Wikipedia talk:Peer review/Archive 5

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Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 10, 14:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1959429 out of 2048000 bytes (88571 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Semi-transcluded several, will archive in a few hours. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Question about "Getting full" notices

We already delete duplicate notices from VeblenBot that PR is getting full. I have been just leaving the most recent with a note that I fixed the problem by archiving and/or semi-transcluding and I know others have done the same. My question is, do we need to even do this? Would just clearing all of the notices be OK to let folks know the space problem has been resolved for now? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think that is a good idea. These notices are helpful but ugly! Geometry guy 14:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I left one as an example, above Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Seeking help from volunteers

If you look at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog, there are 8 peer review requests with no responses last I checked. There are 4 or 5 more that will be added in 7 hours (from April 11). If you have a chance, please review one (or two). Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Slashes in titles

I made a change to {{PR/subst}} to try to fix a problem for articles with slashes in the title. I haven't thoroughly tested the (minor) change, so please report any problems with new peer reviews here. (Current peer reviews should be unaffected.) Geometry guy 21:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Guideline: a daily limit on the number of PR requests per editor

I am proposing a guideline that no single editor should nominate more than two articles per day at Peer Review and would like some feedback on what others think. I am also interested if there is support for limiting it to just one PR request per editor per day.

I have three main concerns with multiple nominations by a single editor, which tend to all be on one topic. The first is that when a large block of single topic articles from one editor are all nominated at once, it has a tendency to overwhelm the capacity of the interested editors to adequately review all of the requests. The second is my concern that no one editor can reply promptly and appreciatively to comments on detailed reviews on several articles simultaneously (so why not wait a bit on some of them?). The third is that groups of articles nomoinated by the same user tend to have similar issues in all of the articles, so getting a review on one or two as model articles, then fixing those similar problems in all the articles, then submitting the others for more detailed peer reviews seems to me to be a better way to do it.

I would have no problem with one editor nominating seven articles in a week, or even thirty in a month, but big blocks are harder for the system to digest. Some recent examples I can think of include: six articles on wrestling, seven or eight Harry and the Potters albums articles (and they went through the sysem twice), or more recently ten on entomology by one editor in one day. Note this proposal would not prevent several separate editors working on several similar articles from nominating all of them on the same day, as has also happened recently for class assignments.

Finally, as a guideline, this would just be added to the instructions: "Please limit nominations to two (one?) requests per editor per day." There would be no punishment if someone ignored the guideline (except sparse reviews).

I welcome feedback and discussion, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea—and I'd go for one rather than two—for all the reasons Ruhrfisch mentioned. In fact, is there any reason to have more than one article in PR at a time (as opposed to more than one article per day? Wouldn't it be better to get the feedback on the first (some of which might be applicable to the others) before inundating the process with more? (I've done more than a few reviews where the requesting editor has done little or nothing to the reviewed article for weeks afterwards, so maybe putting too many in at once overwhelms the writer as well as the reviewer!) MeegsC | Talk 16:21, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I reviewed two related articles nominated by the same editor yesterday and I think they benefitted from being reviewed back to back, which is why I suggested a limit of two. I know there are several ecitors who have multiple reviews active and seem able to juggle them, but I do wonder if an absoulte limit would also be a good idea - two a day and no more than six total active nominations at any one time? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree broadly, but I think we can also suggest to editors the option to group several related articles under a single peer review, as happened with the Saxaphone articles, for example. Geometry guy 19:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

The peer reviews you have been providing is really an extraordinary service. Compared to 6 month average turnaround in some academic journal peer review processes, it is amazing that peer reviews can be delivered on a timely basis within a few days here in wikipedia. Limiting it to one a day or one a week is extremely fair. doncram (talk) 16:51, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/2006 Atlantic hurricane season/archive1

I started Wikipedia:Peer review/2006 Atlantic hurricane season/archive1 a couple of days ago, but it still hasn't appeared on the Peer Review page. Is there any reason for this, or am I supposed to add it myself now? Thanks, Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 13:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

It is there for me, so it sounds like a cache problem: try bypassing your cache. Geometry guy 15:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, still doesn't work. It must be something wrong with my computer or something. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 12:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I look at Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date and it is number 18 there currently Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, it's no there now. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 14:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Missing archive

I noticed on Talk:LZ 129 Hindenburg that the article had had a peer review which is now archived. However, the archive link is red. Any ideas? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

• I tried adding "|archive=1" to the tag (as well as |archive=2) but neither worked - still a red link. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

  This was caused by a page move just after the peer review nearly 2 years ago, and has remained unfixed since then! I've fixed it: here is the diff in case anyone finds more examples of this problem. Geometry guy 09:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

What have I done wrong?

I've created a natural sciences peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/Formation and evolution of the Solar System/archive1, but it isn't listed on the peer review page. I have to say this new automated system is far more complicated than the old system. Serendi^podous 11:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• The bot updates the PR listings once an hour, so I checked at wp:pr/d and it is listed there now. You may also want to ask for a review or two at WP:PRV, the list of volunteer reviewers. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:10, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Gojira review

I this this peer review closed? Or should I expect some more?--  LYKANTROP  07:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

• The peer review is open and listed normally. Have you asked for a review at WP:PRV? If it does not get any repsone in three days it will be added to Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog and should get some feedback within a day or two after that. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
• PS If the "archive1" at the end is confusing, please remember (quoting the top of the PR page): Individual peer reviews can be edited by following the edit section links next to the article titles, which are now stored on /archiveN pages from the very start (the term "archive" for these pages is purely historical). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

PeerReviewBot proposed

I have filed a request to run a bot to automate some of the archiving of old peer reviews. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PeerReviewBot for details and discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks so much Carl, I will weigh in there. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I have added a second task, to automatically link to semi-automated peer reviews when they are generated. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/PeerReviewBot_2 — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Please help make sure every request gets a response

On March 15 2008 I made a proposal that all Peer Review requests get a response. I have not archived a PR request made since Feb. 22 that has not recieved some detailed response. I have two ideas on how to keep this going and a request.

Idea one is just to encourage everyone to review - when people thank me for my reviews I reply and close with something like "I am glad you found my review helpful. Please consider reviewing something at WP:PR, particularly one of the requests with no response so far at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog." Many have gone on to do reviews, and if we all did this, I think it would help spread the load a lot.

Idea two is similar to something I proposed back in March - if all of the editors signed up at the volunteer reviewers list would pick one request with no responses per month and review it, that would go a long way too. The new wrinkle is to pick a day of the month to do this review - it could be your birthday or an anniversary or a friend or loved one's birthday, whatever. As an example, my first edit was on July 8, so I could pick the 8th of each month. That way I hopefully remember to do an orphan review a month, and it spreads these out throughout the month if everyone picks different dates. If you want to see the list of requests with no response that are at least three days old, these are listed at at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog, or you can look at the peer reviews sorted by date listing and see if there are any more recent ones that interest you.

Finally, I note that there are sixteen orphans at least three days old currently listed and ask for your help in making sure they get a response,

Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 05:06, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Natural Science?

Does anybody know what happened to the Natural Science sub-section? It was here yesterday and had several new entries.—RJH (talk) 19:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

• There is a "node count limit exceeded" error which is chopping off the bottom - Peer reviews sorted by date has a problem too. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I tried doing the partial transclusion trick on all peer reviews over 8 kb but it did not work. I wonder if the problem is just that there are too many PR requests to transclude them all? I have asked User:Geometry guy and User:CBM to look into this, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    • The discussion should be centralized at Wikipedia:VPT#List_of_baryons_and_preprocessor_node_count. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you.—RJH (talk) 17:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Help

Resolved

I want to create a PR for Donald Bradman. Two issues - it has already had a PR so following the instructions on the project page will lead to the creation of a blue link to the archived PR, and secondly, the talk page has an article history section which isn't very easy to update. Help would be gratefully received. --Dweller (talk) 10:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, TRM. --Dweller (talk) 11:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposed limits

I have discussed this with The Rambling Man and would like to propose some limits on Peer Review requests. The rationale is that peer review resources are limited and, in order to provide everyone with a response, some limits have to be placed on requests as well.

1) Editors are limited to making one peer review request per day, and are further limited to a total of four open requests.

Since PR is supposed to be an interactive process, having more than four open PR requests seems counterproductive. A PR request can always be archived if someone had four already and wanted to open another.

2) Articles with major cleanup banners in place can not be submitted for peer review (this would not include small {{fact}} tags).

Since the goal of peer review is to improve articles that are already decent, major issues should be resolved first, before PR. This would be similar to the "quick fail" criterion in GAN.

3) Once an article has had a peer review it can not be relisted until at least two weeks since the archive of its previous PR.

Feedback sought and welcomed, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

All of those sound like welcome and needed limits. I support them all, especially #1 and 2. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 21:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

For #3, I would also like an extension for a two week limit from a past FAC, GAN, or A-class review, since ideally feedback should have been received from them. Other than that all limits are well thought out. bibliomaniac15 21:48, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The limits proposed by Ruhrfisch and The Rambling Man seem reasonable and mild, and I support them. The burden at PR is on the reviewing editors rather than the editors seeking a review. Surely the editors who seek reviews will not object to limits that make it possible for PR to continue. My chief concern is that if no limits are set, the reviewing editors will get overwhelmed and abandon PR. Keeping the rules simple is essential. If the rules remain simple, newcomers will quickly catch on, administrative overhead will be kept to a minimum, and fewer disagreements about rule interpretation will occur. I would therefore not favor adding exceptions and qualifications to the limits that would force requesters or reviewers to do much "paperwork" before starting a review or that might be hard for a requester or a reviewer to understand. Limits 1, 2, and 3 are simple and clear. Finetooth (talk) 23:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, not sure about 2, depends on what you mean by cleanup banners. I'd have no objections for example if an article turned up for PR with merge/split templates if the person putting it there was asking for feedback about which parts of the article should be expanded or moved off to subarticles etc. JMiall₰ 12:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to not provide examples - I was going by the Good Article criteria, see Wikipedia:Reviewing_good_articles#How_to_review_an_article. The wording there is Presence of any correctly applied cleanup banners, including, but not limited to, {{cleanup}}, {{wikify}}, {{NPOV}}, {{unreferenced}} or large numbers of {{fact}}, {{clarifyme}}, {{huh}} or similar tags. Basically the idea is that if it is already clear the article has a major problem, then deal with that before requesting a peer review. The article is going to have to change a lot in the cleanup process, so why bother reviewing something now that will be very different when cleaned up later? I do not think merge tags count as clean up, and the wording "correctly applied" allows discretion too. What I want to avoid is a situation where a PR request is made with a clean up tag on the article, then after a peer review and clean up, another PR request is made. Clean it up first, then request PR. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:50, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

In general I don't like the idea of hard limits, this is a volunteer project after all, but all of the proposals above seem reasonable. Especially since if someone lists more than 3 or 4 articles it's not likely that they can properly implement the suggestions that people give anyway. How about we go ahead with this but word it as a perhaps firm guideline with a note that they should understand it is ok for other people to remove them and they can re-submit them later? I'm just thinking that there are some situations and some prolific editors that can handle the unusual amount of feedback and get it implemented quickly. - Taxman ^Talk 16:15, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I just checked and currently User:Kozuch has ten open PR requests (all made in one day), User:Ealdgyth has seven open PR requests, User:TonyTheTiger has five, User:Moni3 has four, and User:Wackymacs has four (there may be others with a fair number of requests I am just not thinking of). Of those, only Kozuch, Ealdgyth and TonyThe Tiger would have been affected by the limit. Kozuch basically did a drive by "Here are 10 articles that should be reviewed" and has not responded to any of the peer reviews. Ealdgyth does a lot of reviews of references here and at FAC. Ealdgyth's and TonyTheTiger's oldest reviews have been inactive for some time and could be archived early, I suppose (if this limit were in place they could just archive some old ones to open a new one). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:52, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Probably the best thing to do is to leave them each a message explaining the issue and that if they don't think they can implement the suggestions in all of the outstanding peer reviews they should be archived. For Kozuch it looks like they just had a misunderstanding of what peer review was for, so most likely they should all be archived, but a message ahead is better. Thanks for taking the lead on all this. It's really having an impact on peer review. I can't recall a time it's ever functioned better. - Taxman ^Talk 23:49, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, good idea. I note that User:Kodster just listed a fourth PR request, so I will also leave a message there. My thought was to inform them of this discussion and let them know consensus is that from now on, no more than four open PR requests will be allowed. I don't want to make people close reviews now unless they are ready - but to be aware of this for the future. There are one or two other users that have often listed four or so reviews at a time that I may leave a notice for. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

To me the difference is if they can handle them, give them some leeway. That's why I don't like the hard and fast rule. So if someone shows they can implement the suggestions from 4 or 5 peer reviews at once they should be allowed to, but 4 is a sensible start. And if they don't handle them well, then yes, they should be temporarily placed on hold. Overall it looks like you have a good plan. Just at least ask them to close them if they aren't going to implement the suggestions. Those do no one any good. - Taxman ^Talk 01:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

How do you decide someone can implement the suggestions? Really, I do not know how to decide this. Do you look at their replies to the PR (in which case many of the PR suggestions are not implemented) or do you look at the edit history of the article? Both of these are a lot of work - who is going to do and decide this? I can usually count open PRs, which is why I suggested that as the rule ;-) Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:14, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the simplest, but not foolproof, way is to look at their replies in the PR. If there are no replies, then the suggestions were probably not used. The foolproof way is too look at the edit history, but in some cases you can just glance at the article and see if the suggestions have been implemented. For example if the suggestion is to add more references and expand the lead section, you know if that happened or not. But you also now that did happen for example if the editor responds in the peer review and says they improved so and so and to have another look. You're right, it's a lot of work, but if you follow peer reviews over a period of time what I was getting at is you start to get a handle on people that do a good job and deserve to have a little leeway. That's all. - Taxman ^Talk 13:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, Kozuch made zero replies in his 10 open PR requests. Ealdgyth has replied in 1 of 7 peer reviews (plus she has at least 16 reviews of references). TonyTheTiger has replied on 3 of 5 peer reviews (I do not count the review of Crown Fountain as he did not open it - that would be a sixth PR). Moni3 responded to all four. Wackymacs has responded to 3 of 4 - to be fair the fourth is the new one which has fairly recent comments. Wackymacs has also done numerous reviews (did not count). Kodster has four reviews, three of which have gotten feedback, and s/he has responded to two of those. In the past few months there were 10 entomolgy requests in one day with zero responses, and six on Jainism in one day with two or three responses.

My sense of the data is that four is about the most open peer reviews anyone can handle. I would just as soon implement the rule as have to check everything. I suppose there could be an opt out in the detailed rules page that if someone is making responses to all four open PR requests they can open another. As was noted above, the burden is on the reviewers - opening a PR request is fairly easy and not replying to it while it is listed takes no time. I want to make life as easy for the reviewers as possible, while still allowing reasonable numbers of requests to go forward. I will ask the multiple request editors identified here to respond here if interested. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:32, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

(←) I am also instinctively wary of fixed/artificial restrictions, but I back Ruhrfisch 100% in this case, The restrictions are straightforward and easy to understand, and reflect a realistic expectation that the article should benefit from the nomination through a fruitful dialogue between nominator and reviewers. This is what peer review is for. Geometry guy 00:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

• These are reasonable restrictions, in my opinion. I think we need to do something to optimize the peer review process as much as possible - this seems like a good step. Awadewit (talk) 22:30, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who participated in this discussion. I have added the limits to Wikipedia:Peer review/Request removal policy and have added them in very condensed form to the PR directions: "Nominations are limited to one per editor per day and four total requests per editor. Articles must be free of major cleanup banners and 14 days must have passed since the previous peer review, FAC, GAN, or A-class review. For more information on these limits see here.". I was on a brief wikibreak and did not get to contact the users mentioned above, but will let them know now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Conveniently, I have no problem with these since all four of my reviews have responses and have been "grandfathered" in. I have absolutely no plans in the future to build multiple articles like I did within 5 weeks. However, if this had come two weeks earlier, it would have set my master plan fatrher back considerably. So, I have no idea if bringing that up is even worth it. I know something has to be done to take care of the backlog. Ironically, I would like to start reviewing more once all my work with this set of articles is finished... --Moni3 (talk) 01:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, your four PR requests were OK under the new limits as each was opened on its own day and there were no more than four open at any time, so you would not have had to change what you did. I put a wiggle room phrase in the limits explanation that if someone was responding to all open PR requests, they could open a new (fifth) request, per the discussion. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist?

Is there any page I can watchlist so I can see things being nominated? If I watchlist Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations I see additions, but it doesn't look like it is the same for peer-review. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Weird, I thought that if you had this page watchlisted, you would see the posted nominations, but apparently not. No wonder I miss so many... ~checks page~ Okay, looks like you would need to watch list specific pages for specific peer reviews as the lists are auto generate by a bot. For Arts, for example, watch list User:VeblenBot/C/Arts peer reviews. For lang and lit, User:VeblenBot/C/Language and literature peer reviews, etc etc. Be nice to add something to the that page with some "add to watch list" links for each cat. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

You can watch all articles at User:VeblenBot/C/Current peer reviews. Geometry guy 17:34, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! That is very convenient. I am heretofore just an occasional visitor, but now I am starting to watch that and comment in some PRs. doncram (talk) 04:16, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that is so much handier than going through the whole list one-by-one to see what's new. Thank you, Geometry guy. Finetooth (talk) 19:24, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Favor

I am taking a wikibreak for the next two days - could someone please update Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog on May 31 and June 1, preferably just after the start of the new day (0:00 GMT)? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:05, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm traveling, and the Internet connection where I'm staying is erratic. I will try to check, though, and update the backlog if I can. Finetooth (talk) 21:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. Finetooth (talk) 02:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I am back - thanks so much for taking care of that in my absence, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:38, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Decentralization

Here's a thought... why not bring peer review right to the talk pages of the articles, in a similar vain to the way RFC is decentralized? It would take very little work to decentralize the system. MessedRocker (talk) 11:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This would also lend itself to sectional peer review... just as how we have RFCpol and RFCmedia for politics and media, there could be PRpol and PRmedia. MessedRocker (talk) 11:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can see what the benefit here would be? Can you explain more about why you think this would improve the PR system or increase participation? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 15:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I am opposed to this idea. Peer reviews are on subpages so they have a single link that never changes. Talk page links change as they are archived, so the peer review link would need to be updated on archiving (or else someone would have to dig for it). Peer Review, FAC, and FLC are all on their own subpages and GAN is in the process of moving to its own subpage from the talk page, so this proposed change would be different from the model of all other article review processes on Wikipedia. Major aspects of peer review (opening the peer review, finding a volunteer reviewer, adding the semi-automated peer review, tracking PRs without a response at the backlog page, and closing peer reviews) all now take places via the centralized WP:PR page - how would this work under your proposal? Finally I note that peer review requests are already available sorted by one of ten topics (plus a "general" topic) or sorted by date, how is this different from "sectional peer review"? Since your proposal is not very detailed, it may be that I have misunderstood it. Please feel free to give more detail on how you envision this working while still preserving permanent links and the other aspects of the current system I mentioned. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose as well. PR is already decentralized by wikiprojects with parallel structures (WP:VG hosts their peer reviews as subpages there, for instance.) Not sure how this would help anything. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 18:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Good point. MessedRocker (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

In the new GAN process, the review is on a subpage which never changes, but is transcluded onto the article talk page, at least while the review is active. I don't see any obvious obstruction to a nominator transcluding a peer review onto article talk if they want to do so. This would change none of the rest of the process: the review would still be transcluded onto WP:PR and reviewers would be completely unaware of the transclusion unless they set out to look for it.

That would give nominators and editors a choice as to how they access the review: they can come via this page, via article talk, or simply watchlist the review. However, I think that this is a very small benefit, and I don't think it is worth doing. Geometry guy 20:36, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Scientific peer review has been transcluded, in my experience. It leaves a permanent record of the discussion about the article, often at a higher level than most talk page discussions. It would seem to have the same long term benefits as leaving other old discussions on the talk page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:40, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Multiple peer reviews

Is there a template for multiple peer review archives? Primate has had two, can they be merged into one simple peer review box which links to both? Cheers, Jack (talk) 22:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

{{ArticleHistory}}, but its complicated. If you wait until the next FAC for the article, then the peer review templates should automatically be merged by User:GimmeBot. Geometry guy 00:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Geometry guy, it was pretty complicated but I've implemented it anyway. I'm expecting to offer it up to the FAC sometime next month. Cheers, Jack (talk) 00:41, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

14 days

I followed the discussion, above, about limiting peer review requests, and was in general agreement with what was being proposed. However, the 14-day rule (no peer review requests within 14 days of an earlier review including GAN) came as a surprise, as this point was not raised in the discussions but only in the conclusions. I can see the sense in relation to articles that have failed FAC or GAN, but I can't see the point with articles that have passed GA. Why does such an article have to wait the full 14 days? If it's a good article, and its editors are fired with enthusiasm and anxious to get more feedback before taking it further, I don't think they should have to sit on their hands for a fortnight. They should be allowed bring the article to PR without delay, provided that the other limiting regulations are observed. (Disclosure: I have a recent GA that I want to bring to PR.) Brianboulton (talk) 23:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

• The original proposal was just for previous PR requests (no second PR until 14 days after closing the first). To be honest, I do not check articles for this criteria (except for articles with a previous PR), so I have no problem with dropping GA from the 14 days and will be bold and do that next. Thanks for pointing out the discrepancy, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I changed it to after an unsuccessful FAC, GAN, or A class review. The idea being that if it had a suggessful GAN or A class review it is ready to move to the next stage and would benefit for PR for that stage. If it was unsuccessful, it has other issues to resolve first. Is this OK? I would list your PR request in any case. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:51, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

    There's no guarantee that an unsuccessful GAN or A class review will have detailed comments for editors to work with, so I would recommend mentioning only unsuccessful FACs. Geometry guy 09:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

    • OK, this seems reasonable, but I will keep PRs and unsuccessful FACs in - I will make the changes next. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Semi-transclusion note

I just semi-trancluded a bunch of peer reviews to get the size down to Post-expand include size: 1454749/2048000 bytes. In the past I have gone down to anything above 8 KB, but this was done by semi-transcluding just those above 10 KB.

Not sure why I am posting this, I guess it is for those of you keeping score at home, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Useful info for me. While you were away, I also only semitranscluded reviews over 10K. I think this shows that peer review bot is giving us a bit more space to work with, which is good news. Geometry guy 09:08, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

is it possible to get a reply?

i posted Jeita Grotto for review some while ago and still am not getting any response, do i have to bribe anyone for some suggestions or a comment? Eli+ 05:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

The date on the request is 14 June 2008, which is only two days. The article looks interesting to me, and if no one reviews it in the meantime, I'll review it later on 16 June. First I must sleep, though. Finetooth (talk) 05:53, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

thank you for your swift reply, i am really impatient :( sry Eli+ 07:07, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

YOu may want to visit here: Wikipedia:Peer review/volunteers. --Efe (talk) 07:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It is not unusual for articles to go three or more days without a response - those that go that long are listed at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog and do all get some sort of review eventually. Another idea to consider is to review another article with no responses and ask the nominator to return the favor. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:05, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

When requesting reviews, it is helpful to link to the review page, in this case Wikipedia:Peer_review/Jeita_Grotto/archive1. Geometry guy 18:31, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Multiple peer reviews and a page move

I have a 2 step problem. I'd like to have the Earle Mack School of Law article go through Peer Review but it has previously gone through peer review before. I've taken a look at some of the above conversations and I would just start archive02, but this article was peer reviewed as the Drexel University College of Law. Since peer review isn't my realm of expertise and I don't want to screw anything up with inappropriate page moves or something of the like, help? Thanks! --ImmortalGoddezz (t/c) 14:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the first peer review to /archive1. The peer review process will now automatically start the next peer review at /archive2 for you. Geometry guy 16:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate it. :) --ImmortalGoddezz (t/c) 16:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Copy-edit backlog

Hey everyone! There's a massive backlog of articles needing copy-edit, from as far back as January 2007, that not many people seem to be working on. I (and a few others) have been working through the backlog these few weeks, but there aren't enough of us to work through 2k+ articles in a sensible amount of time. :) So head over to the category page if you want to help! --Samy85 (talk) 01:46, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I just updated our progress chart; make that 4,243 articles in our backlog.-Samy85 (talk) 02:21, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your work on this. It seems to me there should be some sort of system for assigning priorities. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The end of an experiment

Back in March I proposed that no peer review be archived without a response. Since then neither the bot nor I have archived a PR request made since February 22, 2008 without some substantial feedback.

I would like to thank all of those who made edits on the peer review backlog page, especially User:The Rambling Man, and User:Biomedeng, User:Jwanders, User:CSumit, User:SGGH, User:Peripitus, User:Seahamlass, User:Bardin, User:Tenacious D Fan, User:Casliber, User:Finetooth, User:GeeJo, User:Wackymacs, User:Giggy, User:Glane23, User:Sillyfolkboy, User:Milk's Favorite Cookie, User:FrankTobia, User:Giants2008, User:Brianboulton, User:Taxman, User:RJHall, User:Peter Isotalo, User:Juliancolton, User:AnmaFinotera, User:Nikki311, User:Oldelpaso, User:Peanut4, User:Awadewit, User:Ludwigs2, User:Yannismarou, User:Syberwolff, User:Chzz, User:Malkinann, User:John Carter, User:Lazulilasher, User:Ealdgyth, User:Belovedfreak, User:La Pianista, User:Judgesurreal777, User:Dr pda, User:Doncram, User:Laser brain, User:Jakob.scholbach, User:Rambo's Revenge, User:Quadell, User:Eóin, User:Risker, User:Midnightdreary, User:Konstable, User:Malkinann, User:Geometry guy, User:Hurricanehink, User:LuciferMorgan, User:Killervogel5, User:G.A.S, User:13 of Diamonds, User:Jimfbleak, and apologies to anyone I missed.

Despite all these editors' help, I can no longer do the daily number of peer reviews needed to keep up with the backlog. I am pretty much burned out. I will still do the semi-automated peer reviews and will do some reviews (not sure how many). I can also keep the backlog file updated, if there is consensus to do so (see below). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

A new idea

I have observed that many peer review requests have no reply from the original nominator to the review comments. I looked at the 10 most recent days for PR requests that were removed by the bot or a user (June 20 to June 29). There were 50 peer review requests removed in these 10 days, 4 of which were for housekeeping reasons. Of the 46 remaining, 22 had no reply from the nominator to the PR comments (and 24 did). I also looked at the breakdown by the stated goal: there were 14 PR requests that listed no goal for the article, 6 of which replied (8 made no reply); there were 11 PR requests that listed Good Article as the goal, 3 of which replied to reviewer's comments (8 made no reply); and 21 PR requests listed FA or FL as the ultimate goal, 15 of which replied to reviewer's comments (6 made no reply).

I also note that 38 of the reviews were archived by the bot (17 with replies, 21 not). The rest were archived by hand, 4 for housekeeping reasons (no replies), 1 for no goal (no reply) and 7 for FA / FL (6 replies and 1 no reply).

Anyway, about half of all peer review requests never had a reply from the nominator, and well over half (64%) of the peer review requests with no stated goal or GA as a goal had no nominator reply. Peer review requests with FA as the highest goal were the only ones with nominator responses in over half the cases (actually ~71%).

I have seen reviewers leave a brief comment or two on a PR, and then add more only if there is a response (and they leave no more comments if there is no response from the nominator). This is what I plan to do from now on.

My questions are: 1) Should I say something like "if you want more comments, please ask here" in the PR, or should I just assume those who are interested will reply? and 2) Does it make sense to still trakc the backlog? Would it make sense to change it to nly show those requests with "no response" (currently it is no substantial response)?

Feedback is welcome and sought, thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm amazed that you kept up at this rate for so long. You deserve 20 bushels of barnstars for the effort. My first thought about your question (1) is that it wouldn't hurt to include a line that says, "if you want more comments, please ask here", and it might be helpful to shy editors. They might or might not get more comments, but they would know it was OK to ask. About (2) I'm not sure. It's easy for people to say "do this" or "do that" when they don't know how hard or time-consuming the doing might be. If maintaining the backlog is much of a chore, I'd be inclined to drop it. Finetooth (talk) 05:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I still feel bad about not everyone getting a PR. My secret plan is therefore to try and give everyone a comment or two, perhaps make sure all the FA goals get more, and if I have time say more for those who actually respond. Since over half of PRs do not respond, I think it might work. Watch this space for my next failed experiment in four months. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:43, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it is a very good idea to provide a short initial or partial review, and then see if the reviewer responds. In one of the very few PRs I've done, I simply reviewed the lead, first as an introduction to the subject (which requires only reading the lead), then as a good overview of the article (which requires more work). Geometry guy 21:06, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I will try this method too, R and GG. Another thought has crossed my mind since yesterday. I wonder if it would be possible to informally recruit 10 editors willing to do 1 review a week using the new method described in R's "secret plan" above. The only sustainable system that I can imagine that reviews everything submitted is one in which the individual work loads are small enough to sustain indefinitely. I say "informal" because I'm not suggesting any formal scorekeeping or accounting. I don't want to add administrative chores to the pile. It would just be a matter of comraderie, honor, trust, and frequent knocking on wood. Ten reviews a week plus all the reviews done by everybody not in the Gang of 10 might be enough. Finetooth (talk) 04:02, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I like this idea. FYI there were 173 PR requests in June 2008 - see here. This is down slightly from past months, probably becasue no one is allowed to 10 a day anymore or have more than four open at once. That 173 works out to just less than 6 new PR requests a day. User:Ealdgyth already reviews refs for anyone who mentions FA in the PR request. There are others who are active in the backlog. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:42, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>Tomorrow (Tuesday) when I'm fresh, I could write this idea up in the form of a request that I'd then be willing to send to some or all of the people in the "thank you" list above and/or to others. I could post my rough-draft spam here first for further tweaking by all concerned before sending it to any individual reviewer. Does this sound reasonable?Finetooth (talk) 05:04, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

It sounds very resonable to me, thanks. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 10:48, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought about who has been active over the past four months at reviewing requests on the backlog and came up with these names: Ruhrfisch, Finetooth, The Rambling Man (may be too busy as one of the FLC directors), SGGH, Brianboulton, Giggy, Juliancolton, Milk's Favorite Cookie, Sillyfolkboy, Doncram. The problem is that all of these are busy in other areas too, like GAN and WikiProjects, and have been active at different times throughout the past four months. I also just picked 10 names - several others on the thanks list above may be worth asking. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:33, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've encountered quite a few of these editors in other areas. I'm just now looking at my blank screen thinking about what to say to them. I hope to have something within the hour. Finetooth (talk) 16:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Yay, i am flattered to scrape by and make the list. Looking fwd to what may be said. :) By the way, like anyone else probably, i kinda pick and choose which peer review requests to comment on, and am oriented to the historical ones, and would also gravitate to mathy/statistical ones, by the way, if there were any. But then, it seems MILHIST or whatever siphons off most of the historical ones. It is not too clear what gets to PR, what is siphoned off by other efforts. cheers, doncram (talk) 17:27, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment, which made me rethink the whole invitation issue. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:15, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Experiment letter, rough draft

Here's my rough-draft form letter for the review experiment. I tried not to be pushy or to create any new administrative tasks. Advice on improvements would be welcome. I see no reason why we can't finish the polishing (if any) today and send the letters. I volunteer to do the sending. All advice on who to send them to would be appreciated. It appears that we have part of the 10 editors already, and if we should be so lucky as to attract 20, that's not a problem. I will send the letter to all those mentioned by User:Ruhrfisch in his short list above. I'd be happy to send them to others as well. Or others can use the letter with their own signature and send them anywhere they like. Finetooth (talk) 17:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

After finishing the final draft, below, I removed the rough draft from this page to avoid future confusions about the "real" version. I left the discussion in, though, because it contained substantive ideas somewhat separate from the rough draft. Finetooth (talk) 04:26, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

• I think it reads well and have a few minor suggestions / ideas.
  • Could this phrase be tweaked and that reviewers do not waste time doing long reviews for nominators who may not want them.? Perhaps something like and that reviewers do not waste time doing long reviews for nominators who do not respond to these comments.?
  • I understand this If you want to take part, just do the reviews. but how will we know who is signed up and who is not? I guess that by their fruits, you will know them (if nothing else).
  • Should there be any mention that they were chosen in part because they have made some peer reviews on items from the backlog in the past four months?
  • As long as we keep up with the backlog chronologically, would it make sense to mention Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date as a place to find PR requests with no feedback? It takes about three days to get on to the backlog list.
  • I omitted some people from the list of 10 before becasue they usually review only a certain kind of article, but doncram's comment made me rethink that, so I would add User:Casliber, User:GeeJo, User:Taxman, User:RJHall, User:AnmaFinotera, User:Nikki311, User:Oldelpaso, User:Peanut4, User:Laser brain, and User:Midnightdreary. I tried to pick people who are currently active on WIkipedia and have left User:Ealdgyth off the list as she does all the FA / FL refs reviews, but she might want to try the short review plus followup method tested here. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:15, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Final draft

This version includes the suggestions from User:Ruhrfisch. Further suggestions are welcome.

Dear Fellow Editor, I'm writing in hopes of enlisting your aid in a four-month experiment at Peer Review (PR). The success of the experiment will depend on finding at least 10 editors willing to review at least one article a week through the end of October 2008. The experiment will employ a streamlined review process designed to insure that every nominator who seeks a review gets one and that reviewers do not waste time doing long reviews for nominators who do not respond to an initial short review.

The way it works is this: (1) Choose any article at Peer Review that lacks a review. Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date, especially the backlog list, is still a good place to find such articles. (2) Provide a short partial review based on your initial observations and wait to see if the nominator responds. Examples of short reviews can be found at Wikipedia:Peer review/Foreign relations of India/archive1 and Wikipedia:Peer review/Ed Stelmach/archive1. (3) If the nominator does not respond, the review is done. (4) If the nominator responds, continue the review as you see fit.

The experiment will require no noticeable administration. However, if you plan to participate, it would be helpful if you posted a brief note to Wikipedia talk:Peer review to that effect.

At the end of October, we can see how the experiment turned out and whether this process or some modification of it could sustain Peer Review permanently with minimal backlogs. If you can help, that would be great. If not, that's perfectly OK. We are all tremendously busy with a lot of different projects.

I have chosen to write to you in part because you've done peer reviews from the backlog during the past four months. Please forgive the form-letter nature of this note, which is more efficient than a personal note. With respect and thanks for your hard work on many projects, Finetooth (talk) 20:31, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

• I like this better - two more thoughts. Would it make sense to link the "backlog list"? And would it make sense to link to an example or two of a breif review? I have done several so far - perhaps Wikipedia:Peer review/Foreign relations of India/archive1 (just me) or Wikipedia:Peer review/Ed Stelmach/archive1 (Ealdgyth and me)? I have tried to list the four or so major things I noticed reading the article and have even stopped reading when I got to four. The big ones I look for a lead, references (both that it has them and that they are formatted properly), and images. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

These both are good ideas. Rather than fill the page with a third version, I added the links to Version 2. When we are done, I'd recommend deleting the rough drafts and re-labeling the final version. I don't usually change anything but my own typos on a talk page, but leaving just the final draft here might save confusion later about which is the "real" one. Please let me know whether you think this is ready to be sent or if it needs further adjustments. Finetooth (talk) 00:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I am fine with the letter as is. Thanks for all of your work on it. I am also OK with leaving just the final version here. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Super. I removed the rough draft but left the discussions about it alone, adding a short explanatory note. The main thing, though, is that I sent the final version to all of the 20 editors you recommended except you, me, and User:Sillyfolkboy, who doesn't seem to have a talk page. I'll do my best to do at least one review a week from now until the end of October. Assuming you are in, that's two participants. :-) Finetooth (talk) 05:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much for doing this. I am in. User talk:Sillyfolkboy works now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I have now sent User:Sillyfolkboy the note as well. Finetooth (talk) 04:48, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Tracking

How about tracking participation in the experiment as it goes on? I'd like to be able to check my own participation, anyhow. Trying... doncram (talk) 16:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I like this idea, but I do too many to track them all. I just searched my current reviews that are not semi-transcluded, and 15 of 29 reviews I did had replies. So about half of mine have replies. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Experiment tracking, optional, for reviewers

Reviewers, add your reviews if you feel like it.

Peer reviews performed within the experiment

requestor	PR request	reviewer	date reviewed	response (in article)	response (at PR)	followup
WilyD	Peter Jones (missionary)	Doncram	July 9	edited
Ealdgyth	Robert Burnell	Doncram	July 14
E. Lighthart	Gardens of Versailles	MeegsC	July 3	yes	no
Brianboulton	List of Mozart's operas	MeegsC	July 3	yes	yes	yes (now at FLC)
Peripitus	Anstey Hill Recreation Park	MeegsC	July 9	yes	yes
	List of Roman Emperors	Doncram	Aug 5
User:Leonard^Bloom	Federal government of the United States	Doncram	Aug 13

Complete list of United States Supreme Court cases

Hi. I nominated List of United States Supreme Court cases (formerly Complete list of United States Supreme Court cases) for peer review here but it hasn't showed up on the peer review page. Any suggestions? thanks.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 13:46, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

• It takes time for the bot to list it - I just checked the chronological listing at wp:pr/d and it is now listed there. I see you have asked twelve editors to review it from the WP:PRV list - this is an abuse of the system. The directions at WP:PRV read in part "... please do not send "review spam" to each individual listed below. Find 2-3 editors most interested in the article's subject area and give them time to respond." Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:09, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

My apologies. I didn't read that part.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem, though you might want to let some of the people you asked "off the hook" Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:45, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

PR reviewing experiment

This seems an excellent idea, and I'll be pleased to participate. Brianboulton (talk) 09:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

• I also plan to participate Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:45, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
• Count me in. --Laser brain (talk) 14:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
• I'll add myself here too to make the head-count easier. Finetooth (talk) 04:50, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
• Count me in, and thanks for initiating this. However, I can only do what i can, and i may need some tag team-style help with reviews, and/or some PR coaching. To date, i have felt more comfortable giving a few quick comments, which is the first step in the comment / wait-for-response/ give-more-full-review process. It's a stretch for me to do the fuller reviews, but i will try to do some by emulating other reviews that i have seen. But on any where i've done the first step and there has been a response, please feel free to provide the full review. doncram (talk) 15:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• Can someone who wasn't invited try too? If so, I'm willing to give it a go. My job sometimes takes me out of computer contact for a bit, but I'll try to do two or three in the weeks leading up to/coming back from such an event. MeegsC | Talk 18:12, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
  • By all means - I apologize that I missed your question until now. The invite list was just to what seemed to be the most active reviewers of backlog items in the past 4 months, but anyone is welcome to participate. Thanks very much! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject or taskforce to deal with the copy edit backlog

Hey all! I've been trying to gauge interest in a taskforce or even a wikiproject dedicated to maintaining and working on the category of articles needing copy edit, which has backlog reaching to January 2007. Already there are a few people interested in the idea; if you're interested or want to help, drop a note at my talk page! When there are enough of us interested, we can put up a proposal for the wikiproject and start working out the details. :) --Samuel Tan 01:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Why not just revive the recently marked inactive League of Copyeditors? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 02:00, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The LOCE was premised on both dealing with the backlog and doing reviews on request, and as far as I can tell it went historical because it did not manage to fulfill the latter. I'm proposing a project or taskforce that deals mainly with the backlog. For example, it could be a taskforce of WP:PR or WP:Grammar, so that members of the project would occasionally help work on the almost 5,000 articles needing copy edit, instead of just one or two people trying valiantly to do that. :) -Samuel Tan 06:20, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

History

Can someone sort out Wikipedia:WikiProject History/Review/Peer review so that it displays the peer reviews? I can't figure out how it works. Thanks, DrKiernan (talk) 07:50, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. Are there any other WikiProjects that would like to have a particular section of the peer review page listed on their project peer review page? (This can only be done within reason.) Geometry guy 08:16, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date

I know there is a problem with PeerReviewBot and also perhaps VeblenBot. I dod the semi-automated peer reviews by hand, but is there any way to get Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date to display in chronological order again? Searching for the date is a pain. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:02, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps something was fixed? I am looking at User:VeblenBot/C/Current peer reviews, on my watchlist, which is sorted by date from most recent to oldest. I am not clear, though, does this include the "backlog" and everything else? Am I correct that this is the one-stop-shopping place for me to check for peer reviews being needed? doncram (talk) 15:28, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this was a temporary glitch caused by (I believe) a computer failure while the bot operator was travelling. It has now been fixed. Geometry guy 22:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

No more LoCE

Just a heads-up. Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors (LoCE) has temporarily bit the dust, and its main page refers people to the PR volunteer list for copyediting. If we send people to LoCE for help, they will be caught in an endless feedback loop. Finetooth (talk) 20:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, sigh. I have recommended people ask one of the editors listed as a LOCE participant. If the LOCE does not reactivate soon, it would probably be worthwhile to spam those not already listed at WP:PRV and ask them if they want to sign up there for copyedit help. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:18, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I see that 21 editors have signed up at WP:PRV, which is a few more than the last time I looked. I recognize some of the names from the LoCE, so to some extent the switch is already happening. Everywhere I go on Wikipedia, I see editors looking at Mount Everest. The bright side is the same as the dark side: we'll never be out of work. Finetooth (talk) 02:45, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - thanks for putting things into perspective Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Partial transclusion

The total size of the peer review page briefly exceeded the size limit, so I did the partial transclusion trick on all peer reviews larger than 10 kB. Normally there is a warning from VeblenBot, so I am not sure what they problem is. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:36, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Before we get formal...

Would someone mind giving F-20 Tigershark a once-over? I'm really not sure what sort of state it's in, and I'd like to know if I should start the PR process with an eye to FA. Maury (talk) 21:38, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

• I looked at it to make sure it was not already in the PR queue (it is not) and noticed that it needs to expand the lead per WP:LEAD. As for a real review, please submit it for a peer review like everyone else. Currently the longest wait for a review is about a week, much less in most cases. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:14, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Extend Auto-Archive

According to Carl, PeerReviewBot automatically archives peer reviews that are over 30 days old and have not had new comments in 2 days. The 2-day rule definitely needs to be extended. I was thoroughly reviewing Everglades for User:Moni3 for 30 days, and I consistently added comments every three or four days. I was totally surprised and confused when I saw that the peer review was auto-archived 3 days after a new comment.

Long articles take a long time to review, and editors should be able to work at whatever pace they want. Ideally, the auto-archive period should be 8 days. That way, an editor who only has access on weekends can add comments on a saturday, and then make comments the following sunday and not have to worry about the peer review being archived. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 10:25, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Let me give the reasons why this is done - for well over two years various users and now the bot have archived all peer review requests that had no responses after 14 days and anything over 30 days old that was inactive for at least 2 days. The reason for this is space - Peer Review gets close to 200 requests a month and without this, the PR page would get too crowded. When the PR page gets above a certain size, no reviews are transcluded at all.

If a PR is archived, it can be dearchived just by undoing the changes on the PR page and the article talk page. Once a PR is archived, it is no longer transcluded on the main WP:PR page, but the editors could keep working on it if they wanted (archiving just stops transclusion to WP:PR). I have either done the archiving by hand or checked the bot each day since last September. If I recall correctly, this is only the second or third time someone has asked about a review older than 30 days being archived too soon. I woulkd rather accomodate the special cases than let everything older than 30 days go an extra 6 days before being archived. Since we work on consensus here, I will go with that, but these are my thoughts. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:07, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Let me see if I follow you here: Now that I've manually un-archived the peer review to keep working on it, the bot won't re-archive it because it's not transcluded? If that's the case, then that's totally fine. As long as we don't have to keep correcting the bot, there's no problem. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:24, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

If you manually un-archived it, the bot will treat it like a new peer review, so it will get archived again when there are no edits in 14 days, or after another 30 days it will get archived if there are no edits in 2 days. Either way, if the page stops being edited again, the bot will eventually archive it again. But it won't be necessary to fight against the bot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

To clarify further, when the bot or anyone archives a peer review, all that really does is stop it being transcluded at WP:PR, so someone looking at the list does not see it there. Anyone who was already participating in the peer review could still edit it (despite it being archived). Putting the PR notice on it again starts the whole PR process again (as Carl noted). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Autoformat

I just realized that while the PR autochecker tells everyone that "years with full dates should be linked", the MoS has been altered to make this optional within any given article. Should we ask User:AndyZ to update the autochecker?. Perhaps deleting mention of autoformats would be best since a bot might not be able to tell inconsistent formatting (bad) from zero formatting (OK) and complete formatting (OK). Finetooth (talk) 22:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for catching this. I just checked and AndyZ has not made any contributions since February 24, 2008. I can leave a message on his talk page and send him an email. User:Geometry guy may be able to help here too - perhaps just remove the notice in question? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I use a version that I maintain myself at User:Gary King/peer reviewer.js just FYI. I could remove the part where it suggests linking dates? Gary King (talk) 02:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay the date suggestion is commented out now. Gary King (talk) 02:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks GaryKing - I run the script as AZPR. Just to make sure, did you comment it out in the AZPR source or just in your version? If not in the AZPR source, could you either do it there or show a diff so I can do it? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Diff is here. Gary King (talk) 03:04, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I have left a message on AndyZ's talk page. I tried altering the notice text and I tried commenting out the call to the subroutine (I think), but when I went in just now and ran the script as AZPR (logged in) on the article List of hip hop albums, I still get the link dates message. So I rolled back my edits to User:AndyZ/peerreviewer.js‎. I will ask Geometry guy if he can fix this. If anyone else reading this can fix it, please be bold. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:25, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>Where does the AndyZ script live, and how do you run it? No need to answer if the answers are long and complicated. I don't do any programming, but my thought was to copy the entire subroutine from Gary King's script and paste it over the subroutine in the AndyZ script. It seems to me this should work. Finetooth (talk) 16:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I had thought of something similar, but I am not sure it would work. The problem is that there is a separate AZPR (Andy Z Peer Review) account, which both AndyZ and I can access (though he wrote it all). That is what I use to do the semi-automated peer reviews. If I am logged in as AZPR and open any article, it immediately goes to edit it and runs the PR script (which I then copy and paste into WP:PRA/JL08). Because of this, the script there is a bit different from what Gary King has on his page (to complicate matters, you can add few lines to your monobook.js file and then you can run the script as yourself, but it calls on AndyZ's or AZPR's subroutines - I have this in my Ruhrfisch account). So what Gary King has appears to be a version of the "anyone can use it" script, but what I was trying to fix was the base script and if needed the AZPR script. To be honest, I am out of my programming league here and would rather let someone who knows more than I do fix this (though I am glad to answer any questions). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Just comment out the following code to do the same thing as what I did to my version of the script:

if(/\s(january|february|march|april|may|june|july|august|september|october|november|december)\s(\d\d?\D)/gi
    .test(inputText_PR)) outputText_PR+="\n{{subst:User:AndyZ/PR/linkdate}}";

So the commented version looks like this:

/*if(/\s(january|february|march|april|may|june|july|august|september|october|november|december)\s(\d\d?\D)/gi
    .test(inputText_PR)) outputText_PR+="\n{{subst:User:AndyZ/PR/linkdate}}";*/

Gary King (talk) 16:57, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Ruhrfisch, for explaining the script complications. The whole line of thought in this section evolved, as you no doubt guessed, from the discussion here on the 2007 Atlantic Hurricane season talk page about removing date autoformatting. I see that User:Tony1 has added a note to the hurricane talk page saying he has a script to remove the autoformats "in a jiffy". Finetooth (talk) 17:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

If you want to keep the test, but change the message, the page that needs to be edited is User:AndyZ/PR/linkdate. It should be clear how. Geometry guy 18:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks G guy! I changed the message to the following: "Years (2008) or months (January) by themselves are typically not linked. Per Wikipedia:Context, be consistent about linking years with full dates. Either do not link any of them (which seems to be more common), or link them all: for example, link January 15, 2008.[1]" Is this OK? By the way, none of my edits to the script seemed to make any changes to what showed up on running it. I am open to further tweaks of the message. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Perform a hard refresh by following the instructions given at the top of any .js page. Gary King (talk) 20:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I give up. I have edited the script and it makes no difference. I have bypassed my cache. I have changed the notice text, but the old one still shows up. My preference is to modify the message, but I would rather turn it off than have this wrong message. Thanks everyone, but I can not fix this Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:31, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The commenting out did not fix it? That's strange. Gary King (talk) 23:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It did not before - I just did it again, bypassed my cache, and ran the script as Ruhrfisch on the List of hip hop albums article and got the new (tweaked) notice. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you bypassed the cache correctly the first time, then. It would have worked a little while later anyways because eventually the cache needs to clear itself. Gary King (talk) 01:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Whether or not I bypassed the cache correctly (and I could have made a mistake, although Control F5 seems hard to mess up), I just ran the semi-automated peer reviews as AZPR and the tweaked message came up despite my earlier commenting out of the subroutine. Since it appears the message can be changed, I am open to suggestions about refining it further. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Literature in the Hoysala Empire

I nominated this article for peer review today and specified that it should be in the lang-literature section, but somehow the article has been listed in the general category. Can someone help out here please. thanks, Dineshkannambadi (talk) 22:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

• I fixed it - it had to have just "langlit" but had "arts • langlit" which the bot did not recognize - no cat or unrecognizable one gets put into the general category. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Something is wrong

Wikipedia:Peer review/Félix Houphouët-Boigny/archive1 has not yet been added to the main PR page, and I created it yesterday. Also, I did not get any automated peer review. What has gone wrong? --I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 22:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

A bot lists articles in WP:PR and only does this once an hour. I just checked and the peer review is listed under General Topics in WP:PR, and is also in the right chronological order in the chronological peer review listing. As for the semi-automated peer review (SAPR), they are almost always run by me as User:AZPR around 0:00 UTC. Then the bot adds the notices to the peer reviews about 6 hours later and archives. When I ran the semi-automated peer reviews last time, the peer review was not yet listed. Since they are done only once a day, yours was added at about the longest time possible to wait. I will run the SAPRs next and it will be at WP:PRA/JL08 if you want to see it before the bot adds the notice. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It is here now, enjoy! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:07, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

location of link to semi-auto peer reviews

Because of the way that Template:PR/preload is set up, the placeholder for semi-automated peer reviews usually ends up above the nominator's text. Would many people prefer to see the placeholder moved below the nominator's statement? The downside would be more complexity on the preload page that the nominator has to edit. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

We could always try moving it and see what happens. Perhaps very clear directions commented out - NOMINATORS PLEASE ADD THE NOMINATION ABOVE HERE, then the placeholder, then PLEASE ADD REVIEW COMMENTS AND RESPONSES BELOW HERE. Moving the SAPR link down would presumably move it off what is seen at WP:PR when reviews are semi-transcluded for space - this would save even more space. If it were consistently below the nomination and above the reviewers comments and responses it would be a good marker for the bot to do semi-transclusion too (whenever that happens). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Mangalore PR

Mangalore was not promoted to FA status on August 9 2008 and I listed it for PR on the same day. What should I do since 2 weeks are not over?Kensplanet (talk) 19:55, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I did not notice this - thanks for bringing it up here. I see the current PR has not received any feedback beyond the semi-automated peer review. You could archive the current PR and then remove the archive tag when two weeks have passed. The idea is that the two weeks is time to address the remaining comments from the FAC - have the references been fixed? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I have archived it. Can you just check whether I have done it properly. Wikipedia:Peer review/Mangalore/archive3. Thanks, Kensplanet (talk) 14:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I archived it so the bot will stop transcluding it to the WP:PR page. After two weeks have passed you can just undo my edit and it will be listed again (no need to open PR 4) Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

A problem with general topic

I noticed that nominators often forget to specify a topic. This results into a long list of articles classified under general topic. Would not it be advantageous to modify {{Peer review}} template that it can display ten page creation links (instead of one link now)—a separate link for each topic. If this is implemented the nominators will be freed from manually inserting topic codes into {{Peer review page}} template. Ruslik (talk) 19:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

When I used to archive PRs by hand I saw that many of the general topic PRs are actually incorrect topics - if someone has a Geography article about Blah and they put "topic =Blah" in instead of "topic = geography", then the PR goes into the general topic too. I have asked if a pull down menu with the 10 topics could be used here, but will be the first to admit I do not have any idea how to code such a thing. Geometry guy came up with the current system which works well (with this noted problem) Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I will try to create experimental templates in following few day. Ruslik (talk) 14:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - I owuld check with User:Geometry guy and User:CBM to make sure they work with the bot etc. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

A draft is here. The template itself can be found here. Ruslik (talk) 07:10, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, it looks nice, but the topic "Arts" is missing, I would spell it "Everyday life", and I would put the "General" topic in with the others. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

 Done. Ruslik (talk) 13:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. I don't see any bot issues. Thanks for doing this. Geometry guy 18:29, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I created 9 preload templates {{PR/preload1}}–{{PR/preload9}}. The exp. template now works—it opens edit windows with the correct preload. If nobody objects I will implement it soon. Changes to {{editintro}}, {{Peer review/doc}} and to Wikipedia:Peer review/guidelines should also be made. Ruslik (talk) 08:51, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I just implemented all changes to templates. Let see how it will work. Ruslik (talk) 13:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Excess PR requests removed

User:Bugnot listed five articles at WP:PR today. I archived (removed) four of them because the limit is one a day, and four total requests. Please read Wikipedia:Peer review/Request removal policy, specifically the Limits section, which says Peer review resources are limited and, in order to try and provide all peer review requests with a response, some limits have to be placed on requests as well. Requests exceeding these limits can be removed. Requests that are removed can be relisted when they no longer exceed these limits.

This is the first person to list more than two in a day since the limits were agreed to, and the first time I have archived any for that reason. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Peer review help for the Simple English Wikipedia

There's a large backlog there, and if anyone here has some spare time and could do well at assessing the quality of the article's content and the proper simplicity of the writing, that'd be great. It's right here. - A Link to the Past (talk) 17:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Strange behaviour

The peer reviews of Montreal and Niedermayer-Hentig_Expedition were closed by User:PeerReviewBot long ago, but still remain on the page. I do not see any obvious error, so I am interested what is going on? Ruslik (talk) 13:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Montreal is no longer listed, the Expedition still is. I asked Carl to take a look at this as he runs User:PeerReviewBot and User:VeblenBot, which do the additons of new PRs and removal of old ones - see below. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Jamie Stuart PR

I created the page and followed the instructions a couple of days ago yet the PR is still to be listed on the project page. Is there a problem or have I missed a step? Thanks, --Jimbo^[online] 15:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I do not see an obvious problem - I asked Carl to take a look at this as he runs User:PeerReviewBot and User:VeblenBot, which do the additons of new PRs and removal of old ones - see above too. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

This should be fixed now, it was a combination of a couple issues I have run into with the new editing API. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Sep 19, 05:49 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 1933294 out of 2048000 bytes (114706 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 09:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• I did the partial transclusion trick on the six largest reviews (all over 16 k) and it is fixed, under 140 K (Post-expand include size: 1382456/2048000 bytes). I note that this is the first such notive in over a month (since August 15). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 10:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

removals

Call me confused, but the removal instructions on the peer review page don't mention anything about article editors removing PRs once they feel their concerns have been addressed, et al. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 13:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Good idea - do you have suggested wording? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, this is a good idea. I think we should be able to close a PR once our concerns have been addressed. No need to wait 14 days or whatever for it to close. TwentiethApril1986 (want to talk?) 11:09, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I added nominators of peer reviews can close discussions which they initiated if they feel their concerns have been addressed, to the instructions, thanks Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The End

Back in March I proposed that no peer review be archived without a repsonse of some sort, and neither I nor the bot have archived a PR request made since February 22nd that did not have some response. In June I nearly quit, but decided to try doing less detailed reviews until October. Now it is October and as much as I hate to do this, I do not see how I can keep doing several PRs a day.

I will continue to do the semi-automated peer reviews. If there is interest, I will continue to maintain the backlog list. I want to thank all of the people who have done peer reviews, including The Rambling Man, Finetooth, Brianboulton, Dabomb87, Giggy, SGGH, Wackymacs, and everyone else who has done reviews - see here.

Sorry, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:00, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Please don't be sorry. Making an effort that I would have found impossible, you helped a great many people. I'm not sure about the backlog question. It might be best if editors reviewed on the basis of interesting content rather than on queue time. The underlying problem is that the needy articles greatly outnumber the eager reviewers. Finetooth (talk) 18:02, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks as always for your kind words - it is good to have another perspective on this. I was thinking more of the requests that will likely not get reviews now. I will keep myself listed at WP:PRV and do requested reviews (though I think I will limit those to a few a week). If no one else weighs in here, I will remove the backlog list in a few days. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:07, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Your contributions to peer review are fantastic. There's no need to apologise for doing a bit less. To save you sending me a reminder, I've set up the archives for next month. It is very easy now thanks to the maintenance page. Geometry guy 08:12, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words and for the heads up on the tool for page maintenance. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:08, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I came across this thread because I was surprised to see that the backlog list had not been updated for a couple of days. You've done an amazing job—I don't know how you're able to do so many reviews per day. If possible could you keep maintaining the backlog list? I have it watchlisted and usually check it once a day to see if there's anything interesting to review (I often skim an article or two but don't often review). Though I guess if the number of review(er)s doesn't increase the backlog will balloon, and there won't be any point maintaining the list. Dr pda (talk) 20:45, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I just got burnt out and had to cut way back. I can maintain the list and will update it in the next 8 hours or so. After two weeks of inactivity the bot will archive peer reviews, which will remove them from WP:PR and then I will remove them from the backlog list. I guess the question becomes should reviews with no responses still be listed on the backlog after 3 days (so they will stay 11 days on the backlog list if not reviewed) or should they be listed after a longer period of time with no response - perhaps a week? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:48, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not sure what the best time period is, I suspect it will depend on the number of reviewers. I see you've currently set it at four days. This seems reasonable for the moment. Dr pda (talk) 12:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Can't ... stop ... reviewing ... articles - after a break of four days I reviewed some more today. They would have been archived tomorrow otherwise without a review. Not sure how long I can keep it up, but I'll see. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)