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AfD through page curation tool?

Hello NPP, I attempted to nominate XLAB for deletion using the Curation Toolbar. However, I'm not sure it "stuck." The original deletion template on the page pointed to a red-linked "this article's entry." I clicked on this to create the page but I don't see XLAB in the 6 May AfD list. Just checking to see if I made a mistake with the page curation toolbar. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 16:40, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@AugusteBlanqui: The rest may need to be done by hand--if left as is, the nomination won't get noticed by anyone other than the few followers of the article and will languish indefinitely. If you want to tackle this, see WP:AFDHOWTO and start with step II, redoing the discussion page with the {{afd2}} template, then adding the discussion to the log page in step III. (Bonus: If you get step II right, a bot should do step III for you eventually, but I don't like relying on that.) Feel free to ping me if you need a hand--I've fixed a bunch of these where the discussion page wasn't created correctly for any number of reasons.
(Personal opinion: More editors would do well to try their hand at doing AfD nominations "the hard way" before leaning too heavily on the tools and scripts, so that they have a better idea of how to proceed if a tool goes awry.) In any case, let me know if you have further questions or need for assistance. --Finngall talk 17:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Additionally, for future XfD nominations I'd recommend using Twinkle instead of the page curation tool, in my experience it's more reliable. signed, Rosguill talk 17:31, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Good point. Also last I checked, there was a bug in Page Curation where if an article had been nominated for AfD before, PC can't create a second discussion and instead appends to the old closed discussion page. Twinkle works much better in general. --Finngall talk 18:13, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
There are also two other issues I noticed in T252056: the deletion tag log's last AfD log entry was almost seven months ago (10 October 2019), and when a page is nominated for AfD using the page curation toolbar, the resulting edit summary says "Nominated page for deletion using Page Curation ()" instead of "Nominated page for deletion using Page Curation (afd)". GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 18:58, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
I strongly endorse using Twinkle rather than the curation tool for AfD noms but think we need to note where we can issues so that one day we get the curation tool working reliably. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:54, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
  • When wanting to AfD from NPP, I have decided to complete the NPP process of acceptance, and then use twinkle to AfD the article. This is because the NPP AfD option seems to not work properly, and twinkle works great.
I do not agree with telling new AfD nominators to use the manual method. It is painful, too painful. A better option is to advise new people to AfD on how to better do the AfD nomination. One piece of advice I find myself offering not infrequently is: Make your deletion nomination clear and strong. You should be yourself convinced it should be deleted before writing your nomination. Cite the reasons clearly. Do not make a limp wristed statement like "I'm not sure this is a good article, what do others think?". Another frequented needed advise is: WP:BEFORE is supposed to be mandatory. Do not AfD pages that should be merged and redirected. Lack of notability is not a deletion reason if there is a redirect target. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:43, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
It just happened to me as well. This is not good. Our curation tools should be handling this - a missing tool is like a headlight going out on your car, and if you don't fix it ASAP, something else breaks down until you're driving a junkard. Isn't everything in the curation tool linked and synced? I'm referring to the info section in the curation tools which provide the history of what is going with the article. This needs to be fixed. If my memory serves, wasn't it DannyS712 who handled some of the tech issues with our curatioin tools, or was that a different Danny? Kudpung can you please weigh-in here? Atsme Talk 📧 20:14, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
@Atsme: please post any errors that appear in your console next time this happens (yes, it was me). See WP:BUGREPORT #6 DannyS712 (talk) 20:18, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Another case, but possible a false positive: something similar happened to me yesterday using Twinkle, on this article: Una vez más (EP). The usual process seemed to go through, but at the end the Twinkle popup didn't close (had to do it manually) and the link to the AfD wasn't functional, although the AfD page itself had been created. Had to paste the name into the template a couple times before it took - I assumed it had something to do with the accent/special character in the title, thus ignored the issue. - This may or may not be related, just mentioning it. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:36, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Ok, Danny - the steps I took were to click on the (1) clicked on the garbage can, (2) added text for the explanation, (3) clicked on Mark for deletion and it instructed me to take manual steps instead of doing it the automated way via the curation tool. The console errors follow:

(I'm no js guru, but I think the following is the info you need. If not let me know. I'm using Firefox 76.0 (64 bit) on a MacBook Pro):

Long list of errors
  • 16:21:39.040 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:454
  • 16:21:39.040 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘Alpha(’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:543
  • 16:21:39.040 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘Alpha(’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:4570
  • 16:21:39.040 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘Alpha(’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:4720
  • 16:21:39.040 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘Alpha(’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:4795
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘-moz-border-radius-topleft’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:44741
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘-moz-border-radius-topright’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:44930
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘-moz-border-radius-bottomleft’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:45126
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘-moz-border-radius-bottomright’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:45330
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘Alpha(’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:45746
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘-moz-border-radius’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:45783
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:46063
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:46444
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:54467
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:55125
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:55734
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:56303
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:56809
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:57468
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:58033
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:58512
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:59132
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:59694
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:60228
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:60879
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:61811
  • 16:21:39.041 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘mask(’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:65292
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:65962
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:67371
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:67591
  • 16:21:39.041 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:4:69901
  • 16:21:39.042 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-moz-handler-blocked’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:26308
  • 16:21:39.043 Error in parsing value for ‘padding’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:6:44204
  • 16:21:39.043 Expected media feature name but found ‘-ms-high-contrast’. Zaza_nationalism:6:44229
  • 16:21:39.043 Expected media feature name but found ‘-ms-high-contrast’. Zaza_nationalism:6:44256
  • 16:21:39.043 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-expand’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:44432
  • 16:21:39.043 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-clear’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:48478
  • 16:21:39.043 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-clear’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:49425
  • 16:21:39.043 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-input-placeholder’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:51851
  • 16:21:39.043 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:63236
  • 16:21:39.043 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:63362
  • 16:21:39.043 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:63537
  • 16:21:39.043 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:63663
  • 16:21:39.043 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:63833
  • 16:21:39.043 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:6:63959
  • 16:21:39.044 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘alpha(’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:12:2498
  • 16:21:39.044 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:12:9055
  • 16:21:39.044 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:12:10085
  • 16:21:39.044 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:12:11609
  • 16:21:39.044 Expected ‘none’, URL, or filter function but found ‘progid’. Error in parsing value for ‘filter’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:12:12120
  • 16:21:39.044 Unknown property ‘-moz-border-radius’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:13:248
  • 16:21:39.044 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-input-placeholder’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:17:2469
  • 16:21:39.044 Expected color but found ‘none’. Error in parsing value for ‘background-color’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:28:149
  • 16:21:39.045 Unknown property ‘zoom’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:31:85
  • 16:21:39.046 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-input-placeholder’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:2:22610
  • 16:21:39.047 Error in parsing value for ‘display’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:2:3053
  • 16:21:39.047 Unknown property ‘-moz-box-shadow’. Declaration dropped. Zaza_nationalism:2:25
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:138
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:276
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:451
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:589
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:759
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:897
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:1079
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:1219
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:1398
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:1538
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:1712
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:1852
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:2027
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:2165
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:2343
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:2481
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:2654
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:2792
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:2971
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:3111
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:3289
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:3429
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:3602
  • 16:21:39.048 Keyframe rule ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:3:3742
  • 16:21:39.050 Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. Zaza_nationalism:1:70
  • 16:21:39.263 Unknown property ‘-moz-column-width’. Declaration dropped. load.php:1:197
  • 16:21:39.264 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-input-placeholder’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. load.php:1:30414
  • 16:21:39.265 Unknown property ‘orphans’. Declaration dropped. load.php:1:57253
  • 16:21:39.265 Unknown property ‘widows’. Declaration dropped. load.php:1:57262
  • 16:21:39.267 Unknown property ‘-moz-column-width’. Declaration dropped. load.php:1:8812
  • 16:21:39.280 Unknown property ‘speak’. Declaration dropped. load.php:1:12694
  • 16:21:39.282 Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element ‘-ms-input-placeholder’. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. index.php:95:24
  • 16:21:39.314 Unknown property ‘-moz-column-width’. Declaration dropped. index.php:31:20

Atsme Talk 📧 20:43, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

The errors all look to be trouble with CSS/LESS styles, rather than the javascript. I'll keep my eye on this if I need to send anything to afd myself DannyS712 (talk) 04:58, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

​:Holy mackeral - tripled it!! Atsme Talk 📧 22:12, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Atsme, I appreciate your ping, but why should I worry? Nobody else cares much nowadays and I'm supposed to be retired which is exactly what Arbcom wanted. The whole NPP project which I fostered for 10 years or more has just simply fallen apart. 10K backlog, doh! Just unbelievable. Let's see what Wikipedia looks like in five years time, shall we? (If I'm still alive - one mild stroke already left one one bunch of misfits dancing with glee). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:35, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

New article review

I created an article Kere Basadi 2 months back. It hasn't been reviewed yet. Could you please confirm where to submit this article for review?

- Thanks Pratyk321 (talk · contribs)

Pratyk321 The backlog of new pages needing review goes back some three months presently. You don't need to submit anything, all new articles go into the queue. If it doesn't get reviewed immediately by people working at the front of the queue, it can often get all the way back the the end of the queue before getting any attention. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 12:30, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
Pratyk321 I sympathise and certainly 3 months is a totally unacceptable backlog for a project of such importance as Wikipedia. However, the article Kere Basadi has several issues including substantial portions of text that appear to have been lifted from other sources (see WP:COPYVIO). There are also issues with formatting and punctuation. With the interest in NPP being at an all-time low, it's possible that the few active patrollers (less than 10% of the 700+ editors who requested the right to use the patrolling tools) could not be bothered to give the article the serious attention it needs. Address the issues and a patroller will probably pass it quite quickly as appropriate for being referenced by Google. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:12, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere: Thanks for sharing that information
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk), Thanks a lot for your feedback, I have tried to keep the article in my words to avoid any copyright violation, but I will review it again to address issues you mentioned. Regards Pratyk321 (talk · contribs)

What to do with foreign language sources?

I'm trying to review Seo Woo-jin, but I'm stuck figuring out notability because every source is a foreign language source. Are foreign language sources allowed on Wikipedia, and if they are, is it considered acceptable for new articles (or, I guess, any article) to rely entirely on them? ThadeusOfNazerethTalk to Me! 03:25, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

ThadeusOfNazereth, they are absolutely allowed. Use Google Translate on them (you'll probably also benefit from browser plugins that let you translate text without opening a new window. If the translation is too poor for you to do anything with, skip to another article and let an editor more familiar with the language give it a shot. WP:NPPSG is a broad source guide that can help you as well. signed, Rosguill talk 03:31, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

More reviewers

Should we try to recruit more reviewers? The backlog is pushing up towards 10k. Mccapra (talk) 06:26, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Mccapra, ideally yes, although it's always easier said than done. My impression was that inviting individual editors that seem trustworthy to apply has been relatively effective (as compared with putting up notices on noticeboards), what do other people think about methods? signed, Rosguill talk 17:36, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Rosguill, I used Query to run a bunch of stat searches on editors and found several hundred people to send invites to earlier in the year. We had a couple dozen new reviewers join shortly afterwards from that cohort. That said, it could be that there are just more articles coming in now that everyone is cooped up with the COVID lockdown. It usually happens when kids are off during the summer. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 19:54, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Insertcleverphrasehere, that got us a bunch which was good. ICPH would you be able to write a Query that outputs, for a given editor, days that someone has at least 1 NPP review? If you can do that the idea of a backlog drive based around days participating rather than number of reviews becomes doable and I think could be a positive for us. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:53, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Barkeep49, Hmmm... that's a good idea. I'll look into that. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 21:55, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Couple thoughts. I guess that there are about 700 new pages per day to review. And there are 41 reviewers who average at least 2 reviews per day. and about 700 current (non-admin) reviewers who don't. Maybe we could get more numbers done by increasing the "41".

Also some specialists on sports might help. It seems like 1/2 of everyone on the planet who ever played a game meets the SNG  :-) and numerically Wikipedia is becoming a directory of obscure athletes so maybe some people who know enough to quickly assess whether a sports player is in the "1/2" could get a lot of articles done. Or maybe we have that already.

Finally, as an experienced editor (51,000 manual edits over 11 years) who is new to NPP, I can say that it's really a big leap to get fluent at this. Rather than needing to know "almost as much as an administrator" , fluency here requires knowing much more than a typical admin. Besides core policies and guidelines, 100% knowledge or most or all of the SNG's is just a start. Then you need to learn in what areas accepted practices (including those at AFD) override WP:notability. From reading this column, it sounds like I need to find out what Twinkle is and how to use it because the "proper" curation tools don't work for AFD's? Point being, maybe assisting folks in becoming fluent reviewers could get a lot more reviews done.

Sometimes observations by the new dummy guy (me) might be helpful. Sincerely North8000 (talk) 20:46, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

North8000, those are superhelpful observations. I've so appreciated everything you've asked about and commented on as you've gotten more involved at NPP. FWIW, I agree with you on increasing the 41 but that proves hard. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:51, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Devoting more resources to training reviewers that have received the permission already, and having editors focus on specific types of articles that they feel comfortable with are interesting ideas. Taken together, it may be worthwhile to retool our instructions document at WP:NPP to encourage reviewers to master reviewing a few types of articles, rather than expecting everyone to try to review any type of article from the get go. To aid in this, instead of just telling people to go memorize all the SNGs, we could write short guides for classes of articles (e.g. "actor biographies", "festival-circuit films", "Bollywood films", "historical biographies") no longer than 2 paragraphs that identify which SNG criteria are likely to be relevant while also giving advice about sources, likely outcomes, or other things to watch out for.
The danger in proposing all of this, unfortunately, is that writing guides, teaching editors, and recruiting and screening applicants all take skilled reviewers away from doing actual review work. I don't have any more than a gut sense of what the tradeoff curves actually look like in reality, so it's hard to know what the correct amount of resources to devote to these tasks is. signed, Rosguill talk 21:02, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
@Rosguill: Perhaps we should consider relaxing the requirements for autopatrol? Perhaps something like 10 or 15 articles? DannyS712 (talk) 06:41, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
DannyS712, speaking frankly, sometimes I think we should get rid of autopatrol for articles. There is basically no way to filter out sufficiently motivated bad faith editors, and the ability to eventually make money off of it is quite a lot of motivation. I feel like almost every time I've handed it out, I've had to make a point of following up on the editors later on. Reviewing the cases usually takes more time than the amount of articles it saves from the queue for all but the most prolific editors. signed, Rosguill talk 06:50, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
@Rosguill: we could also, via bot (DannyS712 bot III would be a candidate) randomly unreview articles created by autopatrolled editors, to ensure there is at least some oversight. Something like 1 out of every 5 articles created by an autopatrolled user being added into the queue? DannyS712 (talk) 06:55, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
DannyS712, hmm, that could be an improvement as far as follow up work beyond the initial approval. Still, even with a safeguard, I'm not sure it really saves much editor time for all but the most prolific editors, and it's a source of drama and discouragement for editors who most of the time are doing ok work that's still good for the encyclopedia but for one reason or another shouldn't be trusted with autopatrol. signed, Rosguill talk 07:32, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

North8000, WP:Twinkle is pretty easy to install, and is quite frankly a godsend not just for NPP but for a whole litany of maintenance admin-adjacent tasks signed, Rosguill talk 21:06, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think it would be a good investment of time. NorthAmerica's point is a big reason I never got that active in reviewing articles, and similarly why I tended to focus on redirects rather than articles. A lot of editors aren't comfortable reviewing out of their depth, so materials that help people specialize would lower the barrier to entry. It's also something you could recruit WikiProjects to help with so reviewers don't have to take much time off (and maybe some of them will turn into reviewers). Making it easier to participate for casual or niche editors is a good investment of time in my opinion. Wug·a·po·des 02:59, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Your opinion is always welcome here Wug. Thanks for the endorsement. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:07, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@Rosguill: Thanks; I'll go there and learn/use. North8000 (talk) 10:54, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

the point above about avoiding articles in fields where I lack expertise was well made. I rarely touch sports, actors, singers or beauty queens, because I’m not interested in them, not interested in what constitutes RIS in their domains and can’t be bothered spending time on them when there are so many decent well written articles about topics I do know or care about in this gigantic queue. Still I hate to see them sitting there month after month with nobody apparently wanting to deal with them. So if we can get more sports specialists etc. to join in the work that would be great. I have tackled a few mathematics and science ones, which were quite a challenge and I hope don’t turn out to be poor quality. Mccapra (talk) 22:31, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm a bit surprised that so many editors find the sports articles to be difficult. I find that the criteria at WP:NSPORTS for most sports are rather easy to follow. I'm skeptical of how closely they map onto GNG, but from a procedural perspective that doesn't matter because the SNGs have enough supporters who will bat for them at AfD so nominating them for deletion doesn't accomplish much. signed, Rosguill talk 03:02, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Well in my own case I can read and evaluate sources in several other languages so I tend to look for articles to evaluate where that will be relevant. I try to avoid BLPs because so many of them are junk and I don’t want to spend more time at AfD. Sports are easy when the articles are about national teams and their players, but I don’t know all about the different leagues in different sports, different seasons of different leagues, and different seasons of different teams in different leagues. In the time it would take me to check up on all of that I could have reviewed four or five other articles. I’ve done a couple of sports ones that had been stuck in the queue for months, but I’ve looked at others and decided to leave them to someone else who knows the topic better. Mccapra (talk) 04:32, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I've started working on a quick guide resource as brainstormed above, feel free to contribute. signed, Rosguill talk 05:59, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

NPPDRAFT text change

While consulting some Wikipedia pages yesterday, I noticed that WP:NPPDRAFT's advice was significantly different from the text at WP:DRAFTIFY, which covers essentially the same topic. As these are both formally supplement pages, I went ahead and copied the information from DRAFTIFY over into NPPDRAFT, as it more closely reflects the broader Wikipedia attitude toward when to move articles to draftspace. signed, Rosguill talk 18:50, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Mccapra (talk) 21:05, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Could someone a bit more techy than me please look at this page? I want to move it to draft because it is likely that the topic is notable, but the article is poorly written and does not have RIS. The move to draft is not accepted for some reason. There isn’t a draft page of the same name that I can see so there may be some other technical issue with the page. Many thanks Mccapra (talk) 06:29, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Mccapra, the article's talk page was set up as a redirect to the article itself - that might have been causing the 'move to draft' to barf. Could you try again now? GirthSummit (blether) 09:30, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for looking, no it still won’t go. I’ve tried manually and using the Move to Draft script and it says there’s already an article with that name, or the name I have chosen is not valid. Do you think the unusual name is triggering a spam filter? Mccapra (talk) 09:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Mccapra, the draft is a redirect to the article and has two entries on its history, so you can not overwrite it as housekeeping. I think page mover permission is the least bit required to overwrite it. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 09:53, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
ok thanks very much for your help. I’ll add it to the requested moves queue. Mccapra (talk) 10:19, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Or, if there is a draft of the same name, is it best for me to PROD or SD the mainspace article?Mccapra (talk) 10:27, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Mccapra, if you think draftification is the correct course of action, you can move it to an alternative title in the draftspace. In this case, apparently, the correct capitalisation is Draft:Acharya Visuddh Sagar ji Maharaj, if those are the words we are going with. I am guessing Vishuddh Sagar Maharaj may be better, but that would be an issue for when putting it into mainspace, not the other way around. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 11:39, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Mccapra, I will add that whether to go for deletion instead of draftification is always an independent consideration regardless. As for speedy, duplicates of articles can be speedied if there is no need to merge them, not so with duplicates in mainspace of articles in draftspace. I think articles moved from the draftspace are handled in the mainspace if possible, using other deletion/s or maintenance tags as appropriate, but if you are not edit-warring, there is nothing to prevent one-off re-draftification; it would constitute the B of BRD. Usedtobecool ☎️ 11:46, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Derh. Thank you. I didn’t think of that! Mccapra (talk) 11:40, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Well that was all very simple in the end. Thanks for your advice. Mccapra (talk) 11:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

NPP articles sorted by topic

See WP:NPPSORT (User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting) - a new bot-generated report that sorts unreviewed articles by topics. These topics are predicted by ORES machine learning software. Will be updated at UTC noon, everyday. This is similar to WP:AFCSORT for AfC drafts.

Hope this helps in reducing the 10k NPP backlog.

Cheers, SD0001 (talk) 18:46, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Just for fun, I picked one of the topic pages at random. It was User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting/Geography/Regions/Africa/Central Africa, therefore one would expect the articles there to be about Central Africa. I reviwed three of the articles. The first, Swisher Field is about a place in the United States. The second, Ulrich Roller, is about an Austrian Nazi. The third The Southern Mystique is about a book critiquing race relations in the United States. None of them have anything to do with Africa. I'm not sure if the other topic pages are as badly categorized, but I think the machine learning software has much to learn. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:55, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Boy, you have to go through the first 8 before you get to one that has anything to do with Africa. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:11, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Only 2/12 on that list have anything at all to do with Africa. The machine learning definitely has a lot to learn. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:13, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
@ONUnicorn: Thanks for your feedback. Looks like there are issues primarily with Africa (and possibly other geographical topics), though I do note that predictions for such topics like music, film, video games, software, architechture, women, biography all seem to be quite accurate. I am now regenerating the reports (should be ready in about 20 minutes) using the drafttopic model as that one seems to be more accurate. This same model is used for WP:AFCSORT lists, which was well-received by the AFC project. SD0001 (talk) 19:30, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
The situation in Central Africa has improved a bit, but it's still bad. I would suggest ignoring Central Africa and the like for now. These are grey areas which I'd guess ML software has been unable to learn much about because of the small number of pages. Topic predictions for other topic areas are quite accurate as far as I can see. SD0001 (talk) 19:45, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
SD0001, Thank you so much for creating this. One of the main "complaints" I have about NPP is that I can never find articles in topics that I'm interested in. Sam-2727 (talk) 19:34, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
+1 this is a fantastic tool. It does throw up some wacky results but it certainly beats scrolling up and down a gigantic queue. Thank you! Mccapra (talk) 04:53, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
It's worth noting that the tables can be sorted by creation date (if you want to patrol the older ones first), and by ORES class (if you want to pick up some low-hanging fruits). Also, any prior AfDs are flagged in the Notes section. SD0001 (talk) 17:45, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Excited to announce that I've just added short descriptions! About 4900 of the 9900 articles have these shortdescs, so dare I say being able to see them makes these lists so much more useful than the NewPagesFeed? SD0001 (talk) 13:46, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Irish Supreme Court cases articles

Dear fellow NPP members, Over the past academic year I have been working with students and law faculty to create articles on Irish Supreme Court cases. There is an explanation of the rationale and pedagogy behind this project on the front of my user page. The key point is that non-disruptive contributions were my priority.

When the project started I took feedback from WikiProject Law based on a few early articles. They pointed out the need to avoid WP:QUOTEFARM. I worked with the student editors to strike a balance between this guidance and the advice from my law faculty colleagues that it is often important to preserve and quote the exact language used in a decision.

In this respect, one thing I have noticed is that Earwig is giving a false positive on some of the articles due to the presence of direct quotes from the case decision. The case decisions are from the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) and its usuage rules for Irish decisions follows the Courts Service of Ireland regulations. Its rules allow for re-use and quoting as long as citations are provided. Earwig is also flagging common legal phrases and proper nouns. We are checking every article with Earwig to make sure that any flags it puts up relate to material that is properly quoted and cited or refer to common legal phrases and proper nouns. If anyone has concerns about content please let me know. Alternatively, I will have all the articles on my watchlist so I can respond to concerns on individual article talk pages. I'm letting WT:CP know about the articles too.

I will be moving articles to mainspace starting later today and tomorrow, and over the course of May. The law faculty and I are working through them in chunks to do the Earwig checks, formatting, and any final tidying.


AugusteBlanqui (talk) 10:51, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I’ve reviewed a number of these today and found exactly this: Earwig throws up 50-65% vio rates but they’re all direct quotes. The articles I’ve seen are all well written but I leave the rest for others to review. Mccapra (talk) 21:10, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
BTW they’re near the back of the queue in October and November 2019. Mccapra (talk) 21:12, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks to editors for reviewing these. I've moved more articles today. Rather than clutter this talk page I've made a table that lists the articles on the front of my user page. I don't do this in hopes of 'skipping the queue' but just to let NPP know that I take responsibility for these articles. Depending on our (myself and two colleagues) quality control I'll be adding a similar number in two more batches. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 11:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@AugusteBlanqui: I sort of alternate, looking for "easier" (= compliant and well written) articles in newer feeds and then taking on the tougher older open ones. I ran across some of the articles that you noted while doing the former. What a great contribution to Wikipedia! Well written articles, on encyclopedic topics that need coverage in Wikipedia. My only "yellow alert" during reviewing was that they looked TOO well written and so I did a lot a checking for copied text.......in essence that the quotes from sources were identified as quotes. And they also looked good in that respect. Please pass along big "thumbs up" to everyone involved on this great contribution to Wikipedia. Sincerely North8000 (talk) 23:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks @North8000: I've published another batch of student articles today. I've added them to my user page. One more last will arrive next week. Just a heads up in case reviewers see a dozen new articles in the feed with strange names like H v H. My colleagues and I have vetted these through earwig (to make sure what it flags is properly quoted/cited) so please let me know if any reviewer has issues with them. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Cool. North8000 (talk) 16:50, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Dictionary entry

The new page Socionym is written as a dictionary entry, and probably has no hope of being more than that. What should one do with such a thing? --JBL (talk) 18:31, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi there’s a template ‘copy to wiktionary’ that I’ve added to the page. Mccapra (talk) 18:38, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Since there is not already an entry for this term on Wiktionary, you can add the {{Copy to Wiktionary}} template as Mccapra mentioned. If an entry already exists on Wiktionary, the article can be replaced with a soft redirect—the template {{Wiktionary redirect}} was made for this purpose. If you're unsure whether the article should exist on Wiktionary or Wikipedia, just send it to AfD to get input from other editors (e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Give him an inch and he'll take a mile). The general policy on articles that read like dictionary entries is WP:NOTDIC. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 18:57, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
... is a much better answer. Mccapra (talk) 18:58, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks all! --JBL (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Crossing the 10,000 line

I see we've finally cross the dreaded frontier into the teens. Has this ever happened before? Mccapra (talk) 13:33, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Head to WP:NPPSORT, pick your favourite subject, and chuck chuck chuck. I am doing Computing right now. SD0001 (talk) 13:50, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
I’m kind of doing ‘everything but sport’ for the moment as I’m too slow at that! Mccapra (talk) 14:54, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
That's what I did too. Just got through all of the astronomy list. Sam-2727 (talk) 03:42, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Mccapra, I believe it happened before ACPERM. But not great. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:09, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
It's noteworthy that this is happening at the same time as AFC is seeing a massive decline in the backlog - it's just ~1400 now. SD0001 (talk) 14:40, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Well that’s a hopeful sign. Mccapra (talk) 14:54, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Well in some ways that's promising. Hopefully we could get a pipeline of people from AfC to NPP as AfC gets more under control. But ultimately we need more reviewers active. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:49, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Congratulations at reaching a backlog of 10,000. I can only sit back in my retirement and laugh at myself for having been so stupid as to have dedicated 14,964 hours of my life to Wikipedia's content quality issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:47, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
    Kudpung, I understand why you've written this but the people here are not the ones who need this "congratulations". Barkeep49 (talk) 17:57, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Not cool Kudpung. Polyamorph (talk) 13:19, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Attack

Hi Folks, What does it mean on the NPP dialog when it says Attack in the Possible issues field. It on Rule 3 adviser. scope_creepTalk 11:54, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

see Attack page Mccapra (talk) 12:20, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Book copies Wikipedia article

I was at first wondering if Semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror was copied from [1]. But it turns out to be the other way around, because that page was split from Fiber laser. The book doesn't attribute Wikipedia. Is there a place to report these kinds of things? Sam-2727 (talk) 03:51, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

You could probably report it to the publisher. It looks like it's a self-publisher though, so it's probably not a particularly reliable source, and they may not actual vet the content they publish. Wug·a·po·des 04:15, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
That's what I was kind of thinking as well. The publisher doesn't seem very reliable. I will report anyway and see what happens. Overall, the book seems to be copied from a number of sources. Sam-2727 (talk) 04:30, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Update: I emailed them and I got an automatic reply asking me to send a letter to them. Definitely not going to do that, so I guess that's the end of the road. Sam-2727 (talk) 13:35, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Wiki-software operational meanings of out terminoloy

Is there anywhere that coverse the computer operational meanings of "patrol" vs. "curation", and "triage"? I recently got chasticized by somebody saying that I should have used "pagetriage" instead or article curation. North8000 (talk) 11:12, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageTriage and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Curation, I think. Vexations (talk) 11:38, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
@Vexations: Thanks! North8000 (talk) 16:31, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Discrepancy in whether pages tagged for deletion should be marked as patrolled

There appears to be a discrepancy between Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Deletion and WP:NPPLOG. Whereas the former tells reviewers do not mark the page as reviewed when tagging pages for deletion, the latter asks reviewers to mark as patrolled Any page that is tagged for speedy deletion, proposed for deletion, or nominated for discussion. My gut feeling is that the former makes more sense, but I want to confirm here before making any changes. Thanks. --Dps04 (talk) 09:52, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Usedtobecool clarified this for me a couple of weeks ago when I had a similar question. The answer was consensus is not to tag PROD articles as reviewed. Mccapra (talk) 12:28, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Only articles at AfD or RfD should be marked as patrolled. CSD or PROD could be declined and thus need further attention. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:31, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Just adding that the reasoning behind the above practice is that RfDs and AfDs will receive extensive community review, usually including a final closure by an admin, and thus can be considered to be in safe hands once the deletion tag has been placed. CSD or PROD tags can be removed without such a process, so we want to leave those unreviewed so that they don't slip through the cracks. signed, Rosguill talk 17:40, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. In that case, unless I am missing something, the information in WP:NPPLOG is outdated. Unless someone objects, I am gonna go ahead and correct it. A lot of pages link to WP:NPPLOG. --Dps04 (talk) 18:01, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Dps04, yeah that should be corrected. The part where it says that there's no "undo" for patrolling is also a bit misleading, since you can mark articles as unreviewed (although I think that if you're just looking at the patrol log specifically, the unreviewing may not show up). signed, Rosguill talk 18:05, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
@Rosguill: Yep, I got confused by the no undo part too. I'll go ahead and remove that part as well. Hope this clears the confusion and prevents other reviewers from making mistakes like these. Cheers (Update: corrected) --Dps04 (talk) 18:15, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

90-day limit on no-indexing

I didn’t realise till just now, but learned here that mainspace articles automatically get picked up for indexing after 90 days. Aside from articles where a redirect is removed, we have articles in the NPP queue back to 130 days ago. If we don’t catch up to less than 90 days, patrolling isn’t stopping bad articles being indexed. Maybe we need more people working the back of the queue? Mccapra (talk) 21:48, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I was wondering about that. I work the back of the queue about 1/2 of the time and it has happened dozens of times where I google the article title to check for sources and google comes up with the article that I'm reviewing.North8000 (talk) 22:00, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes that 90 day threshold is an important one as things do go live at that point in Google. A good reminder for us all. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:42, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Speedy delete severely flawed article added to mainspace while also exists in draft space?

What is the recommended way to handle severely flawed articles that have been created in the mainspace at same time a draft article exists? For example, Berkeley SkyDeck and Draft:Berkeley SkyDeck. If a draft didn't exist I would probably draftify the article but that is clearly not an option here. Is there some kind of speedy criteria in this situation or how should this be handled? Loksmythe (talk) 01:56, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Loksmythe, in this case it looks like the editor erroneously copy-pasted the draft article into mainspace rather than moving the page. I would suggest continuing the review as normal and either approve and tag the article, or start a deletion process. If you come to a conclusion other than deletion, file a histmerge request. I'm also going to leave a COI notice on the editor's talk page. signed, Rosguill talk 02:31, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
I ran into this problem too and Nnadigoodluck said any time it happened, contact him and he’d override the redirect. Mccapra (talk) 05:16, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

This article shouldn't belong to the encyclopedia, but wouldn't it be a stretch to call this an A1? The context is hard to ascertain, but it is certainly not a very short article, and although it's pretty much nonsense in the ordinary sense of the word, it isnt really total nonsense or a word salad under the strict definitions of "nonsense" in Wikipedia, as some of the sentences are understandaable with much difficulty. (I thought of the possibility of copyright violation, but then it seems not the entire thing is copied, so G12, which requires the entire article (or basically the entire article) to be copied, doesn't quite apply either). And the common deletion criteria (e.g. A7, G11) doesn't really fit here. It seems prod is the only correct option? --Dps04 (talk) 14:26, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Interestingly, the sole author of the article post the exact same passage in his user page. I suppose this is a U5? --Dps04 (talk) 14:29, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
It's a poem. Obvious nuke, and no way that it can be improved by "normal editing". I actually don't know whether that falls under G1, but I suspect any assessing admin who sees this would speedily delete it, and just pick some broadly applicable criterion. Thus I guess the current A1 note will do as well as any. $.02 --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:42, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Elmidae, The problem with using A1 here though, if we want to be strict about things, is that it is not a very short article. I do not really understand much of what's on there, but I do know it's English and it's more than 2-3 sentences long. This should disqualify the page from A1 (see Wikipedia:Why I Hate Speedy Deleters#A1). Sure, Wikipedia is not a place for hosting original research, which includes the poems or fictional works or whatever it is on that article, but Wp:NOT is itself not a speedy deletion criteria. That's why I think we have an article which is close to G1 but not quite, close to A1 but not quite, so by the process of elimination, WP:PROD seems the only likely option. Dps04 (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
@Dps04: well, let's see what happens with the CSD. But you might as well send it straight to AfD if an assessing admin can find no speedy criterion to delete it. This being a very recent creation, I doubt that a PROD would be of any use at all - it will never stick for 7 days. PROD is supposed to be a timesaver, but there's no time saving if the exercise is likely to be futile :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Elmidae, Indeed, someone went and declined speedy under A1. They briefly tagged for G1 until they self-reverted. (History: 1) To me this is where CSD fails us: clearly un-encyclopedic material which nevertheless gets to stay here for 7 days because it can't (properly) get CSDed. I honestly think I am wasting my fellow editor's time if I send this to AfD -.- -- Dps04 (talk) 19:03, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
information Note: Origin of the Harp has been listed at Articles for deletion. You are welcome to join the discussion. --Stay safe, PRAHLADbalaji (M•T•A•C) This message was left at 19:25, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Can't cover all eventualities :/ I don't think these cases are all that common, though. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:52, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
And in a twist ending it gets deleted as a G12. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Barkeep49, It could well be a G12, though for some reason I can't access the copyrighted material in the links post by the closing admin to see if there's really blatant copyright infringement (though there is no reason not to trust their judgment). As I said, this is clearly where CSD fails us: there's a unanimous consensus for this to be deleted, and yet it doesn't really seem to fit in any one of the CSD criteria (editors suggested A1, G1, and even A10 (!), A11 (!!, never thought of this :O)). It seems to be a mixture of some elements of A1 (difficult to ascertain context but not very short), G1 (barely understandable yet not nonsense), G12 (some copied phrases) and even possibly some G2 (in light of this), yet I am hesitant to say within certainty it falls clearly into one of them. The irony though, is when the EXACT same article was post on the's author's user page, there's no need to go through A1, G1, G2, A10, A11, G12 or AFD: it is a no-brainer U5 (and was deleted as such). Dps04 (talk) 04:36, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Sending curation messages to the right student editor

Currently, curation messages about articles created by Wiki Education student editors are sometimes sent to the wrong editor, because of a technical issue involving who initially created the student sandbox page. Can the page curation process or script send the {{Taggednote-NPF}} or other curation message to the Talk page of the student editor who actually created all of the article content in their sandbox, rather than to the Wiki Education content expert assigned to helping the student and who created a rump sandbox on their behalf with with a 33-byte template?

Wiki Education supports and collaborates with university classes whose students have assignments from their professor to write or modify articles for Wikipedia. These classes are monitored and assisted by Wikipedia editors associated with WMF known as "content experts", who (among other things) guide and mentor these new student editors in getting on board as Wikipedia editors. One standard procedure is for the content expert to create a rump sandbox in the student editors user space, consisting of nothing but {{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}} to get them started; for example, here. (This was formerly User:Iaguayo/sandbox, and then was expanded by student editor Iaguayo (talk · contribs) until it became this 15kb article.)

Then, a page curation volunteer like User:North8000 comes along and uses the page creation script in the context of curating Geri Montano, and the tool sends the {{Taggednote-NPF}} message to the Talk page of the creator of the page. Only under current circumstances, the message goes to the Wiki Ed content expert who created the 33-byte sandbox, not to the student who developed the 15kb article, as in this NPF message added to the Talk page of Wiki Education content expert User:Shalor (Wiki Ed).

Creation of a rump sandbox by a Wiki Ed/WMF content expert on behalf of a student editor is a normal procedure. (In this case, the student eventually moved their sandbox to main space after they were ready with it.) Given that the Wiki Ed content expert is not the one really responsible for the creation of the article, but only the initial sandbox, is there some way that the page curation process can assign the NPF note (or other page curation message) to the student editor instead?

I'm not too familiar with tags, but one thing that occurs to me, is that maybe it could be done via an edit summary tag. Upon sandbox creation via {{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}}, a tag could be added to the edit summary naming the student editor in the tag as a tag parameter value. If that is possible, then the curation process could detect that value in the initial edit and act accordingly. If it's not, then alternatively, the Wiki Ed procedure that creates the sandbox in the first place and which currently adds an edit summary like, "Created page with '{{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}}' " could be modified, either automatically or by conventional manual procedure, to instead add an edit summary like, "Created page with '{{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}}' on behalf of user=[[User:Example]] ". The page curation process or script would then pick up the user from the summary, and use it to determine who to send the curation message to. Mathglot (talk) 20:40, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Adding User:Sage (Wiki Ed). Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
I can't speak to the technical details, but I do question this statement, Given that the Wiki Ed content expert is not the one really responsible for the creation of the article, but only the initial sandbox.... Insofar as none of these students would be editing were it not for an assignment, and, in my experience, student editors are generally intimidated and overwhelmed by any message to their talk page, then should not the Wiki Ed content expert and the instructor of the course ideally take responsibility for whatever ends up published here? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 22:25, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Even if not full responsibility, shouldn't they be willing to receive and decide what to do with any curation messages? North8000 (talk) 23:38, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
In terms of what can be done with the page curation process this would need to be added to the wishlist for consideration next time we can capture some foundation programming time. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Changing the edit summary could certainly be done. The normal pattern is that these edits get made with the account of the student editor at the time they join a course on dashboard.wikiedu.org, but for new users these edits don't always succeed because of edit filters, so Wiki Education staff will add them later on if they are missing. The editors writing the articles are definitely the right people to receive these messages, ideally... although as the talk page discussion related to the NPF example shows, if the new page curation happens several months after the page goes live, the student editor may not be active anymore. Anyhow, if there's a specific format of edit summaries that would be most useful for NPP scripts, let me know and I can make that happen.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:07, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Or just have the student editor create the page from the start. Give them the url and tell them to add something and save it when an empty page with the text box comes up. Is that so much harder? Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:28, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
I always like low-tech solutions, especially when they're easy to implement, and just as good (or better) than high-tech ones. Usedtobecool's solution is the easiest, and best one so far, imho. Assuming Wiki Ed procedures could migrate to using UtbC's approach (Sage?), maybe the one I originally proposed could be kept in the toolkit on the back shelf for use when the (new) normal procedure couldn't be used.
And as far as "shouldn't it be the responsibility of the content expert anyway" question: No, it shouldn't. All Wikipedia editors take responsibility for their own edits; it's in a basic principle somewhere; I'll link it if I find it. Content experts are always watching over students, and of course they'll gently nudge or intervene when necessary. But they are not "responsible" for what another editor chooses to do on Wikipedia, however noob they be. Brand new student editors already create several subpages in their User space as part of their training and on-boarding process. There's no reason at all, that creation of their sandbox, couldn't be made part of that. Mathglot (talk) 19:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
Having the student editor create such a page manually is the main way we've been doing it since the beginning of 2020. These days, we don't want students to use their default `/sandbox` page at all; the intended workflow is that students choose which article they are working on, and then they get a link to a sandbox that matches the topic name and start the page, without any template posted by either them or anyone else (example). If they do use the default sandbox with the template, it's usually either because their instructor has been doing this for a while and explained in class how to find their (default) sandbox page, or because they noticed the 'Sandbox' link at the top while on Wikipedia on their own; we don't have much control over what new editors see or do when they are on Wikipedia. The main purpose of the {{dashboard.wikiedu.org sandbox}} template is to make sure students don't accidentally end up in the Articles for Creation process by following the directions of the default sandbox template.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:52, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I think that this particular article is a good general example of the topics being discussed, but not for the mechanics involved. Because.... I used the curation tool to tag the article for notability and it appears that no messages went to any user pages. Then I edited the talk page of the article and put that explanation and info in there. In this case I had two intended recipients. One might be anybody who is interested in the article to look for and add WP:GNG type sources, or at least feel that they were offered a chance and time to do so VS. a fast trip to AFD. Second, since I intended to leave it marked as un-reviewed (due to being close to the line on wp:notability) to get a second reviewer rather than taking it to AFD, I thought that my notes on the digging I did might be helpful to a second reviewer. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Earwig

Is anyone getting Earwig’s copyvio detector to load properly at the moment? It keeps timing out for me. Mccapra (talk) 07:00, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be working again. Mccapra (talk) 07:59, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

So, I have been a bit bolder in my reviews recently and ran into a single-source article (or two) that seems to meet SNG per the source which gives the wrong name. It seems I will have more questions for NPPR after I figure out the rest of it. So, in order not to split the discussion, I was wondering if interested editors could visit the discussion linked in the header, and chime in with respect to how to do NPPing in these cases. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 13:27, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Technical ideas related to NPR

Some new page reviewers may be interested in this village pump discussion. —PaleoNeonate – 11:05, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Could an experienced reviewer critique me on this one?

This is mostly about me learning how to handle borderline ones. LutosAir_Quintet has been tagged for notability since early April. It doesn't have and I can't find any in-depth independent coverage of them. Nor anything that makes them clearly meet a SNG criteria. Yet they appear to be very prominent and active, and there is a lot of coverage with short mentions of them. The have an article in the Polish Wikipedia, their home country. To me, between a preponderance of all of the above, plus guessing that this would almost certainly kept if taken to AFD, I would pass this one. Could an experienced reviewer critique me on this? Thanks North8000 (talk) 13:20, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Slightly off-topic for your question, substantial parts of the article text (containing WP:POV superlatives) are probably close enough to the text on this web page to be a WP:COPYVIO. AllyD (talk) 14:02, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I ran the comparison that AllyD mentioned and found it to be a COPYVIO eligible for deletion under G12 and have deleted it as such. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:22, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
I had spotted wording that I was going to check for such but decided to ask about wp:notability instead. North8000 (talk) 16:04, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Good question North8000. I have not done any kind of BEFORE so I am going off of what was present in the article and your description of what other sources have available. First it having an article on Polish Wikipedia is a data point about renown (which as we know is different from notability). Because each language Wikipedia determines its own standards for notability I find having an article on its home language wiki to be best for finding sources (which may indicate notability here) and second best as a data point for renown (which can tip the balance in a borderline case but isn't a determinant all on its own). I find it a bad sign if a music group does not meet one of the NMUSIC SNG. That SNG is not particularly onerous so your inability to find evidence that either their discography (criteria 1, 2, 3, 5, 11) or performances (4, 10), all of which are sourced and present in the article, meet notability under NMUSIC is a bad sign. The further fact that you can only find a lot of brief mentions might mean that they are good at publicity, which again speaks to renown and not notability. For me, the fact that you can't find enough evidence of notability yourself but also suspect that it would be kept at AfD is a reason to leave it for another reviewer (because unlike AfC belief about what would happen at AfD is not part of our evaluation matrix). They will either be unconvinced enough to nominate it for AfD (at which point you can find out if your suspicion about AfD is correct) or they will mark it reviewed at which point you'll have had a second unbiased opinion confirming with where you landed on a borderline review. Hope that's helpful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:22, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: Thanks! That is very helpful! One question When you said "...what would happen at AfD is not part of our evaluation matrix" is using Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes as a guide sort of an exception to that? Before when I took some to AFD that clearly failed wp:GNG and SNG the dialog there implied that my nomination was in error because "xxxxx type articles are always kept". For example, a small train station on a major rail line. I never tried it with a town, but a very tiny town in India would be another example. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:54, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

North8000, using OUTCOMES successfully is more an art than a science. OUTCOMES should absolutely impact possible nominations for deletion but needs to be done with care. First it really is important to remember what OUTCOMES is and isn't so I am going to quote it at some length:
Quote from OUTCOMES

This page summarizes what some editors believe are the typical outcomes of past AfD discussions for some commonly nominated subjects.

This page is not a policy or guideline, and previous outcomes do not bind future ones because consensus can change. The community's actual notability guidelines are listed in the template at the right. Notability always requires verifiable evidence, and all articles on all subjects are kept or deleted on the basis of sources showing their notability, not their subjective importance or relationship to something else. All articles should be evaluated individually on their merits and their ability to conform to standard content policies such as Verifiability and Neutral point of view.

As guidelines and actual practice change, this page should be updated to reflect current outcomes.

Avoid over-reliance on citing these "common outcomes" when stating one's case at Articles for Deletion. While precedents can be useful in helping to resolve notability challenges, editors are not necessarily bound to follow past practice. When push comes to shove, notability is demonstrated by the mustering of evidence that an article topic is the subject of multiple instances of non-trivial coverage in trustworthy independent sources.

This page simply attempts to summarize Wikipedia's common daily practice with respect to deletion debates. If you feel that an outcome common to articles like the one you are discussing does not apply, then give a common-sense or guidelines-based reason why it shouldn't apply. Avoid weak or illogical arguments, such as "Notability is only an optional guideline" or "We always keep these articles".

For the NPP it should advise rather than dictate your action. It is not a guideline and people should not attempt to use it as such. However, it is wise to have a strong argument (and in some cases a very strong argument), either way (marking something notable which OUTCOMES says isn't, or nominating something for deletion which OUTCOMES says is normally kept). On top of that people in some areas are more passionate/likely to turn out than others. Learning that is part of the experience of doing NPP. Hope that helps. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:11, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't know whether to take this any further, I don't want to be asking for a tidy world that doesn't exit, just trying to avoid doing anything that would be considered to be a mistake by NPP norms. When there is a pretty strong and direct conflict between between Outcomes and wp:GNG/SNG's, is going either way a mistake?:

  1. One real example is a very small unincorporated village in India. There's one source which merely lists it so we know that it exists and where it is. Other than that no coverage and there's not likely to be any suitable coverage.
  2. Another is a small train station on a major rail line. Coverage is info from train schedules and a mention in a newspaper article that it was one of the train stations that commuters were stranded at one day. Unlikely to be any suitable coverage.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:00, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

In terms of #1, OUTCOMES says Cities and villages anywhere in the world are generally kept, regardless of size or length of existence, as long as that existence can be verified through a reliable source. This usually also applies to any other area that has a legally recognized government, such as counties, parishes and municipalities. and NGEO says Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. I don't see a mismatch between OUTCOMES and NGEO. So that Indian village is likely notable and can safely be marked reviewed. In terms of #2 there is no actual guideline just an essay. OUTCOMES says Existing heavy rail stations on a main system (i.e. not a heritage railway) are generally kept at AfD. That has also been my experience. So do you think that this is an exception to that? Some reason it's different enough that it would get a different result? If yes, make your case. If no then mark it reviewed. If the answer is no but it bothers you try and start a discussion - though in the case of transportation I don't see that changing just given the number of editors we have who like our current standards. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:29, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
My attempt was to ask about 2 where OUTCOMES clearly violates the guidelines. I screwed up with my example #1 because I forgot that the same thing is in the SNG. On the latter I think there is such a conflict and I think your answer is that if outcomes is very clear on it, it's OK to follow OUTCOMES. Thanks. North8000 (talk) 21:00, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Potential proposal for AfC

I made a suggestion at ANI that was inspired by a GF user who creates lots of stubs and stubees. Most AfC/NPP editors are aware of the problem and that we are left with lots of work (and a backlog) because we have to expand and source those submissions before they will even meet the basic requirements of being an article stub. In the interim, the creator is credited for creating an article while we spend hours making it one as our backlog grows. I'm of the mind that we may be able to convince the WMF to automate the process by modifying how new articles are accepted upon submission (before they are actually created in mainspace), be it through AfC, draft space, or first created directly in mainspace. Sulferboy offered to help me put a proposal together so I'm pinging him now.

I was thinking an instruction could be coded to prevent article creation if the submission is:

  1. - under a minimum word limit,
  2. - lacks a minimum number of RS per stub or article size,
  3. - contains multiple misspellings, and so on.

The program would return an error message with instructions for what needs to be fixed in order for the article to be published - not unlike submitting a form and having it rejected because you forgot to add a phone number, or the email address wasn't valid. Perhaps JS or Lua could accomplish this task? I'm pinging 2 programmers who have always been able to answer my crazy questions, RexxS, Wbm1058 and DannyS712, just to make sure that what I'm proposing is doable before we add it to our wishlist for WMF. I'm thinking that such a process will be a welcome addition because it will help eliminate the junk stubees and contribute to the reduction of the backlogs at AfC, NPP, and AfD. Your input will be greatly appreciated. Atsme Talk 📧 12:35, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Fix ping Sulfurboy - ooops - Atsme Talk 📧 12:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, hi! I don't believe we've officially met. I Usedtobecool and I believe that's at least two and a half programmers, possibly more. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:10, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Greetings, Usedtobecool - glad to meet you! Two and a half, possibly more - hmmm...well, I've never seen anything done by a half programmer but have seen things done half assed. ^_^ So what I'm gleaning from your response is that it can be done, and that's great news which is worthy of jumbo text to garner the kind of attention it needs. Atsme Talk 📧 18:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
IMO having a robot block articles is not a good idea. IMO there is a much simpler fix for this and many other problems. Make it a routine at AFC, NPP and AFD that it is the article creator's job to find and include wp:notability-related sourcing. It would no longer be the reviewer's job to do the research; they would evaluate sources based only on the included sourcing. North8000 (talk) 12:53, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
The program would not actually be "blocking articles" - it is asking the stub creator to fix the problems right there on the spot, and explaining what they need to fix. Why allow junk into our queue? Atsme Talk 📧 13:08, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Minimum word limits are screened by Special:ShortPages. There are legitimate short pages such as Wiktionary redirects and set indexes that need {{subst:Long comment}}-tagged to whitelist them.

The spam blacklist is a control mechanism that prevents an external link from being added to an English Wikipedia page. A similar control mechanism could be used to stop misspellings but I think the misspelling list for such blacklisting would need to be maintained by administrators. Too many editors are obsessive about tagging things which are borderline legitimate alternative spellings as flat-out misspellings. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Im fed up with experienced editors creating unsourced stubs, sometimes in a high-speed run, and leaving it to someone else to bother finding sources for them. I’m all in favour of being patient and helpful to new editors, but some lazy old ones really need to cut it out. If a new article has neither sources nor external links it should be blocked from mainspace in my view and diverted to draft space. No need to expect anyone else to spend time on it. Mccapra (talk) 16:55, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Support for a minimum page size on the first draft of perhaps 1k bytes but it would only be enforced by the article creation wizard otherwise editors could game the system by slashing articles then deleting/moving them. Oppose spelling being a consideration as there are many good writers with poor spelling, also there are variations of English such as American/British. Also determining a reliable source is better left to human reviewers but there could be a requirement for at least one reference, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:31, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree that spelling/language should not be a factor. Mccapra (talk) 20:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Keep in mind that the program is alerting the content creator to fix those issues. Why not have the content fix them right then and there before the stub is published. I don't understand why reviewers would rather do the work instead of helping the content creator do the work. 😳 Atsme Talk 📧 21:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Well I made about three errors in my comment that I corrected and you've just made one Atlantic306 (talk) 21:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
    Well, at least the program would tell us which word is mispelled - my spellchecker isn't saying a word in mine, but 3 in yours. Ha!! Caught it but there you have it - the program would not have caught it, either - we do need reviewers but I'd rather review a real stub, and not have to create it for the content creator. Atsme Talk 📧 21:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure about this idea. Here are my thoughts:
    • Do unsourced articles and tiny stubs really take up that much of reviewers' time? It takes about 10 seconds to see that an article cites zero sources and decline it (or draftify it). Same with a sub-stub that makes no claim of notability. Long articles with lots of references and unclear notability (e.g. typical COI/UPE articles) are much more problematic. I am aware of the issues with one editor's stubs that led to this proposal, but the issue is not really that their articles are stubs, it's that they create a massive number of stubs and resubmit them without substantial improvement. I looked at a bunch of drafts in the oldest AfC category, and I didn't see any stubs; they're mostly relatively long articles with a decent number of references.
    • A <1000 character sub-stub can be a legitimate article. For example: "Foo bar is a species of bar in the genus Foo. It was described by John Doe in 1900.[2]" That would unquestionably be kept at AFD.
    • Bots do not understand context and cannot effectively determine what is a spelling error and what is not, or which sources are reliable and which are not. "John Doe studied literature at Harvard University" sourced to the New York Times is reliable; "Kombucha may be effective for treating breast cancer" sourced to the New York Times is not. A subject's own website or social media page is usually unreliable, but WP:BLPSPS describes how it can sometimes be an acceptable source. Y Kant Tori Read is not a typo. And so on.
    • Related, newbies often do weird things with reference formatting and it would be difficult for a bot to detect all the possible ways that someone can attempt to cite a source.
    • New users who struggle with writing articles need guidance, not a stock template from a bot (assuming they are trying to write about something marginally encyclopedic and not just spamming their autobio).
    • A bot to decline unsourced articles has been proposed before, and was not approved.
  • All in all I don't see that the benefits outweigh the negatives. Spicy (talk) 21:51, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Spicy - if you haven't already, read this case, which is where this all began. Atsme Talk 📧 23:28, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
I have read it, as I said in my post. That ANI thread is about one user's conduct issues, which can be resolved by sanctioning that user. I don't see a case for placing these restrictions on all users. The average editor at AfC or NPP does not create 1,500 stubs. Spicy (talk) 23:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
See Category:All stub articles - may help put things in perspective as far as how many are created. I haven't found any stats that tell us how many are created in a month. The 2,261,992 number may not be current. I picked one at random St Anthony's Fire (novel). How long do you think it will take you to find all the stubs in that category that don't have sources or enough info to qualify as a stub?? And they keep coming every day. Atsme Talk 📧 00:17, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
That article was created in 2006, when standards were much lower. If it were created in that state today it would have been draftified within an hour or two and G13'd if it was not improved. I dislike substubs and I agree that there are too many poorly sourced, non-notable, useless stubs on Wikipedia. But eliminating them is not worth implementing policies that will prevent the creation of stubs on actually notable topics and discourage new users (without even getting into the technical issues of how a bot can determine if an article is unreferenced or if a source is reliable). Spicy (talk) 00:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Responding to one note above, I don't know how it rolls at AFC, but at NPP and AFD, if reviewer has to prove a negative that suitable sources don't exist for wp:notability, that a tiny stub does consume a lot of time. IMO that's why I think it should be the editor's responsibility to the basis for wp:notability IN THE ARTICLE including sources if the basis is wp:gng. And the reviewer would review only the provided sources. North8000 (talk) 13:01, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  • "Dalbergia latifolia is a species of plant." would be an acceptable stub. So, I am thinking the word limit would be 7, or 6 if we allow imperfect English. Less than a sentence can be G2'ed I think, so I am not sure how much we gain. Bots, I'm pretty sure, can't judge whether a source is RS, they can only work off a blacklist. One good source is enough to write a start class article on a non-controversial topic, so the limit there would be one. I would support stopping completely unsourced articles. In my experience, there are usually external links present though inappropriately, and I doubt bots could be made to tell whether an external link in article body is spam or an attempted inline sourcing. When I write Nepal-related articles, my chrome redlines almost all proper nouns, all words that are transliterated for lack of proper translations but have yet to make to the international dictionaries, and a fair few ENGVARs too, I think. So, spellchecking is probably impossible to implement with current technology. In summary, to properly discuss 1, we would probably need to discuss an actual proposed limit, for 2, the limit can't be more than 1 but the bots are unlikely to be able to judge its quality, and 3, I think would not work. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:46, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Re: word count limits, I have created hundreds of sub-1K stubs, so I am not sure if it's a good idea to rely on word or character counts. Mind you, I would never, ever, move anything to article space that did not have enough sourcing to establish notability by one of our guidelines. I'm not patroller, and don't want to butt in here, but (pun!) I think source count is the way to go. Unsourced should be unallowed. Personally I would require two inline sources.If they are notable and you have one source, the second is not going to be that hard to find. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:13, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

AfD not working

Is the page curation's AfD function broken? I tried to AfD https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Are_Blytt&type=revision&diff=961115804&oldid=955312103&diffmode=source but no AfD page was created at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Are Blytt. This is the second time this has happened, I also had problems with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Artistic scandal, I ended up redoing that one with Twinkle. Vexations (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The "next" button in the curation toolbar doesn't seem to be working either. From my experience Twinkle seems much more reliable than Page Curation. --Dps04 (talk) 18:58, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
I always use Twinkle. Much more reliable. Mccapra (talk) 19:23, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
Dps04, next is working for me. Vexations (talk) 19:40, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
Vexations, that's weird, but anyway I am not a big fan of page curation so I can live without it. Hope someone can look into the technical issue though -- Dps04 (talk) 05:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Curation tool broken?

I keep on getting this. [3]. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 11:14, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

It's working fine for me. This happens sometimes when another script malfunctions. Praxidicae (talk) 11:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

NPPSort not updating?

Hi all, it appears that User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting has not updated since 3 June. Is this intentional or is something off with the bot? I've found the tool very useful for finding articles to review.Eddie891 Talk Work 00:24, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I also just left them a message on their talk page. Incidentally, I just stumbled across the sorting recently, and if anyone hasn't used it before, I strongly recommend it -- I spend a lot of time when reviewing looking for articles that I am comfortable assessing, and having them sorted in various ways is incredibly helpful. --JBL (talk) 20:49, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Addendum: apparently SD0001 is on a wiki-break, but per the comment on their talk page I've sent them an e-mail, so hopefully this will be working again soon! --JBL (talk) 20:54, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Seems to be working again! --JBL (talk) 17:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
And now we are back to 10000 unreviewed articles again --Dps04 (talk) 06:16, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello New pages patrol/Reviewers,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources
  • A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
  • Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
  • A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
  • Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

IMO what's needed to catch up

Looks like we're solidly over 10,000 backlog. Elsewhere it's been written that the way that Wikipedia gets so much volunteer help is a combination that they enjoy it and of fulfilling a mission. I guess we get about 700 articles per day. Not counting admins I think that there are about 700 with the reviewing tool. Yet there only about 66 reviewers who average at least one article per day and only 40 who average 2 articles per day. So IMO what's needed is to help people become regular reviewers. IMO this is because it is so difficult to get fluent / comfortable / knowledgeable at this. In real life / business I'm a good trainer and writer of "dummies guide to....." because I have good empathy/understanding for the people who don't know the topic and what they need. Let's say that someone is an experienced editor, and is familiar with wp:gng, the SNG's and wp:not. They still have these big hurdles to learn:

  1. How does wp:notability actually work?. I may have written down the decoder ring at Wikipedia talk:Notability#North8000's description of how wp:notability actually works right now
  2. For the common reviewing tasks, which tools should be used and how to do the task. I've reviewed over 500 articles and still haven't figured this out. I figured out a hack to make new page curation work on AFD's and so I get by just using curation tools which folks seem to be saying "don't use" but I haven't found a "mark as reviewed" tool anywhere else such as Twinkle.
  3. Some coaching so that people can have a thick skin when they AFD an article. Because on 100% of these there will be somebody there in essence arguing that you made a mistake by sending it there.

If anybody ever wanted to write more guidance to help in these areas I'd be happy to help. As a recent newbie here I still have the much needed "dummy" qualification. :-) North8000 (talk) 14:04, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I think advertising the sorted lists to reviewers would be helpful: I didn't know about them until recently, and they've made my forays into patrolling much more pleasant and effective. --JBL (talk) 14:26, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree a big part of the problem is AfD. Every day I see articles that look like junk but the burden of WP:BEFORE is just too great when it’s a BLP bombed with twenty online refs to sources I’ve never heard of in another language, and when the subject’s fans are going to pile in at AfD and push even more links to even more junk sites in an attempt to prove it’s notable. I guess others feel the same so these articles sit in the queue for months and get indexed after 90 days anyway. Anyhow many of the 700 might be persuaded to do two or three easy ones a day, especially using the brilliant new sorted list. That would push the total down even if it doesn’t help with the tough ones at the back of the queue. Maybe more new page reviewers with language skills in Albanian, Bulgarian, Hindi, Tagalog etc. would be useful too. Mccapra (talk) 15:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I'm of two minds - first, when done correctly, the work is time consuming and finding sources/citing quite laborious; second, we are now dealing with a growing number of paywalls. Not all of us have immediate access to a public or university library. Another disincentive is the time sink when taking an article to AfD. I would not hesitate to reject sloppy, uncited stubs and OR articles, and those that have slipped through the cracks, speedy delete them, but inclusionists have different ideas. Maybe we can recruit them to start citing unsourced content in our queue? Atsme Talk 📧 15:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
lol Mccapra (talk) 20:50, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

In this section my focus was on an easy way to get more reviewers active. North8000 (talk) 17:04, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Ok I wonder if all 700 have received a talk page message about the new bot report which will save them a lot of time in reviewing and let them review what they’re interested in? That might encourage some to be more active. Mccapra (talk) 20:52, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I support that idea. I can set up the message/mailing list, if others like this idea. Sam-2727 (talk) 21:39, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Per my comment above, I also think this would be a good idea. --JBL (talk) 21:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree that featuring it in a NPP newsletter makes a lot of sense. @Sam-2727: no need to setup a new message group as one exists.. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Barkeep49, I didn't realize how complete the list already was. Sam-2727 (talk) 23:37, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
I am all for getting more editors to be reviewers. My concern is that our editor pool is relatively stable and a fair amount of that pool will have either done NPP and burned out or done it and decided it's not for them. The truth is that Onel was pretty much single handedly keeping NPP afloat and so we continue to feel his decision to leave the project these months later. By all means lets get more editors I just find myself failing to be completely optimistic that more editors are there for us to solve it but I also don't have a better solution so more editors it needs to be. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
It's been six months and the noms still keep coming. I wish all that needs deleting would be deleted in one go; the wmf tools give up trying to list their creations, so I have no idea how many even are there. We ought to make an effort to persuade them to come back, but I don't see how we could even think about trying that as long as the AFD notifications keep coming. I'd thought they'd be an admin by now; instead we've got this, and far too few seem to even notice that they were here and are now gone. Usedtobecool ☎️ 22:48, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
The burden placed on NPPers is far too heavy for it to be sustainable without a compromise on one or the other aspect of how this works. AFD is basically a battleground where action you take on each, places you into one or the other camp, often concurrently. As things are what we have is the best we can get, and it is not that far from an ideal outcome as far as I am concerned. When an article has gone three months without being reviewed, it almost always means that the article is in the grey area where it fits none of the boxes, so it getting indexed would probably be the best outcome anyway, it will be taken care of when an experienced editor familiar with the topic comes across it, tomorrow or the next millennia. Like all processes, the quality of the work depends on the number of volunteers taking part in it and their skill vs the load. If we insist on judging our effectiveness by the backlog, we will require a fundamental reform as to what NPP is and does; I see two options: either we judge only on the sources given, which, if it had consensus which it will never have, will shift the burden to AFC and AFD and those process will start to feel the load (AFD is already severely undermanned, aside from being all other kinds of mess) or we stop judging notability and look only at whether it is spam, a complete mess or more A7 than GNG and leave the rest to posterity (the option I'd support; it's not like articles marked as reviewed have never gone to AFD and been deleted one, two, ten or fifteen years after). Usedtobecool ☎️ 23:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
Not exactly to the point, but possibly relevant - I’m not sure we’re using our volunteer time effectively anyway. Out of all the articles I’ve reviewed I’ve never found one that passed AfC and that I wanted to send to draft, AfD or anywhere else. Generally the articles that have passed AfC are the best ones I see. Maybe my experience is unusual but if it isn’t, why are we double-checking them? If we allowed articles accepted at AfC to bypass NPP and go straight to indexing we could focus on the ones taken straight to mainspace without AfC checking. Every new article would still get checked, but we’d end the overlap and we’d have fewer articles to focus on here. Mccapra (talk) 04:26, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
(adding/commenting, not counter-arguing) AFC is a sort of a gateway permission to NPP and is handed out quite liberally. One of the reasons for that is the declined articles will often get looked at by someone else when resubmitted or G13ed after it is declined, or by NPP if it is accepted. I have come across acceptances from some very experienced which happened to be marked as unreviewed, which they would have to have done deliberately since they are autopatrolled. That one is a philosophical choice, I think, the same one discussed a bit at User talk:Deepfriedokra/archive 2019-02#Cleanup thoroughly?. Articles that look good and have come from AFC don't consume a lot of NPP time anyway, do they? Usedtobecool ☎️ 06:36, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
no that’s true, they don’t. Mccapra (talk) 07:02, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

IMO the scope and the numbers points to a few obvious things:

  1. Let's say that there are hundreds of thousands of active editors out there, many taking a few minutes to make a stub on a non-wp:notable topic, with no suitable sources. Then the 50 NPP folks handling 99% of that firehose are the ones responsible for finding sources or proving a negative that they don't exist? Solution: get that sentence changed at wp:before, and then make it a routine at NPP & AFD to make GNG determinations based on sourcing that is already in the article. I don't think that this change would be that hard to make. One sentence at wp:before and then NPP and AFD just deciding their operating norms.
  2. Next, when we spot an article quality issue where we can leave a helpful hint or tag, cool. But for the 50 NPP patrol folks feeling a sort of obligation that they are going to find and address the 20 types of article quality issues issues from the firehose of articles from hundreds of thousands of editors is mathematically out of whack. People want to feel good that they are doing the job properly, not guilt when that is mathematically impossible. The solution would be that the main job of NPP patrol should be to decide if the article should exist. It's cool if they could give tips/tags when they spot one of the other 20 types of problems, but that is not an expectation or responsibility to do 100%. This would be an easy change....just NPP patrol deciding its operating norm and incorporating it into any instructions.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:41, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

There are editors who feel having a Wikipedia that anyone can edit and that retains all notable topics irrespective of their current state is more important than making any quality control procedures we have more effective. We'll get consensus for dissolving NPP before we get one for judging articles by sourcing already in the article. That's what makes me think NPP should stop being a notability police (I would suggest passing all articles when there is reasonable doubt about notability as long as the article is not a complete junk) if it wants the backlog cleared. There is no way BEFORE will get relaxed anytime soon. Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:15, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Honestly in this case I'd agree with those editors, we'd lose a lot of good content if BEFORE wasn't required. The above suggestion seems reasonable, and it's basically what {{notability}} is for. signed, Rosguill talk 05:20, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
As an added note, however, while it's good that people are concerned about the state of the backlog, I'm not sure that we're currently at a point where we need to be drastically changing the scope of NPP; currently we're experiencing a slight increase in the backlog on a day to day basis, but that could easily change with just a handful of newly enthusiastic NPP volunteers (or based on shifts in the rate of new articles being created). signed, Rosguill talk 17:53, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

PageTriage doesn't recognize SFN

Hi all, and I should preface this by saying that I don't understand coding at all, but it appears that PageTriage is flagging articles that use {{Sfn}} style-citation as having no citations. Is this something that could be fixed easily? No big deal if not. Eddie891 Talk Work 17:53, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Predatory journals

Hi Folks. Who is Gen'd up on predatory journals. What is the procedure regarding them. I have ATPase Domain 3B which is showing up two pink references, indicating they are predatory. Thanks. scope_creepTalk 14:53, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

The publisher, ClinMed, is on the original Beall's list [4] - check by entering the name in the search bar. As such, I'd remove the references, and since this is a medical article I'd also remove (rather than tag as uncited) any statements cited exclusively to these sources. Plenty of other refs included though, so the article per se seems fine to me. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:05, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks @Elmidae: I've seen the mechanism several times now, but never gave it much thought in the last couple of weeks, until I started reviewing them. Its quite a nice design in the way they have indicated. Will do. scope_creepTalk 20:06, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Tag alerts

Okay, so a NPP editor tagged an article with a refimprove tag. I assume I was alerted because I created the page. So far so good.

I did not receive a talk page message (as the documentation seems to indicate), only the alert notification. So, does this mean we can send alerts to other users? How does this alerting work? CapnZapp (talk) 19:22, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: I've moved two of these articles back to draft, now the 2nd time, as they are unsourced. scope_creepTalk 11:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
@Scope creep: Could you please answer the question? This is not the place to discuss individual articles. Thank you CapnZapp (talk) 12:14, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
Apologies, that was crass. scope_creepTalk 12:21, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
No problem. CapnZapp (talk) 18:02, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Review v Patrol

These two terms appear to be used interchangeably. Is there a distinction that I am missing, or do they mean the same thing in this context? --PuzzledvegetableIs it teatime already? 15:32, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Puzzledvegetable, they're used interchangeably. signed, Rosguill talk 17:24, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Copyvio Articles

User:Koushik Pain (currently blocked) created a series of articles about Ashoka Chakra awardees, most of them are cases of blatant copyvio (mostly copy-paste from external sources). I have already reported some of the articles and they are deleted. There are still a lot of articles.

  1. I have read WP:SOLDIER, and most of the articles seems to fail it. Can someone confirm on this ?
  2. Even if the articles are notable, after removing the copyvio content, no significant content remains. So, what should be the next step ? Sanyam.wikime (talk) 15:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
    The biographies of soldiers meet WP:NSOLDIER #1, as they've received Ashoka Chakra, which is India's highest award for valour. However, some of the receipients aren't actually soldiers, such as Chaman Lal. Not sure whether NSOLDIER can be used to justify notability for non-soldiers.
    Are the gallantry award citations actually subject to copyright? SD0001 (talk) 12:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
    @SD0001:, I was not sure about the WP:NSOLDIER as Ashoka Chakra is India'a highest award for peacetime courage only, but thanks for clearing me about that.
    I didn't get what do you mean by Are the gallantry award citations actually subject to copyright?, because the article just don't use the source as a citation, they have large amount of texts (like the complete story of the awardee's braveness) directly copy-paste from the copyrighted source. So, that seems as a violation to me.
    Can someone also suggest the future course of action.
    P.S. - I am the above user only, who started the topic (renamed). Zoodino (talk) 08:47, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
    SD0001, I think I’m WP:NSOLDIER states that “
    Were awarded their nation's highest award for valour,or were awarded their nation's second-highest award for valour (such as the Navy Cross) multiple times,” This is my area of concern on most of the articles. Megan Barris (Lets talk📧) 06:13, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
    I am not an NPP reviewer, but just got interested. Megan Barris (Lets talk📧) 06:16, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

New essay related to NPP

I wrote a user-space essay with some thoughts about the role that NPP plays in reproducing Wikipedia's systemic bias, User:Rosguill/New pages patrol is racist. The title is intentionally provocative, and I'd appreciate people's thoughts on the essay. I think that many new page reviewers already informally practice some of the behaviors that I suggest adopting in the essay, but I'm wondering what people think about putting them into practice on a broader scale. Inasmuch as many of us are keenly aware of the problems of systemic bias on Wikipedia, it may do well to formally address the issue as part of our NPP onboarding process alongside tutorials other core components of new page reviewing. signed, Rosguill talk 23:45, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

English Wikipedia's ability to cover topics is incredibly uneven. To look just at NPOL, we will have articles on state legislators representing hundreds ore maybe a few thousand but not on mayors who represent 90 or 100 thousand. Does English Wikipedia underrepresent topics in certain countries, even English speaking ones like Nigeria and India? Yes. Is this a problem? Unequivocally a yes. I could take issue with various parts of the essay (why, for instance, does it suggest a loosening of standards for articles on corporations and other topics that are rife with spam?) but instead let me categorically reject what I think is an underlying suggestion.
New page patrol should not be forming a LOCALCONSENSUS about notability and verifiability. We should, instead, be striving to reflect the consensus of the whole community on those incredibly important topics. If we as editors think that our consensus about those topics should be changed we are better equipped than most to get those topics changed. We should not, without the community's endorsement, change how we patrol and thereby, to some large degree, implement a de facto change without an accompanying de jure change.
To me the most interesting and thought provoking element of the whole essay is the section on AfD and questioning whether nominators should see deletion as a victory. But that could be written to everyone not just to NPP. I think there's a lot we could do to help facilitate coverage in our areas that are underrepresented, including getting more sources recognized for their local importance at WP:NPPRS. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:06, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
My thoughts when writing this were more to challenge how people assess notability, particularly in light of NPOSSIBLE, rather than proposing an actual formal change of standards. We already have a huge amount of leeway in deciding what is or isn't significant coverage, and we're also already empowered to simply place a {{Notability}} tag instead of nominating for deletion for borderline cases.
It's easy for new page reviewers to fall into the habit of seeing themselves as the strict guards at the door, treating all shortcomings in an article with equal ruthlessness. I think that it's important for us to recognize what the implications of our decisions are. Ultimately, we're here to build an encyclopedia, not to enforce a bureaucracy. signed, Rosguill talk 01:46, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
Upholding the consensus of the community around content policies and guidelines is building an encyclopedia. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:55, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
I think that a generous approach to NPOSSIBLE assessments is closer to the broad community consensus (and to your own track record of patrolling) than mechanistically AfD'ing anything that falls short of having three quality references, which is really the main thing I'm polemicizing against here.
Regarding the bit about whether my comments about AfD are more broadly applicable, they are to an extent, but I think that there's still a special relationship vis-a-vis NPP here. An article sent to AfD as part of an new page review is being sent there as the result of a routine process. On some level, you are sending it to AfD because a flowchart told you to. Is your obligation as a reviewer to get the article deleted, or is it to submit it for further community review? signed, Rosguill talk 03:20, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for writing this Rosguill. I’m going to think about what you’ve said for a couple of days before replying. Mccapra (talk) 19:10, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I probably speak for a lot of new page patrollers in saying that I just attempt to do the job properly, and to figure out exactly what "properly" is. And this includes borderline AFD decisions.North8000 (talk) 19:33, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

There's one situation where I think that some systemic bias against non-English topics is unavoidable. This is where the editor never bothered to put in wp:notability-related sources, and the NPP patrol is supposedly expected to search the world, and review the sources that they find to prove that wp:notability ones don't exist before AFD'ing it. For a NPP person to do this for the world of non-English sources is unrealistic to put it mildly. Something that the millions of editors don't have the person-hours to do you can't expect the 70 NPP people who do 99% of the reviews of the 700 articles per day that they generate.North8000 (talk) 19:44, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

At AFD's I never take on the role as an advocate for deletion. If people make a faulty argument that I screwed up, I might cite the policy in response. In fact, a common phenomena is that the AFD triggers a massive flurry of work adding sources and content and I end up reversing my stance to "keep". North8000 (talk) 19:48, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Shame on you, Rosguill, for writing that ill-thought meandering foolish essay. What you meekly suggest giving "extended benefit of the doubt" is in fact an admission that you think Wikipedia's mission is forward a political agenda and that you, who claim to be an admin, are fine overlooking the rules when it suits that political preference. This sort of affirmative action take on WP:N only creates derision, as we assume that articles on some subjects are just there to placate the chattering class, not that those articles should exist on merit. It used to be, we established community rules and then we stuck to them, without regard to race, class, sex, etc. and efforts to "enforce a bureaucracy" were the application of those community standards. What you stupidly encourage is the worst sort of favoritism to replace objectivity. I don't think you ought to have a mop if you cannot agree to stick to community consensus. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:56, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
@Chris troutman, in as much as we are all entitled to our opinions, statements like Shame on you, ill-thought meandering foolish essay, are very much belittling & condescending & as mature individuals that I presume we all are it is my opinion that your perspective and reaction on/about the essay Rosguill wrote could have been civil without the affronts. I honestly didn’t expect this from you, we haven’t interacted ever before but I have always had great respect for you this really shocked me coming from you. Celestina007 (talk) 22:05, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
@Celestina007: It's funny; Calliopejen1‎ said almost the same thing to me once. What you ladies both fail to recognize is that I can usually be perfectly pleasant but when I see egregious errors (in this case, this essay), I don't mince words and I don't suffer fools. Being collegial, while intended on this website, is often impractical and sometimes, ineffective. The other replies to this essay, above mine, failed to throw sufficient criticism against this essay. Dangerous ideas have to be stopped. Maybe now you have more respect for each of them as editors than you do for me. I'm content to have dissuaded the essay's editor by imposing a cost for their action. Rest assured, I take your condemnation in the spirit it was offered. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:06, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Chris troutman, there's a reason I put this in user space. This essay is an attempt to grapple with our shortcomings and blind spots as new page reviewers, not an attempt to propose new policy or declare my intent to ignore community consensus. It is probing at the corners to see if there is room where we can reassess how we evaluate articles that we are individually ill-equipped to evaluate: if I was trying to push this as a sweeping reform, I'd be at the village pump. And it's hardly being done to placate the chattering class. To be quite honest, the set of experiences that immediately precipitated this essay was seeing a slew of submissions of films from regional Indian cinema that did meet notability guidelines, but which had been previously deleted following PRODs or AfDs on less well-written versions of the article by different editors. These articles, by our own guidelines, should not have been deleted in the first place, but we were unable to recognize that at the time. signed, Rosguill talk 20:09, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    Then I suggest what you should have written about was encouraging patrollers to perform a more-thorough WP:BEFORE search to find foreign-language sources. Without knowing which specific AfDs to which you refer, I would imagine you bristle at Anglophone monoglots not seeing inherent notability in the subjects you like. You've proven that my criticism of your writing is on point because your explanation now seems to either turn on sources that weren't considered or you just want us to keep articles you like. This is important for you to understand because you're encouraging NPP to ignore some set of rules for some reason and you haven't been completely clear as to why. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:41, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    It really has nothing to do with the subjects I like--I know next to nothing about Indian cinema, and I've come across instances of this happening with articles that I myself nominated for deletion. Simply recommending a more thorough BEFORE doesn't help because the underlying problem here is that most of us will fail at this BEFORE no matter how much time we spend on it. As North8000 pointed out above, this would put more (unreasonable) burden on page reviewers who are already overtaxed. signed, Rosguill talk 20:48, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    Chris troutman, everyone understands that people on the internet are awful and that's why we can't have nice things; you don't need to be so aggressive about reminding us. Rosguill, thanks for starting a worthwhile discussion. --JBL (talk) 20:52, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    @Rosguill: Then you still haven't explained your position; you're saying that there are articles about notable subjects but the authors didn't make a claim of notability and you think that they get nominated because a BEFORE search doesn't turn up adequate sources? Why? It would seem if the sources don't exist then the subject isn't notable. If our editors aren't finding sources and you don't blame them, then maybe that article doesn't belong on en-wiki. There are wikis for the languages of India. Is this your complaint? Chris Troutman (talk) 20:58, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    Chris troutman, my position is that we are routinely deleting articles that should not have been deleted, that do meet WP:NEXIST, because of the confluence of our own shortcomings in our ability to assess them and other, inexperienced editors' failure to provide sources upfront. Even if it turns out that our hands are tied and there's nothing that we can do to address this issue, I think it's important for us to be cognizant of this issue and to at least think about ways to address it. signed, Rosguill talk 21:06, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    It would seem that if there's no claim of notability and BEFORE search doesn't reveal sufficient sources, then the article should be deleted, and your premise is wrong. If you're bemoaning the loss of eyesore articles because you claim the sources exist but somehow no one can find them, then how are you finding them? Are you simply convinced that the sources must exist but no one has them? Your essay isn't asking us to be cognizant that sources aren't translated or are paywalled, so maybe you ought to re-think what it is you're asking of the community. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:22, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    Newspaper archives in physical libraries are almost certain to contain coverage of these kinds of subjects. They're also totally inaccessible to anyone who's non-local, and are non-trivial to access even if you are local. I think your tagging of Bin Badal Barsaat (1975 film)‎ for notability is pointy and is actually a pretty good illustration of the problem I'm identifying: this is a movie, from before the internet existed, starring actors that at a glance appear to be fairly big names in Lollywood, that is still generating retrospective reviews in 2017 that state that the film was a big hit on release. Do you really think that contemporary Pakistani papers wouldn't have published reviews? signed, Rosguill talk 21:56, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    Finally, after much questioning, get to your actual point: you think that some subjects certainly pass GNG because sources must exist although no one has dug them up, and you think editors ought to avoid deletion because you'd rather keep a stub with a single citation rather than have no article, at all. That's way too inclusionist for me and your haphazard essay does not explain your point well. Immediatism is my philosophy. If you want to argue that I tagged that single-citation article with no claim of credibility simply because you wrote it, you're welcome to express that during the deletion discussion. I can't speak to what Pakistani newspapers wrote about in 1975 and I'm fine leaving that to Urdu-language editors to figure out. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:23, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

It would seem to me that a routine of "how to build a new article" should include looking for and including wp:notability-related sourcing. How is that radical? If the responsibility of new article creation is limited to generating titles and then it is the responsibility of NPP to do a world-wide source search and confirm lack of suitable sources, then wikipedia needs only about 70 title generators and a million source researchers and curators instead of the current opposite.  :-) North8000 (talk) 21:12, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Regarding Bin Badal Barsaat (1975 film)‎, I don't think it is pointy, its bang on, although its still being written. That kind of work to validate these kind of references are hard work at the best of times and trying make a effort to go beyond that to make a decision, which is really outside our purview, is making it extraordinary hard. And there is other better articles to review. The onus has always been on the writer to source it anyway and the reviewer is under no compunction to do the work. Your essay is laudable but essentially advocating for loss of control when the problem is more structural than operational. On top of that we don't have the tools to do it and never had. We have no utility/script on hand to identify the type of articles that your talking about. We already have fairly well developed process, so what would change? Slowly but surely the WMF are holding editithons all over the world, but it is very very slow and it will be 20+ years before its completed. scope_creepTalk 22:52, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
@Rosguill: How about getting wikiproject going so we can focus on it, perhaps formulate an idea what the problem is, what research has been done on it, what other efforts are going on, and so on. scope_creepTalk 08:42, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I've written a response to this essay in my own user space here. Mccapra (talk) 18:45, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Changes at the WikiEd Foundation

Sad news for all of us at NPP. The WikiEd foundation formally announced a reduction in scope in how WikiEd will be supporting students for the coming year at the education noticeboard. As student editors come into contact with NPP regularly and because they can be a big time sink I"m going to quote an excerpt at length:

What does this mean for our programs on English Wikipedia? We will continue to run our Student Program, where students edit Wikipedia as a class assignment, and our Scholars & Scientists Program, where we train subject matter experts to edit, just with fewer numbers than before. In particular, with our Student Program, we have announced a stricter application process to participate in the fall 2020 term. We will be accepting some courses per normal, and some under the condition that student work stays in sandboxes until our staff has a chance to review the student work, in an effort to avoid putting additional burden on the volunteer editing community. As always, if you see any problematic editing from student editors in our program (they'll have a Wiki Education banner on their user page that links to their course), please flag it here on the Education Noticeboard or ping User:Ian (Wiki Ed). Our intention with this plan is to balance providing good support to participants without causing some courses to teach without our support. We hope this will result in good quality content on Wikipedia with minimal disruption to volunteer efforts.

If you find courses that are editing without WikiEd support and they are causing issues WP:ENB continues to be a place to note it. Obviously this page can also be used if discussion is needed about an appropriate NPP response to student editors as well. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:16, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I've pointed this out before, but WikiEd only supports projects in North America. There are many academics outside of North America who use Wikipedia for class projects. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 07:45, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Could I ask for help with the talk page of this article please? The original article was redirected to Kanafeh a while ago, along with its talk page. I think the redirect on the article was reverted recently and it was recreated. However the talk page still redirects to the talk page of Kanafeh. I’ve had a look at this but I’m afraid if I try to revert the redirect so there’s a proper talk page at Kadaif I’ll end up making a gigantic mess and annoying everyone. Could someone with decent hand+eye coordination fix it so Kanafeh keeps its talk page and Kadaif gets one back? Many thanks. Mccapra (talk) 14:39, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Mccapra: I've reverted the main page back to the redirect. The main article mentions Kadaif, so that is OK. The talk page of the redirect didn't have content. It seems to be OK, but I could be missing something. scope_creepTalk 15:24, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Great thanks. I wasn’t sure if the Kadaif article was really needed or should be redirected, but wanted to keep article and TP together. Anyway you’ve resolved that one for me! Thanks Mccapra (talk) 19:08, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposals around changing PROD

There are a variety of proposals around changing PROD that New Page Patrollers might be interested in participating in. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:33, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

NFOOTY wrto. specific articles

I recently started looking at footy articles, and came across a batch of new ones from a prolific creator with more than a few articles still in the queue which don't seem to meet NFOOTY, but some of the similar articles from them have already been marked as reviewed.

I would like to know what, if anything, I am missing in my reading of NFOOTY. Usedtobecool ☎️ 19:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool: Hi. I don't normally get involved in football article, but do sometimes if they are part of a batch of WIR articles. My understanding of WP:NFOOTY is that playing internationals for your country shows notability? --John B123 (talk) 19:31, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
John B123, looking through a few of the ones you reviewed, they've played in youth-international teams for the most part (e.g. U19 Denmark), so they don't qualify on those terms. That having been said, most of the players listed here are described as having played in the highest-level women's leagues in their home countries. While they're not listed at WP:FPL, the section for women's leagues has a disclaimer saying it's incomplete, so I'd be inclined to think that top-level leagues for women likely meet NFOOTY's criteria. signed, Rosguill talk 19:56, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I have notified the WikiProject because I'd like to know just how incomplete FPL is exactly. I have been treating it like scripture, more or less. Usedtobecool ☎️ 20:25, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm now seeing the section on "top-level non-fully professional leagues" would suggest that the heuristic which I proposed in my previous comment is off base. signed, Rosguill talk 20:28, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
All the ones I curated through met the played in a competitive game between two teams from fully professional leagues qualifier. Or so I thought....Hughesdarren (talk) 23:51, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Hughesdarren According to WP:FPL, the only fully professional women's football leagues are in England and US, and they haven't played in either. So doesn't look like any of them have played in a fully professional league. Joseph2302 (talk) 08:01, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
Can normally be quite quick to do, I will check the FPL list and also check sites like soccerbase.com and soccer way.com to make sure the name of the player and stats match up. Govvy (talk) 10:14, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Notability of schools

Could some other reviewers please take a look at a run of articles about schools in Ethiopia here. I think they’re a bit unusual from a notability point of view. The schools seem like run of the mill non notable schools but unusually they have been studied as part of a piece of research into sanitation. My view is that despite coverage in these RIS they’re not notable, but as I’ve never come across a similar case I’d welcome others’ views. Thanks Mccapra (talk) 10:22, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

To expand on my reasoning - schools are from time to time the subject of specific research. All schools have children who walk there from home. A study telling us what % of children in the schools studied walk from home doesn’t tell us anything special about it, though it gives us unusual detail. Similarly in the UK all schools have some kids on free school meals. A study telling us what number receive free lunches at a particular time doesn’t mean the school is notable, it just means we know a lot about its lunches. Mccapra (talk) 10:45, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
Mccapra, less-than-high schools that don't meet GNG/NORG are redirected to their respective school districts (probably a western thing) or otherwise the lowest admin division that the school belongs to (Mahbere Sillasie for Harehuwa school). List of schools in Ethiopia may be a valid alternative. AFD would be an option if redirecting doesn't stick. Less-than-high schools aren't usually kept as standalone articles unless they meet GNG, though high schools are kept as long as there is proof that they exist. Private high schools may be easier to delete for not meeting GNG especially if they are promotional. For public high schools, though policy requires them to meet GNG, AFD doesn't. Being "high" is like an unwritten SNG for schools. Usedtobecool ☎️ 11:29, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
Usedtobecool ok so do these all seem to be GNG passes? Mccapra (talk) 15:33, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
Mccapra, sorry for the delay. I looked at the first few, all of them have the same kind of content. I haven't checked the sources and probably couldn't if I tried, but it's easy to guess what they may be about from what they are cited for. My opinion is they are highly unlikely (because saying definitively without checking the sources would be out of line) to meet GNG. It looks kinda like writing a BLP describing the anatomy and physiology of Homo sapiens. What the description section gives, in particular, is trivial and fleeting. Most of the rest of the content (which is true of almost all rural communities in the third world) makes those articles a WP:COATRACK for content which comes better under the scope of Education in Foo, Women in Foo or Health and sanitation in Foo, etc. and therefore doesn't add to notability of any specific school. If there was a school like that in Denmark, it would be scandalous enough to meet GNG I reckon, obviously not so in Africa and South Asia, IMO. If no one else comments here and you still can't be sure, try with one, first redirecting then taking to AFD, or simply watchlist them and see what ends up happening. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 05:15, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks yes I’ll try a redirect first. At AfD I will have to make a case for why the subjects are not notable despite coverage in multiple RIS. Mccapra (talk) 05:35, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
I'll add a plea for redirecting rather than AfDing, on the often-repeated but still valid basis that schools in countries such as Ethiopia are far less likely to have the opportunity of attracting the sort of significant coverage, if the sources in these articles are to be dismissed, that makes First World schools notable. There's also the point that an official source like a Watsan report confirming the existence of a school in a particular populated place can serve under WP:GEOLAND as support for articles on the places, so despite the above these are not entirely useless. Ingratis (talk) 11:28, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

When going through new page review I pick and choose what to tag, but what am I suppose to do when another editor keeps removing a template like ref-improve, like on this article? Govvy (talk) 13:30, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Govvy, he's not wrong to say that everything is sourced. Not every individual sentence is sourced, but the content of the dutch source supports all the claims. AD is a reliable source for such claims. You might want to try DeepL Translator, it does a decent job of translating Dutch to English and is often a bit better than Google Translate. Vexations (talk) 13:58, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
But in the software, when you use the option asking for more references, that's what it adds, :/ Govvy (talk) 14:04, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Autopatrol and global rollback

Note: previously discussed at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 36#Autopatrol and global rollback

In light of this case, I'd like to propose again that a bot automatically un-patrol pages creating by global rollbackers that are not locally autopatrolled --DannyS712 (talk) 00:49, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

  • I was nominally in favor of it then and remain in favor of it now. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:20, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Coincidentally, it turns out this is the same user I mentioned without mentioning in the linked discussion. This is how the article looked when I found it, and I am still not convinced it meets ORGDEPTH. I see his local permissions have now been removed. He is still an AFC reviewer though. I suggest he be removed from that list, and we, at the very least, take a random sampling of his curation log and AFC acceptances to check for UPE/SPAMmy articles.
    On the subject, my concerns remain the same as last time—I doubt it will be effective considering how easily he got other local permissions here despite previous issues on a global scale, but that is far from an excuse not to try. I would strongly support. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:46, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Good idea, global rollbackers who don't have local autopatrol rights will unpatrol creation of new pages/files automatically by the bot. I'd strongly support this idea. Thanks! Warm Regards, ZI Jony (Talk) 08:47, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. I was a bit surprised when I first found out that global rollback came with global autopatrolled. Many global rollbackers are not regular editors on enwiki and their pages may still benefit from review. There is also the possibility that it could be used as a loophole for UPE (not saying this is what happened here, just a consideration). We have seen paid editors go to great lengths to get autopatrolled and from what I can tell, getting global rollback seems to be easier than getting autopatrolled on enwiki (spend a few months reverting cross-wiki vandalism vs. create 25 notable, well-written, non-stub articles.) I appreciate this serves a purpose on smaller wikis where individual edits are patrolled, but I don't see a compelling reason for GR to have autopatrolled on enwiki. Spicy (talk) 10:57, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. But I would suggest removing autopatrol from the GR global user group to resolve the issue fundamentally unless there are better options. --94rain Talk 04:42, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
    94rain, that's something that would have to be done on meta. This is something we can do and control locally. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:51, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
    Yes. And it appears that there already exists a relevant discussion thread on meta: m:Wikimedia_Forum#Why_does_global_rollback_include_autopatrol?. I will comment there later. Best, 94rain Talk 05:44, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Support. The real fix is that the right should no be included with global rollbacker but also do here per Barkeep. North8000 (talk) 06:01, 3 July 2020 (UTC);

BRFA

BRFA filed at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DannyS712 bot III 72 --DannyS712 (talk) 10:27, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether this is the correct place to request this, but I was wondering if a NPP member could take a look at this article. It appears to be a first effort created by a new account directly in the article mainspace. The creator's username also might indicate a case of WP:AUTO and WP:COISELF. The article has tons of problems such as incorrect formatting and syntax, promotional tone, possible image copyright issues, non-free content issues, embedded external links, but many of those are things that can be cleaned up without too much difficulty. The main concern, however, has to do with WP:BIO and whether the subject is Wikipedia notable. As stated above, the article never went through AfC so it never really got assessed for notability. It's template to just WP:DRAFTIFY this and give the creator suggestions on how to improve things (H:YFA, WP:REFB, etc.), and then advise them to submit it to AfC when they think it's ready, but if NPP feels the article is viable there's probably no need for any of that. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:47, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Marchjuly, I agree he's likely notable. However that article is to me, G11 eligible. However, because there seems to be a good faith, if clearly COI, editor involved I did indeed choose to draftify it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:56, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for taking a look Barkeep49. Do you think you could post something on the creator's user talk explaining what happened and why so that they don't try and recreate the article again. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:02, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Marchjuly, the draftify script I use does indeed leave a message about what happened. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:25, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
I didn't know that. Thanks again. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:45, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
The creator undid your move, but I moved it back to the draft namespace again. I also left a message on their user talk explaining why. If you'd like to clarify things or add anything new , feel free to do so. You are an admin so perhaps you can be more persuasive than me. I might've much things up a bit in moving it back to the draft namespace; so, my apologies if I created a bit of extra cleaning up for you or anyone else. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:09, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Top Reviewers Report

Does anyone know what is going on with the lagging numbers and missing sections in the Wikipedia:Database reports/Top new article reviewers report? No big deal, but I like to look at that report to see how much work everyone is doing. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 15:37, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I asked on the talk page of the person who runs Community Tech bot a couple of days ago and he said there was some maintenance on the servers causing a delay and it would be back soon. I think it's been down most of the week though. Mccapra (talk) 05:32, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
Looks like it’s fixed now. Mccapra (talk) 09:52, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Broken again. Mccapra (talk) 19:05, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
A lot of other statistical reports in WP are in rough shape over the past week or so, such as Wikipedians by number of edits, your monthly edit counts, etc. All related to database maintenance. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 00:36, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Future season of a sports team

I've been working the oldest end of the que and bit the bullet and took a sports article that looked like it should go to AFD.  :-) It was about the future 20/21 season of a sports team. 2020-21 Queen of the South F.C. season. Currently there is no content about the subject of the article and no references about the subject of the article. It provides an outline/ framework for a future article when the subject occurs. The few sentences of content and all of the references are about previous seasons. It is probable that if/when the season occurs, the article would be a "keep", but right now none of that exists.

I AFD'd it and it's coming back as an overwhelming "keep". Is there a common practice at NPP on what to do with articles that are likely to have suitable sources in the future but not now?

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:09, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

In my experience an upcoming season or election is generally considered notable. In the case where there’s no information about a season in the future, I’d recommend redirecting the article to the team itself, though even then an afd may be worth the time given that most articles don’t cover things too far into the future (see WP:Articles for deletion/Super Bowl LX). In some cases, draftification or userfication is another option to allow the content to develop further. Best, Eddie891 Talk Work 20:24, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@Eddie891: Thanks! North8000 (talk) 11:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
I have enacted Draftify for a few articles of this nature that were woefully incomplete, with just a structure waiting to be filled with info. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 00:49, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Isingness

The new page patroller and autopatrolled editor Isingness has been blocked for UPE spamming (credit to GSS). I've listed their patrols here: Special:Permanentlink/969319005. MER-C 18:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

@MER-C: Would it be helpful to, via script, just ad all of their patrols back to the queue? DannyS712 (talk) 01:46, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes. I haven't written the code yet. Separately I have blocked TheImaCow for accepting AFC drafts for pay (credit to SamHolt6). MER-C 10:22, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
And this one made 45K edits in 3 months, which now presumably need to be checked.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:19, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
Wow! Thanks. So disappointing. Mccapra (talk) 15:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
I was planning to protest about TheImaCow as he/she had 44k+ edits. I thought it was decades, but three months!!! That is really worrying. scope_creepTalk 15:55, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
3700 odd edits a week or appropriately 500 a day. I think it must have been more than 1 person on that account. scope_creepTalk 16:03, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
!!!!!! Mccapra (talk) 16:29, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
No surprises here. Usually when something is too good to be true it usually is just that, “too good to be true” I’m always suspicious of “new editors” with precocious talents. Celestina007 16:46, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
...I think I got some similar concerns at first - I average > 200 edis a day. --DannyS712 (talk) 09:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
@MER-C: the code is fairly simply, should I add them all back to the queue? More generally, should we establish a general guideline on what to do when such accounts are discovered? --DannyS712 (talk) 09:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I think these have to go back to the queue.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:39, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
In that case, would you be willing to flag me as an account creator for a few hours so that I am exempt from the rate limit? My reading of the code (<nowiki> ) is that I would be subject to a rate limit of adding 1 per 3 seconds, but as a global rollbacker I am exempt from the rate limit, so this wouldn't be enforced unless I figured out how to code the delay into the script. Granting me local rights that exempt me from the rate limit would mean that I wouldn't violate Wikipedia:Global rights policy#Global rollbackers, and while I'm not sure if this would technically be within the scope of account creator, the only other local groups with that right are bots, crats, event coordinators, stewards, and admins. DannyS712 (talk) 09:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
No, I am afraid it is not in scope for account creator flag. Could we just have the script running with the rate limit but longer? Otherwise filing a bot could be ab option.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:37, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
I'll try to add a timer to the script DannyS712 (talk) 10:40, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

44k edits in three months!? So multiple people working from that account simultaneously like scope says. Probably a nightmare to implement but zoom logs me out of one device if I login to the same account on another device. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 18:09, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

There is several ways of doing. VDI is one way of doing it possibly, but there is plenty of other utilities for moving and tracking sessions. I been thinking about it, there is just no way that editor could put out 500 edits a day, every day for three months. I've worked half-way through the list at Special:Permanentlink/969319005. There is a lot of decent articles in, but a lot of junk which I moved back to Afc. Many many article with just one reference, blps and so on. A couple at CSD and a couple at Afd. scope_creepTalk 19:44, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
It is possible, and we have users regularly making more than 500 edits per day. However, this is not possible without mass use of semi-automatic tools. I consider myself a pretty active user, my workflow is to make small incremental edits, and I never had more than 4K edits per month.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
In one month, they did 13000 edits. scope_creepTalk 20:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
Does Check User or any other place get notified when an editor racks up such a high count in a short period? I know that with automated or semi-automated edits the edit count can climb quickly. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 11:21, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
AugusteBlanqui, all a checkuser does is compare technical data (IP, device, OS, browser, and/or whatever additional information a server is allowed to query a client, in the background) between two or more accounts when there is grounds to suspect they are related, and after a sockfarm has been detected, sometimes, look for additional accounts that share the exact same technical specifications. Racking up a high edit count could be signs of account-sharing which would be the opposite of socking. I am confident there are mechanisms to detect bot-like editing from non-bot accounts, to protect against DDOS if nothing else, but don't know of any within the enWP volunteer corps, perhaps is at Wikimedia server security. In any case, their threshold must be a lot higher than 500 edits a day, since it's not impossible to hit 500 edits an hour with AWB even. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 06:55, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

I forgot to generate a listing for TheImaCow. It is here: Special:Permanentlink/969583341#Pages moved from draft to main (TheImaCow). MER-C 09:36, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Another autopatrolled user has now been blocked for UPE: ImSonyR9. MER-C 17:09, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Unpatrolling and re-enqueuing

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


quarry:query/36304 searches through the logs of all of the pages patrolled by Isingness that still exist, and sorts them into those still in the page curation system (ones that should just be unreviewed) and those no longer in the system (ones that need to be re-enqueued). Currently it shows 143 to re-enqueue and 18 to unreview. I'd like to, via script, re-enqueue and unreview all of the pages accordingly, with a 3 second delay between each action per the rate limit. I haven't written the full code yet, but the framework for the delay is written if anyone wants to see it. Since there isn't a full process to go by, I suggest that reviewers who support or oppose this mass action (on a one-time basis) comment below. I won't actually do it until there is at least some support. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 10:57, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Support - Easiest way to ensure things don't slip through the net. Also support formalising these processes at some point, as I suspect this sort of shenanigans around AFC / NPP is only going to become more common (as if twice in a week was not common enough!)... Jack Frost (talk) 11:27, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I have done this manually a few times in similar situations so I support. I would just caution about situations where a subsequent reviewer had the last patrol. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:18, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support North8000 (talk) 01:46, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support making it standard procedure as well. Comes up often enough, and should only get oftener enougher. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 06:57, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support in this instance and making it standard. Mccapra (talk) 10:47, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Can an admin please close this (either now or soon) to officially authorize the unreviewing / re-enqueueing? DannyS712 (talk) 01:54, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Script is running now --DannyS712 (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
Okay, it should be done now - everything unreviewed and requeued. The replicas are lagging a bit, so the info I had was out of date and some of the pages I tried to unreview were already unreviewed. Additionally, Draft:Dirk Böttcher was deleted and couldn't be unreviewed. Unfortunately, watching the console output as it ran, it looks like the quicks of async meant that some of the reviews were just under 3 seconds apart. Apologies if this would be considered abuse of my global rollback rights - next time I'll set the delay to 4 seconds DannyS712 (talk) 17:53, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
DannyS712, thanks for doing this. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Curation tool

Occasionally while I’m logged in I go to an article and find that the curation toolbar doesn’t appear on my screen. Usually if I refresh the page, it appears. However when I go to Marcos jewels it just won’t appear at all. Does it show for anyone else with that article? Is there something I can do to make it appear? Thanks Mccapra (talk) 06:20, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Mccapra, it appears to me that once an article is reviewed now, the toolbar dissapears. This is an undesired feature, in my opinion, and should be reported on phabricator. Sam-2727 (talk) 15:42, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Or at least for some articles. As well as the one you give as an example, it's happening for SpaceX Crew-2 and Genda Gu as well. Sam-2727 (talk) 15:45, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok thanks Ive had this problem for a couple of day on this specific article but it still comes up twice a day on SDZerobot as unreviewed. I’ll report it as you suggest. Mccapra (talk) 16:14, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Update I now think this is a problem with the sorting by SDZeroBot. The page curation toolbar wasn't showing for me on Marcos jewels because it had already been patrolled by User:Spicy on 28 July but as of this morning SDZeroBot is still listing it. SpaceX Crew-2 was patrolled by User:Ozzie10aaaa on 29 July but still appears on this morning's SDZeroBot list. Genda Gu has also been reviewed, and is still being picked up this morning by SDZeroBot and listed as unreviewed. Mccapra (talk) 05:54, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
As with other tools, that was because of database replag. SD0001 (talk) 16:19, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Page has been reviewed notice - question about the process

I received the notice "The page Thailand Quality Award has been reviewed." I was told by the reviewer that this was part of the patrol process. I have a question about the process that I was advised in the Teahouse to ask here:
Where in the article is it noted that it was reviewed? I looked in the history and the talk page and found no record of it having been reviewed.
--Ian Korman (talk) 03:07, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

In the history tab, there is a link at the top to "Page statistics". There is another link there, also at the top, to "log". At that page, select all the additional logs at the bottom and click "show" and you will see when/who did the review/patrol. MB 03:35, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

AfD feature acting strange on curation tool

Or is it something I'm doing? Doesn't that feature automatically log the AfD at the main log and didn't it automatically create the AfD page without us having to do that manually, or am I dreaming? Atsme Talk 📧 23:14, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

I found it unreliable and stuck to Twinkle.Mccapra (talk) 23:23, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
It never did that before - it was working really well. DannyS712 - do you have any ideas about this issue? Atsme Talk 📧 23:26, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
Check the console and see if there are any warnings. That might reveal the cause DannyS712 (talk) 23:29, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
I believe it has been broken for quite some time. The page history of AFD log pages shows that no ones uses it any longer for AFD. SD0001 (talk) 16:24, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Well, Mccapra, SD0001 - who ya gonna call? CodeBusters!!! Calling DannyS712! Atsme Talk 📧 15:07, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
If Danny could figure that out, that would be fantastic. Otherwise I think we'll need to stick to our "Twinkle is more reliable with AfDs" advice until we can get foundation developer time again (this would probably be our number 1 bug fix). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:26, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Are there any console warnings? DannyS712 (talk) 22:08, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Western Africa page sort

Hi if anyone has the time and inclination, there is a growing queue of BLPS over at the Western Africa new pages sort that look doubtful in terms of notability. Some have been there for months and it would be good to have many eyes on them so they can be marked as reviewed or sent to AfD as appropriate. Thanks Mccapra (talk) 16:09, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Another glitch

Recently, I found out about the issue with the page curation tool and auto-templating of users pages when nominating a page for prod or AfD. However, yesterday I was made aware of yet another issue with the tool. When you use it to send a redirect for discussion, it does not automatically fill in the target field on the discussion page. Another time I will be using Twinkle instead. Onel5969 TT me 16:24, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Onel5969, at this point pretty much the only time that I use the curation tool is when I want to just mark a page as reviewed (and to look at the copyvio report). Even adding templates is a bit smoother with Twinkle. signed, Rosguill talk 17:00, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Rosguill. Onel5969 TT me 17:04, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Given that this is so badly bugged, perhaps we should just ask the devs to remove deletion-related functions from PageTriage? There are a ton of things which twinkle takes care of (such as adding delsort listings, placing the tags at the correct location per MOS:ORDER, etc) that PageTriage ignores even when it's working correctly. Twinkle never uses newbie-language messages though, but that's something we could improve in twinkle. SD0001 (talk) 06:58, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Curation Masterclass

Hi all,

I like to work on the pages from the back of the queue, because they're often the most challenging ones. Often, however, they're really tough: articles with borderline notability that got recreated, content forks, movies or sports events with committed fans, etc. I think I could learn a lot from a group VOIP session with screen sharing where a small group of us go through articles one by one and agree on what the right action is. Who's keen? I'm in the Central European timezone, but for this purpose I'd be open to any time of the day or night on a weekend. Pinging likely candidates: @Insertcleverphrasehere, Barkeep49, Cassiopeia, Rosguill, Atsme, Utopes, Polyamorph, and Onel5969: --Slashme (talk) 09:30, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Slashme, this is an interesting idea and would be interested in supporting it, time permitting. I'm in US central time zone these days. signed, Rosguill talk 14:32, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I agree - it's a digital Editathon, and would really work great for NPP enrollees in the school. Atsme Talk 📧 14:35, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Not the most active patroller, but I'm in (if the time lines up)... Eddie891 Talk Work 14:36, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
The idea of a digital NPP edit-a-thon is a really interesting one. I believe people generally edit most during their work days but obviously something like this doesn't fit in that format nicely. I'm wondering if it something like 15:00 UTC on a Saturday might offer us our best chance of getting people? We lose Australia/NZ but I think we get all of Canada/continental US/Europe. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:30, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I'm personally fine with that proposal; we can also consider doing multiple groups of this if we need more flexibility on time. signed, Rosguill talk 15:36, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Slashme, I like the idea, and I'd be able to join between 12:00 UTC and 24:00 UTC Vexations (talk) 16:09, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent idea. However, my current real-life schedule doesn't really permit me to commit to specific dates and times. Would sure be interested in hearing the outcomes, however, since I almost solely deal with the back of the queue.Onel5969 TT me 17:27, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Great idea and I’d like to join in, esp when I’m in quarantine from 1-14 September. Mccapra (talk) 17:28, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
If the time works for me, I'd also like to join to learn. Sam-2727 (talk) 17:32, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm actually really keen on this so I'd love to try it out tomorrow at 15:00 UTC. Anybody who would like to join, please vote on the screen sharing / chat preference. --Slashme (talk) 18:45, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Slashme, I'm down for Jitsi but are you taking the steps necessary to host. I presume I could figure out the software I need to join but there's no way I can figure out anything new as a host before tomorrow. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:24, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Barkeep49, Jitsi works in-browser without any software for both hosts and other participants (although you can access fancier hosting features by downloading software and hosting a dedicated server). For our purposes the browser app should be enough. signed, Rosguill talk 19:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I strongly suggest we use Wikimedia's service: Jitsi. I'll get a token and it's really easy to dial into: no special software needed. --Slashme (talk) 19:02, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49 I'm happy to host. I just had my first Jitsi meeting today. I didn't need to install anything and it "just worked™". The quality went downhill with 33 participants, but I think it should work well with a smaller group. If it doesn't work for us, I'll announce a fallback, e.g. Google Chat, and we can move across. --Slashme (talk) 19:47, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Excellent idea, and for once I can even make the time. I'm in. Strongly suggest Jitsi, too - it really is the most hassle-free of current video conferencing options (also Open Source). One note: don't join on Firefox, that seems to have a tendency to screw up the microphone. Chrome works best for me. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:03, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the note! I was on Firefox (Ubuntu) and it seemed to work, but if there's an audio problem I'll switch to Chrome. --Slashme (talk) 21:39, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Great idea, would love to be part of it; however, I am in Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT+10) for such I would only available in weekend. Cassiopeia(talk) 04:39, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Australian Eastern Standard Time

Screen share 22 August 2020
Name Jitsi Discord Google chat Skype Zoom Zulip
Slashme Green tickY Green tickY Green tickY      
Elmidae Green tickY Red XN no idea? Green tickY Green tickY Red XN
Cassiopeia   Red XN Green tickY Green tickY Red XN Red XN
Your name here Green tickY Red XN  

Meeting Location

@Slashme: did you get a ticket for Wikimedia meet? If not L235 might have one we can use as we're only a couple minutes out from 15:00. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:56, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

@Barkeep49, Cassiopeia, and Elmidae: Here you go! Sorry for the late notification! --Slashme (talk) 14:59, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
@Barkeep49, Cassiopeia, and Slashme: Whoa what? Don't tell me I bollocksed up my UTC calculation again. Aaargh, I did - added rather than subtracted... sorry guys, I just spent my time taxoboxing some algae and now have to jump into a work-related conference. Complete time-keeping failure. Let's do that again soon and I turn on brain beforehand? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:28, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
Elmidae, no worries. Vexations, Slashme, and Rosguill have been having a good go. Some great discussion and this is probably worthwhile to do again. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:27, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi all, that was a great success and I learned a lot! I'd love to do this again. I'm not going to be available for the next three to four weekends, but will be willing to host again when I get back.

Jitsi worked well, screen sharing was readable and audio was mostly fine. Was really great to meet Barkeep49, Rosguill and Vexations in person as it were. --Slashme (talk) 17:24, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

  • I think I will be active again with NPP by September end. I've been refreshing the NPP stuff step-by-step. Let me know about the next meet, and hopefully I will be able to join in. —usernamekiran (talk) 12:10, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

New football stadiums

Are proposed or under construction football stadiums notable? Wikipedia:WikiProject Event Venues/Sports task force/Notability#Stadiums and indoor arenas suggest they only gain notability once matches have been played. Anybody any thoughts on this? --John B123 (talk) 22:00, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

John B123 I can give you some examples of stadiums under construction: UBS Arena, Sydney Football Stadium (2022), Agia Sophia Stadium, MSG Sphere at The Venetian etc. And proposed stadiums from your country Category:Proposed stadiums in the United Kingdom and from the USA [5] and there is also a full section. So yeah, they seem to be notable since years on Wikipedia! We even have stadiums that were never built. Rostadia2012 (talk) 23:05, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
It says "Currently hosts or has hosted a Professional sports team". IF THE STADIUMS BELONGS TO A PROFESSIONAL TEAM, IT'S NOTABLE! It is enough to be built for a notable team, NOT TO HOST A MATCH. Rostadia2012 (talk) 23:07, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
By your interpretation an under construction Wembley Stadium wouldn't have been on Wikipedia. Just saying. Rostadia2012 (talk) 23:10, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't see how "If the stadium belongs to a professional team, it's notable" follows from the SNG - my reading also would be that it must host the team in actuality (i.e. be available for the team to play matches in). The examples given above all pass via WP:GNG through sufficient general coverage, which has nothing to do with this special guideline. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:17, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
    • Elmidae By your interpretation an under construction Wembley Stadium/ The O2 Arena wouldn't have been on Wikipedia. Or the current UBS Arena! Just saying. Where does it say "it must be available for the team to play matches in"? Go to any lawsuit, they will only analyse the paragraph. And it says "Currently hosts or has hosted a Professional sports team". If the stadium is being built for a professional team (any sport in the world), it's enough, you can't attack the writing (it doesn't say it must host matches now). Plus it can be from the US, the UK or Mozambique. It does not matter, if Mozambique owns a professional league then it's qualified. Of course a stadium for a professional team gets decent, enough coverage. The rules have been the same for a lot of years. Rostadia2012 (talk) 23:29, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
I'm going to repeat myself: The examples given above all pass via WP:GNG through sufficient general coverage, which has nothing to do with this special guideline.. The special notability guidelines supplement WP:GNG, which is generally harder to satisfy. If plenty of newspapers write about a stadium under construction, we can have an article. If they don't, then this SNG does not make it so we can (again, my interpretation). --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:46, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
A failed stadium could have lasting notability so i agree with Elmidae. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I'm a little rusty. How are we dealing with articles like Rolling Loud? I've marked it reviewed right now, since it doesn't seem overly promotional to me, but like GSS, I might have draftified, only it had been and then moved back.Onel5969 TT me 15:08, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

We're as divided about it as before, but the best bet is to leave it with a tag if it's notable or to take it to AFD if it's not. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Barkeep49. Onel5969 TT me 21:40, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Bengal potatoes Redirect to wiki cookbook?

Working the really old end of the cue (2003)

Looks like all agree that the article should not exist.

Somebody converted Bengal potatoes to a redirect to Wikipedia cookbooks. Then an experiencd editor removed the redirect and put in text that says "this article does not exist" and then gave a link to the the recipe at wikipedia cook books. Is this correct or should it be a simple redirect or should it be completely deleted? North8000 (talk) 21:56, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi North8000 - That was a bit of a sticky wicket, but I think Reywas' solution was a pretty good one. While it could have been sent to RfD, no harm in sending it to the cookbook.Onel5969 TT me 15:42, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. Cool, but but is the current method of sending it to the cookbook OK? Not a redirect, but instead a note with a link? North8000 (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
I wondered about this one too. It uses {{Wikibooks redirect}}. The template's documentation states: This template is only for entries that currently exist on Wikibooks and which, due to previous re-creations, are likely to be re-created in unencyclopedic form. Do not place it on every possible title. The article hasn't got a history of recreation, so a simple redirect should be used? --John B123 (talk) 16:04, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
I dunno. I would think that it would be problematic in it's current form. Structurally, it is an article (not a redirect), but it's not an article.North8000 (talk) 18:03, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
It is a soft redirect, not an article. It is common practice to replace problematic articles with soft redirects to sister projects when applicable—see Category:Interwiki link templates for templates similar to {{Wikibooks redirect}}. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 20:37, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks@Lord Bolingbroke: I just leave it as is and mark it as reviewed. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:40, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Futsal

Hi. I know that WP:NFOOTY and WP:FOOTYN don't apply to Futsal. What are the rules regarding Futsal notability?Onel5969 TT me 15:16, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

I've looked myself but can't find anything specific so assume WP:SPORTBASIC is the guideline. --John B123 (talk) 15:40, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks John B123 - That's what I've been using, but thought their might be an SN I had missed.Onel5969 TT me 17:19, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Replag?

For the last few days Community Tech Bot hasn’t provided a report on top reviewers for the previous day, and the SDZerobot is continuing to list and sort articles that have been patrolled. Is this a replag thing or is something else happening? Mccapra (talk) 02:24, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

phab:T262239: replag due to maintenance — JJMC89(T·C) 05:42, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks very much. Mccapra (talk) 07:08, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

ANI blocked an editor under scrutiny for page creations

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Article_creations_by_Soul_Crusher. The thread may end up deciding to review their mass creations. Someone was seeking input from NPP. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 08:22, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

College sports figures and WP:NCOLLATH

Hi. I haven't seen any change on NCOLLATH, but of late there has been a spate of articles like C. J. Walker (basketball), which while well sourced are of the type which is of run-of-the-mill college athletes, who garner the usual WP:ROUTINE coverage one would expect. In the past, these types of articles would normally be redirected to the college team's page, but recently there's been a lot of pushback such as at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jordan Burns. What's the current idea regarding these types of articles.Onel5969 TT me 16:49, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Sigh... I don't know. That's definitely a whole lot of text about some guy with a grand achievement of nothing much, but I'd say the refs in that section may satisfy non-trivial media coverage beyond merely a repeating of their statistics, mentions in game summaries, or other WP:ROUTINE coverage. Dude is named in the titles, at least. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:08, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
Elmidae - Just realized I never thanked you for the above.Onel5969 TT me 16:13, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Page curation toolbar no longer appears

Hi all,

I am not sure if it's only me who is experiencing this bug. The toolbar disappears every now and then. It was appearing until yesterday and when I logged in today to review new pages it no longer shows. I logged off and logged in a few times but that did not fix the problem. Please can anyone advise how I fix this?.--Umakant Bhalerao (talk) 07:18, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

In recent days I’ve found that instead of appearing at the top right edge of an article it’s changed to appearing bottom left. Sometimes. Mccapra (talk) 09:29, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
If an article is not in the NPP feed I think you'll need to add it via "Add to the New Pages Feed" before the toolbar can be shown. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 10:04, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Is it or is it not available to restore from under the "tools" in the left sidebar on any unreviewed article? Usedtobecool ☎️ 10:05, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

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