Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Archive 4

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New article, new editor - four nominations for deletion by two nominators

I happened to see this, a new article created by a new wikipedia editor and wondered how often this happens. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 16:11, 15 December 2015 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: New article's created by new accounts? Happens a lot -- samtar whisper 16:19, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
@Samtar: See the title of this section. The question was: how often it happens that a newly created article is nominated for deletion four times in just few hours. Vanjagenije (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Okay, must have misread it -- samtar whisper 17:19, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech: greetings and thanks for bringing this up. The creator of a page is not supposed to remove a speedy deletion template (anyone else can contest one). The editor who created the article probably did not notice that information in the CSD notification on their talk page; it is buried 2/3rds of the way through the note in a block of text that would be easy to miss. We have a template, Template:uw-speedy1, that explains how to contest a speedy in a WP:BITE-compliant way, but the patroller and a 2nd one, GSS-1987, elected not to use that, re-adding the template without additional feedback until they use the much more confrontational Template:uw-speedy4. The A7 nomination itself was a little borderline given that the article already exists on two other languages of Wikipedia. The Avengers then followed this up with an AfD nomination that can only be described as terrible. I pinged User:The Avengers and would like to hear their thoughts on if they would handle this differently next time. VQuakr (talk) 21:21, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
@Samtar: I apologize, it was a shoddy way to post a message here. I should have repeated the message from the subject, and have no excuse except to say I try my best, but sometimes forget. BTW is it really that simple to avoid deletion by simply removing the CSD tag? Ottawahitech (talk) 01:59, 20 December 2015 (UTC)please ping me

The welcome message is above the deletion tag. The editor removed speedy deletion tag three times. I see, level 2 would have better than level 4 warning. In speedy notice itsef, it's mentioned how to contest the deletion. I nominated for XFD as they would have removed speedy tag again. English wikipedia has higher standards of notability than other language Wikipedia. Every patroller must watch the pages tagged for speedy deletion for a period of minimum 24 hours. The page creator will removed CSD and PROD tag. XFD is not easy to avoid. I don't watch my AFD nomination. The Avengers 02:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello @VQuakr:, I requested Speedy Deletion A7 (once) to the page because the speedy template was removed by the author without explaining why s/he removed it nor s/he oppose the speedy deletion A7 (diff). Cheers GSS (talk) 06:43, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
I'd concede the first speedy deletion nomination was correct according to policy, and a good example of why I dislike that policy as overhasty on new goodfaith articles. Though it's troubling that the tagger involved would go straight to a level 2 let alone level 4 warning or consider speedy deletion a matter of notability. The second and third speedy nominations came after the article had been expanded and included a plausible assertion of importance - that the artist had work hanging in two national collections, I appreciate that technically they were valid restorations of a previously valid tag, but since the article no longer merited the A7 tag it was not a good move to restore it. Perhaps we need a policy change to allow people to remove A7 tags if they have added a sourced assertion of importance. I don't know enough about art to know whether such an artist would necessarily be notable, so I wouldn't criticise an editor who tagged it as non notable or after carrying out WP:Before tagged it for AFD. Thought I note the current AFD tag is because "the sources are unreliable" with no indication that they have looked for sources - also the best feedback to the editor at that point would probably have been that we need independent sources, reliable is a broader term. ϢereSpielChequers 12:54, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

So now is the time for progress

The first CSD A7 tag by The Avengers was legitimate (notwithstanding that he is a sock). Anyone who after 14 minutes has not written more than 'A. Person is a painter can be assumed to have finished what they are doing. Like many editors , I do repair and improve many articles created by lazy new contributors, but only if I think that such pages have potential. With over 5 million articles, Wikipedia is not so desperate for new content that our editors should be expected to further develop such extremely short one-line stubs, especially where the script sends a message to the creator.

The second CSD templating Should have been done with more care, if indeed done at all. The body of the article may not have carried any claims to significance or importance, but by now the contents of the Works in state collection section meets criteria #4 at WP:ARTIST and should have received more forethought from patroller GSS-1987 even if they were unaware of a previously removed tag. GSS is a very new user, has limited experience, and is possibly not even a native English speaker, and is therefore not ready for the challenges of patrolling new pages. At this stage, however, now having received two identical CSD information templates on their talk page the creator should have realsed that something is amiss and should probably now have read those templates more carefully. This all confirms once again that 1) many Wikipedia contributors, whether they add content or police the pages, are not native speakers, and for all we know, this applies to Achamanan too, and 2) reinforces the perennial argument that many of our templates are just WP:TL;DR and just don't get read. Anyone who has majored in Communication Science knows full well that signposts and instructions that are too wordy simply get ignored, and I hink WereSpielChequers is aware of these issues if VQuakr and Ottawahitech have not taken them (yet) into consideration.

Along comes The Avengers again who restores the CSD-A7 tag again by which time however, the article now also has sources, and The Avenger turns out to be one of the many socks of Cosmic Emperor who has an acute propensity for policing the encyclopedia. Chances are, that Achamanan who last edited on 15 December still does not fully understand that he has done anything wrong by removing a CSD template 3 tines, has given up and will now not return to inmprove the article which will now remain as a perma-tagged BLP. What Jbhunley summarises here in a keynote thread above is what DGG and I and a few others have been saying for years: it is now time for a wake up call and get NPP made into a user right for qualified patrollers only. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:10, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

And not only does it require skill and experience, it also requires the willingness and patience to give people accurate and specific focused advice; I sometimes think we would do better if we abandoned the entire template system for patrolling and AfC, or at least required a custom-written explanation every time as well. Once there's the intent to do it right, and the assistance of enough co-workers with similar intent and experience to share the work and give time to do it right, then the skill and experience is required: first, for accurately understanding the situation--which requires long experience here with similar problems aa well as a certain degree of intuitive talent, and second for explaining it clearly and helpfully, which requires both accurate knowledge of what an article requires, and the ability to properly and considerately express it. Not every experienced good editor can do this--many people can more easily write good articles than teach others how to write them.
the hardest part of this is going to be getting enough qualified people to do the screening. This is going to take a change in orientation, not just a change in procedure. But getting the unqualified out of the process is the first step, for what really takes the most effort is correcting their errors--both explaining it to them, and explaining the situation to the original contributor.
In this case, there were many failings: First, the ability of a incompetent sockpuppet to do such a critical task--we must find system ways of preventing this. Second, the failure to realize that an article here with links to articles in two other WPs probably is not a A7 candidate unless the other two articles are also questionable--as does happen with some cross-wiki promotional campaigns. Third, as Kudpung says, not realizing the key factor in the special notability requirement. Fourth, the use of our warnings system which is more suited to reprimanding people than guiding them. (If someone writes a single bad article, it's enough to get it deleted or fixed; there is really no need to reprimand them, considering that our edit filters make it impossible for removal of a CSD template not to be noticed--some things can indeed be best done by programs). DGG ( talk ) 06:09, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
@Kudpung: I requested WP:A7 as per Article namespace checklist First questions because there was no claim of notability of the subject and was not even cited (diff) also yes am not native English speaker. To be cooperative, I don't mind to remove new page patroller template from my user page if you think am not eligible to be a patroller at this stage as I always believe to do the right thing. Cheers GSS (talk) 07:22, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi GSS, the test for A7 is lower than notability. Articles merely need a plausible assertion of importance, and this included one that the artist had work hanging in two national collections. If there is an assertion of importance, but you doubt they are notable then you can tag if=t for notability or if you really think it should go try AFD. Completely unsourced BLPs can be tagged with BLPprod, but at the moment uncited is only a deletion criteria for attack pages and biographies of living people, and it is only a speedy deletion criteria for pages that are "unsourced and negative". Can I suggest you read Wikipedia:Field guide to proper speedy deletion before doing more deletion tagging? ϢereSpielChequers 08:18, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello WereSpielChequers, I apologize if I made a mistake somewhere but my intention was to do the right thing and sure I will go through WP:FIELD to learn more about speedy deletion before doing more deletion tagging, Cheers. GSS (talk) 08:31, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks GSS, much appreciated. We all make mistakes, the important thing is to learn from them. ϢereSpielChequers 19:31, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Do not bite the newcomers

I just saw evidence that an experience editor placed a Prod tag on an article started by a newbie a minute after the article was started. Unfortunately this type of biting occurs quite frequently — can anything be done about it? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 21:11, 18 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech:In hindsight, I should have waited. In fact, the user had a source in an external link in the initial edit, so the blpprod was actually inappropriate. Thanks for raising your concerns. Matthew Thompson talk to me! 03:12, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I generally believe it is a good idea to put a clock on unsourced BLP's by using BLPPROD. How long to wait before placing it is a judgement call - if it looks to be a promotional puff piece meh, tag it when you see it. If, on the other hand, it looks to be a good faith viable start I suggest you leave it up in a browser tab for an hour or so and then tag it if still unsourced. If the editor has been working on it over that time go to their talk page and give them a friendly explanation to go with the auto-notice. If the page is a one edit wonder again meh, it is probably promo by a paid SOCK - tag. Always watch for removal, particularly if it looks like promo/paid work - work with good faith newbies and explain our sourcing requirements to them and how to legitimately remove the BLPPROD. Unsourced BLP's are probably the worst thing, short of straight up BLP violations, to let slip through NPP. JbhTalk 03:32, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm also less hesitant to wait with BLPPROD. Often, the user creates the page then logs off never to return. I find it less BITEy than a CSD, which I'll wait for unless it's a very obvious violation. As for the browser tab thing, that would work if I didn't generally have over 100 tabs open anyway. Nonetheless, quick tagging is routine at NPP amongst many taggers. Can anything be done about it? I Not really I can think of. Ask editors to be a bit more lenient on their talk page. I've had to personally deal with a few over-eager CSD taggers by following them, changing rationale and declining others. I understand the frustration it can cause. Matthew Thompson talk to me! 03:47, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes but is the loss of the newbie more or less likely after we have tagged their article for deletion? My assumption is that deletion tagging drives people away, but I'm not sure how robust the proof of that is. I remember seeing evidence that the 25% of editors who start by creating new articles are rather less than 25% of the new editors who stay here, but I'm not sure yet if we have research that looks at newbies who are neither spammers nor vandals. ϢereSpielChequers 07:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I believe one of my first edits here years ago was creating a new page for a non-significant school, which was incorrectly tagged for A7 (which doesn't allow educational institutions) within minutes of me writing the article. Then it got PROD' which I declined, they ignored the fact I could decline it and readded it. And then eventually AFD dealt with it. I'm still here. Of course my anecdote proves nothing, and it's probably likely in many cases that the users would be driven away. I don't think it changes the fact that new BLPs require sources and {{unsourced}} just doesn't get the message through. I even tried finding references to that article after I tagged it to no avail. The original page looked (somewhat) promotional but there was a claim of significance preventing A7. I was half expecting someone to come along and add references.
I suppose my quick tagging was half guided by the fact I've seen many pages get rapidly BLPPROD' - even by mops - who aren't questioned on it, especially on pages such as this one (I would have much preferred the editor leave a note on my talk page before putting it here, without that new 'mentioned' thing, I wouldn't have even known this was here) But in the future, I'll bookmark the page and come back later to avoid any doubt. Matthew Thompson talk to me! 08:22, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Linking to humourous anti-guide about treating editing like a game

At the head of this policy page, there's a guidance statement about taking patrolling seriously. It specifically mentions not treating the exercise as a game. Since an entirely related and appropriate anti-policy essay exists on that precise subject, I figure a link to it might be helpful.

Especially considering that policy and guideline pages are only useful for those who need to read them, and those reading them are like to need the guidance, it seems ideal to link to related guidance whenever and wherever possible. If that guidance takes a humorous approach, so be it. However we can help editors learn how best to conduct themselves should be the route we take.

Please discuss. I will consider a lack of reasoned discussion about this decision as an indication that no one minds me reverting the reversion. fredgandt 00:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

First of all, WP:PTG is not a "guidance", it is a humorous page. I don't think it is a good idea to cite a humorous page at the very beginning of this instruction page. Patrolling should be taken very seriously, and such a link may suggest to new users that this is all humor. Vanjagenije (talk) 08:06, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
Obviously I disagree, so only further explanation of why can follow: It is guidance insofar that (as stated at the top of its page) it shows by way of humour how not to behave. You may have noted that it is liberally linked to many important guides/policies which are some of the fundamental principles upon which this project hangs? It is satire; used to provide more than an easily dismissed list of instructions; rather, it's a highly relevant allegorical scenario leading the reader to fully understand the relevance. This is entirely the point of humorous essays; it is why they exist.
Linking it here, doesn't detract from the seriousness of the message, just as linking to it here doesn't affect the seriousness of my argument. It is merely further related reading on an important subject.
If you know of a serious guideline/policy page that covers the subject that editing Wikipedia is not a competition or (specifically) game, then perhaps linking to that instead might be a satisfactory compromise? I am, as always, simply trying to improve the UX of this Wiki, and would be glad of any appropriate further reading. fredgandt 09:18, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
No thanks. WP:Play the game may have some merit to someone somewhere, but it is not useful in relation to new pages patrol. Johnuniq (talk) 09:40, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I am if nothing else, a team player. The third party I hoped for has joined, and unless there's a fourth, fifth or more, I guess that's that. Thanks for playing ;-) fredgandt 09:46, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Would like to be a New Page Patroller

Is there some toolset I need to request (like at RFA for administrators) to be able to do that? I am becoming more active on the project, and like working with people who are just starting out on Wikipedia. Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 21:32, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Hallward's Ghost: No, there is no special toolset that you need to request to be able to do New page patrol. There is a page curation tool, but it appears automatically when you click on an article in the New Pages Feed. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:45, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll get started! Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 21:49, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
@Hallward's Ghost: Please read Wikipedia:New pages patrol carefully and start out conservatively. NPP requires great care and familiarity with Wikipedia's content policies and our Policy on Biographies of Living Persons(Please read and understand it) When you tag an article please leave the editor a note about why you are tagging it or something that politely asks them to come back and fix the problem if they can. Also, if the problem is only a matter of a few minutes to fix consider fixing it rather than tagging it.

If you are unfamiliar with some of the automated tools like RefFill, the Copyvio detection tool and HotCat you may want to check them out. (They are under Page-->Tools in my interface but I am not sure if they are standard) Thank you for your willingness to help out. If I can be of help please feel free to contact me on my talk page or {{ping}} me by placing {{ping|Jbhunley}} on any talk page and signing the edit with ~~~~. JbhTalk 22:08, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Will do. Another question I had was how I could gain the ability to approve (or decline) pending changes. I've been noticing that tag showing up in my watchlist more and more. @Jbhunley: Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 22:22, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Pending changes reviewer is a user right that can be granted by any administrator. See Wikipedia:Reviewing for a description of the process. You can ask for the right at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Pending changes reviewer. JbhTalk 22:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Will do. Thanks for the tips and links. Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 22:32, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
  • While we welcome enthusiasm for maintenance work with open arms, I do not believe 233 maispace edits is sufficient to have gained substantial knowledge of our notability guidelines and deletion policies. Although a gateway to NPP does not (yet) exist, the far less important project at AfC requres a minimum of 500 mainspace edits plus a demonstrable history of good judgement. NPP is an essential daily process, has a steep learning curve, and is not really the ideal area to empirically associate oneself with the quality control of new submissions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:34, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
    @Jbhunley:@Kudpung:Just to be clear, I made constructive IP edits (probably 1000, at least) before ever creating an account. I never kept track of these, or what IP I was editing from, so I can't prove that to you. I only mention that by way of noting that, while I'm no expert (and don't claim to be--I have a LOT to learn), I'm also not quite the guppy my contributions as Hallward's Ghost makes me seem. However, if the regular New Page Patrollers are still uncomfortable with me pitching in, even on uncontroversial new pages, then I will stay away from this area. Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 16:48, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
There's more to experience than edit count. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:44, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
  • There are no 'regular' NPPers. Unlike AfC, there exists at NPP not the slightest regularity nor interaction between those who do it - and there won't be until an official gateway to it gives it some sense of being a collaborative project. Anyone who feels they want to do some patrolling just gets on with it. If they get a lot of it wrong though, they'll soon hear about it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:23, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
    Okay, thanks for the explanation. If I choose to start working in this area, I'll take my time and be careful in what I do. I wonder why there's no "official gateway" to it? Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 14:14, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Why are newbies attracted to NPP

I have just removed an ad for NPP from the top of Wikipedia:Your first article which is pointed to by the standard message posted on user talk-pages of new editors whose first article is wp:CSDed. Are there more ads like it around? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 14:46, 23 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Perhaps a modification to the first sentence is in order, such as "New pages patrol is a process by which experienced editors check newly created articles for obvious problems." Jim.henderson (talk) 18:40, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Good point, we draw the attention of new editors to New Pages Patrol and then complain when they become involved without the necessary experience. NPP is linked in the {{Article creation}} box on Your first article and What is an article?. It is also linked on other pages intended mainly for new users:
None of these pages suggest that NPP is a task for the more experienced editor: Noyster (talk), 19:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech: I wouldn't consider that hatnote at "ad for new page patrol"; it seems more to be a standard disambiguation hatnote to me. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:58, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes I know it is standard - this is the reason I raised it here. Maybe some standards should be re-examined in light of the potential harm they can cause. BTW thanks for pinging me user:ONUnicorn. For some strange reason I did not get a notification just happened to revisit here. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Proposed tool to help you all

Please see here - this is being proposed under the WMF Inspire campaign. Jytdog (talk) 03:41, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

{{New unreviewed article}}

Template:New unreviewed article has been nominated for WP:Templates for discussion on March 10 by someone. As this template is a new page indicator, I thought I'd let you know. -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 06:07, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Nominated for the wrong reasons, and users voting to keep it for the wrong reasons. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:06, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Notability vs Relevance

Discussion at: Wikipedia talk:Credible claim of significance. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:09, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism

There are over a hundred events that are going to be held in the coming week (largely on Saturday, March 5th) to encourage new editors to write articles on subjects that haven't been covered yet on Wikipedia (see this article for details).
I know that the New Pages Patrol can be a little zealous but I hope when these articles start coming in, you would consider tagging them as stub articles rather than nominating incomplete articles for deletion. I think the articles that are going to be created ARE subjects that Wikipedia should have an article about, they will just be articles that are being created by new editors so I don't expect them to be in perfect shape. Liz Read! Talk! 23:37, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

@Liz: thanks for the heads up! Of course, we never should be nominating salvageable content for deletion. Out of curiosity, is any sort of organization system (such as hidden categories or talk page project banners) planned to be used to help identify these articles? VQuakr (talk) 00:28, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
That would be a helpful feature to add. I'm going to ping some of the organizers who will have more information about this: @Failedprojects:, @Siankevans:, @Pharos:, @Bluerasberry: and @Theredproject:. Liz Read! Talk! 00:57, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Another thought: looking at the article Liz linked above, I would imagine the contributions from the events will be biography-heavy. It probably is worth emphasizing to the participants the need for BLPs to include at least one reference and for new articles about people to include a credible claim of significance. If articles that meet those criteria are still getting tagged for deletion (particularly speedy deletion), it probably is appropriate to coach the patroller, or escalate either here or at WP:NPPN. VQuakr (talk) 01:31, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks @Liz: for posting this here. Yes, please tag them as stubs, and/or move them into draft space if people make the mistake of starting the page directly, rather than creating a well cited first few paragraphs in their sandbox, before adding to article space. @VQuakr:, we have clreated solid training materials that our nodes use. These all emphasize Wikipedia:Five pillars with a particular emphasis on BLP notability. Most nodes will be following our training modules, which means that every participant will start with 1+ hour of training, before beginning. Furthermore, we strongly encourage people to start by improving existing articles. Creating hidden categories on each page is a bit of a challenge, both because the event is rhizomatic and we can only offer suggestions to the nodes, and also because volume of pages is going to be quite large: Last year with 75 nodes, we created 400 new pages, and improved 500 others. We expect that number to grow this year. That said, I do believe that @Rhododendrites: went through and tagged some? all? of the articles created, as you can see here: Talk:Caroline_Woolard -- Rhododentrites, will you be joining us again? We have asked all nodes to collect the pages they have created/improved on their event pages, and on Sunday we will begin to centralize these here: Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism/Outcomes2016. --Theredproject (talk) 04:22, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
@Theredproject: Yes, I will be attending the MoMA event as a participant and the Interference Archive event as one of the organizers.
Last year I retroactively made Template:ArtAndFeminism2015 article and, in a fit of procrastination, added it to all of the pages linked from the various meetup pages. Someone has already gone ahead and created the 2016 iteration at Template:ArtAndFeminism2016 article and a few people have added it to some pages. The template adds articles to Category:Articles created or improved during ArtAndFeminism 2016. But it would, of course, be up to participants, organizers, or others to manually add it to each page. Unfortunately I don't know of a good way to automate that, and especially given the expected larger number of articles, I don't foresee having time to tag them myself (beyond those at the IA event).
This is sort of an aside (feel free to respond elsewhere), but have you considered ways of using the Outreach Dashboard? It won't automatically tag the articles, but if we have Dashboard pages for each event and organizers add usernames of participants, it will automatically create a list of articles people worked on that day (along with pageviews, etc.). I noticed there's an A+F cohort, but last I checked the IA event was the only one with an event page. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 04:49, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
@Theredproject: awesome, I figured as such but it was worth verifying. Exciting! VQuakr (talk) 07:28, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
@Pharos: can we add this category to all of the preload draft links? (!!!)--Theredproject (talk) 15:40, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
@Liz: any feedback? I hope the event went swimmingly! VQuakr (talk) 05:18, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Should we have a more generic template for edit-athons with an argument to point to the session page? Jim.henderson (talk) 11:21, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Labels

For info: Wikipedia:Labels--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:19, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

NPP: a cross-Wiki critical issue

I'l be at Wikimania in Esino Lario and I'm hoping to faciltate a discussion at that concerns all of us who are involved with NPP and its consequences for article creators. Anyone who will be going to Wikimania this year or who has any points that they would like raised at the meeting, please feel free to post your ideas here. The abstract of the discussion is at New Wikipdia articles: Controlling the quality and relevance. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:32, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a really interesting discussion! I'm sorry I won't be there. I have not been as active in NPP (or Wikipedia in general, frankly) lately, but I'll give it some thought and post any discussion points that come to mind. Thanks for keeping me in the loop. Go Phightins! 14:13, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the notification about this. I've had various real life issues that are currently keeping me from editing as much as I'd like. But I'll try to find some time to take a look at the abstract and share some thoughts. Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 14:38, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Has it occurred to anyone reading this that we might have fewer notability issues on new articles if we simply explained what we required in terms of notability to people before they started writing an article? Has it occurred to anyone that telling people what they need to know before they put in work might be seen as a sign of respect? --joe deckertalk 15:40, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps we could change the first bullet of the new article edit notice (for new editors) so that it looks like this: Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article. We could also have a check box that requires new users to confirm that they have actually read WP:YFA before they are able to edit a new article.- MrX 22:39, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Not a bad idea actually, MrX. Unfortunately though, it's a bit like that box you have to check anywhere else that says "I have read the Terms & Conditions'. People never do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:19, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
  • A possible idea is a dedicated "patroller right" limited to editors who show competency in basic Wikipedia editing and policies/guidelines as well as ones related to new pages patrol. Esquivalience t 22:26, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
  • If I had any great ideas, I'd throw them out. I know that many are rabidly opposed to this kind of thing, but this is an area where paid Mediawiki employees could help a great deal, with the clear understanding that they are servicing English Pedia and not Mediawiki. I have a strange feeling that this kind of idea is dead on arrival. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:45, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Let's not get too defeatist, Oiyarbepsy. In the past, the community has been strong enough to get some crackpot WMF projects thrown out, and a strong enough lobby to to get some things (Page Curation) made that we urgently needed. Perhaps the almost 100% turnover in C-Level staff plus the CEO following the exodus she caused will introduce enough new blood into the incorporated body that works for us (notice the grammar) will be less of a socio-political NGO and start looking at its encyclopedia projects again with a view to understand the priorities of the readers, writers, and maintenance brigades and repairing the servers and tool-servers it's supposed to be in charge of on our behalf. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:21, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
  • BradonHarris, former Senior Chief Director of Engineering (and probably the 3rd most important staff after the CEO and Erik) was working at my/our behest, as part of the group of solutios that included Page Curation, on a project he code named Article Creation Flow which would not only have addressed exactly the suggest made by Joe Decker above, but also have been a replacement for the little used Article Wizard. For reasons best known to Brandon - and I was met simply with a vague, benign smile when I mentioned it to him the last time we met,which unknown to me was just 4 months before he left the WMF - the project was cradtily swept under the carpet and hidden behind many layers of moves and redirects. It would have solved many of the on-going, years-old issues that we have to cope with at NPP, and would also have made the WP:AfC project neatly redundant.
The issue I would like to discuss at Wikmania covers every conceivable manner for preventing the creation of clearly inappropriate new pages, while avoiding biting and discouraging those who innocently do not understand that Wikipedia is in fact an encyclopedia.
One of those solutions is, inevitably and foremost on our wishlist, as Esquivalience correctly recognises, is the introduction of an audited user right to patrol new pages. We have such things for the less critical recent changes reviewers, and thresholds of required competency for vandalism patrollers and AfC reviewers, so the logical step towards getting the Page Curation softwae used properly, is to ensure that it is not used by new and/pr highly inexperienced editors. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:31, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
A ping popped me here, so I thought I'd drop by and maybe answer some questions about Page Curation and the workflows. Hi guys!
First, my title was "Senior Designer". I'm flattered, but "Director" I was not. And the command structure (at the time of the development of Page Curation) was: Sue Gardner -> Erik Moeller -> Howie Fung -> Myself.
Second, I should say that Page Curation is one of the projects I am most proud of in my time at the Foundation, and I actually use it as an example in classes when I teach about design.
That said, there were some problems with the way Page Curation diverged from my vision and became a reality. Most were minor and fixed quickly, but the biggest and most problematic one is that the templates and deletion rules were hard-coded into the software, rather than being something that could be customized on a per-wiki basis. At the time this decision was made (to remove the customization), I was off the project and couldn't fight for it.
The reason Article Creation Workflow never happened is something that is both sad and petty at the same time. There was a design and template system that most of us agreed was the path; however, when it came time to set down production, there was disagreements, which caused us to have to rework everything. This happened several times in a row and we ended up back-burnering the project because no one could agree (welcome to Wikipedia!). Eventually, teams got shuffled, priorities changed, and that's that. The "benign smile" that Kudpung mentions: that was me trying to create a response that was truthful and vague: I love the project and its idea, I wanted it to happen (I care a great deal about this part of the way Wikipedia works), but I knew that it was never going to happen. I also knew that I couldn't promise or deny anything, and I knew that it would be frowned upon if I decided to work on it or push for it on my own.
(For the record, the abovementioned "disagreements" did not happen with anyone in my command chain; we all thought it was a priority)
Hope that clears anything up, and I'm willing to talk further.--Jorm (talk) 06:48, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Thank you enormously, Brandon for that explanation. I've been wondering for years what happened to Article Creation Flow, and you can rest assured (you can check) that I have always referred to the Page Curation suite as a brilliant piece of software and in my mind one of the best things to hit Wikipedia since sliced bread. What we still need is what you began to develop with Article Creation Flow, which IIRR never got beyond a sketch of what its user interface would look like and a couple of flow diagrams. Perhaps now that there have been so many changes in the structure and priorities within the WMF there is a way it could be resurected and maybe I can make a case for it. Perhaps we can talk about it in Italy (if you're going to be there of course) - there does seem to have been a tentative of something like it at mw:Wikipedia article creation but by that time I was working on other stuff and didn't notice it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:43, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Applaud any move to overhaul article creation flow. But the problem goes beyond article creation in the normal sense. This is because the would-be autobiographers who join us daily, many of them aspiring young people from the developing countries, often contribute their efforts elsewhere than on a new page in mainspace. Look at user pages; look at help desk and teahouse; look at randomly selected existing articles that get their content replaced; look at project pages and their talk pages - policy pages, help and welcome, tutorials, anywhere. Sometimes just a name gets added, sometimes a name, date and village of birth, sometimes more: but I don't regard these attempts as vandalism - intentionally damaging - but as the work of people who haven't understood anything about Wikipedia and whose English skills are often scanty.
So the bold banners of the kind suggested above need to come in not just at the article creation stage but earlier on: at the moment a new account is registered. At present we're not using this opportunity to convey anything to a new user about what might or might not be appropriate. Recently I had a discussion with JohnCD who has been urging this for years: see User_talk:JohnCD/Archive_31#Account creation information. Would it be possible for you to raise the topic of the WMF role in developing a more informative account creation process?: Noyster (talk), 12:36, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi, Noyster et al. This is what I was hoping to do when I met Brandon for the last time. In the aftermath of WP:ACTRIAL, with a lot of help and input from people like WSC, DGG, HJ Mitchell, Blade, WTT, Scott, Joe Decker and other volunteers we got the WMF to create Page Curation and start on the new landing page. Jorm has explained above why it didn't work out with the landing page and it didn't take me two minutes to figure out what the rift was within the WMF at the time and why one of his superiors was rude to me in DC and why one of the junior contractors was running around the conference using the 'F' word about the volunteer team.
What we actually have now, 4 years later, is still only a job half done. Half done because exactly what you are talking about was the other half of the project; Jorm's landing page that he was forced to abandon. One could hear audible groans and titters in the theatre in Hong Kong while the reciprocal laudatory videos from and for Sue were being played while some of the involved staffers were just too embarrassed to be at the conference after loudly announcing they would be there.
What we need to do now, and urgently, is to resurrect that project of Jorm's and/or or seriously start developing something along those lines. Ichatted with JohnCD about in in Oxford in 2013 and here we are another 3 years down the road and still nothing. I don't believe the problems surrounding the dilettantish use of Page Curation and the critical absence after all these years of a proper landing page as being particularly contentious or controversial issues and needing a community consensus - after all, the community wasn't asked if it wanted Visual Editor, Media Viewer, Flow, or Notations, andor the IEP. IMO, NPP is critical enough for the WMF to put an entire development team on, instead of their staff asking for grants for themselves to do it, or junior staffers pompously telling us the foundation operates on a bootstring. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:08, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
Edit count and number of patrols for edit count ≤ 20000.
As a initial practical measure which we might even be able to implement locally: have the article right to AfC reviewers apply to NPP also. It's the same job. There is a complication tho,in there being two methods of NPP,one using the curation dashboard and the old one without. I use them equally. I do not know what the relative proportion overall? DGG ( talk ) 16:14, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
DGG, That 'initial practical measure' is clearly the first and most fundamental of changes that should be made and you and I have been aware of it for years. AfC and NPP may have some basic similarities but as far as importance is concerned, the AfC is about as crucial as the ARS. NPP is the and only firewall against unwanted new 'articles' and it just has to be done properly, systematically, and seriously. The stats that Cryptic has made for us are leaning towards proving that not only was I right 5 years ago, but that the junior WMF contractor who persistently claimed we were wrong, was completely wrong and that the Foundation was bending the truth in order to drag Jorm away from further work on the problem. Those enigmatic pieces of a jigsaw that have been rattling in my desk drawer for years have suddenly all slotted into place. As you guys in the US say: 'Awesome!' Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:24, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
If what you're trying to show is that NPP is done by users who are too inexperienced for it, I don't disagree, but I'd be very, very leery about using those stats to try to prove it. My admittedly-anecdotal experience, looking at the page-curation logs in my watchlist after I speedy articles, is that the vast majority are either not done through the page curation interface at all, or that they only got "reviewed" to get them off the unreviewed list after a different editor had already tagged them for deletion.
I'm happy to provide data, but please be careful not to ascribe any interpretation of them to me. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. —Cryptic 04:37, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I think the data speaks for itself without much need for either objective or subjective interpretation. When I was in Grade school over 60 years ago, 10 out of 100 was 10% and I don't recall scientists having changed the rules of math since ! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:56, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Cryptic makes a valid point though. The page-curation interface has shortcomings, as I have previously raised here only to find that WMF is no longer interested in improving it. For that reason, I don't use it except to mark pages as patrolled, which I only do if I'm sure further review is not necessary. In other words, I may tag an article as needing sources, but not mark it as reviewed if I think there may be other major problems benefiting from a second look by other patrollers. The stats show that I have curated 108 pages in the past year, but my CSD log shows that I have tagged more than 800 articles for speedy deletion. Of course I've also tagged hundreds more for AfD, PROD, or with cleanup templates. I use Twinkle with "Mark page as patrolled when tagging (if possible)" unchecked because I don't think a page should be marked as patrolled if it doesn't belong in main space, if for not other reason than another user could remove the CSD tag, removing the page from the NPP queue, and hiding it from other patrollers.- MrX 10:58, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Two things here, X: Whichever system is being used, and there is no denying that the Page Curation tool is vastly superior, what you don't see are the dozens of wrongly tagged patrolls every day. I see them because I sometimes sit down and work systematically through the CSD cats, and I find the rate of wrong tags there, not to mention what might be wrongly PRODed or AfD'd, (or even wrongly let through) is hair-tearingly high. Secondly, you're right about the Foundation thinking they've given us a finished product, but that's the problem with even the most expensive software in the world - even my state-of-the art MacOS is full of bugs. It's traditional to release software before it is finished. However, there has been a mass exodus of staff recently and we have a golden opportunity to exercise some pressure from below that hasn't been possible since WP was founded. We have to seize this chance and act before the window closes and the WMF becomes a closed huddle again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:42, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
There is no doubt that the page curation tool as whole is vastly superior than its predecessor. One of tasks I have recently taken on is reviewing new articles marked for speedy deletion, because for the past (roughly) six months, there have been an influx of enthusiastic patrollers who are doing it wrong. In fact, this morning I found a couple of erroneous CSDs from a brand new editor. I agree that we have to seize the opportunity to address the larger issue of curating new articles from new editors while there is an opening. Having led software development teams on multi-million dollar software projects in a previous career, I believe I could lend a hand in helping to collect requirements, particularly from the people who actually do new page patrol on a routine basis. Of course, that would be futile without receptiveness from WMF, and willingness to implement feature and mods to the current system. I think we could also stand to improve the NPP process to make it more consistent, including creating a user right, offering mentoring, and having common, documented standards for NPP.- MrX 12:11, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
The brand new editor gives me pause. One doesn't join Wikipedia and ones first half-dozen edits are to tag articles for CSD or PROD at a speed of one a minute (and I've just declined another of their CSDs). We all know that there could be half a dozen reasons, but most of them arouse suspicion. This is one of the classic reasons why strict control must be exercised over who can patrol new pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:47, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
One thing which I would like to see is technical impossibility to put new articles for CSD according to certain criteria (at any rate A7) within few (say three) hours within creation. Sometimes these articles are improvable, and sometimes authors can improve them, but not when an article is gone within minutes.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:18, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
There a couple of ways that could be accomplished. Force new users through AFC process, or only allow new articles from new users to be visible to those users for the first few hours, before they become visible to the everyone.- MrX 19:56, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
The way this can and must be achieved, Ymblanter - and it's what this discussion is all about - is by ensuring that new page patrolling is only done by properly schooled, trusted, and authorised users. Irrespective of whether the patrollers are using the vastly superior Page Curation, or the old page feed and Twinkle.
It's either that, or as X suggests, we relaunch WP:ACTRIAL, create the new Article Creation Flow landing page that was discussed with Jorm above, and merge AfC and its task force to NPP. The problem there is though that there are still some people who believe that everyone except IPs being able to spontaneously throw a new page into mainspace is what makes Wikipedia work. Having patrolled thousands of new pages, I cannot support that view, and in fact there is not, and never has been any proof of it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:56, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Sure, in the bright future only experienced users will be doing NPP, and there will be enough of them to ensure quality of NPP. However, this bright future is still some way ahead of us, and may be in the meanwhile we can use some technical support to prevent some incompetent actions.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:40, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
The technical side is not something we need 'support' for. It's somehing the community agrees by consensus that is needed, and the WMF told to get it done. That's what they are there for - although they tend to lose sight of that fact. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:16, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Another example - user's very first edit was to wrongly tag a new article for deletion. It happens all the time; barely 5 minutes into my daily short stint at NPP I see this kind of think every day. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:17, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
I was not aware of WP:ACTRIAL since I was not very active in 2011. I have to say that I'm appalled at WMF's refusal to implement it. I found this comment to be quite eye opening. I had no idea that WMF was that disconnected from the community that builds and maintains the content. The attitudes expressed in that thread explains a lot of the friction that I've observed between the community and the WMF over the past several years. Sad.- MrX 02:45, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: Orangemoody. Any discussion about adding minimum qualifications to page curation needs to point out that we really should make it as difficult as possible for criminals to use Wikipedia as a tool for extortion. IMHO, the improvements to quality of reviews and editor retention are just gravy on top of the benefit of reducing the risk of real-world harm. VQuakr (talk) 03:51, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Poor patrolling is a double-edged sword,, one which the Foundation's detractors at Bugzilla totally failed to see (even Philippe): it loses us good faith editors whose creations are bitily deleted because the poor souls haven't got a clue as to what they are allowed to write, and the spammers and paid advocates articles are allowed through because the patrollers haven't got a clue how to recognise artspam, hoaxes, or attack pages. The WMF is interested only in 3 mio, 4 mio, and now 5 mio 'articles' and doesn't care a hoot that possibly as many as 25% ofthe 'articles' have no business being in the encyclopedia at all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:55, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Those who have, such as X, taken the trouble to read up on the background to the six-year saga of trying to improve NPP, will also be interested in this entire thread which is yet another classic example of the polarisation at the time within the WMF and how the one side deliberately usurped, delayed, and finally sabotaged a 100% communty initiative and then tried hard to obfuscate their reasons for doing so. Later that year in Washington I was told quite categorically by one of the most seniour staff members (neither Jorm nor Erik, and certainly not Philippe with whom I have always enjoyed the very best of relations), that the community has nothing to say in the matter, should shut up and do as it's told by the Foundation, and stop rocking he boat. Let's hope that the recent 100% turnover in C-Level staff and CEO will open the opportunity to lead the Movement to some genuine positive steps forward and remember that we the community are essentially the writers and maintainers of what we are hoping is supposed to be a quality knwowledge base with servers and software to maintain tather than a a socio-political NGO, and that we are the tail that should be wagging the WMF dog and its Bard of Trustees. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:41, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
    Kudpung, you linked to your MW talk page but there's no thread there. I'm interested in reading more of this history.- MrX 04:02, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
I'm terribly sorry X, thos is the talk page I should have linked to. Read it carefully. Those were the days when I still used to be polite and my jaded temperament didn't show so much. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:38, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:User_pages/RfC_for_stale_drafts_policy_restructuring

I thought folks here ~might~ be interested in this RfC. It has a zillion subquestions but one of them is whether all articles marked for AfC should be in draft space or not.... Jytdog (talk) 10:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Marking a Page as Patrolled

Is there a straightforward way that I can mark a page as patrolled using Twinkle? I see a Tag button that allows me to tag a page, which allows me to mark it as patrolled, but that requires that I check at least one cleanup or cleanup-like tag to apply. Am I missing something obvious? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:04, 21 May 2016 (UTC)  Done Robert McClenon (talk) 20:20, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

For a little while, I had the little tag in the lower right corner to mark the page patrolled. However, now I managed to install the Page Curation side bar, and I don't see an icon on it that just marks the page patrolled. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:29, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: In the page curation sidebar, middle button is marked with "mark this page as reviewed". Vanjagenije (talk) 20:53, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
I figured that out finally. So reviewed and patrolled are the same. It's a powerful set of tools, but not very well documented even for experienced users who are retired IT people. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:54, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

New template idea

Hi, as this also affects new page patrollers, I'm adding a notice here. Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#New_template_idea for the discussion. Anarchyte (work | talk) 07:10, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

NPP reform

Just a reminder that in just over a week at Wikimania there's going to be a discussion about the systems of control of new pages. Anyone who is going to Italy and would like to take part, please check out the conference schedule, and I look forward to seeing you there. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:31, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

FYI: Edit Review Improvements

If someone amongst you are interested as a patroller, there is a new project described on mw:Edit Review Improvements--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:38, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Prompt prods of new pages by new editors

I've been WP:PRODPATROLling the past several months and I have seen a pattern of new pages being promptly (within minutes in many cases) proposed for deletion. This doesn't seem to be inline with the advice at WP:NPP or WP:ATD or WP:PROD for that matter. Many of these new articles have been created by new editors and so there is a WP:BITE aspect to it. Here are some examples from my prod patrolling today. ~Kvng (talk) 22:21, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. If it's not being tagged before 10 minutes have passed, I really don't see the problem. I mean, PROD does state that if you object, you can simply remove the notice. –Compassionate727 (T·C) 23:21, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
So you don't see a WP:BITE issue here? Where does your 10 minute figure come from? Are you yanking my chain? ~Kvng (talk) 23:42, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
The very page associated with this talk page says 10 minutes... –Compassionate727 (T·C) 23:44, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
Here's what I found:
  • Tagging anything other than attack pages, copyvios, vandalism or complete nonsense only a few minutes after creation may only serve to annoy the page author.
  • A good rule of thumb is to wait about 15 minutes after the last edit before tagging the article (or up to an hour if a {{newpage}} tag is present).
  • Research has shown that writers unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines should be accorded at least 10 to 15 minutes to fix the article before it is nominated for speedy deletion.
This is talking about tagging and speedy deletion, not prodding. Do you interpret "tagging" to include prodding? ~Kvng (talk) 23:53, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes. PROD is a deletion tag, as is CSD. The ones you specifically seem to be thinking about are maintenance tags. That's one type of tag, and PROD and CSD are another. –Compassionate727 (T·C) 23:56, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
That wouldn't be my interpretation. Let's see what others have to say. ~Kvng (talk) 00:04, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Having looked at two of the pages, I think that one of them was an appropriate PROD and one was a reasonable case for AFD but not for PROD. My real question is: What do other experienced editors think should be done with new pages by new editors that have very little content? On the one hand, I agree that WP:BITE is a good behavioral guideline (and it is a guideline, not a policy). On the other hand, every guideline has exceptions, and I personally think that occasionally experienced editors tie themselves in knots to avoid being seen as biting. So what should be done with new pages by new editors that have very little content? They are easy to deal with at AFC (as declines), but how long should they be left up in article space? I know that there is no rule that says that cruft by new editors can be moved to draft space; is this a case where WP:IAR applies? If not, what should be done about new pages by new editors that have very little content? Ultimately, do they get prodded, or are empty pages the price that we pay to retain new editors? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:10, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) PRODing is definitly 'tagging'. In general I like to wait a while to PROD, in my opinon it is only good for "one edit wonders". The exception, in my mind, is BLPPROD. I think it best to tag all unsourced biographies as soon as you see them unless you can immediatly find sources through something like {{find sources}}. This puts a clock on low notability articles, ups the requirement to RS (rather than if they put any source in which would prevent the BLPProD being placed). This saves having to run the article through AfD if the author has no RS and is of little inconvenience if the author has RS. It is good to place a note nicely explaining BLP sourcing requirements on the author's talk page so they do not simply get the impersonal automted notice. JbhTalk 00:18, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Like WP:COPYVIO, and WP:CSD, WP:BLP is a more serious concern and policy dictates that that be dealt with promptly. I'm concerned about normal WP:PROD here. I would prefer that maintenance tags be put on problematic contributions and then at a later time these can be escalated to WP:PROD or WP:AFD. I don't understand what the rush is to delete new articles with notability and other issues. If you're itching to delete crappy articles, over at WP:WPNN we have a backlog stretching back to 2008 of articles tagged for notability. If it feels like you're "bending over backwards" for WP:BITE, WP:NPP might not be your happy place on WP. ~Kvng (talk) 13:55, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Not sure if this is actually a reply to me, if so I fear you misread my remarks. I find normal PROD to be useless when an article is being written as well as being inappropriate in most cases. If however, the article has been unedited for half an hour or so and is still stubby, or if more substansial for a couple hours, it is a good idea to do an abreviated BEFORE and PROD it to try to keep from clogging up AfD. (I seem to get more complaints about AfDing stuff I should have PRODed) A good PROD rational and, unless it looks like to author is a drive-by, a note on their talk page is good practice. This is hardly "bending over backwards" to BITE. If an article lacks noability it should not be here and waiting for it to fall out of the NPP queue means it will become lost amongst all of the other articles here, even if you watchlist it, since often these kinds of articles are not edited again.

The whole point of NPP is to insure articles meet minimum standards, including notability. JbhTalk 14:20, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I apologize for responding to two of you with one response. I'm sure you're aware that another constraint on prod is that it is supposed to be used for cases "expected to be uncontroversial". What I'm putting forward here is the idea that a prompt prod of a new article by a new editor on a contribution that does not qualify for deletion under WP:CSD is potentially controversial due to WP:BITE and the WP:NPP guidelines around that. I'm surprised that there is so much concern about keeping new articles articles with notability issues in mainspace for a few weeks while we let the newbie down easy when we are already hosting over 60,000 of these dating back as far as 2008. ~Kvng (talk) 00:38, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
It's not just controversial and bitey, it's generally useless. Prod a page by a new editor within a couple minutes of creation, and one of two things will happen: 1. the author stops editing, and maybe wanders off to start yet another Wikipedia-is-evil page on facebook; or (more likely) 2. the author removes the prod template without comment in his next edit, whether or not deletion is appropriate. In the second case, a CSD tag would at least get reverted back onto the page, but you can never prod it again. —Cryptic 01:07, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Goals of NPP, Tradeoffs, Questions

First, I think that the comment that someone who is concerned about bending over backward to avoid biting newcomers may not in a “happy place on NPP” was meant for me, not for User:Jbhunley. (That had been my phrase.) However, his most recent comment and the previous comments raise questions as to what are the primary purposes and secondary objectives for NPP. I agree that the “whole point of NPP is to insure articles meet minimum standards including notability.” Other objectives, such as to be welcoming to newcomers, are secondary. Since many newcomers don’t understand notability, there is a difficult tradeoff between the primary purpose of NPP and its secondary goals.

I initially disagreed with the idea of waiting a period of time, such as an hour, before starting deletion, but I now mostly agree. I am not sure that I agree with waiting an hour before any tagging, but this discussion isn’t about tagging in general; it is about prodding and other delete actions. I initially thought that editors shouldn’t commit very incomplete articles to article space, and that they should wait until the article was ready for scrutiny before submitting it from user or draft space. I still think that, but I see that new users don’t know about spaces. A remaining question is, if an article has been submitted by a new user and clearly is nowhere near Wikipedia standards, what should be done with it? It can be prodded (or AFD’d or CSD’d); is that biting, and does notability trump the bite guideline. It can be tagged with a happy face, which seems to be one of the positions here. Is the new editor also advised that they need to read up on policies before submitting more articles? Is there a middle ground?

I think that we are in agreement that a few types of articles by new editors really need to be bitten by CSD tagging. (That is, the article, not the editor, should be bitten.) These include copyvio and serious BLP violations. I think that they should also include blatant advertising. (You will know blatant advertising when you see it. It uses the first person plural or the second person too much.) Other than that, I think that the same questions apply to articles by new editors that would normally be tagged for no context, no content, or no claim of significance, as for PROD.

Do we agree that the primary purpose of NPP, and its reason for being, is to ensure that articles meet minimum standards? If so, what are our range of actions on articles that do not meet standards? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:15, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Robert McClenon for opening up the discussion. I would prefer to focus on prod and more specifically on prompt prods of new articles by new editors. You say the goal of NPP is to assure that articles meet minimum standards. You acknowledge that the initial contribution is often skeletal and so some waiting period (I've heard numbers between 10 and 60 minutes now) is useful to give authors time to refine their contribution. I would prefer that we start with maintenance tags, smiley faces and welcome messages and slowly escalate to other interventions. The consequence is that, for a time, we will have to be comfortable with content that does not meet minimum standards. Is it possible that NPP could take it down a notch or look beyond the first 10 to 60 minutes of an article's existence? ~Kvng (talk) 00:25, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
First, I was agreeing that the primary purpose of NPP is to ensure that articles meet minimum standards. That wasn't originally my statement. Are you saying that NPP has a different primary purpose? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:37, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Second, far from agreeing with the concept of a waiting period on New Page Patrol, I disagree, except that I can see an exception for new editors. Experienced editors should know not to commit an incomplete article to article space. They can refine their contribution in user space. What I am willing to agree with is that new editors, who may not know about user space, may not know that they should refine their contributions in user space before committing them to article space. I am willing to allow some slop for new editors who haven't yet learned how Wikipedia works. I can see a pragmatic reason to wait up to an hour or so before reviewing articles on New Page Patrol, but I strongly disagree with those who imply that there is a general obligation to give general editors time to refine their contributions in article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:37, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Third, I strongly disagree with putting smiley faces on content that does not meet minimum standards. I agree with maintenance tags and welcome messages, if we also put explanations on the talk pages of the new users. We should be trying to give new editors advice about how to become better editors, not just welcoming them. I dislike the smiley faces both because they are saccharine, and because I do not see that they are likely to be beneficial in the medium run, let alone the long run. Are the new editors who create the stubs also being advised that they should either improve them or ask for help in improving them, or are we just giving them smiley faces? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:37, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Fourth, is User:Kvng's concern focused specifically on PRODs of new articles by new editors, or are we also being asked to hold off on other review actions, such as CSD, AFD, and tagging? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:37, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm trying to stay focused on prompt prods of new articles by new editors. ~Kvng (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
  • In my opinion, our first and foremost goal with NPP is to ensure articles meet the absolute minimum standard. All serious works based on contributions by the public or academia review submissions with at the bare minimum this goal in mind, usually with a more strict goal (such as exhaustive peer review). Many of these serious works show apathy regarding contributors' experience; for example, if a inexperienced contributor's submission shows no serious attempt to write a respectable work, they will likely be rejected in a few minutes by an editor or reviewer. If the fear of biting newbies gets to the point that patrollers fear from taking appropriate action with regards to inappropriate articles by newbies fearing that they'll be criticized for upholding the quality of the encyclopedia, then we have a serious problem. Poor quality control leads to a proliferation of garbage. Of course, deterring potential contributors is always bad, and newbies should normally not have a red banner stuck on their new articles in the first few minutes since creation. But this has to be compatible with maintaining our quality and respectability as an at least half-serious reference work. Esquivalience t 02:52, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree with User:Esquivalience. The goal of not driving away new editors is important, but the goal of maintaining the quality of the encyclopedia is even more important. If our fear of biting newbies is such that a necessary job can't be done, then the job needs to be redefined, rather than just doing nothing. The proposal below is a good way to redefine the job. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:45, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Could we address this concern by having NPP participants move articles that would otherwise be prodded into the AFC pipeline? ~Kvng (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
As an RFC reviewer who has recently worked at NPP, I think that moving pages that would otherwise be prodded into draft space, and thus subject to AFC review, would be a good case of WP:IAR. There is no rule permitting moving a weak article to draft space, but there maybe ought to be such a rule. That way, the weak articles aren't in article space, but they can be improved while their authors learn, and their authors can even ask for help. I think it is a good idea. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:45, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes. This would be a useful option however an RfC developing consensus to do so and develop the guidelines/procedures would be needed. If this were done IAR more than a couple of times there would certianly be a dramafest. JbhTalk 21:55, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
As per the concern that doing this frequently via IAR, which is really meant for one-time or rare situations, would cause a dramafest, I have thrown the idea out at the Idea Lab. If that is accepted, a detailed RFC can be drafted. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:28, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. JbhTalk 02:48, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I have a question. User:Jbhunley and User:Esquivalience have both stated that the primary purpose of NPP is to ensure that new articles meet minimum standards. I agreed with both of them. I was then quoted by User:Kvng as having stated that the purpose of NPP is to ensure that new articles meet minimum standards. I observed that User:Kvng was neither agreeing nor disagreeing with that statement. So my question is: What does User:Kvng think is the primary purpose of NPP or are the primary purposes of NPP? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:52, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I have not spent time at NPP for a while and so don't have a strong opinion about primary purpose. I have posted here because I detected a disconnect between what I read at WP:NPP and behavior of NPP reviewers who do a lot of prodding. My reading of WP:NPP is the priorities are: ~Kvng (talk) 03:24, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
  1. WP:CSD related activities
  2. Interfacing productively with new editors
  3. Applying maintenance tags and other WP:ATD
  4. Deletion nominations (respecting WP:BEFORE)
1,3,4 are "ensuring articles meet minimum standards". I would add that before tagging at least a brief good faith effort should be made to fix rather than tag. This means fixing bare urls rather than {{linkrot}}, trying to find good cats and wikifying rather than {{uncategorized}} or {{deadend}} etc. This also means trying to figure out if the article has a reasonable chance of passing notability criteria, maybe noting some sources on the talk page if you think it can pass, or starting deletion processes rather than tagging {{notability}}. An NPP reviewer should kick as few issues down the road as possible before they click "reviewed". JbhTalk 04:04, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
As a side note I do not think any article tagged with {{notability}} should be marked "reviewed". Rather another reviewer should take a look at it, or it should be moved to AfC. In fact I think that would be a good criteria to use for Robert McClenon's Idea Lab proposal - Any time a new article would be tagged with {{notability}} it should be moved to draft space and entered into the AfC workflow. JbhTalk 04:10, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Gah... that can become a back door delete. Need to think more about the knock on effects... JbhTalk 04:26, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Takeaways from AFC

As a reviewer at Articles for Creation who has recently worked at NPP. , and might or might not do so again, I have a few thoughts. NPP and AFC are different, but have some overlapping functionality in terms of reviewing the quality and content of new articles. Everything comes in through NPP. Only AFC submissions come in to AFC. NPP and AFC articles both come from a mixture of experienced and inexperienced editors. Most AFC submissions by experienced editors are accepted, and nearly all new pages that are patrolled by NPP reviewers are marked as reviewed, with or without tags. The real issue is pages created by new editors. In my experience, new editors and the articles submitted by new editors may sometimes belong to certain classes that are sometimes clear, sometimes less certain, and sometimes overlapping.

The first class of new editors, fortunately, is those whose objective is to contribute constructively to Wikipedia. The articles that they, as new editors seeking to be constructive, submit often do not meet notability standards, and sometimes do not meet stylistic and tone standards, and their initial submissions may be accepted or declined. However, they are willing to learn from the advice of more experienced editors to improve their articles. Typically their articles will eventually be accepted. Occasionally their first topic of choice simply isn’t notable. In any case, such editors are exactly who most want to attracted and retain.

The second class of new editors, unfortunately, is those whose primary reason for coming to Wikipedia is a promotional or self-serving one, to publicize their company, or sometimes themselves. Their articles will almost never be accepted through AFC. (If they are, an AFC volunteer has probably made a human mistake.) Their articles will typically be declined, and occasionally will be tagged for speedy deletion as unambiguous advertising or speedy deletion as copyright violation (from the web site of the company being advertised. While it would be good if these editors will change their ideas about Wikipedia and become constructive contributors, it is, in my opinion, more important not to permit them to add promotional material to Wikipedia than to avoid “biting” them.

The third class of new editors is those who appear to be clueless. This class does (as noted) overlap both with constructive editors and with promotional editors, but there are a few completely clueless new editors. Their submissions to AFC are declined for many reasons, for notability reasons (but sometimes for what are really social networking profiles), as test edits, as blank edits, or sometimes because the reviewer can’t figure out what the submission is supposed to be. Some of them do then acquire clues.

Applying these observations to NPP may be useful, although all reasoning by analogy is limited. The articles that are being proposed for deletion, which were the original subject of this discussion, probably fall into the third class, submissions by new editors who are, at least at the time, clueless. (Unsourced biographies of living persons are a special case, because they may be submitted by otherwise clueful new editors who just don’t yet know that biographies of living persons absolutely require sources.)

Are the articles by new editors that are being proposed for deletion: inadequate articles by constructive new editors; promotional pieces; or articles by clueless new editors? I would assume that they are not promotional, but the work of editors with varying mixes of good faith and clue. I think that this categorization may be useful in helping us to decide how to deal with inadequate articles at New Page Patrol. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

I cannot speak for PROD (I always AfD), but the vast majority of newbies are frustratingly hit-and-run: create a subpar article at best and leave, not responding to any concerns that I convey at their talk page, and showing no serious attempt to back their article even for the first few days since creation. Even with PROD does this appear: many newbies do not act on concerns, but when their article is tagged with any deletion template, they suddenly come to remove the template or defend their article vigorously. Perhaps WP:ACTRIAL would ensure that only newbies serious about creating an article can create one, but the WMF went against a community consensus and vetoed it. Esquivalience t 11:42, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Promotional articles (your 2nd class) can be handled by WP:CSD so that leaves the well intentioned (1st class) and the clueless (3rd class) and the. I beleive policy indicates we need to WP:AGF on the part of these editors and I don't think prodding their contributions less than an hour in is doing that. ~Kvng (talk) 14:54, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I assume that User:Kvng means that promotional articles entered directly in article space can be handled by WP:CSD. Only the most blatant promotional articles at AFC are handled by CSD. Most are declined as reading like an advertisement. Sometimes the AFC reviewer discovers that the NPP reviewer has already put WP:G11 on the article. There isn't always a clear distinction between the first class and the third class at AFC, and I have no reason to think that NPP is any different. In any case, most well-intentioned articles at AFC are declined on the first pass. Establishing notability and providing proper references to establish notability really is hard. Some well-meant articles entered directly into mainspace are presumably nominated for AFD.
User:Esquivalience states that they do not PROD new articles, but use AFD. Does User:Kvng also consider that to be biting them? If User:Kvng agrees that clueless articles can be moved from mainspace to draft space, should completely inadequate (although clearly well-intentioned) articles be moved from mainspace to draft space? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:11, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm not as focused on AFD of new articles as on prod because there's more light at AFD and so AFD is less likely to delete underdeveloped articles on promising topics and AFD participants are more able to effectively push back on blatantly WP:BITEy NPP nominations.
Clueless and well-intentioned submissions should be given the same good-faith consideration. If NPP reviewers consider a new page worthy of deletion but it does not qualify for speedy deletion, I think the proposal would be to move the article to draft: sapce, slap an AFC banner on it and a notice on the author's talk page and see if anyone ever pushes the AFC submit button on it. ~Kvng (talk) 02:19, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
If a proper job is done of explaining to the author, then the author can be expected to push the AFC submit button. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:26, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I have proposed the idea of moving the inadequate articles to draft space in the Idea lab. The next step, after discussion, is an RFC at Village pump (policy). Robert McClenon (talk) 02:26, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for taking the initiative on this. I've posted a notice at AfC. ~Kvng (talk) 02:37, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I am facing considerable push-back at the Village Pump on the idea of moving the inadequate articles into AFC. If anyone here feels strongly that moving the inadequate articles into AFC is appropriate, can they please also provide their input at the Village Pump? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:14, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

More Thoughts About Inadequate Articles by New Editors

As I noted just above, I am getting pushback at the Village Pump about the idea of sending inadequate articles by new editors to AFC. The editors there have in particular taken issue with the idea that the do not bite guideline is a reason to avoid proposing deletion of inadequate articles by new editors. So we need to consider what should be the consensus among NPP of how to deal with such articles if the move-to-AFC concept is rejected. I see at least four approaches. The first seems to be to put smiley faces on the articles, welcome the editors, and try to explain to them that their articles need improvement. I haven’t seen anyone except User:Kvng state that position, but that position has been stated and should be discussed. (As I have noted, I take very strong exception to the smiley faces, but that is my opinion, and is worth at least what you paid for it.) The second is to nominate them for deletion at Articles for Deletion. The third is to consider and dismiss Kvng’s criticism and propose them for deletion. I personally think that good arguments besides those of Kvng have been made against the PRODs. (Other people suggested that, so it may be worth more than you paid for it.) The fourth is to consider A7 seriously, and tag some of the articles for speedy deletion for no credible claim of significance, and nominate the rest for AFD. I personally think that the second and fourth ideas are those that should be seriously considered. (I still also personally think that sending the articles to AFC is a reasonable idea, but I won’t push it when I am clearly in a minority.)

I would like to ask whether either Kvng or other editors have had success in getting new editors to improve clueless articles by new editors. If statistics exist, I would like to know what they are. My own thought is that I agree with User:Esquivalience that new editors can be "frustratingly hit-and-run" in not trying to improve inadequate articles, and that implies that there is a diminishing return to trying to welcome and teach these editors. Maybe new editors who submit an inadequate article are not the new editors who are about to become productive editors; maybe new editors who are about to become productive editors either submit a reasonably good article, or start out with other activities than article creation.

I have said a lot for one day and will say more elsewhere or on another day. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:53, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

  • As I mentioned before, maybe WP:ACTRIAL could work, with little cost but huge benefits. It's a shame that the 2011 WMF defended vehemently the "anyone can edit" principle at the huge cost of quality. — Esquivalience (talk) 03:22, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
@Esquivalience: I once saw somebody suggest something similar to WP:ACTRIAL in passing. It was that users who weren't autoconfirmed would be required to use AfC to create the article instead of being able to do so directly. –Compassionate727 (T·C) 14:51, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
My experience with the articles I have deprodded is that most of them stick, some are sent promptly to AfD where more than half are then deleted but most require non-trivial AfD discussion. I rarely see new editors participate productively in any of this. Many seem reluctant to even deprod even if their initial submission is somewhat reasonable and it addresses an arguably notable topic. I don't think new editors are equipped to participate in notability and sourcing policy arguments associated with CSD, PROD and AFD. This is diving into the deep end of WP and I don't think it's a good introduction. The learning curve is not quite as steep at AfC. Creating a new article is not the best place for a new editor to start but it seems to be the place a lot of them begin. ~Kvng (talk) 02:09, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Rough Consensus

There has been discussion about moving articles from article space to draft space in three places: here; at the Articles for Creation talk page; and the Village Pump Idea Lab. There is strong pushback against the idea of moving inadequate articles, whether by new editors or otherwise, to draft space, unless the editors agree. In the absence of a Request for Comments, I think it is fair to say that there is rough consensus against the idea. That idea was proposed as a compromise between tagging inadequate articles for proposed deletion, and the idea that doing so would be biting the newcomers, so that their articles should be tagged with smiley faces and the editors should be gently encouraged to improve them. I think, as a result, that we should conclude that there is also rough consensus here against the idea that inadequate articles by new editors should be met by welcomes and gentle encouragement, let alone with smiley faces. If anyone disagrees with that rough consensus, an RFC is appropriate. There is a widely held view that inadequate articles should not be tagged for deletion (any type of deletion) until a reasonable period, maybe an hour, has elapsed. (I personally disagree with giving experienced editors any lag time, but am willing to give that lag time to new editors who may not know about user space and draft space.) So I would conclude that the rough consensus is that new editors should be given a short-time pass on inadequate articles, but that otherwise there should be no special exception on deletion of articles by new editors. Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:59, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

I would disagree with the 'no deletion tagging of any kind for at least an hour'. This is not the current practice. CSD and BLPPROD should be done relatively quickly, not 1 or 2 minutes after creation, but they should not be allowed to sit around either. Also the question of any deletion tagging was not the locus of the discussions, rather it was quick PRODing. In that case I can agree that there is a consensus to not PROD very new articles however, unless I missed something, most of the discussion was for more of on the order of 15-20 min rather than on the order of an hour. I dislike giving specific times since that is likely to lead to wiki-lawyering. JbhTalk 17:07, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Agreed. CSD should be done after roughly 15 minutes in my opinion, with the exception of G3, G10, G11 and G12, which should be done immediately. BLPPROD (at least in my opinion) can also be done immediately, due to the softer nature of it. –Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:23, 4 June 2016 (UTC)::Agreed. CSD should be done after roughly 15 minutes in my opinion, with the exception of G3, G10, G11 and G12, which should be done immediately. BLPPROD (at least in my opinion) can also be done immediately, due to the softer nature of it. –Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:23, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
So in any case do we have rough consensus against the original idea? The original idea seemed to be that inadequate articles by new editors that would otherwise be PRODed should be welcomed, gently encouraged, and tagged with smiley faces. There seems to be rough agreement, except perhaps by one editor, that such articles should, after some short period of time, be tagged for deletion, whether for CSD, BLPPROD, PROD, or AFD. So I would say that the response to the original post should be: don't tag in 1 to 2 minutes; don't let inadequate articles sit around for a long time, either with or without welcomes to their authors; consider carefully which of the deletion tags to use (which is always good advice). Robert McClenon (talk) 17:21, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes. I agree with that statement. JbhTalk 17:32, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
I disagree with this rough consensus but maybe that's why you're calling it a rough consensus. I appreciate the need to deal with copyright, BPL and CSD issues promptly and we have good processes and policies for dealing with those. But why the rush on other reasons, most prominently notability? Where does this 1 hour rule of thumb come from. Most other things on Wikipedia happen on timescales measured in days and weeks. ~Kvng (talk) 02:19, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
@Kvng: It's just a time frame after which it is considered less oppressive to begin dealing with issues. It's an "okay, I think you've waited long enough now, go ahead." –Compassionate727 (T·C) 13:13, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Okay, but that's not a justification for acting so quickly. What's the justification? Part of Robert McClenon's consensus is acknowledgement that these prompt prods are bitey but since these contributions are so horrible it is necessary to deal with them in an hour or so. What sort of horror are we talking about? What's the rush? ~Kvng (talk) 13:44, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
User:Kvng writes above: 'Most other things on Wikipedia happen on timescales measured in days and weeks.' PROD starts a process that lasts seven days. If Kvng is saying that PROD shouldn't be started in one hour in the case of inadequate articles by new editors, how long should experienced editors wait before taking action? Are they optimistic that, with gentle encouragement, the new editor will rework the sub-stub into a reasonable article? Alternatively, are they suggesting that the sub-stub should be AFD'd? (I can go along with that, but it might be seen as a burden to the editors who !vote and close AFDs to nominate things that should have no snowball chance.) Is Kvng optimistic that the new editors will learn how to improve the sub-stubs? (My own opinion is that some clueless new editors will eventually acquire clues, maybe within a week, maybe not, and that some will not acquire clues.) Robert McClenon (talk) 14:01, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm not really concerned whether new editors improve their original contribution. What I care about is giving them a better initial Wikipedia experience. Creating a new article is beyond most new editors. Nevertheless, this is where they start in droves. Just because a new editor is unable to effectively improve their contribution doesn't mean it should be immediately deleted. We work collaboratively here to improve each other's work. I don't see how it hurts to leave an orphaned crappy new article around for a few months. This gives the community opportunity to improve it and gives the new editor time to orient themselves.
I need to understand the argument against this. There's a huge gap between proposing for deletion within 10-15 minutes of creation (which I believe is currently considered acceptable NPP practice) and tagging for notability or other serious but non-time-critical issues and letting various cleanup wikiprojects take it from there. So, in the face of acknowledged negatives associated with the practice, please explain to me what is the compelling reason for NPP promptly proposing deletion of articles on what individual patrollers deem to be non-notable topics. ~Kvng (talk) 14:48, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Because if the experienced reviewers, the ones who follow this proposed long wait, wait days to review some drive by reviewer will mark a crap article reviewed and then it is pretty much here to stay. NPP is not primarily about providing a smiles and flowers experience to new editors. It is about insuring a minimum standard of article. If a bad article is PRODed then point the editor to Teahouse or AfC. We should be nice and try to be helpful but NPP is not a wiki-nanny service. It is quality control. JbhTalk 20:14, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Why is it unsatisfactory to tag these promptly (e.g. with {{Notability}}) and have them considered as candidates for deletion at a later day by other editors? ~Kvng (talk) 20:36, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Also, at the start of this discussion you were asking for wait times on the order of 15 minutes. Now you want days??!!?? It is just not going to happen. JbhTalk 20:18, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
What I want to know is what is the justification for the current 10-15 minute minimum guideline and what are the expected consequences of increasing that. At the extreme, I would expect that if NPP stopped using PROD or AFD, the encyclopedia would have a bunch more orphaned, short, low-quality articles on marginally notable subjects. I don't see this as a significant problem because I don't see how they negatively affect the reader's experience of the encyclopedia in any significant way. For those that are upset by below-the-surface cruft, I would suggest you would have a much bigger impact on quality in this area if you spent your time working on the backlog of articles with notability issues at WP:WPNN. These stretch back to 2008 so you're unlikely to bite anyone by working to improve or delete them. ~Kvng (talk) 20:36, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Your question has recieved several, very detailed, answers throughout this thread. That you disagree with them does not make them less. I guess I can give you the blunt answer. Look at all of the shit that has piled up because of being simply tagged and left in WPNN. Piles of crap can be shoveled from the top or the bottom. Since new articles must be reviewed anyway it is silly to add to the pile for someone else to clean up. Particularly when, as WPNN shows, no one wants to shovel the pile from the bottom.

I suggest we should simply agree to disagree at this point. JbhTalk 21:53, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

The answer I have received is that the NPP mission is to ensure minimum article standards are met for new submissions. I asked how quickly after submission that is expected to be achieved. The answer I'm getting here is, "immediately." The 10-15 minute guideline is merely designed to help ensure that the submission is complete before it is reviewed. There is acknowledgement that NPP can bite and that biting is bad but the feeling is that ensuring minimum standards is much more important. Please let me know if I have misunderstood because what I have learned in this discussion, although it may not directly contradict, has a very different emphasis and tone than what's up at WP:NPP. ~Kvng (talk) 23:07, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
That's about right however, you keep bringing up biting yet you do not acknowledge that almost all of the people who have commented here have discussed how they work to mitigate the potential for biting newcomers. I know you feel strongly about this topic but you seem to be seeing partial agreement as disagreement. In just this thread I have said:
  • "It is good to place a note nicely explaining BLP sourcing requirements on the author's talk page so they do not simply get the impersonal automted notice."
  • "A good PROD rational and, unless it looks like to author is a drive-by, a note on their talk page is good practice"
  • "I would add that before tagging at least a brief good faith effort should be made to fix rather than tag. "
  • " If a bad article is PRODed then point the editor to Teahouse or AfC"
Nor do you seem to have paid attention to the times I have said
  • "PROD, in my opinon it is only good for "one edit wonders". "
  • "I find normal PROD to be useless when an article is being written as well as being inappropriate in most cases"
Others in this discussion have said similar things. So, a better restatement is: NPP exists to insure articles meet certain minimum standards. While performing this task reviewers should be sensitive to, and work to avoid, biting newcomers. JbhTalk 23:45, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for restating. I am concerned that no matter how you sugarcoat it with talk page messages, invitations to the Teahouse etc., prompt deletion of an editor's first contribution is going to have an inherent bite. I am also concerned, based on my experience at WP:PRODPATROL, that the non-bitey NPP behavior we strive for is not consistently achieved. ~Kvng (talk) 00:20, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Seldome is anything consistently achieved on Wikipedia, except perhaps wiki-drama . JbhTalk 01:01, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Avoiding the drama

  • I've held back before commenting here in order to see this discussion develop. As the one editor (and admin) who has been the most persistently active in the research for solutions of quality control of new submissions over the last 7 or 8 years, and who is still active on this front and will possibly be facilitating a cross-Wiki discussion at Wikimania on the subject later this month, I firmly underline the statement We should be nice and try to be helpful but NPP is not a wiki-nanny service. It is quality control.
All the issues outlined in the discussion above boil down to simply two things:
  1. The refusal of the Foundation to provide funds and/or engineering to develop a proper landing page for the project so that newbies know up front what they can and cannot do here. The problem being that the WMF jealously guards its right to quote statistics for growth based on all new article submissions, and therefore will not allow those that are inappropriate to be deducted from their stats, and was most probably the underlying reason for rejecting the overwhelming community consensus at WP:ACTRIAL. Everyone here is missing the thread further up the page at #NPP: a cross-Wiki critical issue
  2. The lack of education of those who patrol new pages -or their unwillingness to do the job properly; exacerbated by the fact that although the one most vital maintenance feature of Wikipedia, NPP does not require the slightest demonstration of competency for the task - a paradox in view of the far less important AfC project which requires reviewers to have minimum qualifications.(RfC coming soon).
Address these two issues, and all the other points of discussion above will be resolved. We can only hope that with an almost 100% turnover in senior staff at the WMF, their new goals will be oriented more seriously at these urgent requirements rather than constantly investing into solutions for non existent problems; it's not as if there is a lack of funds (which was one of the fake reasons provided by one staffer who recently joined the exodus). @DGG:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:28, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your explanation, which makes sense, that the WMF has a corrupt motivation for not supporting any efforts at quality control. It is unfortunately now clear that the WMF is not really serving either the community of editors or the community of readers. (The community of readers, far larger than the community of editors, has a need for quality control, because they expect Wikipedia to be a good source of information.) I wish that I could come up with a kinder characterization of the WMF's agenda. (I could come up with one, but it wouldn't match the facts.) Robert McClenon (talk) 13:06, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for this background. The issue of discouraging/disqualifying paid editors has not been brought up in this discussion as a motivator for the prompt dispatch of new pages. I appreciate this concern though I'm sure you appreciate that heightened awareness of this would create tension with WP:AGF. Your green text above squares well with my summary of the MO here at NPP.
I appreciate that NPP is on the receiving end of a fire hose and would like to see that be made more manageable. In that endeavour, I am willing to consider lowering or delaying standards for new articles and I'm getting the clear message that the other editors here are not interested in such consideration. I do support your two numbered initiatives and I think both have the promise of improving things here for new editors and patrollers but it sounds like the first is DOA and I fear, based on my experience at AfC, that the second is subject to the "consistently achieved" limitation Jbhunley and I discussed at the end of the last section above. ~Kvng (talk) 16:03, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for understanding that the rest of us are not willing to compromise on the quality of new articles. In particular, I don't think that the strategy of giving gentle encouragement to the editors of poor-quality articles is likely to result in those articles being brought up to standards. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:57, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
You may be right about the fate of the articles. On the other hand I think we would improve new editor retention and help them improve. The cost of this is allowing crappy new articles to linger in mainspace for a few months. ~Kvng (talk) 19:54, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Most of the crap new articles are created by hit-and-run editors: create and run. No responses to queries I give them. Leaving crap articles in mainspace may actually deter editors away: giving them the impression that we do not have even the slightest in quality control. — Esquivalience (talk) 23:30, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Based on my observations at AFC, and I admit that AFC is not the same as NPP, I have no reason at all to believe that giving any sort of kid-glove treatment to the authors of substandard articles will either result in improvement of those articles or improve editor retention. If I understand User:Esquivalence, I completely agree. Giving easy treatment to the authors of substandard articles will not result in the improvement of those articles, nor is it likely to result in retention of those editors, but it may annoy those new editors who come to Wikipedia to make useful contributions, and who see that crap is rewarded just as much as quality. That is my opinion. Of course, User:Kvng appears to think that crap articles are written by future good editors who simply don't yet know the difference between decent articles and crap, and I and possibly Esquivalence think that crap articles are written by crap editors, not by new editors who need handholding and smiley faces. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:03, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
Whomever is correct I would say it is pretty much indisputable that if editors are not shown, as soon as possible after starting an article, that Wikipedia has minimum standards they will never become good editors - why take the time and effort to learn the standards and write good articles if crappy articles stay. We can encourage them to learn, help, point them to AFC or TEAHOUSE but we do not leave non-policy compliant articles on Wikipedia. That is the whole freaking point of NPP - to weed out articles which are, by policy, unacceptable.

@Kvng: At this point I believe this has been discussed to death, here, at ANI, wherever. If you want to put up an RfC to change things please do but I very strongly believe the consensus among those who do NPP is that NPP is quality control, we have other places and processes for hand holding of new editors and our job at NPP is to courteously point editors to those places or, sometimes, provide assistance ourselves. It is not possible to teach how to do something properly by "passing" failing work. JbhTalk 03:34, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

'...the consensus among those who do NPP is that NPP is quality control. is partly true, JB, but only in so far as it concerns the small group of highly active, very experienced patrollers. While the recent stats demonstrate that they account for a fair proportion of patrols done through Page Curation, a very large number of patrolls are done by a very large number of transient, often newand/or inexperience operators who breeze by to experiment with the tools. The often ge things wrong. Far too often.
Following off-Wiki developments, the RfC to improve NPP and the use of the Page Curation suite of tools is shortly to go live. If there are any last minute questions or suggestions, please contact me on my talk page.
Robert McClenon and Esquivalience are definitely on the right track even if they haven't mentioned the evils of surreptitious promtion and other artspam, and talks have begun with the WMF with a view to revive (at least the requirement) for the New-Article Creator landing page that Brandon was forced to abandon - do please read this thread in the recent archive if you haven't already done so. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Can you provide a link to the draft RfC or is it being developed privately? — Esquivalience (talk) 03:12, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Not so much 'privately', Esquivalience, but not everything is obliged to be developed on WP pages - there are offices, meet-ups, conferences, workgroups, MediaWiki, WikiMedia, etc., and minutes are not always taken; after all, this is a critical cross-Wiki issue. Doing it this way also avoids a lot of backgroud noise. That said, the draft is not yet complete, but it will be short and sweet: Minimum mainspace edits and minimum tenure to oerate the Page Curation tools, creation of this user group, and th right accorded through PERM. do please read this thread in the recent archive if you haven't already done so. Suggestions welcome. He hasn't posted here for a while, but I believe vQuakr to share an interest in these developments too. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:22, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
BTW: Anyone wants to know just how poor the relations were with the WMF (at least at junior staff level) in the 2011 runup to the development of the Page Curation tools, just get up to date with this. It is hoped all round that following Wikimania 2016, that reasonable support can be expected without junior WNF staff claiming volunteers' projects for themselves. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:11, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

NPP backlog

The backlog currently stads at over 7,000 pages. This is higher than it has been for a long time. Help is needed but naturally only from experienced editors, and please bear in mind that in spite of the backlog, accuracy rather than speed of patrolling us essential. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:58, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

New Page Patrollers are asked to be particularly vigilant for pages suspected as being created or edited by paid users. The criteria to check are listed at Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Orangemoody. More background on this important story of enormous abuse is at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-02/Special report.

Generally, inexperienced or too rapid patrolling are the main reasons that such articles get patrolled and slip through the net. If patrollers come across pages they don't know what to do with, they can leave them and pass on to the next one. Ideally however, they should not be too embarrassed to ask for help here. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:46, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

BC year articles

We have a bunch of articles such as 569 BC which were all created from redirects by User:Alumnum (pinged) abd, as far as I see, do not contain any non-trivial information. Any ideas what should we do with them? Patrol and let them stand? AfD? Revert back to the redirect?--Ymblanter (talk) 15:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Please allow me to analyze the situation more comprehensively. All years from 510 BC to the near future had an article of their own with a lead describing basic information about them (in my edits I just streched this back to 580 BC). Years older than that don't have a lead and some (random ones) are simply redirected to their correspondent decade (as 569 BC was redirected to 560s; some of the same decade had leads and others hadn't). I think all years of recorded history are supposed to have an article about them (instead of an article about the decade, century or millenium they belong to), but I may be wrong. Anyway, deleting or keeping, we should follow a standard and not select random years to have an article while its adjacent years do not.
I have an opinion on a closely related issue. For historical reasons, all leads of articles about years 46 BC on cover basically the same information (with some little additional details from 1 AD on), making them nearly identical; so I believe that a template will be more effective than repeating the same description in each article (as we do now). Leads of years before 46 BC, called Pre-Julian years, also have a standard of their own; I was trying to create a template to reproduce their lead, but I failed since I couldn't find how to convert BC years to the ab urbe condita. Any suggestions? - Alumnum (talk) 16:02, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
For the first question, I believe that every article should have some non-trivial info. If say we known that some king died in 567 BC but we do not know anything for 566 BC, let us keep 567BC and redirect 566BC to the decade article. Do these articles have any potential to be filled ever with any info? This is my personal opinion of course.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:20, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
For the second question, unfortunately I have no idea. If no other users reply, it might be good to go to a specialized project.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:31, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I'd actually prefer to keep them all as redirects to their respective decades unless any particular year becomes so big that it makes the decade article too long. That way the information is kept in context. --Slashme (talk) 13:23, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree with this. It also makes navigation easier. There is quite a bit of slack in dating events at that range as well, many events may be given ranges of possible years in various sources. JbhTalk 13:42, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Slashme and Jbhunley. Remote years with few known relevant events make very small articles, and some of the dates are imprecise. Listing them in their respective decades or centuries or millennia makes more sense. We already do this with dates in the far future; for example, instead of "3000" we have 30th century, in which only events like astronomical predictions or cultural references are listed. - Alumnum (talk) 23:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Combining of NPP and AFC

I have seen a mention of a plan to combine New Page Patrol (NPP) and Articles for Creation (AFC). Is that correct, or is there some other plan involving some degree of combining of two types of review, or have I misunderstood, or what? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:29, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I've heard that float around as well. The idea is to give users who create an article directly in mainspace the same level of support and oversight that is given to users who create an article in AFC. Perhaps through, for example, having all new non-autopatrolled mainspace articles go to draft space. Kudpung, I'm sure, will be able to provide more context. →Σσς. (Sigma) 06:57, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
The RfC to combine them was held a while ago but has not been enacted due to waiting on internal restructuring of the WMF who dies the software. Combinging will give us the best of both worlds: The user right for AfC applied to NPP (which up to now can be done by anyone), the dynamic tam at AfC helping out on NPP (current backlog 7,200), a new Article Wizard for Drafts, and an extended suite of the excellent curation tools to replace the AfC helper script. As a result, both the AfC project and the essential NPP operation will work more smoothly and enable more interaction with good faith creators, and help track deliberate spammers à la Orange Moody. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:54, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Unreviewed pages dropping off suspiciously quickly

Several times now, I've seen the number of unreviewed pages on the feed drop from dozens to a handful or none within minutes, after being essentially stable all day. Has anyone else seen the same? It looks like someone speed-clicking through the list without really reviewing. Do we have any way of identifying if that is the case, and who might be responsible? —swpbT 20:26, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

@Swpb: SwisterTwister reviewed about 500 articles in the last 24 hours ([1]). Impressive. Sometimes they were making four reviews per minute. I wonder if WP:NPPCHK was checked every time.Vanjagenije (talk) 20:53, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
@Swpb: There was an ANI thread about this last month. He's still receiving comments like this and this, along with a regular drip of "unreviewed" notices. Rebbing 21:02, 18 May 2016 (UTC) (edited to correct link)
*sigh* Do we need to hold another ANI on this? –Compassionate727 (T·C) 12:36, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Wow. Probably? —swpbT 13:05, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
This thread on his talk page (permalink) may be of interest. When I talked to him about this last month, I assumed it was behavioral issue, but, after observing his interactions on his talk page, his AfD comments, and his reaction to the ANI thread—rather than acknowledging our concerns, he maligned his critics as trolls and got so worked up he considered retirement because of the "dramas"—I've come to believe this is some type of competence or comprehension issue. He's been receiving feedback about these issues since his failed RfA and he clearly prides himself on this work, yet he's not learning, he's not listening to reasonable feedback, and he's not slowing down, and I think any community response should take that into consideration. Rebbing 15:31, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
If you ANI again, you'll have my full support. I've gone ahead and opened a new ANI. Clearly, this has been going on way too long. —swpbT 16:04, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

I rarely visit wp:ani but was surprised to see two current threads about the same editor:

How long should one spend voting in AfDs?

Some here may know that I have lost many edits due to deletion, and User:SwisterTwister has voted delete in several wp:AfDs of articles that I started, so my ears perked up when I saw this user mentioned here. I have always been curious about those editors who manage to vote delete on AfDs using only a couple of minutes per discussion — How do they do it? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:26, 18 July 2016 (UTC)please ping me

This honestly should not be an issue because I'm voting at ones that include AfDs with no or few votes. If we're getting to a consensus, there should be no objections. SwisterTwister talk 16:26, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
@SwisterTwister: since both you and User:Swpb are here, I wonder if I may ask what is the point of putting both a wp:CSD and a wp:AfD tag on the same article? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 14:19, 28 July 2016 (UTC)please ping me
There is no point, as far as I can tell. Once a page has been to AfD once already, it can't be speedied, no matter how speediable it may otherwise be. —swpbT 14:25, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Indian temples & villages

Lately I've noticed several articles created on the topic of an Indian temple or village where the author is a first time editor with the same username as the temple or village. The one I've just patrolled is obviously a first time editor. I'm not sure what to make of the trend but it's made me curious enough to ask, anybody else noticed anything or have any ideas what's occurring? Big rollout of rural broadband perhaps? for (;;) (talk) 14:56, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi For (;;), can you give us some examples of such articles? --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:03, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Kudpung, The one I dealt with yesterday was Charan mandir created by User:Charan mandir. I didn't touch any of the ones I'd seen before so unfortunately I have no record of them. for (;;) (talk) 06:28, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
for (;;), Charan mandir (I've looked at it) was correctly deleted and it as the only thing to do with it. Probably created in good faith but by someone , as you say, probably in deepest rural India who is going to take a very, very long time to learn how to write for an encyclopedia. Make anote of any others you come across and let me know. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:50, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Kudpung, will do. Thanks, for (;;) (talk) 12:58, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Kudpung, one day you see them everywhere, then a two month gap (and a change of username on my part) before you see another (with a single character difference):
I've also noticed some other poor contributions lately where the corresponding image on Commons has been tagged as a Wikipedia Zero upload. Again, not sure it approaches anything usable as an indicator of articles/images needing attention, nor that it would be kindly taken by WMF if their project was taken as such. Regards, Cabayi (talk) 08:19, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

So Fresh albums

I see there is a series of albums called So Fresh, and I'm not convinced that any of them are independently notable. They all contain a template at the bottom linking to the various years, so the list is easy to find Most of them say nothing except that they're compilation albums and what the track list was. I would like to redirect most of them to the main article, but I'd like to hear a few more voices before being so bold. --Slashme (talk) 14:26, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

They have all been #1 on a national (Australian) music chart, as stated in the main article, so pass WP:NALBUM. Many have gone Platinum or double-Platinum based on sales so, again, passes WP:NALBUM. I think you would see a lot of push back because people who write album articles think the track list is important and covering them all in the main article would be unwieldy. You may try a WP:MULTIAFD based on "Notability aside, a standalone article is only appropriate when there is enough material to warrant a reasonably detailed article; articles unlikely ever to grow beyond stubs should be merged into the artist's article or discography."(WP:NALBUM) and see where it goes. JbhTalk 16:15, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

SpaceX CRS missions

There are quite a few SpaceX Cargo Resupply Mission articles in the New Pages Feed. Surely they're not all independently notable? At a certain point, this kind of thing gets to be WP:ROTM. Most of those pages are pretty much carbon copies of each other. Any thoughts? --Slashme (talk) 10:58, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Most of the more recent resupply missions at List of Progress flights are bluelinked, too, so this isn't unique to SpaceX. WT:N is probably a more central discussion location if you wish to review notability of unmanned spaceflights. VQuakr (talk) 08:00, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Proposal to require at least one RS source for all new articles

There is a discussion now taking pace at the village pump that may be related to the subject of this policy/guideline page. Interested editors are encouraged to join the discussion. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:09, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

removing thumbnails from infoboxes per WP:INFOBOXIMAGE

So I have been working on a maintenance project to clean up Category:Pages using infoboxes with thumbnail images. I wanted to see if I could add something to the checklist that New page patrollers run through. That is to check that images in an infobox are NOT thumbnails. So instead of doing it like this: |image=[[File:SomeImage.jpg|thumb|Some image caption]], just supply the name of the image. So in this case you can simply do: |image=SomeImage.jpg. There will then be a separate parameter for the image caption such as |caption=Some image caption. Would love any feedback! --Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 18:39, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

@Zackmann08: Is that really so essential that it should be added to the checklist? Doesn't look to me. The purpose of the new pages patrol is to catch the most serious problems, not to catch every problem. Even now, the list of unpatrolled articles is heavily backlogged, we don't need to make the process even slower. Vanjagenije (talk) 20:14, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
@Vanjagenije: That is a fair point. Is it essential? Absolutely not!! My thought was more to just add it to the list of things to keep an eye out for. I.E. "If you see it and are reviewing the page anyway, go ahead and fix it". Does that make sense? --Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:16, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, it seams to be covered with point titled Is the article properly formatted?. But, since we already have that category that is being patrolled by certain users like you, I don't think it should be an issue for new pages patrol. Vanjagenije (talk) 20:20, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
@Vanjagenije: fair enough! I'm not too familiar with the New pages patrol so I wasn't sure and figured it was worth asking. Appreciate the feedback! --Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:29, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
Zackmann08, thiswould be beyond the brief of NPPers. NPP is not a clean-up process. Although they might stop to improve some glaring issues, they won't check for things that will only be evident in the source code. That kind of operation relies on initiatives such as yours. Keep up the good work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:15, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
Kudpung thanks for the feedback and the compliment. :-) Much appreciated! --Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 03:41, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

NPP backlog

Te backlog is now at over 9,000. This is an increase in 2,000 or 30% over the last 20 days.--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:32, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Backlog is now 10,472. The number of weekly patrols is inferior to the increase in new articles. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:20, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Some of the pages in the backlog are old articles blanked by vandals and subsequently restored to the old version. These could be patrolled pretty quickly.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:54, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Shame we can't get people to do it. I have my work cut out tracking down the bad patrollers and telling them to go awaty from NPP. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:50, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
I am on holidays and have only limited internet access, but hope to be back Monday next week.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:03, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
11500 as of now, but I believe it was 11800 yesterday.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:18, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

NP Reviewer right

For those who keep asking me, and especially those who have taken what they have heard out of context, the current discussions (ongoing since 2012 and revitalised at a recent meeting) are for the introduction of a software controlled user group, called something like 'New Page Reviewer' which will lock all non authorised users out of the use of the WP:Page Curation and bring it in line with at least the requirements for AfC.. On the principle of user right groups that require a certain recommended threshold of experience), the right would be accorded by admin discretion at WP:PERM, much in he same way as Reviewer, and Rolbacker. This should bring it in line at least with the requirement for the far less important and less critical process of AfC. It is at NPP where all the 1,500 or so new pages that arrive every day get rightly and wrongly tagged for deletion, and rightly and wrongly passed for inclusion. It's also the place where first-time article creators get bitten, and regular, competent users get harassed by incompetent patrollers. Al that is really required is for NP Reviewer candidates to have at least 90/500 and read and fully understood the tutorials at WP:NPP and WP:Page Curation], and the policies and guidelines at WP:DELETION and the items documented at WP:OUTCOMES. At the moment , there is little to discuss until the new suggestions are proposed at RfC. There, they can be supported or opposed. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:10, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

As a sideline, everybody knows NPP, but does anyone still work the 'Edits by recent accounts' feed that was where I grew up (in Wikipedia terms...)? In my 12,000 edits before getting a mop, I found all sorts of things in there that the NPP people had missed. Is it still going, even? I can't remember where it was now. Possibly Page Curation (which I disliked strongly last time I looked at it...) has done away with it. Peridon (talk) 11:08, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
To get to the point, an NPP reviewer right might be a good thing - but it would probably cut out one or two good IP patrollers. Also, would it stop manual tagging and stop access to any list of recent creation or editing? A bit of explanation by the admin declining a tag goes a long way, I find. Peridon (talk) 11:17, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
I found that view by accident as a new editor from the "Recent changes" link in the tools panel; on the "recent" page, it's the "new editor's contribs" link. (It's a hidden feature of Special:Contributions when you pass it contribs=newbie in the query string.) From the new editors' contributions list, you can tick the box to see only page or article creations.
My "discovering" of that feed was fairly unfortunate for everyone involved because, unlike Special:NewPages, there are no guiding notices. Forget reading the NPP documentation, I didn't even know there was a patrolled queue! All I saw was an unending stream of sewage sneaking in, so I did what any newbie might do. Rebbing 11:29, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
  • IP users have never been allowed to patroll pages. Patrolling pages is currently at the level of 'autoconfirmed'. The quality of new page patrolling isn't currently as bad as it is at AfC reviewing, but only perhaps because there are so few pages being patroled (hence the 10-fold increase in backlog over recent months) by other than 3 or 4 highly experienced people that there are no metrics to draw on. What Wikipedia also needs now is some concrete, objective supprt for measures to keep it clean rather than constant criticisms of the featues we have got that woulod work well in the right hands. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:47, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
There are IPs that manually tag. And for some of them (and others) db-reason causes problems. It's the tagging I'm personally more concerned with - I don't think I've ever marked a page as 'patrolled' (except when it's done automatically). There is a need for some form of education there. I used to check things that had been marked as patrolled, and tagged quite a few. If marking as patrolled is to have value - as I'm not sure it currently does - an assignable right would be good, but difficult to assess. This could tie up with a reform at AfC too - I've raised the point of self-acceptance at the Project talk page after seeing the Reuben1995 incident. However, with both of these, I can foresee backlogs growing. (I'm partly playing devil's advocate here as I can't see a workable solution yet...) Peridon (talk) 12:47, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
PS pardon my ignorance, but what is 90/500? Peridon (talk) 12:49, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
@Peridon: It's the requirement that AfC reviewers have an account at least 90 days old and at least 500 undeleted edits to articles. (See WP:WPAFC/P for the full details; there are also softer requirements for participation.) If you take a look at that page's revision history, you'll see that a lot of people who sign up as AfC reviewers either don't meet the criteria, or technically comply with the letter of the law but not its spirit. (Seems every other week there's someone who will make 500 useless edits just to hit that threshold; see e.g. Special:Contributions/Reuben1995 and Special:Contributions/Getcharstar for recent examples.)
As an aside, AfC contributors also occasionally discuss specific cases of "reviewer competence", if you will, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants, but it's kind of informal. Sometimes I like to look through the "Recently accepted" and "Recently declined" sections at {{AFC statistics}} to identify potential problems, but as you can see there's just too much for any one person to assess. /wiae /tlk 13:19, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
How are automatic patrols determined? I am surprised to see that I have marked 22 pages as patrolled without ever meaning to! see: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=patrol&user=Ottawahitech&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter= Ottawahitech (talk) 15:51, 18 August 2016 (UTC)please ping me
@Ottawahitech: that means that you edited an article that had pending changes, automatically accepting those pending changes. That's different than marking a new page as patrolled. VQuakr (talk) 03:52, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
@VQuakr: Are you sure? The page I linked to above says:Patrol log: Below is a list of all pages marked as patrolled. Only newly created pages can be marked as patrolled. This is done via a link at the bottom of the new page. BTW thanks for the quick education tour of pending changes which I don't remember ever seeing before (but who really remembers :-), and in any event I never intended to mark anything as "patrolled" (whatever patrolled means) Ottawahitech (talk) 15:09, 25 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Articles for Creation and NPP

In connection with, first, the discussion of combining AFC and NPP, and, second, recent complaints about AFC, I have posted the following at the AFC talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#The_Future_of_Articles_for_Creation_.3F

Your comments either here or there are invited. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:50, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Template: Orphan

I know many NPPers use the orphan template so thought I would share the following here: I got a jolt recently when I clicked the Find link tool, but found myself out of Wikipedia at a website with advertising. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:04, 18 August 2016 (UTC)please ping me

It is a non-wiki link, so yes, you would find yourself "out of Wikipedia." I haven't noticed any advertising; this may be thanks to ad blocking. I use find link when I'm working on orphaned articles, and when I tried it just now to find links for Yiduan, it took me to the usual page and had reasonable-looking results. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 02:32, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Backlog

The backlog now stands at 13,158 total unreviewed pages.

Just to recap:

  • 13 July 2016: 7,000
  • 1 August 2016: 9,000
  • 7 August 2016: 10,472
  • 16 August 2016: 11,500
  • 28 August 2016: 13,158
  • 11 September13,869

--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:36, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps Wikimedia foundation must do something. As volunteers are doing their best. English Wikipedia has 1000+ page creations daily. --Marvellous Spider-Man 05:56, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
The Foundation will not do anything. It is up to the communities of individual Wikipedia projects to come up with their own solutions. If such a solution is considered by the Foundation to be globally useful, they might act to provide engineering to develop the suggested solutions. What the English Wikipedia requires is a lot more New Page patrollers, but only ones with sufficient experience for the multiple tasks described at WP:NPP. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:25, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Most immediate action would be remove the patrol power from an account only 4 days old and 10 edits (auto-confirmed). And page reviewer as a right will be good to notice nicely written but non-notable articles.
Another problem is that if a page is tagged for speedy deletion, some user's twinkle preferences mark the page as patrolled. The administrator declines speedy with an edit summary "Declining speedy but notability doubtful, take it to AFD". The user unintentionally patrols the page. The article manages being noticed by other patrollers as the page is patrolled.Marvellous Spider-Man 06:39, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Please repost these issues at WT:Page Curation. They will then be listed with the other things to do. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:40, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: New Page Reviewer user right

It is proposed to ensure that New Page Patrollers be suitably experienced for patrolling new pages. This user right would bring new page patrolls inline with the requirements for the reviewers at Articles for creation, and the systems for according minor user rights such as rollbacker, template editor, page mover, etc. (see: Requests for permissions). The discussion is taking place at: New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:20, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

New Features For Page Curation

Now that some concentrated focus is being lent to NPP, a page has been created (for once not by me) at Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements where users can briefly list any essential, brand new features that they would like to see in the New Pages Feed and Page Curation tool bar. Please read what is already there before commenting or adding to the list. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:23, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

@Kudpung: A link? Vanjagenije (talk) 00:39, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
Added. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:51, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Backlog 2

The backlog now stands at 13,869 total unreviewed pages. And growing.

  • 13 July 2016: 7,000
  • 1 August 2016: 9,000
  • 7 August 2016: 10,472
  • 16 August 2016: 11,500
  • 28 August 2016: 13,158
  • 11 September 2016: 13,869
  • 15 September 2016: 14,154
  • 19 September 2016: 14,539
  • 23 September 2016: 14,890

At this rate, by the end of the year the backlog will be the highest ever recorded. That said, patrollers are reminded that Quality rather than speed is nevertheless paramount. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC) --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what was the largest patrol backlog ever? VQuakr (talk) 04:46, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
Can't remember, vQuakr. AFAIR It was around 39,000 when Blade, Scott, and I started to do something about in 2010 and spent days and nights trying to get it down. Scott once mad a very good tool that would plot not only the backlog on a graph, but also provide a lot more info including the names of the editors who were patrollng right now, an hour ago, and up to 24 hours ago. That tool, like many others, were lost in the contentious takeover of the ToolSever by the WFM Labs. For anything Labs provides that I use regularly, nothing performs as well as it did under ToolServer. As usual, the WMF has its own agenda and refuses to put their priorities in perspective. At least community driven tools and scrips are made by the volunteers at time when they are needed, but of course it's the Foundation who shuold be doing it - they have plenty of money.
That said, many seasoned patrollers are now giving up because a) they are fed up of being to only people doing it, b)the WMF won't accept the urgency to develop the features that are needed, ) the community partly refuses them for other reasons. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:51, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

A possible reason for large backlogs?

As a wp:inclusionist who regularly gets articles I start tagged (and deleted), I wonder if anyone here is interested in my experience or is this the meeting place for wp:deletionists?

In case you are interested, an article I started yesterday about a woman city councillor, Eva James, who passed away more than 20 yeas ago was tagged with a wp:CSD and promptly deleted by User:DGG as (A7: Article about a real person, which does not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject). When I see that NPP is having problems fighting mountains of spam, I can’t help but wonder why my creations are always scrutinized so closely instead of the "spam"? Ottawahitech (talk) 19:16, 21 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: hi! It's been a while, I hope you are well. To answer your first question: this is a discussion place for issues concerning WP:NPP (a process that necessarily includes deletion), but I would not consider it a meeting place for deletionists. In answer to your second question, we attempt to review nearly all the articles that are created (how else would we identify which are spam?), with the exception of creations by authors that have the WP:AUTOPATROLLED permission. An effort to increase the number of article creators that have the autopatrolled permission would reduce the workload on patrollers, but we would need to be cautious: the entire purpose of NPP is defeated if articles that needed improvement or attention are not patrolled. VQuakr (talk) 20:54, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
fwiw, city counsellor in a small Canadian city of 86,000. One sentence article. Only ref is a town recreation center named after her. It would have been unfair to delete this immediately after creation, but it was deleted over 24 hours later. Ottawa,why did you create this article? Surely you know we delete articles on city counselors except for world class cities, and this is so far below that as not to be in my opinion a credible claim of significance--and would certainly have no chance at AfD. We would have fewer problems at NPP if people created fewer obviously untenable articles. The beginners can't help it really, because they don't know. DGG ( talk ) 00:47, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
@DGG: This is just one recent example of articles that I start which end up being chopped, so I figure this must happen to a lot of good faith editors. If you think you are doing the right thing then I guess you will have to live with backlogs. Just don’t expect everyone to feel sorry for the poor NPPers.
As far as Eva James is concerned, I was astounded to find no information on her on Wikipedia. I was even more astounded to find so little about her through google. She is/was well-known in ottawa, but I guess she preceded the internet-age and since I do not have access to other sources I thought starting an article was bound to get edits from those who do have access to offline sources. As far as "Surely you know we delete articles on city counselors except for world class cities" - no I did not know, and even if I did I still think Wikipedia should have an article about Eva James. Ottawahitech (talk) 03:52, 22 September 2016 (UTC){{small|please ping
@VQuakr: Yes it has been a while, hasn’t it? Interesting how large Wikipedia is when two active editors do not cross paths for a long time :-)
The reason I was wondering about what type of editor is welcome here, I saw some discussion on a user talk page that I thought should be discussed here out in the open and wondered why it was not happening, since I know from experience that people tend to shun places where they feel they are not part of the gang… Ottawahitech (talk) 03:39, 22 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Whether we raise or lower our notability standards we will still have to deal with backlogs, because we will still have to examine every article: there are factors such as promotionalism and copyvio which need to be examined for every article. DGG ( talk ) 04:21, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
User pages are in the open; I would imagine many user pages have more watchers than this page. Anyone is welcome to edit here; it's not different than a WikiProject in that regard. As DGG notes, changing our notability guidelines (even if a local consensus here were able to do so) wouldn't directly affect the workload at NPP. With the exception I mentioned before all new pages get patrolled whether they are ultimately deleted, slightly improved, or checked off as perfect without any modification. Deletion is a small part of NPP, and any editor that attempts to patrol new articles using deletion as their only tool is unambiguously "doing it wrong." VQuakr (talk) 22:37, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

There is no need to feel sorry for our NPPers - there are almost none left. Like admin candidates,they are a dying breed. Those who know what they are doing do what they can and those who don't know what hey are doing usually get away with it because basically there are only DGG and myself checking on what they are doing and obvious;y we can't double check every patrol.

Dropping our notability standards would be absolutely the wrong way to address the backlog - we can be happy that our policies and guidelines require such high standards. (dropping the standards at RfA a year ago didn't get us more admin candidates either). Our problems are threefold:

  1. Finding enough people who are experienced and mature enough to do the patrolling - and finding ways of preventing those who are not. Most articles are fairly clear 'keep' or 'delete' but actually recogninsing one from the other is not easy for people who refuse to read the instructions. T's not rocket science and the actual borderline cases are quite few. Generally the articles that end up at AfD are there for a good reason but the patrollers didn't know what to do with them, or the creators persistently removed deletion tags.
  2. Getting consensus to raise the bar for the right to create articles in mainspace - which would have been achieved five years ago if the WMF hadn't been so myopic.
  3. Getting a proper landing page made for new users who think they are going to create articles.

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:30, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Kudpung: just a small comment: I may be wrong but isn't User:DGG spreading himself a bit too thin? You say only the two of you are checking up on NPPers, but I have seen DGG also actively nominating articles for deletion, participating in wp:AfD discussions, let alone carrying out deletions and more. I know it is hard to stay away from things one is passionate about, but isn't there a breaking point somewhere? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:43, 23 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Ottawahitech, I thank you for your concern. Neither I nor Kudpung can get to everything, and that's exactly what we are discussing here. Spotting the instances we want to deal with is an art, but it's an imperfect art. The minimum step in helping the situation is to remove unqualified or erratic reviewers, because what really takes the time is correcting errors. DGG ( talk ) 20:41, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
Ottawahitech, if you knew just how many hours DGG spends every day (and night) in front of his computer and outside in NY at meetings on Wikipedia, you would understand that concerns about him spreading himself too thin are unwarranted, although there is naturally no way you should know. He actually spends more hours every day on each one of his areas of specialisation than most editors spend in a week on their theirs, and what we put in writing here in talk pages and on RfCs is but a tiny fraction of our Wikipedia time. I am also retired and I spend around 40 hours a week on average on Wikipedia stuff (sometimes more, and sometimes that much just travelling to Wikipedia conferences and outreach venues and back). About 80% of it on NPP/AfC related issues, the rest on areas that require my admin tools and judgment, and some on writing new content.
Obviously no one has to spend as much of their time on Wikipedia as we do, but the criticisms we receive for it are ofttimes disheartening - especially from those who accuse us of 'idle talk' (see: user talk:DGG#Restated Question: What Is the So-Called Merger of NPP and AFC but do nothing themselves to move things forward other than provide, well, idle talk.
The bottom line is that if we can properly address :
  1. The quality of AfC reviewing
  2. The quality of NPP patrolling
  3. The education and guidance of new users through a proper landing page
we would at least not have to spend so much of our time duplicating the work of NPP and AfC by constantly reviewing the work of the reviewers. And that's what all our 'idle talk', idle research, idle RfCs, and idle participation at Wikipedia conferences around the world are all about ;)
Obviously what we both want is teamwork, a task force to address these issues, but each time we invite people along, we get accused of, well, even more idle talk. Bit ironic, ain't it? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:13, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Do new pages consisting solely of a redirect show up in the list of new pages to be patrolled?

It would be useful for someone to note the answer to this question somewhere on the page itself. Mihirpmehta (talk) 23:55, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

@Mihirpmehta: I believe that re-directs do show up on the list (if I remember correctly there is a toggle), but other wp:spaces such as categories, templates, files & other misc do not (a shame imo). Ottawahitech (talk) 03:45, 22 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Right, there's a toggle you can click to hide/show them, at least the version at Special:NewPages. Templates, categories, etc. are also there if you select the appropriate namespace from the pulldown menu; files are on a separate page, Special:NewFiles. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 06:40, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! Mihirpmehta (talk) 18:19, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
@Mihirpmehta:, @Ottawahitech:, @BlackcurrantTea:, if you are interested in features of Curation, their absence or their improvement, you will certainly wish to read the page at Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:00, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
@Kudpung: Actually I would first like to find out how I have apparently already patrolled 22 articles without ever intending to  :-) Ottawahitech (talk) 00:15, 25 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Hi Ottawahitech, sorry old chap, not my parish; I'm just the mover and shaker. Try the devs (whoever they are...). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:05, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Ottawahitech: Pending changes reviews are marked in both the review and patrol logs. I'm not sure why. Rebbing 03:08, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Backlog 3

The backlog now stands at 14850 total unreviewed pages. And growing.

  • 13 July 2016: 7,000
  • 1 August 2016: 9,000
  • 7 August 2016: 10,472
  • 16 August 2016: 11,500
  • 28 August 2016: 13,158
  • 11 September 2016: 13,869
  • 15 September 2016: 14,154
  • 19 September 2016: 14,539
  • 23 September 2016: 14,850
  • LATER THE SAME DAY: 15,017
  • 01 October 2016: 15,940

vQuakr, by 24 January 2013 we had got the backlog down to 'only' 25439. I believe you posted that information yourself ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:14, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Kudpung I'll make the same suggestion I made last year, that editors creating good quality article should be informed of the autopatrolled permission which, if they pass the checks and are successful at WP:RFP/A, will mean fewer articles needing patrol in future.
It won't reduce the backlog immediately, but it will slow the rate at which the backlog grows. Cabayi (talk) 08:47, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
@Cabayi: How about giving trusted users (not me, obviously :-) this right without asking them to spend their valuable time making applications and waiting in line? Ottawahitech (talk) 00:22, 25 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Ottawahitech, a few reasons it shouldn't be automatic:
  • As VQuakr pointed out last time I suggested this, "some prolific page creators still prefer to have that second set of eyes"
  • A year or two ago I spotted an article creator who was churning out good quality articles that blatantly did not need review. I suggested they apply for autopatrolled. The application descended into a re-hash of a block the user had received years previously and whether the blocking admin thought enough contrition had been shown. That's not the kind of embarrassment I'd wish on anybody.
  • Another editor I nominated, who had several good articles created (though less than the threshold), oodles of good articles created on sv: (way, way over the threshold), and who was an admin on sv: was rejected out-of-hand. Not sure what the potential problem was, but there you go, not my decision to make.
Given those experiences, I'd happily suggest to somebody that they apply, but I'm far more reluctant than I was to apply on their behalf, or to foist it upon them. Cabayi (talk) 11:54, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Idle talk task force

A neutral, centralised discussion area is being currently created for the idle talk where those who are actively concerned with improvements to the way new pages are handled at both AfC and NPP can sign up for the action. A link will shortly be posted. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:41, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

That would be non-idle talk. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:39, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
And not finished yet, it took up 3 hours of my 'idle' time. I'm not sure how long I am still prepared to keep pushing this broken car. All I get is wannabe policemen coming by and telling me I'm in the way. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:06, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
What we really need to do is, first, get a tow-truck, and second, decide whether the car is broken because it has a dead battery or because it has a dead engine, third, put in a new battery. Now that I understand what is being proposed, I understand. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:44, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

A dedicated venue for combined discussion about NPP & AfC where a work group is also proposed has been created. See: Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:41, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Marking Page Patrolled

I think that I have asked this before, but forget the answer. It is a very simple very basic question. How do I mark a page as patrolled? I don't usually do New Pages because I mostly work AFC, but how do I mark a reasonable new page as patrolled? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:40, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Found it. Small thing in lower right. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:33, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

 Done

PROD doesn't patrol page

If a page is tagged by a patroller for speedy deletion, or is nominated for deletion, the page is also marked as patrolled. If a page is tagged with PROD, that doesn't mark it as patrolled. The patroller has to tag it manually. In my view, the job of patrol is done if the page is PROD'd, since New Page Patrol is primarily a quality control function, to identify pages that either are inappropriate or that need improvement, and, if the page is PROD'd, it has been determined to have failed quality control. Is there another place where I should write up this issue? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:18, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

It's configurable in Twinkle and I'm not sure about the page curation tool. There may be cases where a PROD or CSD should remain unreviewed, so leaving that decision to the page patrollers seems best.- MrX 22:29, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

New page patrol

A person recommended me on our Admin noticeboard I might not meet the critera, but I usually patroll the Recent Changes. Gary "Roach" Sanderson (talk) 22:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

@Gary "Roach" Sanderson: there were a couple of big problems with this edit. One, the article was tagged 5 minutes after said article was created. That is too hasty - many new editors create an article by clicking "save" to save their progress like they might in a Word document. Generally, you should never tag an article for "completeness" issues if it is less than an hour or so old. Editing an article that soon after creation can create unnecessary edit conflicts, which are themselves bitey. Two, "unsourced" is not a valid reason for speedy deletion, the criteria for which are narrowly defined. VQuakr (talk) 00:53, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeah you are correct, but I would still like the position im already a recent changes patroller. Gary "Roach" Sanderson (talk) 01:12, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
@Gary "Roach" Sanderson: as of this writing there is no barrier to entry. Just start patrolling. If you want to not suck at it, read WP:NPP and participate in WP:NPPSCHOOL first. If you really suck at it (ie, you continue with speedy tags like the one linked above), you'll eventually get topic banned. VQuakr (talk) 03:11, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
@Gary "Roach" Sanderson Don't get discouraged. NPP, like everything, is a learning experience. My first few forays were... ummm... interesting. It took me a while before I realized I needed to actually read some of the guidelines people were linking to me in the exasperated notes they kept dropping on my talk page. One thing I think we should emphasize more is doing NPP from the other end of queue. With a few exceptions tagging articles right after they are born is considered bad form. That said I do think your instincts were right about this one. It's unsourced and was probably intended as article spam. If I don't see some improvement by Wednesday I will send it to AfD. Best regards... -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:11, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
@VQuakr: once I get on my PC on Saterday I will go there. I found it when I was patrolling recent changes. Gary "Roach" Sanderson (talk) 16:09, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Have fun! Please be diligent but to echo Ad Orientem, don't be discouraged. VQuakr (talk) 06:15, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Set of template messages

Hello all. I've started to develop some new form messages for new editors, that I hope will be more friendly and informal than the default Twinkle messages. They're listed on my user subpage. I'd be really keen to hear what people think about them and if they have any suggestions for improvements. Blythwood (talk) 17:49, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

@Blythwood: thanks for the link! Is the intent to propose these as a replacement to the Curation toolbar messages, a replacement to Twinkle warnings, both, or neither? Would you say User talk:Blythwood/Template messages for NPP is a better location to discuss the intent and details? VQuakr (talk) 06:13, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
@Blythwood:, Thanks for working on providing more friendly and informal messages to new editors, we sure need them. I tried to find the messages you propose, but was met with a wp:Wall of text, and since I am in a hurry now, was not able to find them. Just thought I would give you this feedback in case you are interested. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:51, 29 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me
I do like the tone of these messages, which look as if they would do a better job of reaching out to the good-faith and reasonably literate new editors whom we want. They deserve serious consideration and Wikipedia talk:Template messages/User talk namespace may be a suitable place to start. You may like to shorten your introduction Blythwood, or consider "hatting" it between {{collapse top|Introduction}} and {{collapse bottom}}, so that readers can go straight to the suggested user notices if they want: Noyster (talk), 15:28, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments. I'm not planning to submit these as official templates (at least not now), but I hope people may find them useful. Blythwood (talk) 05:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for doing this Blythwood, (& @VQuakr:, @Noyster:), @Ottawahitech:).
There is huge potential for the examples I've seen at User:Blythwood/Template messages for NPP. Because we've already been asked by the WMF for a list of revised and/or additional boilerplates to embed in the Page Curation tool, it might be a good idea to start a page at WP:NPPAFC, such as Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC/Template messages and transclude the contents of your User:Blythwood/Template messages for NPP to it. Discussion can then take place on its talk page and I think you'll get a lot of positive response. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:40, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

User continues to receive deletion notices long after leaving

Musicpvm (talk · contribs) has made his last edit here on 26 November 2012, but his talk page shows that he received 1 wp:CSD and 2 wp:PRODs after he left. Just wondering (mainly about the CSD).Ottawahitech (talk) 14:43, 29 September 2016 (UTC)please ping me

@Ottawahitech: Assuming that he created the pages that were being tagged for deletion, that's not unusual. Those of us using assistive tools (e.g. WP:TW) will often notify long-idle users automatically. It does no harm, and occasionally the user may actually receive the message, e.g. if they are active on another WMF wiki or have email notifications enabled. I always notify good faith page creators, and idle vs. active is never a factor in that. The only ones I might sometimes not notify are cases of pure vandalism (but mostly I notify the vandals as well, so their problematic activities get documented on their talk page). In general, for all I know, the creator may have retreated into contemplation in a monastery for a few years, and will return tomorrow with a new enthusiasm and insight into the world, so the notification may still be useful. Murph9000 (talk) 15:48, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
@Murph9000: Thank you for replying. Lots of information to digest. Just a couple of small questions/comments for now:
  • Re Assuming that he created the pages Under what circumstances are editors who are not the creators of a page notified when the page enters a deletion process?
  • Re often notify long-idle users automatically This is great - I wish everyone followed this example. Many editors, idle or not, never receive notifications when pages they created are deleted.
…More to come at a later date… Ottawahitech (talk) 15:31, 2 October 2016 (UTC)please ping me
@Ottawahitech: WP:TW only has an option to automatically notify the creator. I'm not aware of any automated tools that notify other contributors. So, it's up to the nominator to decide if they think it is appropriate to nominate others. Other people can jump in as well, if they want to, and drop nomination notices on significant contributors that they think should be aware of it, as long as it does not become WP:CANVASSING (i.e. only use the standard notice, with no added opinions or commentary, avoid only notifying those on one side of keep vs. delete, and don't notify people who have no obvious connection to it). It's usually only an issue for AfD nomination of an article with a longer history, and not a required step of the process. See WP:AFD § After nominating: Notify interested projects and editors for details. Discretion is required, to decide when to notify, and who are the significant contributors (i.e. don't notify every single user who has edited it). Murph9000 (talk) 11:27, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Backlog 4

No comment.

Mid July to 01 Oct 2016

. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:21, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


A dedicated WORK GROUP for combined discussion and action about NPP & AfC is being compiled.

See: Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC.

Please join, but please have time for it and be prepared to do some reading before signing up. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:34, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:The future of NPP and AfC/To do

Work Group members: Please complete your list of 10 priorities. The sooner all work group members have completed this first task, the sooner the WMF will start doing something about it (or so they tell us). --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:18, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

End of queue

Every time I check (I admit it is not often but maybe 2 x per year) there is something wrong with the end of the queue. None of the articles there features a 'mark this page as patrolled' link. It seems those very old entries all are unintended artefacts. Today for instance I tried to patrol Khoka Chalu Cheez near the end of the queue.

  1. First, it is placed there in a misleading way: It was a redirect for three years and only today became an article, should have been listed as 'created today and not patrolled' instead of 'created in 2013 and not patrolled'.
  2. Second, it does not have the link to patrol it. There is therefore no way, I assume, to get it out of the queue, and there is therefore also no satisfaction on my side, to have reduced the backlog even by a tiny bit.

The New pages feed further is very slow on my computers. I assume it uses a lot of bandwidth. Please point me to a solution, if any, and sorry if I overlooked anything obvious. --Pgallert (talk) 16:18, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

This is really weird. Obviously, you can not patrol a redirect (and Khoka Chalu Cheez is currently a redirect), but at some point it must have not been a redirect and this is a reason why it made it to the queue. Anyways, at the end of the queue there are some weird things, if you do not want to deal with them, you can scroll till June 2016 and start patrolling real articles nobody else ever looked at.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:22, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
@Ymblanter:, You said: Obviously, you can not patrol a redirect? Could you please explain to dummies like me why one cannot patrol wp:redirects in light of Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol#Do_new_pages_consisting_solely_of_a_redirect_show_up_in_the_list_of_new_pages_to_be_patrolled.3F. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 16:50, 3 October 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Sorry, I was not precise. If some info is added to a redirect, for example, if it gets nominated for RfD, it can be patrolled. But a "pure" redirect can not be patrolled.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:39, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
@Pgallert:The type of case you encountered is a long-recognised bug and is listed at Wikipedia:Page_Curation/Suggested_improvements#2._Redirects: Noyster (talk), 18:03, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
@Noyster: Thanks for the link. IIRC this bug is there for several years, not weeks. --Pgallert (talk) 10:42, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: Thanks for the clarification. The really annoying thing is that those reactivated redirects have no link to patrol them, and that their eventual disappearance from the New pages feed seems to be somewhat random. Moreover, the redirect issue occurs even if a redirect was created after the page was already patrolled. See e.g. the revision history of List of Comet affiliates which is currently near the end of the queue. --Pgallert (talk) 10:42, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
@Pgallert: They may not have the "mark this page as patrolled" button at the bottom, but if you can get the new pages toolbar to come up you can mark it as patrolled by clicking the big green checkmark. Their disappearance from the new pages feed happens when someone does that to get rid of them. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 15:03, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
@ONUnicorn: That solves the problem, thanks a lot. Didn't know that tool bar. --Pgallert (talk) 09:00, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
Yes, indeed. Some of the issues are known budg, some I would argue are useful (if a vandal removed all the text in the article I would say there is nothing wrong if the article shows up as not patrolled), and some of us are fighting this part of the queue. It is usually pretty short though, and one can always skip this part and go to patrol the the real things.

Not indexed?

I see that as of a relatively recent change to WP:NPP, it says "...pages that are still not patrolled are not indexed and cached by Google or other search engines.". When was this NOINDEXing introduced, and by what process is it done? I don't see any sign of a NOINDEX magic word in new unpatrolled articles, so by what other means is the NOINDEXing carried out? --David Biddulph (talk) 09:41, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Reading the wording again, is it trying to say that pages in certain namespaces other than articles are NOINDEXed, and that these pages are not covered by NPP? If that is what it is trying to say, the wording has confused some readers into believing that articles which have not yet been patrolled are NOINDEXed (see WP:HD#Problem in my page). --David Biddulph (talk) 09:47, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Sorry David, wrong forum (see above). But FWIW, this is being handled as a MediWiki extension in order to avoid abuse. NOINDEX was introduced in 2010 but had been broken and nobody noticed. It affects all pages in mainspace until they arfe patrolled.--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:51, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
@Kudpung: Just to let you know I came here today to check for any interesting developments and am disappointed to find out that this forum has suddenly changed focus and all previous posts have been archived with no discussion. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:15, 29 October 2016 (UTC){{small|please [[wp:Notifications|ping]https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol&action=edit&section=1#] me}}
Ottawahitech. The last post in the archive is 25 days old. Any open discussions are above and are already in the wrong forum. This talk page is exclusively for discussing the tutorial. Please see the edit notice above. Follow the navigation tabs to any relevant departments. You will find all you need, and more, there. If you are signed up for the development task force (active participants only), you will already have received two newsletters. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:57, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
The project you may be looking for, Ottawahitech, is at Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:42, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Stop templates

FYI: I have added documentation for all of the stop patrolling templates ({{Stop NPP}}, {{Stop NPP 2}} {{Stop NPP 3}} {{Stop NPP 4}}, added Z numbers for tracking, and provided the ability in the second template to list for the person you are asking to stop patrolling, the problems you see with their patrolling efforts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:03, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Who will be applying the templates? Who are the meta-patrollers? I assume that this is primarily meant to relatively new editors who have volunteered to patrol new pages, like many things that new editors do enthusiastically but without knowledge. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:15, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
FWIW. Robert, they are boilerplates I wrote and have been using for years. I just offered them here for anyone to use. I suppose that there are no more 'meta patrollers' than there are 'meta users' who are allowed to apply any kind of uw templates that are free for use for anyone who knows how to use Twinkle. I had an idea at one time that I would ask the devs to incorporate them in the Curation tool. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:17, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
User:Kudpung - By meta-patrollers I meant editors who are patrolling the patrollers and are cautioning them when their patrolling is disruptive. It is my understanding that there are only a few people, such as yourself, who do this. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:20, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
I know what you meant Robert. The reason there are only a few people, , and I believe basically the 'few' are DGG and myself, is because we're the only ones who bother - and it's due to our empirical experience over the years that it was finally decided to start the ball rolling by proposing some kind of user right for patrolling pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:27, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
And personally I would be delighted if 2 or 3 people with similar experience joined in this. It's one of the places in WP where long familiarity with the way the guidelines are interpreted makes a real difference. DGG ( talk ) 02:12, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
DGG is perfectly right Robert, but it will probably take more than just 2 or 3 more. NPP, ...like many things that new editors do enthusiastically but without knowledge - thank you enormously for stating that. You've no idea how true it actually is and it's been my mantra for 7 long years: Maintenance is a magnet to new and inexperienced users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:40, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
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