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Removing right of a indefinitely blocked user

Can the reviewer flag from indefinitely blocked user A Great Catholic Person ? — fr + 07:32, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 07:37, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)(I was too slow) @FR30799386:That user only has WP:Pending changes reviewer rights ('reviewer'), not WP:New page reviewer rights ('patroller'). There's no point for a permablocked user to have pending changes reviewer though, so the next admin who sees this should feel free to remove that user right. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 07:41, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

NPR and COI

I was directed to here from a post on my talk regarding COI and NPR issues. If someone has feedback to give on the intersection of the two or any questions about my particular use in reviewing and patrolling, please provide it. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:00, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

@Justin: Per the NPR rules: 5: "The editor must review pages solely on a volunteer basis.". Now, I checked the review logs of all the pages listed where you have done paid editing, and you haven't done any reviews on any of those articles (or any of the other articles that you have listed a conflict of interest on), so there is no violation of that rule. However, there is a general consensus that NPR rights holders should not also be paid editors. See: Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/Reviewers/Archive_16#Should_paid_editors_be_allowed_the_reviewer_right_at_all? for a previous discussion on the topic. Given that you haven't been an active reviewer since last year anyway, it would probably be most convenient if you just requested removal of the user right. If you want to become an active reviewer, there may need to be further discussion about the cross section of paid editing and the NPR user right. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 21:26, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
@Insertcleverphrasehere: Thanks. If anything, I would do it the other way around: paid editing was a one-off several years ago and then one-off very recently. Once the deletion discussion on the former article is over with, I'd like to just go back to not dealing with it entirely, honestly. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:35, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
@Justin:If you don't intend to edit for pay in the future, you could also make a note of that on your user page and go that way I suppose. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 21:41, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
Koavf I am categorically opposed to allowing paid editors to patrol new pages. I simply cannot trust your judgment. How, for example, could I ever believe that your support for keeping the article at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jesse Waugh (2nd nomination) was based in policy and not motivated by obligations to your client? You ought to have known that that AfD was being undermined by sock- and meatpuppets and yet you did -nothing- to remedy the situation and fairly assess the article on its merits because you were a compromised editor. You have wilfully ignored what I consider the fundamental principles of ethical reviewing (integrity, honesty, fairness), in what amounts to dereliction of duty as a reviewer. And that was in March this year, not several years ago (I'm assuming that by one-off very recently you mean Bob's Watches). Unless you completely denounce any and all paid editing, not just your own but ALL paid editing, I see no way forward for you at NPP. Vexations (talk) 23:20, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
@Justin: As I said previously, There is a consensus that paid editing and NPR are incompatible. I see that you added this to your user page, which is a good start, but that you have chosen the wording "generally" is a very significant issue. I see that your user page still indicates "I do not advertise my services editing Wikipedia but I am willing to accept payment for editing in the future if other clients are willing to abide by the terms of service of the site.". I don't think that this is going to fly amongst the NPP community (see Vexation's comment above, who is not the only one with this opinion). I generally am in agreement that there needs to be either a strong statement of no future paid editing, period, or else dropping the NPR userright (probably preferred at this point). Note that this isn't necessarily an assumption that you will act improperly, but that the community has generally decided on a hard line in the sand with regards to paid editing and NPR. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 00:24, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
@Vexations: Because I had no obligations to that person and he was not a client. No one paid me for that. Please get your facts straight before you make accusations. I have clearly stated on my user page and the relevant talk pages which ones were for pay and Jesse Waugh was not. 00:47, 30 August 2018 (UTC)―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯
Koavf I stand corrected. I misread your page as saying that you been approached off-wiki to work on Jesse Waugh and accepted payment. You indeed did say "not all had money or any kind of remuneration offered". I misunderstood which ones you did edit for pay. I'm still not entirely clear; is it only Bob's Watches and On Becoming Baby Wise? I accept responsibility for the error, and have struck the segment of my comment that is based on my erroneous reading of your statement. My view of paid editing as categorically incompatible with NPP remains unchanged. --Vexations (talk) 01:15, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
@Insertcleverphrasehere: I'm willing to give it up for now if that's what others feel and finish up the round of edits I'm doing before applying again. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:47, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
@Koavf: Vex's statement might have been unfair and unfounded but it's exactly that sort of suspicion why I think, and so do others, that holding the NPP permission is incompatible with having done paid editing. There are so many other ways to contribute to the encyclopedia, including doing new page patrol and just tagging, improving, or nominating for deletion with marking it as reviewed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:18, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
@Vexations: Correct. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:43, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
I believe that paid editing and any kind of reviewing such as NPR or AFC or edit requests is absolutely incompatible. I actually believe that paid editing and volonteer editing are incompatible. Either you are here to make money or here to build an encyclopedia. I think that once an experienced volonteer editor has gone over the wall and offered their services for money they should restrict their activities to just that. I don't believe that having alternative accounts for paid and volonteer editing is the way forward either because there will always be the suspicion that one is used for overt editing and the other for black hat editing. Dom from Paris (talk) 07:12, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

What do you make of this

A new editor creates an account in February of 2016, but makes no edits except to their user page where they add two rarely used userboxes. They create an article for an internet entrepreneur in March.[1] In November they create an article for a real estate company,[2] which gets deleted in an AfD. [3], and is recreated in December 2016, by a single purpose account.[4] They do nothing for a while, then come back this August to create Drumeo in a single edit.[5] What do we think, is this someone with an unusual ability to learn wiki syntax quickly and a genuine interest in internet entrepreneurs and real estate, or a single undisclosed paid editor or a sleeper account from a sockfarm? If so, which one? --Vexations (talk) 01:42, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

@Vexations: Nice catch! I've tagged the articles for possible undisclosed paid editing. Bennv3771 (talk) 02:55, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

asking for admin help

I've been messing around in WP:QUARRY a bit to see if I could find unreviewed articles that have been touched by so many different editors that they should have been reviewed by now. The NPP Browser [6] lets you do that to some extent by sorting by Revs. Anyway, I wrote a little query with my very limited SQL skills (I'm too embarrassed to post it here, but do feel free to ask how I did it) and found over 500 articles in the queue with edits by admins (and 970 entries by people with the new page reviewer right BTW). I was thinking that we could perhaps contact these admins on their talk pages and remind them that they can mark pages as patrolled, and that would really help bring down the backlog. After all, they're fixing the page already, so it wouldn't take much to patrol it. I don't want to pester people though, Do we have of folks who have been invited we don't keep asking them the same thing? --Vexations (talk) 16:34, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

No. There are many reasons why an Admin or NPreviewer will edit an unreviewed page and decides not review it. You're having mistaken assumption that whoever have page reviewing right must review any unreviewed page that they happen to come across. And to particularly spam over 1000 talkpages on somerthing that people already know is not a good idea, in my view. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:06, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
I was actually thinking about contacting these admins in person, one by one, as a follow-up to a review I would have done myself. I just didn't want to bother people who already declined to patrol articles. That's why I asked if there was a list. Anyway, I'll let it go. --Vexations (talk) 19:37, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

30th August Backlog Update

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. (Purge)
NPP backlog, number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Orange represents older than 30 days.

The backlog has continued to raise over the last month, and is currently at 3154 articles (over double what it was a month ago). This is cause for concern, and if nothing changes, will continue to raise.

The back of the backlog has continued to fall behind, to the point that it now stretches back over a month. Our goal should be to review everything before it reaches the one month mark, so these articles should be reviewed as soon as possible.

The good news is that we are relying less on one individual, and that the workload has been spread out a bit more amongst more reviewers, the bad news is that we are slowly falling behind by about 50 articles per day.

I'm not really sure what is driving the recent spike in unreviewed articles, but it seems to be generally lower reviewing activity in the last couple months. It might not be time to panic yet, but the current situation is starting to resemble the slow spike that led to the massive backlog early last year. I'll be posting some adverts around various pages to try to drum up a bit of activity, which might help, but anyone with ideas as to how to arrest the current trend, please post your suggestions here. Cheers, — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 23:10, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Great post at WP:AN Insertcleverphrasehere. It really feels like the case that if we can get some number of admin to spend 5 minutes a week we could get to at least status quo, if not start dropping the overall backlog. On that note would people see any value in a bot delivering a random page (most likely from the middle of the queue) to interested reviewers/admin X times a week as a way to remind people and make it easy for them to participate? I have someone in mind who might be able to help on the bot side if people think this a good idea. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:33, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
​Well, I don't want to bug people too much, and the situation isn't that dire. It is currently a worrying trend, that's all. If we can get on top of it, stop it growing, and keep it under a month, I'll be quite satisfied. It doesn't really matter if there are a couple thousand articles that are unreviewed as long as it isn't growing, and as long as we are reviewing them in a reasonably timely manner (longer than a month is too long IMO). — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 23:44, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
One thing I would like to point out, is there's actually more to review than just what the graph shows: all redirects will need to be reviewed. If you add redirects to the filtered states in Special:NewPagesFeed, you'll notice that the number of unreviewed pages increases to over 11,000. Fortunately, redirects are usually quick and rarely controversial to review, but we still need people to review them. Just something to keep in mind.--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 14:34, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
In theory reviewing redirects would be great. I did some of that a couple months back and in the time I was able to review 5 normal articles I could review 20 - 30 redirects (or maybe more). But if a bad redirect goes unreviewed we're not letting bad information hit Google and we're at risk of having Wikipedia be used for promotional crud and we don't have BLP problems. From my POV if we never review redirects that's OK - the article content is really what needs our attention. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:49, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
That is true. Articles could easily have a number of serious problems with them that need to be addressed before they hit Google, such as major BLP violations or copyright vios. However, there really isn't that much harm a single redirect can do. The worst I could think of would be something like redirecting "X sucks" to "X" but I don't think I've ever come across anything like that, particularly after ACPERM.--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 14:59, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
Remember that if a redirect gets reviewed and later on gets replaced by an article, this article is already reviewed and does not show up in the queue. In most cases (such as spelling changes etc) it is not plausible that someone starts a new article, but if a non-notable subject is redirected to a notable subject (for example a group member to an article about a musical group) I am not sure whether there is any benefit from reviewing these redirects.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:06, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: That's not correct. I do review the redirects I "create" by doing rollbacks of attempts to start articles over them. If someone attempts to then revert me the articles do again appear in the queue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:15, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
It appears that if an editor who would need to have an article reviewed either creates an article out of an existing redirect, or reverts a redirect which was created to replace a non-notable subject (for example), than it returns to the needs to be reviewed queue. Only if the revert or creation is done by an editor with autopatrolled rights does it turn up as reviewed. Onel5969 TT me 21:01, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
Converting an article to redirect or converting back, or blanking an article will all trigger the article going back into the new page feed. Redirects need to be checked, especially the history page (to make sure that someone didn't improperly convert an article to redirect) and the target needs to be checked to make sure it is appropriate. The reason I don't bring up redirects in these backlog updates very often is that there are quite a few editors who work quietly in the background on these. I do send out appreciation to those editors though, as they are often some of those that are frequently at the top of the list of most active reviewers, and their efforts are much appreciated. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 22:15, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Expertise in Nigerian sources?

I tried to help out with this ANI thread requesting some eyes on these article contributions, mostly BLPs, but I'm quite out of my depth with the sources, unfortunately. (Some of the entries are still in the New Pages queue but I'm afraid even some of the already-reviewed may need a second look--as I began going through them, I found two BLPs that were checked off as "patrolled" with one or no sources--not sure if that was on purpose or accidentally autopatrolled.) By chance does anyone who might see this have more relevant regional knowledge than I do? Thanks much. Innisfree987 (talk) 22:26, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Note for anyone who gets into it--I've started finding some WP:CLOP/copyvio issues, unfortunately. DeltaQuad who raised the original question is offering to work with the editor directly, we'll see if that goes anywhere. Innisfree987 (talk) 23:32, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
The sources that this editor has been using are (listed by frequency):
Some of those are OK, but bellanaija is terrible IMO. Vexations (talk) 02:52, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
  • These sources are outright not reliable':
  1. http://loudestgist.com -gossip, nonsense compilation blog (read their name again)
  2. http://buzznigeria.com -gossip
  3. http://onobello.com -one man blog
  4. http://www.gmusicplus.com -unreliable blog
  5. http://www.chiomajesus.org -one man blog
  6. http://gospelmusicnaija.com -fans blog
  7. http://youthvillageng.com, unreliable blog
  8. http://www.bellanaija.com -gossip blog
  9. http://stargist.com -celeb gossip blog
  10. http://www.informationng.com -gossip bog
  11. http://austinemedia.com -gossip blog
  12. http://www.africanprintinfashion.com
  13. http://www.instagram.com -social media handle, very unreliable
  14. http://www.stars.ng -unreliable blog
All these sources (apart from Instagram) exist only as website to generate money through AdSense, some of them from WordPrees or Blogger free template and subdomains before they migrated to show semblance of reliability.
  • These are reliable:
  1. http://www.premiumtimesng.com -one of the most reliable sources from Nigeria.
  2. http://www.thenationonlineng.net -national paper
  3. http://silverbirdtv.com -national TV
  4. http://punchng.com -national paper
  5. http://sunnewsonline.com -national paper
  6. http://guardian.ng -national paper
  7. http://www.vanguardngr.com -national paper
  8. http://allure.vanguardngr.com -this is pull out fashion magazine inside Sunday Vanguard (from http://www.vanguardngr.com)
  9. http://www.voice-online.co.uk -seems to be British magazine
All these (apart from the last which is not from Nigeria) are widely-known national media outlets
  • These are in between or I am not sure
  1. http://www.pulse.ng -most a times gossip, sometime serious reporting. Have known corporate headquarters and other publications/broadcast
  2. http://www.naija.ng -ditto
  3. http://encomium.ng -largely not sure
  4. http://theeagleonline.com.ng ditto
  5. http://www.mtvshuga.com -not sure what these guys are up to
  6. http://theglowup.theroot.com -ditto –Ammarpad (talk) 04:34, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
Oh terrific, thank you Vexations and Ammarpad so much. Will be an enormous help sorting this out. Thank you! Innisfree987 (talk) 04:41, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Changes to New Pages Feed ready for testing

Hi all -- I'm Marshall Miller; I'm a product manager with the Growth team at WMF. I posted here in May to talk about a project that the team is working on to help reviewers get through backlogs faster by adding data to the New Pages Feed. While the work was originally planned for the Articles for Creation process, many NPP reviewers weighed in, and so there are also going to be benefits for the NPP process.

We have deployed the first couple parts of the project in Test Wiki so that reviewers can try them out before they have any impact on the actual work of reviewing. We want to find out as soon as possible if we're on the right or wrong track. Here is what's different:

  • The New Pages Feed now contains a toggle for "Articles for Creation", which is where all draft pages are listed. This gives AfC reviewers access to the feed so they can use it to prioritize their work.
  • The feed now displays "Predicted class" (Stub, Start, C-class, B-class, Good, Featured) and "Predicted issues" (spam, vandalism, attack, no issues) with every article, regardless of namespace. These are predictions generated by ORES, which is the same system that adds models to the Recent Changes feed.
  • The feed is also filterable by those criteria. This way, reviewers could focus their time on just those articles predicted to be spam, or just those articles predicted to be of high quality.

The idea is that this additional information will help NPP reviewers prioritize their work to focus on those pages which need attention most. Please post any thoughts or reactions on the project's talk page, or let me know if you have difficulty accessing Test Wiki.

Thank you. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): I am having some problems with the feed today. I haven't been on there for a few days and when I try and sort the list By Oldest and with the filters State=Unreviewed and That=Show all I get only 2 pages that show up even if I click on refresh but when I change to sort by Newest all the unreviewed pages show up. I usually review from the back of the line and I can't do that now. Is this a bug? Dom from Paris (talk) 12:36, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
Just to be clear I am talking about the normal feed and not the test. Dom from Paris (talk) 12:38, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes. T202815 --Vexations (talk) 12:41, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
Ditto. Someone flipped a bad bit somewhere, methinks. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:12, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
Domdeparis and Elmidae -- thanks for reporting this. A few reviewers also noticed it over the weekend, and so we were able to push out a fix today (see additional discussion here and on the Phabricator task that Vexations linked). Please let us know if things are still not behaving correctly (and also please try out the New Pages Feed in Test Wiki and let us know what you think of the coming features!) -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
@MMiller (WMF): thanks, that seems to have cleared it up. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 06:48, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
@MMiller (WMF): I tried out the test page but as I don't seem to have any rights there I can't use the curation bar or the review tools. All I can say is that I don't see how the predicted issues works because this page is predicted as spam [8] and this one as vandalism [9]. Dom from Paris (talk) 12:26, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
@Domdeparis: I'm sorry for the late reply. It sounds like you're asking what the difference is between a page that gets predicted as "spam" and a page that gets predicted as "vandalism". In my experience with these models so far, I think it's best to consider any of the three predicted issues from ORES (spam, vandalism, attack) as an indicator that the page needs to be looked at closely. In Test Wiki, we make many pages with tiny amounts of content (like the examples you linked), and the machine learning model does not have a lot of data to work with in those cases. Basically, the model is saying "something is wrong with this page, but I'm not sure exactly what". Does that help answer your question? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Reviewing controversial articles

Islamophobia_and_Israel

Please tell me if my handling of the above article was acceptable: the above article deals with a highly sensitive subject but it is one I don’t have much of a say in or have strong opinions about. It’s sourced, and might with cleanup merit existing in some form; however it’s currently full of POV statements and possibly synth. Rather than tag bomb it and move it to draft though, I recommended that it be moved to draft via an RfC, as it doesn’t seem to meet the top few source criteria for non-BLPs with too few sources. If a BOLDer new page reviewer wants to move it to draft I wouldn’t mind. Edaham (talk) 03:02, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

With English that poor I’d support moving to draft Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 03:37, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Given that this is a highly controversial topic and makes strong claims that are difficult to impossible to follow because of the English employed I would agree with Draftify. It also seems to make broad generalizations based on a single source which I would either feel the need to clean-up if I were to mark it patrolled. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:47, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
thanks, if I move it to draft now, will the RfC I started remain in effect? Edaham (talk) 04:04, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review?

Are there two or three editors who would like to join me in doing a NPP peer review? My thinking is that we all agree to look at some number of one other's reviews and offer thoughts about things they noticed (mostly good no doubt but also questions that arise). Mechanics yet to be worked out (the two things that spring to mind for me are the number of reviews to be looked at, how do we decide which reviews to examine) but I thought I'd see if there's any interest from fellow editors for this as a concept. I was thinking 3 or 4 so you wouldn't be looking at the person doing yours but not so many that it's difficult to coordinate this pilot. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:51, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Good idea, but I feel I'm not on it reliably enough these days to commit to a productive cooperation of this type :/ --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 06:17, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Barkeep49 I like this idea. I'm quite new to NPP and would find a peer review of my work useful. When I'm unsure I add templates/categories/wikiprojects etc as I identify them but don't mark the page reviewed, so it would be helpful for that to be incorporated, i.e. I'd list some pages I've gone over but not 'ticked', for the peer review group to discuss. › Mortee talk 22:00, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me, so I would support it. I do think it would be beneficial as a whole, reviewing and providing feedback on how others review articles. I don't think I'd be a good candidate to review reviews myself, though, as I don't have much experience with new page reviewing in the sense of actually marking pages as reviewed (considering I got the right just a few days ago).--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 00:12, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

October 2018 at Women in Red

Please join us... We have four new topics for Women in Red's worldwide online editathons in October!



New: Clubs Science fiction + fantasy STEM The Mediterranean

Continuing: #1day1woman Global Initiative

(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Rosiestep (talk) 14:46, 28 September 2018 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Mobile App for NPP

I was travelling recently and found that one thing I was able to do on the move (and a large data supply) was NPP. Of all the Wiki activities I do, it seems to be fairly easy to do on the move, as it is mostly reading articles and reading refs and google searches. In the web browser on mobile, even in landscape mode, the curation toolbar is quite tiny for my fat fingers, about an inch high, and I frequently hit the deletion button instead of advancing the queue. If anyone wants to make a mobile app for NPP, with a larger curation bar (maybe on the left side too, covering the useless wiki sidebar, and esp. for iOs, I would love to use it. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 23:48, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

@L3X1: Just out of curiosity, are you using mobile view, or the desktop view but just on a mobile device? Both would be quite different in this circumstance, I think.--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 23:53, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
SkyGazer 512 I am using desktop view on a mobile device, I found the mobile version hard to use, limited functions for histories, talkpages, and other critical editing links. It why I also hate the official wikipedia app, as far as I can tell, it is more for browsing than editing. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 00:38, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I always use desktop view regardless of which device I'm on - I personally hate mobile view. Also, fyi L3X1, if you mess up a ping, you can't correct it and have it work properly without a new sig. A trick is to correct the ping AND mention the user separately in the edit summary. Cheers, --SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 00:53, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
SkyGazer 512 :( I had thought I timed my new sig for the new minute, but apparently there was lag. I might like to try mobile view on something bigger, one of the tablets perhaps, but I am sure I will end up just using desktop. How Cullen edits so much on mobile is beyond me. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 00:57, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
@L3X1: What happens if you zoom in on the screen? When I do so on my iPhone, the toolbar becomes much larger, so I can curate articles pretty easily when I don't have access to my computer. Or are you saying you would like the toolbar to be larger without having to zoom in?--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 02:30, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
SkyGazer 512, Yes, I found it a little bit of a hassle to zoom in on the toolbar each and every time I wanted to use something on it. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 15:19, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Draftification

Faced with a new article that is grossly promotional, a reviewer can propose it for G11 speedy deletion. I am cautious about doing this however if the individual or organisation might be notable and if a few sentences of non-promotional text might be salvaged. Some admins will delete such articles but others will not. As an alternative to nomination for speedy deletion, a couple of days ago I returned this page to draft with the comment "Grossly promotional copyright violation and not clearly sourced, incubate in draftspace", and I wondered whether that was misuse of the Draftification tool? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:27, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Editors with a COI are required to work through Articles for Creation (per WP:COIEDIT). Promotional articles are nearly always written by editors with a COI, so I think it is totally fine personally (though you should inform the editor that they are required to edit through AfC because of thier conflict of interest). Others might think that G11 is better, but it depends how bad it is. But I've had G11s declined where it was literally an advert for an App (price on the app store included!), so go figure. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 10:13, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
I've had that problem too. Just to add a bit of controversy - would it be a misuse of move to draft if I took an article to AfD, then after not having been deleted, or having passed G11, I then moved it to draft to go through AfC? On a side note, the username "Ordimediaplus", the creator of the spam article you draftified, fails WP:ORGNAME Edaham (talk) 11:03, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
'Keep' at AfD is a de facto endorsement that the article is appropriate for mainspace (so no in this case). 'No consensus' would be more of a grey area where you might get away with doing that, depending on the circumstances, but generally probably not in this case either. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 11:28, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
If something is notable I will draftify it if there's promotional/COI concerns without a second thought. In fact in general if an article doesn't appear ready for mainspace but is a notable topic I think draftification is appropriate. Only in special circumstances (mainly around BLP issues) would I even consider AfD if the topic is notable. Nearly by definition AfD is about judging notability. Everything else terrible about an article is irrelevant except whether sources exist (even if they're not present) to judge an topic notable - if the answer is yes than AfD is not the right route to improving the encyclopedia. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:27, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
We need to get away from the idea that moving-to-draft is a decision reserved for individual reviewers or that it comes with a set of prescribed rules. It's governed by the same principle as all Wikipedia editing. If you think moving an article to draft improves the encyclopaedia and are reasonably that sure nobody will object, then go ahead and do it. If you're not sure, or if somebody does object, then discuss and gain a consensus first. That's all there is to it.
By the way, it's not true that AfD is only for notability concerns. Nominations on other grounds are somewhat less likely to succeed, but they're still valid and do work sometimes. In particular, if something is highly promotional but gets knocked back as a G11 (that criterion being quite subjective), I'd suggest taking it to AfD or PROD rather than draftifying it. Notable or not, we don't need spam hanging around in draftspace. AfD is also a good venue for discussing contested moves-to-draft. – Joe (talk) 13:38, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
From what I have seen I think you're highly likely in many areas to have a frustrating experience where a heavily promotional article ends up as keep because the topic is notable. Making a WP:TNT argument successfully is difficult and you're better off just trying to do the fundamental rewrite yourself, in a BRD fashion, than going AfD. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:48, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
TNT alone tends to be a weak argument at AfD because somebody can just rewrite or stubify the article to address the problem. But when you have an article that's highly promotional, especially if it's been edited solely by a COI editor, my experience is that the community tends to agree that it is better to delete it than rewrite it, per WP:BOGOF. – Joe (talk) 14:19, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
But there are rules for it, and people do complain about it or say that it's akin to deletion (because you're removing it from mainspace). The rules per WP:DRAFTIFY are:

Has some merit

1a. for example, the topic is plausibly notable (if not, it should be speedy-deleted under A7 or nominated at AfD; do not draftify junk).

Does not meet the required standard

2a. The page is obviously unready for mainspace. It does not meet WP:STUB; or it would have very little chance of survival at AfD; or it meets any speedy deletion criterion.
2b. The topic appears unimportant, is possibly not worth the effort of fixing, and no great loss if deleted due to expiring in draftspace.
2c. The topic is not a new topic likely to be of interest to multiple people (such as current affairs topics).
2d. The page is a recent creation by an inexperienced editor. (Old pages, and pages by experienced editors, deserve an AfD discussion).

No evidence of active improvement

3a. There is no evidence of a user actively working on it.
3b. There is no assertion that the page belongs in mainspace, such as a clear statement to that effect in the edit history, or on the talk page, or a revert of a previous draftification.
2d and 3b seem to be ignored, as I've seen people draftify articles regardless of the creator (which makes sense to me) and redraftify things that were moved from draft to mainspace already. If we don't really go by these rules, we should probably change them, rather than hoping that whichever of the 1200 admins comes across what you've draftified isn't a stickler for rules. Natureium (talk) 14:40, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
But per WP:COIEDIT, when the author clearly has a COI, 2d and 3b should be ignored, and the editor should be told that they are required to submit through AfC. This isn't represented over at WP:DRAFTIFY and should be added. I'm not a big fan of 're-draftifying', because it is akin to edit warring, and I'd rather just review it in another way instead. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 22:23, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
I totally agree with the sentiments but the trouble is that WP:COI says "you should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly" (my bolding) and not required and WP:DRAFTIFY says "Other editors (including the author of the page) have a right to object to moving the page, and to have the matter discussed at WP:AfD. If an editor raises an objection, move the page back to mainspace and list at AfD." An editor moving a page back to mainspace is tantamount to objecting so I can't see how, as things stand, we can re-draftify without falling foul of edit-warring accusations. --Dom from Paris (talk) 22:38, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

When the author clearly has a conflict of interest

4a. The article has some merit but is written with a promotional tone that makes it clear that the author has a conflict of interest with the topic (exclusively promotional articles should instead be tagged with G11).
4b. Whenever this is done the author should be informed that COI editors should submit new articles through Articles for Creation (fourth bullet point of WP:COIEDIT).

I have added the above 4th point to WP:DRAFTIFY. If they re-create, or move it back to main, then the same rationale of "an editor raises an objection" will apply, but most COI editors are probably not aware that they 'should' submit through AfC, nor that COI editing is discouraged. Many are fine with going through AfC once they know that that's what they are supposed to do. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 22:47, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Revision deletion

As I don't want to get myself blocked under the 3Rs rule, I wonder if someone else could request a revision deletion for the article Blood and High Heels. I removed a copyright violation from the article earlier today and asked for a rev del, but the request was reverted by the article creator. I replaced the template and asked the creator to leave it alone but they took no notice and removed it again. I have now explained the purpose of the template and issued them a further warning. Please could someone else make the rev del request. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:59, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

I've added it back for now. Hopefully they won't remove it again, now that you've explained the purpose of the template in detail and warned them to not remove it again.--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 19:05, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
TonyBallioni has now hidden the revision.--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 19:14, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Thank you both. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:05, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure these edits would fall under WP:3RRNO #5, since removing the revdel request will prevent the copyvios from being removed properly. Primefac (talk) 15:33, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Next time you come across an article...

...that is written in a language other than English, and you have to use Google translate to review it...think about this video, and things won't seem so bad. 😂 Atsme✍🏻📧 04:28, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Which reminds me of [10] —PaleoNeonate – 10:26, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
...or to the elderly regardless of language. 👵🏻 Heh??? Atsme✍🏻📧 16:13, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Temporarily stepping away from patrolling new pages

Hello everyone,

I have been patrolling new pages for I believe about three years now. I think my skills have significantly improved since I began, and am fairly happy with them now. However, there still seems to be the occasional article where I do not put the correct deletion tag or put one where others believe the article should remain in place. Although there is nothing forcing me to step away, I am doing so in good faith, as the articles that have been perceived to be mis-tagged by me from other users still trouble me and make me feel as though I need to take a break and make sure I am fully and unequivocally informed on all policies. It saddens me to due so, as I understand our backlog of new pages is remaining consistent now, but to ensure fairness to all page publishers, experienced or not, and to ensure as few mistakes on new page reviews as possible, I will take some time.

I plan to again read through the deletion criteria and look at confirmed examples to give me more context. Does anyone have any ideas of other places I can look. I must be 100% confident in my abilities before I return to this process. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you all so much in advance. BRES2773 (talk) 18:12, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi BRES2773. I'm sure Articles for Creation could use your help. There's a backlog of over 8 weeks, consisting of nearly 4000 articles. There are lots of spam and articles on non-notable subjects, but there are some good articles in there that can be promoted to mainspace and cleaned up. It's also a great place to refine your skills in analyzing notability, copyright violations, and undisclosed paid editing. You can request permission to join at WP:AFCP if you're interested. Bradv 20:53, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
@BRES2773: Thanks for this message. While we strive for perfection, it is unfortunately always a little out of reach, don't agonise too much about it. I'd suggest running through the detailed flowchart when you aren't 100% sure about how to review an article, or just practicing with it a bit to see if it gives you the same results as your personal method. It is a little more time consuming, but can give you a degree of confidence about your decisions, so might be perfect for you. Please give us feedback about how you find using it. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 22:01, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
I actually have found the flowchart to not always be very helpful, as I feel that it pushes for deletion, and particularly PROD or even speedy deletion far more often than seems appropriate. Even if in many of these situations the flowchart is "right" and the article does merit deletion, panicked responses from the creator or other involved editors often make this a more drawn out and emotionally taxing process than notifying editors and then proceeding to propose delete after a discussion, or sending it straight to AfD. signed, Rosguill talk 23:04, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
@Rosguill: I'm curious as to what you mean by this. In what kinds of situations does the flowchart push for CSD inappropriately? There is no reason why messaging the author or discussion cannot be used during the review, in between any of the steps, but reviewing the article will need to be completed at some point. Sending it straight to AfD is of course up to discretion of the reviewer, but PROD is preferred first unless you think it very likely to be contested (and it is important to put a good rationale in the prod template). AfD isn't a free process, it takes up a ton of experienced editors' time, and should be avoided wherever possible to avoid this loss of time. This is why the CSD criteria exist, and why the flowchart recommends PRODing first. Though a discussion with the author may be a good idea, authors will often not respond to messages, which can leave you hanging for an indeterminate amount of time. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 23:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
@Insertcleverphrasehere: Two separate points so I'll address them separately:
  • The flowchart makes it way too easy to get to CSD G11 for being exclusively promotional. Part of this is because the flowchart doesn't make it clear that you should be checking for notability of the subject independent of the content currently in the article; I've run into plenty of articles for borderline notable subjects that nevertheless have pages that could be described as being exclusively promotional–some of these have been deleted through PROD or AfD, but others have survived AfD despite their terrible, promotional first drafts. As far as AfD vs PROD goes, I think part of the issue is that there are many articles that are WP:SNOWBALL territory (particularly, but not always, self-promotional articles) that will nevertheless not be deleted through PROD because the primary editor will contest it, in total defiance of Wikipedia guidelines and policies. If it's going to end up being taken to AfD anyway, sending it straight there avoids the hassle of tracking down articles I've nominated for PROD only to have the tag removed half a week later. signed, Rosguill talk 23:48, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
  • regarding discussion, I agree that it has a place in the review process, but IIRC it's not part of the flowchart. It's also sometimes a little hard to coordinate, as discussion may occur at either the Talk page, the user's page, or the reviewer's page, and a few times I've started a discussion regarding some aspect of an article I've been reviewing only to have another reviewer come through and either greenlight or mark-for-deletion. This could potentially be addressed through some sort of tagging system. On a related note, we should consider editing the flowchart to include a step for checking who created the article and who has made significant contributions toward it: I got several angry messages the first few days I was on patrol for diligently following the flowchart and taking drastic action against articles that had been created by relatively senior editors. signed, Rosguill talk 23:48, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
One of the flaws of the curation tool is that is sends the notes from the reviewer to the creator of the article. It should go to the talk page of the article instead. I've gotten my share of "what were you thinking?" responses from experienced editors who created a redirect that was overwitten by a new editor. I learned to always check the history of a page I'm reviewing. Vexations (talk) 01:47, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@Rosguill: G11 is difficult, no matter how you judge it. AfD often does not delete articles that would be G11ed if CSD tagged. This is because AfD !voters are often more concerned with judging notability than by judging WP:NOT. For this reason it is generally better to CSD promo articles than to AfD them. Notable topics that are exclusively promotional CAN be tagged with G11; While the G11 criteria does say that it is preferable to replace with NPOV material, this is not our job at NPP. The only other option is to stubify the topic or remove the promotional material/language and rewrite the article, but I'm not in the business of repairing a COI/PAID editors works so that they can have their entry in the encyclopedia, and nor should anyone else be obligated to (see WP:B1G1F). The main issue is with the word "exclusively". It is subjective and what is exclusive to one may not be to another. To be safe, mildly promotional articles should never be G11ed, they must consist entirely of overly promotional material, this is why the word "exclusively" is emphasised in the flowchart. Mild promos or non exclusively promotional articles should be stubified, or tagged with WP:NPOV, or draftified if it is obvious that the author has a COI.
Per your side note, if you are 'taking drastic action' against an article by a senior editor and they are getting mad at you, either you missed something, or they need to write better articles and shouldn't be sending you angry messages. I'll agree that checking who the author can be pragmatic, as it helps highlight when we might have made an error reviewing (e.g. an experienced editor is unlikely to make a copyvio, so a double check is likely to reveal a mirror or public domain content or something like that). But we shouldn't treat new editors and experienced editors differently just because experienced editors complain more loudly; we should be reviewing thoroughly enough that it shouldn't matter. If the editor being experienced makes you pause before tagging something for CSD, it might be a sign that you are too liberal with CSD, or that you need to do more due diligence for all your CSDs so that you are always confident (why should the experienced editor get the benefit of the doubt when the newbie doesn't?). — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 02:07, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Vexations, I totally agree about the notifications to the article creator when it should go to the article TP. It even notifies banned/blocked users. I'm pinging MMiller (WMF) hoping maybe he can either fix it or make a suggestion so we can. Atsme✍🏻📧 02:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

This was brought up over a year ago on the suggestions page. See: Wikipedia:Page_Curation/Suggested_improvements#54._Send_feedback_to_talk_page. This, along with all other suggestions, have been resolutely ignored to the extent that nobody bothers to comment on items on that page any more. I've copied both of your comments to the relevant section. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 02:27, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
If there's consensus for a suggestion, you should open a phabricator task for it. Otherwise, nobody is likely to act on it. WP:PCSI is more like an "idea incubator" than a to do list. – Joe (talk) 05:35, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
That's good advice, though I was generally referring to the failure of pretty much all of the phabricator tasks to actually get resolved; which has diven activity on the page to a near standstill. You are correct that Phab tasks need to be opened for a few of the tasks that have gained consensus despite the lack of participation on the page, I'll put it on my list. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 06:54, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
I go through and transfer some to phabricator occasionally (and have just done so). WMF devs have done some of them up, though it seems a bit random. The thing is, it's not their job to do everything we ask for. In theory, Mediawiki is open source software and anybody can pick up a phab task. But in practice, it's a nightmare to contribute even small changes to core code like Page Curation (I've tried). At this point we should probably give up on nonessential feature requests and "quality of life" suggestions being implemented any time soon. We can try to do as much as we can with user scripts etc., but unfortunately some thing are stuck in the Page Curation bottleneck. – Joe (talk) 07:15, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
​Yeah. Its a tough situation. There are few things on that suggestions page that should have been fixed a long time ago (the CSD and AfD issues especially have led to me personally just using twinkle for all deletion tagging). But you are correct in saying that some of the things on there are "would be nice to have" features. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 09:05, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for tagging me and pointing this out, Atsme and Insertcleverphrasehere. I understand the issue -- that sometimes the communication from an NPP reviewer gets sent to someone for whom it is irrelevant (and does not get sent to the relevant person). Unfortunately, our team won't be able to work on that because we're needing to move on to our projects for editor retention in mid-size wikis. My best advice is to submit a proposal for the Community Wishlist survey that include this issue as part of an omnibus group of NPP and Page Curation issues. I'm sure if many reviewers (both NPP and AfC) vote for the proposal, it could make a good showing in the survey. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Given this does trying to organize make any sense? Does trying to figure out a few top priorities ahead of time make sense or does it make more sense to try and stick every reasonable idea on the wishlist and see what gets traction? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:30, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

hmmm

Discussion moved to Talk:Valentino Ready-to-Wear runway collections. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 00:35, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Wishlist

Responding to the discussion above that went from stepping away from patrolling new pages to discussing the wishlist. I believe this is really important. We need to figure out how to deal with software development. It deserves its own heading. I've pointed out that the wishlist survey is coming a while ago and that if we want to submit something (and that appears to be a big IF) we should start thinking about it earlier rather than later. I am firmly opposed to throwing things at the wall and see what sticks. I would like to see to sensible proposals for meaningful improvements that help us to do higher quality reviews of more articles in less time. I also want to discuss our relation with the WMF with regards to bug fixing. A request to fix a bug does not belong on the wishlist, IMO. The wishlist, as I understand it is for feature requests. What constitutes a bug is subject to debate, of course. Sending notifcation to the talk page in stead of the creator for example: Is that a bug? Well, it depends on your point of view. The WMF might say that it's not a bug because the software does what it's designed to do (BTW User:MMiller (WMF), can I please see the design specs somewhere?). They could rightly argue that a bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. (That's our defintion of a Software bug). (Note that by that definition they should fix the duplicate AfD bug). On the other hand, I might argue that it's been designed wrong to begin with and the design adversely affects my and other's ability to use the software. It is not a new feature request, it is a usability issue with an existing feature. So before we even begin to look at using the wishlist, I'd like to get some clarification. We have reported different kinds of issues that don't all seem to fit the wishlist. Some are clearly bugs by any definition, some are usability issues, some are new features. What goes where and how do we say for example: "Hey WMF, we'd rather you fix a few bugs than work on new features". Can we get time allocated to bug fixing through the wishlist? --Vexations (talk) 03:17, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay so, cards on the table, I think making Page Curation a core part of Mediawiki was a big mistake. It makes the WMF devs the bottleneck for maintenance and improvement. They have done a lot to help, but at the end of the day they have limited resources and we can't tell them how to allocate them. The community wishlist is a non-starter in my opinion. We have ~50 outstanding issues at WP:PCSI, are we supposed to put them all on the wishlist? We've tried before, and it didn't work. If we don't 'win' this time around, then that's more effort wasted and another year that things go unaddressed. Frankly, we shouldn't have to compete to get core functionality maintained.
We can't undo that mistake, but we can try to minimise it. We need to give up on the idea that Page Curation should support the entire NPP workflow. For example, people have complained for years that the deletion and tagging interface isn't up to scratch. But Twinkle already does deletion and tagging perfectly, and is actively maintained by community devs who are responsive to suggestions, so why not just use that? Similarly, at one point we asked for WikiProject tagging and draftifying to be added to Page Curation, but now we have user scripts from User:Evad37 that do them instead.
I'd suggest a good way forward then is to get as many items on our 'wishlist' as possible implemented as user scripts. Collecting these and existing scripts together into a single 'NPPHelper' tool would also help, and eventually that might be able to duplicate features of Page Curation. We then only have to rely on Page Curation for the very core functionality, e.g. generating the feed. – Joe (talk) 06:08, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
This is the way I was leaning as well. In the recent newsletter I made a stab at collecting together a list of useful scripts and gadgets, but it would be ideal to eventually have these collected as a single tool. The page curation tool is unfortunately a sad joke. One of the other major problems is that the Page curation tools don't come up for articles that aren't in the feed, so even if it worked perfectly, you still have to install Twinkle anyway to tag or delete older articles. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 06:17, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Personally I think the curation toolbar is a good tool but I agree with Joe's underlying point that we should make use of user scripts where we can. That said it feels like some stuff is best done through the toolbar or at least that is our "easiest" route to development and so I don't think it's "make use of user scripts or ask for curation improvements" I think it's "make use of user scripts AND ask for curation improvements". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:44, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
@Vexations: regarding your question about the original design specs for the Page Curation system, I found them here on mediawiki.org. Also relevant is this page, which gives a higher level view of the technical side of the original project. For the design specs around the work that the Growth team has been doing over the past months, that can be found on the project page or nested in Phabricator. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
MMiller (WMF), do you have any idea as to the time-frame, when you folks can execute the long list of pending improvements over this page.Other than by making a pointer to the wish-list? It's another event, if you can guarantee that all the unattended features of the total 69 can be punched into a single wish and pursued....Folks over here, will be probably happy:-)
As I sed at Danny's t/p, the entire development-pattern resembles acute dumb-assery. Something, for whose development, a certain class of people have their share of resources but no minimal interest whilst another class has got extreme interest but no resources.
And, have you got any idea, as to how fast-track the execution of the easiest of these phab-tickets (See T204464 for an example.)? ∯WBGconverse 12:37, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
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