (or we could consider starting out this way and then transitioning to a deeper dive once we have a paper of record or two identified for most countries). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:28, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Rosguill. I want to make sure that the solution to this issue - and this is a big issue (not just for NPP) - is maximised, hence a community-level discussion. A couple of weeks ago, a portal workshop was convened of all interested parties to get to a "core consensus" on portal-issues. How about doing an RS/P workshop, hosted by NPP, to identify the unambiguously best news source in each country (e.g. The Hindu in India, Irish Times in Ireland etc.). There are loads of countries for which we don't know what the RS/P are? These RS/P candidates would then be put as a block to the community for update to the official RS/P list in one go.

Even that process, would reveal the near-RS/P sources that would probably also form a "next list" (e.g. journal of record, or other term), which is the list you are trying - rightly - to create. But that list should also become a community list (RS/JOR?), which could be used by all. I spend time on "problem" articles (e.g. Proud Boys), and such lists are a terrific help; however, outside of the US, Canada, and the UK, we don't seem to have RS/P for many other countries? This is not just a NPP problem, this is a major WP problem, imho. Britishfinance (talk) 19:02, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, I think we're in agreement about our goals, but I'm concerned that the process of convening a workshop might be too bureaucratic of a process. It could also potentially make it more difficult to incorporate the views of people who want to contribute to the discussion for a particular region that they are more familiar with, but who don't want to stick around to weigh in on the rest of the topics (esp. if part of the plan is to invite people from other language Wikipedia projects to participate). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:18, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

The last NPP newsletter of the year is set to go out tomorrow. @Rosguill, Scottywong, Britishfinance, and Vexations: (and others) the discussion has stalled out a little but I'd like to announce our next step. Do we feel like the countrapproachch (I think it would be Ghana) or the "top sources" approach is the best next step? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I think that the top sources approach is interesting but maybe the process needs to be fleshed out a little more? On the other hand, if we move forward with Ghanaian sources then we do need someone to do some background research to set up the discussion, so we're going to have some work to do either way. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:56, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I would be in favour of "top sources", as I think it is also a big issue for Wikipedia as a whole (esp. outside of the main en-locations like US/UK/Canada), and I think we could list them off quicker (these should be so unambiguously RS/Ps, that it should have little debate) – the community could agree at least one RS/P for the above table in 7 days imho?

However, I am also mindful of Rosguill's need to press on with specific countries. I also wondered if India should be targeted over Ghana? The volume of Indic NPP is greater (and I think it is also the case in AIV), and confusion over Indic-RS is a problem. Anecdotally, I know that The Hindu is probably an Indian RS/P (there is an interesting ArbCom case going on just now where an Indic-BLP was A7'ed with a ref from The Hindu (if people knew it was an RS/P, the issue might have been avoided)? Britishfinance (talk) 21:14, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, I think India is too large of a country to be done successfully as our first go and might, as Ros has suggested elsewhere, need to be done over multiple RfCs. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:15, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, am I naive in thinking that despite India’s size, there are probably be less than 5 RS/Ps in India? In NPP (and AIV), I think RS/P is a critical aspect of making key decisions on GNG etc. I think (although I could be wrong), that RS/Ps are a powerful tool that give a disproportionate benefit in GNG issues when identified? Thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 22:41, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Britishfinance, I would be amazed if there are only 5 reliable sources in India. Further, any reasonable effort at doing a source guide for India will need to include a huge number of non-reliable sources as well. It will be a massive undertaking if/when it happens. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:57, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I think more than India's size (although that is also a factor), the country's language diversity would make it difficult to run it in one go. We could potentially do an RfC on just English Indian sources, and come back to the other languages in time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:20, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Barkeep49, in relation to India, I am not referring to "ordinary RS" (of which there is obviously a wide pool), but "RS/P candidates" – E.g. the highest quality RS. For example, in the UK, it is the BBC, The Times, and The Guardian etc. I don't even know what these would be in India, but there are probably not more than 5 Indian newspapers or 5 other Indian media outlets that would have the status of these UK WP:RS/P examples (or am I wrong in this)? I think that a material proportion of dispute on GNG in Indic articles could be helped by having the Indian RS/P list (per my Arbcom example above)? (also, it would be great to have the main RS/P list split by country). Britishfinance (talk) 10:41, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Well if we're talking "top sources" then sure maybe India only has a handful. However, for NPP purposes I don't think we need some new "better" tier of sources, we just need reliable sources. And importantly we need to know sources that we can't use or can use but only in certain ways (e.g. how WP:MUSIC/SOURCE says we should only use certain authors on DotDash). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:02, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

• If considering Indian sources, this should draw on the AfD-oriented WP:INDAFD with input from the other editors listed there to achieve a consistent source evaluation? AllyD (talk) 22:16, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Final Outcome of Page Curation Improvements Project (Community Tech)

Hello, everyone! The Community Tech team has an important update: The Page Curation Improvements and New Pages Feed project is now complete, after 7+ months of work. We have posted the final update on Meta-Wiki, which provides detailed information on all remaining proposals. Thank you all for assistance throughout the project, and we're so glad we could help improve tools for New Pages Reviewers! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

This is bollocks.

1. If you - by you, I am referring to you, your team, your managers, those that decide your budget and the WMF as a whole - think that your work constitutes a project that is any way whatsoever complete, adequate or sufficient, you are very much mistaken.
2. "we're so glad we could help improve tools for New Pages Reviewers"... so why are you stopping? Maintenance requires an ongoing commitment, especially in an adversarial environment in which threat actors adapt to defenses. The burden is only going to grow. The WMF isn't going to give up its pursuit of quantitative growth at all costs any time soon.
3. If your answer to the above is "we don't have the time or budget", refer to my latest Signpost article. That you are stopping does nothing but prove my arguments: "A large portion of the blame [for spamming] lies squarely with the Wikimedia Foundation. The WMF places significant emphasis in materials targeted at donors on crude metrics of content quantity and community size simply because that is what the WMF thinks donors want to hear. The WMF therefore faces incentives very similar to Facebook and Google. [...] A few extra vanity pages and sockpuppets certainly help the WMF look good in their pitch to donors." and "The WMF does not sufficiently care about our admin tools being fit for purpose. Like Facebook, Youtube and Google before recent scandals, investments in content moderation are seen as purely a cost while "initiatives" that provide feel-good anecdotes for donors or increase donor-targeted metrics and hence increase donations are heavily prioritized. The WMF deserves nothing but utter condemnation and scorn for the complete lack of maintenance, let alone investment, in the code underlying the administrator toolset." Adding 17 smallish features then walking away leaving the code unmaintained is not really caring. It's a token gesture.
4. If your answer to the above is "ask at the next wishlist", see above. Having to bid for the allocation of capital expenditure in a popularity contest to fund operating expenditure is unacceptable. Try talking to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or the National Health Service and ask them how that turned out. MER-C 18:24, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Just want to express my appreciation to MER-C for putting all of this forth. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

IFried (WMF), Nice, you've finished all of the tasks in the initial brief except the ones that you arbitrarily decided are "out of scope". That would totally pass muster in my office when the client is expecting delivery on a project as well. Thanks for letting us know that you are finished with the project, hopefully we can beg some developers that donate their time to finish your 'complete' work! The Keyword search one boggles my mind; how is it that a tool developed by one of the members of the community [4] (which is currently down) was able to have this functionality, but you with an entire team of people can't make something that works in a similar way? For several of the others: "This proposal never reached a general consensus among the Page Curation community, with some users expressing ambivalence regarding its usefulness." BULLSHIT, all of these requests were declared useful in a poll of NPPers before we even went to the wishlist. Almost none of the NPPers have been following the phabricator tasks, and just because one person posted a somewhat negative comment on Phabricator doesn't mean you just abandon it or that consensus as to the usefulness has changed. That's just using WP:OTHERPARENT to ignore the previous consensus. With regards to your announcement of having been happy to help us and being 'finished', I'm not happy. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:21, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: See also phab:T42135 and phab:T148353 - patches provided for both. "hopefully we can beg some developers that donate their time to finish your 'complete' work" - its not just finishing the work, its also merging it DannyS712 (talk) 21:49, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Ilana, reviewing new pages, is the single, most important function in the whole of of the English Wikipedia; naturally you are thrilled at having been able to address our needs, but you have only been doing what we are paying you for. We the volunteers do all the work compiling and controlling this encyclopedia. it was bad enough when the original developers of the Triage software abandoned development on Page Curation, but you will not remember the history, and there are few people left at the WMF who remember (or who want to remember) either. I admit that there has been important work done on it this year, but some of us have spent hundreds of hours over the years evaluating what is needed and trying to get the WMF to understand that if development had been done on a regular basis, there would not have been the recent panic to get an NPR user right established, ACTRIAL done, ORES to work, and something done about the increase in COI, spam and Undeclared Paid Editing (which even the WMF staff have been found guilty of in their spare time).

This year has seen the biggest Community/WMF constitutional crisis ever. Volunteers' trust in the WMF is at its lowest level ever but there should be a happy symbiosis between the owners of the servers and the creators of the content on them. However, the WMF who enjoy their office comforts, perks, and junkets never admit that it is our volunteer work that generates the huge surplus of funds, and hence any claims of 'not enough staff' or 'not enough money' are absolutely risible.

Ilana, I find this WMF statement to be typical of party political campaign BS. The Foundation is preaching to itself and nobody here believes any of it. If you are personally in a genuine managerial position, I appeal to you on behalf of the NPR community, to ensure that the development of NPP remains an on-going work in process and one for which there should exist a permanent departmental team of developers. If you do not in fact hold a position of responsibility (and I concede that you are quite new in the WMF), then please ensure that the people at the top, who are ostensibly neither fully aware nor overly concerned about what goes on the shop floor (and have practically told us so) are made aware of what's going on and that a competent delegation of tasks is carried out as soon as possible. I and others fought long and hard for nearly a decade with no thanks to get ACPERM and NPR where it is today in face of the constant insults online, at Phab, in the corridors by senior WMF staff at Wikimania conferences, and our scheduled slots on the topic neatly replaced at the last minute by WMF people with more promotional, repetitive WMF navel-gazing screed. Please don't let me and all the people on this page down who have worked so hard.

The Signpost has been mentioned; indeed, besides the mentioned piece, among my many routine articles for the magazine in 2018, I wrote some wholly justified criticisms of the WMF and its management, but so have others. This year's major events caused by WMF incompetency, although perhaps not directly New Page Patrol related, resulted in many admins laying down their tools in protest. It therefore marks the beginning of some changes in the way this en.Wiki project is going to be run, and mark my works, the core of hard-working reviewers is getting fed up already, the backlog is rising steeply again, and if they ever go on strike - which they may well do - there will be hell to pay. We are fiercely proud of our voluntary, unthanked and totally uncompensated work which very often goes far beyond a paid staffer's 35 hour week, or telecommuting from the comfort of their living-rooms, and the occasional junket to head office or a contrived conference, but it will be the end of something the WMF is so pompously proud of and refuses to give the tens of thousands of volunteers any credit for. Rant over. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:51, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Kudpung, with the amount of money that the WMF receives each year, "not enough developer time" seems a poor excuse. You are a tech company! Hire more developers!? The community does everything else. All the WMF needs to do is provide a competent platform for the community to build the encyclopedia. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:48, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

I would like to clarify however that I have no beef with the individuals that worked on this project, or even with IFried (WMF), it has been clear that the team who worked on this project has been wanting to help us from the beginning and has done a lot of really great work. I suspect that the call is coming from higher up that they move on to other stuff, and I can't blame them for that. My comments should be taken as criticism for the WMF's poor allocation of resources towards software development. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 04:54, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Lint error in New Page Review newsletter December 2019

New Page Review newsletter December 2019 includes this:

[[File:2019 NPP Backlog.png||800px|A graph showing the number of articles in the page curation feed from 12/21/18 - 12/20/19]]

The double pipe results in a Bogus file options lint error, an empty option. File declarations should not have double pipes. Please try to avoid this error in the future. —Anomalocaris (talk) 11:22, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris:  Fixing... now by bot DannyS712 (talk) 11:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

I'll also take this opportunity to add a signature so that it is archived property DannyS712 (talk) 11:24, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

And fix the div closure DannyS712 (talk) 11:34, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Should be  Done DannyS712 (talk) 12:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Guide to redirect reviewing published

I've gone ahead and published an essay-in-progress about reviewing redirects at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirects (shortcut WP:RPATROL). Consider yourselves invited to make changes and suggestions as you see fit, but it's long overdue that we have some sort of a guide to reviewing redirects. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 01:36, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rosguill: This will indeed be helpful – thank you for putting this guide together. I did have one question, though, judging from many RfDs in which I have participated: what redirects from misspellings are acceptable, RfD worthy, or R3 worthy (though I believe this is really only for egregious and implausible ones)? I can't identify a clear pattern in the discussions, and I imagine many such redirects are regularly created, so I think some addition to your essay describing these would be helpful. Thoughts? ComplexRational (talk) 01:58, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

ComplexRational, yeah we should absolutely add something about that. Typos are weird, because they're simultaneously something that is very rarely helpful (we should support the creation of redirects from misspellings that are due to people misunderstanding the name of the thing they're looking for, not so much redirects from hitting the wrong key on the keyboard), but also does very little harm compared to the amount of work it takes to have an RfD discussion. So, if it's a truly implausible redirect (e.g. multiple characters wrong, extraneous punctuation, or a cross-keyboard typo with no phonetic explanation) I file R3, otherwise I usually ignore it and move on. IMO the only misspelled redirects that are not clearly R3 material but are worth taking to RfD are redirects where the misspelled title could equally be a misspelling for something else. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:51, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I have added a paraphrase of this comment to the essay. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 03:08, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Good to keep this in mind, especially to avoid the perennial debate between WP:RCHEAP and WP:RCOSTLY; this addition neatly explains the most common clear cases. Thanks again for all your work on this. ComplexRational (talk) 15:27, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Automatically reviewing RfD tagged pages

When an RfD tag is placed on a redirect, it gets added to the redirect queue, likely because it gets tagged as an article created from a redirect. These pages don't need reviewing as they are already receiving more than enough scrutiny at RfD, but they end up cluttering the back of the new pages queue. I would propose that we have a bot automatically mark these pages as reviewed. Such a bot would be easy to program if it's allowed to mark AfDs and MfDs as reviewed as well: I'm hard pressed to think of a scenario where this causes a problem. Courtesy pinig DannyS712. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 07:51, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rosguill: Additionally, when nominating to AfD/MfD via the toolbar, pages are marked as reviewed in the background; thus, it follows that pages nominated not via the toolbar can be uncontroversially for the same reason: pages will get enough scrutiny from the deletion process. DannyS712 (talk) 08:00, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Template text for use when draftifying on suspicion of COI

I've drafted the following and figured it could be of some use:

It appears that you may have a conflict of interest with the subject of [[Draft:|Draft:]], and as such you should submit this article to be published through the Articles for Creation process.

Before editing the article further, please first disclose on your user page and on the article's Talk page whether you have received money to write this or other articles on Wikipedia, or if you have any other kind of conflict of interest with the subject.

I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. Before submitting, you should make sure that the article is fully compliant with Wikipedia’s neutrality and verifiability policies, as well as our notability guidelines. When you’re ready, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. ~~~~

source code

It appears that you may have a [[WP:COI|conflict of interest]] with the subject of [[Draft:|]], and as such you should submit this article to be published through the [[WP:AfC|Articles for Creation]] process. Before editing the article further, please first '''disclose on your user page and on the article's Talk page whether you have received money to write this or other articles on Wikipedia, or if you have any other kind of conflict of interest with the subject.''' I've moved your draft to [[Wikipedia:Draftspace|draftspace]] (with a prefix of "<code>Draft:</code>" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. Before submitting, you should make sure that the article is fully compliant with Wikipedia’s [[WP:POV|neutrality]] and [[WP:V|verifiability]] policies, as well as our [[WP:N|notability guidelines]]. When you’re ready, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. ~~~~

_signed, Rosguill ^talk 04:18, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

If people like this it would be easy enough to turn into a true template. Barkeep49 (talk) 04:23, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Here's a slight variation for new users who clearly have issues with POV on an article with the potential to be promotional, but that are not clear-cut COI cases:

An article you recently created, [[Draft:|Draft:]], does not conform to Wikipedia’s neutrality policies, and as such you should submit this article to be published through the Articles for Creation process.

Before editing the article further, please first disclose on your user page and on the article's Talk page whether you have received money to write this or other articles on Wikipedia, or if you have any other kind of conflict of interest with the subject.

I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. Before submitting, you should make sure that the article is fully compliant with Wikipedia’s neutrality and verifiability policies, as well as our notability guidelines. When you’re ready, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. ~~~~

code

An article you recently created, [[Draft:|]], does not conform to Wikipedia’s [[WP:POV|neutrality policies]], and as such you should submit this article to be published through the [[WP:AfC|Articles for Creation]] process. Before editing the article further, please first '''disclose on your user page and on the article's Talk page whether you have received money to write this or other articles on Wikipedia, or if you have any other kind of conflict of interest with the subject.''' I've moved your draft to [[Wikipedia:Draftspace|draftspace]] (with a prefix of "<code>Draft:</code>" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. Before submitting, you should make sure that the article is fully compliant with Wikipedia’s [[WP:POV|neutrality]] and [[WP:V|verifiability]] policies, as well as our [[WP:N|notability guidelines]]. When you’re ready, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. ~~~~

_signed, Rosguill ^talk 04:29, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

• The wording "or if you have any other kind of conflict of interest with the subject" should perhaps be "or if you have any other kind of conflict of interest when writing about the subject", or more briefly " or if you have any other kind of conflict of interest concerning the subject" as our problem is usually that the editor's interests align too closely with those of the subject, ie no conflict. PamD — Preceding unsigned comment added by PamD (talk • contribs) 10:41, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
• Thanks! I do like the phrasing. Template form might be handy for use outside the draftify tool(s) (although the template could also be pasted as part of the tool-delivered comment, IIUC.) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:22, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

AfD via NPP bar is on the fritz again

Seems like this happens every few months. Current breakage plays out as creating the log entry [5] but "failing to create" (or find?) "the target" for the actual discussion, which then has to be set up manually. Instance in question was not a 2nd+ AfD, just a normal 1st one. That shit ain't helpful :/ I do try to remember to just use Twinkle instead, but sometimes I don't. Is there some constant, weakly tested tinkering going on with that functionality, or why does it repeatedly break? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:16, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Elmidae, maybe this is another instance of T238025? I experienced this bug when using PageTriage to tag for AfD (also a first tagging) not too long ago. ComplexRational (talk) 20:10, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Cheers - seems to be the same issue (or most of it). Commented at the task. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:22, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Good work

Would just like to thank everyone for the huge decrease in the queue recently, as evidenced by the graph at the top if this page. Let the momentum continue. Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 12:04, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

User copying draftified article back into mainspace

2020 FC Seoul season was created without sources, so I moved it to Draft:2020 FC Seoul season. The user copied the page content back, replacing the redirect. What is the best way to handle the situation? buidhe 05:46, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Take it to AFD. Primefac (talk) 19:17, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:18, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Buidhe, In general, if they copy back to main you can't draftify again. The only options are tagging, AfD, CSD, or convert to redirect (where appropriate). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:28, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

There's at least one other option: a WP:Cut-and-paste move can (and usually should) be reversed if it can be caught in time – turn the destination page into a redirect and tag it for deletion as WP:G8, and if necessary revert the source page to a version where the former content is visible. This may not work well if the cut-and-pasted content has subsequently been edited, as sorting out the histories may then be difficult or impossible. A redirect to FC Seoul seems to be the best option in this particular case – only one sentence is sourced. HNY! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:03, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers, In general, users have the right to decline to go through AfC, regardless of how they move it to main space, if they are declining to use AfC via a cut-and-paste (which is implied by recreating in mainspace), the correct option is to pageswap the pages to restore the history and then housekeeping CSD the draft. Again, nobody is forced to use AfC unless they are a paid editor. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 23:32, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Well even that is not iron clad. It's only "you should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly;". I should eat more vegetables than I do after all. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:40, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

• AfC is optional. Draftspace is optional. If opposed in draftification, you must not insist. Read WP:DRAFTIFY. Your option is WP:AfD. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:44, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Redirect Whitelist Minimums

Thanks to the work of many (but especially DannyS712 and Rosguill) the redirect whitelist is off to a great start. As this endeavor becomes more mature adding more specifics to the guidelines seems appropriate. Rosguill added some today reflecting the standard that they've been using. After some discussion on their talk page, it seems like we should have some minimum standards (though the in practice standard will likely be higher the - just as it is for many PERMs). Rosguill has suggested:

Minimum criteria is generally over 100 redirects created with few-to-none deleted outside of housekeeping processes"

does this seem right? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:10, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Answering my own question, I would suggest that this seems right number for the in practice standard but would suggest we set the minimum standard lower - say 50. But I don't feel super strongly about this beyond wanting the NPR community in support of it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:10, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  Barkeep49, I think that based on my own practice so far, I'm really looking to provide the pseudoperm to editors with 200+ such redirects, but will go ahead and evaluate editors even if the xtools query comes back and has only 100+ redirects (and in some cases, for editors with 10k+ contributions across the project, I'll confer it with even under 100 redirects created). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:03, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• I'm not sure I see the value of an arbitrary minimum. Redirects are easy to make, and an editor could make 100 uncontroversial {{r from plural}} redirects in a day, get the perm and then go on a Neelix-level spree in a few days. I think the standard of "has a history of making good redirects" and leaving it up to admin discretion is the way to go. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  I would have no objections to this. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:01, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Redirects turned into articles are not getting reviewed

Not an issue after all

This was brought up a while back and appears to still be happening. Editors can take an article that was originally a redirect and turn it into a full article, and it will bypass our process. See, for instance, Nathan J. Robinson (which looks fine, but others where something similar happens might not be). Can we address this? Sdkb (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC) Nathan J. Robinson is showing up for me as an unpatrolled in the queue and I don't see any log history of someone going out of their way to unreview it, so I'm not sure there's actually a bug here. There might be a lag between the article being created from redirect and getting added to the queue? Anecdotally, I run into quite a few articles that get added to the back of the queue because someone converted a redirect to an article, so if there is a bug out here somewhere, it's not occurring every time a redirect is removed. signed, Rosguill talk 22:08, 2 January 2020 (UTC) My experience (though I haven't be actively looking at new pages for the last couple weeks) has been the same as Rosguill's and Nathan J. Robinson does show up in the feed for me too. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:56, 2 January 2020 (UTC) I recall, maybe 1 year ago, the oldest end of the queue of unreviewed articles were all new articles overwitten on top of old redirects, or old redirected articles reverted. Today, the oldest are October 2019, there are no old overwritten redirects. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:18, 2 January 2020 (UTC) I see 12 articles at the back of the queue right now older than 2019 that appear to have been recreated from a redirect. One other difference between now and a year ago is that we've been more actively encouraging editors to patrol from the back recently, so the backlog of such articles will get cleared more often. signed, Rosguill talk 23:37, 2 January 2020 (UTC) Oh, I realized that the reason it wasn't showing up as an unpatrolled page was that I had originally created the redirect. Sorry for the confusion, and glad we seem to have this covered! Sdkb (talk) 18:24, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Badge for RS/P (and even RS)

This might be a mad idea, but how about some kind of "badge" that could be stuck on the articles of WP:RS/P's to say that it is an RS/P (or that it is definitively not considered an RS)? I don't know if this could be extended outside of RS/P (probably not until we have longer agreed lists per earlier discussions). My rationale is that, ultimately, RS is at the heart of Wikipedia. Without RS, Wikipedia, in theory, should be blank. However, I think the upkeep/debate/discussion of even RS/Ps is not great (you get much more participation in other less important areas of WP, imho). There are many times in WP (doing NPP, AfD etc.), when you find yourself checking out the WP article of a proposed RS to decide if it is an RS – wouldn't it be useful (and interesting for the RS/P community), if they could "stamp" a badge on articles that met their criteria (or definitely did not meet their criteria). Might raise interest levels both internally (and externally) on what an RS/P (or RS) is - E.g. high profile media publications might have a "Not RS/P" stamped at the top of their article, which would show the outside world, that while anybody can edit WP, our standards for what is kept are not trivial? Britishfinance (talk) 14:58, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Strikes me as an unjustifiable pushing of our WP-internal concerns into article space. Making any kind of statement in the article about whether we consider the subject a RS is undue; it's not of interest to the reader (well-publicized kerfuffles like the Daily Mail decision excepted) and will probably look somewhat conceited - who are we to treat our internal assessments as of encyclopedic interest? - One could maybe make a case for noting that on the talk page, as that's "housekeeping space". But at that point you might just as well check on the RS/P lists. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:10, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The creation of an article is a statement, as is rating an article (FA, GA etc.) which we stamp on the article; RS is even more important to WP than an article rating, imho? RS should be at the core of everything in WP, and RS that is considered an RS/P is an important thing in WP (even more important than FA/GA imho). Britishfinance (talk) 16:54, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

But FA/GA is an assessment of the quality of the article, not the subject. The latter is not in our purview, except for internal consumption. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:04, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

That is a fair point Elmidae, although I don't think Wikipedia should be afraid to note WP:RS/Ps in a public fashion (given it is equally valuable to get public reaction/interaction on the issue); however, if others feel that it would cross a "red line", then perhaps placing on a Talk Page is a good alternative? thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 18:06, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I would be opposed to any sort of Good Housekeeping Seal. Elmidae expresses my concerns for putting it on the article proper. If someone knows enough to check a talk page for a seal they can know enough to check RSP. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:26, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

There are many senior editors, including admins, and the majority of junior editors, who don’t know about RS/P. RS should be (is) at the heart of WP. We display FA/GA (rightly) - why would we be so reluctant to display its RS status? It could help invigorate the discussion and prominence of sources in WP (which is critical to our future)? Thanks. Britishfinance (talk) 22:40, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Well I have quite mixed emotions about RSP, which I wrote about in November. Status quo bias means that if facts change it takes a huge amount of effort to change RSP. A limitation of RSP is that "so obvious they're never discussed" sources don't end up on it. This can also be a good thing as in the case of Sports Illustrated which was as RS as a sports source got for years but which I would work incredibly hard to make sure it didn't end up on there now. The media world is changing very quickly these days and by definition RSP does not. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:48, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

If RSP is not functioning properly, and not being updated/debated constantly, then we have an even bigger problem. We should not run from this. If we can’t manage a list of RS/Ps (the easiest RS list), then I think it will affect our credibility and integrity of our platform. Britishfinance (talk) 22:58, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

To the original idea: I completely disagree. I think this is an awful idea. On main articles this is wrong. It is a false comparison to FA/GA, this is a tool for readers to know that the quality of the article writing is deemed good, that they're probably safe to use the sources academically, for example, and that they're going to find perhaps everything there is to know at that page. It presents an expectation for reading. However, a badge declaring that "people who write Wikipedia think that the topic of this article is effectively bad" (because that is what readers will get from the idea that it's an unusable source) is a massive violation of NPOV. The suggestion of talkpages is theoretically better, because it's mainly editors that use them, except for the stated purpose of talkpages, shown at the top of many, which is to discuss the content of the article, not its subject. Having a badge of dishonor for the subject goes against this. We have the lists in the appropriate pages, we don't need to break our own policies and the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia to add editorial notes to articles. Kingsif (talk) 00:02, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

You on the right track, but the problem with RSP is barely scratches the surface, even in the type of web properties it targets. It would need quite a major push to build up a sufficiently deep set of knowledge, perhaps something like the top 20000 web properties, but even that doesn't scratch the surface. The main drag on it is that, while we have designed a system which has industrialised the creation of articles, we haven't done the same for knowledge discovery or more accurately reference discovery. There's no folk that are going out, searching for good references, checking particular writers; we don't do it. There is references that I see and turn up for use in several article in particular, of a type that seem to come up on a regular basis but once you have checked the authors, know they are good, you move on, but there is no central system on WP to record that kind of information, so six months later you forget it and then you need to check it again. They're is no software for normal editors to add a book that has been checked, or article that you have seen on Die Zeit, nor a description of why it is important and what facts it contains. It might be case that the subject domain is too small to make it work, i.e. too small an article, or conceptually small, but we are in the age of expanding articles. I've seen a centralised knowledge discovery system like that before. It would be great at the group level, for a group of folk working on a set of articles. It would be great also if such stuff existed. If it did exist, a quality value could be added to the article, containing a set of properties, so anybody could glance at it, and it would indicate at a glance what the article lacked. It would be great, really great, if the page could say to me, there is eight references still to add, here are the sources. Then it would be industrialised RSP. scope_creep^Talk 00:56, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Redirect User links

Bradv posted the following to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist which I'm BOLDLY moving here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:32, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Can this page use {{user2}} links for the list of users, similar to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants? – bradv🍁 21:27, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

@DannyS712: for an answer as it's his bot. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:32, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Chiming in while we wait for Danny: I think that this is a fine suggestion, but the bot needs to be able to scan the whitelist and I'm willing to bet that it's not currently set up to read user2 templates. That having been said, I imagine it should be an easy change to implement. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:38, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

DannyS712, do you have any thoughts on this? Can I go ahead and make this change? – bradv🍁 03:10, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Bradv: I didn't see it.  Investigating... DannyS712 (talk) 03:11, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Bradv: Can you temporarily lower the protection to template-protected (or use an edit filter to disallow edits by non-sysops who aren't me) so that I can sync the change to that page with the change to the bot code? DannyS712 (talk) 03:12, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

DannyS712, I've lowered it to TE temporarily - let me know when I can put it back up. – bradv🍁 03:15, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Bradv: thanks. I've merged the code change, and just need to deploy it and run it DannyS712 (talk) 03:19, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Bradv: Deployed, dry mode confirms that users are parsed correctly. Please protect, and then I'll run it once to double check DannyS712 (talk) 03:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

DannyS712, thanks! Restored full protection. – bradv🍁 03:50, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: Bot patrol pages created by users now autopatrolled

I'd like to suggest that any page created by a user that is currently autopatrolled (including admins) and was not previously unpatrolled by a reviewer be automatically patrolled by bot (DannyS712 bot III). I was trying to debug something and came across https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indian_head_bob&redirect=no - created by @Rosguill: before they became an admin. Had it been created after becoming an admin, it would have been autopatrolled. Since it wasn't, but since adminship isn't granted to those who have recently created pages that would be controversial to accept, I suggest that it would be likewise uncontroversial for a bot to patrol the page. Thoughts? --DannyS712 (talk) 00:42, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Err... seems like an exceedingly rare corner case to me. How often is that going to come up? Probably not frequently enough to bother with. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 02:24, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Elmidae: not really, any time a user becomes an administrator or autopatrolled and has created pages recently, they would be affected DannyS712 (talk) 02:29, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Some level of review of autopatrolled created articles is good and this feels like a natural way without overburdening the queue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:34, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: but any recently created articles would have been looked at when the user was applying for autopatrol/admin, right? DannyS712 (talk) 02:38, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps. I would sort of hope that if a qualified reviewer were looking at an article for whatever reason and found it passed they'd marked it reviewed. So if it wasn't marked as reviewed seems to me an indication that perhaps it wasn't checked by a qualified reviewer. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:40, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I guess what danny is on about is that sometimes someone comes along and starts prolifically churning out good quality new articles, then get noticed by an admin who marks them as autopatrolled. I see no reason why a bot should not retroactively apply the autopatrolling to any other articles in the queue that the user has created previously. In most cases it won't matter much, but in cases where someone starts cranking out taxonomy articles or the like, it can save a decent amount of time. It sounds like Danny is fine doing the legwork, which doesn't even seem that complicated. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 02:48, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, With specific regard to your last comment, not all admins who give out autopatrolled are fussed about actually doing reviewing, so that isn't necessarily the case. They might have a look at the last few dozen articles that the user created, some of which might be reviewed and some of which might not, but also might not actually tick them all off. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 02:50, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Easter egg bestowal of autopatrolled due to observed high volume actually sounds like something that might create a fair amount of such cases, and make it worth it to include them. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:14, 6 January 2020 (UTC)