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Revision as of 13:34, 13 September 2012
Counter-Vandalism Unit | ||||
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This page has archives. Sections older than 91 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III. |
See also: Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/patrolled pages for discussion on development of the special patrol page (inactive).
Marking as patrolled
I don't see any guidance on the main page as to when to mark articles as patrolled. How does that work?--Bbb23 (talk) 17:10, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
- Articles are marked as patrolled if, and only if, they can be accepted for inclusion in the encyclopedia, and when the patroller has done everything that is required, including additional research, by the instructions at WP:NPP and it linked related pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:48, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
- The short answer is that you can mark any page as patrolled unless it qualifies for speedy deletion, in which case you should tag it for deletion. You aren't required to spam clean up templates onto the article or fix formatting or add WikiProject templates anything like that, although (like any other editor) you are welcome to do whatever you can to improve an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
- And the slightly longer answer is that patrollers are very strongly encouraged to do a minimum of research before applying ANY tags at all. Checking for COPYVIO, for example, is paramount, as is reading the WHOLE article to evaluate for attack or hoax pages. Pages that may not need deleting but need dangerously necessary attention but are marked as patrolled without tagging, will escape any future attention. This defies the entire notion of patrolling new pages - which indeed some editors in the past have suggested that new page patrol is unnecessary! Any patroller who does less is not doing the encyclopedia a service. If it can't be done properly, there's little point in doing it at all. Newbies and lazy editors who want to get involved in the 'managerial' side of Wikipedia should search for an alternative area to work - one where they are prepared to invest all their skill and take time to do the job properly. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:05, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Looks like we have two different answers. Is there an actual guideline or policy on this? Separately, if I nominate an article for deletion, do I mark it as patrolled?--Bbb23 (talk) 01:11, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
- In the case of PRPD, AfD, and CSD, that side of it is taken care of by the site software. generally, most tagging will automatically record articles as patrolled - or not; it depends on what side of the bed Twinkle got up from. The common sense answer is that no articles should be left untagged if they require some form of attention. Around 80% of all new pages get deleted sooner or later, and extremely few creations can be marked as patrolled without needing any tags. The actual guideline is common sense rather than policy. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
- I do not agree with your opinion that most non-deletable pages need to be tagged. Cleanup templates should not be spammed into every single page that they happen to apply to. They should only be added if you believe that doing so will actually be helpful (e.g., to help a newbie find information on formatting WP:Inline citations, not to point out that stubs can be expanded). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
- Tagging, as I have mentioned many times before, is a matter of common sense - which the majority of new-page patrollers either do not appear have, or are so new here that they do not even understand the fundamental principles of creation/inclusion/deletion. If you were to do some new page patrolling you would probably notice that not only do most new pages need tagging for something or other, but around 80% of them actually get deleted sooner or later. However, if I remember rightly, you do not consider New Page Patrol to be an entirely necessary process, or one that needs to be done accurately, hence I understand your comments. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
- Kudpung, I know this is hard to remember, but I've patrolled hundreds of pages. I frequently even follow the directions about working from the back of the list. But I don't find it either necessary or useful to spam tags onto most of the non-deletable pages, and when I do add a tag, it's almost always just one tag. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
OK, as an experienced WP editor but inexperienced NPP-er I've had another go at a few pages just now and come up, again, with a problem about the process. Looking carefully at the NPP page, I note that if an editor uses Twinkle to add tags, etc, the page is automatically marked as patrolled. But if an editor picks a page from the new pages list, and improves it by editing manually (ie makes real improvements to the article rather than just slapping a few tags on), it stays on the Newpages list and they have to reopen it from that list to click on the "Mark as patrolled". I've worked from the back of the list and found articles which have had lots of edits, one which had been taken to AfD, which were still marked as unpatrolled. This seems crazy. There's an incentive for eager NPP-ers to do nothing but add tags, as real editing makes it more difficult to tag the article as patrolled. No wonder so much rubbish turns up at stub-sorting, where several editors have "edited" the article by adding tags, but the structure and content cry out for simple improvements (eg a bold superfluous heading, a non-sentence lead, glaring typos). PamD 09:38, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I can see I could mark it as patrolled first and then re-open it to edit it, but I might get distracted (I'm a full time carer and Mother's needs take priority over NPP) before I can re-open it and do the necessary cleanup edits. I would lik to be able to mark as patrolled as part of an editing session. Why can't I? PamD 09:41, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
- I've been asking for months that the "mark as patrolled" button to be visible at all times (until it's been clicked) for those who opt in to having it displayed. Apparently it's a "server load" issue that stops it from being able to be implemented, I think. But back to the original question, there are different very levels of patrolling. Should it be patrolled if there is at least one verifying ref and no negative comments, or should it only be patrolled if it is fully sectioned, linked, categorised, tagged, templated, infoboxed, succession boxed, navboxed, wikiprojected and copy edited? In the end it is your call. Patrolling is just one layer of defence. A properly patrolled article is "good" only when it is patrolled. A properly linked/categorised/wikiprojected has a chance of being seen many times in the future, so is more protected from future damage.The-Pope (talk) 09:53, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
- I've always believed that patrollers, as the first to see new articles, should take a few moments to add the easy, essential missing items such as stub tags, cats, missing reflist template, bolden the entry line, move wrongly capitalised page names,and address any other minor, but significant formatting errors. Nobody is suggesting however, that they should spend 30 minutes turning rubbish into a real article - and that's why we have the tags. Some of us have been trying for two years or more to encourage the community to address the problems of new pages, but none of the efforts have born fruit, and some have been quickly rejected by the Foundation. As Wikipedia grows, the number of totally unwanted pages grows with it, and partly due to lack of information for first time page creators (and nonsense creators) - or the way such information, if available, is presented to them. I've been toying with the new, new-pages prototype; it's pretty and it's cleaner than the current special:new pages, but it does not address any fundamental issues of page patrolling, and is not really much of an enhancement over the live feed that has been available for years. At best, it is eye-candy for competent patrollers, while at it's worst, it may even encourage even more inexperienced users to patrol pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:13, 30 June 2012 (UTC).
- The New Pages Feed handles this a bit differently. If you go to a page from there, the "mark as reviewed" link will continue to persist. In fact, you've actually been placed into a "curation mode", which will become more obvious once the Curation Toolbar is rolled out to everyone.
- The Curation Toolbar, by the way, allows you to decide whether or not to mark a pages as reviewed when you apply tags. There's a checkbox ("also mark as reviewed"); it remembers state so if you turn it off, it stays off. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 20:32, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
- Right, New Pages Feed looks quite a lot better. As an occasional NPP-er I hadn't been following all the recent developments closely though was aware that stuff was going on, was surprised that New Pages didn't look new-and-improved, didn't realise / had forgotten that NPF exists. Should there be some prominent mention of it at WP:NPP? I've just now reviewed a handful of pages, and I like the way that I can select a page, edit it, then choose to click "Reviewed". Definite improvement. PamD 21:17, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
- When we've got all the elements of the prototype in place we're sticking a wacking great notice at the top of Special:NewPages to inform people about it, but the NPP page would definitely be a great place to advertise it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
- Right, New Pages Feed looks quite a lot better. As an occasional NPP-er I hadn't been following all the recent developments closely though was aware that stuff was going on, was surprised that New Pages didn't look new-and-improved, didn't realise / had forgotten that NPF exists. Should there be some prominent mention of it at WP:NPP? I've just now reviewed a handful of pages, and I like the way that I can select a page, edit it, then choose to click "Reviewed". Definite improvement. PamD 21:17, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
- I've been asking for months that the "mark as patrolled" button to be visible at all times (until it's been clicked) for those who opt in to having it displayed. Apparently it's a "server load" issue that stops it from being able to be implemented, I think. But back to the original question, there are different very levels of patrolling. Should it be patrolled if there is at least one verifying ref and no negative comments, or should it only be patrolled if it is fully sectioned, linked, categorised, tagged, templated, infoboxed, succession boxed, navboxed, wikiprojected and copy edited? In the end it is your call. Patrolling is just one layer of defence. A properly patrolled article is "good" only when it is patrolled. A properly linked/categorised/wikiprojected has a chance of being seen many times in the future, so is more protected from future damage.The-Pope (talk) 09:53, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
Clubbing baby seals
I've noticed that members of this project tend to be a little heavy-handed and jump the gun by immediately moving for deletion of articles before they even have a chance to be started/written. Some of us don't use sandbox and contribute on the go. Unfortunately, WP was easier years ago. Today, there are too many bells and whistles and levers and templates that confuse the hell out of me--WP is becoming too technical and isolating average editors without a CompSci/coding background. Today, articles are becoming opaque because they are too technical for the general public (e.g. while I understand more science than most, even I notice the physics and cosmology articles are getting incredibly academic and inaccessible to the average reader...try reading an article on a star from the view of a curious non-astrophysicist). Today, the editors on projects like this one tend to intimidate people from continuing to edit (If contributions are doubted immediately before one has a chance to completely present them, it will drive away potentially good editors who don't want to deal with that hostility/intimidation--intentional or not). There should be a window of at least few days--a grace period--before members of this project jump to action yelling "delete! delete! delete!" I can't understand how this project can claim to be "backlogged" but start proposing deletion and inundating a nascent article with a technocratic genocide less than 24 hours after it was started. That's my two cents.--ColonelHenry (talk) 13:53, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- Then perhaps you would like to join any discussions that attempt to introduce more quality and expertise into the corps of new page patrollers which appears to be mainly populated by very young and/or very inexperienced users. I tried my best for two years to get something done, but the powers that be have other ideas - like creating very usefultools for patrollers, but which are still only any good in the hands of users who understand the policies and deletion criteria. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:20, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- Kudpung I'll see what I can do. Can you bring me up to speed on what pages I should look at or what I may need to know so that I can effectively look into the matter?--ColonelHenry (talk) 21:27, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- So, just to review, what was the problem with starting the article in your sandbox, other than you just don't feel like doing it? And the whole articles for creation thing, is that just too much bother as well? Franamax (talk) 18:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- The community has agreed that editors are allowed to start pages in the main namespace. NPPers have no business punishing people for doing exactly what the community tells them they may do, even if its "just too much bother" for the NPPer to come back to an article in an hour or two to see what progress has been made or the NPPer "just doesn't feel like doing it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- Did you actually read the thread? The OP is asking for a few days, not an hour or two. Please show me where the community agreed to give editors a few days to demonstrate the viability of a topic. And while you're at it, please show me where it was decided that userfication or incubation is some sort of "punishment", I must have missed that discussion too. Franamax (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- To give some background: I started the article in the middle of the night. I thought I'd have it up faster but then I realized that most of the resources were in German, Italian and Bulgarian and would need translating. I decided to go to sleep and tackle it tomorrow. Tomorrow came, work bogged me down. Unfortunately, real life and real obligations get in the way of what we would like to do. I wish I had more time to contribute. Asking for 2-3 days is a lot less harmful than other contributions that leave something slanderous in place for 18 months like the calumnies at John Siegenthaler or the past edits that introduced Stephen Hawking as "a dirty lying cripple." Sometimes a little more considered judgment on priorities can temper the corrupting influence of the crude power of NPP.--ColonelHenry (talk) 21:27, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- Did you actually read the thread? The OP is asking for a few days, not an hour or two. Please show me where the community agreed to give editors a few days to demonstrate the viability of a topic. And while you're at it, please show me where it was decided that userfication or incubation is some sort of "punishment", I must have missed that discussion too. Franamax (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- Franamax--I don't use sandbox. Never have, not inclined to leave my comfort zone to try it out. Old dogs and new tricks. I don't use a lot of the templates and little coding gizmos just because I haven't felt the need to explore outside my comfort zone to learn more about them. Quite frankly, on a prima facie basis, I find them making WP needlessly complex. WP doesn't have a problem with editing on the fly, and didn't when I had over several thousand edits from 2002-2008. I was not aware of WP:AFC before your comment but on reading the first line, it doesn't apply here. I have a user account. AFC applies to people who don't have one and request an article be written.--ColonelHenry (talk) 21:27, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- The thing is, the site has scaled up quite a bit since 2002 and it's not really possible to give everyone their desired comfort zone. Especially when the large majority of new article creators would define their comfort zone as "this band my firend made is teh coolest and definatly notable". The difference between a mainspace page and a user sandbox is just that you put "User:ColonelHenry/" in front of the article name, which I bet even an old dog like you could figure out. ;) The templates and coding, that's a different story, but that's not needed at all to get an article to stick. All you need to do in your own pagespace is to put together enough to show notability (which I think we agree needs to be done anyway, right?) and say the basics of the topic. After that, yeah, move it to prime time and lots of other people will put the bells and whistles on - but no article ever got deleted because it didn't have an infobox. And AFC might not be the place I'm thinking about, though I think it is, there is a place to incubate articles where others can help with them. But even if it's wrong because you have a user account, so what? That's another rule you know, ignore rules and put it there anyway, it will work out. My point is that not everyone can insist on the easiest path for them in particular, if we are to have an overall working website, and so long as there are people willing to help you userfy an article, things should work out. Now I do think that speedy notices should have a real clear option (ideally one-click) to let you easily userfy a page for the case you mention, where you thought it would be quick and easy to get the page up but it turns out to be more complicated. Your initial work shouldn't go to waste. But I don't think there should be some inherent right to have your partial page sitting in the mainspace either, when there are so many other good options for it. The reality is that most people, most pages - not viable now and never will be (I think 85% of new pages get deleted, the vast majority deservedly so). Franamax (talk) 22:11, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- which I bet even an old dog like you could figure out. ;) Don't give me too much credit, I'm just a barely functional drunk. I'm lucky if I can count anything or tie my shoes before noon. Seriously though, I know enough to be effective and do quality work. But I'm set in my ways and idiosyncratic. In a world like Wikipedia there probably isn't a defined "normal" when it comes to editors and editing styles (something I can say after meeting and getting to know many wikipedians at meetups). Perhaps there should be a template that connects to some form of oversight that says "This article was started on (date) and might take a day or two to look nice. It is a work in progress." And that gives a reasonable 48-hour, 72-hour, maybe 5-7 day grace period. Provided it isn't a vanity article about "yo, my cousin's band roX...nawmeen?" Thankfully, some of us don't write articles like that--even if we are slow from time to time in getting it done for other's edification and satisfaction.--ColonelHenry (talk) 00:31, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
- I agree: it's not really possible to give everyone their desired comfort zone. Where we disagree is whether the person who needs to step out of his comfort zone is the NPPer or the article editor.
- Have a look at the article in question when it was tagged for deletion. Although obviously non-speedy-able from the first version, it was tagged within minutes and PRODded about 18 hours later. Would it really have hurt anyone to leave this alone for even a few days? Would it have been a calamity if the NPPers stepped out of their comfort zone this time, and focused on the 80% that is terrible? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- The underlying issue, and the main one, is that NPP is largely carried by a corps of editors who are extremely young and/or inexperienced. Only this morning I had to ask a new user to calm down whose first 15 of their 22 edits (the rest are to their user page) were to create AfDs; another patroller tagged a perfectly reasonable and serious article start with ((WP:A1]] within 39 seconds of its creation. There is nothing wrong with NPP as a process, and it is the most essential process at Wikipedia, but the problem is the people who are allowed to do it. New tools are in the making (sigh) that will hopefully streamline the actual process somewhat more streamlined (although I haven't found them particularly insightful), but they don't and can't address the incompetency of the patrollers. The best tools in the world are useless in the hands of an unskilled worker. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:59, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
- What do you think attracts newer editors to NPP? Is it positive vandalism? (in the vein that violence and destruction is negative creation or while art or the pursuit of beauty is positive creation). Do you think NPP contributors need special qualifications (elected like admins, appointed, community-nominated?)--ColonelHenry (talk) 05:22, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
- To your first question: What attracts young/and new users (and they are mostly young) is the power that it gives them to be quasi moderators of one of the world's largest websites. They generally wouldn't be given moderator tools on even a run-of-the-mill local forum. In tens of thousands of checks on the work of patrollers, I've never come across one who has patrolled with the intention of vandalising the project. I'm sure that apart from the obvious feeling of power, that most patrollers patrol in good faith, but by not gaining more experience as general content editors first, and by not reading and learning the somewhat complex policies and the instructions for NPP, they get it hopelessly wrong and just make more work for the rest of us. To your second questions: Yes, obviously, and strongly so, and for those reasons. We don't (officially) let kids, or people without driving licences drive cars on open, public roads, do we? And most countries nowadays insist on passing through driving school before the test. NPP currently requires no training, and no demonstration of competency - ironic really for such an important task. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:11, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
- What do you think attracts newer editors to NPP? Is it positive vandalism? (in the vein that violence and destruction is negative creation or while art or the pursuit of beauty is positive creation). Do you think NPP contributors need special qualifications (elected like admins, appointed, community-nominated?)--ColonelHenry (talk) 05:22, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
- The underlying issue, and the main one, is that NPP is largely carried by a corps of editors who are extremely young and/or inexperienced. Only this morning I had to ask a new user to calm down whose first 15 of their 22 edits (the rest are to their user page) were to create AfDs; another patroller tagged a perfectly reasonable and serious article start with ((WP:A1]] within 39 seconds of its creation. There is nothing wrong with NPP as a process, and it is the most essential process at Wikipedia, but the problem is the people who are allowed to do it. New tools are in the making (sigh) that will hopefully streamline the actual process somewhat more streamlined (although I haven't found them particularly insightful), but they don't and can't address the incompetency of the patrollers. The best tools in the world are useless in the hands of an unskilled worker. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:59, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
- The thing is, the site has scaled up quite a bit since 2002 and it's not really possible to give everyone their desired comfort zone. Especially when the large majority of new article creators would define their comfort zone as "this band my firend made is teh coolest and definatly notable". The difference between a mainspace page and a user sandbox is just that you put "User:ColonelHenry/" in front of the article name, which I bet even an old dog like you could figure out. ;) The templates and coding, that's a different story, but that's not needed at all to get an article to stick. All you need to do in your own pagespace is to put together enough to show notability (which I think we agree needs to be done anyway, right?) and say the basics of the topic. After that, yeah, move it to prime time and lots of other people will put the bells and whistles on - but no article ever got deleted because it didn't have an infobox. And AFC might not be the place I'm thinking about, though I think it is, there is a place to incubate articles where others can help with them. But even if it's wrong because you have a user account, so what? That's another rule you know, ignore rules and put it there anyway, it will work out. My point is that not everyone can insist on the easiest path for them in particular, if we are to have an overall working website, and so long as there are people willing to help you userfy an article, things should work out. Now I do think that speedy notices should have a real clear option (ideally one-click) to let you easily userfy a page for the case you mention, where you thought it would be quick and easy to get the page up but it turns out to be more complicated. Your initial work shouldn't go to waste. But I don't think there should be some inherent right to have your partial page sitting in the mainspace either, when there are so many other good options for it. The reality is that most people, most pages - not viable now and never will be (I think 85% of new pages get deleted, the vast majority deservedly so). Franamax (talk) 22:11, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
- The community has agreed that editors are allowed to start pages in the main namespace. NPPers have no business punishing people for doing exactly what the community tells them they may do, even if its "just too much bother" for the NPPer to come back to an article in an hour or two to see what progress has been made or the NPPer "just doesn't feel like doing it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Why not just make it harder to start new pages. IOW, require contributors to have some higher standard of content contribution (whatever metric, maybe number of total edits or a granted right or whatever). Since the vast majority of the stuff coming in is bad...and since there is plenty of work to be done elswehere...why not just have a model of apprenticeship? Seriously, every trade, profession, sport, etc. works this way. You learn by doing. The days of "wiki wiki" fast fast and throwing up unreferenced crap for Larry Sanger to just get the thing going...are long gone.
And similarly, divert the patrollers into having to do some DYK or GOCE or BLP referencing or the like before NPPing. I mean I have NO DOUBT that we regularly and repeatedly rebuff really smart, experienced people that have good writing skills and the like (ex professors and the like) because they start to contribute and maybe don't know all the technical wiki tricks...and then have some heavy handed 14 year old dropping textbox turds on them. And then they are gone...
- That's exactly what happens - except that not only are they only 14 years old, some of them are as young as 8.
- We tried to make it harder to create pages but although the community adopted the solution by a healthy consensus, it was rejected by the Foundation. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
- Kudpung, can you explain where you get the idea that "some of them are as young as eight" from? I've just checked not only the analysis but the raw data from the survey, and not only did we not directly ask age (making precise statements of age hard), I can confirm that, even if we are generous with the year of birth data, not a single person in the sanitised list of respondents is eight, or was eight when filling out the survey. Where are you getting this data from? Similarly - yes, some of them are fourteen. But 79-82 percent of them are over 18, and this rises to 83-85 percent for the high-workload patrollers, who do 89 percent of the work. So, we have no quantitative data to indicate "some of them are as young as 8", and very few are 14. What quantitative data are you relying on here?
- On the page creation front - TCO, we're working on a tool to better inform new editors of what is expected when they create pages, and I would be very grateful for your input :). Note that the disclaimer at the top should be taken very seriously (I actually have a meeting later today to discuss a redesign) but the essential methodology and principles will remain the same. Any feedback is welcome :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
- There has appears to have been no further technical development on this since 8 February, (and that was only a comment and nothing to do with physical software development). If something is taking place, it might be a good idea to keep the community informed, provide some facts, a link to the working prototype, and an ETA on the product. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:27, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
New pages by category?
Is there currently a way to filter new pages by category? For instance, is there some tool that can show me only unpatrolled pages that are categorized under Category:Chemical compounds? I'm having the problem that Special:NewPages is simply overwhelming in its range of topics, and finding a topic I'm familiar with or learning about new topics I'm not interested in is very time consuming. When it comes to rock bands, sporting events, TV shows, Bollywood, etc., I am completely clueless, and frankly I'd prefer to remain that way, as I have zero interest in these things. If I could just filter these out and focus on some broad area I'm familiar with, I could be a more effective page patroller. (Likewise, I'm sure there are Bollywood connoisseurs out there who get annoyed at having to sort through articles that would interest me.)
Any thoughts/recommendations on this? Thanks. ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:17, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
- The problem with using categories is that many new articles don't have any. Pages like User:AlexNewArtBot/ChemistrySearchResult which are updated daily by a bot based on both cats and text - see TedderBot's contribution list is probably the best bet. It's a pity that these lists are often unknown to many, they should be prominant on most WikiProject's pages if they are to be effectively used. Yes, they have some false positives, but in general they are the best way to track new articles by topic, not just the whole lot. The-Pope (talk) 01:48, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
- And then you want to add Fred's script so you can patrol them through that page. Put this:
importScript("User:Fred Gandt/getUnpatrolledOfAlexNewArtBotResultsPages.js");
- into your User:YourName/common.js to use the script. Then you get a button to click that will tell you which of the new pages are unpatrolled, and a "Patrol" button that will take you to the unpatrolled pages with the little link for patrolling in place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
- Ahh! an important step indeed. I checked out the Tedderbot pages and was having the problem that I couldn't see which ones were patrolled (most had already been caught at the time).
- It would be nice if there were some sort of un-patrolled category on the pages so they could be caught and sorted with a tool like AWB. I'll play around with it and see what I can find. ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:55, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
- into your User:YourName/common.js to use the script. Then you get a button to click that will tell you which of the new pages are unpatrolled, and a "Patrol" button that will take you to the unpatrolled pages with the little link for patrolling in place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
New articles in talk space
I stumbled across two articles that have been recently created on the Talk page: Talk:Universal Sufi Festival and Talk:Rahe Bhander Ennoble Award. I don't see any advice about how to deal with that (a move with attribution would leave the talk page pointing to the article?), so am dropping this here for someone with a clue (sorry!). Johnuniq (talk) 11:58, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
- You could get an admin to move-without-redirect? Happy to do it myself :). Ironholds (talk) 16:13, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
- Now done! Ironholds (talk) 16:14, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks. I notified the user in case they can't find the articles. Johnuniq (talk) 08:04, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
- Now done! Ironholds (talk) 16:14, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Backlog again
Note that we are backlogged again, with the end of the queue now in approximately 28 days (the cutting line is 30 days).--Ymblanter (talk) 17:32, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- It tends to go up and down. The only times it goes down significantly is during a crisis, such as last year's IEP when experienced editors rallied together to clean up a mess. New tools are great in the hands of those who know how to use them, but something needs done to address the issues of what apparently are generally poor patrolling and/or an insufficient number of patrollers. As you are concerned by the backlog, perhaps you may be able to come up with some ideas. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- No, I do not really have any good ideas - except for the fact that the problem can be potentially solved by introducing flagged revisions, but this does not seem to be an option for the moment. May be more actively search for candidated to autopatrollers.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:36, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- A big banner at the top of this page says that this page is "within the scope of the Counter-Vandalism Unit". Oddly enough, the CVU has recently introduced a CVU Academy that aims to teach editors interested in counter-vandalism how to do it properly. If there is a need to "more actively search for" autopatrol candidates, then either a parallel but similar effort, or an effort by the CVUA to assist in identifying and/or training appropriate candidates for NPP, might be useful. (On the other hand, parts of this comment about some involved in that initiative, may give some here pause for thought on this idea.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:10, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- I have no idea how the CVU can claim NPP to be within its remit - the two projects have very little in common. Perhaps the CVU banner should be removed from this talk page, and all attempts at NPP reform kept in the hands of experienced users. That said, we're still waiting on a Foundation product that in spite of promises for action does not appear to have received any further attention from the software experts since 8 February. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:26, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- A big banner at the top of this page says that this page is "within the scope of the Counter-Vandalism Unit". Oddly enough, the CVU has recently introduced a CVU Academy that aims to teach editors interested in counter-vandalism how to do it properly. If there is a need to "more actively search for" autopatrol candidates, then either a parallel but similar effort, or an effort by the CVUA to assist in identifying and/or training appropriate candidates for NPP, might be useful. (On the other hand, parts of this comment about some involved in that initiative, may give some here pause for thought on this idea.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:10, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- I'm confused as to where you're getting that there hasn't been attention since the 8th of February. We deployed a new version of the New Pages Feed to enwiki on Thursday and the next version has been deployed to the test server. If you're talking about the Article Creation Workflow, that software was/is dependent upon MediaWiki 1.20 and so couldn't be deployed until 1.20 was made out. However, we have decided to hold off on deployment of the feature because, upon reflection, the implementation did not meet the design requirements and we're revisiting it.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- What Brandon said. We had a deployment earlier this week; that's not "no attention since 8 February". If you did not notice the deployment then, well, that's not our problem. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I have no idea what you are talking about Oliver. Jorm has just clearly said deployment has been held off. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:56, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you for clarifying which of the solutions we are working on you are talking about :). This was not initially done, hence the confusion. Yes, deployment has been held off; we decided it might be better to finish the new patrolling system before creating a system that risks upsetting the already shaky balance between number of patrollers and number of articles created. Apologies if you think we should've gone ahead immediately. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
- I still don't see the connection between the development a proper landing page for new users and the 'shaky balance' (whatever that is) between number of patrollers and number of articles created. Surely your goal should be to 1) address the lack of patrollers, and 2) to demonstrably improve the understanding of Wikipedia and its policies of those who then do the patrolling. Neither the 260+ warnings I have issued to patrollers nor the NPP bans issued by other admins have ever been contested, so NPP is clearly and dangerously underperforming - and that is the root of the problem.
- The NPF, while a truly excellent tool (why wasn't it thought of years ago?) when in the right hands, does not unfortunately, and cannot, address any of these issues. At best, it's such a cool tool that it might even risk attracting even more inexperienced users to patrol new pages.
- Thank you for clarifying which of the solutions we are working on you are talking about :). This was not initially done, hence the confusion. Yes, deployment has been held off; we decided it might be better to finish the new patrolling system before creating a system that risks upsetting the already shaky balance between number of patrollers and number of articles created. Apologies if you think we should've gone ahead immediately. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I have no idea what you are talking about Oliver. Jorm has just clearly said deployment has been held off. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:56, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
- What Brandon said. We had a deployment earlier this week; that's not "no attention since 8 February". If you did not notice the deployment then, well, that's not our problem. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
- As I understand it, Article Creation Flow was conceived as a peace offering for the rejection of ACTRIAL, which, I hasten to remind, was not proposed by a bunch of exclusionists as was claimed at Bugzilla, but was designed to combat the huge flow of totally useless new pages and at the same time encourage the development of serious new articles. While a new landing page also won't and can't address the actual standard of patrolling, it would most likely significantly reduce the number of new pages that the regular community is expected to clean up and/or delete, while at the same time encouraging new editors of shaky creations to do their own cleaning up and perhaps becoming potential Wikipedians - it might also help reduce the amount of admin error. The only 'upset' of some balance or other, as far as I can see, would thus be a net positive all round. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:05, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
- "I still don't see the connection between the development a proper landing page for new users and the 'shaky balance' (whatever that is) between number of patrollers and number of articles created" - at the moment, new users going to redlinks are not exactly presented with a helpful and simple interface that intuitively explains their options. Developing the landing page will do these things; it'll say "hey, this is a redlink! here are your ways forward (go back, maybe create a new article, request it be created, whatever". This should hopefully decrease the number of bad new articles by briefing new writers on the requirements. That's great. But it could conceivably also increase the number of incoming articles overall, because instead of a confusing interface people are being actively told "you can create articles and here's how". So, yes, this could upset things, at least in the short-term.
- In regards to patrols; you've issued 260 warnings for incorrect patrols or tags, yes? That's a very, very tiny number of problematic postings. I've, as one admin, validated many more CSDs than that. As one patroller, I've patrolled far more pages than that. And, again, I'm just one guy. 260 is a minute percentage of the number of actions actually taken (presumably, we have at least 3 million total patrol actions logged in the article namespace alone). I've not seen any evidence that it's a systematic rather than a subjective problem, and we don't invest months of developer time in what is essentially an edge case. If you can show that it's actually systematic, we should have a conversation. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:28, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- And, no, that would be the new pages feed that is aimed at helping resolve the ACTRIAL issue :). Here's the thing; you talk about our priorities for improving the quality of patrollers and addressing the lack of patrollers. How do we do this through software, exactly? A userright requirement for patrolling? It's largely not our place to just arbitrarily jump in and say "yes, we want this userright"; if you want something like that, go hold an RfC. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:30, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- My 260+ warnings are only my warnings, and should serve as an indication that it is possibly only the tip of the iceberg. You are fully aware that I, as just one of the users concerned with making progress towards addressing New Page Patrol issues, I have patrolled 10,000s of pages over 100s of hours, including those that have already been supposedly 'patrolled'. The community would welcome any suggestions from the Foundation to address these issues as they already appear to be doing. The creation of a landing page for new users (Article Creation, Flow) is not a fringe issue, it was already proposed by the Foundation as a tandem solution to ACTRIAL, and would provide an important solution. I will say again that while NPF is a brilliant tool, sophisticated tools are only as good as the worker whose hands they are in, and in the worst case scenario, because it is such a cool tool, NPF may even attract more inexperienced users to the task. It therefore clearly does not address the core issues in any way - if it were to, I would like very much like to understand how you/the Foundation feel(s) it does. I will also point out that the Foundation does occasionally jump in with arbitrary solutions (sometimes in fact good ones) and/or to reject community response. The opportunity for a reasonable, structured conversation was available last week in Washington. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Indeed; I was there! I did, in fact, try to talk to you - you blanked me, for some reason. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:14, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Nope, it is not my art after travelling a 24,000 mile round trip, with the express intention of discussing some issues with you in particular. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:41, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I'm sorry, Oliver, but that is a lie. I offered to facilitate a discussion between the two of you, and you told me to fuck off (your words). Now I don't give a shit about that but I won't let you come here and pretend that it was Kudpung who refused to engage with you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:17, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Erm. No, I'm pointing to that specific situation - I approached him, said "Hey [name]", he blanked me. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:34, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- And for reference, Kudpung, as an (admittedly not-quite-as-good) alternative, I'm happy to have a conversation with you on Skype if there's something you want to talk through :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:37, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, we need work by the volunteers here; the better the tools, the more we will use them. Kudpung said not that he had patrolled 260 pages, but that he had gotten in touch with 260 patrollers, to improve their patrolling. This has a multiplier effect much more effective and far reaching than just patrolling. As far as I know he has made the major effort of anyone in this, both in advocating this approach and in actually doing it, and he deserves the tribute for it. An attempt to belittle or ignore his work is unwarranted. Those working on the project for the WMF ought to have made it a major effort to talk with him at Wikimania--after making their presentation, it was perhaps the most important thing they needed to do there. International conventions were invented for purposes like this. I as well as HJM tried to facilitate it, and we tried repeatedly. I certainly would have learned a good deal just by listening to the discussion. DGG ( talk ) 04:30, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I know that he spoke to both Howie and Karyn Gladstone; I can't speak for any other conversations that were had :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:45, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- And thank you, DGG, for proving my point :). I wasn't claiming that he'd not done a mammoth amount of work, precisely the opposite - that he does more work on this front than almost anyone. And that's the problem with trying to extrapolate from him identifying 260 poor patrols; he does a lot more work than everyone else, so his experience is unlikely to be reflective of the experience of reviewing admins as a whole. This means that while it may seem a substantial problem, it isn't necessarily; he may be catching most of the individuals responsible on his own.
- Now, just because it isn't substantial numerically doesn't mean it isn't important, but it does mean that it may not be worth the massive effort of undertaking a (third) page patrol software project to fix it. Despite what people may assume from the fundraiser every year, we don't actually have that big a team; day-to-day, I currently work with 2 (3, on occasion) programmers in this area, and each of them only have four days a week to dedicate to the projects they're working on because of 20 percent time (the idea that one day a week should be spent bugfixing other or previous projects). To invest in yet another project in this field would inevitably mean pushing back everything else we have to do because, again, we're a small team, and our to-do list includes a global profiles system, an inter-wiki notifications system and fixing user talkpages. And that's just until the end of the year.
- In addition, I'm not even sure what software we could invest in to fix this problem; it's primarily a social one, and this makes fixing it with technology a wee bit difficult - and also means we cross a line we've tarried on before of "this community process is broken, we will jump in and fix it from above", which makes me rather uncomfortable. If people have ideas to fix the issue, I would advise them to bring it up with staff (as mentioned above, I assume Kudpung already did in his conversations with Karyn and Howie), and then see if there is perhaps a social solution to what is ultimately a social problem. Because, resource-wise, we're tapped out unless we want to fling our project timetables out the window. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:52, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I know that he spoke to both Howie and Karyn Gladstone; I can't speak for any other conversations that were had :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:45, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, we need work by the volunteers here; the better the tools, the more we will use them. Kudpung said not that he had patrolled 260 pages, but that he had gotten in touch with 260 patrollers, to improve their patrolling. This has a multiplier effect much more effective and far reaching than just patrolling. As far as I know he has made the major effort of anyone in this, both in advocating this approach and in actually doing it, and he deserves the tribute for it. An attempt to belittle or ignore his work is unwarranted. Those working on the project for the WMF ought to have made it a major effort to talk with him at Wikimania--after making their presentation, it was perhaps the most important thing they needed to do there. International conventions were invented for purposes like this. I as well as HJM tried to facilitate it, and we tried repeatedly. I certainly would have learned a good deal just by listening to the discussion. DGG ( talk ) 04:30, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- And for reference, Kudpung, as an (admittedly not-quite-as-good) alternative, I'm happy to have a conversation with you on Skype if there's something you want to talk through :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:37, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Erm. No, I'm pointing to that specific situation - I approached him, said "Hey [name]", he blanked me. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:34, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Indeed; I was there! I did, in fact, try to talk to you - you blanked me, for some reason. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:14, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- My 260+ warnings are only my warnings, and should serve as an indication that it is possibly only the tip of the iceberg. You are fully aware that I, as just one of the users concerned with making progress towards addressing New Page Patrol issues, I have patrolled 10,000s of pages over 100s of hours, including those that have already been supposedly 'patrolled'. The community would welcome any suggestions from the Foundation to address these issues as they already appear to be doing. The creation of a landing page for new users (Article Creation, Flow) is not a fringe issue, it was already proposed by the Foundation as a tandem solution to ACTRIAL, and would provide an important solution. I will say again that while NPF is a brilliant tool, sophisticated tools are only as good as the worker whose hands they are in, and in the worst case scenario, because it is such a cool tool, NPF may even attract more inexperienced users to the task. It therefore clearly does not address the core issues in any way - if it were to, I would like very much like to understand how you/the Foundation feel(s) it does. I will also point out that the Foundation does occasionally jump in with arbitrary solutions (sometimes in fact good ones) and/or to reject community response. The opportunity for a reasonable, structured conversation was available last week in Washington. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- And, no, that would be the new pages feed that is aimed at helping resolve the ACTRIAL issue :). Here's the thing; you talk about our priorities for improving the quality of patrollers and addressing the lack of patrollers. How do we do this through software, exactly? A userright requirement for patrolling? It's largely not our place to just arbitrarily jump in and say "yes, we want this userright"; if you want something like that, go hold an RfC. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:30, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- As I understand it, Article Creation Flow was conceived as a peace offering for the rejection of ACTRIAL, which, I hasten to remind, was not proposed by a bunch of exclusionists as was claimed at Bugzilla, but was designed to combat the huge flow of totally useless new pages and at the same time encourage the development of serious new articles. While a new landing page also won't and can't address the actual standard of patrolling, it would most likely significantly reduce the number of new pages that the regular community is expected to clean up and/or delete, while at the same time encouraging new editors of shaky creations to do their own cleaning up and perhaps becoming potential Wikipedians - it might also help reduce the amount of admin error. The only 'upset' of some balance or other, as far as I can see, would thus be a net positive all round. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:05, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Getting back to the question of what we should do here, I think we all agreed at Wikimania that Oliver & colleagues managed a very useful rework with the revised patrol page that would help almost all patrollers; though it needed some further development. I also think the consensus was unmistakable that it was good enough to be immediately deployed as the default page, keeping the old page in secondary status. (Unless the programmers think there is some fatal flaw,) Further development can proceed from there. Delaying deployment pending further work or further discussion or the development of additional pages is not helpful. I recall saying there after Oliver's presentation that although the community should have done the development, it was highly appropriate for the WMF to do it when the community had failed for so many years. Now is not the time to add bureaucratic obstacles. The foundation has shown it got this right. Let them not spoil their good work by delay--the sort of delay we all associate with unnecessary bureaucracy. . DGG ( talk ) 05:05, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- I'm slightly confused; we're not talking about delaying the replacement for the New Pages Feed - it's considered a working prototype, and will move on from "prototype" when we've finished and deployed the curation bar (think twinkle but with keyboard accelerators, more options, a better interface and it doesn't break every time MediaWiki upgrades). The delayed project is a completely different thing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:45, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
- Would I be right in thinking that perhaps the delay in developing Article Creation Workflow is somewhat connected with the proposals for an entirely new interface design? (both by the same project creator). If so, I can understand the workload, but it would be great if development of a new landing page - at least its basic architecture without the final skin - could take place concurrently in order to save time. As you know, I personally consider user retention to be a high priority, and of course it goes hand-in-hand with the excellent NewPagesFeed and how, and by whom, it will be used. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:50, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- The two issues are not related.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 05:04, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- Would I be right in thinking that perhaps the delay in developing Article Creation Workflow is somewhat connected with the proposals for an entirely new interface design? (both by the same project creator). If so, I can understand the workload, but it would be great if development of a new landing page - at least its basic architecture without the final skin - could take place concurrently in order to save time. As you know, I personally consider user retention to be a high priority, and of course it goes hand-in-hand with the excellent NewPagesFeed and how, and by whom, it will be used. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:50, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
- I certainly had social activities in mind, not so much the software development. We are btw less than 24 h from the cutting line.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:22, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
Messages for new-article creators
An RfC discussion is currently taking place at:
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
Users interested in enhancing new-user retention/new-article retention are invited to join the discussion.
--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:12, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
AfC
I have been concerned for some time that the AfC process is using standards not only internally inconsistent, but inconsistent with the standards experiences NPPatrollers have been using, and inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. Ses my comment there at [1] DGG ( talk ) 21:19, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
How to identify articles that have been edited / cleaned-up
Hi there,
I just found the New pages patrol page - looks like great work! I have 2 questions:
I couldn't tell from the instructions how to remove an item from the queue if it has been edited. I just finished editing Matthew de Lacey Davidson and wasn't sure how to remove it from the list of new pages to be reviewed. How should I handle that?
By the way, for awhile I've been using AWB to edit new, random or category based pages - but it looks like there are other tools that are recommended (Twinkle, etc.) Should I look at getting something other than AWB?
Thanks!--CaroleHenson (talk) 01:40, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
- For removing an edit, you should go back to the queue, click on the article, and patrol it. (If you clicked on an article from the queue and first edited it, return to the first version you loaded from the queue, reload it to take into account your changes, and patrol the resulting version).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:28, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Bot transfer from the back of the queue
The page states: After 30 days, unpatrolled pages are removed from Special:Newpages and added to Category:Unreviewed new articles by a bot. Do I understand correctly that this does not occur anymore? Today in the morning, the queue was backlogged, and I happened to be the only patroller interested in the back of the queue at these specific hours (checked by the log that nobody els was patrolled the back of the queue). I saw articles disappearing from the queue (as if patrolled by someone else), but they are not in the category. Or are they expected to be transferred later at some point?--Ymblanter (talk) 10:46, 18 August 2012 (UTC)