Peer review
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This page contains a technical description of how the peer review process functions, and a list of templates and other tools associated with peer review.

Templates

Advertisment

The following template may be used to advertise the peer review process: Template:Wikipedia ad exists

Backlog

The following templates may be used to display the peer review backlog:

• Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog displays a large box in the centre of the screen
• Wikipedia:Peer review/PRbox displays a smaller box on the right of the screen

The information from these two pages is based on the manually-entered list of peer reviews with no feedback here:

• Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog/items

Layout

As of 2014^[update], this icon is currently used to represent peer review:

All pages have the following two templates attached:

• Wikipedia:Peer review/Tab header, providing the tabs
• {{Peer review/Sidebar}}, listing pages in more depth

Shortcuts

As of 2014^[update], the following shortcuts are used to represent the peer review process:

• WP:PR pointing to the main page
• WP:PRL pointing to the list of full reviews
• WP:PRG pointing to the list of instructions
• WP:PRV pointing to the list of volunteers

Behind the scenes: technical details of the peer review process

Users, when following the instructions, begin the technical side of the peer review process by transcluding the {{PR}} template to an article's talk page.

Category listing

Once the PR template has been attached, articles are automatically fall within a category relating to the topic of the peer review. A bot (VeblenBot, operated by Carl) automatically updates a page containing a list of all articles within that category.

On that list, each item in the list is recorded on the page alongside the name of the item , its namespace number, and a timestamp indicating when it was added to the category. The pages are typically listed in chronological order.

The pages holding these lists are shown in the box below:

Display of current reviews

The suite of pages listing reviews in each topic is then transcluded into a single page.

This full list of reviews, separated by subject area, is fully transcluded at: Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews. This page can be transcluded on other pages, using the parameter 'mode' to change the format of each peer review entry.

1. If 'mode' is set to 'transclude', all reviews will be displayed in full. As of 2014^[update], this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer review/Current
2. If 'mode' is set to 'list', all reviews will be displayed by name, with a list of links to the review, the article and talk page, and an invitation to watch the page. As of 2014^[update], this is the default setting for reviews and can be seen at Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews
3. If 'mode' is set to 'raw', or any other value is used, all reviews will be displayed only by their name and the date and time they were added. As of 2014^[update], this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date

How to transclude the review list onto new pages:

1. To transclude all reviews, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=transclude}}
2. To transclude a readable list of entries, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=list}}
3. To transclude entries in raw form, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=raw}}

Maintenance

This page is intended to provide information on how to maintain the peer review process. Please update it to provide more information or to adapt to process changes.

How to create a new month's peer review archive

If you are on time (i.e., it is the end of the month and you are creating next month's archives) proceed as follows:

1. Create the July 2022 peer review archive by following this link and saving the page.
2. Create the July 2022 peer review category by following this link and saving the page.
3. Create Template:CF/July 2022 peer reviews by copying the current month's template (open this link in a separate tab), changing all four occurrences of "June 2022" to "July 2022".
4. Stabilize the May 2022 peer review archive by following this link, and adding "subst:" to the VeblenBot transclusion. If you are motivated enough to keep the archives tidy, remove any items which are not peer reviews of individual articles, or which are WikiProject peer reviews, and check for peer reviews which have level 2 or level 3 section headings.
5. Notify Carl (CBM), the operator of VeblenBot, (or Ruhrfisch) that the next month's category needs to be listed, but the previous month's category has been stabilized.
6. Update the Peer review archive section.

If you are late (i.e., it is the beginning of the month and you need to create the current month's archives), most of the steps are the same, but the above links won't do the right thing.

1. Create the June 2022 peer review archive by following this link and saving the page.
2. Create the June 2022 peer review category by following this link and saving the page.
3. Create Template:CF/June 2022 peer reviews by copying the previous month's template (open this link in a separate tab), changing all four occurrences of "May 2022" to "June 2022".
4. If the archive from two months ago has not been stabilized, now is the time to do it! Just edit that archive and substitute the VeblenBot transclusion.
5. Notify Carl (CBM) that the current month's category needs to be listed, but the category from two months ago has been stabilized.
6. Update the Peer review archive section.

How to deal with the entire peer review page being listed as a peer review on the peer review page

It happens from time to time that the peer review page is placed in one of the categories for articles under peer review. This causes the peer review page to list itself as a peer review, which is obviously not a good thing (thankfully, the servers do not admit infinite regress, and simply give up trying to display content).

There are several ways this can happen, but they usually involve an individual peer review placing itself in a peer review category, without surrounding this category by "noincludes". Since the review is transcluded on the peer review page, the category gets added to the peer review page too.

To find the culprit, visit the VeblenBot page corresponding to the topic under which the entire peer review page is listed, and look for strange entries. The entry immediately below the mess is likely to be the cause of the problem.