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This submission is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Reliable sources are required so that information can be verified. If you need help with referencing, please see Referencing for beginners and Citing sources. GeorgeBergerson (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This board is for discussion about the operation of the AFC process. Please ask for assistance at the AFC help desk. 331dot (talk) 00:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, AFC folks,

I just noticed that Shewasafairy was reecently blocked and on their talk page they have discussions with editors whose drafts they reviewed. They even kept a log, User:Shewasafairy/AfC log. But I can't find their name on the AFC Participants list. Was their name recently removed or were they never an accepted AFC reviewer? I was wondering if the drafts they looked at should be re=reviewed. However, I can see that I'm tla was recently removed from the Participants list so they were an approved reviewer but they also had a log, User:I'm tla/AfC log that I thought might be reviewed in case there was any paid editing occurring. Thanks. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:59, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I failed to scroll up to see this discussion with I'm tla above this one. But, honestly even though you all know about the block/sock issuesfor a few days now, my concerns remain. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:03, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I just said elsewhere, Shewasafairy got AFC rights automatically when they were granted NPR here.
Yes, we've not really got around to discussing rechecking their usage of advanced rights, that I am aware of. There are multiple editors involved, so everyone may be individually doing spot checks, which I have done a few of myself. Best, — Usedtobecool ☎️ 06:39, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've quickly gone through Shewasafairy's acceptances. A bit of a mixed bag, a few borderline cases, a couple of solid ones, and some that have either been approved by NPP or are awaiting patrol (most were autopatrolled by Shewasafairy). One I moved back to drafts, as it seemed like the subject might be notable, but the sources just weren't there. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:05, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just went through and unpatrolled any suspicious Shewasafairy NPP patrols (NCORP, BLPs). I'm tla was not an NPP. I think this is sufficient to make sure that all of the articles get scrutiny. AFC accepts will get checked again by a random NPP so should be safe to leave alone. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I deployed a small update to the AFC helper script tonight. The two main things in this deploy are 1) there is now a check box to copy over comments to the talk page, and 2) better autofill of a person's name in the DEFAULTSORT box on the accept screen. I have a bunch more in the pipeline. Will keep you posted. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:41, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have been following via the storm of git emails recently. Good work at getting some progress on these outstanding issues. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 09:13, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's an issue where AFCH is adding the section header without a line break. I've opened a ticket. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 00:07, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, that come off as a bit curt, didn't it? Thanks to the AFCH maintainers who implemented the copying of comments to the talk page; I think a lot of reviewers, including me, will be pleased to hear it! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 00:11, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your message was fine. Thanks for quickly reporting on GitHub. I think I got the fix out in 13 minutes from when I got the GitHub email :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:39, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming features[edit]

Howdy folks. I'm excited to announce I've written AFC helper script patches for several frequently requested tickets. You can visit the patches and check out the screenshots to make sure you like them. If you're a techie (cc SD0001), you can click on the "Files changed" tab to see the code I wrote and review it. I plan to merge and deploy these patches on Monday.

• hide submit button if no comment typed in
• add edit conflict detection
• auto subscribe to user talk messages
• when accepting, offer to place Db-afc-move when the destination is a redirect

So far I've cleared out the queue of other people's patches, cleared out the queue of tickets marked easy, and am about halfway through clearing out the high priority (frequently requested) queue. Will probably work on AFCH for another week to finish clearing out the high priority queue, then switch to a new project. There is no shortage of programming stuff to work on in the movement.

Anyway, I hope y'all like these patches. If you want me to adjust anything, let me know before Monday. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:47, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for doing these, NL. I know a lot of reviewers have been wanting these features for years. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 00:56, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seconding Ingenuity — thank you so much! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 01:23, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good work, sorry but real-life issues mean I probably won't get time to review the code. KylieTastic (talk) 07:28, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Been a delight to see this getting processed. Primefac (talk) 11:59, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. The new features are live. Please keep an eye out for bugs. P.S. An additional feature not mentioned above is the TurnItIn copyright detection warning will now show (it was broken before). –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:19, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Newsletter?[edit]

Cheers Novem Linguae. As the subscribe feature is a new preference we really could do with a way to tell people that it is now an option especially as we know from past discussions that a lot don't even notice the preferences. I'm not sure how many reviewers even watch this page. KylieTastic (talk) 09:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cool stuff @Novem Linguae! @KylieTastic and others, what you think about a newsletter? S0091 (talk) 16:22, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@S0091 by newsletter I assume you mean a mass message? Why not, we've never sent many. A short post highlighting the tool improvements and maybe a general poke about the backlog growing and any other news? KylieTastic (talk) 17:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, mass message. I don't mind trying to do one but will need some help. Is there an example of one from the past somewhere? S0091 (talk) 17:35, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Newsletter#Newsletter archive may provide some ideas, templates, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Double signature bug[edit]

• Possible minor issue Novem Linguae... I just noticed on a couple of declines an extra signature on the user talk page messages (this and this) however the first I did after your announcement this morning this does not have the issue, so it appeared after changing my preferences (I enabled 'Do not add pages to watchlist' and 'Receive a notification....'). I played in my sandbox with different settings but it didn't happen so maybe it's only on new pages or something? Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 20:58, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That's probably the discussiontools API (which I use for subscriptions) auto adding a signature. Definitely a bug. Will work on fixing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:51, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, this bug happens when 1) the user talk page doesn't exist yet and 2) the user's preferences are set to auto subscribe. The simplest fix is to stop auto adding {{Talk header}}s to the user talk pages that AFC helper script creates. I've written a patch for that if anyone wants to comment. Will probably deploy it tomorrow unless there's objections. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:33, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
On 1 May 2024, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each review will earn 1 point. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

– DreamRimmer (talk) 16:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: If you are an AfC reviewer and don't have NPP rights but believe you can help out, please check out the granting requirements for NPP. If you meet the criteria, you are welcome to apply at WP:PERM/NPP. Thanks :) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:32, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone ever use {{Db-afc-move}} on articles rather than redirects? For example if there is a really good draft and a really poor article and you want to replace the mainspace article with the draft? The answer to this will determine how I write the documentation at Template:Db-afc-move/doc (which I recently edited), and may also affect the current patch I'm writing for WP:AFCH. At the moment my patch is only for tagging redirects. My concern is {{Db-afc-move}} is a type of WP:G6, which I think is normally only used on redirects. But the "non-controversial maintenance" clause is broad enough that it could arguably be applied to articles if the deletion were completely non-controversial. If {{Db-afc-move}} cannot be used on articles, then I guess the alternatives could be anything from a copy-paste move with attribution, to a page swap, to asking an admin to G6 it for you. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:35, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No never! Surely that should never happen, if someone wants to improve an existing "really poor article" they should do so in place. KylieTastic (talk) 07:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't have even crossed my mind to do so. I would decline that 'really good draft' on the basis that a published article exists, directing the author to edit that. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:29, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have exists as a decline reason; I don't think we should be G6'ing articles just to move a draft over them, since as you say there are a half-dozen alternate options. Primefac (talk) 11:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. I'm glad I asked. Will fix the template documentation to say redirects only. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:39, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I posted a question at VPM about copy-pastes, and am now asking here about an unexpected answer that I got. I have from time to time complained that the message that the history merge template suggests be given to the user who did the copy-paste is mealy. It doesn't say not to do copy-pastes, only that move is better. I still think that there should be a Level 2 caution, at least in cases where the reviewer thinks that the editor should have known better. However, I said that we would like to minimize the amount of work done by admins in doing history-merges. I got an answer that is, essentially, that history merges are not needed, and no admin work is needed, because either a talk page template, or a note in an edit summary, is sufficient. So my question is: Are history merges no longer required? It was always my understanding that if a reviewer encounters a draft and an article that are the same, they should check whether they have the same authors, and, if not, request a history merge. I hope that this is not considered a stupid question. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:46, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a stupid question, and not to be too rude to the individual in question but saying "I don't know anything about this but..." and then proceeding to give an opinion is... problematic. Yes, there are many options for attribution, but histmerge is the easiest and leaves the least amount of room for ambiguity and screwing things up. Request histmerges... I don't mind! ^_^ Primefac (talk) 19:20, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. And I still think that copy-pasting of drafts into article space should be discouraged. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:54, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not that I handle a ton of histmerges (apparently I'm 8th for the year?) but I also never mind them. If anything, I think we don't see as many of them as we should. I have no issue processing the less complicated histmerges and I'm interested in the opportunity to do more and get good at the harder ones. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:22, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And histmerges are an admin task that very seldom makes other editors angry. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:04, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've been watching the help page and some AFC conversations a while... one recurrent theme is that for a common type of article that they are creating (=aren't given presumed notability by an SNG) the creators don't understand that for their article the wp:notability requirement is not about the common meaning of notability, it's about having two published independent sources (sometimes one) which cover the topic of their article in depth. For somebody new to Wikipedia I don't think that they understand this from the explanations given, doubly so because the explanations are usually complicated by the (irrelevant-for-them) SNG possibilities. Would it be good to add something like this to explanations?:

Thanks for working on your article. The subject of separate articles needs to meet Wikipedia's WP:Notability requirement which can be confusing. To meet this it needs to meet either meet the requirements of an applicable special notability guideline (which IMO is not an option for your subject) or meet WP:GNG, Wikipedia's sourcing-based General Notability Guideline. So, roughly speaking, to meet that requirement you need to include two independent published sources which cover the topic of your article in depth. So it's not about notability by the common meaning of the term, it's about finding two sources each of which meets all of those criteria. My suggestion is to look for and include those sources. If you are unable to find sources which meet all of those criteria, IMO it's best not to pursue creating a separate article for this subject. Happy editing!

North8000 (talk) 00:27, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where exactly are you proposing to add this? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 00:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was more bringing it up for general discussion and am not sure I know the mechanics/tools well enough to formulate it well. But something that would be included in relevant decline messages and maybe boilerplate that can be pasted into relevant help page responses. Or a "if your subject does not meet a special notability guideline" section that can be linked to Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:37, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. If a draft meets the criteria for CSD (for example, for G5), should the draft be tagged and declined, or can the submission templates be removed altogether? Thanks. '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk|contribs) 01:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey CanonNi, I'd recommend simply tagging the page without any further action. Declining the draft tends to cause template bloat on the page creator's talk page, which I like to avoid. If an administrator declines the CSD tag for whatever reason, the draft will simply remain in the queue for review as usual. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 02:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understand. Thank you! '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk|contribs) 02:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that an exception would be for G12/copyvio, since AFCH has the option to tag the page along with the decline. Primefac (talk) 07:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the clarification. '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk|contribs) 07:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I do the opposite (and I'm not saying it's right, just what I do): I decline or reject the submission as I think fit, and then request speedy if it seems necessary. If the speedy gets declined for any reason, that means the draft has at least been removed from the pool. Yes, this does result in a decline notice on the submitter's talk page, but so be it. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, in thinking about it more, I don't think there's a single "best" way to deal with it. A decline probably has better information about why the draft itself wasn't sufficient (with tips to improve) while a CSD notice will simply tell them that the page fails one of our deletion criteria. On the other hand, G5 and G10 should not be declined, as those types of pages just need to be nuked outright per DENY etc. Primefac (talk) 07:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fair. Although your mention of G5 raises a point: certain admins (without naming any names) don't like to action G5 requests unless the author has already been confirmed as a sock at SPI (or otherwise as a block evader), even if the case is pretty obvious (FanBeatles333 recreating a draft that the blocked BeatlesFan333 had previously created, that sort of thing). This is part of the reason why I treat the review and CSD separately, because I can never be 100% sure that the speedy will go through. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:51, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll name myself, because I'm one of these admins. I believe that's how it should be though. We shouldn't be performing G5 deletions unless we're sure the accounts are related. Admins unfamiliar with the LTAs wouldn't be familiar with all the signs and wouldn't feel comfortable acting without being sure. Side note, you'd be surprised how many G5 tags get added before a user has even been blocked as a sock. Hey man im josh (talk) 08:05, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't have you in mind, but thanks for volunteering! :)

Above my pay grade to suggest whether it's right or wrong to accept the type of G5 I'm referring to, all I know is that some admins readily accept, others consistently decline, which means it's a bit of a gamble to see which admin attends to it first.

FWIW, my motivation in requesting G5 in cases which to me seem obvious is to avoid putting them through SPI which is often congested enough already. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I always decline/reject for two reasons: Apart for G5 the notices tend to give better information and I find it cuts down on the "why did you delete my article?"; Second to get it out of the !queue. Sometimes it takes hours to be deleted so just wastes peoples time. If people are submitting drafts that require a speedy then they clearly need more information so I'm not concerned at all with 'template bloat'. KylieTastic (talk) 08:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like Enterprisey is retiring or semi-retiring. Before he left, he gave me access to the AFC history tool, and I went ahead and made some updates. So far I've modernized the code, added a feature where the URL always contains the username now (for easier linking), and the browser forward and back buttons now keep a proper history. I'm open to more suggestions if y'all think of anything else. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:54, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tool broken on Firefox and Edge[edit]

​ Given that you've changed the backend code of the page, could you please update {{userAFCH}} and {{userAFCP}} so that the "reviews" link works properly? I'm not seeing what needs changing and I can't get it to work any more. Thanks! Primefac (talk) 12:19, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's working on my end.

Novem Linguae (t · c · reviews)

Clicking "reviews" opens afchistory and calculates all my reviews. Can you please give a diff or exact template code where it's not working so I can try again? Can you try hard refreshing (ctrl+F5) to clear cache? Can you please check for WP:CONSOLEERRORs? Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:39, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just tried and I get total failure in Firefox and Edge for https://apersonbot.toolforge.org/afchistory/?user=KylieTastic but it works fine in Chrome. Edge has the console error of Error with Permissions-Policy header: Origin trial controlled feature not enabled: 'browsing-topics'., no errors on FF. KylieTastic (talk) 22:36, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Was able to reproduce in Firefox. Looks like a Firefox+Edge only bug. I didn't see it because I'm on Chrome. Will see if I can debug this or will roll back my changes. The $( window ).on( 'pageshow', function () { is the problem. I'll be back in a bit with an update. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:47, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just deployed a patch. Hopefully fixed. Try it now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most excellent, ta. Primefac (talk) 11:12, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rows too tall on Chrome and Edge[edit]

It works on all three browsers now. It looks better on FF for mine as most lines are single depth, but reviews on drafts with long names (Draft:David M. Knight - American Catholic Priest, Author, Speaker, Retreat Leader, Spiritual Director) makes Chrome and Edge format the table so all the dates take two lines. Not a biggy. KylieTastic (talk) 08:30, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think double tall rows may be an old bug unrelated to my changes. I went ahead and filed a ticket. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually that was a quick fix so I wrote and deployed a patch. Should be fixed now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, looks fine. Thanks KylieTastic (talk) 10:04, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently a discussion at WT:Drafts regarding a proposed split of WP:Drafts. The thread is WT:Drafts#Split into help page and guideline. Thank you. S0091 (talk) 17:07, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen a few articles that cite the IANS that look like press releases, but are also in reputable newspapers. Noah ^💬 19:29, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@-noah-, you might want to try starting a discussion at WP:RS about it. -- asilvering (talk) 21:37, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. A few days ago, User:Dan arndt moved an article I created to draftspace. Admittedly, I let this one fall through the cracks, and it sat for a few weeks as an unreferenced stub. I immediately objected to the move and requested that the article be moved back to mainspace per WP:DRAFTOBJECT, but, nearly 5 days later, I still haven't heard anything back. I believe I've more than established the subject's notability and intend to improve the article even further. I'd appreciate anyone who could help me out here or direct me to the right place. I've created thousands of articles in my almost 15 years of editing, including a number which I've gotten up to GA status, and I think it'd be silly to require review of the existing draft. Thanks! Rockhead126 (talk) 20:46, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It was clearly not ready for main space when it was draftified, you have improved it, just submit and it can be accepted. Theroadislong (talk) 20:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for making a fuss about nothing; despite having autoconfirmed rights, I've never dealt with this situation before, and I didn't realize until I read Wikipedia:Requested moves that moving to mainspace is like any other move. All good now. Rockhead126 (talk) 21:07, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the last few days, when I try to add a comment using AFCH, I get an 'edit conflict' error message for no obvious reason. I think this has (so far at least) only happened when I try to do that straight after I've just done a decline/reject, but I'm not sure; will keep an eye on it. Reloading the page and relaunching AFCH resolves the issue, so it's no biggie, just a bit annoying. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:22, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's probably the edit conflict detection feature that we released a few days ago. As you say, it's probably detecting your decline as an edit conflict. Don't forget that there's a comment box on the decline/reject screens, so you can just type your comment there before clicking decline/reject. Then, if I'm understanding you right, you wouldn't need to reload the page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I figured. Is there a time limit (from the decline/reject) within which a comment gets treated as an EC? In other words, would it help if I waited, say, 5+ sec before commenting?

As an aside, rightly or wrongly, when declining, I don't like to put into the comment box anything which isn't related to the decline, I rather add it as a separate comment. So if I decline eg. for notability, and there is also a problem with formatting or layout etc. which I feel compelled (!) to remark upon, I do that after my decline so it's clear that isn't why I declined. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:04, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The algorithm doesn't look at time. It triggers if there's an edit after the page is loaded. Perhaps I could look into making it only detect edits from other people, and not edits from yourself. Stay tuned. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:14, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A patch to only detect other people's edits as an edit conflict ended up being pretty easy. Will deploy it in the next day or two. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:02, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Novem Linguae, appreciate it! :) DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:06, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Deployed. Will take effect within 15 minute as caches clear. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:31, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if anyone else is still having the issue but I am. Even without placing a comment I get the warning when I decline a draft. --CNMall41 (talk) 02:26, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Was able to reproduce. I've reverted the changes for now (will take up to 15 minutes to take effect) and will fix when I get back from dinner. Thanks for reporting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect. I just performed it on a new AfC submission as well as the one I was attempting when I first received the error message. Both work fine. Thanks for fixing!!!!!! --CNMall41 (talk) 03:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, apologies if the answer to this question is mentioned somewhere and I've missed it! I just wanted to check if I had to be a listed AfC participant in order to create redirects from WP:AFC/R; or if that isn't a requirement for that page. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 17:03, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No barriers, any autoconfirmed user can help at this venue. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:07, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info :) ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 22:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Speedy decline #1 has been updated to account for how to handle Drafts that are translations from other Wikipedias (permitted, but requires attribution in the edit summary) or are a copy of content from other Wikimedia projects (also permitted, with attribution). In brief: a Draft submitted for review which contains content translated or copied from other Wikimedia projects but lacks the required attribution statement in the revision history should be speedily declined as a Terms of Use/copyright violation, and a link to WP:RIA should be provided to the user in the decline message, which explains how to rectify the missing attribution so the Draft can be resubmitted. This is based on Wikimedia's Terms of Use which govern every edit at Wikipedia (a statement and link to it is given on the preview page just above the 'Publish' button every time you save an edit). The Terms of Use overrides guidelines, policy, consensus, and ArbCom, and is a hard requirement. Feel free to update the additional wording as need be. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:55, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot in your edit summary you stated "Translated drafts lacking required attribution are being approved at AFC contrary to Wikimedia's Terms of Use, and this cannot continue." Can you please expand upon that statement? For transparency, I did revert Mathglot and asked they start a discussion here. They reinstated their change and we did have discussion on each other's talk pages, but nothing contentious. My main concern is this being a chronic issue. S0091 (talk) 21:18, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's definitely a common issue in the encyclopedia at large, and I have no reason to believe it's not happening at AfC also. I've been templating people who do this, but I can't really imagine that's helping much. For a non-AfC/NPP example, I used to keep Category:Unassessed Germany articles zeroed out, but haranguing people for not attributing their translation got too annoying and I decided that wasn't a good use of my time. @Mathglot, can you clarify what you mean by "speedy decline criterion #1"? That's not an option in the AFCH reviewer script. -- asilvering (talk) 21:35, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, sorry, I'm not used to the terminology; the actual term is "Quick-fail criteria", and what I am referring to is row #1 at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions#Step 1: Quick-fail criteria. Mathglot (talk) 21:39, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, ok, that's not helpful for reviewers in itself, since we don't have a decline criteria for unattributed translations. If we're supposed to be outright quickfailing articles for this reason, we'd need both clearer consensus on that and a decline reason written up for it. Here's a start for one, in case anyone has any good ideas about how to make this clearer (I sure don't):

trans - Submission appears to be an incorrectly attributed translation from another language Wikipedia

This submission appears to be a translation of (articletitle) on (language) Wikipedia that has not been correctly attributed. Translations must be attributed in the edit summary. Find instructions at WP:HOWTRANS and WP:RIA.

I'm not sure this is worth declining articles over, though I do agree it's a problem. What I mean isn't that I don't think the attribution is important, but that I don't think declining the article is going to lead to better compliance. I think we'll just end up with more frustrated and confused newbies. What I would sincerely appreciate is for someone (@Novem Linguae? sorry, you're the first person to come to mind) to draw up a userscript or even an alteration to AFCH that would automate both repairing the attribution and templating the translating editor. -- asilvering (talk) 22:28, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the point about compliance and frustrated newbies. I dont know whether it's fair in that case to just ask AFC reviewers to fix the attribution problem themselves or not—I guess I should ask first, if reviewers strictly review, or do they also fix problems that are easily fixable? Because while the lack of attribution is very serious, the fix is very easy. Adding the {{Expand French}} template to the top of an article translated from French, for example, will give you an exact attribution statement in the expanded instructions that is compliant with the Terms of Use and can be copied word-for-word and pasted into the edit summary. Go to Adolphe Sax, for example, expand the banner at the top, and look at the 4th bullet. Does this help, and would it be something a reviewer could do, or is this beyond their remit? Mathglot (talk) 23:01, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot reviewers frequently do small edits. I think it's perfectly fair to say "fix it or don't accept it", but then I'd want "fix it" to be about as easy as checking a box that says "attribute translation", since the more we add to reviewer workloads, the fewer articles anyone can review. -- asilvering (talk) 23:05, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the WP:RIA wording is what the Reviewer would add, if they can add it, so not quite the language in the Expand language banner. But it could easily be automated by template for ease of use by reviewers. If it would help to have that, I can create template {{attrib needed|lang_code|title}} and it will spit out the exact words that need to be added to satisfy the attribution requirement specified by WP:RIA. Would that help? (P.S. No need to ping; I am subscribed.) Mathglot (talk) 23:10, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See {{Attribution repair}} (or, {{RIA}}, for short). Mathglot (talk) 00:28, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Sure, and that's a fair question, but I don't want to point fingers at reviewers who are just following the instructions as given. Anyone may email me privately for more information off-wiki. I can't say how frequent it is, as I am not an active reviewer, and I only find out about them by accident when someone creates an article that happens to have a link that hits something on my Watchlist, and then I get a link notification. If the article title given in the link notification sounds like it might be translated from another Wikipedia, I go have a look. This comes up from time to time just from that very tiny filter of links hitting my Watchlist, so the actual number must be a whole lot bigger than that. That said, I had a couple of hits this week, and one about a month ago. How to extrapolate that into an incidence estimate is anybody's guess, but if we need a better estimate, there are folks at WP:Quarry who might be able to help. Mathglot (talk) 21:37, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Purely anecdotally, a common - not just occasional - experience at NPP is picking up very obviously unattributed translations that have been accepted from Draft by AFC and wondering why they weren't spotted. Ingratis (talk)

The reviewing instructions (until yesterday, and the wording seems to be in dispute) have never made any mention of translation, so I'm sure the issue does occur. As to the question of whether reviewers fix things, that depends on the reviewer. There's a huge backlog, and in my case, I generally don't, unless it's something I have a particular interest in. More importantly, how should one notice this? If it's picked up by the copyvios tool, that's fine, but I don't recall ever seeing such an example. User:Mathglot's method, "If the article title given in the link notification sounds like it might be translated from another Wikipedia, I go have a look" doesn't seem feasible. Greenman (talk) 08:29, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Greenman, yeah, the one thing I do understand about Afc is the huge backlog; I see it mentioned at the Teahouse and Help desk all the time. Regarding "how should one notice this?", I think that is exactly the right question to ask next. Like a lot of things from riding a bicycle on up, it was hard once, but seems straightforward/semi-automatic to me now. (I often marvel at the folks who can spot sockpuppets while squinting sideways at three sentences written by one of them, but like everything else, I guess it comes with experience.)

This is kind of like that, I believe, and because this thread is focusing attention on the whole issue, I have started to think about doing a brain dump and trying to analyze how I do it, so I can write it down. Your quote of my "method" was really just my hand-wavy way of saying, "I've been riding this bicycle so long I don't really know how I do it anymore." But I'm starting to compile some raw notes offline, and I'll put something together at some point and try to sketch it out, and then maybe users like Asilvering, Ingratis, and others who have also noticed this issue and worked out their own methodologies can jump in and we can get a group together and develop a how-to page that can be linked to for this purpose. Stay tuned, but it won't be right away, unless someone can jump in with something quickly to get it going. Mathglot (talk) 08:55, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Greenman, I typically find it pretty easy, but perhaps that's because I'm a translator myself. (It's possible I miss a lot of them that are in languages I can't read?) If it "feels" translated from another language, it almost certainly is. An extremely obvious tell for German is that the references section will be called "Literature". Another obvious tell for many languages is a style artifact: they will say (born Berlin 4 April 1998 - died Paris 10 August 2021) or similar; that is, the place of birth/death is in the parenthetical in the first sentence. Dates in day-month-year format is another frequent one - it's not completely unusual in English but it is ubiquitous in many other languages. If none of the references are in English, that's another likely sign. Another one is overtranslation - rendering something in English that is normally written in its original language. It is especially common from Chinese, where you will sometimes find a whole phrase, often repeated in the article, that makes no real sense in English. That's because the translator has "translated" each individual character rather than taking the meaning as a whole or using whatever the English-language equivalent is. I can't think of a real example right now, but here's one that's so obvious no one would ever screw it up: instead of saying "Republic of China" or "Taiwan" for 中華民國, saying "middle flower nation" or something. It happens in Latin-alphabet languages too, though. Imagine someone saying "spread" or "paste" where in English we'd say pâté. -- asilvering (talk) 17:31, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I thought of another much weaker one: the section headings are totally unlike how we use them in English wikipedia. This is only a weak tell because sometimes newbie editors make this same mistake. An obvious example is having a biography where the top-level header is "Biography" rather than the standard on en-wiki, which is "Early life" etc. -- asilvering (talk) 17:40, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

NB - day-month-year is the UK standard - it will often mean no more than that the editor is British. Ingratis (talk) 19:00, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but a typical British editor is writing in English from start to finish, so it won't give off "this is a translation" vibes. -- asilvering (talk) 21:18, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to add that I really value what Afc reviewers contribute to the encyclopedia. It's a really valuable service for maintaining quality, and I realize there is a tension between adding more reviewer instructions on the one hand, and throughput or being able to get anything done on the other, and I don't know what the solution to that is; maybe there isn't any really good one. But what you are all doing is really valuable, and I think it's important that that be acknowledged. So, a big "Thank you" goes out to everyone involved in this project; what you are doing is really worthwhile. Mathglot (talk) 11:10, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure where best to add this comment (in this thread or the one below) but in my opinion this is an issue that needs to be looked out for by reviewers, but is not in and of itself a reason to decline a submitted draft. For other "copyright" issues there is a tangible change in the page - removal of offending content, RD, or wholesale deletion. "This wasn't properly attributed" can be fixed with a single edit summary and as mentioned above probably should be done by a reviewer rather than decline and try and convince the submitted to make the attribution and then resubmit with literally no other changes required. There's talk of a Newsletter being written soon, this issue might be worth including in it as well so that folks know to keep an eye out for it. Primefac (talk) 13:32, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Primefac. This is not an a reason to decline a draft and according other comments, it is a broader issue than just AfC. Also, to Greenman's point, there are no tools currently available for us to be able to identify a draft might be a translation. In article space, you at least get interlanguage links which can provide a hint but you don't get interlanguage links in draft. Unless there is something really obvious, it leaves reviewer's guessing if it is a translation and from which language. Looking at some pending drafts, Draft:Carl Gierstorfer is an example. The creator did use the German Wikipedia as a source and linked to a German Wikipedia article so that's a good hint but had they not, there's nothing to indicate de:Carl Gierstorfer exists so the draft might be a translation. S0091 (talk) 15:58, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually that one gives a clue a bot could use to tag some drafts as probable translations. AnomieBOT updated the German templates and left the comment <!-- auto-translated from German by Module:CS1 translator -->. Maybe that bot could be updated to add a maintenance template if it does this in draft. That could alert creators that they needed to attribute and/or reviewers. There are probably a number of such hints that we could use to tag possible translations. Also in this one the birth being (*1975) rather than (born 1975) is a hint to me. A search for "Module:CS1 translator" gives 40 possible translations in the !queue, and 321 in draft space. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 16:23, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oooh, yeah the bot is a good idea. @KylieTastic nice find! For my and perhaps others education, why (*1975) is a hint? @Mathglot we need a bot. :) S0091 (talk) 17:00, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@S0091, German Wikipedia uses * for born and † for death, so if you see those in the lead then its probably a translation from de:, or sometimes just a German editor. KylieTastic (talk) 17:17, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is a very good one, since it's quite unusual in English except in encyclopedias. If you see it written like that, you're almost certainly looking at a translation, or a work of WP:OR by a genealogist, or, well, something written by someone who knows how to write an encyclopedia article (a very different genre than a wikipedia article, despite our claim that we're an encyclopedia). If it's the latter, you'll be tempted to decline it as npov or essay. -- asilvering (talk) 17:35, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• When I see cross-wiki translation copyvio in drafts, I just throw {{Translated from}} on the talk page then proceed as normal. Unless I am missing something, this seems like a pretty efficient workflow, and I am not sure adding another round of back-and-forth via a dedicated decline message would be an improvement to this workflow.
  In regards to creating a user script for this, could always check WP:US/L to see if someone has already made it, or request a custom script at WP:US/R.
  If it happens all the time, we could think about building it into AFCH, but because this might need to be applied to both accepts and declines, there isn't a really good spot for it. Would need to custom code a new screen, probably, which is not trivial. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:32, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you use the {{Translated from}} as a reminder to self (or whomever) to add the attribution to the rev history later? Mathglot (talk) 06:06, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I was under the impression that the template on the talk page is sufficient to provide attribution. However re-reading WP:CWW it doesn't say this clearly, so I have started Wikipedia talk:Copying within Wikipedia#Is a template on the talk page enough for attribution? to double check my understanding. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:33, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not, it's strictly optional; a nice-to-have for other editors. The requirement is from ToU § 7g Re-use for one of two things to be placed into the revision history via the edit summary, either: a) a list of all of the authors of the source article copied from (usually impractical, but may work for young articles or those developed entirely or almost entirely by one editor), or b) a hyperlink to the source article such that the link leads to a list of all the authors (this would be true of any Wikimedia property, via the History link). Mathglot (talk) 09:47, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding this edit, the wording added states that "Drafts containing copied/translated content and lacking such attribution should be speedily declined". I don't see such a statement in the Terms of Use, but I do see WP:RIA, which states that "While technically licensing violations are copyright violations, pages that contain unattributed text do not normally need to be deleted. Attribution can be belatedly supplied by the methods above, using dummy edits to record new edit summaries. Such belated attribution should make clear when the relevant text entered the page. You can also identify problem articles, in particular complex cases that you cannot fix right away, by tagging the article itself with the templates

(for a single origin) and

(for articles with multiple origins)." Greenman (talk) 08:38, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, I misread this in an interesting way. I read "speedily declined" as "speedily deleted". While speedy deletion does exist, I'm not aware of such a concept as "speedily declined". I'd suggest just changing this to "declined". Greenman (talk) 09:06, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) First, nobody is talking about deleting anything, that is not what this is about. Unattributed translation (or copying) is a licensing violation whether the article is highly notable and has 500 references, or is undeniably non-notable and has zero references. (Note that attribution is not required/no longer required for an article that has been removed from Wikipedia, but it *is* required for all copied/translated content that has ever been added to an article, even if it is no longer there in the current version. Removed content still requires attribution; removed articles do not. I.e., as long as the article still exists on Wikipedia, then licensing of copied/translated content still applies.) For those articles having copied/translated content that lacks attribution, you are absolutely right to quote RIA as the method of supplying belated attribution: this is called "repairing insufficient attribution" and can be applied to any article or draft that lacks it. That was the whole point of asking above whether reviewers only review, or also modify, because if a reviewer could apply WP:RIA during review, that would settle the matter and remove one bar to acceptance.

The wording "Drafts containing copied/translated content and lacking such attribution should be speedily declined" does not come from the wmf, which does not concern itself with AFC procedures. That is wording I created to propose how AFC reviewers should act when faced with a licensing violation. Given that the wmf Terms of use prohibit unattributed content anywhere in Wikipedia, what instruction or guidance should we give an AFC reviewer in that situation? What ought they do, if they are assessing a Draft that has copied content but lacks an attribution statement? I think that should trigger an instant decline, because we shouldn't give an AFC stamp of approval to a Draft that is in direct violation of the Wikimedia Terms of use. If you disagree with that reasoning or that wording, just change it.

The two templates you quoted are issues related to complex edit histories and reside on the periphery of this problem; they do deserve attention, because they exist, but they are a small fraction of the problem. The majority of the cases are articles with very simple edit histories—often fewer than a dozen or two edits. The edge cases covered by those templates should be handled too, of course, but they are a footnote compared to the whole. Mathglot (talk) 09:26, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was using "speedy decline" as a synonym for "quick-fail", as in, "quick-fail criteria". Mathglot (talk) 09:30, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot, this does make me wonder about templates, though - do we have one for "unattributed translation"? We really ought to. That would allow people who suspect an unattributed translation to raise the issue without having to do the detective work themselves, which they might not be able to do or might not feel confident about their abilities to do. -- asilvering (talk) 17:38, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I looked around, and I'm pretty sure we don't have one, and I agree we should. Can you link two or three templates typically used by reviewers to point out other types of issues, so I can style a new one in a similar vein? (subscribed; no ping needed) Mathglot (talk) 19:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AfC uses the same maintenance tags that are used is mainspace and probably the most used are Template:COI and Template:UPE. There are none, at least that I am aware of, that are specific to a draft/AfC so if you create one, it should be applicable in mainspace as well. The COI one actually might be a good one with some modifications, like "Content in this article appears to be a translation, in whole or part, from another Wikipedia project and may require the appropriate attribution. See Help:Translation." S0091 (talk) 19:36, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See {{Unattributed translation}}. In use at Louli Sanua and Adrien Couret. Mathglot (talk) 21:47, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this! Extremely helpful. -- asilvering (talk) 21:45, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, though it seems it somehow isn't clear enough, since it's already been removed from Louli Sanua incorrectly. I think we'll have to edit the notice to make it clear that the edit summary is where this is required. I'll make a note on the docs for the translated page talk page template also. -- asilvering (talk) 21:52, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe; I've now added the attrib directly to the Sanua article so it is compliant again. Seems to me I had a discussion about this with the lawyers at wmf at some point; one wishes they had written ToU 7g a bit clearer, as it does leave open an arguable interpretation that the TP template is enough; the problem with that being, someone can just come along later and delete it from the TP, whereas you cannot delete the hyperlink to the source from the article revision history—once it is there, it is permanent. You'd think lawyers would know about writing (or stealing) language that had already been tested and verified in a court case where it had come up before, or just being clearer about it. I'll see if I can find that discussion, but I'm not even sure what project it was on; probably mw: or meta:.Mathglot (talk) 22:20, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I expanded the template /doc to try to explain that better, at {{Unattributed translation#When to remove}}; feel free to update it directly as you see fit. Mathglot (talk) 22:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can't we just follow the advice at WP:CWW and either add {{Translated from}} to the talk page, or make an edit summary with a dummy edit? I am not sure a new maintenance tag is the best solution for this. In the time it takes to place the maintenance tag, we could instead follow the advice at WP:CWW and either add {{Translated from}} or make the dummy edit. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:35, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that would be easier in some cases for some reviewers, but from what I've seen above, some reviewers are review-and-maybe-fix, and others are review-only, so it may be a matter of personal style. There have also been valid objections to making the RIA fix as a reviewer, because it may not always be clear what source the creating editor copied it from, and you have to know that that to add the edit summary attribution, but you don't need to know it to add the maintenance tag, just that it came from somewhere, and hasn't been attributed, which basically just kicks it back to the editor who created it to supply that information. So in those cases, adding the tag may be easier. Mathglot (talk) 10:02, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]