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This page is for New Page Reviewers to discuss the process with each other and to ask for and provide help to fellow reviewers. Discussion also takes place on our Discord server (invite link) For discussions on other matters, such as bugs, etc., please navigate through the tabs, or go to the discussion pages of the relevant policies. For discussion on topics purely relevant to coordination tasks, such as backlog drives, please post at Coordination Talk

Top New Page Reviewers database report (updated by bot 2x daily)

NPP backlog

Archives

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 51, 52

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Archives of Page Curation: 1, 2, 3, 4. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 8 sections are present.

Marking articles sent to AfD as reviewed

I thought we decided long ago to not mark a queued article as reviewed if we send it to AfD, or has that changed? It makes sense to leave it unchecked so that it stays in the queue and serves as notice to other reviewers who stumble across it that there's an AfD in process and to please participate. Atsme 💬 📧 02:57, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

No, that goes for CSD and PROD because they can be denied or just removed by the author. If the AFD is properly nominated and unlikely to be procedurally closed without a normal discussion, it should be marked reviewed because its fate will be decided at AFD and there is no reason to waste more scarce NPP "bandwidth". MB 03:47, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

It is documented in the flowchart to mark as reviewed after sending to AFD. The bit about checking for a valid AFD covers the case of finding an article in the queue that was already nominated by a non-NPPer. MB 03:55, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

According to the flowchart, we should mark any article that is undergoing AFD as reviewed. I imagine the reasoning is that it is not circumventable, unlike CSD or PROD which can simply be removed by a bad actor. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:08, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

It may be circumventable on a very bogus AfD which may be subject to procedural speedy close. I think this should be the only exception. MarioGom (talk) 13:08, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

One added motivation for marking AfDs reviewed right now is that there's been some issues with XfDcloser's handling of RfDs, so when patrolling articles with deletion tags there's a chance we may come across a redirect with a tag left on that needs to be removed. AfDs would otherwise clutter up this backlog. _signed, Rosguill 16:26, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Atsme, Or Atsme, in order to avoid any convolution think of it like this, when you send an article to AFD it is indeed "reviewed" (in any sense you can think of) if it survives the AFD then fine, if it doesn’t, still fine, in the end the article would been indeed have been reviewed. This is peculiar to AFD's only. When it is a CSD you do not mark as reviewed as it can contested or declined, same as prod. Celestina007 (talk) 16:39, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you to all for your input. Fortunately, I just now found the discussion I was trying to recall – Archive 30 – the OP focused on PROD & CSD, but there was also support to keep AfDs unreviewed. The closer of that discussion did not make note of the latter in their close. I actually have an example of why I still support leaving AfD's unreviewed and will provide a link shortly. Happy patrolling! Atsme 💬 📧 17:35, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

I've long thought that they should be marked as reviewed until the AfD has concluded (as keep, obvs). Marking as reviewed gets the noindex flag removed, so I can imagine situations where a UPE's client sees their name appear in Google, and they pay the spammer, who walks away happy, not caring whether the article is deleted. Keeping it unpatrolled during AfD and getting AfD closer to mark it as reviewed as a part of the 'keep' process, seems better to me. Girth Summit _(blether) 18:22, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Does the AfD Header not have the NOINDEX magicword? I thought it did, because we didn't want search results for articles that were there, much like how all the AfD subpages are filtered out by robots.txt Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:05, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Yep – {{Article for deletion/dated}} contains {{NOINDEX}}, which noindexes pages that are less than 90 days old. DanCherek (talk) 19:09, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

OK, that's weird. I am pretty confident that I've seen Google pick new articles up while they're at AfD. I'll have to dig into this further though, I can't bring specific examples to mind right now. A job for tomorrow perhaps. Girth Summit _(blether) 19:32, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

But that's only for pages that are less than 90 days old. I'm working on years old, and that's yet another problem. We're backlogged with old articles and redirects that have slipped through the cracks, not to mention articles that are created directly in mainspace without ever going through AfC. Atsme 💬 📧 20:41, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. OK, I can't find any examples of new articles currently at AfD which have been picked up by Google if they were unreviewed prior to their deletion nominations. I thought I'd seen that happen in the past, but perhaps if I'd looked more carefully at the logs in those instances I would have been able to find an explanation. This assuages my concerns about AfD being a sort of backdoor to temporary acceptance of spam. Girth Summit _(blether) 11:08, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

I believe that the info above indicates that they will be picked up by Google if they are more than 90 days old, irrespective of whether or not they are at AFD? North8000 (talk) 00:33, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Girth - thanks for doing the reseach. Just curious...does NPP have a counter to this "so-called" humorous essay? It's rather disconcerting to think our work is thought of in this manner. Atsme 💬 📧 00:40, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@North8000. Yes. I believe this is correct. Articles older than 90 days remain in the queue until we mark them as reviewed, but become indexable by search engines. Ditto for articles at AFD, because the {{NOINDEX}} template used in the AFD notice template also appears to have a 90 day timer. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:58, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

I once uncovered a set of I think dozens of semi-hoax articles, all by one editor. On very technical subjects, that looked very intelligent and Wikipedian but said absolutely nothing / was gibberish if you analyzed it technically. Lots of sourcing/ citing and material randomly near-copied from the sources. I think it was someone doing a "study" to show that they pulled one off on Wikpedia. North8000 (talk) 11:59, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@Atsme There is no reason not to mark a page sent to AfD as reviewed. Once nominated it will either be deleted, or endorsed by consensus to be kept, in any case, it is out of the hands of New Page Patrol. The rationale for not marking CSD and PROD as reviewed is that anyone can remove the tag (even though the author shouldn't in the case of CSD), which can result in stuff falling through the cracks if the reviewer doesn't check back on it. The same thing cannot happen with AfD, as there are automated systems to prevent that from happening. — Insertcleverphrasehere 17:39, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Does anybody know if there is a place to see any of the total numbers?

So this page shows the total backlog, and links to one showing stats on the top 00 reviewers. But is there a place that show things like total number of new articles for a day or week or other time period, or the total number of reviewed / NPP reviewed / autopatrolled for a day or week or other time period? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 16:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Good question. --Whiteguru (talk) 23:29, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• If it hasn't already been compiled, you can extract this data with Quarry if you can work in SQL. Patrols are in mw:Manual:logging table. – Joe (talk) 07:43, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Would it be possible to get any of those numbers shown on this page or a page clickable from this page? North8000 (talk) 11:33, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• Hi, North8000 - if you will look at the bottom of the page in queue view in the gray bar – to the left of the Refresh list it gives you the total of unreviewed pages (15171 total unreviewed pages) and date of the (oldest: 6515 days). Atsme 💬 📧 18:06, 21 May 2022 (UTC) Well, duh - that wasn't your question – my apologies. Maybe the stats you're asking for can be created by our tech gurus. In the past, we made requests for certain features every so often - that's how we got the curation tool. I believe Kudz led that charge. Atsme 💬 📧 23:30, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

He ain't leadin' it now - nor is anybody else interested by the look of the backlog. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:38, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm thinking some of it can be fixed with the right BOT. Atsme 💬 📧 23:41, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Adding - I just added a request on the TP of Wbm1058. He operates/programs BOTS so maybe he can help. Atsme 💬 📧 13:32, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Sumptin's wrong with the queue

The queue is full of articles that don't belong in the NPP queue - for example tagged articles dating way back, such as Thumb Wars, Feedzai, and Masinagudi noted as unreviewed. Others that are tagged may need citations, or they're orphans/no categories, etc. (Yes, I know we can set our filters to see only the ones we want to see, but that doesn't reduce the backlog). Surely, we're not expected to fix all these articles, are we? I can see fixing some as we go along, but we're talking about a huge backlog when those articles are counted. The queue shows 15171 total unreviewed pages (oldest: 6515 days). Atsme 💬 📧 18:04, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey there. Thumb Wars and Masinagudi had their redirects removed. Anytime a redirect is removed, the article gets placed in the queue as an anti-spam measure. Feedzai started as a mainspace article, then was moved to draftspace, then was recently AFC accepted. Fun fact: The queue sorts by article creation date, not date placed in queue. Anyway, all this looks normal to me so far, just some quirks of Special:NewPagesFeed and Page Curation. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:19, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the splainin', Novem. I'm wondering if now that AfC & NPP are joined at the hip if we really need to be seeing AfC approved articles? I am familiar with redirects being removed improperly...I use them for training exercises. If only there was a work-around. Right now we have 7042 redirects in the queue. Maybe we could form a redirect task force? It's a great place for new reviewers to get their feet wet, no? And here's something else...this article was created with a notability tag attached at creation. Avivdc did make a declaration on his user page and has been cooperative about fixing what needs to be fixed. I'm of the mind that these types of articles should not be autopatrolled, and should go through AfC first. Your thoughts? Atsme 💬 📧 20:44, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey Atsme. Folks with NPP permission are able to mark their own AFC accepts as reviewed, but some choose not to do so. I personally only mark mine reviewed some of the time, because there are some extra steps for NPP, and because a second set of eyes can be helpful. There are some discussions about this in the archives of WT:AFC.

Patrolling redirects is its own skill, I've worked with our redirect patrol guru Rosguill in the past to try to document the procedure for it at Misplaced Pages:New pages patrol/Redirect checklist. I suspect that queue is doing OK, since our current troubles seem to be due to Onel discontinuing high volume reviewing of the mainspace queue.

Looks like DataRails was draftified by Celestina, then the article author cut-and-paste-moved it back to mainspace to bypass AFC. New users creating articles with tags is always a red flag for cut-and-paste for me, and possible UPE. Many NPPs reflexively draftify COI/UPE, and I think that's fine. WP:COI says that folks with a COI creating articles should use AFC. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:34, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

@Atsme I mostly do redirects, just because I find myself more comfortable with them than full articles (and can do them faster). Novem mentioned Rosguill does a lot of them too. Plus after doing mostly redirects, I am in a bit of a rhythm. Check the history, check the target, does it violate CSD/R#DELETE? If no, pull up twinkle, add a category and hit patrolled. Plus it gets redirects out of other patrollers ways who can do articles better/faster than I can. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 01:53, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

@IAmChaos! – THANK YOU! PS: Based on all the good you do, your user name is deceiving. Atsme 💬 📧 13:35, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

@Atsme Ya know, it may be now I think about it. Luckily I have a friend, whose name may be more accurate. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 17:35, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Backlog getting out of control

Since we lost the diligent One the backlog has been spiralling out of control. One option is running another backlog drive; I believe we achieved at least moderate increase in reviewing with the last one. (t · c) buidhe 23:16, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

You just noticed? It started long before that–kinda when all the coordinators moved on...Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:24, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Depends on how you define "out of control", I guess—it's the worst it's been since 2018. Anyway, I'm interested in helping resolve the situation. (t · c) buidhe 23:53, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

I can do more redirects (and start doing reviews again)...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:33, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah... that's what happens when all the work gets concentrated amongst a few very prolific reviewers. Lose one and it falls apart. There needs to be a recruiting drive and a push to get reviewers more engaged. I just checked the coordination page and only one newsletter has been sent in over a year! Those newsletters were instrumental in getting the team motivated. New page patrol can't just expect to tick along without anyone at the wheel to encourage people to be engaged. Everything has just been let to slide and Onel was taking up the slack that all the other reviewers have left in the system. It isn't his fault that the backlog is now skyrocketing, it's the lack of coordination, he was just a band aid on a very bad situation that was slowly getting worse. — Insertcleverphrasehere 17:31, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree. We need to do an effort to bring back some inactive reviewers to active status, as well as recruiting new reviewers. Any idea on how can we start this work? MarioGom (talk) 18:39, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

You're right MG. I relatively focus more on declining bad AfC drafts than on NPP. Academics, family and other stuff keeps me busy. My laptop is accidentally damaged and I'm here on mobile. But doing NPP work on mobile is troublesome for me. There needs to be some sort of drive. Let's push the articles either to mainspace or to the trash-bin. Back to what you asked, a nice message could be prepared and mass-sent to all NPP'ers noting that an electronic certificate would be provided to all, imho. Shouldn't the editors be appreciated? ─ The Aafī on Mobile 19:18, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

If editors aren't appreciated for what they do, I feel they lack the capacity to do so, or just they start avoiding the work. ─ The Aafī on Mobile 19:20, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

AafiOnMobile That's one of the benefits of a backlog drive: lots of barnstars are awarded! (t · c) buidhe 19:24, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

What if barnstars are given to editors on monthly basis so that they remain in touch with the work, and feel appreciated. I'm thinking of something beyond drives that could keep the editors enjoyable. ─ The Aafī on Mobile 19:31, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

when I was awarded with the Precious; since then Gerda has been posting nice messages on my talk page about improving articles, even if improvement is very less. Gerda's lovely notes make me enjoy and improve more. ─ The Aafī on Mobile 19:34, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, I find little reward in barnstars. I'm mostly self-motivated, and my greatest motivation is seeing the backlog go down (even if it's just within a WP:NPPSORT category). The downside of this is that I'm a bit demotivated by the sustained backlog increase. It makes me feel that no matter the amount of work I can individually do in this area... it doesn't make any difference. MarioGom (talk) 21:05, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree with MarioGom. Whilst I liked getting a barnstar for doing well at a backlog drive, monthly barnstars would not motivate me at all. Seeing numbers go down is more motivation, but that's not happened for a while... -Kj cheetham (talk) 09:03, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

As far as resources for recruiting, see User:Insertcleverphrasehere/NPP and User:Insertcleverphrasehere/NPR invite list. Back in 2018/2019 over a couple months or so of spare time I used Quarry SQL searches (see the ones at the top of: https://quarry.wmcloud.org/Insertcleverphrasehere ) to identify potential recruits, manually filtered them, and sent out a ton of invites, and tracked the results of the invitees and what they reviewed. From this relatively mild effort 18,000 reviews were completed in the first six months, essentially equivalent to the entire backlog at the time when I first started sending the invites (we also coincidentally ran the backlog to near zero during this time). This number is also quite a bit larger than the number of reviews that I personally have done in total. Recruiting is important, and is actually more effective than just going out and slogging away at the backlog yourself. No one is doing it, so it should not be a surprise that we are running out of active reviewers. the editors on Misplaced Pages that would happily help us often don't know that we need the help.

Those SQL searches need to be re-run, manually checked (usually only 1 in 5 or so was suitable for an invite), and invited to join the project. If someone could take on this job, it would probably be the single best thing that could be done to turn the situation around for NPP. — Insertcleverphrasehere 17:21, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

it's the worst it's been since 2018 - What a coincidence! It's time to prune the deadwood out of that ridiculous list of 0ver 700 reviewers. Now where are the coords? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

The last time I looked at the list (some months ago) there were 7 active members on a list of approx 705 NPP reviewers. The other thing to keep in mind is that WP:NPPSORT has an inclusion of articles that have been tagged. Many of these are articles that their creators are not going to do anything in regard to the maintenance tag. --Whiteguru (talk) 23:56, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I know that Kudpung and I disagree on this. I think we need more reviewers, though pruning the inactive ones from thee list is also a good idea. See my comment above regarding recruiting, but I think my push of inviting people was instrumental in reducing the backlog last time it was particularly bad, and managed to attract a few relatively prolific reviewers to the project that became invaluable over the last few years. Some people that applied after my invite also did sweet fuck all too, so there's that. But people with the NPR right, whether they apply under their own volition or are invited are always going to follow a power law distribution. — Insertcleverphrasehere 17:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I have some ideas that I'm trying to tidy up to present. North8000 (talk) 01:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Have we considered discussing a reduction in the requirements for autopatrol? We could also ask that admins patrol Misplaced Pages:Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege more. DannyS712 (talk) 06:10, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Sadly, the community has been tightening autopatrol recently. Example: Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals#Passed: 7D Remove autopatrolled from default toolkit. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I recognize a few names in that automated report, and I wouldn't grant autropatrolled at all. And I'm sure some wouldn't get it granted if requested. That being said, I think it's a good thing that NPPs nominate some people to autopatrolled from time to time. MarioGom (talk) 07:33, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The backlog has gone to around 14885 this morning from about 15k so some pages are reviewed, but we can’t get many reviewers when it takes weeks for the admins to review them, take my request as an example, because I had passed NPP school it was a request that took less time than usual, but some requests will probably take over 2 weeks. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 05:50, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The backlog won't disappear in a day, no. It will take a few months at least. But since Kudpung sent out the newsletter there have already been an influx of new people applying at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_permissions/New_page_reviewer people who probably had no idea that we needed the help before seeing the message. I just sent out messages to a bunch of the noticeboards, and already had a few takers. There is help out there to be had, we just have to ask. — Insertcleverphrasehere 17:52, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The admins have sympathy for us (except Rosguill who is one of us) and are approving requests much much quicker, and I got about 50 pages done this morning so if every reviewer did something like that, that’s part of the backlog gone, but we are keeping up with the new pages as they come in. So those are some positives, negatives are that we probably will have some more UPE’s bubbling up if the admins are reviewing requests faster, | Zippybonzo | Talk | 19:55, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

User:Hatchens

Earlier today I blocked new page patroller Hatchens for undisclosed paid editing. Specifically, he seems to have been accepting drafts written by other UPErs and as he also had autopatrolled I think these will have skipped the NPP queue too. More details at Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#User:Hatchens. – Joe (talk) 15:16, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I have seen the reason for this block and agree with it. If nobody objects, I will dust off my unpatrolling script in a couple of days time. MER-C 15:25, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Good catch Joe Roe. There needs to a CU done if not already. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:45, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I've taken a look. No hits, but we should keep an eye out. – Joe (talk) 07:59, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Could we either have a Page Curation filter

• for reviewer (or ex-reviewer for articles that have been unreviewed)
• OR for all articles that have been unreviewed? -MPGuy2824 (talk) 08:07, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Both of those are good suggestions, MPGuy2824, but like most good suggestions that get made on this page, no one seems to follow up and get them done. What NPP needs is a coordinator or a Task Force. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:32, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I might have some extra time in the next few months to try and update the extension code, but I don't try to keep track of everything on this page. Good suggestions that have support should be filed on phabricator where the developers will see them DannyS712 (talk) 08:38, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I created T309008 for my first suggestion. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 11:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

If there is a developer willing to review my patches things would move a lot faster probably than if trying to coordinate with the WMF. If someone here wants to familiarize themselves with the code base and work with me on this that would be great (we may even be able to get a grant for the improvements in the next round of grant applications, who knows?) DannyS712 (talk) 08:44, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I tried once, years ago, to tackle some of Misplaced Pages:Page Curation/Suggested improvements, but trying to set up Vagrant made me want to bang my head against a wall. Have the WMF modernised their development environment yet? Otherwise, I'd long thought we'd be better off if we replaced page curation with a gadget like WP:AFCH so improvements don't have to go through the WMF bottleneck. – Joe (talk) 08:52, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

@Joe Roe take a look at https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/, tool for creating demo wikis for arbitrary patches. I've sent a pull request to add page triage support. I know from whenever I first set up vagrant that it was a huge headache (though I was setting it up with centralauth and wikibase too), have you tried docker? From what I recall when I set that up (I have 3 different MW setups on my computer :) ) - see mw:MediaWiki-Docker. You will separately need to install the page triage extension, but you can do that by replacing "GlobalWatchlist" with "PageTriage" and following the instructions at mw:MediaWiki-Docker/Extension/GlobalWatchlist. DannyS712 (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Bot to mark redirect->article->redirect as patrolledarticle->redirect_as_patrolled-2022-05-22T21:28:00.000Z">

Seems like a common use case that fills up the back of the queue. We'll have a patrolled redirect get turned into an article, then reverted. Would there be support for patrolling these automatically with a bot? I can put a WP:BOTREQ in if there's consensus. cc User:DannyS712 –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:28, 22 May 2022 (UTC)article->redirect_as_patrolled"> article->redirect_as_patrolled">

• I support this request. --Whiteguru (talk) 23:02, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae no need to make a bot request there, I'd be happy to work on this if there is consensus. My recollection of the page curation code is that redirect->article results in the page being marked as unreviewed, but that article->redirect does not. So the simpler version of this task would be just to extend my existing redirect autopatrolling to including redirects that are not the only revision (which I think is currently a requirement). A more advanced and complicated version would be

• for every unpatrolled redirect
• if the last edit was changing the article to a redirect
• and a previous version of the article was a redirect to the same target
• and that previous version was already marked as patrolled by someone (including by the bot...)
• then mark the new version as patrolled as well

let me know what people think DannyS712 (talk) 00:03, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey Danny. Thanks for the quick response. So the simpler version of this task would be just to extend my existing redirect autopatrolling to including redirects that are not the only revision (which I think is currently a requirement). Are there more details to that? If we simply patrol all redirects originating from an unpatrolled article, I think that could be problematic. Your bulleted list above is good, I think that workflow is correct and is in sync with what I was suggesting. To simplify the coding/speed up the bot, could change and a previous version of the article was a redirect to the same target to and the 2nd to last version of the article was a redirect to the same target, or put a limit of 10 revisions deep or something. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:15, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

When patrolling the back of the queue, I sometimes see edit warring over article vs redirect. These often happen in pop culture topics, and they might be tricky. They might involve edit warring by a few users. Per WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT, if there is clearly no consensus on the redirect, we shouldn't be patrolling the redirect, we should be restoring the article. Consider the following case:

1. Article exists from 2010 to present. Never nominated for deletion.
2. Existed most of its history as an article, except during a couple of short periods that it was a redirect.
3. The article is so old that it originally didn't make it to the NPP queue (it didn't exist). The review log does contain one or two instances of redirects marked as reviewed.
4. There are currently 2 or 3 users edit warring over the redirect.
5. In my opinion, per WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT, our action here should be restoring the article, marking it as reviewed, and ask everyone involved to discuss in the talk page or nominate for deletion. An article that existed as an article for 10 years, almost uninterrupted, is not material for NPP, there's no point for us in keeping it in the backlog.

And now here's a possible counter-example. An article in a similar state as the previous example, but:

1. It has existed most of its history as a redirect, except during a couple of short periods that it existed as an article.
2. There is one banned user who come everyday to restore the article, and their accounts are quickly blocked, and their creations reverted.
3. I would consider marking the redirect as patrolled, since I think WP:REVERTBAN has more weight here. A banned user doesn't get to legitimately object a WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT or WP:DRAFTIFY.

I guess we could argue over what's the right action for each of these 2 examples, but they should probably be no task for a bot. MarioGom (talk) 07:22, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support - Thank you, DannyS712! Atsme 💬 📧 13:09, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Redirects as unilateral deletionarticle->redirect_as_patrolled-2022-05-23T00:24:00.000Z">

Completely off topic: Does article -> redirect not unreview? That seems like an easy way for someone to go ahead and soft delete a page. I personally have been checking histories as I review redirects. I remember recent(not so recent?) conversations onwiki about limits on draftifying because the community was concerned about NPPers doing unilateral deletions by way of G13. And be honest, when's the last time you've looked at page history for a redirect, cause I don't unless I'm patrolling? Happy Editing--IAmChaos 00:24, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Good question. I tested it on testwiki just now, patrolled article -> redirect does not appear to unpatrol. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:36, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I have reverted some of such redirects recently. See my comment in the main section here for tricky cases in this category. MarioGom (talk) 07:23, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Newsletter

There has been no newsletter since last September. I just drafted one, to try to get some attention on the backlog. Could someone at least give it a quick review? And is there someone here with mass-sender rights that can send it? It's at Misplaced Pages:New pages patrol/Coordination#New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022. MB 01:02, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I will, as I already said earlier on your TP, despite snide remarks by some users about commenting from the sidelines after I shepherded NPP and its software for well over a decade. I also wrote most of the previous newsletters and am a MMS. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:42, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Done. It can always be reverted, some people's prose is better than mine but please don't do so just for the sake of literary license. Now back to semi-retirement and creating a few more new articles (yes, I'm autopatrolled...) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:14, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Kudz!! Atsme 💬 📧 13:04, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022

Hello New pages patrol,

At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.

Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.

In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 823 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 848 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.

This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.

If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Misplaced Pages notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.

If you are no longer very active on Misplaced Pages or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Backlog

I got the NPP Newsletter. I see the backlog is huge again. I'll start working on in the next couple of days, try and do a coupla thousand before the end of the month. scope_creep 12:27, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you SC!! Atsme 💬 📧 13:04, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol capacity and backlog

I've been noodling on this for about a year and here's what I came up with.North8000 (talk) 14:29, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The backlog of unreviewed pages is an ongoing unresolved problem which is getting worse. As of this writing it is 15,000 and rapidly growing. This is the result of hundreds of factors, some good, some bad. Any useful analysis requires identifying core solvable problems or good changes which will help improve the situation. I'll discount some other areas discussed as too small to help (e.g. autpopatrol and bot-change related) and focus on the core need and goal which is the amount of throughput of by-human NPP patrol reviews. For shorthand/terminology and ballpark I'm also going to use "30 reviewers" for shorthand because currently this is the number of reviewers averaging 2 review completions per day or more, and under best case scenarios, the number we might have reviewing big enough numbers to solve the issues. And I'll use "1 million" for the number of editors, knowing that it can be considered to be more or less than that depending on the criteria used.

General Analysis

It appears that a throughput of about 1,500 by-human review completions per day is needed. Since maybe a third are just tagged for later re-review, this means about 2,200 reviews a day including those. Attempted reviews where the NPP'er ended up just leaving it it for an expert would raise that number further.

The gorilla in the math living room that affects everything else is that under the best case scenario we have millions of article creators and 30 people doing NPP on what they create.

Analyzing one level down on the throughput side, throughput is the number of active reviewers and the rate of reviews that they can and do accomplish. And one level below that the factors are influx of reviewers that are really going to review, having them get better at it, having them spend more time reviewing, making it easier to accomplish reviews, and retaining them as active reviewers. And of course, making the process less difficult and more pleasant is key to many of these.

Even to get to moderate proficiency requires a wiki-knowledge level which is higher than that of an average admin. For example, to be able to review even 1/2 of the articles that need review requires extensive knowledge of all of the notability guidelines, wp:not, wp:common outcomes and some knowledge of of the undocumented fuzzy wp:notability ecosystems works. To get that to 95% requires far more than that, with medium knowledge of most of the fields covered by the SNG (e.g. to know the sports terminology and structure to interpret the SNG), fluency with a wide range of tools (source-searching, copyvio and translation tools) 4-5 other major guidelines and policies and fluency in searching sources in non-english countries.

If one listens to everybody who comments or complains on what seems to be implied, the expectations of what could be covered in a NPP review are gigantic. The list of all of the tags to apply implies catching every possible problem or weakness in an article. The NPP flowchart is not really as demanding as it appears at first glance, but does included copyvio searches and analysis of the results.

NPP'er satisfaction with and enjoyment of the work is essential to recruiting reviewers, having them do more, and staying around. Even if they ignore the complainers, the unwritten expectations inflicted by NPP itself are so high that nearly everybody is going to think "I'm doing a bad job". And, to add to that it is a painful job once one sees comments and happenings at articles that they AFD and similar places.

Of all of the zillions of possible tasks for NPP, 95% could be called article development including identifying and fixing problems. Mathematically the 95% needs to be handled by the millions of editors, not the 30 NPP'ers. The other 5% that can really only be done by NPP is acting as the gatekeepers on "is it OK for this article to exist?" questions.

WP:Before regarding sourcing inflicts a mathematical impossibility on NPP. For an extreme example to illustrate,in 10 minutes, each of the million editors could create 10 sourceless articles on non-notable people in non-english-speaking countries. Each will require about a 1/2 hour by an NPP'er to comply with wp:before before sending it to AFD. So those 10 million articles will require 5,000,000 person hours by the 30 NPP'ers to send them to AFD. If they each average 5 wikihours a week to work on NPP, WP:Before makes it so that it would take the NPP'ers 641 years to "properly" review what the million editors can create in 10 minutes. Mathematically, the only solution to this doubly lopsided situation is that including needed wp:notability-related sources (thus confirming that they exist) needs to be the job of the 1,000,00 editors, not the 30 reviewers.

Solutions

1. The general expectation within NPP needs to change to the only responsibility of the 30 reviewers being to be gatekeepers on the "Is it OK for this article exist?" questions. Everything else it's cool for NPP'ers to do but will be considered to be "above and beyond" their responsibility. And we need to convey this whenever it comes up. The change is mostly psychological; don't change the flow chart, just interpret it in this context.
2. It's ridiculous that our main tool (curation) here 50% doesn't work and isn't documented. We need to demand that WWF needs to stop their unneeded self-assigned ivory tower tasks and provide us with a working, maintained. documented tool. Until then, see below that work-arounds need to be covered in training.
3. Finding and putting in notability-required sources needs to be considered a main part of building an article, something done by the million editors. Specifically wp:before needs to be modified to reflect this. Supplying wp:notability required sources (and thus determining whether or not such exist) is the job of the million editors, not the 30 NPP'ers (or the AFD folks) NPP'ers can get that done. Until then, we need to implement that unilaterally during this emergency condition. When wp:notability requires sourcing, that we go by the sources that are IN the article.
4. Training here needs to get tweaked. The first stage needs to say to learn and get good at wp:notability guidelines, wp:not and the other ~6 guidelines related to the core task and come back after that. It's too much to try to teach that here. The next stage needs to include a lot of mission helpful getting started tips. (like how to use curation, when not to use it, and (simple as it is) how and when to use twinkle. And later, when reviewers are approaching near-rock star fluency, for the rock stars to give them tips on (off wiki) on practical decisions made to operate at rock-star rates.
5. Implement other items within NPP to help in the other areas identified in the analysis.

What next?

I'd been willing to be some type of an assistant co-ordinator here to work on such things. I'd navigate a discussion to decide on what to do and then to try to help implement.North8000 (talk) 14:29, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Don't take 30 minutes to do a WP:BEFORE search. I bet I've never spent that long on such a search and my AfD record isn't bad. Just 2 minutes, Google, Google News, Google Books, Google Scholar, bam. If some articles are kept at AfD it's fine, although in my experience that disagreement is more about should we have an article in this situation than turning up sources I didn't find. It's true that you don't necessarily have time for a before search on every article, so if the content looks ok sometimes it's the right thing to do to slap on a notability tag and move on. (t · c) buidhe 15:27, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree 30 mins is excessive for a WP:BEFORE, and notability tags have their place too. I personally spend maybe 5 mins max when doing NPP usually, though I might spend longer being more thorough when commenting on an AfD. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:34, 23 May 2022 (UTC) P.S. I should note I tend to stick to specific types of articles when doing NPP, rather than just whatever random article is next in the queue. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:38, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

moderate proficiency requires a wiki-knowledge level which is higher than that of an average admin. For example, to be able to review even 1/2 of the articles that need review requires extensive knowledge of all of the notability guidelines. IIRC I can't pull {{tq}}'s off of discord without incurring the wrath of certain people, but we were just talking about sorting out who likes certain categories, and maybe targeting Wikiprojects for NPPSORT pages that have particular backlogs and ask the reviewers who watch that page who are more familiar with the subjects RS/NGs to try and get them down. Of course there is discussion above on this page about a full on drive, whoch could (should) help as well. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 15:34, 23 May 2022 (UTC) ​

I'll spare others the risk of violating the outing policy, and I will quote myself:

Throwing here a half-assed idea before going to WT:NPP/R with it:

I'm thinking about some sort of active NPP census, where we share with each other what kind of reviewing we are doing or intend to do.

The structure I was thinking is a list of: all WP:NPPSORT categories + Redirects + Back of the queue + Front of the queue.

Each of us would add our username to the categories we do or intend to do.

This could be useful to drive a recruiting effort (e.g. oh, we have no one really interested in patrolling articles about X region?), maybe also the seed for some other coordination actions (e.g. topic-based drives), discover peers to ask for a second opinion about an article in the same topic of interest, etc.

What do you think?

MarioGom (talk) 15:46, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Sure, can't hurt. (t · c) buidhe 15:49, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

My "needs 30 minutes" example was admittedly an extreme case to make the "asymmetrical effort" point. Not a statement that I'd spend 30 minutes on it. But to back that up, let's say that somebody puts up an article on a sports figure in a non-english-speaking country (maybe one that doesn't even use the same alphabet characters) in a language that you do not know. How long would it take you to research well enough to say sources don't exist to the point that somebody at AFD won't be finding something and saying that you screwed up? North8000 (talk) 16:50, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not worried about someone at AfD saying I didn't do enough work. I can search the characters on Google Books and Google News and if it turns out sources exist after all, so what. Perfect AfD records are overrated. (t · c) buidhe 17:09, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks...yes, I know that.....after about 500 reviews I learned that doing the job requires technically violating wp:before and having a thick skin at AFD. (is this covered in the training somewhere? :-)...another of my points) And this also relates to several of the other points. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:01, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

That's true. That's one place where you need a thick skin. The other place is CSD where you encounter the vagaries of admins interpreting the CSD categories. Whiteguru (talk) 21:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Essay to track reform ideas

I've created User:Novem Linguae/Essays/NPP reform notes. This is my attempt to document every NPP reform idea I see. I've grouped the ideas into 5 or so subheadings. Feel free to add to it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:01, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

A thought but not a solid idea is us being able to assign autopatrolled as we see fit, after all, we are the reviewers. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 20:00, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Non-admins assigning permissions is not going to happen, but I'm sure that if you nominate someone for autopatrolled based on your reviewing experience, there are high chances an admin will assign it. MarioGom (talk) 06:03, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Tips to increase individual reviewing speed

North8000 did a great job in the above thread that could be yet another attempt at NPP reform. I'd like to get a parallel conversation started about sharing tips. Discounting proposals to change how NPP works, do you have any practical tips to share with other reviewers about how to improve the work as defined today? MarioGom (talk) 16:04, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• Citation highlighters can help with an initial source assessment. Don't take their results as definitive (especially if you're going to nominate for deletion), but they can give a good overview. User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter is currently the best suited for NPP work, since it covers both reliable and unreliable sources. User:Headbomb/unreliable is also very good, but focuses on unreliable sources alone. MarioGom (talk) 16:04, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The only question to answer is "Should this article exist in mainspace or not?" If yes, rule out copyvio, mark as patrolled and move to the next article. If not, see if there's another article it can be redirected to. (t · c) buidhe 16:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Here is a classic example of articles that were redirects and end-up in the NPP queue because one editor believes it shouldn't be redirected and others believe it should. So what is the best remedy for keeping these situations out of the queue without getting into an edit war, a t-ban, and whatever else tends to arise from such disagreements? Atsme 💬 📧 16:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

My usual strategy is to ignore articles like this and wait for the original edit war over the article's status to resolve itself. _signed, Rosguill 16:22, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't get involved in these cases too often, but when I do, I try to revert the article to whatever state has been stable for a longer time. For example, if this article has existed standalone for many years, and there's no previous RFC to support either outcome, then revert it to a standalone article and mark as reviewed. Then open a discussion in the article talk page, with mentions to people involved in the edit war, and ask them to please, please, solve it through discussion. In another thread above I shared a couple of other examples where I took different actions. MarioGom (talk) 16:28, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Also keep in mind: in the absence of special circumstances like a previous merge discussion, RFC or AFD result, WP:REVERTBAN, or something else, a repeatedly objected blank-and-redirect has less priority than a standalone article. See WP:BLAR. MarioGom (talk) 16:31, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Draftify or delete the unsourced OR

See this discussion which throws NPP into quicksand. We could deploy a bot to rid our queue of unsourced articles. Benefits - article creators will learn to cite sources, and our queue will shrink dramatically. It makes -0- sense to not draftify or even delete unsourced articles. I think maybe delete is a good option, too. Why are we even allowing OR??? It's a policy vio. Atsme 💬 📧 16:58, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, bot is not great at telling which articles are unsourced. I focus my patrolling on the "unsourced" queue and while a lot of it benefits from draftification, there are also many articles that use sfn referencing, are valid use of general references, or that don't need references (i.e. dab pages). All of these are counted as unsourced, but should not be automatically draftified. (t · c) buidhe 17:07, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

You may be right, but I don't know why a command using missing items such as {{cite}}, {{reflist}} or ==references== wouldn't work. It might even work in JS Wiki Browser, which is somewhat automated. I'm just tossing out ideas. Maybe DannyS712 and/or wbm1058 can provide some input. Atsme 💬 📧 17:41, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

OK, I've been pinged to this page a couple times now, so taking a look. On the issue of "unsourced articles" I've already seen that there are apparently some bots already working on some aspect(s) of this, but I'm not familiar with the details. First thing I noticed is Category:Articles lacking sources has some 74 talk pages listed on it, despite it being a category for articles lacking sources and not talk pages lacking sources. Note that the {{Parent monthly clean-up category}} sidebar lists these 74 as "undated articles". This is likely redundant as most of the articles themselves have already been tagged, and adds to the burden of our imaginary full-time reference-finding gnomes as now when they add references they need to edit both the article and the talk page separately to remove the tags (unless someone's written a handy-dandy script to take care of it). This categorization was apparently boldly added on 1 October 2019 to Template:WikiProject Cities by Awkwafaba. This template appears to be responsible for most of the 74; I'm going to revert the addition of {{{unref}}} from that template. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Was also added to Template:WikiProject Animal anatomy by the same editor. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:01, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

...and Template:WikiProject Micronesia. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

...and Template:WikiProject Papua New Guinea – wbm1058 (talk) 20:30, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Sigh. Also Template:WikiProject Pakistan. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:50, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

...and Template:WikiProject Polynesia. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:04, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

...and Template:WikiProject Viruses. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:45, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

...and, of course, Template:WikiProject Sexology and sexuality. wbm1058 (talk) 22:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

and Template:WikiProject Fungi. Wish it were easy to revert toenail fungi. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:24, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: and many more categories that preceded those, and not made by me. I was following precedent, I didn’t invent this. No need to throw shade my way over and over. And are you really complaining that there are edit requests on talk page templates? As in all the image requests, infobox requests, map requests, and so forth that have been on talk pages for years and years. If you have a problem with this long-standing practice, burying it in a side conversation on a NPP talk page is not the proper venue. --awkwafaba (📥) 03:33, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Awkwafaba: No, I'm not complaining about edit requests, image requests, infobox requests, or map requests. I'm only complaining about general notices of articles lacking sources posted to talk page WikiProject templates (many of which are collapsed to ensure that few editors even notice them). I've now cleared all of the 74 that I reported above. Unless I missed one, the nine templates listed above are the only ones which were populating Category:Articles lacking sources, and I believe you were responsible for each of those nine. Please give an example or two of one of the many categories that preceded these nine. If, as I noticed here, {{WikiProject Germany}} is an example, that populates Category:Unreferenced Germany articles which is a subcategory of Category:Articles lacking sources and thus is not a precedent for what you did. Category talk:Articles lacking sources hasn't drawn much discussion recently but @Buidhe: regarding "bot is not great at telling which articles are unsourced" see see here that in February 2019 there was consensus in favor of a bot run to tag pages with {{Unreferenced}} but in March 2019 GreenC bot 7 was withdrawn by the operator. – wbm1058 (talk) 08:43, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: as you have no problem with edit requests being duplicated on both the article page and the talk page, as you just detailed, then it seems your issue was that a subcategory was not created. I’m not sure why changing the category parameter on a few talk templates required all this alarm. You merely could have created the subcategories and changed the parameters on the templates and the problem would be solved without the grousing. Or maybe have just asked me if you wanted help, as you seem to imply being bold and doing it oneself is not desirable. --awkwafaba (📥) 21:05, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Awkwafaba: Misplaced Pages:Edit requests are requests for edits to be made to a page where editors cannot or should not make the proposed edits themselves. This is a different animal – edit requests are not allowed to linger for months; they are generally expected to be promptly responded to and closed. I do have a problem with tags reporting a lack of sourcing being duplicated – as I said above, this burdens the editor who adds a citation to the article with the need to edit two pages to remove the tags. There are some 14 special categories that operate outside of the {{Monthly clean-up category}} system. I haven't researched the basis for their creation, but I think there should be some basis for adding another one of these – a demonstrated need. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

If there is blatant original research, I usually draftify (if draftification applies). I recently found a couple of articles that were original research to the point of being almost a hoax, CSD or AFD for these. MarioGom (talk) 18:55, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

That being said, is there a good template to post on user talk pages to request them to please, please, please, include at least ONE reliable source? MarioGom (talk) 18:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

a filter might be reasonable, accounts with less than x edits cannot publish/save/move to mainspace without at least one ref/citation template/link. Of course this doesn't weed out the blatantly fake sources and would probably encourage people adding utterly unreliable trash. PRAXIDICAE💕 19:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I'd support such a filter. (t · c) buidhe 19:44, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't know about you, but IMO articles with absolute zero sources of any kind seem exceedingly rare. But articles with 1-2 not-really-sources (e.g. a listing-only in some database website) are very common / very numerous. North8000 (talk) 20:16, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

North, a few days ago there were more than 700 articles in the "unsourced" queue. Significant portion were fully unsourced and needed draftification or redirect. (t · c) buidhe 20:22, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe the places I work misses them. I usually work a 5-6 week old window or else the oldest end of the cue.North8000 (talk) 01:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment - although I'm no longer active in the project, thought I might add a couple of thoughts here. First, regarding tagging articles, that does not mean that the article is reviewed. When I was reviewing I worked in two areas, the back of the queue, and then articles about 2-4 weeks old. At the back of the queue, that was the triage. If there were issues, they needed to be dealt with, simply tagging usually would not suffice. The vast majority there I either marked "reviewed", or took one of the options: draftify, redirect, AfD or Prod. Sometimes I would tag them, and then watch for a week before taking any action, seeing if the issue they were tagged for was improved. During that week, sometimes other reviewers would act on the article. In the second group, those 2-4 weeks old, if there were issues in the article which if it were at the back of the queue would require action, I would tag it, to alert other reviewers of issues I saw with the article. Then when it hit the back of the queue a month or two later, if the tag was still there, with no improvement, I would then take action.

Second, regarding removing unsourced material. Be careful, as per WP:BURDEN it is allowed, but many editors will simply revert and re-add the unsourced material. When I was reviewing this happened on a daily basis, sometimes several times. I saw that as disruptive editing, and warned other editors, but admins felt that it wasn't disruptive, and that my continued insistence at adding sources was the disruptive factor, citing edit warring. It is what led to my one and only block, which directly resulted in my leaving this project. So just be careful. I'm very disheartened by the fact that the backlog has more than doubled in the 2 months since I left the project. Thus endeth my ramblings. Onel5969 13:50, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969: Thanks for sharing that information. I've observed that the editor you were "warring" with was also blocked, and that they last contributed on 18 March 2022 (just 3 days after their short-term block), and that the disputed unsourced content was moved by the other party to their own user space just before they stopped editing. I don't understand why such a fuss over a list of fictional characters. Maybe the bar doesn't need to be set so high for a fictional character as it is for a living person. We could just let some of the fan cruft slide by NPP to reduce the size of the backlog and allow more time for focusing on the more important stuff. That wouldn't stop anyone from putting the fan cruft article up for deletion if they chose to do that. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:49, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I think the bar for fictional characters (places/concepts, etc.) should be much higher than non-fictional people. But I guess there are those of this who think of this as an encyclopedia. And those who don't, who see it as more of a fan magazine. And in my opinion, any editor who can't grasp a pillar of WP like WP:VERIFY should receive very long blocks. Once unsourced information has been removed, and and editor puts it back, and is then warned re: WP:BURDEN, if they add it back a second time, imho, that's at the very least disruptive editing, and since it breaks VERIFY, it's, again imho, vandalism, since it is a deliberate act, and it violates one of the 5 pillars of WP (# 2, which reads in part, "All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sources"). But obviously, there are admins which don't take VERIFY very seriously.Onel5969 20:48, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

So you're saying that it's actually more important that we ensure that Teslo the great-climbing Electroid is scared of heights (and not misstate that he loves to get high) than to make sure that we accurately state how a newly-elected politician voted on an important bill? I disagree. wbm1058 (talk) 22:29, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: The way I read Onel5969's comment is that he believes that there should be a higher bar of notability for fictional characters compared to people who actually exist. I don't think that line of reasoning would contradict accurately stating how a newly-elected politician voted on an important bill? Clovermoss (talk) 04:20, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Not to belabor the point, but when they shouted "VERIFY" at me three times in their most recent post above, I read that as a higher bar for verifiability, not notability. wbm1058 (talk) 16:08, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: I can see that perspective, honestly. I guess I just focused more on the first sentence. You're right that "verify" is repeated thrice. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. It's hard to know what someone intends if you're not them, though. So that's all I'll say on the matter. I hope you have a good day. Mine sucked for the most part, but it still has the chance to get better. There's always tomorrow. Clovermoss (talk) 22:58, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

wbm1058 - My apologies. I didn't see that as "shouting", but I can understand how you might have. I was simply using the formatting of the policy (much like Joe Roe is doing in the comment below this). I was also talking about two different concepts, inadequately as it would now appear. The notability of fictional characters, and then the separate concept of the policy of verifying information in an article. I should have been more explicit. Onel5969 01:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• Doing anything to automatically remove or filter out unsourced articles is going to fall afoul of WP:PRESERVE. Assuming the material can be verified, lack of citations is a surmountable problem, and we don't delete articles for surmountable problems. In my opinion we also shouldn't be using the backdoor to deletion via draftspace in that circumstance either, but perhaps that's a lost cause. Also, not everyone wants to or (especially amongst new editors) knows how to use citation templates and ref tags, nor do they have to. – Joe (talk) 10:29, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  How 'bout we filter out the "unsourced" pages that aren't truly unsourced. For example, from Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2014 I see baseball players Ernie Alten, Ossie Álvarez and Bill Bailey (pitcher). It seems clear to me that these articles were all sourced from the databases linked to in the "external links" section. Just change ==External links== to ==References==, remove the {{unreferenced}} tag, and voila. Done. Any objections to my doing this with all similarly referenced American ballplayer bios?

  Though on a closer look at Bill Bailey I see information that doesn't appear to have come from those databases. We could add a citation to the SABR bio which actually is a real, detailed biography. Should we continue to trust one-edit wonder Nerdley's 17 April 2008 contribution, or revert it? wbm1058 (talk) 16:53, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  It's not just baseballers; I've often noticed that articles with valid external links are being tagged as unsourced, and sometimes resulting in unwarranted trips to BLP_prod. I think the correct tag is usually {{More footnotes needed}}, which isn't usually life-threatening and can always be supplemented with pinpoint citation needed tags if specific material (eg quotation) must be sourced.

  I think some of it originates from the early days when bullet-point ref lists were the norm, and I think more recent ones are often translations; afaik, eg de.wiki still uses the bullet-point references model. Or maybe folk who've read a commercial encyclopedia; their entries hardly ever have inline sourcing. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:39, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• Hi, Joe, I'm pretty sure the context of PRESERVE speaks to content within a sourced article, not an unsourced article. See the following w/my bold underline: As long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability, and No original research. At that point we're assuming the content additions are to expand a properly sourced article or stub, and that the article itself was accepted into mainspace via AfC or was created by an autopatrolled user. Rather than delete content additions, we simply tag them but those types of issues would not be cropping up in the NPP queue. Unsourced articles do not belong in mainspace until they are properly sourced, and the onus is on the article creator to establish whether or not it's OR, and Verifiable in RS, not our already taxed admins and NPP reviewers. Such articles should be draftified, a PROD nom or sent to AfD. Atsme 💬 📧 23:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  +1, although in my opinion redirecting to an existing sourced article and stubbing (while adding a source that verifies the existence of the subject) are also potential options when dealing with an unsourced article. (t · c) buidhe 23:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

NPP Flowchart 'optional' steps

Hi folks. I've gotten quite a bit of feedback on the flowchart over the last couple years or so, and the most common feedback was that some of the steps at the bottom should be cut. While I don't necessarily disagree, I have lost the original file that I used the create the flowchart, so updating it in that way would require completely remaking the flowchart from scratch, which is more work than I really want to put in right now.

However, I think that from what I have seen that there is a rough consensus that the bottom four bubbles of the chart should at least be considered 'optional' steps, and I've updated the flowchart with that in mind. You might have to clear cached images to be able to see the changes. Please let me know if you if you disagree with the change or have any further feedback. — Insertcleverphrasehere 20:15, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

If people were to prefer that these steps were removed completely, that could also be done I suppose, just by blanking them out and adding a bigger "mark as reviewed" button at the bottom and drawing a couple of arrows, which wouldn't be too difficult. I know some people are concerned with the chart looking too imposing, so any change to simplify it might be an improvement. Let me know if you would support or oppose this change. — Insertcleverphrasehere 20:26, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I support marking them as optional. I lean towards opposing removal. MarioGom (talk) 07:36, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The flowchart seemed like a good idea at the time, it was a great initiative and I know I encouraged you to do it, but I didn't realise you had something so complex in mind. It is good and really does accurately summarise the flow and the things to do, but OTOH I think it detracts from the tutorial which Fuhghettaboutit and others completely rebuilt for the new user right, and which users then don't bother to read now or the video tutorial either. Obviously from the comments on this talk page over the years since September 2017‎, a few people do appear to find it a tad confusing.

The bottom line IMO, is that just like RfA, anyone requesting the NPR right should have done their homework first, thoroughly studied the tutorial and the flowchart, have been around long enough, and have the relevant knowledge of policies and deletion processes already. They should then use the flowchart later as an aide-memoire but not try to base their entire work on it all the time, which is why they are taking 30 minutes to review a new page instead of the standard three minutes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:05, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I found the flowchart very useful initially. It's just like a cheatsheet: it's not supposed to replace every manual, it's only a support resource. And I think it's completely ok if not everybody finds it equally useful, or if we have different perceptions of its complexity. MarioGom (talk) 11:39, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The flowchart is terrifying. I'm sure it puts people off patrolling. I often look at new pages and try to copy edit a little, but have hardly ever actually marked anything as patrolled; I'm always afraid I've missed something. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:06, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Espresso Addict: Discounting the steps that are now marked optional in the updated version, is there any particular step that you find easy to miss? MarioGom (talk) 05:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

MarioGom: The things I find particularly hard are: checking to see whether it exists under another name (especially for species where the name could be very different), and the demon copyvio -- not that I forget to do it but I only rarely successfully get Earwig to run, so I tend to stall mid review. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Don't worry so much. If there aren't any obvious secondary titles to check, move on. If the copyvio detector can't run, then grab a chunk of prose and throw it into google, see what comes up, if nothing obvious, move on. We aren't aiming for perfection here, just do the best you can with what you've got. — Insertcleverphrasehere 12:46, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Insertcleverphrasehere. Outright copyvio is usually glaringly obvious, anyway, and Earwig is bad at catching close paraphrasing. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:29, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Kudz about doing their homework first. In fact, the first place I point my trainees is to the tutorials and flowchart, and the first part of my course tests their knowledge of the most relevant WP:PAGs for reviewers. I also agree that the flowchart is too complex – the flow got damned up. Shrink it to initial steps for a proper review, and maybe create a small companion chart with the options. NPPSCHOOL, mentoring and trial periods are all good options as well. Atsme 💬 📧 23:52, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Backlog reduction goal

The latest chart shows a sudden and significant reversal. This is getting me more motivated now that it doesn't appear to be hopeless. In lieu of any formal backlog reduction drive, how about just a simple monthly goal. I propose 14,000 by the end of the month. I think that should be easy to hit. Since there are no coordinators to discuss this with first, I boldly added a header with this goal. I hope no one objects. MB 04:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@MB well, I don't object, I just slightly doubt that we will manage it. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 07:30, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Let's try it! MarioGom (talk) 07:37, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that is a 'significant' reduction, be nice if the trend lasts though. Problem with backlog drives, as has been seen in the past, is that they just invite more speed and less quality. If push comes to shove, it would be better to draftify more of the questionable creations, or get the 90 day cut-off period extended. But good luck with asking for that at Phabricator these days. Experience has clearly demonstrated that a process like NPP needs its go-to person (or people), so some structured coordination wouldn't go amiss. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:09, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

they just invite more speed and less quality My experience with a similar backlog drive (the AFC backlog drive we did last year, which was really successful and cleared a 4,000 article backlog) was that the quality of the reviews was fine. We confirmed this with a re-review requirement. In my opinion, the biggest problem with that particular backlog drive was that it burned out all the top AFC reviewers for several months, which allowed the backlog to return. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:39, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: AfC is not NPP. While they are closely related (to the point of the community having considered several times merging the two processes), there are two fundamental differences: There is a 90 day deadline to review the current backlog of 16,000 new articles before they (especially the junk, nonsense, and spam) get released for indexing by search engines, while at AfC there is no deadline other than the procedural deletion if they are not edited for 6 months, and the backlog is much smaller. There are a few other significant differences, but that would be another discussion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:04, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I didn't say it was a significant reduction, I said significant reversal. This was the biggest drop in two months of mostly steady increase. I would have been happy with just leveling off. As far as the goal, I was trying not to frame this as a "drive" but just a target for the month that we should try to hit with regular sustained effort. As I said in the newsletter, we need to more people doing more reviews routinely. MB 14:06, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm now planning a July 2022 backlog drive. Unfortunately, the participants list isn't set up yet but I hope to get that done in the next few hours. Hopefully there are a couple editors willing to act as co-coordinators; last time that was Elli and Tol. (t · c) buidhe 14:25, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I’m happy to coordinate, a July backlog drive would probably be quite good, especially as the backlog might be smaller by then. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 19:48, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

My sense is that an important issue is being overlooked here. The back of the queue consists of abandoned articles, and articles that are tagged for maintenance, that maintenance which has not been attended to by the creators and hence, left marked "Unreviewed". After focussing on one area in NPPSORT for several weeks, I can point you to a number of editors who have multiple messages on their talk pages about "ways to improve" this or that article, and such advice is patently ignored. It is many of these such articles that are in that → 14,000 queue as observed. The issue is "What do we do with these articles - which have had one preliminary review in NPP - and remain in NPPSORT? That figure in NPPSORT is inaccurate to say in the least. The other issue is what to do with abandoned articles. I have seen - at AFD - some articles from the back of the NPP queue. There is mention of a 90 day deadline: once that deadline is reached there should also available the option or facility for New Page Patrollers to apply "abandoned article" if it has been tagged and the maintenance required is not attended to. Determining the period for applying abandoned status can be debated, however, some of the material at the back of the queue is very dated. --Whiteguru (talk) 22:14, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Would "abandoned article" be a maintenance tag? What would abandoned article status do/allow outside of the normal channels? –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:21, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Why on earth are processed tagged articles still malingering in the queue? Surely that's not sensible. If they are tagged for maintenance they are already in the category for that maintenance tag, and don't need further NPP attention. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:59, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Many articles are tagged for maintenance, the creator doesn't respond for 1 month or more, then I come along and draftify them. it makes me confident that they aren't going to fix up the article. (t · c) buidhe 01:05, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

That might be pragmatic, but it isn't policy compliant, is it? The way G13 works these days, moving to draft is a 6-month-delayed prod with virtually no oversight apart from the areas that DGG looks through. If they went to AfD, someone else might fix them. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:12, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Which part do you consider to be non policy compliant? Draftifying is allowed, maintenance tagging is allowed. Some would consider doing both to be going above and beyond, giving the article creator multiple opportunities and many months to fix major problems. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Draftifying an article that isn't being worked on falls under the backdoor to deletion prohibition. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:47, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. WP:DRAFTIFY #3 seems to encourage draftifying articles that are not being worked on though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that too. I'm not sure it's what I remember from when I last looked at the policy a few months ago, but perhaps my memory is at fault. The two things do seem incompatible. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:15, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: Funny, until recently I was also sure that it said the opposite, but it's actually been like that from the beginning. I pointed out the contradiction at Misplaced Pages talk:Drafts#Why draftify articles that aren't being actively improved? and I think David Eppstein hit the nail on the head. – Joe (talk) 22:14, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Joe Roe Indeed! I think what bothers me so much about moving to draft is that, if I, as an admin of nearly 15 years' standing, unilaterally delete an article I consider is not up to scratch, then I can -- rightly -- be disciplined, and if I continued to do so, would probably swiftly lose my admin privileges. However, any editor with move rights can delete an article (with a 6-month delay) merely by moving it to draft space, with no effective check at all. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict and Joe Roe: Aye, there's the rub. It's what comes of unbundling, while nowadays an admin can't say "Boo!'" to a goosr without being sanctioned by Arbcom - and theere's generally only one sanction for admins. No wonder why under today's climate non one wants to be an admin. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:01, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@MB Nice work everybody! Just dropped below 14,000! — Insertcleverphrasehere 07:12, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I've been watching the queue and we actually dipped into the 13,980s once and then went back above 14,000. Now we are down below 13,900, so it's probably safe to say we met the target. Although, it is a long holiday weekend in the US and that may have an affect. But yes, good job everyone. MB 16:30, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Furthermore, having tags does not mean the article has been "processed" by NPP. The tags could have been added by anyone, and they can be removed by anyone at any time (including by the author) without fixing the problems. The article needs to stay in the queue until someone does more than tag it (CSD/AFD/Draftify/etc/ or approve). MB 04:28, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I generally only draftify articles that are 100% unsourced. Since you can remove unsourced content in any article, I don't see why it's not allowed to remove 100% unsourced articles as well. (t · c) buidhe 11:50, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Buidhe. I don't have a problem with moving to draft in the complete absence of sources, though I would always suggest trying one's luck with Google first. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:15, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

MB "Triaged" is possibly a better word. There's a big difference between an article that has slipped through the cracks and could have any number of major problems, and one that a reviewer has checked and tagged appropriately but has yet to exit the system. Imo, it would be better in process terms and psychologically to have separate heaps of completely unreviewed stuff and stuff that has been reviewed but is waiting for the creator/other editors to do something to render it acceptable. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:43, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: 'Triage' was actually the working name for the new New Pages Feed and its Curation Tool while we were developing them over a decade ago. On the premise of 'could survive an AfD', I generally used to draftify anything that is not a strict candidate for CSD, PROD, or AfD but which is quite clearly not fit for mainspace. NPP is not 'fix it' - that's the domain of AfC or the creator of what is now a draft. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:10, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Kudpung: It's no secret that I don't think moving to draft is working, or at least it's working brilliantly to excise imperfect content, but not to develop content. There's -- understandably -- a lack of volunteers to work on inadequate content submitted by inexperienced editors at both AfC and NPP. Somehow we the encyclopedia need to reinvent the Sow's Ear Into Silk Purse Machine of those heady early days, but I fear it might be impossible. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:21, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

There never was a "Sow's Ear Into Silk Purse Machine of those heady early days". Back when this encyclopedia was building entries covering the last couple millennia of history there were entries of merit to develop. Now we have all the articles we need and we're inundated with everything else we don't want or need, given to us by the least talented and most conflicted. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:41, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Espresso Addict: I just dropped a reply to DGG's post below (he and I have been around and collaborated very closely on these issues practically since the genesis of AfC and NPP). He does a truly dedicated job nowadays of rescuing some drafts in his sphere of expertise, but of course it's only a drop in the ocean of all the junk that's there and because he's so good at what he does, he's the last person I would want to feel under pressure to get it done. That said, it's always been my opinion that if AfCers fix articles, they do it voluntarily and are under no obligation to do so. More important is to give tips to the creators and encourage them to do it themselves, and if they don't, well, G13 is thataway! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:38, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Written four years ago:

Although AfC is not the Article Rescue Squadron, many draft creators (and confirmed editors too), especially single-purpose accounts, submit their creation in Misplaced Pages expecting other editors to complete it or clean it up. They need to be informed up front that not only are notability and sources required, but that the article must also be appropriate for an encyclopedia, and that clean-up attempts by reviewers might not be the best deployment of their enthusiasm to rescue certain kinds of articles.
Dialogue with the creator is an intrinsic part of the AfC template system, and used well, more effective than Page Curation's message feature. Unlike New Page Review, whose principal task as a triage is to either tag articles for deletion or pass them for inclusion with perhaps some minor details needing to be addressed, at AfC the skill is in being able to sensibly recognise whether or not a new article has true validity and potential for the encyclopedia and offer some basic advice – the rest is about not being scared to keep or delete. –The Signpost June 2018

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:59, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Appeal the 90 day draftification ban?

Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 172#Proposal to ban draftifying articles more than 90 days old without consensus. Just wondering if we should look into appealing this at WP:AN. I am having trouble reading the consensus of this discussion as a consensus to ban draftifying articles more than 90 days old. By my count, there was 45 support, 46 oppose. Hard to imagine the support arguments were so convincing that it overrides the opposes. For example, during the discussion I did a spot check of draftifications at the back of the AFC queue and didn't find any egregious errors. You can search for "Chess, thanks for your comment. I spot checked the first 5. Draft:Dean Shomshak" to see my analysis. Overall I find the hard evidence and diffs of draftification misconduct to be quite lacking, and not enough to override the opposes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:05, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

It is worth considering, but have you encountered some articles needing draftification after 90 days, counted since the day they were moved to mainspace? I use draftification quite frequently, and I have rarely encountered the need to draftify after 90 days since last creation or move to mainspace. On the other hand, maybe this is more evidence that the 90 days rule was based on bad premises in the first place... MarioGom (talk) 05:59, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I've encountered hundreds. They fall into two groups: ones where the editor is no longer present (as is the case for almost all inadequate wiki education program articles and many from editathons), and those where the editor is still around, often continuing to make equally poor articles and ignoring the notices. Iif the editor is not around, I can understand the limitation; if the contributor still is around, I don't see why there needs to be such as stringent time limit. But I cannot immediately see any way of codifying this.

My experience is that about 5% of abandoned drafts would make reasonable articles without extensive rewriting. If we automatically delete them, we are losing at least 10,000 articles a year; if we automatically move them to mainspace as we do now, we are adding at least 50,000 totally unsupportable articles.

This leads be to 3 general comments which are being lost sight of:

1. Shifting work between NPP, AfC and AfD does not yi)eld any net benefit.
2. Accumulating a backlog does not reduce the amount of work.
3. Arbitrary time limits after which action is taken without consideration do not benefit the encyclopedia,. DGG ( talk ) 09:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Do you have an alternative to propose that doesn't needlessly burden other editors to fix/finish the work others have begun and are credited for creating? The latter also leaves us open to being BOT spammed with inadequate, un-cited stubs, not to mention PE who get paid for the mention while others create the good article for them. Atsme 💬 📧 17:46, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I have one. Putting in the wp:notability sources (and thus seeing if they exist) needs to be re-identified as a core part of article creation and the job of the million editors, not the job of the 30 NPP'ers. North8000 (talk) 16:52, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

advance alert

As mentioned above, I am the principal person screening forthcoming afcs; this is putting an excessive burden on one particular individual. No WP process should depend largely on a single person. I have successively reduced the fields I look at, and I have been forced by the pressures of real life to skip over occasional days altogether. This sort of burden and time pressure is unreasonable for a volunteer. Even trying to keep up greatly reduces my participation in other processes, and my ability to improve or rewrite or translate existing articles, or to do what I really want, which is to help editors develop their skills on an individual basis. This is making my experience at WP increasingly unsatisfactory, and the last few months of statistics at XTools shows the decline in my participation. I shall try to help the forthcoming drive to reduce backlogs as efficiently as I can because I know I can do it efficiently, but otherwise I anticipate progressively reducing my work at NPP/AfC/AfD. I have helped a number of good reviewers get started, and now it's their turn. I see myself as primarily a teacher, and the role of a teacher is to bring students to the point where they work independently. DGG ( talk ) 09:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

DGG idem, with difference that I can't be bothered with maintenance tasks these days. I've burned out on NPP, UPE, and COIN, and today's new articles in the feed are just stream of sports people, Bollywood, and political candidates; the days when doing NPP was interesting and articles we could learn from are long since gone. Besides which I no longer have the tools to do it properly. NPP is nowadays soul-destroyingly boring and tedious, it's hardly surprising that that the majority of the 750+ rights holders won't do it. I have focused my work nowadays on writing new articles or getting some to GA. All when my new activities in RL (and my age) allow the time, of course... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:24, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

July Drive

The July Drive sign-up is currently open, the drive starts on July 1st and ends on July 31st: Sign up here. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 06:36, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Copyvio feature in Curation tool

I've come across quite a few articles that are marked as potential copyvio that have been corrected, but the Curation tool still shows them as having a copyvio. Example: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Can this anomaly be fixed or must we live with it? DannyS712 are you familiar with the code's instructions and if it can be modified? Atsme 💬 📧 15:58, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Continuing to show the tag even after being removed is the system working as designed. There are some reasonable reasons why to do this as checking against COPYVIOs is a bit resource intensive. It would make a great feature request whether it would be Danny or some other developer who might work on it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:06, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Notice of discussion Notability (sports)

I'm placing this notice here for active reviewers to consider regarding a few proposed additions at Misplaced Pages talk:Notability (sports)#Expanding Notability for Equestrians. Your input is requested. Atsme 💬 📧 22:00, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation – A new WMF restriction for all Misplaced Pages editors.

IP Masking: After gathering final feedback, the WMF will soon be permanently rolling out its IP masking feature. On May 24, 2022 the IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. This will be of interest for New Page and AfC Reviewers and anyone else concerned with vandalism, COI, UPE, etc. Many of the reasons to view IP addresses will no longer be available to everyone or indeed to other special rights users (admins, recent changes/vandalism patrollers, AfC, NPP, SPI, COI, UPE, etc.) who are not CU functionaries. On En-Wiki, access and use of the CU tool is highly restricted, regulated, and limited in scope. On IP masking:

We currently have an access restriction in place which was informed by our conversations with Legal and Trust & Safety. In general, our goal was to ensure that we do not risk the privacy of an editor by exposing (potentially) sensitive information to users who a) may not need to see it anyway and b) may not be trusted with that information. – WMF

Individual Wikiedias will apparently not be able to opt out of IP Masking which is to be imposed on all WMF projects on a decision of the WMF legal division.
Some questions that are still open regarding this new feature and its tool include:

1. How, and under what criteria, does the WMF consider imposing or recommending user access levels to the tool that reveals IP adresses? Or will this be left up to the individual projects?
2. Will this mean that a new, special user group will need to be created locally (or by the WMF) to view IP addresses? If so, what user experience would be required, and what measures would be available to prevent users requesting such a right for the sole purpose of gaming the system?
3. Nowadays with most IP addresses being dynamic (especially mobile connections), and the hugely increasing use of low cost VPNs, the IP information and CU tool results are nowadays largely inaccurate and/or ineffective. What can be said about about the usefulness of this 'IP viewer' tool in practical terms?
4. How will this impact on the growing interest on some projects to simply ban IP editing altogether? (Portuguese Wiki has already done so).

See description and its discussion. See also further information and discussion for Beta testers on the Test Wiki, and those who would also like to test it and see what it does. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Update

We are suggesting that admins should have the right to view IP addresses (alongside checkusers) by default as we know it is essential many times for admins to view IP addresses and block them, as appropriate. For patrollers, we suggest a new group/right that can be given to trusted patrollers, as defined by the community norms. We are suggesting a lightweight community-driven process for giving these rights to users who meet some minimum criteria of account tenure and number of edits. Advanced users in the community could also have the right to take away this privilege from anyone they think may be misusing their access to IPs. In addition, WMF T&S staff would also be responsible for handling cases of violation. – WMF

Please note that this is all advance information only. It's not a call to rush off and start a half-baked RfC anywhere on anything. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:34, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, that is an improvement. I liken the NPP new group/right to the rights afforded WP:VRT members, so I don't see a problem with it. Atsme 💬 📧 01:51, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Atsme, with the caveat that access to the WP:VRT user right has (or had) a relatively low threshold - I was a VRT agent myself. We have even had VRT users banned from there for using it to work around their paid editing. I know, because I discovered them myself when I was still active and one or two more have been kicked out since. Misplaced Pages could be more corrupt than the Cambridge Five, not to mention Orangemoody. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:30, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't have too much of a problem with IP masking. The only thing I really want is a way to know if an anonymous user is from the same IP range as another, and possibly loose geolocation to help identify vandals who IP-hop. If we could incorporate those, we wouldn't really have too much need for IP's outside of what CU's already do. I noticed there is a geolocation feature in the beta, but it seems a bit too broad for my liking. I suppose it's good for privacy though. (Well, except for a few cases, like shared IP tagging, which can be a useful tool. I'd like to see how we could accomplish that, we'd likely need a "viewer" perm in that case) ASUKITE 15:09, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Update

Currently 791 users are trying this feature. It can be turned on in your Preferences > Beta features. Testing it does not mean Beta testers will be authorised to use it once the IP Masking has been rolled out. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:10, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Stats

Is it possible to acquire stats that tell us the # of PRODs that were denied, and went to AfD and survived? Atsme 💬 📧 11:34, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I don’t think so. This sort of thing isn’t tracked via anything that I know of. — Insertcleverphrasehere 23:13, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Atsme and Insertcleverphrasehere: it is almost certainly doable, just like a recent question for data on new articles sent to draft by NPP that finally did not survive an AfD or other avenue of deletion. It's not a question of it being 'tracked' already. The problem is finding someone to do it. Conventional Wiki wisdom appears to assume that every Misplaced Pages editor is an IT expert, at least those of us whose names hold additional user rights or who frequently figure in maintenance areas. However, in contrast to those who grew up already using tablet computers and mobile phones in kindergarten , many of my generation missed out on all forms of formal education in computer literacy. We were aware of the importance of statistics but the actual processing was done in the basement by our university employees wearing white coats and surrounded by huge banks of metal cabinets with large wheels of half-inch tape and lots of flashing lights.

Surprisingly though, despite its reliance on technology, there has been a shift away from applying essential statistics on Misplaced Pages towards the use of easier anecdotal evidence. This is why many important RfC now fail to gain the desired traction. Back in the old pioneering days of projects such as RfA reform, NPP, and ACTRIAL, we did produce a lot of stats to reinforce our arguments, but it seems to be a challenge nowadays to drum up enthusiasm for data mining. Users such as Scottywong were a godsend but AFAIK he has moved on from scripting search routines. Opabinia regalis was also extremely adept and helpful when I needed stuff, but I don't see her around so much nowadays. I am sure that there must be someone among the NPPers who could do it, or perhaps DGG, Barkeep49, and Worm That Turned, who know a lot of people, can point you towards someone. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:41, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

The problem with PRODs is that there is no persistent record when an article gets PRODed. PRODing an article is just another edit in the revision history. While the PROD template is on the page, it's included in some deletion categories, but once the template is removed that information is gone. The only way to determine if an article has been PRODed in the past would be to examine every edit in its revision history to look for the prod template. That would be a very arduous and time-consuming task. I suppose another way would be to put together a bot that keeps a running list of all articles that have been PRODed (by frequently checking the deletion category), but you'd only be able to know about PRODs that happen after the bot starts running. Either way, it's not a straightforward task. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 00:19, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

PRODding leaves a template on the talk page though. (t · c) buidhe 00:22, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Would it be helpful to have an edit filter that adds a tag when a prod template gets added to a page, so that it would be much easier to find prior prods (those added after the filter was created only though) DannyS712 (talk) 01:06, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I've invited Wbm1058 to the discussion to see if he might have some ideas. I think he operates a BOT. Atsme 💬 📧 01:36, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't know whether I should put a higher priority on responding here or here. Before I would spend time on any statistics gathering project I'd need a better understanding of the project and its objectives, and what actionable items would be derived from the statistics. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:14, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I would echo what wbm is saying: of potential NPP data we could gather is this really the most useful? Kudpung's ask about AfD actually strikes me as a more useful stat (and potentially one that is findable with quarry). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it's important in an effort to make sure we're not wasting the valuable time of our reviewers who PROD an article only to discover that admins won't take action on it; thereby, forcing us to AfD. The stats will give us an idea of how many refused PRODs actually survived AfD. I think it's important to know if we have an unnecessary time sink; i.e., reviewer doing the research, adding the PROD, waiting a day or more for an admin to take action (if we're lucky), and in ??? cases, admin removes the PROD suggesting AfD. Now the reviewer has more work to do, the AfD also lasts a minimum of 7 days, but if there is no input or little input, projects are notified, and before you know it, we've waisted 2 weeks minimum with absolutely -0- benefit, not to mention the negative effects it has on reviewers who actually spent the time to do the research, and were turned down only to have the article deleted weeks later. I'm not saying all reviewers are perfect, but it appears these stats will have more positives than negatives if it turns out the rejected PRODs and CSDs are indeed a time sink with little value VS the value derived from the admin follow-through that favors the decisions of a good NPP reviewer who PRODs or CSDs articles they determined unworthy after spending time to do the research, (which also obliquely indicates they are probably not a UPE), and (b) with WP:REFUND in mind, why are we putting more work on the backs of our reviewers instead of making article creators more proficient in following WP:PAG? It's far less work for admins to refund than it is for reviewers to go through the time sink while our backlog increases. The stats will help us determine if our admins are making good judgment calls by not taking action, and that our reviewers have a good understanding of PROD & CSD – the STATS will help us make that determination, and will also help put our minds at ease re: admin UPE. Atsme 💬 📧 14:56, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

- Just a quick note, Atsme - PRODs have to last 7 days as well. Onel5969 15:23, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

- It's Saturday the day after – apologies & thx for pointing it out, One – but 7 days makes it even worse – and I get it that we're all overworked, including admins. Atsme 💬 📧 17:03, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

- Given that this page is for discussing the new pages patrol – I don't think WP:PROD is appropriate for recently-created pages. PROD must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected. Presumably the page's creator should be expected to object to the deletion of their recent creation. PROD is appropriate for pages created years ago, whose creator may have retired, and where community expectations for the page's content have changed from the date the article was created. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:18, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

- Given that we maintain a 5 digit backlog and try to start at the back of the NPP queue, they're not really new articles anymore. A substantial number of articles such as removed redirects, PRODs & CSDs comprise our queue because they're sent back to us as unreviewed. I realize that NPP is our second line of defense for keeping crap out of the pedia, but having said that, I've seen existing redirects that began as non-notable articles/BLPs – let's say it was titled John Doe when it began, and ended up a new article/BLP titled, Jane Doolittle. I'm not quite sure how redirects are recycled like that or if any of the following takes place or should even be considered: (a) is a MOVE required, (b) at what point is the transformation made, (c) can a UPE take advantage of it to stay off the radar, or (d) is it even worthy of concern for NPP reviewers? Atsme 💬 📧 17:03, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Atsme: I looked at the NPP feed ordered by oldest first to see what you were talking about. I got stuck when I couldn't figure out how to review a page. Then I realized I'd been conflating patrolling pages with reviewing them. I either forgot or didn't realize there was a difference. I checked my page curation log and saw that I'd reviewed just one page, back in 2014. I guess Billy needs to go back to school ;| and figure out how I enabled and disabled that toolbar. I figure I must have been unimpressed back in 2014 and disabled it after giving it a try. wbm1058 (talk) 21:52, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: - well, it's good that the differences are now known. There is also a big difference between new page reviewer & pending changes reviewer. I have no doubt you will get it figured out and that you & Danny can present us with some very useful tools to consider. Atsme 💬 📧 12:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• Another stat – to better demonstrate the need for the stats I've requested, following is another question that screams WE NEED STATS relative to unsupported arguments made to not draftify, AfD, PROD & CSD unsourced or poorly sourced or nonnotable stubs/articles. Levivich brought this one up at the mandatory draftification proposal at VPP (which probably needs better wording). He asked an admin what evidence he had for unsourced articles that are frequently being notable, which is one of the misguided reasons for keeping unsourced/poorly sourced stubs & articles and not draftifying them. From where I sit, the reasons given for not draftifying are exactly the reasons we should draftify, and allow the article creator to finish what they started. Having said that, my concerns go even deeper and include UPE and BOTs that are spitting stubs/articles out faster than we will be able to keep up. Atsme 💬 📧 18:56, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Not ready article in Mainspace, Identical Draft already exists

(Moved from another talk page to here for further input) RV University was moved to draft by a previous reviewer. The article has been re-created in Main space and is identical to the draft. Do I move to Draft:RV University-2 or use G6? Just questioning since G6 is not part of NPP script options. Slywriter (talk) 14:56, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I personally have been PROD-ing such articles, with a reference to the draft already existing and the mainspace article isn't ready yet. Singularity42 (talk) 15:27, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Also - this should probably be at Misplaced Pages talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers. Singularity42 (talk) 15:29, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Maybe G6 and throw a {{uw-c&p}} at the user? My brain is very foggy today but wouldn't c&p move qualify as G6, or some other speedy? I havent looked at this particular example, but in general i mean?. Of course this could be seen as a WP:DRAFTOBJECT and subject to not draftification anymore, in which case PROD/AfD would be the options leftover. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:55, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Per the drafting rules, we should persue other means rather than drafting. Just as it is fine fir us to move a new article, it is also allowed for them to contest that move. To re-draftify the article is tantamount to move warring. AfD it or stubify it. — Insertcleverphrasehere 23:18, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Slywriter, Singularity42, IAmChaos, and Insertcleverphrasehere: since we rolled out the draft namespace several years ago, I personally move all new pages to draft that are clearly not fit or ready for mainspace, but which 'might survive an AfD' if given sufficient attention. Note that while NPP is not the 'fix-it' department, there are no deadlines at AfD where although many AfCers volunteer to do a lot of basic fixes, the principle focus of AfC is (was?) to educate the article creators to do the fixes themselves, and if they don't/won't, G13 is thataway! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:52, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Kudpung, totally agree, issue here is an article created in main, moved to draft, new article created in main identical to draft. Where does the Main not fit for mainspace go? AfD, G6 eligible, move to draft with 2 appended?Slywriter (talk) 01:07, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Slywriter: AfD it, MfD the draft, warn the creator about disruptive editing (or any other disobedience template that fits), perhaps hinting that a possible block may be lurking on the horizon. I've been around so long on NPP and seen so much drivel and gaming the system that I am no longer an 'inclusionist at all cost', nor am I afraid to be stern but polite with obvious scoundrels - it's not the same as 'not biting' new and otherwise good faith users. Watch it though, because under today's climate an admin (if you are one) can't say 'Boo!' to a goose without risking a character assassination by vindictive miscreants. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Kudpung, Thanks, NPP a bit different animal than AfC and routine patrolling for vandalism and promotional material, so trying to find the community norms. Not an admin and doubt I'd ever survive the inquisition to be one since I mostly handle the other side of editing- pruning, not creation. Anyway, I've AfDed. Will drop a note on the talk page of editor. Leaving the draft for now. If they continue then will seek more permanent steps to prevent re-creation.Slywriter (talk) 01:48, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Slywriter: bear in mind that (now that I have looked) this does appear to be a fairly new user and probably not a native speaker, so they may not realise they are doing anything wrong. One of the great failings of the WMF or Wkipedia is that after all these years, there is still not an informative welcome page for newly registered users, still leaving everything (AFAIK) up to the Welcoming committee. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:42, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Slywriter: There is now actually some kind of start up info displayed to a new user's after registration, but it's not a permanent template on the user page and it carries no information on what to do and what not to do, or What Misplaced Pages is not, so from NPP experience, it seems as if most new users generally ignore it anyway. Kudpung Tester (talk) 05:00, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung@Slywriter There is actually advice about this exact thing over at WP:DRAFTIFY (more specifically: WP:DRAFTOBJECT). We aren't supposed to draftify more than once. — Insertcleverphrasehere 18:00, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I hist-merged the draft which is the standard solution for cut-paste moves. Misplaced Pages:Requests for history merge. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:52, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Proposal: bot autopatrol of *userspace* pages created by admins

I know that we unbundled autopatrol from the admin toolkit, but many admins create user pages as they tag sock puppets, write essays or user scripts, etc. Would it go against that unbundling RFC to have a bot automatically mark pages created by admins in the user namespace as patrolled? DannyS712 (talk) 21:45, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it's a bit of an unwritten rule that we don't patrol userspace, so a bot may not be needed for this. Others should feel free to chime in though! –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:12, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Novem is right I believe, but also I think that would patrol any drafts they make kind of giving all admins mainspace AP, at least indirectly. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 22:41, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't think user pages created as a result of a logged admin action need to be patrolled. They can be left unpatrolled. Generally the user has been blocked and/or banned so they won't be creating a normal user page. Content crpated by admins in their own user space is rarely harmful - I think it's best to AGF on what admins do there unless there sufficient are grounds for suspicion that they are acting out of order. Systematically Patrolling user space is otherwise just making work or 'a solution looking for a problem'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:45, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Medical sources

Are we supposed to be upholding the medical project's reliable sources for medical articles in biographical articles? I know it's best practice but I used to review these in DYK and, in my experience, they hardly ever comply. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I think maintenance tagging is optional for us now. Feel free to throw a {{More medical citations needed}} on it if needed. For determining whether to mark as reviewed, we can focus on the rest of the flowchart, which is mainly CSD and notability. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:28, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response, Novem Linguae! Espresso Addict (talk) 04:06, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

MEDRS does not necessarily apply to bios. It does apply to the parts of them which talk of having discovered a cure for a disease. Unlesss theee is very good documentation, I usually handle this by by saying something like which he proposed as a potential treatment for .... . If the med peopel want todeal wwith it further thtye will. DGG ( talk ) 05:41, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Autopatrolled editors creating unsourced pages

Via this thread, I discovered that several autopatrolled editors are creating articles without any sources whatsoever: List of ports in Iran, Sara Fernández Roldán, Pierre Pasquier (colonial administrator), Lot (fineness), 2022 Leinster Senior Hurling Championship Final, 2022 UEC European Track Championships, Midnight Cop (all by separate editors). It looks like most of them have had the permission for years.

It's my understanding that such behavior is not considered acceptable for autopatrolled editors. What should be done about these editors? What processes are in place to identify autopatrolled editors who aren't using the permission according to community expectations? (t · c) buidhe 03:24, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Treat it like a standard behavioral issue, raise it politely on a talk page and then go to ANI if not resolved? IIRC some editors have taken it upon themselves to scan autopatrol editors' contributions, but I'm not aware of any established process. _signed, Rosguill 04:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I recently removed the permission from an editor who had been creating unsourced and undersourced articles for years, some of which are of arguable notability, including a close to unsourced BLP . I see no reason why any admin can't simply remove the permission if the article quality isn't nearly always up to scratch. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

ETA: Sara Fernández Roldán was created with sources, which were removed by IP who expanded page. I've restored. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:41, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps the permission should be revoked from them, as was done with others.--Sakiv (talk) 13:47, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

IMHO if this is more than a couple of sporadic mistakes, the perm should be removed without excessive drama. WP:ANI looks like one of the worst possible venues to deal with this, except in the rare case where there's some bad faith abuse (e.g. UPE). MarioGom (talk) 14:22, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

yeah that's what I was thinking (t · c) buidhe 14:56, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

@Buidhe does this in any way appear to be related to UPE? I've not looked at the articles highlighted, but the behaviour makes my antennae twitch. 🇺🇦 Fiddle Faddle 🇺🇦 15:00, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I guess for some of them it's possible, but in other cases not; I don't see why anyone would pay for Lot (fineness). I'm not the most experienced with UPE though. (t · c) buidhe 15:22, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I've encountered the author of Lot (fineness) (now redirected) several times; I'm sure they are good faith; I think they contribute a lot to de.wiki, which has rather different citation standards. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:46, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

There is no point in redirecting something to an article which does not mention the topic. I can find nothing in OED to support this sense of "Lot", to add to the target article to make the redirect useful, and have proposed the redirect for deletion. It was a translation of an unsourced article in de.wiki. PamD 08:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

IMO autopatrol should be eliminated. Nearly everybody needs a second set of eyes short term and long term to keep them on the right track. Just as NPP can't patrol their own work. North8000 (talk) 15:36, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Maybe. In any case, I think a more immediate action would be not granting any autopatrol requested by the recipient. It would make sense for it to be granted primarily on nomination by NPP reviewers. IMHO, someone requesting autopatrol is a quite strong signal that they shouldn't get it at all. MarioGom (talk) 18:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

There's no fixed process for reviewing and revoking PERMs (that's what WP:XRV was supposed to be, but it died on the vine). In lieu of one, people sometimes raise concerns at WT:PERM, Misplaced Pages talk:Autopatrolled or of course WP:ANI. We should be able to trust autopatrolled editors to create articles that are completely clean 100% of the time, and in my mind leaving even one article unsourced invalidates that, so I'd pull it from these editors unless there's a very good explanation. – Joe (talk) 15:51, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Joe. If we can't trust NPP reviewers with autopatrol rights, they don't need to be NPP reviewers. Atsme 💬 📧 12:23, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

This problem runs deeper in Misplaced Pages. I should not be the only one facing consequences for not adding sources swiftly to the articles I create. Examples: 1, 2. Both articles remained unreferenced for over 10 days.--Sakiv (talk) 15:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I think I set a record. I was ready to put all of my sources in on minute 3 in a new article and somebody draftified the article with all of the stern warnings and instructions when it was two minutes old. (was not a NPP review) North8000 (talk) 18:42, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Do we know how many autopatrolled pages are created per week? I think that would weigh in on a decision to remove the privilege altogether. If it's just a low number, it won't make things much worse than they currently are.— rsjaffe 🗣️ 22:40, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Strong oppose. Would increase our queue at a time when the queue is out of control, with very low chance of the articles actually needing review. Not a good use of limited NPP reviewer time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:20, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

• I concur with North8000 and anyone else who believes the Autopatrolled right is outdated, and as a compromise, with MarioGom's suggestion. Autopatrolled articles do not relieve the queue in the feed - any that are user right compliant only take a second to click the button, while any that are not, and the creator, should be give short schrift. If an article does not belong in mainspace or does not respect the spirit of Autopatrolled, it does not belong there with impunity. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:48, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Draftifying

I'm of the mind that Draftify needs further review. Just curious...who crafted the section WP:DRAFTOBJECT?? Was it a community decision to accept this explanatory essay as part of the deletion policy? Atsme 💬 📧 12:39, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Looks like it was added in this 2017 diff, at the same time as the rest of the draftification text. It appears to be based on a discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:New pages patrol/Archive 5#Clarification and guidance for draftification. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Tags by author

St Lawrence's Church, Erfurt is a translation from German WP. It has one ref, but the bulk of the article has no citations, and there is a More Citations needed tag placed by the author. I believe this church is notable, but the author knows it is poorly cited and is apparently leaving it for others to fix. It would be declined in its present state at AFC. Draftify or pass? MB 21:26, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'd accept it--I was able to find at least passing references on Google Scholar in German (didn't have time to evaluate a non-searchable PDF closely), and any still-extant building that old is almost certainly going to have significant coverage, albeit offline. _signed, Rosguill 21:40, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it passes based on notability. It still doesn't feel quite "right" to accept with such poor sourcing. MB 22:04, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Stub it to what can be verified and move on (t · c) buidhe 07:32, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

The tasks of New Page and AfC Reviewers

Reprinted here from recent comments in another place:

NPP has an atrocious backlog, some of which results from reverted redirects. NPP is currently discussing how best to create some form of automation that would handle a significant portion of these issues, but it's not going to happen quickly. Furthermore, we do have issues with UPEs creating noncompliant articles and stubs, and new editors creating 2 sentence stubs that are unsourced. These problems are not shrinking, rather they are growing with advancements in technology as more people globally learn the benefits of a WP article. NPP reviewers are not here to create, expand, source, and fix articles for the creators of those articles – be they UPE or newbies. –Atsme

I am more concerned about UPEs and the problems they create, and equally as concerned about the fast pace of NPP reviewer burn-out. I'm hard pressed to believe that poorly written, and/or unsourced articles add to the credibility of WP, or that we will ever run short of articles in mainspace. I'm also of the mind that it's actually in the best interest of the project to AfD, redirect or draftify poorly written, unsourced articles that fail the key elements of GNG, V, & NOR than to leave them in mainspace with tags that too few editors have time to address. The onus is on the article creator to properly prepare their article(s) for mainspace. For us to not enforce that aspect of AfC, we are rewarding the creators of bad articles by allowing those articles to remain. –Atsme

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:33, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

To me the no-brainer would be that to find & include suitable sources for the existence of an article (or find out that they don't exist when they try) needs to be the job of the million editors, not the 30 NPP'ers or those at AFD. And it's doable to get this changed, it's just at wp:before. North8000 (talk) 11:11, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Personally my ideal policy amendment would be to carve out an adjusted BEFORE for articles that have not passed NPP, but to leave it essentially as-is for longstanding articles. The BEFORE safeguards are reasonable as a way to reduce workload at AfD and avoid the deletion of valid articles whose sourcing is hard to find for editors without special knowledge of subject matter; our specific problem with them is that they create an undue burden for the small set of editors doing NPP, inside the context of NPP. _signed, Rosguill 16:41, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

And the workflow could be: NPP reviewer finds article without notability sourced in it but sees no other reason to delete it

1. Send article to draft. This gives author notice that there's an issue and gives author time to find proper sources.

2. If article comes out of draft by any means (e.g., author rewrites it in article space, draft passes AfC) and still doesn't have notability sourced in it, nominate for AfD. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 16:59, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

@Rsjaffe:'s idea sounds like a way to easily implement @Rosguill:'s idea. We should start discussing, solidifying and agreeing on such ideas instead of letting them just disappear into the talk page archives. My idea would be write up a tidied up version of the Rosguill/DarkSlateGrey with "The following is considered to be a common and acceptable practice at NPP:" Should we work on this? North8000 (talk) 19:08, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I think we'd need to rework G13 if we're going to be relying on draftspace as a holding area for articles. I'm not really sure what the G13 log looks like, but sending potentially-promising drafts to AfD instead of G13 might be a way to go about fixing it. _signed, Rosguill 22:41, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

And to write out a flow for NPP for articles initially without references or links to resources sufficient to demonstrate notability:

it can run one of two ways depending upon decisions made by the author:

1. NPP sends article to draft. It gets modified and submitted for AfC review. Comes out of draft when passes review. NPP sees it for the second time. If it still doesn’t meet notability based on the links refs in the article, it is sent to AfD for final rescue chance.

2. NPP sends article to draft. Author declines draft by recreating the article in mainspace. NPP sees it for the second time. If it still doesn’t meet notability based on the links refs in the article, it is sent to AfD for final rescue chance.

This utilizes our current tools and processes, but changes two rules: it liberalizes the send to draft recommendation, and puts the burden of notability documentation on the creator. By liberalizing the draft rule, it gives the creator unlimited time to obtain documentation. It also reduces time in queue, which will at least make the queue number lower. Obviously it reduces our work load since we don’t have to do research on each of those articles and gives us a better chance of getting to most articles before they hit the 90 day boundary. We will be seeing more articles since more will enter the queue twice, but with much less work each time. My main concern with hitting 90 days in the queue is it causes unpatrolled pages to be indexed in search engines, which is not a good thing in my opinion. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 23:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I think that is a great idea. It recognizes that finding references (or seeing if they exist) is a main part of starting a Misplaced Pages article and is the job of the 1,000,000 editors, not the 30 NPP'ers. Here it would not only help with the capacity, it would also make the job less painful when reviewers get beat up for not doing reference searches in far away places with different languages being one of a handful of people trying to review ~1,000 articles per day. You should start / we should tweak a final form draft and then see if there is support here. North8000 (talk) 13:39, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Draft of proposal: "At New Page Patrol, one common method of handling articles which do not contain sourcing needed for wp:notability is to send them to draft so that the article developer(s) can determine if such sources exist and add them."

North8000 (talk) 13:46, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Just a quick note that I've tried to add something similar to this to WP:DRAFTIFY before, but was quickly reverted. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:53, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: IMO we just need to agree on it here. As a common/acceptable NPP practice that does not violate any policies or guidelines. North8000 (talk) 11:47, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Comment - this discussion needs to be revived and hopefull result in some kind of positive action. Based on the current discussion at VPP, I'm concerned that a few of our admins are inadvertently misinterpreting PAGs and losing sight of CONTEXT. See my VPP comment here. I'm very concerned that if we don't figure a way to automate some of these routine processes, 3rd party BOTs, UPE, and AI advances will antiquate WP, and it will happen quickly. Atsme 💬 📧 17:52, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  People on AfC talk right now are saying that accepting an unsourced list is ok... ! (t · c) buidhe 18:40, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

• Atsme 💬 📧 18:50, 5 June 2022 (UTC) Adding: At first glance, I'm inclined to agree that geographical locations with blue linked names and coordinates are an ok replacement for citations. On the other hand, the red linked names need some form of verification that they actually exist at the given coordinates. Atsme 💬 📧 19:07, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

• I support any attempt to make things easier. Creating unsourced, undersourced, and poorly sourced stubs gives the appearance of Misplaced Pages growing but at a net negative on really improving the encyclopedia. This is especially true considering the above statement "...unpatrolled pages to be indexed in search engines". As for "geographical locations" sourced through GNIS, there have been a horrible amount of articles created as a populated place, that point to a barren area with no other source to corroborate it might have been a historical populated place. Several editors have been concerned about the reliability of that source alone. -- Otr500 (talk) 13:18, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Common practice on apparent conflict?

At Nsports I requested a tweak to clarify: Request from NPP'er that apparent conflict in "seasons" section be clarified But absent that / in the meantime, is there a common practice to handle those. For example a season article on a higher-level sports team which is "stats only" other than an introductory sentence? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

NSPORTS is such a war zone that whatever you do will be attacked by one side or the other. My honest view is that NPP, especially while it's so run down, should just avoid getting tangled up in it. If we leave such articles unreviewed they'll come off the conveyor belt in 90 days and NSPORTS can fight about them then. I dare say that that's absolutely the wrong thing to say, and doubtless someone will be here presently to tell me so, but I think it's the least bad and most pragmatic response in a no-win situation. Ingratis (talk) 18:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I’ve now been called “liar” in NSPORTS nominations several times. (by an admin!) and people consistently ignore the criteria or argue that the sports specific criteria are wrong. I was about to quit NPP altogether but maybe I’ll just ignore all the sports cruft. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 18:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, after 90 days they'll be indexed by search engines but they'll still be on our "to be reviewed" list. North8000 (talk) 18:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, aren't there are enough other articles to be reviewed keep us all fully occupied? For the present, these articles are a huge potential time sink and as User:rsjaffe notes, any action at all on them is likely to attract a lot of time-wasting animosity. It's a question of picking one's battles, and this is one to avoid, IMHO. Ingratis (talk) 19:15, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I didn't mean that we might choose to review them. I meant that they still have "unreviewed" status, will show up on curation lists and sit in our 14,000 article backlog until somebody reviews it. In short, the the "90 days" has no effect of any kind in the NPP system. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. It's more like OWN, or worse...COI editing, or even worse, UPE. Sure, sure - we must AGF because we might just be dealing with overzealous sports fans. WP is inundated with WP:NOT, including sports promotions and movie promotions (NOTCRYSTAL). How is it not the antithesis of NOTDIRECTORY when we are including stats? Atsme 💬 📧 14:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Not just including stats, but "stats only" articles are pervasive. There's something much more doable than just eternal hand wringing. If we just got organized with established practices at NPP, such would go a long way. And if we do it well, such could become seen as the organized guiding light in the vague ecosystem of wp:notability and wp:not. This is much more doable than most things in Misplaced Pages because it is a matter of allowable routines within that fuzzy ecosystem, which can go far without any changes in policies or guidelines. "Make no small plans....." North8000 (talk) 20:49, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

What about all-stats elections articles? (t · c) buidhe 21:16, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Nsports mentions in several places about avoiding all-stats articles and that there should be prose. I think that there is less guidance available regarding elections. North8000 (talk) 01:13, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Germany

So I was working away at the old feed yesterday and Germany came up. After a double take and a quick check to make sure I wasn't being pranked in some way, I tagged it as reviewed. But I can't shake the nagging question, WHY? And I thought I'd put the question to those wiser and smarter than I. Stop preening, that bar is pretty low... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 09:08, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

According to the page curation log, Arwel Parry marked it as unreviewed on June 3. There's a link in left menu -> tools -> "Add to the New Pages Feed" that unreviews a page. Misclick? –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:20, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, well. Thanks - should have thought of looking there myself. As I said, the bar is low... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 13:54, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

A little concerning

Anyone want to play detective for these UPE classifieds? I can’t find anything that is of use, but someone else might, anyway, here are the classifieds . Anyway, some more eyes would be helpful with this. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 13:58, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Can anyone direct me to a page that list articles by creation date? I have one article of the second post identified but it was created with IPs so not sure I want to disclose without more information and giving away the WP:BEANS on how I got it without being able to tie more together.

On the first one, easy way to search for addition of external links? and does anyone know if Alexa scrapes external links despite our no follow?Slywriter (talk) 15:30, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

@Slywriter, with the IP’s try emailing the CU team to see if they can find any accounts. With the first one, try AWB, that might work. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 15:51, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

These are ads for run-of-the-mill spammers. There are, at least, hundreds of them. There's usually nothing useful starting from the ads themselves unless the platform discloses customers or finished projects. MarioGom (talk) 07:34, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Backlog count

With help from DatGuy, I have a new template to display the current backlog (updated every 15 minutes). I have added it to the header of the NPP project pages. It can be used elsewhere (e.g. your user page) just to make the backlog more visible to more people. It is {{NPP backlog}}. MB 22:40, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Cool! It's nice to know the actual number, and the very current one at that. North8000 (talk) 23:10, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

@MB I dont want to mess with the template, but are the two brackets meant to be there in the front? Happy Editing--IAmChaos 01:23, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Also would it be possible to get the template to link to the Feed, like the PCB temp does? Happy Editing--IAmChaos 01:26, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

awesome and accurate--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:31, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Curation Tool Bug

Is anyone else having an issue with the curation tool? I've noticed that I can't see the latest edits in the top left hand corner of the article anymore, and also, when I nominate to AfD, the corresponding entry in AfD doesn't appear. Iseultparlez moi 17:46, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm seeing recent edits in the Curation toolbar (on the right). My xtools gadget has been not always loading (top left). Happy Editing--IAmChaos 18:27, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

• Off topic perhaps, but while talikng about bugs, with the lack of structured coordination of NPP, is anyone maintaining this page and following up with Phab? Unless there has been some consensus to remove some of the features of the feed and the curation tool that we fought tooth and nail with the WMF to get made, there are a lot more bugs. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:51, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Right now that page looks like just another talk page....a duplication of this one. We probably need place/routine of really hammering out decisions, (including which technical things to ask for) and a place to record decisions that have long term relevance. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:19, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Could somebody check me on this?

I just did my first userfication of an article. Otopeni Olympic Aquatics Centre to En.wikipedia.org/RaduDB28/Otopeni Olympic Aquatics Centre Did I screw anything up? Any comments/tips? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:40, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

I did a full explanation in the curation tool intended for the editor and the article talk page. I don't see it. I may need to reenter. North8000 (talk) 01:44, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

North8000, I use the standard move tool from top of screen to place the articles in draft, not userify. Then leave a note on their page and a CSD on the old mainspace. Never used curation tool to do a move, but definitely something went wrong there as you haven't moved it out of mainspace, just given it a really long name :) Slywriter (talk) 01:59, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I did use the move tool but obviously screwed it up. I just moved it again, attempting to move it to user space but it went to draft space. I don't know why but maybe all's well that ends well. :-) North8000 (talk) 02:08, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Draft:Otopeni Olympic Aquatics Centre I have moved article there.Slywriter (talk) 02:05, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! North8000 (talk) 02:09, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

@Slywriter: So I think I learned two things. One is to go to draft space, not user space. The other (I think) would be to use the move tool and specify the new name as "Draft:Otopeni Olympic Aquatics Centre" ???? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 02:15, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, may need one of the more experienced movers to explain what went wrong but my assumption is you didnt switch main in first drop down and then cut and paste the url, rather than a shortened Misplaced Pages version of article name and path (username/articlename) into second column. Sending to Draft is easier since rarely have to change anything other than change Main to Draft unless article needs renaming.Slywriter (talk) 02:18, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! North8000 (talk) 02:37, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

For draftifications to draftspace, you may be interested in installing the user script User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js, which takes care of 1) leaving a talk page message, 2) leaving a CSD R2 on the old mainspace page, and of course 3) moving to draftspace. The Page Curation tool is known to be buggy when doing things like PROD and probably some other stuff, so I generally only use it for the green check mark, and for everything else I use Twinkle and some user scripts. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:42, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Thanks! Now I'll go learn how to install and invoke a user script. :-) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:17, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Method 1: add importScript('User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js'); to User:North8000/common.js. Method 2 (my preferred method): go to Preferences -> Gadgets -> Advanced -> check "Install scripts without having to manually edit JavaScript files" -> Save. Then visit User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js and click the "Install" button at the top center. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:09, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Thanks! (I think) I did that. If you don't mind another question, how do you invoke/use it? North8000 (talk) 17:34, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Every script is different. That particular one places a link in the "More" menu called "Move to draft" :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:33, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Or {{subst:iusc|User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js}}

For those of you getting into user scripts, I highly recommend these:

• User:Evad37/rater.js: easily adding WikiProject banners.
• User:Danski454/stubsearch.js: adding stub tags.
• User:Wugapodes/Capricorn.js: adding redirect tag templates.
• MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js (available as a gadget to): striking blocked usernames.
• User:GeneralNotability/mark-locked.js: striking globally locked usernames.
• User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter.js: reliable and unreliable sources highlighting. MarioGom (talk) 11:45, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Is this comment on Misplaced Pages:Usernames for administrator attention directed at us?

On the page, there is this note:

Note: Patrollers may wish to monitor usernames flagged by filters 148 and 149 and this recent changes filter tag.

Filter 148 is about possible autobiography creation and looks interesting. Filter 149 is user adding link to an article that contains the user's name, and does not look interesting, as those users get blocked pretty quickly by admins. The third link points to possible self promotion in userspace--is this something we should be looking for? (Often the user page qualifies for speedy deletion. This doesn't seem to be as heavily patrolled as filter 149 is.) — rsjaffe 🗣️ 21:11, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I personally do some RC patrolling time to time, and have a lot of tags tagged in the feed, including that last one. (If you look at my userspace dashboard, its the link called colorful updated). As for the question in your header, I have taken it to mean those who are patrolling the Special:Log/newusers, which I also do from time to time, but I don't usually look at filter outputs, maybe I could. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 00:06, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Interesting stats

New pages, and various other options in user-preferences at this stats tool. This link shows the stats that include edits by Anonymous + Group bot + Name bot + User. Search it any ole way you like. Atsme 💬 📧 17:31, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks!

It says about 150,000 new pages a month. We (including the bot) are reviewing about 50,000 per month and staying even. Autopatrol can't be adding much to that. So the 150k probably has other page types in it. North8000 (talk) 17:47, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Including maybe a new article counts as two pages (article and talk). Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:35, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Is there advice or common NPP practice for "stats only" articles for local elections?

Is there advice or common NPP practice for "stats only" articles for local elections? A typcal example of many that I've see is 1996 Chorley Borough Council election Maybe an intro sentence saying that it was held and who won. and the only source is to the stats. It can be assumed that every election ever held had coverage. WP:not says there should be prose. Thanks! Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:59, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: This isn't really an NPP thing as much as something relating to how we should cover elections. Summarizing the results is a good first step in improving such an article. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:55, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

What I meant is our main question which is "Should we pass it as being OK to exist as a separate article?"North8000 (talk) 20:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, I just sent 2004 Salt Lake County Council election and 2002 Salt Lake County Council election to AFD. It's only been two day but so far there is one KEEP. Every local election will have routine local coverage, so I don't see a case for notability unless there are some issues that get more than routine coverage. MB 20:28, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Personally, they look fine to me (as do the ones MB took to AFD). I would mark them reviewed and move on. I do agree that 1996 Chorley Borough Council election in particular is a little light on the prose, (the 2004 Salt Lake one is by far the best of the three as far as actually having prose content goes), but I wouldn't do much more than maybe throw a stub tag on them.

I think our purpose here as new pages patrollers is to weed out or improve problematic articles. I don't see how these are problems. ~ ONUnicornproblem solving 20:51, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks I think NPP's main role it's to identify articles that shouldn't be separate articles in Misplaced Pages under relevant policies, guidelines and norms. If the topic is OK for a stand-alone article in Misplaced Pages, even the worst article just needs work. If the topic is not OK, then it doesn't matter how nice it is, it shouldn't exist as a separate article. I really don't know the answer on these. I think that each of the ~100.000,000 local, elections held has probably had coverage and so could pass current wp:notability requirements. IMO the less sure area is whether it passes wp:not. Sincerely,, North8000 (talk) 21:18, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

I think it should be determined on a case-by-case basis. Local elections in say New York, Chicago, or LA are obviously notable. Local elections in Peoria are probably not. I think Salt Lake County is reasonable to have articles for. Elli (talk | contribs) 14:05, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

I AFD'd the example one and asked for a thorough review as it may provide guidance or precedent for similar articles. ( Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/1996 Chorley Borough Council election ) My summary there is: Reviewed during new page patrol. I wasn't sure what to do with (ones like) this one and opened a discussion at NPP and there were mixed thoughts/ no clear answer there. Accordingly, I would like to request a thorough large-participation review as the results this might set a direction or provide guidance. This is about a 1996 election in an area with approx 107,000 residents. It consists about 99% election results data with the other 1% being a few intro sentences. There is nothing unusual about the election. Wp:not is not explicit on this but in a few places seems to preclude this type of article. There was doubtless some local coverage. Saying that "presumed local coverage" alone should green-light it would mean that there probably I'd guess about 100,000,000 stats-only local election articles that could be green lighted. I believe there is no applicable SNG, nor precedent documented in wp:outcomes. The editor appears to be in the process of creating separate article for each election / year for this borough. Thanks in advance for your thorough review of this.North8000 (talk) 15:39, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

An episode of How I Met Your Mother

Admittedly, "How I Met Your Mother" was a popular TV show. However, currently in the queue is an article created in 2010 about the eleventh episode of the first season here. In 2015 it was tagged for multiple issues. There are no citations and only an external ink to IMDb.

I checked for sources about this particular episode and I haven't found any. I'm thinking articles like this should go through the deletion process. Is there any consensus here for keeping or wishing to delete articles such as this? Or any recommendations on how other NPP members deal with such pages?

For the moment I am going to PROD this page. I am leaving the multiple issues tag in place. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 03:55, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to TV show episodes deletion and redirect wars ;-)

The article exists since 2007, and has existed since then, so it has nothing to do with new page review. These articles only land in the NPP queue because of the redirect warring by a small number of users. I tag them if needed, mark them as reviewed, and move on. This does not preclude anyone from opening an AFD, obviously. MarioGom (talk) 07:07, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

An issue that needs our attention

I prefer to not let this issue die on the vine because the problems are still in the forefront. Apologies for the length, but from a cost vs benefit perspective, the cost is overwhelming. I do know that some admins & editors are using WP:PRESERVE incorrectly in their keep arguments, despite the fact that the policy unequivocally states (my underline): As explained above, Misplaced Pages is a work in progress and perfection is not required. As long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability, and No original research. Upon arriving at an unsourced article, the state of the article fails WP:V and WP:GNG, and should be left to NPP's discretion to either draftify, userfy, CSD, PROD or AfD. Of course, a volunteer can also choose to spend their time finding sources, and verifying another editor's credited creation. I mentioned the latter relative to UPE/PE. But how does that extra work reduce the AfC/NPP backlog?

There's also the issue of NPP tagging for CSD or PROD, that turns out to be for naught if the responding admin is an inclusionist, or misinterpreted a policy, such as PRESERVE, and simply removes the tag. Why are admins making content decisions? Now I understand why some editors insist that RfA candidates have GAs or FAs under their belt. Some of the reasons to refuse a CSD or PROD of an unsourced article actually conflict with our policies. NPP is then left with AfD where more time is wasted, in part because of the inclusionist vs deletionist wars. See the current ArbCom case. It could all be so easily resolved without losing any of our long time editors to (a) burn-out, (b) an admin action or (c) feeling unappreciated.

The ambiguity and contradictions in our PAGs are another part of the problem, but more specific to NPP is the following jewel 💎: Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion#WP:NOTCSD, particularly as it relates to unsourced stubs/articles. I inadvertently ruffled an admin's feathers when, in my head, I was referring to all hoaxes, including 2. Less-obvious hoaxes. If even remotely plausible, a suspected hoax article should be subjected to further scrutiny in a wider forum. Truth is often stranger than fiction. Note that "blatant and obvious hoaxes and misinformation" are subject to speedy deletion as vandalism. Nearly every single item in that list leads to the heart of our woes, and encourages bad behavior...including the use of BOTs for article creation. It also demonstrates a level of inconsideration, inadvertent or otherwise, which leaves NPP with morale issues. Within minutes of an unsourced article being indexed and published in mainspace, multiple webcrawlers are all over it before NPP has had a chance to review it. Think about the time spent at AfD because of garbage articles that were in the NPP queue, including reverted redirects, unsourced articles, less-obvious hoaxes, OR, essays, non-notable BLPs, etc. (Part of the reason for my stats request) NPP volunteers do have the advantage of the curation tool, a sorted and filterable queue, and (hopefully) a growing number of qualified NPP reviewers, but for some reason whenever our work is involved...well, Rodney Dangerfield comes to mind.

If a subject is notable and worthy of inclusion, the stub/article should be properly written and formatted, and cited to RS by the article creator. The absence of RS speaks loudly to WP:V and WP:GNG, and clearly justifies drafity/userfy/PROD/CSD. To add to the weight of the world on our shoulders, we also have to struggle with UPE, and as we've long since learned after a few desysops, site bans and removals of autopatrolled rights, money is a big motivator...but we continue to AGF.

I think we're too focused on the symptoms instead of removing the cancer, which requires looking in the right places in order to craft a proper remedy. Admins and arbcom are taxed with looking at editor behavior, which is obviously a symptom of a bigger problem; we're leaving the cancer untouched. The remedy lies somewhere in the process of creating articles in mainspace, and that is what needs to be changed. We should be putting safeguards into place to prevent or limit unsourced BOT creations, and work more diligently at preventing unsourced articles from going viral on the internet. NPP should not have to deal with these relentless time sinks that can easily be resolved. Think about the following:

1. CSD – article creator is notified of the problem, the onus is on the creator to fix it. But we have admins rejecting CSD based on reasons that contradict our core content policies. Now imagine a UPE with a BOT spitting out unsourced articles they know will be salvaged, and others will do the work for them. I'm sure they appreciate our hard work which is why they keep sending it to us.
2. PROD – article creator is notified of the problem. They will either (a) remove the PROD and fix the issue, (b) remove the PROD and not fix it, or (c) do nothing. "B" creates the problem, and the remedy should be an unquestionable speedy, not an AfD. We have a backlog at AfD, we need more closers - part of the root cause? See CSD and PROD above.
3. Draftify - article creator is notified of the problem – onus is on them to fix it. If it's not fixed during the allotted time, bye-bye!
4. Userfy - article creator is notified - onus is on them to fix it.

I look forward to further input. Atsme 💬 📧 17:15, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

But what does it mean to be "fixed". Does it mean that notability sources must be included? Without that requirement, our work is nearly hopeless. Currently, we must prove the absence of evidence of notability. How many pages of searches is sufficient to prove absence? What do we do with other languages, particularly ones not spoken by many people?

And, if we draftify lots of articles, what does that do to the AfC process? They'll be flooded. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 17:28, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Rsjaffe, AfC still goes through NPP, so the quality of AfC reviews is less important as we still have to review them. | Zippybonzo | Talk | 17:29, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@Rsjaffe - fix means correcting the reason NPP took whatever action was taken. If it's unsourced and sent to draft or it was userfied or PRODed, then the onus should be on the article creator to provide the RS needed to satisfy GNG. We can certainly provide the link to GNG and offer our help. We should also direct them to The Tea House, or to an instructional video, or to other relevant PAGS. IOW, if we're reviewing an article that has issues, we identify those issues, and if the article truly does have potential, it doesn't hurt anything to post some encouraging words on the UTP of the article creator, and explain what issues the article needs corrected. It's good for NPP to help new users, and encourage them. The latter is how we build a trustworthy encyclopedia, and recruit more qualified editors into a welcoming community. I am referring only to articles that meet the above a-b-c-d criteria. In other cases, we simply tag the article, or fix little issues that we can easily fix. I also agree for the most part with Zippybonzo. AfC is where the article is initially incubated. Repeated denials are not helpful if the AfC reviewer is not explaining or helping or guiding the article creator as to why their article cannot be published. AfC is stage 1, and yes, NPP is also part of that segment in article publishing as Zippy explained. Atsme 💬 📧 18:31, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Within minutes of an unsourced article being indexed and published in mainspace, multiple webcrawlers are all over it before NPP has had a chance to review it. The webcrawlers ignore new articles until NPPs marked it as reviewed or until 90 days pass, thanks to the $wgPageTriageMaxAge setting in mw:Extension:PageTriage.

The ambiguity and contradictions in our PAGs another part of the problem. I think for any wiki-issue where there are two major sides that can't agree, the PAGs get out of date, stuck in an equilibrium that is tolerable to both sides, but verbose, ambiguous, and not reflective of how things are currently working. The notability guidelines are the crown jewel of this, in my opinion, making notability one of the most complicated Misplaced Pages policy areas to master. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:15, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Novem Linguae, does that include autopatrolled new articles, and reverted redirects? Atsme 💬 📧 00:15, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Autopatrolled articles skip our queue and are indexed right away. Reviewed redirects flipped to articles become unreviewed and are treated like a normal unreviewed article by the software. The software does not attempt to track reversion, it just goes "if reviewed redirect is changed to non-redirect, mark unreviewed". More info at WP:NPPREDIRECT and Misplaced Pages:New pages patrol#Technical details. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:17, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

• Comment To use a time-honoured format. There is a discussion at AfD that I think also touches on some of the core points here - this here discussion. For me, there a couple of problems that could use some dramatic solutions. 1) AfD requires WP:BEFORE. That's lovely, but I think for NPP that requirement should be waived. NPP should surely pass an article AS PRESENTED in its current state. Does it pass muster? Yes, reviewed, maybe tagged. No, draftify/delete but without people harping on about BEFORE. A new page patroller is going to get very little done if every single AfD means looking for sources the article creator didn't bother to find - which is, in fact, the case: it's a time suck. And, as we know, NPP tends to throw up more AfDs than generally get thrown up. I now tag for notability in 60% of cases I'd have sent to AfD, but a tag is not really a solution, it's kicking the can down the road. I'm acutely aware that AfDs are rammed and quite a few are now hitting 'no consensus through low participation'. 2) Articles should not be searchable in 90 days automatically, but ONLY AFTER they have passed NPP. The onus is then on the article creators to build articles that actually present as fit to pass new page review in order to get search. 3) The bar to take articles from draft to mainspace should be higher - ie: only after AfC or other oversight. I realise that one's problematic, 'cos AfC itself is hurting. So there them is, a couple of thoughts... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 18:24, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

  AfD requires WP:BEFORE. That's a killer for NPP and needs changing for new articles. When the article is first written is the time of best opportunity for the writer to find notability sources. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 18:35, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Here are a couple of observations I've made that may be pertinent, in no particular order:

• If and when the onus is on NPP to do a WP:BEFORE, some reviewers may only feel confident doing so in a topic of interest or (relative) expertise, or may be limited by accessibility of sources or language barriers. With this setup, the consequence is that fewer patrollers are willing to investigate certain cases, and those who do must spend a considerable amount of time on each case.
• Sometimes, articles that aren't eligible for speedy deletion get recreated in mainspace after they're already draftified/userfied. In that case, there's no alternative to PROD/AfD.
• Especially with PRODs (again when no CSD applies), and as permitted by policy, I've seen editors (e.g., possible UPEs) contest deletion without any clear reason, even though the vast majority of reviewers/editors would consider a deletion uncontroversial. Once, I even saw a PROD tag removed with the edit summary "Fixed typo", then what? AfD it is... again. As far as I can tell, there isn't a good way of dealing with this.
• The onus should be on the creator to write an article that, while naturally a work in progress, won't have any trouble demonstrating notability, neutrality, and verifiability, and with a presentation coherent enough that a non-expert patroller can seamlessly pass the article. If one wouldn't author an article on a topic (e.g., for not being familiar with the subject matter) and is faced with a half-baked new article in mainspace, why is it reasonable to expect them to search and sift through sources on the level of a subject-matter expert or in another language? That's a rather more difficult task than simply checking that the text and provided sources meet all the core content policies.
• we're too focused on the symptoms instead of removing the cancer – I might be missing something, but what is the "cancer" that's the main focus of this thread?

ComplexRational (talk) 18:43, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

The onus should be on the creator to write an article that, while naturally a work in progress, won't have any trouble demonstrating notability, neutrality, and verifiability, and with a presentation coherent enough that a non-expert patroller can seamlessly pass the article. If one wouldn't author an article on a topic (e.g., for not being familiar with the subject matter) and is faced with a half-baked new article in mainspace, why is it reasonable to expect them to search and sift through sources on the level of a subject-matter expert or in another language? That's a rather more difficult task than simply checking that the text and provided sources meet all the core content policies. Yep. 100% agree. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 23:49, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

I really like "The onus..." bullet point that ComplexRational added above and rsjaffe re-posted in agreement. Add another +1 from me, as it is one of my primary concerns which I mentioned when beginning this discussion. CR wrapped it up nicely in a nutshell. It appears we have identified some of our most immediate concerns; therefore, I recommend that we craft an RfC and present it right here to community. Our focus should be on our most urgent concerns and proposed remedies but should be presented one at a time so that we don't overwhelm the community. I remain cautiously optimistic that most editors are aware of, and understand the issues we're facing, but it also appears that we have a substantial portion who do not, much less understand the reviewing process or why we should not allow unsourced articles into mainspace. Evidence of my concerns are demonstrated very clearly at VPP; in fact, there is a whole page of it. I recently commented here, and also commented earlier in that discussion as I alluded to in my initial post above. There are quite a few admins who have a much different view of NPP and unsourced articles, which puts me at a loss as to how we should deal with it, if at all. Perhaps it will require an ARCA case, I don't know. Let's just take it one step at a time, start with a well-crafted RfC, and hope for the best. Atsme 💬 📧 12:37, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Proposal: increase unreviewed new page search engine NOINDEX duration

Alexandermcnabb had a great idea above. Articles should not be searchable in 90 days automatically, but ONLY AFTER they have passed NPP. I think this is actionable, it is probably pretty easy to file a Phabricator ticket tagged with Wikimedia-Site-requests to change $wgPageTriageMaxAge = 365;. Should I create a WP:VPR for this? Is 365 a good number of days to bump it up to? (currently at 90 days) –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:55, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

This is a great idea; by definition, anything still in draft is not ready to be searchable. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:08, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

This isn't about drafts, I think: it's about mainspace articles that haven't been patrolled yet. I think drafts already aren't searchable. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:11, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

• I agree that this would be a good idea; hopefully it shouldn't be too controversial. Do you know where the 90-day limit was decided? All I could find was this RfC, which seems to suggest that all unpatrolled pages should be noindexed. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:11, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Technical limitations?

• I think there are some technical limitations; I remember a similar discussion where it was revealed that the backlog for redirects is capped at 30 days because the page triage system cannot handle the amount of redirects that would pile up in the full 90 days. _signed, Rosguill 19:31, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

  @DannyS712, would you be able to weigh in on any technical limitations to raising $wgPageTriageMaxAge? Is there some kind of database issue that makes this not as easy as changing a variable? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:16, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not familiar with wgPageTriageMaxAge, sorry DannyS712 (talk) 20:55, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

  @MusikAnimal, would you be able to weigh in on any technical limitations to raising $wgPageTriageMaxAge? Is there some kind of database issue that makes this not as easy as changing a variable? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:02, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Novem Linguae There's no technical concern with increasing $wgPageTriageMaxAge as far as I can tell. gerrit:356781 points to this discussion which implies it was created for this very reason. — MusikAnimal 05:35, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  That was an interesting discussion. It gives the reason for 90 days - a concern that someone could "vandalize" an important article by slipping in a NOINDEX. To mitigate that, NOINDEX is ignored on "old" articles and only works on "new" articles. There was an assumption that articles would be patrolled within 90 days. MB 08:01, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  That could be handled separately by an edit filter that detects edits introducing NOINDEX in mainspace. MarioGom (talk) 08:30, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  Hmm. I wonder, how tightly coupled are $wgPageTriageMaxAge and __NOINDEX__? I assumed they were separate, each having their own max duration, but it's possible that their durations are controlled by the same setting. Or maybe a wgPageTriageMaxAge = 365 would place a NOINDEX but then the NOINDEX would still be set to 90 and that would defeat the purpose.

  I also wonder if it'd be technically feasible to go over 365 days. One reason I chose that number is I know that the SQL table pagetriage_log_table only keeps 365 days of data, and I wonder if going over that might cause problems. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:51, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  Ping MusikAnimal. Was wondering if you could weigh in again, if you know offhand. Thanks! –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:05, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Novem Linguae I'm not aware of a time limit on __NOINDEX__, or at least it doesn't seem to be documented. I didn't read all of the lengthy discussion but it seemed at the time, there were separate, unrelated issues where basically NOINDEX wasn't working as expected. That appeared to have been resolved as well. $wgPageTriageMaxAge acts completely independently, judging by the code. — MusikAnimal 21:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Break

This makes sense, if it's technically feasible. MarioGom (talk) 19:43, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Is it possible to have a max age based on categories? BLPs, for instance, shouldn't be indexed at all until reviewed. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 19:45, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

The biggest issue may not be technical. This is a quote from Kudpung: "otherwise you'll just have to make an argument at the WMF to extend the un-patrolled period, and believe me, that would be no easy task, even if you have friends there and meet them personally - been there, done that" — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB (talk • contribs) 17:16, June 17, 2022 (UTC)

I'm in favor, if it's technically feasible. Not sure what to do if WMF is problematic, but I'd hope we could work through any issues. Not sure what the issue might be - if it's "that's the way it's always been," then why hide IP addresses that have always been open, eh? Geoff | 21:24, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

• It helps, especially as applicable to PE in that the client can't see the article so no payment will be forthcoming. Atsme 💬 📧 21:30, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

  This is a bandage over a gaping would: the difficulty due to current policies (particularly WP:BEFORE) posed in NPP. But it's better than nothing. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 23:51, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

• I agree, rsjaffe, we still need to patch the hole that allows unsourced articles to slip into mainspace, and also work on a more efficient system for handling redirects. Atsme 💬 📧 00:08, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  Now that I think about it, changing this will actually help. Right now, no one other than the reviewers has "skin in the game". No one else has an incentive to fix this. With NOINDEX, we can motivate those who care about search engines. Might provide a touch of support to meaningful changes. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 00:14, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

One of my favorite sayings is that deadlines spur action. So would this mean that some patrolling that happens because people are concerned about a page being indexed wouldn't happen or would it allow a more stable operation of the queue before something gets indexed? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:48, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

I've given up on deadlines. I patrol and find 1) stuff that belongs in Misplaced Pages, 2) bad stuff (e.g., UPE, sockpuppetry, obvious non-notable). Anything in the middle, particularly if it is sports related, I just pass on and let it age out. An interesting thing I did was look at the queue starting 31 days out. articles that are not obviously notable in 1) sports category or 2) foreign-language-reference-supported predominate. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 01:25, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

My intention was that people who WANT their article to get any attention (ie: Search) would ensure the article is in fit condition for NPP to validate them. At that point (and not automatically after 90 days), the article would be searchable and therefore properly 'live'. This both spurs creators to ensure pages are up to par and ensures that pages that aren't are not searchable and therefore limits the need to send articles to draftification (easing the burden on AfC), limits the need to go to AfD except in the most extreme/certain to pass cases and ensures that people aren't searching WP and finding utter rubbish. Additionally, lifting the burden for performing BEFORE on NPP means that the article AS PRESENTED is patrolled - not the notional article that could have been should the creator have actually looked for the sources the article needs - reducing burden on the small number of patrollers and increasing the requirements for the large number of page creators to actually create viable pages. Thanks, Novem Linguae for picking it up. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 14:30, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

• @Barkeep49, I'm thinking that if exposure is the main purpose of creating an article, then it holds to reason that if it isn't being seen (indexed), the creator will be incentivized to fix it. OTH, if it's a BOT creation, or one the creator doesn't give a flip about, then it's highly unlikely that (a) it's worthy of inclusion or (b) that the issues will actually be fixed; both of which warrant CSD or PROD. Any article that is notable and worthy of inclusion will be sourced, but let's not waste time on the symptoms and go straight to the root of the problem. An unsourced article never should have made it into mainspace. If we patch that hole, and prevent unsourced articles from slipping through the cracks, a lot of our problems are solved. I'm not sure where the notion of publish it anyway actually originated, but it defies our core content policies, and taxes the very core of NPP volunteerism without fair representation. As rsjaffe put it, the bulk of those who oppose deletion don't have any "skin in the game", or a "dog in the fight". This whole scenario is one of the reasons we need the stats I've asked about – we need a cost vs benefit analysis, so to speak, as it relates to the arguments for keeping unsourced articles that have been denied deletion at CSD & PROD – where did they finally end up? Did they get stuck in the NPP queue – go to AfD and were deleted – or did they actually get published with/without fixing the problems? Crafty editors will also take advantage of redirects to create articles in mainspace without drawing much attention. The redirects, reverts of redirects and those that lead to AfD are another issue – but I sincerely believe it's one we can fix at the root cause - PREVENTION, keep unsourced articles/stubs from ever seeing the light of day. Atsme 💬 📧 14:37, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  Ultimately if more articles are being made than we have capacity to patrol it's going to be a problem at some point. Pushing out no index would give us more breathing room but not change that underlying issue. So we have to either increase capacity or decrease the number of new articles. So ultimately any increase in the NOINDEX time should be accompanied by some plan to change one of these things. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:20, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  I'm for decreasing the number of new articles, which is something we can do by heading them off at the pass; i.e. PREVENTION. A BOT could be created to assure each new article going into mainspace has at least 3 citations before it leaves Draft, or is directly created in mainspace, regardless of autopatrolled status. I don't know enough about the "theft" of redirects to address that issue - all I know is that it exists and it's a problem. Wbm1058 can probably explain it far better than I ever could. Adherence to WP:PAG and more CSD & PROD support from our admins will help to self-correct some of the other issues, as will getting more admins trained in NPP reviewing so that fewer CSD & PRODs will be rejected or sent to AfD. Redirects also need attention in an effort to make it more difficult to get a bad article back into mainspace which is another rather substantial prevailing issue. The various discussions at VPP demonstrates where a big part of the issues stem, including ambiguities and misunderstandings of PAGs topping the list. I also noticed that, for whatever reason, some editors don't have a "middle button" - they are either 100% inclusionist or 100% deletionist. What we need are more includelists. Atsme 💬 📧 15:56, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Atsme: I'll give you an example case study – something I caught on my patrols and cleaned up this morning. I won't say exactly how I found it per "beans" though I do have a section on my user page where I list my work queues, and it was something on that list. Untangling the mess there was a time-consuming manual process which would be extremely difficult to automate. My focus has been on occasionally adding more patrols when I stumble across something that wasn't caught by any patrol I try to create a new patrol that finds other cases just like the one I stumbled onto. Aliana was first created 16 December 2007 as an article about an album by Aliana Lohan. This was deleted per Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Aliana. Aliana was re-created 13 July 2017‎ as a redirect to Eliana via Articles for Creation. That redirect was usurped by OfTheUsername when they started a new article about Aliana, Texas (OfTheUsername later moved Aliana to Aliana, Texas: Proper naming.). That new article had been shuttled back & forth to draft space. I untangled all the crossed wires, and deemed the Texas planned community to not be a primary topic, so I made Aliana a disambiguation. I'm a "middle button" who generally leaves keep/delete decisions about articles like Aliana, Texas to others. But I did note that AIRIA Development Company might have an interest in promoting their planned community which is unlike the other communities listed on Template:Fort Bend County, Texas. I remember riding my bike through places like Crabb and Clodine on my bicycle rides west of Houston in the early to mid 1980s. OMG, Fulshear, Texas is a city with 16,000+ ppl now? I remember that place as not much more than a country corner with a BBQ joint where we ate lunch either during or after our ride (back then it had a population under 600). – wbm1058 (talk) 17:51, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  It's a can of worms. Atsme 💬 📧 18:27, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  bro what. I made the Aliana article independently. I don't work for/connected to AIRIA Development company or affiliates or anything. Sorry about the redirection and stuff I tried to make it a draft but then it acted weird. My bad. OfTheUsername (talk) 18:47, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  Is there a page that shows page creation by user metrics (Daily, Weekly, Monthly)? Perhaps some users could be evaluated and "nominated" for Autopatrol by the community.Slywriter (talk) 15:29, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Slywriter: Misplaced Pages:Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege maybe? – Joe (talk) 18:36, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  I discovered that there used to exist an edit filter to flag unsourced new articles, though it was decommissioned in 2012 with the comment "disabling, no real use" (?). There's also a fairly recent unanswered query as to whether the filter should be reinstated. While this wouldn't be a universal solution, I believe (in agreement with the recent post) that warning users who are about to publish an unsourced article would either lead them to add sources or refrain from publishing. The filter also got quite a number of hits before it was deleted, but I believe it preceded ACTRIAL. Would reinstating this filter be at least a partial solution? ComplexRational (talk) 17:10, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  Interesting discovery. I wonder if it will also catch autopatrolled in mainspace or if it only works at AfC draft to mainspace? It should be a universal catch-all filter. No article should be in mainspace without a minimum of cited RS, even if it's just 2. Could it also catch sources that are unreliable by integrating User:Headbomb/unreliable and maybe even User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen.js would prove useful? Atsme 💬 📧 17:28, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  From what I see, the filter's old configuration did not target any specific user groups and was set to work for all mainspace pages, with built-in exceptions for pages that aren't supposed to have sources such as redirects and disambiguation pages. I'm unsure about autopatrolled – but in that case, there could be grounds for revocation of the permission. Regarding the scripts, I doubt they could be implemented in a filter because there's enormous potential for false positives/negatives and there are simply too many cases to cover (someone with more advanced programming skills, feel free to correct me though); reactivating the old filter would simply help in catching the most egregious cases. ComplexRational (talk) 17:53, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  Quick tech note. The edit filter is computationally expensive and it would probably not be performant to look for more than a short list of the dozen or so most egregious unreliable sources. Which we already have some filters for, e.g. filter 869. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:12, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  How is the filter catching no sources? Is it using citation format, or reflist, or something of that nature? Atsme 💬 📧 18:32, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

  @Atsme: It flags any new article that doesn't have any of several character strings that would suggest either the presence of sources or a page not needing sources – this means flagging new pages not having any of <ref> tags, http/https, disambiguation in the title, #REDIRECT, etc. It doesn't discriminate types of sources, only whether any could be present. ComplexRational (talk) 18:45, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

• That 2012 RfC was a result of a couple of meetings I had with Jorm and Erik Möller over the development of New Page Triage, the working name for the new feed and curation software development. Characteristically Oliver Okeyes (WMF), jumped on the bandwaggon before any volunteers could could start the community discussion, and he later continually tried to block development right through to his leaving the community although there was a clear consensus (WereSpielChequers and Scottywong will remember all this).

'No Index until patrolled' was much like Jumpback which Oliver also promised and did nothing about and wasn’t resolved until TonyBallioni stepped in years later and it finally got boxed through at the WishList in 2019. Anyway, Extraordinary Writ, you can all blame me for the 90 days. When I was asked, it's what I suggested thinking it would be enough. A few years later we got ACTRIAL done which greatly reduced the flood of effluent but it wasn't long before the problems with patrollers started.

Per Barkeep49: Ultimately if more articles are being made than we have capacity to patrol it's going to be a problem at some point. Yes, pushing out the 90 days would certainly just be a palliative. First off - and I know you'll all hate me for this - some stats are needed over a sample period: how many articles are kept immediately, how many are draftified, how many are PRODed, how many are CSDd and AfDd? Or did someone do that already and I missed it? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:23, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I think that extending the 90 days is beyond logical....knowing what we now know, the short 90 day number defeats the whole purpose of that (good) feature and makes it pointless. North8000 (talk) 10:33, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

The suggestion is not to push 90 days out, Kudpung, but institute 'No review = No Search' as a flat deal and make that public, possibly with some guidance on notability and sourcing that lets new page creators know that their page will not be searchable until it reaches a minimum standard of notability/sourcing and has been patrolled. I'm not sure where stats help in this - we can all see the scale of the problem and this would apply some systemic leverage for creators to focus on sourcing. This also means sub-standard articles aren't 'rewarded' by being searchable after 90 days whether reviewed or not - when right now we have little hope of getting to articles in 90 days. The best stat I can see is the NPP queue and how little we are managing to reduce it! Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 13:12, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I think it's quite clear, Alex, that at least Barkeep49 certainly concur that a palliative would not have much effect. One advantage, as the potted NPP history I wrote above is intended to demonstrate, is that the en.Wiki and a few others have since asserted their maturity vis-à-vis the WMF and can now instigate their own controls and policies. 'No review = No Search' as a flat deal is not only an excellent suggestion, but where no amount whipping all the 750 reviewers into action is ever going to work, it's also the only solution. Just do it. It's technically a doddle so just ask at Phab for the switch to be thrown. OTOH, if the Grand Masters of Phab decide you need a community consensus first, you'll have get one. ACTRIAL is a seminal example of changing outdated 'founding principle' policy; we had some very heavy participation and extremely convincing consensus each time we ran a debate for it, but only because our mission statements were armed with a lot of significant stats and very carefully crafted proposals. Now its time for some action. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:21, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Now, I can just about get my head around NPP and AfD, and I can even create the odd page (bless him, but it was User:TonyBallioni wot granted me autopatrolled, as you mention him) but this Phab switchy stuff is, to be honest, a bit beyond me. Have you SEEN what a mess I can make with source editing? I'm not sure I'm the person to actually take this one forward, but am perfectly happy to have made the suggestion if others want to activate it - and just as happy to support. But as for anything beyond tinkering with content, I'm really sure it's not my long suit... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 15:56, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll open a phab request on this. MB 18:56, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done here MB 23:06, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @MB ! :) Alexandermcnabb (talk) 06:59, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thank you MB for taking the initiative. Personally, I would have asked for indefinite 'NO INDEX' and see what the WMF offered. It's always better to ask for more and then negotiate down if held against the wall by the throat. That said, if you get 365 days it might just do the trick but I'm wary of being back here again in 5 years and asking for more. Anyway, by then Misplaced Pages might be dead, and so might I ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:46, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I did ask for INDEFINITE (as you know now that you have been to the phab ticket, just clarifying here for others). There is already a suggestion there for 365 days, and the task was renamed to reflect that :( MB 13:46, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I realise that now. All the fun of the fair, just as I predicted.

The Phab request has now been marked as 'stalled'. I hope enough people are following this because the devs are going to need a lot of convincing this is necessary. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:03, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

It also says a "local discussion" is underway. If that means a private discussion among devs, that is not transparent. All our discussions on this are public. MB 14:21, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

That is classic WMF dev-speak. There is nothing for them to discuss. It's their way of finding another ruse for stalling. They are pretending - like I said above - that the whole thing needs yet another RfC. Oh, I know Phab so well - and Bugzilla, its predecessor. So do Scottywong and The Blade of the Northern Lights. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:54, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, to be fair, the phab ticket has only been open for a day or two, and it doesn't look like anyone has said anything like "we're not going to do this." So, I'd cut them some slack and give them a reasonable amount of time to figure out how to make the change without introducing any unexpected consequences. If they do eventually refuse to make the change, there are probably ways for us to make this happen on our own, without help from the devs. It wouldn't be nearly as efficient or elegant, but you could have a bot automatically add a template to all new articles that ensures they're not indexed, and then removes that template once the article is patrolled. It would be a silly way to do it, but it's possible if the devs put up a brick wall. But from what I can tell, we're not yet anywhere near the point of needing to contemplate such actions. Give them a week or so to figure out what they're gonna do. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 18:04, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Arb Case on deletion-related editing

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct in deletion-related editing

I am wondering whether NPP (and AfC to a lesser extent) collectively should be a party to this or at least some statement should be submitted about NPPs concerns, since we have several active discussions on this page revolving around the issues of delete/draft/noindex. Slywriter (talk) 13:46, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm eligible to provide evidence and will be happy to present a consensus view in that case. Atsme 💬 📧 15:03, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Almost everyone is "eligible to provide evidence", but not everyone is best placed to present some "consensus" view, as if that would be wanted. Judging from User talk:Fram#Youth Olympics, there is more chance of you becoming a party than anything else. If for some reason a "consensus" view of this project would be wanted (no idea why), best leave it to someone uncontroversial to post it perhaps? I just reverted one of your ref insertions on an article I recently nominated for deletion, as your ref didn't support even the single thing it tried to. Like I said before, I wonder whether you should be involved with NPP at all, seeing how difficult it is for you to get sourcing or many other things right. Fram (talk) 09:31, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

An issue that needs review

Please see my response at Village Pump relative to WP:OR footnote (a). Kudz - your thoughts, please? I asked Joe if he could provide a link to that community discussion. I think it's very important for NPP & AfC participants to provide input here in this discussion. Atsme 💬 📧 14:59, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, Atsme, I've scrolled the whole VP page but I can't figure out what it's all about. Can't find the topic. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:22, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Here you go: Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#Thoughts on sourcing our articles from an inclusionist -MPGuy2824 (talk) 10:32, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks MPGuy2824. I've skimmed over it Atsme but I'm going to have nothing to do with it - it's far to contentious and full of borderline PA. I have some very firm ideas about what the work of NPP & AfC is supposed to be, and some even more firm and less flexible philosophy on what is appropriate for the encyclopedia and what is not. Half the community agrees with me and half the community does not. For me to get involved there would just make me angry and the discussion will still be stalemate. Besides which, now that the WMF ideology has got the thread firmly in its claws like it invariable does everywhere else on community discussions, it's even more important that I stay away. In any case, I'm supposed to be semi-retired, as someone poignantly pointed out recently, so I'm better off minding my own business. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:08, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

In Amber still not patrolled after

The article about an album In Amber has not been pratrolled yet after three days. It is already seen 300 times a day. Could anyone patrol it as for now, one doesn't still find the article on a google research with the words "In Amber album Hercules and Love Affair wikipedia". Carliertwo (talk) 18:02, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Carliertwo when you clicked on this page, did you see the backlog chart? That explains why all articles are not patrolled immediately. (t · c) buidhe 18:26, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

@Carliertwo, generally, assume pages will be patrolled when the patrollers have time, I rarely do reviews on request, and the page will be patrolled soon. This page is for reviewer discussion, not asking for your page to be reviewed, asking quite often has the opposite effect. Kind Regards, | Zippybonzo | Talk | 18:36, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Another one bites the dust: Tamingimpala

• Tamingimpala (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Blocked for spamming and sockpuppetry per Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Mostly shoaib. Neil Patel (digital marketer) is a very suspicious accept (see history at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Neil Patel (digital marketer)). Reviews should be examined for corruption. MER-C 08:49, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

This is a link to their reviews. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 09:14, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I believe most of their reviews are not linked to UPE activity, and mass unreviewing wouldn't make sense, but it's worth a look. MarioGom (talk) 13:27, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Oh my - first article on the list MPGuy provided above is Meera Krishna – I added it to the queue to get the curation tool which shows that it was previously deleted but I can't find that discussion. Scrolling the UTP of the article creator Anianju indicates some issues but it appears Tamingimpala tagged it properly as a reviewer. I dunno - we're not staffed well enough to go back through a sock's prior reviews, and still be expected to carry the burden of finding sources for unsourced articles, and checking cited sources to make sure they actually support the material. That should all be done at AfC which is also understaffed. We need to know how these non-notable, poorly sourced or unsourced articles are getting into mainspace and plug that hole before the ship sinks, or there's a mutiny. Atsme 💬 📧 14:52, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

The prior deletion was a 2014 CSD MB 15:00, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Finally. PRAXIDICAE🌈 15:03, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, it's part of the system that unsuitable articles get into mainspace and then weeded out by NPP, so it's no mystery how they got into mainspace. The problem is that NPP job has gotten too difficult, painful and time consuming. On the face of it the big problem is the lobsided math dictated by wp:before. (30 NPP's are supposed to be doing the source searching instead of the zillion article creators). I think more recently compounded by the large influx of articles where the potential sources are not in English where the search gets 10 times more time intensive/consuming. But if you set aside the possibility of changing wp:before, we can easily do a big part of the fix by saying that the NPP routine is that articles which don't satisfy an SNG and don't have GNG-establishing sourcing in them will be moved to draft space so that sourcing to satisfy can be added if it exists. North8000 (talk) 16:20, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Messaging the creator

See Messaging the creator. Whether optional or not, does anyone know why the message feature has been removed entirely? Have I missed something? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:26, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm seeing it in the curation tool when in "add tags" mode –

• Add a message for the creator: (optional)
• Write a helpful note for (creator). It will be posted on their talk page.
• Mark this page as reviewed.

Atsme 💬 📧 14:56, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Proposal

I won't repeat the background and rationale and instead just make the following propsal:

At New Page Patrol, for topics which do not satisify a Subject-Specific Notability Guidline, we consider adding sources to satisify the sourcing General Notability Guidline to be a main part of starting a new article. A common NPP practice for those articles is to move them to draft areas so that sources to satisify GNG may be added if they exist

I'd like to let this sit for a day to elicit/make any tweaks and then gauge support / opposition here. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:35, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

What happens when the editor decides to ignore the draft and recreate a new version in mainspace which is allowed under current draftify policy? — rsjaffe 🗣️ 16:43, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

PS. I strongly support your proposal. Just think we need an add on to it to deal with refusal of draftification. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 16:45, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

I second rsjaffe's comments. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

This is the policy that concerns me: WP:DRAFTOBJECT. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 19:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

+1 to rsjaffe. I believe this policy is well-intended, though I feel it gives too much leeway to those who object without a rationale and/or (signs of) active improvement. WP:DRAFTOBJECT in its current form appears to supersede WP:CIR. ComplexRational (talk) 20:40, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Exactly - our work is toothless so why even bother? Something needs to change because without NPP, what happens? Who or what prevents the garbage from becoming part of WP? Atsme 💬 📧 20:48, 20 June 2022 (UTC)