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Latest comment: 1 year ago by Skarmory in topic Query
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Uzbekistan articles

Latest comment: 1 year ago26 comments11 people in discussion

The new pages feed is seeing a surge of stubs about Uzbekistan in the last 24 hours. Most look like plausibly notable topics, but most have only one source. Many that look like they have two sources are just the same source in pdf and web page versions. Most also rely on primary sources. There seems to be a very active group of new editors which is great but there’s going to be a lot of frustration and disappointment if they keep churning out stubs like this. Any thoughts on how to approach this? Mccapra (talk) 10:07, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

The latest trend seems to be articles using the exact same source and wording like Sirli Mosque, Namangan and Jonobod Mosque. Believe it or not, these are allegedly written by different users! I get that these technically meet our notability guidelines but would these not be better all merged into a list article? I mean I've looked at over 100 of these and none of them contain any unique info at all. They are stand-alone articles for the sake of having them. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 12:59, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
It might be beneficial to talk to them on their talk pages or ping them here. Maybe they'd be willing to slow down while this is being discussed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:36, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
AfC has been inundated as well with these. Curbon7 (talk) 18:11, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
This is an interesting style of editing and we should do something about it. A discussion with similar concerns was started by TheLongTone. One of the Uzbek editors seemed to be blocked for a month somewhen in January, but I couldn't find anything on it in the block log. Maybe they feel they have to hurry before being blocked again? I don't know.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 20:10, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
This was not a block, they were just (unsonsciously) editing from a blocked proxy. Nothing to do with any behavioral issues. Ymblanter (talk) 12:02, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. I already assumed and hoped it was a good faith issue. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 15:41, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
I declined about 20 of these yesterday at AfC -- all cookie-cutter articles with only a few words changed between them. They have since been moved to mainspace by Artemev Nikolay. I'm not really sure what can be done about these, potentially a mass AfD? — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 20:12, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
Ah, it appears to be an editathon going from the 20th to 26th. There's a list of the articles created in it here: meta:IbratWiki/Content_Created#English_Wikipedia. Unfortunately, from a sampling of these articles, very few, if any, are actually ready for mainspace. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 20:18, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
All in all, they are pretty poor. Standard early editathon ware? CSD on some, Afd on others. scope_creepTalk 23:16, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
Do all the mosques not meet WP:GEOFEAT due to being protected by the state and do all of the towns not meet WP:GEOLAND? Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 00:02, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
They are all templated. WP doesn't do templated or generic or cookie-cutters articles. The pushback on AI reinforces that point. scope_creepTalk 00:33, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough. In that case, let's get some AfDs going. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 00:47, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
I got into contact with two of the organizers. One was Umarxon III, who with 226 edits appears to be the most experienced editor. I'd appreciate if those Ibrat camp–wikipedia cooperation could be coordinated a bit better. I am not sure if this happens a lot. I believe to reach out to so many editors is quite an accomplishment. Only the result of so many almost identical articles is a bit disappointing.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 15:37, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment: Good day, everyone! I'm a longtime Wikimedian and an admin on uzwiki and have been closely involved in the WikiStipendiya edit-a-thon. I wasn't able to participate in person in the IbratWiki camp, though. Basically, what we have here are dozens of new users who are trying to contribute to enwiki in good faith. They're all very young (mostly high school students), and none of the coordinators of the camp has much experience editing enwiki. I wasn't able to consult them much, and it seems some of the coordinators had this unfortunate idea of teaching the camp participants how to create cookie-cutter stubs. Some of the articles they've created are decent and can be salvaged, though. (A few examples include Jasliq Aerodrome, Mehrinoz Abbosova and Turob Toʻla; still, most of the entries they've created lack in-text citations and are written in poor English). With the weeklong camp now officially over, we don't have to worry about the influx of new articles anymore. Given that they were all physically located in one place, SPIs are unwarranted. Let's cut them some slack and see what can be salvaged and what needs to go. And do let me know if I can be of any help - I can contact all the coordinators and users not only through wiki projects, but also through Telegram. (Our Telegram group is huge and very active). Nataev talk 15:41, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
    @Paradise Chronicle @Nataev If that was a edit-a-thon so
    It was an unfortunate coordination, but they kept track of their articles here, so we can clean up good. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 15:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
    I've already instructed the camp coordinators to refrain from moving drafts to mainspace. A list of all the entries they've created is available on Dashboard. I've also suggested that the participants add the {{User IbratWiki}} userbox to their user pages. Nataev talk 16:05, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

IbratWiki Edit-a-Thon - Week 2

Good day! I've just found out that the IbratWiki edit-a-thon is going to run for one more week. Apparently this week they're going to be working with a different cohort of students. I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it, but this whole event has been primarily organized by Ibrat, which is a community of language learners (funded by the Youth Affairs of Agency of Uzbekistan). The IbratWiki coordinators are just volunteers trying to help out. While they have years of editing experience in between them, I don't think any of them are fluent English speakers. So, let's cut them some slack and help them out.

Given the concerns raised above about the poor coordination of the first week of the edit-a-thon, what do you think should be done differently this week? For a start, I've told them not to create cookie-cutter stubs. I've also suggested that the participants primarily focus on improving the articles and drafts created by the previous cohort, as most of them are in a rather sorry state. Meanwhile, I'll go ahead and revise the Meta page to reflect the fact that there are two cohorts of students. Nataev talk 15:00, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Nataev. Thanks for checking in with us. I think bullets 1 and 3 in LordVoldemort728's comment above would prevent almost all problems that were encountered this time. To recap, #1 is publish all articles in draftspace (with the prefix Draft: in the title) instead of mainspace (and don't forget to add the {{subst:Submit}} template to the top), and #3 is mentioning the editathon on their user pages so we know they aren't sockpuppets, perhaps with the {{User IbratWiki}} userbox. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:15, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Got it. I've passed on the word. Thank you! Nataev talk 18:59, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Resilience in dealing with frustration

Latest comment: 1 year ago8 comments6 people in discussion

I am wondering if there are any NPPs here willing to share their most effective ways of responding to/dealing with the frustration and personal attacks of editors in a thoughtful and non-escalating way. While it is often possible to effectively communicate with editors, it can get difficult and challenging when these exchanges get personal. Admins, of course, deal with these problems all the time, though I think that NPPs are often subject to a different kind of saber rattling where their authority is questioned even more aggressively. Any thoughts or experiences are welcome. Thank you! Ppt91 (talk) 18:03, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

There are many more prolific reviewers than me (@Onel5969: of note!), but what works in my case is walking away for a while and doing something else when the fur begins to fly. I guess it is easy to say something like that, but it may be harder to actually do. I firmly believe that a successful Wikipedia editor (and NPP member) will have the hide of a rhinoceros and the heart of a dove. My $0.02, for what it may be worth. Geoff | Who, me? 18:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Focusing on easy reviews is one strategy to avoid conflict. Easy reviews include very obvious notability passes such as species articles, and politicians that pass WP:NPOL. Another strategy is, when questioned, to be willing to get a third opinion or engage in a consensus process (such as AFD). This helps to make sure that your interpretation of policy is correct, and it can be helpful for the other person to hear it from multiple people. Shoot me an email with details of your conflict if you want some additional tips. I couldn't find it on your talk page. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:44, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
There's also a list of easy reviews at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Reports/Easy reviews. Thanks. VickKiang (talk) 09:43, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
@Glane23@Novem Linguae@VickKiang A belated note with many thanks. I appreciate it! Ppt91 (talk) 01:16, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
In addition to all the advice above, I would also suggest avoiding fast-paced engagement. The person at the other side might also need time to cool down. So it's ok that your first response is relatively quick, but space out subsequent follow ups. Consider delaying your second reply by one day or even more. MarioGom (talk) 15:29, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
@MarioGom Very good point. Thanks. It's easy to get entangled in a back-and-forth and inadvertently escalate despite one's best efforts to do the exact opposite. Ppt91 (talk) 22:38, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
A few points: be sure you understand the nature of your decline. Whether the subject fails an SNG or just GNG, be sure you can explain what it is and why. If you're circumspect in your review you should have no problem. Then, just explain this issue to the author/ submitter. Your decline or rejection isn't personal and no one should have hurt feelings. That said, please have compassion for the editor who, whether paid or not, is somehow invested in the draft. They know little about Wikipedia and will often express anger, accuse you of bias, and make threats. If you know this is routine you might not let it bother you. Finally, don't be invested in being right or defending your decline. If the author questions you about it, explain your rationale and then leave the matter. If the author re-submits let someone else have a crack it. Anytime editor behavior crosses a line, report to COIN or ANI as needed. Stop reviewing when you need a break from vitriol; come back when you want to. This is just business; please treat it so. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

When should newcomers be prompted to add sources?

Latest comment: 1 year ago36 comments11 people in discussion

Hi y'all – the conversation above about the nifty script @Phlsph7 wrote, led me to think this might be a good place to start a conversation about the kinds of edits that warrant references being included within them.

Specifically, I'm curious to learn: in what cases do you think someone adding new text to an existing article would NOT warrant them accompanying that new text with a reference? E.g. when someone is adding new content to the lead section of an article, per WP:LEADCITE. When someone is adding new content to plot sections, per WP:PLOTCITE. [i]

 
A screenshot of an early design of the initial reference check experience (mobile)

I ask the above on behalf of the Editing Team team who is beginning work on a new project that is intended to offer people who are new to editing Wikipedia actionable feedback when the edit(s) they are in the midst of making could defy policies.

The first "check" will prompt people to add a reference when they are attempting to publish an edit that involves them adding new content to an existing article. See proposed UX that's pictured.

In line with the above, we're trying to craft the initial set of "rules" that will determine when this "check" is triggered, thus the question I'm posing here.

Okay, please let me know if there is any additional context that I might be able to offer that would make it easier for you to engage with the question above. And of course, if you think there is a better place for me to ask this question, please let me know.

---

i. Thank you to @Sdkb for sharing these examples. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:53, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Comments from Sdkb

Here are two other instances I didn't think to mention in my Phabricator comment: disambiguation pages and external link sections.
If you're looking to role out the feature gradually, you could also approach this from the other end, of what definitely should have a source added. For that, it's helpful to look at the categories at WP:BURDEN:
all quotations. It seems perhaps tricky but not impossible to computationally determine when a quote is being added.
all material whose verifiability has been challenged. This would be reverting someone who has removed your addition to restore that addition.
all material that is likely to be challenged. This might be tricky to algorithmically determine. Perhaps articles in categories that indicate contentious topic areas, or using a semantic analysis of some sort to predict.
all contentious matter about living and recently deceased persons. "Contentious" might be tricky to algorithmically determine, but living people are easily identified via Category:Living people.
Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:36, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
Here are two other instances I didn't think to mention in my Phabricator comment: disambiguation pages and external link sections.
Oh, excellent. I've added these additional cases/exceptions to the ticket in Phabricator (T324730) where we're drafting the initial heuristic. Thank you, @Sdkb.
If you're looking to role out the feature gradually, you could also approach this from the other end, of what definitely should have a source added. For that, it's helpful to look at the categories at WP:BURDEN...
To be doubly clear we're on the same page, when you say "gradually" are you referring to an approach that would seek to minimize false positives to start? [i]
Assuming the above to be true, I wonder what – if any – risks you could seeing in starting with this kind of approach?
A couple of initial thoughts...
  • Maybe experienced volunteers would become frustrated if Edit Check was too permissive...it was being too lenient.
  • On the other hand, I wonder if experienced volunteers would grow frustrated if they saw Edit Check was being too stringent and causing unsuspecting newcomers to add references in places that people reviewing edits would consider disruptive/unhelpful.
For context, this question is very much top of mind for the team as we think through T329988: Decide how sensitive reference check should be to start.
---
i. Said another way: to start, limit the scope of edits that would cause the reference edit check to be activated to edits that we think the largest population of people would agree warrants references and then overtime, broaden the scope to include more nuanced kinds of edits PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
are you referring to an approach that would seek to minimize false positives to start? Almost, but not quite. The way I'd frame it is that those scenarios are the ones in which citations are the most important, so there is the most upside. The downside risk of recommending too many citations is more forgivable in that tradeoff, but not necessarily less likely.
Overall, too many references is generally less of a problem than too few, since removing them is very easy. That said, one way I could see editors becoming annoyed is if there is a false positive recommendation that keeps misleading newcomers and causing different people to add an unneeded reference over and over. This isn't currently an issue with the tool activating only when you add new text (which will only happen once for a given piece of text), but it could be if edit checks in the future start applying to existing text in an article. At that point, I think you'll want to build in some way for experienced editors to flag a passage that the tool thinks needs a citation and say, "nope, actually this is fine, stop recommending a change". Analyzing the collection of flagged passages could provide useful insights about edge cases.
Also, I should add, one risk of starting with the WP:BURDEN categories would be that those categories are filled with a lot of heated controversy and sensitive topics, so if you're worried about rocking the boat with a beta feature, maybe those aren't the places to start.
Best, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:12, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Comments from Elmidae

  • Generally speaking, I would suggest sticking to a precautionary principle here and identifying only those instances where referencing is very likely to be unnecessary. I suspect that approaching this from the other end (i.e. trying to determine whether referencing might be required) may be next to impossible. I'm more pessimistic than Sdkb about the "tricky" bit when trying to determine when an addition may be "contentious" or otherwise in need of referencing. Assuming the cautious approach, it seems to me that edits that should not trigger the notice might include:
- lead and plot sections, as noted
- short description
- image captions (the image metadata is supposed to contain any refs)
- gnoming - punctuation & capitalization changes, wikilinking & piping, formatting, adding external links or citations (natch), and possibly a cut-off for altering/adding only 1-3(?) characters
- if it is feasible to hook this into a spelling or grammar checker, then edits that fix such issues could be identified and excluded
--Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:19, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
Generally speaking, I would suggest sticking to a precautionary principle here and identifying only those instances where referencing is very likely to be unnecessary.
@Elmidae would it be accurate for me to understand you using "precautionary" in this context to mean something like the following?
"I think it would be prudent for this 'reference check' to be more sensitive to start?"
Assuming the above is accurate, can you please say a bit more about what is leading you to see more value in implementing a more stringent filter to start?
One idea: maybe you're thinking that minimizing the risk of people adding new content without references is of greater value/concern than the risk of experienced volunteers growing frustrated/becoming disrupted as a result of people adding sources in places that don't warrant them.
Assuming the cautious approach, it seems to me that edits that should not trigger the notice might include...
In the meantime, I've added the edit types you named that should not cause the reference check to become activate to phab:T324730.
Oh! And thank you for sharing this context...I think this might be the first time we're talking? If so, my name is Peter. I work as the product manager for the Editing Team ^ _ ^ PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
@PPelberg (WMF): sorry for the delay! Yes, by "precautionary" I meant that it seems advisable to me that this process start with the supposition that any given edit may need a source, then whittle that down by excluding those cases where none may be needed. This is based on the impression that the other way round (assume that an edit will not need a source, then try to find those that do) is much more tricky and fuzzy to parse. Plus, false positives (excessive suggestions to source) I would consider to be less of a downside than false negatives (missing instances where a suggestion should have been given). Admittedly this is coming from the perspective of an editor who will not have to see these suggestions, so take with a grain of salt :p --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:57, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
I appreciate you following up with the thinking that informed the "precautionary principle" you named above, @Elmidae and I'm sorry it's taken me two weeks to return here!
To bring a bit of closure to this particular decision, we're going to start with an approach with Edit Check that minimizes false positives and is implemented in ways (T327959) that empower volunteers, on a per-project basis, to evolve the heuristic (T324730) to become more robust/complex (read: minimize false negatives) over time.
Note: you can see the thinking that informed the above and the trade offs we're accepting in moving forward with this approach in T329988#8654867. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
I see that Phlsph7 below weights this just the other way round. Is there some general idea within the team on what is considered the bigger issue - excessive suggestions or too few suggestions? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:57, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
@Elmidae: great question and you asking it is creating an opportunity for me to make explicit what was was implicit in what I shared above...
To start, we think excessive suggestions is the bigger issue.
This thinking is built on the following assumptions (copied from phab:T329988#8654867):
  • Following an approach that minimizes false positives will increase the likelihood that newcomers and Junior Contributors will intuitively see the prompts Edit Check is presenting them with as relevant/applicable to the change they're wanting to make. As a result, we assume these people will be:
    • More likely to trust/consider/engage with the guidance/prompt Edit Check is presenting them with
    • Not be further discouraged from returning to edit again because they found the experience to be straightforward
  • Newcomers and Junior Contributors are going to be less likely to detect false positives and therefore, more likely to become confused by them (read: Edit Check being triggered unnecessarily)
  • Experienced volunteers will be more motivated to improve upon/contribute to a simple system that works in expected ways most of the time rather than a complex/robust system that works some of the time.
    • See: Gall's Law: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system."
  • The Editing Team, in partnership with volunteers, will feel empowered to make Edit Check more robust over time (and therefore minimize false negatives) because doing so will feel relatively fast and lightweight. Where "fast and lightweight" in this context mean the Edit Check heuristic (T324730) will be:
    • Represented in natural language (as well as in code) to increase the range of volunteers who can audit and iterate upon the rules that comprise it
    • Configurable on a per-project basis so that volunteers can ensure Edit Check conforms with local conventions and policies (T327563) without needing consider how these decisions could impact other projects
    • Auditable on a per-project basis (T327959) so that volunteers can evaluate how Edit Check is performing "in production" (T324733) and adapt the heuristics in ways that increase the likelihood that it is causing people who are new to accompany the new content they are attempting to add with a reference (T325713).
PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:46, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments from Phlsph7

Such a prompting system sounds like a great idea since many inexperienced users are not familiar with the requirements for references on Wikipedia. The technical problem seems to be similar to the problem faced by the script to highlight unreferenced passages: the newcomer should be prompted if the text they intend to add would be highlighted. The most basic way to implement such a prompting system would be: check whether the added text contains a reference; prompt if it doesn't and don't prompt if it does. This approach would result in many false positives (as when a summary of a referenced section is added to the lead) and false negatives (as when two paragraphs are added at the same time but references are only provided for one).
As was already mentioned, this could be refined depending on where the paragraphs are added. My script currently excludes the lead and sections with the following names: 'Further reading', 'See also', 'External links', 'References', 'Bibliography', 'Notes', 'Selected publications', 'Selected works', 'Plot'. But I'm sure more could be added. If the text is added as part of an existing paragraph, one could check whether this paragraph has references and "citation needed"-tags and whether the text is added before or after the references. Regular paragraphs and probably lists should be checked but image captions and individual table cells in most cases not. There are many different templates that could be taken into account. For example, Info-boxes usually do not provide references for every single fact while for quotation templates, references are essential. Another relevant factor could be the size of the added text: if someone adds 5 words to a paragraph, chances are that this is just meant to clarify an existing statement and to introduce a new one. A further question would be how to deal with explanatory footnotes in contrast to actual references. Even a refined system is bound to lead to false positives so prompt messages should be carefully formulated to take this into account. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@Phlsph7: One section name you can add to the exclusions is "Synopsis," which is preferred over "Plot" for nonfiction works. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:07, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
It's probably not worth pinging newcomers about citing, but I always thought you were supposed to cite the content of nonfiction works. I've always made sure I cited a page range in the nonfiction book, a book review, or some other source. (t · c) buidhe 18:20, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@Sdkb: Thanks for the info. But I think Buidhe is correct that WP:PLOTCITE and WP:PLOTSOURCE only apply to works of fiction. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:36, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
I think it somewhat depends on the work and one's personal editorial views (e.g. this essay doesn't necessarily have full community buy-in). When I was writing Boys_State_(film)#Synopsis, for example, I didn't feel compelled to source the synopsis section — the documentary is telling a story, and the only way to source it would have been to cite reviews that just used the film itself, which would have been rather redundant. Some synopsis sections may need references, but I don't think we can be so certain that all or almost all need them that we should have tools like edit check or your script flag them. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:45, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
If a passage is highlighted, it only means that there could be a problem, not that there definitely is a problem. In this regard, the script is not meant to replace human judgment but only to assist users in finding passages that may need references.
First off, @Phlsph7, I feel inspired by how you've described the HighlightUnreferencedPassages tool. Specifically, I appreciate how by framing the tool as you have, I (someone who might consider using it) start to think about it as a way of helping me direct/allocate my attention rather than trying to relieve me of exercising judgement altogether and just setting me up not to have my expectations met.
Now, I'm going to respond to the points you raised above in separate comments in an effort to make exploring each a bit easier... PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

False positives and false negatives

The most basic way to implement such a prompting system would be: check whether the added text contains a reference; prompt if it doesn't and don't prompt if it does. This approach would result in many false positives (as when a summary of a referenced section is added to the lead) and false negatives (as when two paragraphs are added at the same time but references are only provided for one).
Well put and I agree with what you described above. A resulting question: what risks can you see with a tool like Edit check having too many false positives?
I ask the above with two thoughts in mind:
1. I assume you've spent some time thinking about where on the imagined spectrum of "too many false positives" and "too many false negatives" you think HighlightUnreferencedPassages existing would make it most useful
2. As I mentioned above [i], the Editing Team is actively thinking about how sensitive to make the first edit check to start. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
I think there is an important difference between my script and your project: scripts are used mainly by experienced users while your targets are inexperienced users. I assume that, for experienced users, having more false positives is not so much of a problem since they are able to discriminate between true and false positives on the spot. But false negatives are more of a problem since more time for an in-depth reading would be required to spot them. In this regard, the red color is just a tool to direct their attention. But new users may naturally rely much more on what an automatic message prompt says. False negatives will be handled as before: by other editors who check the edits later. False positives, on the other hand, may confuse the new user and make it less likely for them to continue editing since they may not know what to do and may not want to spend time to figure it out. So I speculate that, in your case, a more conservative approach would be better, i.e. having fewer false positives with the risk of having more false negatives. This may also help you avoid or reduce criticism by experienced users who do not like this change. But, of course, getting the right ratio between false positives and false negatives is a balancing act. Depending on the feedback and how well it works, you could slowly expand to cover more cases.
Two factors are how reliable the detection is and how severe the violation of WP:V is. For example, adding a full paragraph without sources should be easy to detect and is a severe violation. But adding an unsourced entry to an otherwise sourced list is more difficult to assess (do the sources of the subsequent entries cover it or not?) and is probably less severe. My script would highlight it but you may decide not to if the list has sources at the end or the beginning.
As a side note: you may also find the discussion of my script at Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations/Archive_27#Script_to_find_unreferenced_passages helpful to judge some reactions to false positives. Initially, the script did not exclude the lead section, which was criticized. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Mmm, well put and I agree with everything you stated above@Phlsph7.
In fact, I started to quote and respond to specific statements you made only to realize halfway through that I was agreeing with and restating all of what you already said.
We (the Editing Team) met today to decide how sensitive the reference check ought to be to start with and ended up converging on what you describe here:
...a more conservative approach would be better, i.e. having fewer false positives with the risk of having more false negatives. This may also help you avoid or reduce criticism by experienced users who do not like this change. But, of course, getting the right ratio between false positives and false negatives is a balancing act.
Doing the above assumes that, as you said, we'd iterate upon this heuristic over time to iterate towards the "balance" you described. We hope this "iteration" could happen in partnership with volunteers at specific projects and we'll be thinking through the logistics of this a bit later in phab:T327959.
Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations/Archive_27#Script_to_find_unreferenced_passages helpful to judge some reactions to false positives. Initially, the script did not exclude the lead section, which was criticized.
This is the first time I'm seeing this conversation; thank you for drawing my attention to it.
A few questions/ideas this conversation has me thinking about:
  1. What might we do to: A) minimize the likelihood that, as you said, people use Edit Check mindlessly and B) minimize the harm that can be caused by the subset of people who, I assume, will invariably use the tool in this way?
  2. How might we communicate the limitations of Edit Check in prominent enough ways that the experienced volunteers who are evaluating it are likely to see and consider?
  3. Might it be worthwhile for the Editing Team to consider omitting edits to lead sections from the initial reference check heuristic, as it looks like you decided to do?
Note: I do not expect you to engage with the above! I'm mostly speaking them aloud for my own memory/accountability. Of course, if you or anyone else feels inspired to join in on my quest to answer them, I'd value that ^ _ ^ PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the detailed feedback! As for questions 1A and 1B: One thing you can do is to communicate the limitations clearly in the description of the project. Another thing would be to formulate the prompt messages carefully to get the editors to think about the issue instead of telling them what they did wrong. So instead of saying "this is wrong" you could say "there may be a problem". This has also certain disadvantages since simple messages are often easier to understand than carefully worded messages.
I'm not sure about question 2. One rather obvious point would be to make its purpose and limitations prominent in the project description, assuming that the editors assessing it read that description first. I guess its purpose, at least initially, is not to ensure that all edits are free from violations of WP:V but to catch the most severe violations and to make new editors aware of them.
As for question 3: What to do about the lead is a difficult decision since the lead is the most important part of the article. In many cases, WP:LEADCITE does not apply since the new content added is not referenced in the body of the article. But checking this automatically would be very difficult to impossible. If avoiding false positives is a high priority then you probably should exclude it. Or, maybe better, you decide after you have your first prototype to see how serious it is. A further way for you to handle the issue would be to make the user aware of the problem by giving a different prompt message. Something like "please either provide a source or ensure that these claims are supported elsewhere in the article (see WP:LEADCITE)". Another way would be to exclude it for new editors but still list it in the filter log so that experienced editors know what to look for. The idea would be that you have 2 filters: a weak one for prompts given to new editors and a stricter one for the filter log. This way, you minimize false positives for new editors adding content and minimize false negatives for experienced editors going through these logs.
Strictly speaking, my script does not exclude the lead in all cases: the lead is still highlighted for drafts and stub articles. The reason is that, in these cases, it's less likely that WP:LEADCITE applies. Phlsph7 (talk) 06:03, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
You bet, @Phlsph7 ^ _ ^ And thank you for being patient with me over the past couple of weeks.
Now to the points you raised...
One thing you can do is to communicate the limitations clearly in the description of the project.
Great call. I've added a reminder to WP Talk:Edit check to hold @Whatamidoing (WMF) and I accountable to doing the above.
Another thing would be to formulate the prompt messages carefully to get the editors to think about the issue instead of telling them what they did wrong. So instead of saying "this is wrong" you could say "there may be a problem". This has also certain disadvantages since simple messages are often easier to understand than carefully worded messages.
Mmm, yes: design the prompt messages to actually prompt people to consider/think about whether the change they're attempting to make warrants a reference rather than simply telling them what to do. The latter does little to volunteers learn/internalize the ways of editing Wikipedia.
I guess its purpose, at least initially, is not to ensure that all edits are free from violations of WP:V but to catch the most severe violations and to make new editors aware of them.
Would you be okay with us using this language, or some modified version of it, on WP:Edit check or mw:Edit check? I find what you wrote to clearly and succinctly capture how the Editing Team is currently conceiving of this project...
Or, maybe better, you decide after you have your first prototype to see how serious it is. A further way for you to handle the issue would be to make the user aware of the problem by giving a different prompt message. Something like "please either provide a source or ensure that these claims are supported elsewhere in the article (see WP:LEADCITE)".
Oh, interesting. I've filed T331583 to hold the Editing Team accountable to revisiting the prospect of doing what you described above.
The idea would be that you have 2 filters: a weak one for prompts given to new editors and a stricter one for the filter log.
Two filters...can you please say more about this? Specifically, when you say ,...minimize false negatives for experienced editors going through these logs. are you meaning something like the below?
"Experienced editors will be more likely to develop trust and find value in Edit Check if they can see the edits which are likely to need references, but Edit Check prompts were not shown. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Please feel free to use any of my formulations here for the project.
To me, it seems that prompting new editors to add sources and having a log of possible violations of WP:V are, in principle, 2 different projects: you could have one, or the other, or both. The filter log could have the same purpose as the prompt system (catch the most severe WP:V violations) or a different one (make it easier to find all kinds of WP:V violations). And you have 2 quite different target groups: inexperienced editors for the prompts and experienced editors for the log. The experienced editors can deal with more complicated cases and they are probably less confused by false positives (if it is clearly communicated to them that the log is far from perfect). And, of course, the more violations the log captures, the more useful it is (assuming that the false positive rate is not too high). Maybe tags could be used in the log to indicate whether the inexperienced editor was warned or not.
But having two different filters also has disadvantages. For example, it makes the project more complicated and, if the log has the same name as the prompt system, it may be confusing why it also logs cases where no prompt was given. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Excluded sections

As was already mentioned, this could be refined depending on where the paragraphs are added. My script currently excludes the lead and sections with the following names: 'Further reading', 'See also', 'External links', 'References', 'Bibliography', 'Notes', 'Selected publications', 'Selected works', 'Plot'.
Would it be accurate for me to understand the rationale for how you arrived at the section exclusions you named above as the following? I ask this seeking the policies that support these exclusions so that I include them in phab:T324730.
  • Further reading: "By contrast, Further reading is primarily intended for publications that were not used by editors to build the current article content, but which editors still recommend." | Source
  • See also: "The "See also" section should not include red links, links to disambiguation pages (unless used in a disambiguation page for further disambiguation) or external links (including links to pages within Wikimedia sister projects). As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body." Source: Source
  • References: "This section, or series of sections, may contain any or all of the following..." | Source
  • Bibliography: "A bulleted list, usually ordered chronologically, of the works created by the subject of the article." | Source
  • Notes: See "References" above.
  • Selected Publications: I'm not sure about this one...?
  • Selected Works: I'm not sure about this one...?
PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
My main reason for these exclusions was rather practical: I didn't exclude them in the beginning and the script produced many false positives. These sections contain mainly lists of items that currently do not need references. For example, Wikipedia does not require a reference that a link added to a "See also" section is relevant. Or new books added to a "Selected Publications" section do not require a reference to support that this book is actually about this topic of the article. There could be cases where contents added to these sections require references but they are quite rare. If your solution was sophisticated enough to spot such cases then maybe you wouldn't need to exclude these sections. But this may not be worth setting as a goal since there are few cases.
I'm not sure about the specific policies but your suggestions make sense. For "Selected Publications" and "Selected Works", you could use the same as for "Bibliography" unless you find something better. There could also be more synonyms for the section names listed above. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:39, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Others

If the text is added as part of an existing paragraph, one could check whether this paragraph has references and "citation needed"-tags and whether the text is added before or after the references.
Oh, checking for the presence/absence of citations or [citation needed] templates within the paragraph the person is adding text to...great idea! I've added this to phab:T324730.
The basic principle of how my script handles this is roughly the following. I'll use the example of a regular HTML-paragraph but the principle is the same for lists and various templates. If you want to find out whether a sentence (or a word or any type of string) somewhere in a paragraph is unreferenced, you keep going to the right of that sentence until one of three things happens: (1) you encounter a reference, (2) you encounter a citation needed tag, or (3) you have reached the end of the paragraph. If (1) happens then the sentence is referenced. If (2) or (3) happen then the sentence is unreferenced. This algorithm works in most cases to get the intended result. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:39, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
This algorithm assumes that the sentence itself does not contain references somewhere in the middle. If it does then the algorithm can be used for the parts of the sentence that do not contain references. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:39, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
Regular paragraphs and probably lists should be checked but image captions and individual table cells in most cases not. There are many different templates that could be taken into account. For example, Info-boxes usually do not provide references for every single fact while for quotation templates, references are essential.
Great call and agreed; I've added the cases you shared above to the ticket we're drafting the initial heuristic that will determine if/when newcomers are prompted to decide whether the edit they're making warrants a reference or not (phab:T324730).
If you wanted to double down on this, you could go through the most-used templates and decide in each case separately. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:42, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Another relevant factor could be the size of the added text: if someone adds 5 words to a paragraph, chances are that this is just meant to clarify an existing statement and to introduce a new one.
Agreed. We're actively investigating whether we'll be able to specify not only words or bytes added, but whether we can use the number of sentences that someone is adding as a filter as well. See more in phab:T324363. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Even a refined system is bound to lead to false positives so prompt messages should be carefully formulated to take this into account.
I think the point you're making here is astute. In fact, it leads me to wonder: How might you expect to be able to audit the efficacy of the system Edit check is introducing? E.g. might you expect to see a set of configuration pages like are currently offered for various abuse filters, like Special:AbuseLog? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I'm not very experienced in this field. As a rather general comment, I think experienced editors may need to go through individual edits and decide for each one whether the filter should have been triggered. Their judgment can then be compared with whether the filter was actually triggered. This way, you get some feedback on your ratio of false positives and false negatives in comparison to the number of edits. Something like the automatic abuse log you mentioned would be useful to get feedback on false positives. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:46, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Other comments

SDKB summarized the cases where a cite is required which I'd guess is about 5% of additions. I really don't see this as a good or workable idea. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:50, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I would go that far. The larger the text added, the more likely they are adding content that needs support and risks being problematic. Though one of the smallest byte changes could be the most troublesome, removing or adding 'not', which obviously changes the entire meaning of a sentence. Slywriter (talk) 19:01, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
I would think any addition that adds or changes a number in the text or infobox should generate a prompt to cite source. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:06, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
  • The lead is the most significant part of the article because that's what the reader sees first and often they don't go any further. But there's no mechanical linkage between the lead and the body to ensure that they are in sync. So, exempting leads from citation requirements is a big loophole in the verification scheme. If you have automated nagging about updates to the body then this will tend to place even more focus on the lead.
Andrew🐉(talk) 19:16, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
  • I'll begin with a question, and follow-up with a suggestion. Will this tool be able to verify the growing number of foreign language books that are being used in en.WP? This is a real problem considering the obscurity of some of those sources, our inability to determine their reliability, and difficulty in obtaining them. To my suggestion: I agree 100% with Andrew in that the lead is the most significant part of the article. If we cannot verify material in the lead, we may well be on a goose chase. Some of our articles are more like a collection of detailed theses rather than a summary of topics; i.e., tl;dr territory. If we had a tool that could scan the lead in a way to verify the added material with a cited source in the body (or perhaps an internet scan with an evaluation of the verifiable source) we would have a better feel for where to go with the tool.
Second question: will this tool begin scanning at the beginning of article creation at AfC and/or namespace? If so, then is it possible to use keywords that trigger a prompt for the editor while they are editing? For example, on Twitter, certain keywords prompt a pop-up that advises the author if the term is offensive, etc., whereas our pop-up could advise the author relative to WP's needs. We could do something similar at AfC relative to terminology, copyvio and the need for citations and verifiability, and possibly do the same when a new article is being created in namespace – IOW nip the problems in the bud while helping authors at the same time. The tool could be limited to article creation by new editors with say, under 2500 edits, or no limit if it involves creation of or adding material in contentious articles. Keywords could be set to trigger a prompt if the editor is not autopatrolled, or it could go a higher in user rights such as NPP reviewer+. The algorithm will add an inline tag specifying what caused the prompt. Keywords could be used on superlatives, insults, copyvio, or anything else the algorithm finds challengeable. Typically, if the lead is properly verifiable with citations in the body, there is likely little to no issue. Atsme 💬 📧 12:24, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Meeting

The mw:Editing team is hosting a meeting about their plans for a new mw:Edit check feature in the visual editor this Friday and hopes to talk about this subject more. If you'd like to have a real-time conversation with User:PPelberg (WMF), this would be a good opportunity.

If you are interested, please see mw:Editing team/Community Conversations#3 March 2023 and plan to join the meeting (17:00 UCT/9:00 a.m. California). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:16, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Newspapers.com - Now available without application

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

For those who are unaware, Newspapers.com is a newspaper database which contains more than 840 million pages from over 22,000-plus newspapers. Newspapers.com is normally a subscription service but it was also previously available to editors who applied for access through the Wikipedia Library. Some changes recently went through and, provided you have access to the Wikipedia Library, the database should be available by default without an application or subscription.

Eligibility: Any editor can use the library if they meet a few basic requirements:

  • You have an account that is a minimum of 6 months old
  • You have made a minimum of 500 edits to Wikimedia projects
  • You have made at least 10 edits to Wikimedia projects in the last month
  • You are not currently blocked from editing a Wikimedia project

It should automatically appear in your library here, but the direct collection link can be found here.

I HIGHLY encourage editors to check out the site and what it has to offer. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:44, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Glenn Fleishman

Latest comment: 1 year ago10 comments6 people in discussion

The article Glenn Fleishman was deleted at AfD. Today it was undeleted by DavidLevinson with the edit summary undeleted article - Glenn Fleishman is not unnotable. Additions in progress, more later. Undeleting an article legitimately deleted at AfD because of an admin's personal opinion seems an abuse of privilege. Surely the correct way to have an article on Fleishman if you thought he was notable would be to create a new article in draft and submit to AfC. John B123 (talk) 21:11, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

An admin doing a self-refund probably doesn't violate policy. Seems that their only change so far though is this small addition. That probably isn't enough to avoid G4. Perhaps they'd be willing to move this to draftspace until it is ready for mainspace? –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:22, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
A few things bother me about this. Firstly an admin undeleting an article that was deleted at AfD based on their personal opinion makes AfD a waste of time. Why should people bother participating at AfD if the consensus could potentially be overturned if an admin doesn't agree with it? Secondly, per WP:TOOLMISUSE, admins should not use their tools in a non-neutral way. Clearly having an opinion that there should be an article on Fleishman and undeleting the article is not acting neutrally. Lastly, restoring to mainspace with the article marked as reviewed (thanks to Pppery for marking it unreviewed) comes across as attempting to minimising third party scrutiny. --John B123 (talk) 23:45, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
While I certainly don't like admin cowboy undeletions (which David seems to have a history of), I think you're reading too much into restoring to mainspace with the article marked as reviewed (thanks to Pppery for marking it unreviewed) comes across as attempting to minimising third party scrutiny - most likely he was not aware of the mew page patrol process at all, or the intricacies of the way undeleting a page worked. I add lots of slipped-through-the-cracks pages back to the queue, and see nothing malicious about it. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:54, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Ummm...a refund into mainspace is absolutely an abuse of admin power. Self refund makes it worse especially as no admin undeletes directly into mainspace. It goes to draft or user. Slywriter (talk) 00:08, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
The article should have been restored to draft space in my opinion. It was deleted at AfD for a reason. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:40, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Pop it back into AfD? Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 04:31, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
I think draftifying it is the least dramatic option. The other option is CSD G4. I don't think the article has been changed enough to qualify for a 2nd AFD. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:50, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
I did bold. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 09:22, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. --John B123 (talk) 21:14, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Resources

Latest comment: 1 year ago11 comments8 people in discussion

Okay, I'm not sure how many of you struggle with this, but one of the biggest obstacles I have when doing patrol is when the sources are in a foreign language. Oftentimes a machine translation will be very helpful in determining notability, but sometimes it's quite difficult. Might we create a page, and link it on our Resources tab, where we can list, by language, editors that speak a non-English language and would be willing to get pinged to look at certain articles? If so, I'll create the blank article, with sections by language and then others can add to it (sections) or list themselves under a section they'd be willing to focus on. To me the big ones are the languages which use an entirely different alphabet (Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, etc.). Thoughts? Onel5969 TT me 14:06, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

What does AfC do for situations such as these? Hey man im josh (talk) 14:26, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Hey man im josh mostly I believe people either use machine translation or leave for another reviewer. We also have Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/List of reviewers by subject that includes reviewers other languages to help when machine translation is not good enough. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 16:10, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Agree, foreign language sources are a particularly big problem when you patrol people's category pages, however I always use machine translation to avoid any possibility of error but we need to work on it. Creating a separate page for non-English speakers to review pages would be helpful and make our lives easier. M.Ashraf333 (talk) 14:28, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
"use machine translation to avoid any possibility of error"? Really? I thought that in general we didn't have that much faith in machine translation yet. PamD 15:42, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Hhhm, although machine translation has flaws but it helps a lot in understanding the context of the content. M.Ashraf333 (talk) 15:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
I agree with PamD that machine translations tend to contain errors. It is a tool to help a non-native speaker understand the jist of an article, but it has significant limitations. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:23, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
With Google translate the accuracy varies from language to language. The more common a language, the more people use it and suggest a better translation and so it improves. For example translations from Spanish are pretty good whereas from Catalan they are pretty poor. In my experience, machine translations from languages that use a non-latin alphabets are too poor to be relied on. --John B123 (talk) 21:39, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I agree that machine translations are iffy, but I thought I was making it clear that I used them to get the gist of an article, not to verify specific facts about the subject. For example, if I'm looking at an article about Joe Russia, and all the sources are in Cyrillic, if the article has a parenthetical translation of "Joe Russia" in Cyrillic, I'll cut and paste that into the Cyrillic version of the article. If I find numerous matches, then I'll look at the machine translation and see the context of those matches. If there is no parenthetical translation, I'll simply do the machine translation and look for matches. However, this can be problematic, as the machine translation can leave out characters in the translation, so F5 searches don't always indicate how detailed the article is about the person. Onel5969 TT me 00:27, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I’d be happy to share my languages on such a resource page. Mccapra (talk) 07:41, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Tagging for missing photographs with NPP toolbar?

Latest comment: 1 year ago7 comments3 people in discussion

Is this possible with the NPP toolbar? If there is another solution, it would be great to know. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 03:17, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

If there is a template (that is added to the article page) for this, then we can add it to the toolbar's tagging section. Till now, I've been adding image-requested=yes to some of the wikiproject templates (via the Rater script). -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:56, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
I found this template. Image requested. You just need to add a set of brackets {{}} to it. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 04:26, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Maybe presented better like this {{Template:Image requested}}.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 04:30, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T330728
PageTriage/Page Curation toolbar doesn't currently do any talk page tagging, only article tagging. WP:RATER is currently the best user script for talk page tagging, although I think it only does WikiProject tags. I created a PageTriage ticket (phab:T330728) to discuss this idea further. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:55, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you MPGuy2824, I just learned how this is done over the rater script. Didn't know it was possible like this. And to Novem Linguae, thank you for opening a discussion for the PageTriage. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 20:35, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, but the Image Requested one is better, as then it also appears on the talk page banner. Else it is just mentioned in a hidden category. Just an update. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:18, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Autopatrolled for stub creators?

Latest comment: 1 year ago13 comments8 people in discussion

Autopatrolled for stub creators has lead to quite some discussions on several venues. Has this been discussed here? I don't see it beneficial for wikipedia if stubs are created for years (by the same editor). Stubs are likely deficient in some way and in my opinion should get a review so they can get tagged for deficiencies.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 03:24, 28 February 2023 (UTC) :I have added the (by the same editor) after Novem Linguae responded.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:24, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Microstubs are a thorny issue that has risen to the level of arbcom, e.g. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct in deletion-related editing and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale. I'm not sure which way the wind is currently blowing on this issue, but hopefully those links are useful. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:02, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Stubs are likely deficient in some way - where does that idea come from? A well-constructed stub is only deficient in that it does not cover the topic as extensively as could be done, which is the base state of the vast majority of articles. As noted before, someone who can reliably create stubs that have no other issues is just the kind of person we do want to have the autopatrolled right. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:07, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
As long as notability is met. My problem is that some mass-stub creators were not verifying notability prior to creation. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 20:35, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
I do not mean that stubs are deficient per notability, but for information. If stubs are created lets take the example of the one of the species as mentioned by Joe. What about if an editor creates thousands of stubs on species in danger but in the very vast majority doesn't include the info that they are in danger, nor since when they were considered to be in danger or why their scientific name is like this (often for a habitat or some scientist) nor since when they were considered a species in danger? In the articles I reviewed (out of NPP, as stub creator has autopatrolled), all this info was accessible in the sources used. When I review, I often add wls to other articles so they are no orphan no more. To such species articles I'd likely do that as well and encourage the editor to include such info etc. before they request and be granted Autopatrolled. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 10:41, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
Speaking as an administrator who has been known to grant autopatrol, I don't think someone whose main creation work is creating stubs qualifies for the permission according to the criteria as stubs are often not "clean" articles. This is qualitatively different than short articles which sometimes get mistaken for stubs. All that said, I would just note that New Page Patrollers have an interest in autopatrol but I find it a little out of scope for NPP and so I would hope meaningful discussion would be held elsewhere. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:01, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
There's a difference between a 200-word stub with 3 decent references and a one-sentence stub with one source. The former is fine, but there are several reasons why autopatrolled shouldn't be granted to people who mainly create the latter, namely: these kinds of articles do not take a long time to review and don't pose an excessive burden to the NPP queue; in the past UPEs have used rapid stub creation to game the system and obtain the right illicitly; and writing short cookie-cutter stubs on "notable-by-default" topics such as geographical locations and members of legislative assemblies does not necessarily demonstrate a broad understanding of notability and other content policies. There was a case a few months ago where an editor was granted autopatrolled after creating a number of very brief stubs on Oscar winners (which were fine). However, they did not have a strong grasp of English and when they created longer articles, they were full of factual errors and so poorly written as to be unreadable. Spicy (talk) 23:40, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
See a previous discussion of this. As one of the most active admins at WP:PERM/A, I don't share the view that there is something wrong with most or all stubs, and I'd be interested if anybody has any empirical evidence for that claim. An editor who creates hundreds of verifiable stubs on notable topics (species for example) clearly has a strong case for autopatrolled because they have a significant impact on the size of the backlog and individually reviewing each of them is a waste of patroller time. Indeed they have a much stronger case than an editor who has created 25 short-to-medium-length articles over the course of a couple of years and wants to round out their collection of hats, which is what most requests for autopatrolled are these days. Both types of request are susceptible to gaming, which is a separate issue.
A problem can arise when someone granted autopatrolled for stub creation switches to writing substantial articles, and it turns out they're not competent at that. But the same problem can happen when someone granted it for writing long articles on individual topics starts an ill-conceived mass creation. Or when someone granted it for writing good articles about apples starts writing terrible articles about oranges. The problem isn't stub creation, it's that autopatrolled is permanently assigned and almost never reviewed. – Joe (talk) 06:09, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Without trying to tackle the question of stubs, IMO one of the the criteria for autopatrol is a bit in reverse. IMO someone who an experienced editor who has not created a large quantity of articles is the safest to grant the right to. But one of their criteria is having created a large amount of articles. North8000 (talk) 13:57, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

That misses the only real reason for granting the right though - lessening reviewer load. Someone who only creates the occasional article does not fill the NPP queue. Exempting someone who adds substantially to the queue, however, saves review work. After all, the right is not meant to be a badge of honour but a tool to mitigate reviewing effort. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:11, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I knew/know. That relates to the "need" aspect. My point was that regarding "safe to give?" that criteria works in reverse. North8000 (talk) 03:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
I would also support a change into that that quality is weighed more than quantity when admins have to decide on editors who apply for autopatrolled.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:19, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
IMHO someone creating of large amounts of new articles in a Wikipedia that is somewhat mature is a reason for extra scrutiny rather than a reason/requirement for bypassing scrutiny. North8000 (talk) 21:42, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Repeated draftification of the same article

Latest comment: 1 year ago12 comments5 people in discussion

@Onel5969, M.Ashraf333, and Silikonz: Recently, I stumbled upon User talk:DifficTones while looking at that user's SPI case. I noticed that the three of you on separate occasions moved pretty much the exact same article from mainspace to draftspace. I'm thinking it may have been more productive to nominate the article to WP:AFD at some point. Getting the article deleted via AfD has the side-benefit of allowing us to use WP:CSD#G4 to speedily delete any future recreation of the article—rather than requiring us to whack-a-mole the drafts as they are repeatedly recreated. While not a policy, I would also note that WP:DRAFTOBJECT states that A page may only be moved unilaterally to the draftspace a single time. If anyone objects, it is no longer an uncontroversial move, and the page needs to be handled through other processes, such as deletion, stubbing, tagging, etc.

With all of that being said, I'm mindful that a recent RfA candidate made an argument that "double-draftification" is appropriate in some circumstances and that WP:DRAFTOBJECT was not written based on any well-attended discussion (see Q13 at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MB). I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. Mz7 (talk) 23:03, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi. I think there are two separate issues at play here. First, I see there are several messages on the user talkpage, but when I look at the draft history, on the first three, I'm only seeing a single draftification, the one on 2/25. Not sure what happened, but the editors who draftified it had no clue that it had ever been draftified before. The fourth time is similar, although the reviewer knew there was an existing draft about something with the same title. So, if they didn't check the existing draft, they also had no idea that the article had been draftified. It could simply have been created in draftspace, and then recreated in mainspace. Which happens all the time.
I didn't see the RfA discussion about this (I had already cast my vote prior to that question being posed), but I would agree that sometimes DRAFTOBJECT is not written in stone. But I would only do so in cases of UPE or COI editing. The only other instance I can see is if an article is wholly unsourced, gets draftified, and then is returned without improvement. In those instances, I feel WP:VERIFY and WP:BURDEN trump DRAFTOBJECT. I am not shy about sending stuff to AfD, and when I've draftified something and it gets returned without improvement, I usually send it that way, although I am a believer in Wikipedia:Using deletion as cleanup, as sometimes that is the only course of action available to get an article to be improved. Onel5969 TT me 00:21, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Regardless, Silikonz's draftication (see page history of Draft:Draft:Megha Bhardwaj 2) was done only two minutes after page creation, which seems sub-ideal. Now, creating pages repeatedly in mainspace hat are not ready are inappropriate, but I also had a look at their move logs and found 1, 2, 3 in the past week merely less than twenty minutes after page creation (one of the linked ones is an unsourced BLP, but IMO a good way to deal with BLPs would be to promptly remove the offending material, nominate it for WP:BLPPROD or deletion within an hour, etc). M.Ashraf333 also drafted this less than an hour following page creation. Now everyone makes mistakes and I also really appreciate the thankless work that everyone does in reducing the backlog, the NPP guidance is never a firm rule, WP:IAR is always a thing, and reviewers have good reason to suppose that this user in creation might be a bad-faith user, or has a WP:UPE and WP:COI. Regardless, given that none of these are explained during the draftications (if UPE/COI or other reasonable presumptions of the user not acting in good-faith is the reason to not follow minimum draftification rules, then these should at least be pointed out in some venue...), I think that experienced users with advanced permissions not following NPP guidelines is a bit sub-optimal. Now these obviously aren't the biggest deal, but I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts on this. Sorry this is too long, thanks. VickKiang (talk) 06:34, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
I'll leave it to folks that have more thoroughly analyzed it to comment on this case. But I do favor the extension to 1 hour. And also that we should not categorically prohibit a 2nd draftification. But IMO if we know that an article should exist, then it should be in mainspace even if it is in bad shape. But the big "limbo" zone is when that has not been determined and in that case I think that the burden for putting in wp:notability references to establish it should be on the zillions of editors, not thrown onto an overloaded NPP'er to have to determine that they don't exist. And due to other flaws in the system, draftification is the best way to implement that. North8000 (talk) 14:21, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
I think that "limbo" zone is pretty central to my motivation for starting this thread. Nominating an article to AfD does require a bit more effort on the part of the reviewer than draftification because of WP:BEFORE: at AfD, the onus is on the nominator to argue for non-notability, whereas an article can be sent to draft space immediately if the page creator hasn't added sufficient sources to demonstrate notability. The main conflict I see right now is that the written rules state that draftification is sort of like PROD: you can do it once, but once it gets contested, then you can't do it again. Is that guidance accurate? Are there cases where we should try to "enforce" a draftification after a page creator objects by recreating the draftified article in mainspace? Mz7 (talk) 22:11, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Probably the best solution is to develop a mindset that step one in developing an article is finding GNG references, and that is a main part of developing a article. Without that you've done nothing worth keeping. Just like I can't say "here's a windshield wiper. I want it to be given the status as a partially built automobile".
Removing or modifying any categorical rule against multiple draftifications would also be good
Finally, getting rid of or modifying wp:before would be a good idea. North8000 (talk) 18:26, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
I think that the proscription against re-draftifying does need to be done away with, and I also think that WP:BEFORE should be done away with, but only during NPP patrolling. Onel5969 TT me 01:08, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Worth an RfC on both? I'd agree on both counts... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 06:14, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Would it not save us all a lot of heartache if you could only move articles from Draft to Mainspace via the AfC process? I've seen a number of drafts where the user's gone to AfC, lost patience and banged the article into mainspace (and I've seen a number where the AfC history is lost in the process). Draft:Sachiyo_Ito is, I think, one such. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 06:13, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

AFC (inadvertently) has a higher bar. I don't think that it should be required. Sincerely, — Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs)
It's a good idea in theory, but there are many quality content creators who gradually develop drafts and move them to mainspace afterwards. In this case, entirely prohibiting moves from drafts to articles except by AfC reviewers would create a negative effect (though they can also techically use userspace if they desire, but much fewer editors use userspace to develop). However, my other concern is that in addition to North8000's points (and I'm not sure about mandating AfC), wouldn't new users just do cut and paste moves to space? That will still be objecting drafting, and many reviewers would still opt for the practices of WP:DRAFTOBJECT and blanking a cut and paste mainspace move with a db-r2 tag. Or is cut and paste moves also prohibited by some way? IMO such moves are bad, but if these are additionally prohibited that would basically make drafting much more powerful in that article creators couldn't object it in any way unless they submit from AfC (if so, that seems strange because it would make drafting far different compared to BLARs and PRODs, which are also not subject to a community or admin review process but can be easily reverted; also, if it's drafted improperly by a non-NPPer who don't know what they are doing, who give the article creator no info on how to improve, there is no option except to submit to AfC, which has a high standard and will take months)? Thanks. VickKiang (talk) 21:06, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

IMO Eliminating the ability to create a Wikipedia article except through AFC is a gigantic change that would never pass and IMO not a good idea. But I think that there are two other good ideas above. One is indicating that the wp:before is not intended for NPP situaitons (don't forget wp:before is just a suggestion and not enforcable) and also let NPP put articles back into draft. If we did a through job on drafting, providing rationales, addressing concerns and supporting the RFC IMO both could probably pass. North8000 (talk) 22:01, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

As I said above, I agree both of Onel's cunning plans. And fine FINE my passing thought on AfC wasn't the brilliantest of ideas. Alexandermcnabb (talk) 07:03, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

User:John Cummings

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello everyone, there is a ANI about User:John Cummings's promotional content creation that may be of interest to NPP. Frankly, I'm shocked at the promotional nature of the recent content from this editor. Having worked with many new editors, I would argue that if any of the recent pages created by User:John Cummings came through NPP they would not fair well. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 08:50, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

thank you for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:23, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Recent addition to WP:NPP

Latest comment: 1 year ago9 comments7 people in discussion

Does everyone agree with this recent addition to WP:NPP, or does it need more discussion? I don't look forward to folks throwing around the shortcut WP:NPPCON in potential ANIs against NPPers. This addition seems to have a POV that NPPers should never double draftify, never double BLAR, etc. Perhaps this is true, but I feel this needs discussion first. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:18, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it needs a carveout for cases of COI/UPE, but otherwise seems reasonable. signed, Rosguill talk 17:23, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and added language to that effect in a relevant footnote. signed, Rosguill talk 17:26, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Nicely worded and looks reasonable. scope_creepTalk 17:48, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
I think, personally, it was a mistake for such extensive content to be added boldly rather than through consensus, and I would discourage it happening in the future, but I think it's a fine addition when reviewed in retrospect. It is my understanding that the community has made very clear, in unfortunately drama related venues, that they are against NPP doing double of anything, really (excluding the circumstances Rosguill mentioned). Regardless of how the community has let us know, I otherwise see no issue with it. The rest of the content of WP:NPPCON is consistent with what I've learned at WP:NPPSCHOOL or at various other guidance pages. It doesn't hurt to have a more thorough reminder at WP:NPPCON considering the work we do. —Sirdog (talk) 05:39, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I agree it was perhaps a bit too bold, but I don't disagree with the actual content of it. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:31, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I think it's an excellent summation of the current consensus regarding NPP. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 17:11, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

It's wide-ranging with some good stuff in it and other stuff that has structural issues and can have bad intended consequences. IMO for addition to such a prominent and influential place it should receive a more granular review. To do that we could take it out and then put it back in piece by piece. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

That seems sensible. -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:04, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Be on the lookout for articles created through ChatGPT and other LLMs

Latest comment: 1 year ago7 comments5 people in discussion

New page reviewers should be aware of this ongoing ANI case related to the use of ChatGPT (or another LLM) to create articles with falsified citations. Make sure to follow through and actually check cited papers when reviewing articles, don't just assume that a plausible-sounding paper title is real. In particular, closely inspect articles whose creation or expansion follows a pattern of "full content first, citations later", as this can be a sign of LLM use. signed, Rosguill talk 18:27, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Wow. It's great that they provided prior examples, I highly suggest every NPPer read it thoroughly. And I also highly recommend we all bookmark GPTZero to be able to run articles through there. It'd be great if one of our programming gurus could make a quick link, similar to the one to earwig, that we could use on suspicious articles. Onel5969 TT me 20:15, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Good idea. I've added a link to GPTZero to User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/NPPLinks. It is now the third link down, named "AI/LLM check". Unfortunately that particular website doesn't make it easy to pre fill anything, so if you guys find a better website, please let me know. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:28, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I ran into a possible LLM article that was noted at Draft talk:FCLTGlobal, and I was wondering whether we should consider putting together a maintenance tag to help track these? oh hey, somebody made that already, just needs tobe added to twinkle ASUKITE 20:18, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
While I'm thinking about it, I could almost see cause for an RfC to enable draftifying articles that need to be checked for this (sort of in the same vein as our COI policy). ASUKITE 20:57, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Any draftify RFC is likely to be quite messy. The community is divided straight down the middle on AFC, draftspace, and draftification. A "wait and see" approach may be better here. If the volume of these AI generated articles keeps going up, some discussions and best practices will probably emerge on their own, perhaps at pages such as WP:ANI or WT:LLM. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Why would an RfC be needed? Unless you're proposing mandatory draftification with no option to be moved back to mainspace. But honestly if an editor is persistently making fake articles, draftification only hides the problem when it would be better to discover the hoaxes fully and get them blocked. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Possibility for change in page curation?

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T333752

I noticed that if I convert a redirect to a dismabiguation page I'm given the option to mark the page as reviewed. I haven't done so the few times it's happened but it's made me wonder if there should be something that prevents this from being an option in the first place. If I created a page through other methods, it won't let me self-review (which is a good thing!) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 05:41, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Almost everyone who is NPP would also be ok to have autopatrol. In fact, you could easily use NPP and an alt account (meat/sock puppet) to circumvent patrol entirely, so NPP should only be granted if the person could also reasonably be trusted with autopatrol, imv. (t · c) buidhe 06:03, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
Eh, autopatrolled is overrated anyways. Having a second set of eyes doesn't seem like the worst idea. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 06:25, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for reporting. I've created a new ticket to explore this potential loophole. I'm traveling today so can't do detailed testing, but I've described the testing I think we should do in the linked ticket. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:35, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Redirect backlog needs attention!

Latest comment: 1 year ago14 comments9 people in discussion

Currently, while the article queue is largely under control and stretches back only to early March (once you ignore the incorrect timestamps at the back), redirects stretch to last December. Reviewing redirects is much easier than articles (but see WP:RPATROL for more guidance), and I imagine that if editors already actively working on reviewing articles add redirects into their work this backlog will disappear quickly. signed, Rosguill talk 00:55, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

It's been dropping for the last month, though, I think we were at 14k+ back in February. But definitely less time consuming per review than articles. Onel5969 TT me 01:13, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, it is down from its peak (See [1]). But it would be better if there were more reviewers on it. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:50, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
This is another opportunity to encourage editors to hop on Discord if they want to ask questions while reviewing. There's plenty of active NPP members there that can help those who have any questions about reviewing redirects. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Sorry for the (probably) lame question, but what is 'Discord'? Geoff | Who, me? 19:24, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Discord, although I don't have the link to the Wikipedia server on hand. signed, Rosguill talk 19:54, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
There's a link and a lot of useful info at WP:DISCORD. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:02, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
WP:DISCORD has the info for the main Wikipedia discord, and this invite link has the info for the NPP Discord. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:01, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
I didn't know about the one! Thanks NL Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 21:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Completely dumb question; but where does one find the redirect feed? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:49, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
It's the same as the regular one at Special:NewPagesFeed, go to "Set filters" and make sure "Redirects (not RfD)" is ticked; if you would like look at ONLY redirects, untick the other boxes. signed, Rosguill talk 19:52, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, sorry, I admit I saw that some bot was involved in that work and thought they could cope with it. I'll try to do also some redirects in the future.03:40, 4 April 2023 (UTC) Paradise Chronicle (talk) 03:40, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
The bot only reviews redirects created by folks in the Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect autopatrol list. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:42, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Ahhh, interesting. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 03:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Question RE: AfC

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello, I review AfC drafts and I am also a NPP reviewer. I am wondering if it is ok to review an article that I previously accepted at AfC? ––– GMH MELBOURNE TALK 06:39, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's allowed. It gets asked at WT:AFC occasionally and folks have different views on it (some prefer two sets of eyes, others prefer not to add to the backlog), but it is not against any rules. Thanks for checking. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:08, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Page curation script adding {{old prod}} to talk pages of articles flagged with BLPPROD

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T334144
Resolved

Per {{old prod}}'s documentation, it is not to be used for BLPPRODs, so this appears to be an error with the page curation script.Bensci54 (talk) 15:09, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I wrote a patch for this just now. Should be fixed in a week or two. Thanks for reporting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:29, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Addition to the NPP tutorial regarding ECR content

Latest comment: 1 year ago6 comments6 people in discussion

I've added a new section to the NPP tutorial to provide guidance for reviewing topics covered by WP:ECR; in principle, new page reviewers (and AfC) should be enforcing this restriction. signed, Rosguill talk 05:29, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

That is quite a bit of detail. If this is kept, I think it could probably be shortened to a sentence or two, then the bulleted list, to reduce complexity and cognitive burden. Something like

Some topics on Wikipedia are covered by extended-confirmed restricton (ECR), either per an Arbitration Committee decision or following community consensus. These topics can only be edited by accounts that are extended-confrimed (500 edits and more than 30 days old). If you notice articles in the below topic areas by brand new editors, you are encouraged to report the articles and editors to WP:AE, where admins will probably delete the articles and warn the editor.

I'd also be fine with this topic not being included in the NPP instructions at all, which are arguably too complex. I'm curious to hear what folks think, and am fine with any outcome. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:11, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
I undid without seeing this but agree with Novem but on skepticism that it needs inclusion and that if does it should be short. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 06:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Admins won't "warn" a new editor who does not have any way of knowing about our topic area restrictions. AFAIK it's only appropriate to report if someone knows about the restriction and ignores it. So the first step would be draftify and topic page notice. (t · c) buidhe 23:25, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah I don't think this needs to be included. In general help materials on wiki tend to be too long because people want to cover every edge case, but you want to keep the tutorial short enough that people actually want to read it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 23:29, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
I can follow Rosgills concern, specially with this rather public ArbCom case running. NPP is likely one of the first to see new articles that are not yet under ECR protection and I believe a few explanatory phrases could be helpful. I believe that several who apply for NPP don't know that such ECR articles exist and where assistance can be found for them.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 00:19, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Draft Article Draft:Tokunbo_Omishakin vs. Current Article on same subject Toks Omishakin

Latest comment: 1 year ago11 comments6 people in discussion

The same user, Thoppy234, appears to have both submitted a draft biography, Draft:Tokunbo_Omishakin, which is pending review, and also moved a version of the same draft into mainspace, Toks Omishakin, where another editor promptly began editing: Toks Omishakin edit History. What do we do in this circumstance? Geoff | Who, me? 15:16, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I'd trot off to AfD with it (I don't think he's a WP:GNG shoe-in by any means) and note the issue with the draft and mainspace move. An admin will hopefully then clear things up. I had a couple of these today, funnily enough - draftified, then moved back into mainspace by means fair or foul. It's irritating, TBH... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 15:56, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree that GNG is probably not met for this person. Anyone want to try AFD noms for these? I'm not quite sure how to send both to AFD and link them, and I'd hate to mess it up. Geoff | Who, me? 17:19, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
I can do it for you and make a good case to junk it. Is there a second article? scope_creepTalk 17:26, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, scope! Yes, the second effort is a draft pending review: Draft:Tokunbo_Omishakin. Geoff | Who, me? 17:30, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
I have edited the shorter Toks Omishakin article to remove the ELs. The Draft article still retains these and includes a lot of unsourced content. Paul W (talk) 17:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
In these situations, I usually BLAR the draft to point to the mainspace article, then proceed as normal with NPP review. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:30, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Be my guest. Blank-and-redirect is yet another new one on me today, so I'd love to watch how you do it and learn. Interestingly, the draft author (same as the mainspace author) has posted on the draft Talk page that their preference is replacing the mainspace article with the draft version at this point: Draft_talk:Tokunbo_Omishakin. Geoff | Who, me? 21:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
  • @Glane23: In general 'cut-and-paste moves' like this should be history-merged, which you can request with {{history merge}}, though the overlapping edit histories would make this particular case more complicated. You could get away with a BLAR as Novem Linguae suggests if only one person has edited the older version, otherwise they technically need to be merged to maintain attribution for copyright purposes. Perhaps we need to add something about this to the guidelines? – Joe (talk) 09:00, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
    Additional complication is that the published article, Toks_Omishakin, has been sent to AFD. Is it less complex to wait out the AFD, then decide exactly how to deal with it, as the draft is pending review? (Not to mention that the draft appears to have the same notability and referencing issues as the AFD-d article...) Geoff | Who, me? 12:13, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
    Not really. If the article isn't deleted, then it has to be history merged. If it is, then merging them now saves the closing admin deleting both versions (or potentially forgetting to). I'll just do it now. – Joe (talk) 12:41, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

NPPers and page movers on the redirect autopatrol list

Latest comment: 1 year ago9 comments3 people in discussion

There's some discussion above about the size of the new redirect backlog. Both new page patrollers and page movers are expected to regularly create redirects as part of their roles, and since both are fairly difficult PERMs to get, should be trusted enough to do so without review. Should we perhaps automatically add users who have one of those rights, but not autopatrolled, to the redirect autopatrol list? – Joe (talk) 08:53, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

There are a lot of people with page mover and NPP rights that don't actively use them, so I'm leaning against this. For those who are fairly active page movers, they usually end up showing up at the top of the list for redirect creations and eventually end up being added to the list. I would however support all administrators being added to the list by default.
What I'd prefer to address the issue, other than more users reviewing redirects, is for more people to become aware of the redirect autopatrol list and for more users to self-request or nominate others for the pseudoright. Based on the requests archive, there's already been more requests in 2023 than any other past year. That's good, it helps, but the problem with that is that only 2 (of the 41 requests) were made by someone other than me. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:50, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Hey Hey man im josh, where is the "the list for redirect creations"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:24, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Firefangledfeathers: There's a bot that updates Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Reports daily. The page includes a section for unreviewed new redirects by creator (top 10). Hey man im josh (talk) 15:38, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm guessing you're doing something like:
  • Review the list every now and then
  • Check out the top few names
  • See if their redirects are all good
  • Nominate them for the list
Is that about right?Subscript Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:25, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
That's a part of it, yeah. I review a lot of redirects so I sometimes end up becoming familiar with certain names. I also recognize editors from other places and interactions on Wikipedia when their redirects appear in the queue and, based on past experiences, I'll often search to see how many redirects they've created. I'll also just search editors with a high edit count sometimes, just to see if they do have a history of productive redirects. I'll check pretty much anybody I recognize as a quality contributor whose name appears in the queue. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:31, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. Do you have a rough threshold number of creations for nominations? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:22, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
100 problem free redirects is generally the minimum requirement. However, if someone had created 200 redirects and 40 of them were deleted they would not likely be a good candidate. I'll give you a more solid example: Say I had created 200 live redirects (this is the type of search I'd run on xtools) and I had the same 17 deleted pages that I do now. Of my 17 deleted redirects, the rationales were:
  • 2x G6 deletions (technical deletions, usually deleting a redirect to move an article to the redirect's location)
  • 1x G8 deletion (the target no longer exists, often as a result of the target deleted at AfD)
  • 14x G7 deletions (author requested deletion)
  • 1x custom rationale (this one was requested at WP:AFC/R by a ban evader)
These deletions don't point to any issues, whereas if they were all deleted at WP:RfD, then it would be appropriate to keep manually reviewing my redirects. Sometimes a deleted count can be misleading because of G6 deletions or because xtools, unfortunately, shows deleted article pages in this section. So you'll end up with a deleted count inflated by articles that were deleted which, at least in my opinion, should not be taken into account when considering whether a user's redirects need to be manually reviewed.
Really I just ask myself, has this user displayed a history of competency when creating redirects? Is there any benefit to the NPP team manually reviewing their redirect creations? If no, and they pass the threshold, I'll make a nomination. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:46, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
Many thanks. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:54, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

nppbrowser has been revivified

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Old-timers here might remember nppbrowser, a tool created to help in reviewing. It has been brought back at nppbrowser.toolforge.org. Note: the data is refreshed once every 2 hours. It's search function is what we are hoping to get into Special:NewPagesFeed. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:54, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

COI/UPE question

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Who would folks say are some good COI/UPE detector editors out there? There's a question on my talk page which smells okay to me. But I am far from an expert. Onel5969 TT me 18:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

@Praxidicae, MER-C, GeneralNotability, and Blablubbs: to pick a few. – Joe (talk) 07:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. Onel5969 TT me 09:31, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Six months without a backlog

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

We've often celebrated getting rid of a backlog, only to see it climb again as soon as the drive ends. But looking at the graph, we've now kept the number of unreviewed articles under c. 2000 for more than six months. This is an astonishing feat – the first time it's happened in at least 7 years, probably much longer. Well done, everybody! – Joe (talk) 08:07, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

:-D -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:42, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Now there’s just 11k redirects to review and then there won’t be any backlogs in NPP. But seriously, well done. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 19:10, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Regarding LLM tests and false-positives

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Out of curiosity, I checked my most recent article through GPTZero to see what would happen, and wow, it seems that I'm an AI all along! GPTZero states that the entire second paragraph is "likely to be written entirely by AI" (don't know if this is a compliment or insult), and I write with the "full content first then cite" method outlined by Rosguill above as a potential sign of LLM use. In all seriousness, just be aware that while this process does seem good to be able to detect LLM use, it also seems easily susceptible to returning false positives. Curbon7 (talk) 20:24, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Oh jeez, another GPTZero test claims another of my recent articles to have been entirely written by AI. Call me Arnie I guess. Curbon7 (talk) 20:26, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

May 2023 Redirect Backlog Reduction Drive

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Just in case you missed the discussion in the section above, I'll give you a full section here. 😉 You can sign up for the drive here. The aim of the drive is to reduce the redirect review backlog, you must hold New page reviewer rights to participate. The leaderboard is updated by TolBot, and will hopefully (if everything works) account for all redirects reviewed and tagged for deletion (through Page Curation only). Any twinkle CSDs/PRODs/RfDs, will need accounting for at the end of the drive, which will be on the talk page. There is also a need for the redirects to be re-reviewed, around 10% should be re-reviewed, which you find instructions for how to do on the drive page. Look forward to seeing you at the drive, Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 17:28, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
NB - Re-reviewing is not required in a redirect drive. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 07:18, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for organising this so quickly! Will it be promoted in a newsletter like the previous drives? – Meena • 11:18, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
@Meena, I've got an MMS requested to go out on the 20th and there are no plans to promote it in a newsletter, as the next one doesn't have any sign of coming out by the 20th. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 12:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion
New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive
 
  • On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Article patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Sign up here!
  • There is a possibility that the drive may not run if there are <20 registered participants. Participants will be notified if this is the case.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Stats on outcomes?

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I'm wondering if the NPP group has collected stats on the outcome of reviews? IE, n1 are CFD of one sort or another, n2 are passed, n3 are BLARed, etc. I suspect these can be compiled through Quary, but I'm not familiar enough with the model to be effective there. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:56, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Would take some work. You'd want to get the counts of all these categories over a time period (such as the year 2022). Some counts would be easier to get than others. All "mark as revieweds" or all "articles created that haven't been deleted" would be easy to get. CSD would be medium to get... You'd probably want to check the deletion log for CSD keywords. BLAR would be hard. BLAR isn't in Special:Log at all. You'd have to check edit summaries for keywords that correlate with BLAR, and wouldn't get 100% accuracy. Anyway, you could ask for help at WP:QUERY. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:57, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I absolutely hate the Wikidata interface. This used to be so easy. Thanks so much for listening. Mccapra (talk) 05:51, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

wikidata is not easy(I've never understood how to do anything there)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Feel free to add an old-fashioned interlanguage link; EmausBot will do the Wikidata work to fix it. For example:
TJRC (talk) 19:19, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh great thank you I’ll try that it looks nifty. Mccapra (talk) 21:10, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

NPP specific tags

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Greetings. Last month I had the thought to develop a set of tags for different concerns on new articles, with messages more specific to NPP patrolling, rather than just any editor tagging a page. I brought it up on the Discord server, and received some limited feedback. I think these would help folks not involved in NPP better understand the NPP process. I've put them on a userpage: User:Onel5969/Preliminary review templates, and would appreciate feedback. I think discussion on whether or not they should be used should be discussed here, while thoughts/comments/suggestions on wording, etc. should be discussed on the userpage's talkpage. The comments which took place on Discord have already been added there. I've created ones for the most common tags I place on articles. There might be others which are used frequently. There are others where I think the existing tags suffice, e.g. Advertisement, All Plot. Look forward to your thoughts. Onel5969 TT me 14:25, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't really understand how these would be an improvement over the current templates? They cover the same issues, the only difference is the wording. Namely all of them now contain a veiled threat that the article will be removed from mainspace if the issue isn't rectified, which a) isn't a particularly nice thing to say to people writing articles for us and b) isn't exactly true (all of the outcomes listed are subject to consensus-building processes). I know there's a "may" there, but still. Also the wording seems to consistently confuse the concepts of notibility (of topics) and verifiability/referencing (of articles), erroneously implying that there is a hard requirement of three cited sources. The existing templates stick closer to policy and have benefited from years of collaborative fine-tuning of the wording; I think there really ought to be a strong reason to move away from them. – Joe (talk) 18:46, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
@Joe Roe (mobile) Have you left out a "not" in "threat that the article will be removed from mainspace if the issue is rectified"? PamD 19:11, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. – Joe (talk) 14:06, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Redirect drive

Latest comment: 1 year ago26 comments10 people in discussion

A while ago, there was some talk of a redirect drive - is this something that may be happening anytime soon due to the large amount of unreviewed redirects? – Meena • 11:09, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

sounds like a good idea--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:49, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Seconded that it's a good idea. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:50, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Pinging previous backlog drive coordinators to get this on their radar: @Buidhe and Zippybonzo: –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:00, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I’m up to coordinate it, definitely need one. @MPGuy2824, seen as you helped coordinate the October drive, to get this onto your radar too. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 18:37, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
If I remember right, there were a couple of folks who volunteered to help last time, just a bit after me. I think I'll give them a chance first. If no one comes forward in a week, then count me in. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:36, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
I assume it would be a lot of work to organise a drive. When, in terms of an estimate, do we think this could be up and running? – Meena • 10:37, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Sometime around about May or June I would estimate, assuming there are coordinators around in the next week or so, otherwise it'll probably have to be June. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 11:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
I was one of them. Coordinating the event doesn't seem like a whole ton of work if you don't need to do the scripting aspect of things, which Buidhe has done an excellent job at in the past. I'm happy to help out in whatever way I can. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:38, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
@Hey man im josh, I'm able to set everything up and do awards, would you be able to handle the answering questions and such. I'm aiming for May, seen as there is a window of time to do it. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 16:59, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you but I've actually decided not to take on any responsibilities for the upcoming drive. Hey man im josh (talk) 02:50, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm happy to say that you can now sign up for the May 2023 drive here. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 17:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Good news, everyone! The backlog is now slightly under 10,000 redirects. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:40, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Silly question: how do you review redirects at the back of the queue? The green [Mark this page as patrolled] button doesn't show up as it does for new redirects. J947 † edits 00:10, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
That's odd, it shows up fine for me. signed, Rosguill talk 00:20, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Capricorn seems to be saying that the January redirects are too old to patrol? J947 † edits 01:13, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
@J947 they can be patrolled, to clear out any bad quality ones, they just are indexed already, so they are pseudo patrolled so to speak, being that they look patrolled to the uninformed user, but they need reviewing to ensure they are quality redirects. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 06:38, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
@J947: You cannot use Capricorn to review redirects older than a month, but it's still a useful tool for tagging the redirects. You'll need to use the page curation tool that comes up to mark them as reviewed (which can also now tag redirects). Hey man im josh (talk) 14:08, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I still don't see how to review. Are you saying that article page curation sidebar can now be used for redirects? I don't see how I can make it show up; it isn't already there. J947 † edits 23:49, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Please go to Special:NewPagesFeed and set the following filters: "Namespace (Article), State (Unreviewed), Type (Redirects (not RFD))". Choose one of the redirects from there to review. If you still have problems seeing the page curation toolbar there, then reply back with a link to the redirect. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:31, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's my default setting, and it isn't showing up. For any redirect. The toolbar did show up for an article when I first asked on 21 April, but it doesn't now at all. Not a big deal, as the action of adding Rcats means it gets autopatrolled by the bot anyway, but I'm confused that neither the [Mark this page as patrolled] nor the page curation toolbar show up specifically for redirects older than a month. J947 † edits 05:34, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Redirects older than a month are should be removed from New Page Patrol's purview. Do you have an example of a redirect that shows as unreviewed in the NewPagesFeed, but for which the toolbar does not show up? -MPGuy2824 (talk) 05:42, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
FTWBA. J947 † edits 05:57, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Shows up for me. I think it’s a client side issue. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 06:07, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
The toolbar is showing for me on that redirect. In the tools section of the page (location varies by skin), search for "Open Page Curation" and click on it. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:08, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, it was hidden in there. Knew it was something silly... J947 † edits 06:19, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Student projects

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion
  Moved from Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol § Student projects
 – –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:29, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Apparently this talk page doesn't get much traffic so I'm not sure if anyone will see this message. I just thought I'd notify y'all, if you haven't noticed, that in the U.S. we are getting to the end of a school term and I'm seeing a lot of students moving their sandboxes into the main space of the project. Often, they still have sandbox tags on them or reviewer notices. Sometimes they are just moved to "User:Article title" instead of into main space. But most are clearly not ready in any way for main space or "cleaned up".

I just wanted to encourage you, should you come across them, to move them to Draft space, or even back to User space rather than tagging them for deletion. These pages are often abandoned after the school term is over (although I have seen some of them turned into decent articles) but it would be better for the editor if they were moved to Draft or User space rather than straight-out deleted. I realize this is kind of kicking the can down the road but I think the project can handle a little generosity in case these pages need to be reviewed by an instructor to assign a course grade. Thanks everyone for all of the work you do. Liz Read! Talk! 23:05, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I love it when the instructors of the course have their students write an article about them: Draft:Michael G. Hadfield.Onel5969 TT me 10:20, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Vandalism on new article

Latest comment: 1 year ago7 comments4 people in discussion

Earlier today I created a new article List of New Mexico counties by socioeconomic factors. Looking at it on the New Pages feed I see it is tagged "Vandalism." What is that about? Whatever it is, I don't like the implication that this article is a product of vandalism.Smallchief (talk) 17:22, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

That's odd. I'm not sure what the software is interpreting as vandalism in that article. However, please be aware that that is an automated rating, not something a human did. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:22, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm wondering if the thing is detecting references to race and ethnicity and basing the "Potential issues: Vandalism" tag on that? Samwalton9 (WMF) has been doing some work on the page curation tool, maybe he knows more about how that gets generated. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:26, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. I'm glad to know it's a bot rather than a human judgement. Maybe I'll communicate with Walton on this. Smallchief (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
We could ask the ORES people to decrease the allowed false positive rate for the vandalism algorithm. If it's worth the effort. I'm actually a bit surprised you noticed this tag. I think most editors don't pay attention to them. Don't worry, it won't put your article in wiki-jail or anything.
ORES and the vandalism tag are probably powered by machine learning, which is probably the same technology that is behind ClueBot, and generating your Facebook feed. That is, someone trains an algorithm by giving binary input such as yes/no or like/dislike, then the algorithm tries to develop an algorithm that will guess what your input will be next time. In this case, someone has probably reviewed a couple hundred articles and hit vandalism yes/no to train it.
The allowed false positive rate can be configured, which is how ClueBot achieves a 99ish percent accuracy rate. The allowed false positive rate is probably higher for the NewPagesFeed ORES tags (in other words, accuracy is lower), but that may be a good thing. Casting a wider net may help to catch more vandalism overall. All this tag does is let us filter by suspected vandalism in Special:NewPagesFeed, then we can give those articles a bit more scrutiny. It is mostly invisible to the end user. Hope this explanation helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:00, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
It might be adjusting now, ORES is not longer available on the real time recent changes page. Dr vulpes (💬 • 📝) 00:09, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the insights. Smallchief (talk) 00:19, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Add administrators to the redirect autopatrol list

Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments4 people in discussion
All admins without autopatrol rights have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:45, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

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.


I'd like to formally propose adding all current and future administrators to the redirect autopatrol list. For those unaware of what this list is for, a bot automatically marks redirects created by those on the list as reviewed. You can make requests for yourself or another editor to be added to the list at the talk page.

There are:

  • 907 total admins on the English Wikipedia.
    • 339 admins are autopatrolled
    • 568 admins are not autopatrolled
      • 42 of these admins are on the redirect autopatrol list

This leaves a total of 526 admins whose redirects are not automatically patrolled. I have already made requests for 12 of these individuals, leaving 514 admins. That list is:

514 admins that are not autopatrolled and do not have an open request for inclusion in the redirect autopatrol list

I don't see a need for the NPP team to manually review redirects created by administrators. Their inclusion in this list will help to make the redirect backlog more manageable and allow reviewers to focus their efforts elsewhere. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it was basically an oversight that this wasn't done when we removed autopatrolled from the admin bundle, probably because patrolling redirects wasn't seen as a priority then, and correcting that should be uncontroversial. Funnily enough the most notorious redirect-vandal in the project's history was an admin at the time, but I doubt that'll happen again.
A slightly trickier question is how to implement it technically. If I'm not mistaken, the only (semi-)automated changes to the list come from the userRightsManager script, when someone on the list is assigned autopatrolled (which would also work for my proposal to add NPPers and page movers). But that won't work for admins. So either we manually add the 514 above now, and ask the crats nicely to remember to do this for future admins, or there'll need to be a new bot task to maintain the list. – Joe (talk) 14:54, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't think additions to that list are done through userRightsManager (looking at the page's history).
Without delving into the code, I'd guess that it wouldn't be too tough for the bot to get a list of admins, then merge that with the redirect-autopatrolled list before starting its run. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:20, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
I meant that userRightsManager removes people from the list when they get autopatrolled. – Joe (talk) 18:59, 22 April 2023 (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.

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation § Improving the AfC process

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation § Improving the AfC process. One topic of discussion is whether users with NPP rights should be automatically able to review AfC submissions. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 14:56, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

With the recent redirect drive, I've seen a pattern of apparent WP:SPA accounts moving Australian geographic articles to remove state name disambiguators, with little editing history outside this and almost all 1-2 years ago (with redirects left behind, that have to be patrolled). Has anyone else noticed anything along these lines? Skarmory (talk • contribs) 05:59, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I've no idea why a lot of new users (remember, we were all SPAs once!) would be doing it, but if there isn't another settlement of the same name then this is the correct thing to do per WP:NCAUST. The 'comma convention' (i.e. using Town, State even when Town is unamibiguous) is only used for the United States. Probably nothing to worry about. – Joe (talk) 06:51, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I didn't think there was anything wrong with the moves themselves, just a weirdly similar editing pattern across multiple accounts. Figured I'd bring it up. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 06:59, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Script to highlight reading difficulty

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion
 

I wanted to let you know that I wrote a script to highlight sentences by their reading difficulty with different colors. It goes through articles sentence by sentence. Difficult sentences are colored red and easy sentences are colored green. The script also shows the readability score of the article as a whole at the top. It includes a list of sentences ordered by lowest readability to help identify where the most attention may be needed. The script is found at User:Phlsph7/Readability.js and the documentation is at User:Phlsph7/Readability.

The script measures readability using the Flesch reading ease score. It only considers two factors: words per sentence and syllables per word. According to it, texts with long sentences and long words have low readability. This measure is very superficial and often does not reflect the actual difficulty of the text. For this reason, the script should only be used as a rough guide for potential improvements. It cannot replace human judgment.

The script can be used by New Page Patrollers to quickly identify potential issues for submissions with a problematic writing style. However, they should be very careful when interpreting the readability score. It is very superficial and has many limitations. For this reason, reviewers should always ensure that there is a clearly identifiable problem with the text itself. A low Flesch reading-ease score is not a problem by itself. If they have identified a problem and do not plan to solve it themselves, they can contact the author or raise the issue on the talk page. Alternatively, they can add maintenance tags to the problematic passages, like {{Copyedit}}, {{Cleanup-rewrite}}, {{Confusing}}, {{Technical}}, or {{Incomprehensible}}, together with a precise explanation of the problem. The script should never be used to semi-automatically add maintenance tags or reject submissions. A thorough and detailed human evaluation is always required.

I hope to get some feedback on potential problems, how the script may be improved, and how to discourage misuse. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:23, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion, new page patrollers don't do much rewriting of complicated sentences. But the guild of copy editors might find this useful. Happy editing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. You are right, for new page patrollers, the main usage would probably be to identify problems and inform the author rather than rewrite the text themselves. It's a good idea about the guild of copy editors, I've made a post there. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:26, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

See discussion at WT:FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

So sorry to bother

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm not sure if this is the right place to mention or if I need mention at all but the current state of The Beauty Myth: Revisited is discomfiting. I have not done your nice training program so I don't know how or what to tag but wanted to flag for someone. jengod (talk) 19:13, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation § Article creation hypothesis

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation § Article creation hypothesis. The WMF's growth team is considering adding guidance for new editors in the article creation project, and they are requesting community opinion. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 04:09, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

This same thread was also posted at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination § Article creation hypothesis. Primefac (talk) 06:21, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Drafts § Standard practice and consensus for that

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Drafts § Standard practice and consensus for that. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:00, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Redirect stats

Latest comment: 1 year ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Redirects are now under 2k and we are into April! Well done everybody involved.   – Meena • 13:48, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Woo! We are in "Very Low" territory now. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:11, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Down to around 500 right now! Looking like we'll clear the backlog at this rate! Skarmory (talk • contribs) 02:03, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Didn't see this section. Good job everyone. As of this time, down to under 20. Yes, that's not a misprint.Onel5969 TT me 20:28, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 
Reached 0, momentarily. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:41, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 
A screenshot of the English Wikipedia NPP redirect backlog cleared out, including the footer showing zero.
I got a snip last week keeping the backlog at 0 so that we could have a screenshot where the number at the bottom also shows 0 (and without additional filters). Just thought I'd put it along with the other screenshot. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:16, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
We're back up to 500 - which is, of course, low, but let's not let it creep back up into the 1k+ territory if we can avoid it happening. – Meena • 21:15, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Accounts with a few edits creating redirects

Latest comment: 1 year ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I am reviewing redirects over the redirect backlog drive and I see there are several rather new editors creating redirects? How does someone get the idea to start creating redirects on wikipedia? I am also a bit worried that then such names are covered and won't really encourage the creation of a new article. Also notifications of an eventual AfD, added links to and from the article etc. won't go to the expander of the redirect but to the creator of the redirect who might is interested in the notifications but maybe is not even active anymore. I am interested in reading the opinion from other reviewers. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 18:37, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Feel free to give examples. Each situation could have different nuances. Are you RFDing these? Are they problematic? –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:33, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I mean... I don't think this is of much note. People get sucked into various parts of the wiki, redirects is an area that could easily suck you in. Unless there's further pattern (like the Australia geo articles I noted above), it's probably just business as usual, and even then it's still likely business as usual. Redirects are one of the easiest things to create on Wikipedia. Make sure to tag the ones that you think can be expanded with {{R with possibilities}} and {{R printworthy}}, that at least should get some more eyes on the potential of those redirects being turned into articles, though I have no idea how it compares to redlinks. In general, though, if a redirect provides useful information that does not create confusion, it should be fine, and is probably better than a redlink from the same title assuming it gets views.
I don't know how relevant this is to this specific discussion, but User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/WatchlistAFD.js puts NPP'd articles' AFD pages on your watchlist for 6 months. Helps solve some of the notification stuff, though it doesn't account for PROD/CSD noms. I know I'd certainly like to be notified when any page I approved is nominated for deletion. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 03:00, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. I am not into RfDing yet as I am not sure how to address it. Some are names of people, like members of a group, others are geographic names in many variations. For names I'd suggest a specific redirect that make it clear for the search engine what is meant, like: name (name of band). Or for a full name of an actress write the redirect for that name but followed by (actress). If in sometime a namesake gets notable the name and its credits/notifications would still be free. And I am not so much worried for my notifications, but for the potential ones, any editor receives, article creator receives. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:21, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
@Paradise Chronicle Please give us some examples of the redirects which you think are inappropriate. The kinds of redirect you mention above "members of a group ... geographic names in many variations" sound like useful redirects. We don't disambiguate titles unnecessarily, whether they are article titles or redirects. Redirects are a valuable part of Wikipedia: they help the reader find information on a topic even if we don't have a full article on it, or they help the reader who has a different version of the name from the one we have used for our article, and they help to avoid future careless editors creating a duplicate article because they haven't looked thoroughly enough to find the existing one. But if you think some redirects are unhelpful, please show us some examples. Yes, there is a small danger that future notices will go to the creator of the redirect rather than a later article creator, but some, at least, of the systems are careful to make sure that the real content creator gets notified rather than the redirect creator. Thanks. PamD 06:57, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
There were so many new editors creating redirects, there is no need to bring up specific examples, if no-one else sees an issue with this, then there is likely no problem. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:00, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
@Skarmory You have identified some of the redirects I believed are questionable and some were deleted. Thanks. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:31, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Page Curation toolbar doesn't load sometimes

Latest comment: 1 year ago30 comments10 people in discussion

Is anyone else having trouble getting this to appear just at the moment? Mccapra (talk) 22:05, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean the toolbar on new pages? Is working for me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:16, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes the toolbar. Working sporadically for me, sometime inky after several refreshes and sometimes not at all. Mccapra (talk) 22:51, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
I too have had this issue! – Meena • 00:10, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Add me to the list of people for whom it is just randomly appearing and disappearing. No clue why, but it's quite annoying, especially since the "[Mark this page as patrolled]" little thing at the bottom of the page isn't popping up either, so I have no method of actually patrolling the article until it reappears. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 02:01, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Hi all, can you report if you see any WP:CONSOLEERRORs?. Also, one or two links each of where you are facing this issue would be helpful to debug. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:13, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
@MPGuy2824: Pacific glasswort is currently not giving me a toolbar. I do have some console errors; this one seems useful:
TypeError: mw.pageTriage.Article is not a constructor
at ext.pageTriage.views.toolbar/ToolbarView.js (load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.pageTriage.views.toolbar&skin=vector&version=xmdtm:1)
at runScript (load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:11)
at Array.<anonymous> (load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:12)
at flushCssBuffer (load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:4)
Let me know if you need something else, as I didn't include any info from under the triangle (not sure if there's anything I shouldn't post publicly from there, and it seemed like it'd clutter the page). There's also this tampermonkey error further up, but I have no tampermonkey scripts running on Wikipedia.
Uncaught Error: pagejs missing. Please see http://tmnk.net/faq#Q208 for more information.
Skarmory (talk • contribs) 03:04, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Addendum: I spam-refreshed the page until the toolbox came back, and this was missing from the console log when it did. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 03:14, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T324913
Seems to be the same as phab:T324913 then. Hopefully, someone is able to find the time to deep-dive into the code to debug this. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:19, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Also getting no tools allowing me to mark as reviewed. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:43, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
I am using the visual editor and while reviewing redirects I at times don't get shown the toolbar to the right in the screen. It doesn't really affect my editing as I can also mark redirects as reviewed/patrolled with the Capricorn script.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 08:02, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
If the visual editor (or any editor) is open, the Page Curation toolbar turns off until you are finished with your edit. So that part is not a bug.
I still agree there's likely a bug here though. Maybe a rare race condition. A 100% reliable WP:STEPSTOREPRODUCE would guarantee we could fix this bug. If it is intermittent, it will be hard to debug.
cc Chlod, who is our resident JavaScript race condition wizard. phab:T324913. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:32, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: Will take a look in a few minutes. 100% STEPSTOREPRODUCE written above would definitely be appreciated, if anyone can find one. Chlod (say hi!) 09:36, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Patch filed. My comment on Phab has more details. Chlod (say hi!) 12:29, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Of course Chlod solved this effortlessly mere minutes after my ping. I would expect nothing less :) Thanks so much my friend. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:13, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Definitely took more than mere minutes. Nonetheless, happy to have helped! :D Chlod (say hi!) 13:23, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Mine is still on/off? Sometimes it loads and other times it takes 3-4 refreshes of my browser. – Meena • 13:27, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
@Meena: The patch still needs to go through code review and testing (and then the next deployment cycle, i.e. WP:THURSDAY) before it gets deployed. The Thursday part could be skipped by a backport window, but we do still have to check and test things to make sure we won't break PageTriage completely. Chlod (say hi!) 13:33, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I see! Thank you for the explanation. – Meena • 13:35, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
The problem seemed to go away for a while, but is back. Was the patch deployed? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Hello @Jon (WMF). If I'm reading the phab thread correctly, you backported a fix to phab:T324913, right? I also saw on wikitech-l that the train was rolled back this week due to phab:T336504. I guess my question is, did the backport also get rolled back? If not, please see Peter's comment above. We may need to investigate a bit to see why the patch isn't working. Thanks a lot. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:39, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
This should be fixed now (unless you are running cached JavaScript). The train was rolled back with the fix which may have led to the issue reappearing for a bit. Let me know if you see this issue again by commenting on the Phabricator ticket. Jon (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Now It doesn't load for me for good. No workaround anymore and this since several days. I just double-checked again before mentioning it now.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:00, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Please report if you see any WP:CONSOLEERRORs and the particular article where you are facing this issue. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:02, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
I don't get the toolbar at any article and this since days. Also not after pressing the key combination mentioned at WP:CONSOLERROR. I use Safari. I believe I once used to see the toolbar at any page in need of a review or recently reviewed page, at times also without specifically opening the page curation tool. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:23, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
I also made some screenshots. But I don't know how helpful it is to show a screenshot of something that isn't there. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:26, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
It is possible that you've accidentally closed the toolbar. If you see Open Page Curation in the 'Tools' section of the left sidebar, clicking it should solve your problem. If not, a particular article where you are expecting the toolbar would be helpful. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 07:10, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
I don't see the tools section in the lefthand sidebar but I made a screenshot of what I see at Tristan Sternson. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:33, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Try looking for the "Open Page Curation" link in the right menu instead of the left menu. Try scrolling down a bit, it may be hiding towards the bottom of the right menu. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:01, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. The righthand menu worked. The problem is solved for me now. I also knew that it was possible to accidentally close the tool bar, but didn't find the button where to open it again.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 09:31, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

RfC NPP Service Awards and Ribbons

Latest comment: 1 year ago8 comments5 people in discussion

Over the past year I've seen the work everyone keeps putting in to NPP. From our last couple of awesome backlog drives to software updates, we are a really busy bunch. Since there are ribbons and userboxes for admin actions and number of edits I thought it might be nice if we had our own. Kind of a nice way to recognize all the work people put into NPP. I've put together a small proposal that I've included below, it's very barebones but I figured if there was interest then I would expand it with some community feedback and if there is no interest in this at all then I'll just can it. I figure if there is intrest then I'll get to work making the rest of the graphics etc. I kind of wanted it to end up looking like WP:SERVICE or WP:ASVC. Dr vulpes (💬 • 📝) 23:13, 3 June 2023 (UTC)


The proposal has been moved to User:Dr vulpes/NPP service awards.

Comments

I might be missing something, but how does this differ from Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Awards? Did you miss that, is this a new proposal, etc? Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 04:43, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Mattdaviesfsic: yeah I know of those awards I figured it might be a nice addition to go beyond just the number of reviewer actions performed in a year. That was kind of my mindset with it, just a way to recognize activity and service that goes beyond just a year or clearing of backlogs. Dr vulpes (💬 • 📝) 06:01, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
Cool, thanks for letting me know. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 06:47, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
cc awards coordinator @MPGuy2824 –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:29, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
Support the basic idea. It is complimentary to the awards at WP:NPPA (which are annual), and like the Service awards, it should be self-awarded. All the conditions need to be tightened up though. For example:
  1. For length of service, do we count from when the reviewer first got the right (temporarily) or the later time when it became permanent?
  2. Ideally number of 'reviewer actions' needs to be a simple number that can be got from a tool/bot.
  3. Some reviewer actions are easier than others. e.g. articles v/s redirects. We should take that into account.
-MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:05, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Ok sounds good, I'll whip something up this week and report back. I just started a new job so it might be a day or two. Dr vulpes (💬 • 📝) 06:59, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I like this idea. You can't have too many ways of encouraging volunteers. For "reviewer actions" I'd stick to the metric used for Wikipedia:Database reports/Top new article reviewers and Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Awards, which I believe is just number of reviews. It's hard (maybe impossible?) to count things like deletion noms and tagging performed as part of new page patrol. – Joe (talk) 07:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Patrol by non-reviewer?

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I was checking XTools recently when I saw that I had apparently marked an article as patrolled using PageTriage. As I have never been a NPR (considering it though), I was wondering if someone could help me make sense of this log entry ([2]). Thanks, Schminnte (talk • contribs) 17:19, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I think your autopatrol caused that. If an autopatrolled person moves something from non-mainspace to mainspace, it gets marked as reviewed. More details at Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Technical details, bullet 4. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:25, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
That probably was the case now that I think about it. Interesting that it was marked with PageTriage though. Anyway, thanks (GL with the RfA). Schminnte (talk • contribs) 18:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

IP vandalism study

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I know this isn't the right place, but the Counter-Vandalism Studies Unit is dead and according to the Wiki-stats gadjet their talk page had approx. 15 visitors in the last 30 days, vs this page's 1000 visits in the last 30 days. I'm currently conducting a study on IP vandalism, the goal and possible conclusions along with how the study will be conducted is all written on the studies page IP vandalism patterns. If you want to participate, click here and add your name to the participants' list. Crainsaw (talk) 16:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post ( maybe try [3])--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:00, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
WT:CVU also comes to mind. It has low page views but 539 watchers. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:17, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Looking for an NPP newsletter coordinator

Latest comment: 1 year ago8 comments5 people in discussion

MPGuy2824 and I are looking for a volunteer to become the NPP newsletter coordinator. This person would help us write the NPP newsletter, mass message the newsletter (either by having the WP:MMS permission, applying for the MMS permission, or posting an MMS request at the appropriate talk page), and helping keep the pressure on us to send it out more often. It's been about 6 months since we sent it, would be nice to get that interval to maybe 3 months. To get an idea, an example newsletter is located at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination/Draft newsletter. Anyone interested? Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:19, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

It shouldn't take more than a few hours every 3 months, in case anyone was wondering. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 04:29, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
I'm open to it, I've got nothing else to do in between backlog drives. I will at some point request MMS rights as I already need it for running backlog drives and coordinating a WikiProject. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 15:38, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
@Zippybonzo. Awesome. The job's all yours. I added this role of yours to the coordinator page. We've mostly gotten the current one written, it should be ready to send soon. Can you think of anything else we should add to it? Big happenings from the past 6 months? If you could also put a reminder in your calendar for Sept 1 and Dec 1, that'd be great. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:25, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Zippy, if you always keep your watchlist open in a tab, then you can consider installing User:SD0001/W-Ping for setting reminders. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:10, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I always enjoyed the newsletter, both writing it and reading it, and am glad to see it might come back to more frequent publication. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:42, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
I’m willing to take a backseat/assistant/backup role if needed. I enjoy our community and can put in an hour or so a week. Dr vulpes (💬 • 📝) 19:23, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks @Dr vulpes. You're welcome to lurk around the newsletter and add to it or help with copyediting. It's not a very time intensive role though. Would you perhaps be interested in a different coordination role? Or maybe a coordination role we haven't thought of yet? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:27, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

We need folks to focus on article reviewing

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hello folks. If any of you used to do a lot of article reviewing and switched to redirect reviewing for the redirect backlog drive, now may be a good time to switch back to articles. The article backlog is growing and we need all the help we can get to keep it under control. You can check out this list of easy reviews if you want to ease back into it. Thanks everyone. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:38, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

yes, agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:59, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Incomprehensible Article Due to Language Problem

Latest comment: 1 year ago10 comments5 people in discussion

I hope that this isn't a stupid question. What is the best practice for dealing with articles that are nearly incomprehensible, evidently because the author knows very little English? In the specific case that prompts this inquiry, what I can tell is that the article is about a Hindu temple. That is about all that I can infer. The article has already been moved back to draft space once, and has been moved back to article space by the original author. The two options that I know of are to tag the article or to nominate it for deletion. Is the {{incomprehensible}} tag appropriate? I haven't seen incomprehensibility listed as a reason for deletion, but it isn't easy to verify notability if it isn't easy to read an article. Should I review the machine-translations of the references?

The second part of the question is whether anything should be said to the editor who is creating the articles, since we know that editors do not like to be told that they don't know English. It is clear to me that the Wikipedia project would be better served by some editors editing in their native language rather than in what they think is their second language. If the editor is from a country with more than a hundred languages, I don't even know which one to suggest. 16:09, 26 June 2023 (UTC) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:09, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I would tag as incomprehensible and AfD with a nomination making clear that the desired outcome was draftify. Mccapra (talk) 16:24, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Feel free to link to the article. TNT and AFD come to mind as deletion options. Poorly translated or poorly written English is very time-intensive to try to comprehend and repair, so I think it's fair to want to delete or start over. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:31, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
You could try stubbing it back to "ABC is a Hindu temple in XYZ"? But agreed that WP:TNT might be the easiest way to go. Communicating about it is difficult, there's no way around that, but someone probably does need to tell them why their articles probably aren't going to survive. – Joe (talk) 17:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the quick responses. There are two articles at this time. They are Lalita Devi Temple,Naimisharanya and Madhav Temples,Prayagraj. What is meant by TNT as an option? That is a link to the Blow it up and start over essay, but there are at least two methods of blowing up an article, which are AFD and stubification. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:58, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
My issue with articles like this isn’t so much that the English is bad, it’s that the article uses so much specialist vocabulary that it is little more than transliterated Hindi stitched together with English prepositions and the occasional verb. Even if the grammar is corrected it would still be incomprehensible because no thought appears to have gone into presenting the information for users who don’t already know what these terms mean. Mccapra (talk) 21:31, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
You have to ask yourself if users who don’t already know what these terms mean would be looking at the article at all. A tourist? All the technical vocabulary is linked. Polish up the English and the articles will be fine. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:08, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
I have nominated Lalita Devi Temple,Naimisharanya for deletion. I have noted that a previous reviewer sent it back to draft space for better sourcing, and stating that it had too many grammar and language problems. Sources were added, and it still has the same language problems. I didn't see a deletion category for either buildings or houses of worship, so I categorized it as Uttar Pradesh and Hinduism, but that is a different issue. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:00, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Draft:Madhav Temples,Prayagraj had not been draftified previously, so I have moved it back to draft space with the notation that it has too many language problems. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:09, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
You have to ask yourself if users who don’t already know what these terms mean would be looking at the article at all. In my opinion, our articles should be readable to a non-expert. Unfamiliar terms should be explained enough that a non-expert can at least understand the article. Articles that have problems with this sometimes get the {{Technical}} maintenance tag. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:50, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Query

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I have a question as I'm not familiar with the tools NPPers use. If an editor creates a main space article that they then move to Draft space and then back to main space, does it lose its necessity to be reviewed? I've seen this done in the past, these back-to-back article moves, but it wasn't until today, with BraveJusticeKidsCo., that I noticed that the article was neither reviewed and lost the message I usually see that one clicks on to review the article. If an article is moved to different namespaces, does it no longer appear as needing to be reviewed by a patroler? Is this a glitch in the system? Thanks for any insight you can offer. Liz Read! Talk! 23:35, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

It will stay unreviewed, unless the mover from draftspace to mainspace has autopatrol. Can you double check the article you linked, BraveJusticeKidsCo.? It is showing as unreviewed to me, and I don't see anything in the page curation log that indicates that someone messed with the review status. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:52, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
User:Liz - I'm a little confused, because the example that you give doesn't appear to have been moved into or out of draft space. Is there something that you can see with admin glasses that I can't see, or am I missing something? It appears to me that BJKC was moved from a sandbox into article space, and that it is waiting for review. I have tagged it with corporate notability concerns.
However, if an editor who is not an AFC reviewer moves a draft page into article space, it will show up in a category of pending AFC submissions in article space. That category is regularly watched by several of the AFC reviewers. Far from being a way to avoid review, a move from draft space to article space is a way to get reviewer attention quickly. That is because, while the article is in draft space, it has an AFC template. If it is moved to article space using the Move command (which is, of course, how most editors move pages), it will still have the AFC template in it, but articles in article space shouldn't have the AFC template. If an AFC reviewer Accepts a draft, the AFCH script removes the AFC template. I haven't checked whether that marks it as reviewed; but you aren't asking about that. A Move with the Move command from draft into article is not a way to avoid review, but to get special review attention. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:54, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
It doesn't mark as reviewed, even as a NPR. You can manually mark it as reviewed, or leave it for another reviewer to double-check your work. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 14:05, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
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