![Caution Caution](https://web.archive.org/web/20170715072409im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Zhwp_Question_Mark.svg/30px-Zhwp_Question_Mark.svg.png)
![]() Archives |
---|
Threads older than 21 days may be archived by lowercase sigmabot III. |
Contents
- 1 Indexing Question - Article Prematurely Indexed ?
- 2 Comments on Reviewing and Institutional Cultural Disconnect
- 3 Help!
- 4 Instant Indexing, again
- 5 Draftify/Userfy
- 6 Backlog
- 7 Advertisement for NPP/R?
- 8 New Editor Question (again)
- 9 Notice has been requested!
- 10 ACTRIAL update
- 11 An article indexed on google before reviewed
- 12 Editors with most unreviewed pages
- 13 Stats
- 14 Improper A-PAT?
- 15 Unreviewed articles by keyword
- 16 Steve Roach album entries
- 17 One more essay of personal opinion
- 18 Question about The Wondrous Tale of Alroy
- 19 Duplicate Articles
- 20 Copyright Question
- 21 Reminder
- 22 Adding Comments Direct to Article's Talk Page
- 23 Is there still a character limit for comments?
Indexing Question - Article Prematurely Indexed ?
Can someone please explain what causes an article to be indexed, so that it is searchable via Google, before the article has been marked as reviewed? At this point, only an administrator will be able to try to answer this question. The article in question was Sizwe Faith Sithole. Here is the issue. First, User:Haleyquinn688 created the article, which was an unsourced and promotional BLP. Then User:Bluedits nominated it for BLPPROD. I then nominated it for A7. User:JozjuK then removed the deletion tags and added some questionable references. (The only problem with the removal of the speedy tag is that the removing editor was a sockpuppet of the creating editor.) I then did a Google search, and found nothing about the subject except the usual vanity hits AND the Wikipedia article in question. I then nominated the article for deletion, and applied tags to the article. I also reported sockpuppetry. The problem is that, then, when I viewed the logs for the article, it showed that I had reviewed the article. How had the article been indexed by Google before I reviewed it? Administrator User:Mz7 then blocked the socks and deleted the article as G11. Deleting the article is what I was trying to do; one of my primary objectives as a New Page Reviewer is the identification and deletion of crud, and the article was crud, and it doesn’t matter whether crud is deleted as G11 promotional crud, or as no credible claim of significance A7 crud, or non-notable crud after AFD. Why was the article indexed? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:51, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Since one of the reasons for New Page Review is to prevent the use of Wikipedia for Search Engine Optimization by blatant promoters, this is troublesome as it seems to show that the system was gamed. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:51, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- Kaldari: could these have been past 30 days before you implemented the 90 day NOINDEX? TonyBallioni (talk) 03:02, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- Adding tags to an article using Page Curation automatically makes an article as reviewed, and adding tags/nominating for deletion with Twinkle also marks an article as reviewed, unless the "mark article as patrolled" checkbox is deliberately unchecked. Is it possible that somewhere along the line, between the BLPPROD tagging, A7 tagging, cleanup tagging, and AFD tagging, the article was inadvertently marked as reviewed and therefore indexed? Mz7 (talk) 05:57, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- The only review event in the log shown was mine, and I tagged immediately for cleanup immediately after I tagged it for AFD, but, when I tagged it for AFD, it was already showing in Google. That shouldn't have happened unless some other reviewer marked it as reviewed (e.g., by tagging it) and didn't mark it as unreviewed. Did the BLPPROD event mark it as reviewed, so that when the BLPPROD was deleted by the sock, the article was left in a state ready to be indexed? If so, we have a hole that can be driven through. Robert McClenon (talk) 10:09, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni and Robert McClenon: When was Sizwe Faith Sithole created? It's possible either it aged out after 30 days (the previous expiration threshold before it was recently changed to 90 days). It doesn't look like adding the BLPPROD template marked it as reviewed as the first logged event is Robert McClenon reviewing it on June 7, at which point it was already showing up in Google according to Robert. For a thorough explanation of NOINDEXing, see Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing#Indexing of articles ("mainspace"). Kaldari (talk) 19:07, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- And FWIW, it usually takes Google at least a day to index an article after the NOINDEX has been removed, but the actual amount of time it takes is pretty random. Kaldari (talk) 19:10, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- It was created at 03:35, 7 June 2017, tagged BLPPROD with Twinkle by User:Blue Edits at 3:36, and tagged A7 with Twinkle by Robert at 3:37. A fourth user removed both deletion tags at 7:33 and, after several more edits, the article was brought to AFD at 21:28. The patrol log shows a revision was marked patrolled at 3:37, when A7 was added; presumably that was enough to make the article indexable once the deletion tags were removed. (It's pretty irritating that patrolling an article like that doesn't show up by default at Special:Log, but doing it through page curation (the 21:32 patrol log shown in Kaldari's link) does; and nearly as irritating that the 21:32 log is worded so as to be easily confusable with the review log, which is something else entirely.) —Cryptic 20:23, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- In that case, the article could have been indexed any time after 7:33 when the A7 tag was removed. Yes, this is a loophole, but it's also a necessary one. If someone legitimately realized that an article was improperly tagged for speedy deletion, we wouldn't want to prevent it from being indexed (until the 90 days had expired). The purpose of the NOINDEX grace period isn't to make sure that no bad articles are indexed (thousands of vandalized articles are indexed by Google every day). It's purpose is to give editors a chance to identify and delete a large percentage of such articles before they are indexed. Typically the system works well, but it isn't foolproof. If we fixed this loophole, it would then be possible for trolls to prevent legitimate new articles from being indexed by temporarily tagging them with a speedy deletion tag even if they had already been reviewed. Kaldari (talk) 22:13, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- It was created at 03:35, 7 June 2017, tagged BLPPROD with Twinkle by User:Blue Edits at 3:36, and tagged A7 with Twinkle by Robert at 3:37. A fourth user removed both deletion tags at 7:33 and, after several more edits, the article was brought to AFD at 21:28. The patrol log shows a revision was marked patrolled at 3:37, when A7 was added; presumably that was enough to make the article indexable once the deletion tags were removed. (It's pretty irritating that patrolling an article like that doesn't show up by default at Special:Log, but doing it through page curation (the 21:32 patrol log shown in Kaldari's link) does; and nearly as irritating that the 21:32 log is worded so as to be easily confusable with the review log, which is something else entirely.) —Cryptic 20:23, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
- The only review event in the log shown was mine, and I tagged immediately for cleanup immediately after I tagged it for AFD, but, when I tagged it for AFD, it was already showing in Google. That shouldn't have happened unless some other reviewer marked it as reviewed (e.g., by tagging it) and didn't mark it as unreviewed. Did the BLPPROD event mark it as reviewed, so that when the BLPPROD was deleted by the sock, the article was left in a state ready to be indexed? If so, we have a hole that can be driven through. Robert McClenon (talk) 10:09, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
-
(edit conflict)All reasons why Page Curation should be the default GUI for patrolling new pages, and why tagging specifically for deletion should be limited to authorised reviewers (this BLPPROD was a classic example of very poor patrolling - the article was little more than a blatant hoax) . Three accounts that edited that article have been blocked (the creator and their socks ), so this would be a good reason to introduce measures to prevent CSD templates being removed by non confirmed, or even non qualified reviwers. By the same token, it may also be worthwhile considering restricting the removal of PRODs to autoconfirmed users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:31, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Kaldari, one of the main reasons for NO_INDEX is to dissuade spammers, SEO 'experts', and paid editors from creating articles. Trolls should not have access to deletion tagging systems - this can easily be fixed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:37, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
- Thank you. That answers that. There is a loophole, and a loophole that can be and was and will be deliberately used, in that the removal of the deletion tag apparently made the article available for indexing, without the review of a qualified reviewer. (More precisely, one qualified reviewer had reviewed it, and had tagged it for deletion.) I respectfully disagree that this illustrates that tagging for deletion should be limited to authorized reviewers, because I disagree that the BLPPROD was poor patrolling. It was an entirely proper BLPPROD; the fact that the article was also a candidate for A7 or G11 doesn't make the BLPPROD improper. I agree that it would be appropriate to limit the removal of CSD, PROD, and BLPPROD tags to autoconfirmed editors, or more restrictively to reviewers. The addition of the BLPPROD was not poor patrolling, but the removal of the BLPPROD and of the CSD tag were the abuse, and restricting them would prevent that abuse. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:42, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- In this case, as we have noted, the abuse involved another infraction that is already dealt with, usually quickly and effectively, and that is sockpuppetry. However, the socks shouldn't be able to game the system in the first place before they are laundered (isn't that what one does with socks)? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:47, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
- Robert, I looked at the deleted page before I made my comment above. It was indeed an obvious hoax and even practically vandalism. While BLPPROD was technically correct in that the page was about a person and was unsourced, CSD trumps PROD/BLPPROD any time. Skill is often required in order to recognise subtle forms of hoax, advertising, or attack, but in this case it really was blatant - trust me. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:56, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- I'll take your word that it was a hoax. That wasn't obvious to me, and G3 is meant for obvious hoaxes. It was obviously A7, and I am not sure why I didn't tag it G11 also.
- Yes, G3 was better than G11 was better than A7 was better than BLPPROD here, but that's orthogonal to the original question raised - why this page got indexed and how to prevent that in the future - and I submit that that question is the more important. The problem is that the action of patrolling a page is being taken to mean two distinct things: 1) the page doesn't need further review from NPP, and 2) the page is ok to be indexed. The only effective way I can think of to solve that is to train NPP not to mark pages patrolled merely because they're tagged for deletion and make Twinkle not default to doing that. There's really no benefit from marking a page patrolled at that point, since it shows up differently in Special:Newpagesfeed anyway. —Cryptic 01:41, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- I agree that the original question, which is why the page was able to get indexed, is the real question, and that a page should not be considered reviewed simply because it was tagged for deletion and the deletion was then reversed. I would have still taken it to AFD if it hadn't been indexed, but it shouldn't have gotten indexed, and it illustrates a loophole that can be used deliberately. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:38, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- It wasn't considered reviewed because the deletion tag was reverted. It was considered reviewed because Twinkle marked it reviewed when you tagged it an A7. (I understand you can change that at WP:TWPREFS.) Had you tagged the article an A7 without patrolling it, and it deletion tag was removed, it wouldn't have become indexable. —Cryptic 03:08, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- I wasn't using Page Curation to mark the page for deletion. I don't use Page Curation to mark for deletion, which I do directly from Twinkle, but it appears that Twinkle is also marking the page reviewed when I try to have it deleted. Here is another example, this time a more reasonable article. See Lew Gaiter. Its author originally created it as an infobox-only placeholder. I detest infobox-only placeholders, but that is a secondary point. I PROD'd it. The author then removed the PROD and expanded it to an article about a politician. One can argue whether he is notable at this time, but it wasn't a hoax. A Google search turned up the usual vanity hits, and the Wikipedia article, when the only action other than by the author was my PROD. Obviously, tagging an article for deletion and then untagging it causes it to be indexed. Maybe I should always do a Mark as Unreviewed after tagging crud. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:29, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- Robert McClenon, in the Twinkle Preferences you should probably uncheck the various "mark as patrolled" boxes if you're concerned about TW patrolling even when you don't want to. Primefac (talk) 12:14, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- I wasn't using Page Curation to mark the page for deletion. I don't use Page Curation to mark for deletion, which I do directly from Twinkle, but it appears that Twinkle is also marking the page reviewed when I try to have it deleted. Here is another example, this time a more reasonable article. See Lew Gaiter. Its author originally created it as an infobox-only placeholder. I detest infobox-only placeholders, but that is a secondary point. I PROD'd it. The author then removed the PROD and expanded it to an article about a politician. One can argue whether he is notable at this time, but it wasn't a hoax. A Google search turned up the usual vanity hits, and the Wikipedia article, when the only action other than by the author was my PROD. Obviously, tagging an article for deletion and then untagging it causes it to be indexed. Maybe I should always do a Mark as Unreviewed after tagging crud. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:29, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- It wasn't considered reviewed because the deletion tag was reverted. It was considered reviewed because Twinkle marked it reviewed when you tagged it an A7. (I understand you can change that at WP:TWPREFS.) Had you tagged the article an A7 without patrolling it, and it deletion tag was removed, it wouldn't have become indexable. —Cryptic 03:08, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- I agree that the original question, which is why the page was able to get indexed, is the real question, and that a page should not be considered reviewed simply because it was tagged for deletion and the deletion was then reversed. I would have still taken it to AFD if it hadn't been indexed, but it shouldn't have gotten indexed, and it illustrates a loophole that can be used deliberately. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:38, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
- Robert, I looked at the deleted page before I made my comment above. It was indeed an obvious hoax and even practically vandalism. While BLPPROD was technically correct in that the page was about a person and was unsourced, CSD trumps PROD/BLPPROD any time. Skill is often required in order to recognise subtle forms of hoax, advertising, or attack, but in this case it really was blatant - trust me. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:56, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
Cryptic, from my understanding page curation marks all pages tagged for deletion as reviewed and there isn't an option to turn it off without clicking unreviewed. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:11, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- This particular article wasn't reviewed by page curation (until much later, at 21:32). And if what you say is true, it renders page curation unfit for the purpose of tagging pages for deletion. —Cryptic 03:14, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- I'll use the most recent page I've tagged for speedy deletion that is still outstanding as an example [1]. I can't find the documentation now, but if I recall correctly, all deletion templates are supposed to add _NOINDEX_ so the marking as reviewed doesn't matter. The loophole is that if the tag is removed, it can be indexed. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:21, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- And that's exactly what this entire section is about. You've just changed that article from one that can only become indexed if 90 days pass or someone with page reviewer rights takes action on it, into one that anybody who's not blocked can make indexed. It's not the article author who hypothetically removes your db-spam tag who's at fault here, nor even (to a lesser extent) the admin who inexplicably declines to delete it. The person who made that page indexable was you. The workaround for the auto-review misfeature in page curation is to do what User:Adam9007 did before you and mark it unreviewed. The workaround for the similar but less-severe misfeature in Twinkle is (I'm told) to disable it in preferences. —Cryptic 03:31, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- From what Kaldari said above, the mark as reviewed feature in page curation seems an intentional inclusion, that the NOINDEX magic word of the deletion tags is supposed to prevent becoming an issue if the tag is placed correctly. In the case linked to, Adam appears to have unreviewed it because another reviewer marked as reviewed a foreign language page without doing anything. Having looked at a fair amount of review logs, from what I can tell, Robert is one of the few reviewers who uses page curation that also marks pages as unreviewed after tagging for issues or for deletion. If that should be the norm, it should be added to the guide at WP:NPP, and if the community wants it changed to not mark as reviewed, then a ticket should be added to phab. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:52, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- That sounds like a bad solution to me. You're basically arguing that an article shouldn't be indexed until all issues with it have been resolved. That seems completely antithetical to the DNA of Wikipedia. Do we really want to turn Wikipedia back into Nupedia (which was a total failure)? There is already a simple solution for this (uncommon) situation, which is to restore the speedy deletion tag. If that isn't adequate, we should build an abuse filter that prevents non-autoconfirmed editors from removing speedy deletion tags from articles. Not marking articles as reviewed is harmful to the encyclopedia. It prevents people from being able to find new articles (that may be important in the case of current events). I don't understand why New Page Patrollers believe that new pages should be held to a higher standard than all the other articles on Wikipedia. It is entirely possible for spammers and vandals to abuse any of the 5 million articles on Wikipedia (and get their abuse indexed by Google). That is the nature of Wikipedia being an open platform. We deal with this by having a huge volunteer pool of editors who eventually fix most of the problems. It will never be a foolproof system, however. If you want a foolproof system that no one can possibly abuse, you're going to end up with a pool of editors the size of Citizendium's. New Page Patrolling was supposed to just be a way to weed out most of the garbage, not a mechanism to put Wikipedia under the control of a small group of gatekeepers. Let's not forget the importance and benefits of keeping Wikipedia open and dynamic (and even a little chaotic). Kaldari (talk) 17:36, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- No, that isn't the argument, but it appears that you, User:Kaldari, are saying that the ability of Wikipedia to be manipulated by spammers and get their abuse indexed by Google is a feature, rather than a misfeature, and that there should be no effort to deal with that. If so, I disagree with Kaldari and agree with what I think User:TonyBallioni and User:Adam9007 are saying. The problem is that a page is being indexed because a reviewer tried to prevent its indexing and to prevent its inclusion in Wikipedia. That is not a feature; it is at best a misfeature, and I think it is a bug. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:16, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- To clarify what I was saying: I don't see many reviewers actually mark it as unreviewed after tagging for deletion or issues. Robert, you are the only one of the few I've noticed do this, and I look at a fair amount of review logs. That's neither a good or bad thing, just an observation. My point was less arguing for either your view or Kaldari's view, but saying that if the community preference is for deleted pages to not be marked as reviewed, that should be added to the instructions at WP:NPP and a ticket placed in phab to try to fix it. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:23, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- Creating an abuse filter to prevent non-autoconfirmed users from removing speedy deletion templates would be a much better solution as it wouldn't make the backlog bigger and it would also insure that speedy deletion tags aren't removed by vandals and spammers (for all articles, not just new ones). Kaldari (talk) 03:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- Excellent idea and also a filter that prevents someone removing the tag from articles they have created. If it is forbidden to do it it shouldn't be possible to do it either. Domdeparis (talk) 14:35, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- Creating an abuse filter to prevent non-autoconfirmed users from removing speedy deletion templates would be a much better solution as it wouldn't make the backlog bigger and it would also insure that speedy deletion tags aren't removed by vandals and spammers (for all articles, not just new ones). Kaldari (talk) 03:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- To clarify what I was saying: I don't see many reviewers actually mark it as unreviewed after tagging for deletion or issues. Robert, you are the only one of the few I've noticed do this, and I look at a fair amount of review logs. That's neither a good or bad thing, just an observation. My point was less arguing for either your view or Kaldari's view, but saying that if the community preference is for deleted pages to not be marked as reviewed, that should be added to the instructions at WP:NPP and a ticket placed in phab to try to fix it. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:23, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- No, that isn't the argument, but it appears that you, User:Kaldari, are saying that the ability of Wikipedia to be manipulated by spammers and get their abuse indexed by Google is a feature, rather than a misfeature, and that there should be no effort to deal with that. If so, I disagree with Kaldari and agree with what I think User:TonyBallioni and User:Adam9007 are saying. The problem is that a page is being indexed because a reviewer tried to prevent its indexing and to prevent its inclusion in Wikipedia. That is not a feature; it is at best a misfeature, and I think it is a bug. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:16, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
- That sounds like a bad solution to me. You're basically arguing that an article shouldn't be indexed until all issues with it have been resolved. That seems completely antithetical to the DNA of Wikipedia. Do we really want to turn Wikipedia back into Nupedia (which was a total failure)? There is already a simple solution for this (uncommon) situation, which is to restore the speedy deletion tag. If that isn't adequate, we should build an abuse filter that prevents non-autoconfirmed editors from removing speedy deletion tags from articles. Not marking articles as reviewed is harmful to the encyclopedia. It prevents people from being able to find new articles (that may be important in the case of current events). I don't understand why New Page Patrollers believe that new pages should be held to a higher standard than all the other articles on Wikipedia. It is entirely possible for spammers and vandals to abuse any of the 5 million articles on Wikipedia (and get their abuse indexed by Google). That is the nature of Wikipedia being an open platform. We deal with this by having a huge volunteer pool of editors who eventually fix most of the problems. It will never be a foolproof system, however. If you want a foolproof system that no one can possibly abuse, you're going to end up with a pool of editors the size of Citizendium's. New Page Patrolling was supposed to just be a way to weed out most of the garbage, not a mechanism to put Wikipedia under the control of a small group of gatekeepers. Let's not forget the importance and benefits of keeping Wikipedia open and dynamic (and even a little chaotic). Kaldari (talk) 17:36, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- From what Kaldari said above, the mark as reviewed feature in page curation seems an intentional inclusion, that the NOINDEX magic word of the deletion tags is supposed to prevent becoming an issue if the tag is placed correctly. In the case linked to, Adam appears to have unreviewed it because another reviewer marked as reviewed a foreign language page without doing anything. Having looked at a fair amount of review logs, from what I can tell, Robert is one of the few reviewers who uses page curation that also marks pages as unreviewed after tagging for issues or for deletion. If that should be the norm, it should be added to the guide at WP:NPP, and if the community wants it changed to not mark as reviewed, then a ticket should be added to phab. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:52, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- And that's exactly what this entire section is about. You've just changed that article from one that can only become indexed if 90 days pass or someone with page reviewer rights takes action on it, into one that anybody who's not blocked can make indexed. It's not the article author who hypothetically removes your db-spam tag who's at fault here, nor even (to a lesser extent) the admin who inexplicably declines to delete it. The person who made that page indexable was you. The workaround for the auto-review misfeature in page curation is to do what User:Adam9007 did before you and mark it unreviewed. The workaround for the similar but less-severe misfeature in Twinkle is (I'm told) to disable it in preferences. —Cryptic 03:31, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- I'll use the most recent page I've tagged for speedy deletion that is still outstanding as an example [1]. I can't find the documentation now, but if I recall correctly, all deletion templates are supposed to add _NOINDEX_ so the marking as reviewed doesn't matter. The loophole is that if the tag is removed, it can be indexed. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:21, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- I'm trying to wrap my head around the issue and seeking some clarification. Technical question first: As far as indexing is concerned, it's perhaps worth noting that articles older than 90 days are automatically indexed and only pages less than 30 days observe the NOINDEX according to the documentation at Template:NOINDEX. So even if I nominate an article for deletion, that only prevents it from being indexed for 30 days. If I were to unreview a 30 day old article, after I marked it for deletion, the magic word would be ignored. Is that everyone else's understanding of indexing works too or did I miss something?
- Process related question: I don't understand why we have articles that are nominated for deletion but marked unreviewed. What more reviewing is there to be done? When I nominate an article for deletion with the Page Curation tool, I have done all the reviewing that I need to do; I don't need to then also tag it for all the ways in which it can be improved. I have it on my watchlist, and if the deletion is removed I would notice and can take appropriate action. To those you you who advocate unreviewing new articles that have been nominated for deletion, what purpose does keeping such articles in the queue serve? Mduvekot (talk) 14:51, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- User:Mduvekot - I agree that articles that are marked for AFD should be marked as reviewed. That is all the reviewing they need. They will either be deleted or kept, and, if they are kept, the AFD is a better review than just being okayed by one reviewer. Articles that are PROD'd or tagged for CSD should not be indexed. Anyone can remove a PROD, and that should not mean that the article was reviewed, only that it won't be deleted (although an argument can be made that removing the PROD is an okay to keeping it and indexing it). Anyone or anything can remove a CSD tag, and that doesn't mean that the article isn't crud, only that it isn't speediable crud. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:07, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
-
Filter Proposal
A comment was made, with which I agree, that a filter is a good idea to prevent the removal of a CSD or PROD tag by non-auto-confirmed editors, and I think that the suggestion was to prevent the removal of a CSD tag by the author. The removal of a CSD tag by an IP address is usually sockpuppetry, but just preventing its removal by non-auto-confirmed editors is good for that purpose. (For that matter, a filter to prevent the removal of an AFD tag is a good idea. An AFD tag should only be removed by the closing admin, or by the speedy-closing admin in cases of abusive AFD, etc.) Robert McClenon (talk) 15:13, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
Comments on Reviewing and Institutional Cultural Disconnect
It occurs to me that there are two basically unrelated aspects of institutional culture that both contribute to the review backlog, and, more importantly, toward the predictable (and almost planned) decline of quality at the expense of quantity. The first is the WMF, which imposes a culture from above. I have no personal knowledge of the culture of the WMF, but I can see that they like metrics, have a staff, have a budget, and (as User:Guy Macon points out), have an expanding budget and expanding staff. Controlling the expansion of the English Wikipedia must run contrary to what I see as a growth-oriented outlook by the WMF Board. However, if it isn’t controlled, we will soon enough have fifteen million articles, of which eight million are spam and three million are other kinds of crud. That is the first aspect of institutional culture that is contrary to reviewing. A focus on numerical expansion doesn’t place a high value on controlling the expansion. If we, the reviewers, are trying to control the growth, we are fighting against a culture from above.
The second and more subtle factor that works against improving reviewing is a cultural value among editors. That is the extremely high value that is attached to the need to be welcoming to new editors, as illustrated by the rule of Do not bite the newcomers. While that is officially a behavioral guideline, less formal than a policy (although more formal than an essay), I think that it has become a dogma, an almost religious tenet, in the culture of many editors. While as written it is a good guideline, it is my eccentric belief that as implemented it does more harm than good for two reasons. First, it is one of the first Wikipedia rules that many combative new editors, eager to use Wikipedia to right great wrongs, find, and they use it as a cudgel against more experienced editors who try to caution them. (In my perverse opinion, if you have been editing Wikipedia long enough to quote BITE, you are no longer a complete newbie, and you have been editing Wikipedia long enough that you should let a third editor decide whether you are still entitled to kid-glove handling.) One effect of the extremely high value placed on the need to be welcoming to new editors is that editors such as New Page reviewers, who have to be unfriendly to some new articles and some new editors, are sometimes rebuked or degraded.
Just a few comments that as reviewers we seem to be working against both a culture from above and a culture from within. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- On the road to creating: The Urban Encyclopedia.
Atsme📞📧 03:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- On the road to creating: The Urban Encyclopedia.
- First paragraph: I believe every word of that.
- Second paragraph, I largely agree, but some tentative comments: Be gentle with newcomers is important, and it has the right level of current respect, except that an important caveat is needed: The newcomer must have genuine interest in contributing to the project. I don't have a firm idea on how to do this right, but newcomers should be treated more gently for wiki markup mistakes, and less gently for spamming. I still like the old idea, pulled from ACTRIAL rationales, that newcomers with new topic ideas should be encouraged to add mentions of the topic in existing articles, and discouraged from starting a new orphan page (draft or otherwise) until that is done. On that thought, DraftSpace may be doing more harm than good due to mainspace->draftspace wikilinks being forbidden. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:34, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- All I can say to that Robert McClenon is:
- First paragraph: I never heard anything so succinct and more accurate in all my time as an editor and admin.
- Second paragraph: Ditto.
- Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:20, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- can't say I agree with either part.
-
- 1.If the WMF is of the opinion that the growth of the enWP should be encouraged, I'df agree with them. Even for articles, while we do have saturation coverage of current works in a few areas of hobbyist interest, but everywhere else we are woefully incomplete, even for the chronological, geographic and language areas our current editors find easiest to work in. More important, we will always need new editors, to if only to maintain and improve the current articles. Very few of even the most active editors stay for more than five or six years, and WP is a longer term project than that. It would be very good to have a quantitative measure for article quality, but in its absence, what can we measure but article number and editor count? There's no cultural difference between the WMF and the editors in this. And while the bureaucracy may want an expanding budget, although this may affect various aspects of the culture and relationship, I don't see how it affects or even requires the necessity for new editors.
- 2. Most new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia. It is essential to retain them, but at least 80% of those who have their first article rejected quite understandably never return. We may still need to reject their first efforts, but this an be done with a rational targeting explanation in ordinary language, explaining the wikiterminology and encouraging them on how to continue. It can not be done with templates. No matter how well we word them, who in the world actually like an obvious form message sent on the internet? Fpr the ones who come to promote their views, they can be directed for how to explain them, and many of them will learn to once they are told what is expected. For those who come to advertise, they can be directed on how to add articles on their fields of knowledge--some of them will, but at least the others can be sent away understanding politely why this is not the appropriate place. Some do come to make trouble; some come to do undeclared paid entering--even within this groups, still some can be reclaimed. Most can't of course, and here if they are dealt with properly, they can be at least persuaded to leave without making further trouble. A form message doesn't even do that, any more than does the wording on a parking ticket. DGG ( talk ) 06:11, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- DGG ( talk ) 06:11, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- I have a question. User:DGG states that most new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia. I would like to know whether this statement is being made specifically about new editors who contribute an article as their first contribution, and whether this statement is being made as an empirical and factual statement (as opposed to being stated as an axiom or an article of religious faith). The answer does make a difference, because if new editors who contribute an article that is declined did come to contribute to the encyclopedia, then we have both a need for special action to retain them, such as a group of greeters and meeters, and an opportunity for significant improvement in the English Wikipedia, by refocusing the efforts of the large number of new editors to other important tasks such as the improvement of existing articles. Is that a statement of empirical fact, or simply a statement of required belief? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:14, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
- DGG, Kudpung with regards to the quality vs quantity argument, I wholeheartedly support the "move to draft" action after tagging, and reaching out to the article creators to fix the problems. Getting articles deleted is a root canal. A good number of them are being created for promotional purposes by editors who may be employees or have other COIs. A few examples:
- Geneshift - game makers are using WP as a launchpad for their new games, no RS, the results of the AfD were keep (the same is happening with films still in the can, long before distribution);
- Marc A. Zimmerman - someone close to the subject wrote a promo piece about this academic citing nothing but work authored by the BLP himself - I recently added two sources but the entire article needs to be rewritten, and should not have been published;
- Maks SF - multiple relistings in AfD
- Resources are low in all departments. We need less bureaucracy and more active editors. Oh, and we also have the irritation of drive-by taggers who are too busy tagging articles with orphan and category tags instead of fixing the issues. It simply doesn't make sense to allow new articles into article mainspace when they have blatant promotional and/or sourcing issues. They stand a better chance of being fixed in a timely manner by their creators while in draft space, and maybe we could also create a task force to work with those editors and encourage them to grow with us. Atsme📞📧 13:06, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- DGG "Most new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia." Can you point to evidence that that is actually the case, or are you perhaps expressing a hope. In my observation, the vast majority of the 80% of article that are deleted are from editors who are trying to promote something (a company, a person, a favorite record, and amateur sports club). Based on some quick sampling, my guess is that fewer than 10% of non-autoconfirmed users make any edits non directly connected with the original subject that they edited after two months. It should be easy enough to look at a larger sample to see what the actual stats for this are, but I think I'm in the ballpark when I say that a huge majority of new users come here to promote something. Sometimes their promotion overlaps our goal of creating an encyclopedia, but about 80% of the time, it doesn't.- MrX 13:47, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- I didn't say most of the articles, I said most of the editors. I think by now at least half of the new editors know not to start articles immediately, and won't be harmed. A lot of what AC stops are sockpuppets too unsophisticated to get autoconfirmed first--all that adopting AC will do is teach them to edit trivially a few articles. I think it would be very wrong in any case to discourage even 10% of the new editors. We need them. The rest of us are at some point going to either go on to other things or die in harness. DGG ( talk ) 18:07, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- I know you said most new editors. Assuming we talking about new editors who create new articles, your statements simply don't reflect reality as far as I can tell. It's incredibly frustrating hearing these grand generalizations about Wikipedia's mission while the rest of us here are in the trenches trying to save it from being overrun by spammers and vandals. If we're going to make any progress on this, we need to work from a set of facts and not a bunch of unfounded assumptions and platitudes that only distract from this effort.- MrX 20:36, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
- DGG, Kudpung with regards to the quality vs quantity argument, I wholeheartedly support the "move to draft" action after tagging, and reaching out to the article creators to fix the problems. Getting articles deleted is a root canal. A good number of them are being created for promotional purposes by editors who may be employees or have other COIs. A few examples:
- First paragraph: Pretty good, although it seems, as DGG touched on, that the view of the WMF is like Wikipedia editors, but Wikipedia editors only want growth in certain areas (editors), while the WMF wants growth everywhere.
- Second paragraph: I do think that your core idea, that people take WP:BITE to religious levels, is correct. But, as, again, DGG said above, we do need to keep BITE in mind, as we need more editors. So, it seems that the WMF is paying too much attention to some things and not enough to other things, including the core problem, the fact that we need more good editors. So, really, we need to get the WMF to focus a good deal of their energy on getting new, good editors. And we should probably focus on that too. My conclusion, then, is that we need to keep BITE in mind and try and do more explaining and less automated messages. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 20:52, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
- And so the stalemate continues...the promotion & unsourced articles continue while we wait for the Utopian community that can clean everything up with the sweep of a magic broom...the spam continues...the vandalism continues while we remain in denial...the beauracracy grows....the project inherits more garbage because there aren't enough editors to go around and keep things reviewed...veteran editors continue to feel overwhelmed and retire...the integrity of our articles continue to diminish because we can't keep up...the drama continues on the notice boards because the PAGs are wishy-washy...and in the end, where does that leave us? Do a review of admin TPs...take a look at what ends up at COI, AfD, ANI...study the articles at NPR...nuff said. Atsme📞📧 00:30, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Just wanted to add - when savvy admins and editors go the extra mile and take the necessary actions regarding new articles that are clearly not ready for mainspace, such as move them into draft space...editor morale soars because the feelings their fighting a losing battle disappears!!! The tags are in place on the article which helps the article creator become aware of what's required, and they can collaborate with others, ask questions, and eventually create an article that's worthy of the encyclopedia. We need more actions like this one if we hope to maintain the quality and integrity of WP: Draft:Marc_A._Zimmerman Atsme📞📧 02:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Atsme:Just wanted to add that I ain't an admin!Thanks for the elevation though!
!Winged Blades Godric 04:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- My apologies, Winged Blades of Godric, I clarified my statement, and THANK YOU!! We need more "movers & shakers" like you. Atsme📞📧 13:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Atsme: Just wanted to clarify: BITE does not mean, at least to me, not doing shit and just slapping tags on articles. It means cleaning up articles (that aren't obvious attempts at promotion) and telling the creator what they should do if they want to add more info to the article. It means removing unsourced stuff from BLPs with prejudice, but then telling the people who added it that all they need to do is add some sources. I do know, although, that my statement about convincing the WMF was incredibly idealistic. So sorry about that. But, continue moving the borderline articles to draftspace and deleting unsourced statements in BLPs. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 14:16, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- RileyBugz
On the same page and I wear "kid gloves" when communicating with new editors. I was one myself, seemlngly not that long ago. Atsme📞📧 20:17, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- RileyBugz
- @Atsme:Just wanted to add that I ain't an admin!Thanks for the elevation though!
- Just wanted to add - when savvy admins and editors go the extra mile and take the necessary actions regarding new articles that are clearly not ready for mainspace, such as move them into draft space...editor morale soars because the feelings their fighting a losing battle disappears!!! The tags are in place on the article which helps the article creator become aware of what's required, and they can collaborate with others, ask questions, and eventually create an article that's worthy of the encyclopedia. We need more actions like this one if we hope to maintain the quality and integrity of WP: Draft:Marc_A._Zimmerman Atsme📞📧 02:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- And so the stalemate continues...the promotion & unsourced articles continue while we wait for the Utopian community that can clean everything up with the sweep of a magic broom...the spam continues...the vandalism continues while we remain in denial...the beauracracy grows....the project inherits more garbage because there aren't enough editors to go around and keep things reviewed...veteran editors continue to feel overwhelmed and retire...the integrity of our articles continue to diminish because we can't keep up...the drama continues on the notice boards because the PAGs are wishy-washy...and in the end, where does that leave us? Do a review of admin TPs...take a look at what ends up at COI, AfD, ANI...study the articles at NPR...nuff said. Atsme📞📧 00:30, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- "Most new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia.". Actually, very few new users who create an articke as their first attempt to edit Wikipedia come to contribute to the encyclopedia. Anyone who patrols from the 'Were created by new editors' filter, clearly identifies without any difficulty that at least 80% of all the new article are created without the slightest consideration at all for what could even be broadly construed as 'Wikipedic'. These are 'pages' crated by spammers, autobiographers, vandals and trolls, COPYVIOS, hoaxes, gibberish,and foreign laguage pages (most of which also turn out to be completely worthless). The creators only have one goal: to get themselves or their org on Wikipedia or to leave vandalism on it. Those 'users' will never become useful members of the editing community, as clearly evidenced by the very low number of contested CSD and disputed PROD. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:12, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- I would like to provide my own follow-up comments on two topics that have been mentioned in this discussion, expansion of the English Wikipedia, and new editors in the English Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Expansion of Wikipedia
I think that my concerns about unlimited expansion of the English Wikipedia may have been misunderstood. I said that if a focus on growth continues, we will eventually have fifteen million articles, of which eight million are spam and three million are other kinds of crud. (That does mean four million articles that should be kept. Since we currently have somewhat more than five million articles, I did mean that approximately one million of the existing articles are crud that should be deleted. Four million is still a lot of articles, and the English Wikipedia is an impressive electronic work.) I think that some editors may have thought that I meant that expansion of the English Wikipedia is not needed or is undesirable. I did not mean that. Expansion of the English Wikipedia should be encouraged, in particular in areas where coverage is known to be incomplete. Areas where coverage is known to be incomplete include those sciences where the scope of knowledge is both broad and expanding, including biology, astronomy, and chemistry. Every species that has been formally described is worthy of its own article, even if only a stub. Every star that is in a star catalog and every galaxy that is in a catalog is worthy of its own article, even if only a stub. Every distinct chemical substance is worthy of its own article, even if only a stub. Also, there are areas or sub-areas in which it has been determined that our coverage is incomplete or needs to be improved (women writers, medieval art). However, continued expansion of the English Wikipedia as such should no longer be a primary objective, and an increase in the number of articles should not in itself be reported as a measure of continued well-being. (An increase in the number of spam articles, far from being a sign of health, is, to modify Guy Macon’s metaphor, a cancer.)
I would further submit that any need for continued expansion of the English Wikipedia in areas where knowledge is expanding or where its own coverage is inadequate should be viewed entirely separately from any need for new editors. We should not think that we need new editors because we need to continue the expansion of the English Wikipedia. Expansion of the English Wikipedia in areas where it needs expansion, such as invertebrate species, is being done by editors who specialize in the areas of our need. In general, we should not look to new editors to improve our coverage of areas where our coverage is lacking. (There may be special cases where a WikiProject determines that we need to try to recruit new editors with specialized interests. Such a policy, if in order, is unrelated to the handling of over-the-transom editors.) Robert McClenon (talk) 23:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- If it hadn't become clear by WP:ACTRIAL that the Wikimedia Foundation is oly interested in boasting about raw page creation growth irrespective of quality, content, or deletions, it should now be blatantly obvious that this is the leitmotif of the essay by DannyH (WMF) and the phraseology of his rejection of the many user comments both there, here, and at WT:NPPAFC, and his admitted lack of comprehension of what ACTRIAL was all about. Before the Foundation embarks on another course of its own reputation self-destruction, they need to read, and properly read what the community is writing rather than just leave a new comment at the bottom of every new thread. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:14, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
New Editors
One respected functionary says that most new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia. Others disagree. We agree that when their contributions are deleted by NPP (or declined by AFC), most of them leave and do not return. The statement that new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia can be interpreted in either of two ways, as an empirical statement, based on some assessment of their contributions, or as an axiom, a principle that must be taken to be true and is not subject to proof. I am aware that it is an axiom that new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia, and, as a result, the fact that they are not welcomed and are lost is a loss to the encyclopedia and a problem. But MrX asks: Can you point to evidence that that is actually the case, or are you perhaps expressing a hope.? Good question, and the answer does matter. If we do have a large number of new editors who come in order to improve the encyclopedia, and these new editors are not welcomed appropriately, then we have not only a shortage of reviewers, but a twin shortage both of reviewers, and of a corps of greeters and meeters. (We cannot expect the same volunteer editors both to protect Wikipedia from crud and to extend a special profuse welcome to new editors.)
My experience, first in AFC, and more recently in AFC and NPP, is that new editors of new articles fall into three overlapping classes: those who want to contribute to the encyclopedia; those who are clueless; and those who have self-serving agendas. If it is true that the majority of new editors fall into the first class, then it is true that we have a serious new editor problem in that we treat new editors badly, as if they are either clueless or self-serving or both. I would like to see an analysis of new editors. I would be more interested in an empirical assessment than in a quasi-religious statement of belief. If we are indeed losing new generations of editors because we do not welcome them properly, then we need an additional volunteer corps of greeters and meeters, not to nag our current volunteer patrol editors to do double duty.
Also, regardless of the merits or the numbers of the new editors whom we are losing, we should not count on new editors to facilitate a rounding out of Wikipedia or the addition of knowledge in areas that we know need improvement. We should not be assuming that new editors will fill in areas of knowledge and interest, such as invertebrates, medieval art, women writers. Regardless of the rate at which we should be expanding the English Wikipedia, any filling-in of incomplete areas must be done by conscious effort or active recruitment, not by idle hope that new editors will satisfy our needs.
Also, does “most new editors” mean most new editors whose first edits are to create a new article, or just most new editors? Many new editors introduce themselves to Wikipedia in some way other than by creating an article, such as by discussing at a talk page, or by copy-editing, or even by playing in a sandbox. If most new editors who submit an article really come to contribute to the encyclopedia, then we really do have an available resource that is being lost and is not being engaged. But do most editors whose first edits are a new article really come to contribute to the encyclopedia? The answer does matter. I am aware that it is often stated as an axiom or belief, but is it empirically true with regard to editors whose first edits are a new article? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
- Again an excellent assessment by Robert McClenon which probbly the WMF will simply scoff at again. I will just emphasise however, that in the context of these recent discussions, the term 'new users' is used to mean new uses who create a new page in mainspace as their first effort editing the Wikipedia - that needs to be clear.
- "new editors of new articles fall into three overlapping classes: those who want to contribute to the encyclopedia; those who are clueless; and those who have self-serving agendas." Precisely, and that and its associated comments pre-empt the comment I was already drafting to post on one of the other talk pages in this round of discussions, in which I was going to ask for statistics that show:
- Number of articles created by new users,
- edit count of those users, (which of course will be <10).
- Number kept,
- Number deleted by 'each CSD criterion',
- number of actually deleted CSDs that were refunded within, say 7 days
- umber of PRODS,
- number of successful dePRODs, (i.e. that were not sent to AfD.
- number of new articles by new users sent to Afd by patrollers
- number of new articles by new users sent to Afd by patrollers and were kept
- number of new articles by new users sent to Afd by patrollers and were deleted and/or redirected.
The problem will be in getting those stats, because the WMF has now clearly demonstrated by asking the help of a long retired volunteer, that they don't actually know how to consult their own data bases.
- Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
- We agree that when their contributions are deleted by NPP (or declined by AFC), most of them leave and do not return. : I would just add that they have usually gone before they even knew that their articles have been tagged, PRODed, or CSDd. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:04, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- Yes. Yuck. That explains why the vast majority of the PRODs that I apply on NPP expire in seven days, and the tagged articles expire with the PROD tags. Preventing the one-time drive-by "authors" from throwing articles over the fence would make things simpler. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:37, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- From what I have observed the majority of new users that create articles and then disappear create articles that are either for companies or people very often with serious notability problems. Would it not be better to limit the creation of articles to registered users that have a certain number of edits in the main article space? Domdeparis (talk) 08:38, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- User:Domdeparis - Maybe. That would require a new privilege, something more than autoconfirmed, but not quite the same as extended confirmed, that editors could achieve, for instance, by copy-editing. Is that sort of what you are saying? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:56, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- From what I have observed the majority of new users that create articles and then disappear create articles that are either for companies or people very often with serious notability problems. Would it not be better to limit the creation of articles to registered users that have a certain number of edits in the main article space? Domdeparis (talk) 08:38, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes. Yuck. That explains why the vast majority of the PRODs that I apply on NPP expire in seven days, and the tagged articles expire with the PROD tags. Preventing the one-time drive-by "authors" from throwing articles over the fence would make things simpler. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:37, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- Kudpung, DGG, Robert McClenon - I liken the current process of "anybody can edit", as it often applies to article creation, to laboring as an unpaid Busboy. I'm of the mind that unless an editor has autopatrolled rights, all new articles should begin and stay in draft space until they've been reviewed and passed. Another option would be for a BOT to automatically headline new creations in mainspace with the label DRAFT ARTICLE, unless the editor has autopatrolled rights, and include instructions in edit view so the creator will know how to get the label removed. I believe either the former or latter, or both, will encourage article creators to work at getting the label removed, and that's when the training intervention begins to nurture and keep new editors. Either way, such a label advises our readers so they'll know what articles are most trustworthy. Atsme📞📧 14:51, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Atsme, an intesting suggestion, and it would certainly help the genuine good faith artice creators, but it wouldn't stop the creation of blatant spam and other junk. For that, ACTRIAL is still the only realistic solution. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:22, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Autopatrolled rights have only been given to 4k editors and the guidelines are that an editor has to have 25 valid articles already. As it is the draft review is completely snowed under and articles have been in there for months now. I submitted an article myself and after nearly forty days waiting I decided to ask advice of some other editors modified the article and then published it in the main article space. This suggestion would create an impossible backlog and most definitely scare off new editors and even discourage experienced editors from creating articles. This would in my opinion just displace the problem from one group of editors, new page reviewers, to the AFC reviewers. And probably what will happen is that the number of page creations will radically drop because those that aren't autopatrolled will lose patience and abandon the creation of articles. This will mean that only 4000 people will be creating article on WP and we would lose the encyclopedic nature. Domdeparis (talk) 16:56, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- Would it not be better to limit the creation of articles to registered users that have a certain number of edits in the main article space? Domdeparis, if you take a moment to catch up on the talk above on this page and its recent archives, and at WP:NPPAFC, WP:KNPP, Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Analysis and proposal. You'll then see that WP:ACTRIAL corresponds with your suggestions and addresses your concerns for AfC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:08, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- Kudpung, as you probably know by now, I wholeheartedly agree with WP:ACTRIAL and will support it but in the interim, perhaps the DRAFT ARTICLE label (even on stubs) would be easier to get implemented until that happens, or maybe not
. What's happening now reminds me a bit of WP:ProjectAccuracy (now deleted) wherein I attempted to get a quality ratings system implemented that would "certify & semi-protect" articles that passed a high-quality editorial board review (using academia and experts) which would make such labeled articles more appealing to all levels of education as acceptable resources for term & research papers. I submitted it to WMF and....well....
. Gotta add that trying to change the status quo is a bitch and requires the help of
. Atsme📞📧 18:48, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- Atsme, the problems facing us have been steadily getting worse over the last 10 years since the 'watershed' year of 2007 when development and contributions to Wikipedia reached their apogee. I have been in the vanguard of reform to NPP and its solutions for the last 6 years and I personally think that the time now is to implement an urgent solution, such as giving ACTRIAL a chance (as its name implies) rather than prolonging the agony by considering alternatives. Such suggestions could certainly be examined if the trial were to prove that the WMF is right and the Community is wrong, but history has shown that almost without exception, the Community is always right and the WMF is always wrong. In fact the WMF has a clear history of making costly blunders and the recent staff reshuffle isn't going to change things - it;s still the same people. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:13, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Atsme: Well... I think that it would certainly be good to have some sort of system where the creation of articles by non-autoconfirmed users is somehow tagged. It would be nice to have a banner (for about 7 days or so) on articles created by non-autoconfirmed users, as that would make it clear that the article is not to be "trusted". I am coming around now to the temporary ACTRIAL position, though (and as a trial, as Kudpung has made clear), but I certainly hope that we can find another solution. But, I do think that prior to ACTRIAL it should be known what percentage of non-autoconfirmed users whose articles are not delete become autoconfirmed, and how they get those 10 edits (if there are stats on this, please direct me to them). RileyBugz会話投稿記録 19:34, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- Kudpung, as you probably know by now, I wholeheartedly agree with WP:ACTRIAL and will support it but in the interim, perhaps the DRAFT ARTICLE label (even on stubs) would be easier to get implemented until that happens, or maybe not
- Would it not be better to limit the creation of articles to registered users that have a certain number of edits in the main article space? Domdeparis, if you take a moment to catch up on the talk above on this page and its recent archives, and at WP:NPPAFC, WP:KNPP, Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Analysis and proposal. You'll then see that WP:ACTRIAL corresponds with your suggestions and addresses your concerns for AfC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:08, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- Autopatrolled rights have only been given to 4k editors and the guidelines are that an editor has to have 25 valid articles already. As it is the draft review is completely snowed under and articles have been in there for months now. I submitted an article myself and after nearly forty days waiting I decided to ask advice of some other editors modified the article and then published it in the main article space. This suggestion would create an impossible backlog and most definitely scare off new editors and even discourage experienced editors from creating articles. This would in my opinion just displace the problem from one group of editors, new page reviewers, to the AFC reviewers. And probably what will happen is that the number of page creations will radically drop because those that aren't autopatrolled will lose patience and abandon the creation of articles. This will mean that only 4000 people will be creating article on WP and we would lose the encyclopedic nature. Domdeparis (talk) 16:56, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
RileyBugz, according to this, we have ~1.15 million users who have made 10 or more edits ever. Out of a total of ~31.2 million users who have ever registered that means ~3.5% reach autoconfirmed status. Not an answer to your exact question, but maybe it provides some insight. According to the same numbers, we have been gaining between 5-7k new autoconfirmed users a month over the past year. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- Yuck. That's a sad but interesting metric. Most users who create accounts never make the minimal 10 edits. ?!?! Does the WMF have anything to say about that? I assume that they will argue against ACTRIAL, because they will take some interpretation that is consistent with their focus on quantity and is contrary to the community's ideas about quality. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:44, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'm going to be talking on Monday with some people at the WMF who want to help us analyze the situation, and get the stats that will help everyone to understand the full picture, and make decisions. I agree that the WMF hasn't been as helpful as we should have been for a long, long time, and that's something that my team is working on changing. Atsme, if it helps -- you've gotten the attention of my team, at least.
- I think it's important that we gather as much info as we can about new users and new pages. Some of the questions that have been asked here and on the other recent discussions are very complex, with multiple if/then branches, like the one that RileyBugz is asking a few comments up.
- I'm thinking about the next step on our side. Right now, it seems like the most helpful thing that we can do is come up with a list of stats questions that we think will help provide a full picture. My attempt this week to ask if there's already a set of success metrics for ACTRIAL didn't get a helpful response, so I'm thinking that my team should put a list together, and then run it past the folks here to see what we've missed. I'll be compiling the suggestions posted here and in the other recent discussions, but if somebody feels like pointing out the ones you think are most important, that would be great. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 04:16, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- DannyH (WMF), to be clear, while Kudpung might not have a particularly sunny view on your efforts here, he did provide you with a link to the questions that were originally planned on being evaluated before ACTRIAL was vetoed in 2011. I also answered your questions about how this actually fits in better with the WMF's vision for healthy communities than the deletion templates that greet 80% of articles created by new users. While I get why you might be frustrated with the reaction to your efforts here, and what has been the categorization of your proposal as sweeping the problem under the rug, people did address the questions and points you raised. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:33, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- TonyBallioni: Sorry, I should have responded more specifically about that list of evaluation questions. The question that I'm asking about a way to evaluate success for ACTRIAL is different from that list; I'll explain why.
- This isn't meant to be a slight on the work that was done, just an observation: The list of "Questions we could ask" on the ACTRIAL page is making predictions for what we might expect to see -- number of users registering might go down, proportion of accounts making 100 edits in the first month might go up. It's a really good list of indicators that we could look at. But it doesn't actually say "this is what we'd call a success: more good pages (defined as XXX), fewer spam pages (defined as YYY)".
- If we're going to do ACTRIAL as an experiment -- six months on, one month off to evaluate -- then we need some idea of what "success" would look like. Right now, it sounds like the most important indicator is the number of pages in the NPP backlog. Obviously, we know that ACTRIAL would make the number of new pages go down, and the number of pages in the backlog would also go down. If that's the only meaningful measure of success, then we already know that ACTRIAL worked, so it's not actually an experiment, it's just a change in the way that Wikipedia works. So my question is: are there other measures of success or failure for ACTRIAL? That list on the ACTRIAL page doesn't actually answer my question. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 05:03, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- The list of questions provides a basis for metrics that can be used and assessed holistically rather than an exact rubric for success or failure where X% decrease coupled in new pages created with Y% decrease in CSD and only Z% decrease in users reaching autoconfirmed. Success can be data driven and evaluated holistically, especially when the things we are evauluating have no direct monetary value or impact on an organization's bottom line. What we are all ultimately looking for is a way to improve the handling of new pages that aids the encyclopedia. If we look a the trial asking those questions and determine it harmed the encyclopedia as a whole, then the switch should be unflipped. If we look at those questions and decide that on the whole it helped the encyclopedia, then it should be made permenant. Other questions can be added, but ultimately the only question that matters is if considered as a whole, it had a positive impact. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:20, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- TonyBallioni: Yeah, that's a good point. Thanks for expressing it like that; that totally makes sense. Okay, when I talk to folks on Monday, we'll look at that list and see what we can establish baseline stats for. I'll let folks on these pages know what we come up with. Thanks very much. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 05:23, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- TonyBallioni, it will all come out in the wash when we've let ACTRIAL run for its 6 months. One of the problems is possibly partly of my own doing: We now have these discussions spread over four pages including now the talk page of my highly critical essay at WP:KNPP. One thing however that gives me great satisfaction, without feeling smug, is that I have caused more to be discussed on this topic in the last couple of months than was written on it over the last 5 years. That's progress. It's a shame however that DannyH (WMF) will still not read up on the history of ACTRIAL, and follow the current discussions in detail and has decided that he will now only continue a dialog with people who represent his own views. That's not progress. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:54, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- The list of questions provides a basis for metrics that can be used and assessed holistically rather than an exact rubric for success or failure where X% decrease coupled in new pages created with Y% decrease in CSD and only Z% decrease in users reaching autoconfirmed. Success can be data driven and evaluated holistically, especially when the things we are evauluating have no direct monetary value or impact on an organization's bottom line. What we are all ultimately looking for is a way to improve the handling of new pages that aids the encyclopedia. If we look a the trial asking those questions and determine it harmed the encyclopedia as a whole, then the switch should be unflipped. If we look at those questions and decide that on the whole it helped the encyclopedia, then it should be made permenant. Other questions can be added, but ultimately the only question that matters is if considered as a whole, it had a positive impact. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:20, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- DannyH (WMF), to be clear, while Kudpung might not have a particularly sunny view on your efforts here, he did provide you with a link to the questions that were originally planned on being evaluated before ACTRIAL was vetoed in 2011. I also answered your questions about how this actually fits in better with the WMF's vision for healthy communities than the deletion templates that greet 80% of articles created by new users. While I get why you might be frustrated with the reaction to your efforts here, and what has been the categorization of your proposal as sweeping the problem under the rug, people did address the questions and points you raised. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:33, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yuck. That's a sad but interesting metric. Most users who create accounts never make the minimal 10 edits. ?!?! Does the WMF have anything to say about that? I assume that they will argue against ACTRIAL, because they will take some interpretation that is consistent with their focus on quantity and is contrary to the community's ideas about quality. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:44, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I can take some of the blame there too since I restarted the conversation at NPPAFC, which I thought would be a good place to centralize (and still do, to be honest, but you can't really control where people talk.) I do think its a good thing that the conversation at the WMF essay has died down: its a lot more difficult to talk about future plans when you are reacting to something that was generally not well received, and I think shifting the location of the conversation has also shifted it to be broader. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:03, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- DannyH (WMF)...if you get a chance, please take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rihanna. I'm of the mind that it's not representative of what Jimbo intended when he declared WP aims to offer "the sum of all human knowledge". A recent NPR of a Rihanna marketing spin-off Westbury Road Ent. demonstrates to what extent promoters/publicists/fans will go to get an article in WP. It also demonstrates why ACTRIAL is greatly needed. I doubt the Westbury Road Ent. is an isolated incident. The article was rejected 3 or 4 times including my moving it to draft space which was quickly reverted by the article creator who appears to have 2 or 3 usernames. Consider the promotional/marketing effort surrounding Rihanna, and the time sink it was for at least 4 or 5 editors to get it removed. No wonder there's such a NPP backlog and we're losing good editors due to infinite discouragement. Perhaps we should exert as much effort into keeping our competent editors as we do recruiting new ones. As we've learned, most publicists/promoters/fans/COI editors don't stop with just the one WP article - they create spin-offs as evidenced by the Rihanna project - it's like WP:WikiProject Med for a single BLP. WP is filled with song promotions/marketing, game promotions/marketing, promotions for new actors/actresses/singers/films and so on. Do we really need a standalone article about every hit song ever recorded by a notable singer? How about films that were produced but not yet distributed, or every sports participant who failed to win an Olympic medal, or hockey players who competed in at least one international hockey game, and so on? It seems to me that there really needs to be some serious tightening of WP:GNG to remove the ambiguities and questionable requirements. Our encyclopedia is being inundated by promotional marketing, fan clubs and political advocacies, not to mention all the poorly written articles that are submitted each week. I truly believe ACTRIAL will bring some much needed weed eaters and motorized pruning tools to the project which will unequivocally help protect the integrity of WP by improving the quality of the articles that are published. It will certainly help boost editor morale to know we're not fighting a losing battle. Atsme📞📧 16:02, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Atsme: I don't think that upping GNG would solve anything. If it was taken to AfD because of promotion, then there are two outcomes. One, the article would get deleted because of its promotional nature, or two, it would be cleaned up and, if it passed GNG, kept. If we made GNG stronger, on the other hand, then we would just get more articles deleted that should really not be. And, I don't know how upping GNG would help article creators fight systematic bais. It is hard for me to find sources for the Japanese politicians that I'm creating articles for, and having GNG be made tighter would just make them easy targets for deletion (just to note, I am still able to find sources, so they do satisfy GNG currently, but my point is legitimate articles like those could be at risk for deletion by tightening GNG). The reason, it seems, that there are still some promotional articles getting through is because of a lack of participation at AfD. This is getting better now, it seems, but GNG would not be the solution. It wouldn't help improve participation at AfD, or at least very much. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 16:18, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- Atsme, I completely agree about the Westbury Road Ent. article, and the need to keep out obvious marketing spam. I disagree with you about WikiProject Rihanna, which looks like good-faith people who are interested in a subject going to a lot of trouble to make sure that the articles in their subject area are as high-quality as they can be. In my view, that's just like any other subject, big or small. I guess the difference for you is that you don't think Rihanna is an interesting or worthy subject, maybe because she's a pop singer, and you're not interested in pop music? (I could be wrong about that, sorry if I'm misstating your view.) But that WikiProject has produced eight Featured articles, and 50+ Good articles. I don't see how that could be seen as having a negative impact on the encyclopedia's quality.
- As a similar example, I was recently researching various aspects of the Beatles' career for a writing project about the late 1960s, and Wikipedia's high-quality, detailed coverage of the Beatles was unbelievably helpful. I read the articles about every album, most of the songs, all of the spin-off projects, as well as the articles about the Beatles' breakup and their visit to India. The history of the Beatles is very important for people who are trying to understand pop music, rock music, 60s counterculture, the sociological development of the concept of "teenagers", media in the 60s, and so on -- legitimate areas of academic interest. I don't know if Rihanna will someday be seen as having the same kind of cultural impact -- it's hard to top the Beatles -- but that's the kind of scholarship that a comprehensive, well-written history of Rihanna's career could support.
- So conflating the obviously promotional Westbury Road Ent article with what appears to me to be the serious, good-faith work of WikiProject Rihanna -- that's the thing that concerns me about the direction of the NPP over the last couple years. Having a limited group of people deciding which good-faith topic areas are notable risks bias creeping in, and closing off legitimate areas of academic interest. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF): Please AGF. I don't, but you should. Our patrollers aren't persecuting editors because of an WP:IDONTLIKEIT mentality. You should believe that if we think commercial interests and partisans are the problem, it's because we see it all too often and it's true. Treating us like jingoists is only going to further alienate us. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:38, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Chris troutman:: Okay, fair enough. I don't know the situation around the Rihanna pages, and you do. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- @DannyH (WMF): Please AGF. I don't, but you should. Our patrollers aren't persecuting editors because of an WP:IDONTLIKEIT mentality. You should believe that if we think commercial interests and partisans are the problem, it's because we see it all too often and it's true. Treating us like jingoists is only going to further alienate us. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:38, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Atsme: I don't think that upping GNG would solve anything. If it was taken to AfD because of promotion, then there are two outcomes. One, the article would get deleted because of its promotional nature, or two, it would be cleaned up and, if it passed GNG, kept. If we made GNG stronger, on the other hand, then we would just get more articles deleted that should really not be. And, I don't know how upping GNG would help article creators fight systematic bais. It is hard for me to find sources for the Japanese politicians that I'm creating articles for, and having GNG be made tighter would just make them easy targets for deletion (just to note, I am still able to find sources, so they do satisfy GNG currently, but my point is legitimate articles like those could be at risk for deletion by tightening GNG). The reason, it seems, that there are still some promotional articles getting through is because of a lack of participation at AfD. This is getting better now, it seems, but GNG would not be the solution. It wouldn't help improve participation at AfD, or at least very much. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 16:18, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- @RileyBugz and Atsme:, re: both of your comments on GNG: its important to remember that GNG alone does not satisfy our notability guideline, because it is only half of the two-pronged guideline. It must satisfy GNG and not fail WP:NOT. A pass of GNG is not a pass of WP:N if it fails NOT. DGG has explained his views on this in the past, which I will try to paraphrase accurately by saying: GNG and WP:N are ways for us to approximate if something fails WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Ultimately NOT is the policy that guides us as to whether something should be excluded from the encyclopedia. A promotional fluff piece can and should be excluded under it, especially if it is just a borderline pass of GNG. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:00, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- Yes, that's an accurate statement of my view. And the problem of whether something fails NOT INDISCRIMINATE and NOT ADVOCACY will always be a matter for judgment, with many equally valid position. For about half of the article at AFd, either a keep or delete could be rationally justified. (Even, as I hope but is not likely, we agreed on firm cutoffs in the various fields for INDISCRIMINATE, I do not think that there ever will be a sharp cutoff for what we want to consider impermissible advocacy.) And as an additional factor, we all know that reasonably well written articles which are proportionate to the apparent importance and where the sources are not absurdly unreliable, will often get passed at AfD, in contrast to a barely literate one filled with exuberant detail, and with mostly on spam references.Article quality does matter. DGG ( talk ) 20:33, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) RileyBugz, I understand exactly what you're saying as I've participated in AfDs regarding academics in non-English speaking/relatively undeveloped countries. It's not so much about media coverage and fame as it is the overall impact they've made in their respective fields - DGG really helped bring that to light for me. There are always going to be some exceptions to WP:GNG as I've long since learned, particularly when it involves women academics in countries where women have been oppressed - but those exceptions simply need to be discussed as they materialize because there simply isn't any way we can include all the caveats and exceptions to the rule. I think the stats will confirm that the largest number of problems arise from business entities, professionals, and advocacies as I alluded to above. Much of it is pure ole marketing 101 made to appear encyclopedic...but is it, really? Quite a few have gotten by us for a number of different reasons, and I would think a connection to "fame & fortune" is high on the list as demonstrated by the recent Westbury Road ordeal. [FBDB] WP is literally being forked senseless and spun like a top,terminology I borrowed from dating blahgs, and I wouldn't be surprised if the implementation isn't being handled by payrolled publicists and marketers, not to discount overzealous fans and politicial advocates. Without belaboring the pros and cons of GNG, I say kudos to editors like Kudpung who have worked hard to draw attention to these issues, and whose experience speaks volumes to what the project and its editors are facing today. The fruits of their labor is in front of us, ripe for the picking. I can't begin to tell you how relieved and inspired I was when I read some of the comments by DannyH (WMF). There really is light at the end of the tunnel.
Atsme📞📧 20:25, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) RileyBugz, I understand exactly what you're saying as I've participated in AfDs regarding academics in non-English speaking/relatively undeveloped countries. It's not so much about media coverage and fame as it is the overall impact they've made in their respective fields - DGG really helped bring that to light for me. There are always going to be some exceptions to WP:GNG as I've long since learned, particularly when it involves women academics in countries where women have been oppressed - but those exceptions simply need to be discussed as they materialize because there simply isn't any way we can include all the caveats and exceptions to the rule. I think the stats will confirm that the largest number of problems arise from business entities, professionals, and advocacies as I alluded to above. Much of it is pure ole marketing 101 made to appear encyclopedic...but is it, really? Quite a few have gotten by us for a number of different reasons, and I would think a connection to "fame & fortune" is high on the list as demonstrated by the recent Westbury Road ordeal. [FBDB] WP is literally being forked senseless and spun like a top,terminology I borrowed from dating blahgs, and I wouldn't be surprised if the implementation isn't being handled by payrolled publicists and marketers, not to discount overzealous fans and politicial advocates. Without belaboring the pros and cons of GNG, I say kudos to editors like Kudpung who have worked hard to draw attention to these issues, and whose experience speaks volumes to what the project and its editors are facing today. The fruits of their labor is in front of us, ripe for the picking. I can't begin to tell you how relieved and inspired I was when I read some of the comments by DannyH (WMF). There really is light at the end of the tunnel.
- Yes, that's an accurate statement of my view. And the problem of whether something fails NOT INDISCRIMINATE and NOT ADVOCACY will always be a matter for judgment, with many equally valid position. For about half of the article at AFd, either a keep or delete could be rationally justified. (Even, as I hope but is not likely, we agreed on firm cutoffs in the various fields for INDISCRIMINATE, I do not think that there ever will be a sharp cutoff for what we want to consider impermissible advocacy.) And as an additional factor, we all know that reasonably well written articles which are proportionate to the apparent importance and where the sources are not absurdly unreliable, will often get passed at AfD, in contrast to a barely literate one filled with exuberant detail, and with mostly on spam references.Article quality does matter. DGG ( talk ) 20:33, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
List of things we need to know
This is, sorted by most-important to least important, the things we need to know to judge what effect ACTRIAL could have.
- How many new editors get to autoconfirmed in part by creating non-deleted articles, and, on average, how many non-deleted articles do these users (the ones who got to autoconfirmed in part by creating non-deleted articles) create while non-autoconfirmed?
- How many edits do new editors have, on average, after getting their article declined at AfC (only include those that have edited within the past 2 days before getting their articles declined) compared to how many edits they, on average, have after getting their articles deleted. For this latter one, please include the stats for each CSD criterion, because we don't really want the stats of those creating attack pages to be the same as those who are just unaware and creating non-notable articles.
- How many new editors stay until at least 2 days before having their AfC submission declined or ok'd (whatever it is at AfC). This is important to include with the statistic above, as otherwise we will not know whether or not the people who get declined at AfC and stay are just the people who really want to help Wikipedia, or our average new editor.
- What percentage of the backlog do articles created by non-autoconfirmed editors make up and what percentage of article creations do non-autoconfirmed article creations make up. This is near the end because there are stats on this, but we just need it to be more updated.
- How many new articles are created by non-autoconfirmed editors that get tagged for speedy deletion and deleted and how many go through PROD and AfD? (Going through PROD and AfD is much more work)
These are the things that we need to know, in my opinion. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 15:36, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- RileyBugz, this is really helpful for us. Thank you for putting this list together; I'll include these when I talk with folks this week about how to get more stats. I'll let you know what we figure out. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- DannyH (WMF), I would just like to strongly emphasise again once and for all, that ACTRIAL is a trial. There are no notions of 'success' or 'failure' attached to it. It's an experiment to prove or disprove the theories posited by a) the volunteers (more specifically the patrollers who speak from empirical experience), and b) the WMF who don't understand these practical things while clinging onto what might well be an outdated ideology. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:03, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
It's not primarily a problem of insufficient data
Any method at all with dealing with new users and their articles will be trying to minimize both the proportion of unsatisfactory articles that get accepted, and the proportion of satisfactory ones that get rejected. These can not be both minimized at the same time--any system that tries to prevent any possible bad article, will always have the error or rejecting more good ones, and vice-versa. We need to find an optimal point , and then figure out what measures we can take that will get there. But there is no really objective criterion for what is an optimal point Most of us have our preferences; I know my preferred point has changed: I was 8 years ago trying to minimize any possible rejection of a fixable article much more so than I am today. The optimum also varies among different types of articles, and among different types of bad, and no two of us will see this just the same.
I know to some extent what my own preferences are, and I can argue for them, but I do not realistically expect anyone else here to have the same goals as mine. (for example, It does not in the least bother me keeping articles on every possible geographic feature, but I am very concerned that we not lower the standard for eminence in any profession--both professions I care about like science, and those I do not care about, like sports. I am much less interested in the standards for minor differences in notability in either direction, as compared with keeping out lapses towards promotionalism. These are just samples--there's a whole list). Every one of us wi;l have analogous differences, even if not explicit. If we all had the same goal, we could rationally collect data and design the system towards attaining that goal. But we don't, and we cannot optimize towards different goals at the same time. I can --and I do-- give extensive argument why my preferred goal is the best for WP, but I would be surprised if anyone else sees it the same way. In arguing for or against a particular method, I naturally judge according to how far it will match my preferences in different aspects and in different fields. And regardless of goal, there is no magic trick that will permit us to simultaneously optimize accepting the good and rejecting the bad.
There are in fact other criteria than the results. We also want a system we can deal with using the available people. We want a system which will encourage other to join. We most of us want a system that involves a minimum of complicated procedures. We most of us want a system that avoids exaggerating the tendency to dispute minor issues. I at least want consistency, so we can tell people what will be accepted and what not--and I am willing to sacrifice many other preferences to get this--most others here seem to think this less important.,And so on. But we can not do all of these at the same time. (As an example, there will be fewer errors if we have multiple levels of review--but this will also increase the workload on the people dealing with this).
We will never settle these differences. There is for me little practical advantage in having detailed data that different of us will interpret in opposite directions. More important, we can not simultaneous collect detailed data, and also move quickly towards solving out problems. We will always need to proceed on incomplete data, and there is no optimum place to stop collecting data and decide. I think we certainly should continue gathering data, but that's partly because I'm interested in this data for understanding our system, even if it will be of little immediate practical importance. In a different direction, I am so much involved in doing the practical day-to-day work on these problems that I want almost anything which will attract more people to help immediately, than get what I think is an optimal balance of inclusion. Therefore, I tend to support suggestions like ACTRIAL even though I think it will have the wrong balance, because it will decrease the immediate workload. DGG ( talk ) 00:41, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- To encapsulate what you so elaborately described DGG, it's what I referred to above as "unsustainable development" which requires some level of modification to accommodate the rapid growth rate and avoid potential implosion. Atsme📞📧 01:35, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- I do not see it that way. The problem of reviewing the new articles was here when I joined in 2006. It was essentially the same problem, but the reason we didn't see it as prominent was that things disappeared from the feed in 30 days, and we couldn't track them. A he result was even worse than now. Deletion was even more erratic--many admins were simply deleting single-handed, the standards at AfD were even more inconsistent, and there was even less agreement on what the interpretation of the notability guidelines were. We had little agreement on NOTPLOT and on articles about trivia. We didn't have BLPPROD, and there was still incomplete development of BLP standards and ONEEVENT. There was much less awareness of the problems of coi and promotionalism. The result was a heritage of CCOI promotional articles that we are very far from dealing with. Most of our longstanding articles on non-profits were coi then, and remain so now. We did have fewer problems with barely notable business enterprises, as most of them didn't know about us yet, and the SEO industry was much more primitive. Over the years, there have been many improvements, and much more internal awareness of our processes. Most of the truly erratic people here then have left for one reason or another, and we This has been compensating by the increasing difficulty in getting enthusiastic new recruit, and by the increasing flood of articles, along with general public recognition of our international reach. We're bigger, and in my opinion considerably better. We are doing everything we used to do better than we did in earlier years, and could probably continue growing at our present level indefinitely without anything imploding.
- But in another sense, you are right: there is an unmet need: What we have not done is to develop standards appropriate for the role in which people see us. We ourselves never thought we would be in any sense a reliable authority, but people now think we are. It is irresponsible not to try to match the expectations--but the difficult in being a reliable crowd sourced encyclopedia is enormously greater than in just being a crowd-sourced encyclopedia.
- Since you feel I've been too elaborate, I'll try a shorter summary: we do not agree of what we ought to be trying to achieve, and we are consequently trying to achieve inconsistent things. We are trying to optimize something which has no optimum.
- And even shorter: my own priority is recruiting & encouraging new editors who are or will become competent. This is the only way to maintain and improve standards. DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- I understand - did not intend for my use of "elaborately" to mean it was too much - and trust you will understand why I see things much differently regarding the "unmet need". I'm of the mind that if we don't take action to resolve the looming issues plaguing editors and this project, and continue with a focus on recruitment rather than retention, the result will be throwing the baby out with the bathwater as evidenced by current "editor retention" issues. We're neglecting the resources we currently have by not focusing on the problems that plague them which includes a growing amount of work with no light at the end of the tunnel. If the goal is editor turnover, then we're currently headed in the right direction. I think we need to focus more on what's happening in that dark tunnel, and finding a way to escape the darkness of the unknown by incorporating achievable goals, like ACTRIAL. If we aren't able to maintain what we have because of burnout and low morale, how can we expect to attract new recruits? Fewer prospects are willing to buy a house that has a gaping hole in the roof...and that speaks volumes when you stop to consider the damage a gaping hole can cause. I'm of the mind that it's of the utmost importance to fix the problems that are plaguing editors now - focus on editor retention not editor turnover - which in turn will fix new editor recruitment issues. To do otherwise perpetuates starting from square one, only instead of dealing with 2 million articles, we're dealing with the reality of 4x+ that amount, a shrinking editor base, and a growing amount of garbage, promotion, and spam. Atsme📞📧 20:54, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
-
Help!
I found Mount Gargash originally at Talk:Mount Gargash and moved it. The problem is, 1) it was created by an IP editor, and 2) I have Autopatrolled so apparently moving it "reviewed" the article. Can one of the regular WP:NPP editors please have a look at it, and either unpatrol or tag/CSD appropriately. Thanks! --IJBall (contribs • talk) 01:35, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
Done TonyBallioni (talk) 01:38, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- @IJBall and TonyBallioni:, Mount Gargash is now typical of the tens of thousands of short articles that might have some potential but which will forever remain perma-stubs. No maintenace tags, or stub tag, or cats, that might attract the attention of someone, and an IP user who doesn't care less. And now (correctly) PRODed by Chris troutman and unless someone comes across a good reason for removing te PROD tag, it will be lost forever, and frankly, although I am not a deletionist per se, if I were cleaning out the expired PROD list like some admins do, it would certainly be lost forever.
- It's a shame, because it's the kind of article with which the creator probably genuinely though they were adding something good to the encyclopedia, once more demonstrating what a lousy job the Foundation (except for Jorm) has made all these years of providing help for new uses and is still refusing to do. FYI: Robert McClenon, Atsme, DannyH (WMF). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:47, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- The sentiment that new editors think "they were adding something good to the encyclopedia" is probably true and speaks to the how un-informed the public is. It's our job to chase off maybe 80% of all new users if we can't educate them to what Wikipedia needs and I wish those useless clods in San Francisco would put more effort into outreach. Someone else could have tag-bombed that article but I'm happier to cut to the chase. My thinking is, every stub article produced by a drive-by editor we allow robs a committed editor of a Four Award. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- We get a lot of these types of articles near the end of the backlog. Chris definitely cut to the chase, faster than I did obviously, and it was justified. V is a core policy that unfortunately for many similar articles on villages, mountains, and buildings we have no way of meeting. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:02, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yuck. By the way, I thought that IP editors couldn't create articles. Did this happen because it was created (in stupid good-faith error) in talk page space? Actually, it probably should have an article, but I don't want to load the encyclopedia with perma-stubs. I am a deletionist, except with respect to things that really exist in the outside world. Of course, geographic places do exist in the outside world, but this doesn't seem to be documented. What a mess. Yes, apparently, doing anything to a crud page marks it as reviewed. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:05, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, creating articles in talk space is a work around to IP restrictions on creating articles. I've mainly seen it for people trying to sneak spam in. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:07, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Then the reviewer who moved it to article space is in a role similar to an AFC reviewer moving a draft into article space, and is taking responsibility for the article that has no sources. Hmmm. There is no obligation by a new page reviewer to move a page created by an IP to where the IP couldn't have created it. Oh well. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:46, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, creating articles in talk space is a work around to IP restrictions on creating articles. I've mainly seen it for people trying to sneak spam in. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:07, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- The sentiment that new editors think "they were adding something good to the encyclopedia" is probably true and speaks to the how un-informed the public is. It's our job to chase off maybe 80% of all new users if we can't educate them to what Wikipedia needs and I wish those useless clods in San Francisco would put more effort into outreach. Someone else could have tag-bombed that article but I'm happier to cut to the chase. My thinking is, every stub article produced by a drive-by editor we allow robs a committed editor of a Four Award. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- Good article. Notable mountain. One of Iran's highest, and a planned astronomy site of international significance. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- I don't think deleting permastubs is going to achieve the goal of helping editors focus on improving content. It's going to inflame deletion/inclusion tensions and waste time in WP:PROD and WP:AFD. What's the problem with letting these sleeping dogs lie? ~Kvng (talk) 16:18, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Instant Indexing, again
I have another example of the accidental indexing phenomenon. This phenomenon, which I have to assume is a misfeature and not a feature, is likely to be taken advantage of by spammers to get their pages out on Google. The page Www.rkriponkhan.com was created with no content. It was promptly tagged for WP:A3. User:Bbb23 then pulled the A3 tag with the note not to apply the A1 or A3 tags for 10 or 15 minutes. The page was then listed in the New Page Patrol list with a green check mark. That is, it was listed as having been reviewed. I am sure that untagging administrator Bbb23 did not mean to be reviewing the page, only tagging it as not yet ready to be deleted as an empty page. As I have been realizing, New Page creation appears to be a system that is designed primarily to speed up the indexing of pages by Google, with a few checks on hasty indexing by Google, but the checks are all afterthoughts that do not work very well. Quick indexing of pages by Google works very well and very fast, and the various checks on it sometimes manage to work for a little while, but have cracks that crud falls through either by accident or on purpose. In this specific case, can the tagging be fixed so that just removing a speedy tag doesn't constitute an approval of the article? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:29, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Does anybody understand what I am trying to explain? I get the feeling that I am explaining into a vacuum. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:29, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- Actually, it was I who marked the page reviewed after you marked it for A3 deletion. The log shows that Jake Brockman marked it as unreviewed. I don't understand how an article can be marked as unreviewed before its been marked as reviewed, but that another question. I'm not especially concerned about article like this being indexed by Google in the short term, unless of course they slip through the NPP queue entirely.- MrX 16:46, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- The page had previously been marked as reviewed by Bbb23. I think that the fact that it is now marked as unreviewed without being reviewed illustrates that the marking of pages as reviewed is buggy or confused. However, it seems that removing a deletion tag from a page causes it to sort of be marked as reviewed, but not permanently, or something. Will someone please look into the details of what causes a page to be marked as reviewed and unreviewed? Please?! The problems with review tagging can be manipulated by spammers. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:03, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- You User:MrX are not particularly concerned about an article being indexed by Google in the short term. The problem is that the oddities of indexing can be used by spammers, and I think that I know a way that a spammer can deliberately pull a page through the NPP queue, but I don't want to say what it is. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:03, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- It would certainly be preferable if spam articles were not indexed. I'm now questioning whether I should even be marking CSDed, AfDed, and PRODded articles as reviewed. I thought I was doing a good thing, but maybe a better practice is to leave them unreviewed. Does anyone have any guidance on this?- MrX 23:24, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
-
- AFAIK the __NO INDEX__ is embedded in the CSD, PROD, and AfD templates rather than on the article. This means that when such a tag is removed, the page is open again for indexing. Google is very quick with its resident Wikipedia bot to index new pages. Sometimes it's only a matter of seconds and that's exactly the work around that SEO spammers will exploit. Kaldari is the goto engineer on these issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:50, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- I just (empirically) confirmed that when articles by new users are created they have
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>
in the head. tagging for CSD, reviewing, unreviewing, retagging, and re-reviewing does not have any effect on the noindex status. Is it possible the resident Google bot ignores the noindex directive?- MrX 15:15, 25 June 2017 (UTC)- It would be helpful if you could provide specific examples. A page can have a template that sets NOINDEX and still not have the robots meta tag. For example; List of housing cooperatives in Canada is unreviewed and at AfD, so you'd think that it should not be indexed, but it IS indexed, and the reason (per Wikipedia:Controlling_search_engine_indexing is that it is old enough that The magic word and the template do not work on them. Mduvekot (talk) 17:09, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- DAV Public School,Sawang is the specific example that I was referring to. List of housing cooperatives in Canada does not respect __NOINDEX__ or {{NOINDEX}} because it is more than 90 days old. See WP:NOINDEX#Indexing of articles ("mainspace").- MrX 17:19, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- It would be helpful if you could provide specific examples. A page can have a template that sets NOINDEX and still not have the robots meta tag. For example; List of housing cooperatives in Canada is unreviewed and at AfD, so you'd think that it should not be indexed, but it IS indexed, and the reason (per Wikipedia:Controlling_search_engine_indexing is that it is old enough that The magic word and the template do not work on them. Mduvekot (talk) 17:09, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- I just (empirically) confirmed that when articles by new users are created they have
- AFAIK the __NO INDEX__ is embedded in the CSD, PROD, and AfD templates rather than on the article. This means that when such a tag is removed, the page is open again for indexing. Google is very quick with its resident Wikipedia bot to index new pages. Sometimes it's only a matter of seconds and that's exactly the work around that SEO spammers will exploit. Kaldari is the goto engineer on these issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:50, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
-
-
The Problematic Sequence
I had been hesitant to go into great detail as to what the exact problematic sequence of steps is, but I think that the spammers know the exact sequence as well as we do, so that there WP:BEANS doesn't apply and there is no benefit in avoiding saying what is going on. The unintended review occurs in the following situation:
- Editor A creates Article X about Company Y or Person Y. Article X is not indexed, and, having not been reviewed, is not indexable. For the sake of explanation, let us assume that Article X is marginal as to notability and marginal as to promotional content. That is, it isn't obviously reasonable, and it isn't obviously crud, but it is cruddy.
- Editor B tags Article X for speedy deletion as A7 or G11 or both. What happens behind the scenes is that the article is now marked as reviewed, but that review status is overridden by the deletion template.
- Editor C removes the deletion template from Article X. What happens now is no longer behind the scenes. The article is reviewed, and is promptly indexed by Google.
If Editor D marks Article X as unreviewed before Google indexes it, the article isn't indexed. Likewise, if Editor C marks the article as unreviewed at the same time as they pull the deletion template, the article won't be indexed, but that is dependent on Editor C being a knowledgeable NPP reviewer who understands what is going on and wants to leave the indexing decision to yet another reviewer. However. otherwise, the tagging and untagging for speedy deletion has the effect of indexing the article. Editor C (or Editor A, since spammers don't care about the rule against an article-author untagging it) is, in effect, indexing the article. It doesn't take a real reviewer. That is the problematic sequence. Comments? In the cases we have seen, the article does eventually get deleted. But in the cases we haven't seen, the article gets indexed, and no one notices except the spammer. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:01, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- That's not consistent with my experience in the example I gave in the section above. Have you verified that it actual works that way?- MrX 17:25, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- That is what I have observed. How have your observations been different? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:14, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Robert McClenon: For reference, the NOINDEXing feature is documented at Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing#Indexing of articles ("mainspace") in case there is still any confusion about how it works. The first problem here is that a reviewer improperly tagged an article as A3 immediately after it was created. The second problem is that when the admin removed the A3 tag, they didn't also change it back to being "unreviewed". I don't see any evidence that spammers are abusing this process, and if they were, it would easily be caught by people monitoring this feed of editors removing speedy deletion tags. Another possible solution would be to create an edit filter that prevents editors from adding A1 or A3 tags until 10 minutes after the article was created. If that sounds like a good idea, let me know. Kaldari (talk) 06:23, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- User:Kaldari - No. First, you are putting the burden on the reviewers. While it is generally a reasonable rule that an article should not be tagged too quickly, if there really is a hard-and-fast rule that it should not be tagged quickly, stop showing it in the New Page Feed. Second, the real problem isn't the addition of the tag in the first 10 minutes; it is the removal of the tag. If you really want to help, provide a filter that prevents non-autoconfirmed editors from removing the tag. Third, I don't think that editors or admins know that the mere removal of a tag renders the page as "reviewed". I don't think that it should, but, besides, I think that should be publicized. In general, it sounds as though you are trying to find ways to say that the problem is one for the reviewers and admins, not one that maybe involves work by the developers or the WMF or someone. (After all, the WMF is busy coming up with things that the community of editors don't want or need, but I shouldn't say that.) Robert McClenon (talk) 14:25, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- Until reading this thread I have been marking as reviewed an article that is in the NP feed that has been prodded by another user if I agree with the reason. My logic is that if I had tagged it myself using the page curation it would automatically be marked as reviewed, the trouble is that anyone can remove a Prod without justifying it (with the exception of unsourced BLP). So removing a PROD from an uncontroversially poor article is clearly permitted and this article will be referenced if I or another reviewer is not quick enough with the unreviewing. If we leave the PRODDED CSD and AFD articles as unreviewed then they will pop up every time and NP reviewers will waste time checking if the tag is justified or not. I personally feel that a script that automatically unreviews it when the tag is removed is a better way to go. Domdeparis (talk) 14:51, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Robert McClenon: I have been discussing such a filter at Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard#Special:AbuseFilter.2F29, but there doesn't seem to be consensus for it there. Please join that discussion if you feel such a filter would be useful. Kaldari (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- Until reading this thread I have been marking as reviewed an article that is in the NP feed that has been prodded by another user if I agree with the reason. My logic is that if I had tagged it myself using the page curation it would automatically be marked as reviewed, the trouble is that anyone can remove a Prod without justifying it (with the exception of unsourced BLP). So removing a PROD from an uncontroversially poor article is clearly permitted and this article will be referenced if I or another reviewer is not quick enough with the unreviewing. If we leave the PRODDED CSD and AFD articles as unreviewed then they will pop up every time and NP reviewers will waste time checking if the tag is justified or not. I personally feel that a script that automatically unreviews it when the tag is removed is a better way to go. Domdeparis (talk) 14:51, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- User:Kaldari - No. First, you are putting the burden on the reviewers. While it is generally a reasonable rule that an article should not be tagged too quickly, if there really is a hard-and-fast rule that it should not be tagged quickly, stop showing it in the New Page Feed. Second, the real problem isn't the addition of the tag in the first 10 minutes; it is the removal of the tag. If you really want to help, provide a filter that prevents non-autoconfirmed editors from removing the tag. Third, I don't think that editors or admins know that the mere removal of a tag renders the page as "reviewed". I don't think that it should, but, besides, I think that should be publicized. In general, it sounds as though you are trying to find ways to say that the problem is one for the reviewers and admins, not one that maybe involves work by the developers or the WMF or someone. (After all, the WMF is busy coming up with things that the community of editors don't want or need, but I shouldn't say that.) Robert McClenon (talk) 14:25, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Draftify/Userfy
I don't think I'm alone in forgetting to mark pages as patrolled before moving them to draft or user space - where the [Mark this page as patrolled] option no longer exists. Personally I'd find a reminder useful in the text at MediaWiki:Movepagetext along the lines of:
- Note to admins and reviewers: Mark the page as patrolled before moving it out of mainspace.
Any thoughts? Cabayi (talk) 19:18, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- Shouldn't we leave them unpatrolled, so they'll go back in the queue if/when they're moved back to mainspace? Or am I misunderstanding? – Joe (talk) 19:48, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- Why would we mark them as patrolled? As Joe said above, when they go back to the mainspace, they won't necessarily be better. RileyBugz会話投稿記録 20:37, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
- I honestly don't know if the review is persistent through the move to draft space and back, but I would expect that it is, meaning we should definitely not be reviewing prior. TimothyJosephWood 21:16, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Backlog
We're below 20,000 for the first time in a while (at the time of writing, at least). Well done, everyone! Boleyn (talk) 20:33, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
- Not to burst any bubbles, but we dipped below 20,000 yesterday. This morning, I saw that it had climbed above 20,000 again. It seems we're barely treading water here.
- When are we starting ACTRIAL and when will WMF help us with the features we've requested?- MrX 20:43, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- 'Barely treading water' is the right description and anything less than a reduction to its pre June 2016 levels is nothing to rejoice about - even 5,000 would be too much. Reading between the lines, MrX (which I know of course is the wrong thing to do), it seems (to me at least) that the group of Foundation developers that is showing concern for these issues has no intention of actually physically addressing them by developing the required software. Although as Evad37 has demonstrated, these features need only hours rather than months to code up, DannyH (WMF) constantly pleads the classic 'no time, no personnel, no money' mantra, probably knowing full well that good natured volunteers like Evad37 will do the work for free that the WMF is supposedly being paid for out of the donations generated by our work. The move to draft feature was first registered on Phab 18 months ago and there has been not one single attempt to address it. The problem is that Wikipedia has already become such a hotchpotch of useful user developed .js that browsers can't cope with them. The vast majority of them should be MediaWiki extensions or API.
- The only way to get anything done at this stage, AFAICS, is to escalate through the echelons of the totally vague hierarchy of the WMF until someone in a position of responsibility , senior to Danny Horn, takes note, and preferably Maher herself. At the moment, the WMF smacks of Yes, Minister - which even Margaret Thatcher remarked was closer to reality than the sitcom audience realised.
-
- A small group of editors is working to decide how and when ACTRIAL will be rolled out. It's mainly a question of deciding which of the proposed scripts to use, and being sure that now that Scottywong has retired, we know how to obtain and process the stats that are needed to monitor the trial. Even the 'profis' at the WMF are having difficulty knowing how to use the database. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:25, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Usernamekiran Special:NewPagesFeed, right-hand corner above the newest/oldest options.
Personally I do rejoice to see it going steadily, though very, very slowly, down. Yes, there's still a big issue and other solutions need looking at as most people agree, but I don't think ther's anything I can personally do about that. However, acknowledging the achievements of people working hard on this project is important too, and editors' hard work has helped. I find the doom and gloom on this page affects my morale and ability to keep working on it. I hoped pointing out asmall positive might be encouraging. Boleyn (talk) 05:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Boleyn: My comment was not intended to diminish the accomplishment, or to not acknowledge the 4080 reviews that you have done in the past three months which is a huge contribution to having reduce the backlog from it's high of over 22,000. But I am concerned that the trend will reverse if even a few of us stop performing this Sisyphean task.- MrX 16:03, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- Boleyn, thank you for your post here and providing much needed cheer. I agree the doom and gloom can be over the top sometimes, and your efforts for this project really do deserve recognition more than a barnstar can provide. All I can offer is my thanks. I agree that there are concerns with it going back up again, but the current dip is a positive and shows what this project can do when we have people focused on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:09, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- I agree with all of you guys. @MrX and TonyBallioni: Kudpung is correct as always. There are like 10% editors who are actively doing this task. And then there are few editors from that 10%, who have no idea whats going on this talkpage, or with the project. They dont share their opinions, or their observations (if they have any).
- I always felt more editors at this task will be beneficial. Setting up high goals for oneself, or for others isnt always wise. But if we had around 1000 reviewers, and they did only 5 reviews per day on an average, that would be ~5000 articles per day!
- @Boleyn: thanks for the update, it was nice to know that our efforts are not going useless. :-) But as MrX noted, this is a never ending task, inversely which seems to increase with each day. Under the current circumstances, all we need is more reviewers. And thanks for the information about finding the backlog number. I never use that. NewPagesFeed. —usernamekiran(talk) 18:03, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- Boleyn, thank you for your post here and providing much needed cheer. I agree the doom and gloom can be over the top sometimes, and your efforts for this project really do deserve recognition more than a barnstar can provide. All I can offer is my thanks. I agree that there are concerns with it going back up again, but the current dip is a positive and shows what this project can do when we have people focused on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:09, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Advertisement for NPP/R?
There are advertisement on enwiki like "Wikipedia loves uniforms" submit photos of Indian law, and enforcement forces, and win prizes. There is one more ad currently going on about photos of heritage sites. Why cant there be a "notice" similar to these ads regarding NPP/R? Describing wikipedia needs reviewers? pinging @Kudpung, Kaldari, MusikAnimal, and DannyH (WMF): —usernamekiran(talk) 18:09, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Usernamekiran: I'm not sure what advertisement you're referring to. Could you elaborate? Kaldari (talk) 18:18, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) @Kaldari:, I think Usernamekiran is referring to things like 'Wiki Loves Monuments,' 'Wiki loves the Dominican Republic,' and 'WP:Wiki Loves Pride,' which I believe are always advertised on e.g. watchlist pages (and possibly elsewhere, I tend to block the bloody things ASAP). A possible reason- and I'm only painting pictures- might be that these things are global 'outreach' projects, whereas WP:NPR is purely internal, and might even be in breach of WP:CANVAS (I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but I think I'm right in saying that even Kudpung's occasional mass mailings wound some people up some of the time!). Just MHO of course. — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis 18:34, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- @Kaldari: I took that screenshot after you posted the reply. —usernamekiran(talk) 18:30, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- FIM, I don't think it'd be a CANVASS violation (there's no proposal). I also just think it wouldn't make sense for a watchlist or site banner: we don't advertise Huggle or CopyPatrol in that way, partially because they are maintenance tasks that require experience. I think the same would apply here. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:37, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- FWIW, it's possible to create CentralNotice banners (the kind that are used for fundraising) that are only displayed to users with certain rights. For example, you could only show it to users that are admins or page reviewers. I'm not sure if this would be considered too "spammy" for CentralNotice though. You could always propose it at meta:CentralNotice/Request and see what people think. Kaldari (talk) 19:12, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- What about only to extended confirmed users who are browsing recent changes (instead of on their watchlist) and who also don't have NPP? TimothyJosephWood 19:16, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- FWIW, it's possible to create CentralNotice banners (the kind that are used for fundraising) that are only displayed to users with certain rights. For example, you could only show it to users that are admins or page reviewers. I'm not sure if this would be considered too "spammy" for CentralNotice though. You could always propose it at meta:CentralNotice/Request and see what people think. Kaldari (talk) 19:12, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- FIM, I don't think it'd be a CANVASS violation (there's no proposal). I also just think it wouldn't make sense for a watchlist or site banner: we don't advertise Huggle or CopyPatrol in that way, partially because they are maintenance tasks that require experience. I think the same would apply here. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:37, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Kaldari: I took that screenshot after you posted the reply. —usernamekiran(talk) 18:30, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
New Editor Question (again)
The statement was made a week ago, by an administrator and functionary, "Most new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia. It is essential to retain them, but at least 80% of those who have their first article rejected quite understandably never return." What I would like to know, and I think some other editors would like to know, is a two-part question about the new editors. First, was that statement meant to refer to all new editors, or specifically to new editors whose first major contribution is a new article? If it is meant to refer to all new editors, then maybe it is outside the scope of this page, but, since it refers to rejection, it appears to apply to those who contribute an article (or occasionally group of articles). Second, is the statement that they come to contribute to the encyclopedia based on empirical knowledge, or is it a statement of belief? I am aware that it is an article of belief that new editors come to contribute to the encyclopedia. I do not have a whole lot of evidence with regard to those who throw an article over the fence, but perhaps I have a lack of faith, or have not seen the right metrics, or am looking in the wrong way or wrong place.
If it is empirically true that they come to contribute to the encyclopedia, and we are losing a large potential resource, then it is important to know that this is empirically true. First, in that case, we need a volunteer corps of meeters and greeters to supplement New Page Patrol. (Just dumping on New Page Patrol for not being sufficiently welcoming to editors who contribute crud will only burn them out, although dumping on the existing volunteers is very much the Wikipedia way.) Second, if they really do come to contribute to the encyclopedia, maybe WMF can actually figure out some way to engage them to further increase our meaningless metrics. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:02, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- I think this would be important as a part of our research when ACTRIAL is implemented and we can work with the WMF to figure out what percentage of new users become active regularly during that time period vs now. That data could be useful to help us see in what areas we could improve welcoming new users and if direct page creation of inadequate pages prevents potential good users from participating. For those who don't follow the work group the WMF has agreed to ACTRIAL in principle. The question is if an RfC is needed now, and what questions we should be asking in the trial period. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:19, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- Well, since I haven't gotten an answer to my question, I am inclined to assume that the statement is a essentially a statement of belief, and is not meant to be questioned factually. In any case, if ACTRIAL goes into trial (experiment), then we will see a decrease in new articles, and presumably a decrease in the number of new articles that are speedy-deleted. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- If it is empirically true, as opposed to a statement of belief, then we do need to retain and utilize them, which means that we need volunteer meeters and greeters to mentor them. If it is an article of belief, it may be enough to repeat it. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Notice has been requested!
The request for the notice/banner/advertisement can be found here: link to meta
—usernamekiran(talk) 19:03, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- Mass pinging. @Kudpung, MusikAnimal, Kaldari, Boleyn, MrX, Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, I dream of horses, TonyBallioni, Timothyjosephwood, Scope creep, BigHaz, SweetCanadianMullet, Ymblanter, Jupitus Smart, Jupitus Smart, Atsme, KGirlTrucker81, and Chrissymad:
I apologise for such an unnecessary mass ping. But I thought the editors who had been putting a lot of time n energy to this project should know about this. —usernamekiran(talk) 19:19, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- I... wouldn't necessarily say that the primary purpose is to ward away unwanted articles. Maybe that's about half of it, but the other half is incorporating good new articles coherently into the project (MoS, links, tags, projects, stub sorting, categories, sources, etc...). TimothyJosephWood 19:25, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Usernamekiran, I think that's a positive step. I know I had no idea you could nominate yourself as a patroller, or even really that pages were patrolled systematically, until I was given the right. There are lots of people who would be very good reviewers who could be recruited. Boleyn (talk) 19:53, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- I have no real opinion either way on whether this is a good idea or not. I'm only commenting to say that if this goes live you might want to point the ad towards WP:NPP, since that is where the tutorials are. I also just BOLDly updated that page to point people at PERM. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:03, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- (edit conflict)@Boleyn: Same here. I had absolutely no idea about it either until I came across a user who had the right. After that, I stalked this talkpage for two weeks, and then requested the right.
- @Timothyjosephwood: yes, you are right. But I didnt know how to put it there. It would be great if you guys could help with wording/design. This is another reason for the mass ping. :-)
- And thanks for the support guys.
—usernamekiran(talk) 20:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC)-
- I changed the landing page as per your suggestion Tony. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:13, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict × 2) The ad should probably target editors who have been patrolling without the right. Otherwise, just a thought. KGirlTrucker81 huh? what I've been doing 20:17, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- @KGirlTrucker81: I thought about that too. But then I realised, the current filters would involve these users automatically. And if we use only that filter, then we might lose some other prospective users. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict × 2) The ad should probably target editors who have been patrolling without the right. Otherwise, just a thought. KGirlTrucker81 huh? what I've been doing 20:17, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
- I changed the landing page as per your suggestion Tony. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:13, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- It can't hurt to try to get more volunteers, but the banner text probably needs to be worded in a more positive way. (Also, you didn't link to a banner in the third box). I suggest wording along these lines:
- Experienced editors: Help preserve Wikipedia's integrity by patrolling new articles. Become a "New Pages Reviewer"!
ACTRIAL update
I mentioned this above, but the WMF has agreed to ACTRIAL in principle. You are invited to join the discussion on WT:NPPAFC. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:48, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
An article indexed on google before reviewed
I selected the name, clicked "search on google", then moved the article to Angira Dhar from Angira dhar, I skimmed through the sources (then closed the tabs); edited the article, and then marked it as reviewed. When I opened the google tab, I saw the first result was her wikipedia article. ie: The article was already indexed by google before it was reviewed. It was created on 13 June 2017, and reviewed just a few minutes ago from now. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:46, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
-
- Unfortunately, I am not surprised. I think that some actions that do not formally mark an article as reviewed cause it to be indexable. The article was categorized on 21 June. Although it was not marked as reviewed then, is it possible that categorization has the unintended backdoor effect of reviewing the article? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:15, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Here is one more article that has not been reviewed yet, but indexed on google: Alice Torriani. Pinging @Kudpung, MusikAnimal, Kaldari, Danny H (WMF), and Robert McClenon: —usernamekiran(talk) 01:22, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
- She has been out there for months without being formally reviewed. In any case, we have evidence that articles get indexed without being reviewed. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
- @Robert McClenon: Sorry, I forgot the 90 days thing. —usernamekiran(talk) 05:01, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
- She has been out there for months without being formally reviewed. In any case, we have evidence that articles get indexed without being reviewed. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
- Here is one more article that has not been reviewed yet, but indexed on google: Alice Torriani. Pinging @Kudpung, MusikAnimal, Kaldari, Danny H (WMF), and Robert McClenon: —usernamekiran(talk) 01:22, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, I am not surprised. I think that some actions that do not formally mark an article as reviewed cause it to be indexable. The article was categorized on 21 June. Although it was not marked as reviewed then, is it possible that categorization has the unintended backdoor effect of reviewing the article? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:15, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Editors with most unreviewed pages
I have been reviewing new articles for a few days (thanks Kudpung for granting me the right) and made an observation.
A few months ago DrStrauss asked about a way to sort users by number of unreviewed pages. I created a script that generates such list, see User:Rentier/NPP. Listed below are aggregate numbers.
Unreviewed Articles | Editors | Articles | Backlog fraction |
---|---|---|---|
>50 | 10 | 650 | 3% |
>20 | 56 | 1996 | 10% |
>10 | 207 | 4108 | 21% |
>5 | 529 | 6450 | 32% |
>2 | 1434 | 9759 | 49% |
- | 10228 | 19851 | 100% |
Generated: 2017-06-29 15:20:58 UTC |
One fifth of the backlog can be removed by reviewing articles created by just 207 (2%) most prolific editors. Since articles created by the same user tend to be of similar quality, I think that reviewing is made much more efficient by grouping the reviews by user rather than just going through the list chronologically.
Rentier (talk) 16:14, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Rentier: thanks for the script, I'll check it out!
- @Kudpung: would granting some of these editors autopatrolled be an idea?
- Thanks, DrStrauss talk 16:17, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Thank you! I had a hackish script that did something similar and found that way of reviewing very effective when my interests and expertise overlapped with the editor. Once you have the user name, you can use the Were Created by filter in the Page Curation tool. The only problem I see is that the lack of diversity in reviewers might give the editor the impression that you're reviewing them in stead of a "random" article. Not all editors appreciate that, especially if you keep bringing up the same issues. In other words; this is only an effective way of reviewing if there are few or no problems with the articles. Mduvekot (talk) 16:26, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- From first glance, a lot of the articles created by the top creators are mass creations of similar subjects that, well, how to put this diplomatically, leave a lot to be desired. One entry lists like List of universities in Sint Eustatius and rawly formatted statistics like 1979–80 FC Barcelona season aren't really ideal for granting autopatrolled to. Pinging Primefac since he's helped with cleanup of similar things before. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:31, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell (I'me at #15( allmost all the top entries in the list are candidates for categorical deletion. For example, I would seriously consider the deletion of every article that sockpuppet User:Envale has created. Granting autopatrolled is out of the question, as far as I'm concerned. Mduvekot (talk) 17:47, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- To clarify, I was only talking about the ones worthy of autopatrolled. DrStrauss talk 18:26, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Mduvekot: and re the Envale pages, how could we go about a mass deletion? DrStrauss talk 18:28, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Hi DrStrauss, there is a process for nominating multiple articles for deletion. Mduvekot (talk) 19:20, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Mduvekot: I've done it. DrStrauss talk 20:12, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- and several editors workingwith academic articles, myself included, have asked for a speedy keep. We do not automatically delete articles by sockpupetts if reliable editors contribute substantially to them, and several of us have offered to do so. We need time for that. This was in my opinion a reckless use of group nomination, done without consideration of WP:BEFORE. Several of the people are unquestionably notable under WP:PROF, such as holders of distinguished chairs, and I think It will not be difficult to show the notability of at least half the academics and a good many other articles--one is about a major prize from the leading professional association in the field. I agree it is frustrating when poor editing makes work for others, but that's part of what comes from working on a open editing project. DGG ( talk ) 00:42, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
- Hi DrStrauss, there is a process for nominating multiple articles for deletion. Mduvekot (talk) 19:20, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Oh my... those FC Barcelona lists are hideous. Burn them with fire, please. If no matches, then just redirect to the "seasons" article. If users are creating shite like that, we might have to take the SvG approach and just nuke 'em all and start over (though obviously that would take an AN discussion). Primefac (talk) 23:21, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Primefac, those are the seasons articles from what I can tell... TonyBallioni (talk) 23:35, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Sorry, I meant redirecting the terrible "XXXX season" articles to List of FC Barcelona seasons, which has just as much (if not more) useful information about the individual seasons. Primefac (talk) 23:57, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- Primefac, those are the seasons articles from what I can tell... TonyBallioni (talk) 23:35, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Mduvekot: Yes, that's something to keep in mind. On the other hand, sometimes it may be better for the creator to receive a single thoughful comment rather than several one-liners from a bunch of different people. Rentier (talk) 03:05, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- From first glance, a lot of the articles created by the top creators are mass creations of similar subjects that, well, how to put this diplomatically, leave a lot to be desired. One entry lists like List of universities in Sint Eustatius and rawly formatted statistics like 1979–80 FC Barcelona season aren't really ideal for granting autopatrolled to. Pinging Primefac since he's helped with cleanup of similar things before. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:31, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
- 425 unreviewed articles edited by WikiEdu students: User:Rentier/NPP/WikiEdu Not great, but more interesting than mediocre musicians and third-rate footballers. Rentier (talk) 11:54, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
-
- It's also a good idea to review these quickly, since students are typically engaged with Wikipedia for a short time. Thanks Rentier! – Joe (talk) 12:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- @Rentier: Whats up with these so many articles about football clubs, and players? I know nothing about football/soccer/rugby so I have not reviewed any article yet.
- I just reviewed few articles of films/short films by same creator. Harddly 3-4 lines, and no sources at all. One of the articles is already ProD'ed. I added notability tag on others. I will ProD it after 2-3 days if they dont improve. I didnt CSD or ProD them only because it is claimed that the films were produced by state government. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:18, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- It's also a good idea to review these quickly, since students are typically engaged with Wikipedia for a short time. Thanks Rentier! – Joe (talk) 12:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Stats
Hi,
Is there some way to find how many articles/pages were reviewed in June? Thanks a lot. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:20, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- If I did this query correctly, it is 20,080.- MrX 12:46, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks X. Kindly feel free to make changes at User:Usernamekiran/NPR Stats, or to suggest changes. Best, —usernamekiran(talk) 14:00, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Improper A-PAT?
I recently came across an article of a non-notable Bollywood song. The creator is A-PAT, and more than 90% of articles created by him are not notable. Most of the sources used are dependant of subject. I wanted a second opinion of an experienced user. Would somebody please look at it? X seems to be online. —usernamekiran(talk) 14:06, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- I sampled about 25% of their new articles. Most were acceptable, and only one relied entirely on unreliable sources.- MrX 14:13, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- The articles are in encyclopaedic tone, and they have sources. But the sources are not "independent". For the articles of songs, the sources are music sites, music review sites, celebrity gossip sites and similar. They are not "independent" of subject. The ones that are independent, make passing reference to the subject (source talks about the film, passing reference to the song from that film). By this logic, I can create an encyclopaedic article for every person that has a profile on IMDB. —usernamekiran(talk) 14:33, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I think a more general issue you're going to see here is that people simply aren't familiar with South Asia enough to comment on whether something is a notable band or song. Hell, I'm not familiar enough with the North American music scene to comment on that (my rule would be 'if they aren't played on a mainstream radio station, they don't get an article' but that would never get consensus and I also have no idea what is played on some mainstream stations.) Kiran, if you are familiar enough with them to make an argument for it at AfD, I think you should, but I also don't think the crowd here is likely to be that familiar with the topic area. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:37, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- The sources are not very independent, that's true, but you will find other editors who use a much stricter definition of independent. Since I can't distinguish between these particular sources being promotion websites disguised as news sources, or actual news sources, I used the stricter definition of independent.- MrX 14:52, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Yes, I should wait for 3-4 days though, before taking the article to AfD. Hopefully, editors from India will participate in that discussion. May I know where are you from Tony? —usernamekiran(talk) 14:55, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Unreviewed articles by keyword
I made another list, this time grouping the unreviewed articles by keyword. It's a big (ca. 1MB so be careful if you are on a mobile) and ugly list, more of a proof of concept than anything else: User:Rentier/NPP/Unreviewed_articles_by_keyword. Enjoy Rentier (talk) 15:46, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
- Excellent work Rentier! I think a list like that could be very useful to page patrollers so that they can focus their efforts where it would do the most good. Is this something that we could have bot generate a few times a day and perhaps make it a subpage of WP:NPP?- MrX 16:00, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
I created a web interface for browsing the backlog - you can filter by any keyword or username and sort the results: http://176.58.102.28/NPP/public/ If it proves useful, I will move it to the Tools Server later. MrX, do you think that an in-wiki list is still worth doing? I can add an "export to wikitable" option quite easily, but the web app is more convenient, at least for me. Rentier (talk) 00:11, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
- I've been working from this list. AFAICS there are few false positives. I think we should speak to the devs and have it incorporated as one of the filter options in the New Pages Feed. Al in all, an excellent initiative. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:19, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
- EEng, you might be interested in this based on our last conversation. (Though your commentary on the phab ticket would still be appreciated when you're approved). TonyBallioni (talk) 02:24, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
- Rentier, I do think having a list on enwiki is a good idea, if it doesn't require excessive effort. There will likely be reviewers who are uncomfortable going to an unknown website to access such a list. I also agree with Kudpung that filtering should be built into the page feed interface. I envisage a drop down box with a large list of categories and/or possibly a text search functionality. Something like the "New filters for edit review" beta gadget might be useful also.- MrX 12:41, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
- I added an ability to browse the full list by keyword to the web tool, along with an ability to export to wiki markup. I will configure it to update automatically twice a day. Perhaps someone else can make a bot to update the list on enwiki, if there is such need. Simply fetch the content from this url. I'm open to any ideas with regards to reorganising the category-keyword scheme, layout of the wiki-list etc. It would be nice to have the filtering built-in into the page feed, however I don't expect the tool I made to be directly useful in this regard, except perhaps as a justification of the need to have such feature. Rentier (talk) 15:31, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Rentier, this is so useful, thank you. It loads very slowly on my computer, so I've kept another tab opened and copied and pasted the titles into the searchbox that way. If this could be incorporated into Speacial:NewPagesFeed, and a newsletter go out about it, it might encourage some editors to come back. I've certainly been reviewing more, as I've been able to focus on disambiguation, which I know well, and searching for rivers, where I know the notability criteria well and so I'm able to patrol efficiently. Boleyn (talk) 09:05, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
- Boleyn, thanks for the feedback. That's exactly the kind of improvement in the efficiency of reviewing that I was looking for. I agree that incorporating the search into the NewPagesFeed would be best as it would enable the widest participation. In the meanwhile, you can use the web tool I created for a better and faster experience (and you can search by any keyword), though I understand if you are not comfortable going to an external site. Rentier (talk) 16:31, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Rentier, I've been using the web tool and it's made my reviewing much easier and I've stayed more motivated and more efficient. Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to create this. Boleyn (talk) 20:08, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Steve Roach album entries
Hi all, I've been looking at some of the top-backlogged creators, one of whom has made a large number of album entries for a prolific musician named Steve Roach (musician). The album entries I've checked so far all have zero or one secondary source (and if they have one, it's AllMusic). I reached out to the creator of the those in the backlog to see if they could be improved, but the editor concedes there are no further sources and so the entries don't meet NALBUMS; they made the entries because of a personal view of the worthiness of the artist. As a compromise I was going to suggest this editor make a "Discography of Steve Roach" page if they'd like to preserve track listings...but upon closer examination, I'm not sure the Steve Roach page itself (and thus a related discography) would survive AfD: right now it's very thinly sourced for GNG, and so far I haven't found a single album that has as many as two reviews for NARTIST, although I have not searched exhaustively. It wouldn't make any kind of sense to go through the work of creating a discography page and then redirecting dozens of entries to it if this is just not a topic we have the sources to cover in an encyclopedic manner, and we need to delete the whole. Might someone have a chance to look over the Steve Roach page with an eye toward this issue? Would be grateful for input on how to proceed. Thanks so much. Innisfree987 (talk) 18:24, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
- Innisfree987, in my opinion the sources absolutely do not contribute to notability. Many creators believe that a plethora of fleeting mentions, listings, interviews, primary sources, and even other Wikipedia pages, are enough that we won't check them out. The subject has certainly produced an impressive number of works, but as far as Wikipedia is concerned , I think per WP:MUSICBIO it's a reasonable candidate for PROD (would probably be dismissed), or AfD. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
- Thank you for taking the time to look it over Kudpung; I share your impressions. I think I'll go ahead and send to AfD; my guess is that that may be unpopular with the fair number of editors who've worked on the page but at least it'll get the notability question settled (well, we can hope), and then we can deal with the many album entries that are indisputably not independently notable. Innisfree987 (talk) 04:58, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
I've been looking at these too, Innisfree987, and have been redirecting to artist. New editors often think albums are inherently worthy of inclusion, unfortunately! Thanks for your hard work on this, Boleyn (talk) 20:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- Ah, many thanks Boleyn. It looks like the AfD will likely close as keep, so indeed redirecting seems like the way to go. Much appreciated--there are so many! Hopefully the editor will understand that entries are meant to be based not on the existence of the album, but on secondary source coverage of it or other external recognition like charting... Innisfree987 (talk) 01:21, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
One more essay of personal opinion
This one is first from me though: User:Usernamekiran/Strategies for NPR.
I also created a template to invite worthy editors to become new page reviewers. Worthy has been defined in the essay. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:26, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
- Well done, Usernamekiran. Boleyn (talk) 20:11, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Question about The Wondrous Tale of Alroy
Hello, folks. I was under the impression that, unless the creator had the "autopatrolled" right, any articles newly moved from AfC into Main space would not be indexed until reviewed by someone here. But the above-named article, moved into Main space just a few hours ago, is already showing up in a Bing search. And I see no evidence that it has been patrolled. Am I misunderstanding something about the process? Any comments you have will be greatly appreciated. NewYorkActuary (talk) 21:12, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
-
- Does User:TheSandDoctor have the autopatrol privilege? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks for responding. No, SandDoctor doesn't have "autopatrolled", but does have the "new page reviewer" right. Might the software be treating those two rights as the same? NewYorkActuary (talk) 01:11, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- I would assume that the software is treating something as something. We already know that the software does not behave as we are told it behaves. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:29, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- That's ... ominous. I'll keep my eye on other acceptances over the next few days, to see if that is indeed what is happening. Thanks again for the response. NewYorkActuary (talk) 01:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- I understood it to be that, since I have the "new page reviewer"/patroller right, that it simply patrolled it for me since I can patrol any non-patrolled page that I did not create. Which, to my knowledge, that particular draft (and any others I approve) fall into the category. @Robert McClenon: @NewYorkActuary:. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 02:20, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, that makes sense. The confusion is that the "patrolling" doesn't show up in the logs for the article. NewYorkActuary (talk) 02:28, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- @NewYorkActuary: Oh, I see. That makes sense. That is indeed odd. I wonder why it doesn't show in the logs. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 06:34, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, that makes sense. The confusion is that the "patrolling" doesn't show up in the logs for the article. NewYorkActuary (talk) 02:28, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- I understood it to be that, since I have the "new page reviewer"/patroller right, that it simply patrolled it for me since I can patrol any non-patrolled page that I did not create. Which, to my knowledge, that particular draft (and any others I approve) fall into the category. @Robert McClenon: @NewYorkActuary:. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 02:20, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- That's ... ominous. I'll keep my eye on other acceptances over the next few days, to see if that is indeed what is happening. Thanks again for the response. NewYorkActuary (talk) 01:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- I would assume that the software is treating something as something. We already know that the software does not behave as we are told it behaves. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:29, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks for responding. No, SandDoctor doesn't have "autopatrolled", but does have the "new page reviewer" right. Might the software be treating those two rights as the same? NewYorkActuary (talk) 01:11, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- Does User:TheSandDoctor have the autopatrol privilege? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Duplicate Articles
Occasionally, in the queue of new articles, I will see two articles with almost the same title, and the same or almost the same content. The most recent example is Little Caesar (singer) and Little Ceaser (singer). In these cases, the articles are either the same, or one is slightly longer than the other. My assumption is that in these cases the editor doesn't know how redirects work, and wants to make their information accessible under an alternate title, and so has created a duplicate article. In these cases I have converted one of the two articles, typically the one with the variant spelling, into a redirect. (It is commonly, and correctly, said that redirects are cheap. I would add that storage is cheap, and the problem with duplicate articles is not that they use storage, but that the two articles will get out of sync.) Has anyone else seen this? Do other reviewers agree that if the reviewer notices that there are duplicate articles, one of them should be a redirect (probably because the creator doesn't know about redirects). Robert McClenon (talk) 00:58, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- If you have duplicate articles, then all but the oldest/best/use-your-best-judgment should be redirects. That's true whether it's one user who doesn't know how to use Wikipedia, someone who does a copy/paste page move (assuming the end target is a valid title), or someone who doesn't realize an article already exists (usually with some form of disambiguation). Nothing wrong with it, and as you say, redirects are cheap! Primefac (talk) 01:52, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
- Redirects may be cheap but they lend a legitimacy to the typo. Many wiki-clones will happily pick up articles and present them with their typo title and correct content. Redirects from typos aren't necessary, a search on both Wikipedia and Google will happily point you to the right destination. What the redirects do succeed in doing however is propagating the typo and adding Wikpedia's imprimatur to it.
- This has been a bugbear for me since Sparrows Herne Turnpike Road / Sparrows Hearne turnpike in 2009. Hearne was a far less common typo before that redirect was created. Cabayi (talk) 12:18, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
- I seem to recall seeing another super-old redirect being nominated for deletion and kept. The actual policies regarding typos etc in redirects is probably more of WP:RFD's domain, but my point was more that we don't need two duplicate articles, and whichever is better should be the actual title with the actual content (I'm not really fussed if the second page is redirected, A10'd, or R3'd). Primefac (talk) 13:15, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Copyright Question
Sometimes, on New Page Patrol, I encounter an article that simply looks and feels like it was published in a journal or in a trade publication. It just doesn't look like it was written for Wikipedia, and looks like it is a polished piece of work, but was polished for a purpose other than Wikipedia. Normally I try to search for phrases in it using Google. Sometimes this works, and that is G12, but usually not. Earwig's copyvio detector is another source. If I don't find the original, my usual action is to tag it with {{copy-paste}}. Is there another reasonable action? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:29, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
In one case today, I tagged a page with copy-paste, and it was removed by the author with a comment that it was copied by the copyright author into a new page with a different title. Now that, to me, looks like an acknowledgment precisely that it is copyvio, because Wikipedia can't accept copyrighted material even from the copyright author unless there is a proper release of copyleft. Is that correct? What do I do now, other than re-apply the tag? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:29, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- My normal course is run through Earwig first, then Google partial sentences and phrases that are unique. That will normally turn up something. I've never encountered someone admitting a copyvio without naming a source like you describe. Despite what people think, the authors permission to include in Wikipedia alone is not enough. We need proof they irrevocably have licensed it under a compatible license, which means allowing commercial use. What you described seems like a clear case of a copyright violation since we wouldn't have proof of a compatible license. If you had a suspected source, it would make sense to send it to a copyright investigation. Not sure what is ideal since we don't know the source. Diannaa might have thoughts. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- Huh. If I've got the right page (now at AfD?), that's really an odd one.
As an admin, can youIs there an admin who might be able to look and see whether the draft page the user claims to have pasted it from ever existed? If not then clearly something fishy's going on. That said,(Nevermind, found it.) I do wonder where the line is for material we don't know to have been published elsewhere, with an author we'd have to verify for proper licensing. It's plausible to me this is a repurposing of a rejected journal article, in which case, is that any different from me drafting an entry in a Word doc and then pasting it over? Isn't my pasting it in effectively the compatible license? Absent indication the WP editor and the material's author are not the same, we do tend to take it on faith that the person adding the material is the person who wrote it/owns it... Innisfree987 (talk) 01:45, 13 July 2017 (UTC) - Robert McClenon, you're not an admin?? How've you gotten away with that this long?! Innisfree987 (talk) 01:52, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- User:Innisfree987 - That is it. If the author didn't publish it in some other medium, then there isn't a copyright issue. The deletion debate may turn on the matter of style, that it isn't in an encyclopedic tone. Maybe I should use that argument more often. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:22, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- Not an admin. In past years, there were editors at RFA who had a strong preference that new admins had to be "content creators", because some editors thought that content creators were being mistreated by admins. I'm ready to be an admin now if someone wants to nominate me. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:22, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- Huh. If I've got the right page (now at AfD?), that's really an odd one.
Reminder
Reminder: We are doing a push on July 15. If you are experienced in patrolling, we want you. Thanks! RileyBugz会話投稿記録 17:28, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- To RileyBugz: I was sort of inactive in past few days, probably will be for few more days (sleep issues); so I don't know what a push is. Would you please elaborate? Thanks a lot. —usernamekiran(talk) 18:50, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- I wasn't sure where this ended off at based on the previous conversations. If we are in fact making it a formal thing, I do think we should send a newsletter out alerting people. I also have DGG's concerns that this type of thing will push through hasty taggings, etc, but a newsletter to qualified reviewers with the right could help minimize that risk. There are other things that should probably be included (user scripts that weren't in the tutorial, decrease in backlog, etc.). Pinging Kudpung for general thoughts here. I have no problem working on the newsletter and sending it out tonight if need be. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:42, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
-
- I don't really have an opinion - I'm supposed to be retired from micromanaging NPP since February although the elected successor(s) have not taken up their 'duties'. From AfD experience I find that such drives are a net negative and that's why I never organised one for new articles. They encourage fast, superficial work. The additional problem is that with maintenance areas being a magnet for younger users, it will encourage total newbies, and other inexperienced users to patrol new pages and the result is that it just makes more work for qualified reviewers and admins. This is unfortunately exactly what the community faction led by one admin wanted, based on the premise: '...everyone can edit' . What they failed to mention (obviously) was that there are plenty of areas where precisely not every one can edit and IMO, NPP should be one of them. Personally, I'm more concerned with devoting my time to ensuring ACTRIAL is properly prepared and gets off to a timely start. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:57, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Is there an IRC room or Slack channel or anything that will be going on Saturday? Power~enwiki (talk) 03:55, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
- Check out the very lonely #wikimedia-npp connect channel :) — MusikAnimal talk 04:00, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
- And IMO, it's best staying lonely. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:45, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Adding Comments Direct to Article's Talk Page
I worry that I expend effort giving helpful feedback to the creator of an article, only to find suggestions pertinent to the article itself are simply lost and overlooked on a user's own talk page. Some editors have no inclination to act on improvement suggestions. Here's an example of one set of my comments left here and responded to here. The salient comment back to me being I'm afraid that I have neither the skills, time nor inclination to expand on these articles.""
So, if our Page Curation tool had the option to "Add copy of comments to article's talk page" this would enable other editors to see those constructive suggestions and hopefully act on them themselves. Many short feedback comments are clearly of no relevance to the article, but where they are, it's a great shame for them to be unavailable, and a lot more work to have to paste them in directly. Maybe accompany the feedback with a statement like this:
- A New Page Reviewer has left feedback for the creator of this article. The following extract may also be of relevance to other editors in improving this page: (inserted text and autosignature)
Any thoughts? Nick Moyes (talk) 10:41, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Interesting concept. I agree with DrStrauss and will add that I just reviewed User_talk:Mzj_10 and it appears to me that when a new editor creates a slew of articles that end-up at Afd in less than a week, it should raise a major red flag, and the action taken shouldn't be a simple TP notice. I think there should be a cut-off point as to what reviewers are expected to do under such circumstances. I would certainly support an Administrator's Red Flag Report Page here at NPP where reviewers can report such incidents in a centralized location that dedicated NPP admins like Kudpung and Primefac can easily monitor and take action as necessary. Atsme📞📧 14:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
-
- Adding to my comment above - in an effort to reduce the work load on our already inundated admins, page movers can move into Draft Space clusters/groups/series of articles created over the course of a week or two by the same problematic editor before they end-up as an AfD nom. It's sorta based on the expression killing two birds with one stone, or even assembly line production which takes less time and is far more efficient. If nothing happens while the articles are in draft space, the next option is MfD. See discussion thread about this very topic. Atsme📞📧 18:13, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
-
- Interesting concept. I agree with DrStrauss and will add that I just reviewed User_talk:Mzj_10 and it appears to me that when a new editor creates a slew of articles that end-up at Afd in less than a week, it should raise a major red flag, and the action taken shouldn't be a simple TP notice. I think there should be a cut-off point as to what reviewers are expected to do under such circumstances. I would certainly support an Administrator's Red Flag Report Page here at NPP where reviewers can report such incidents in a centralized location that dedicated NPP admins like Kudpung and Primefac can easily monitor and take action as necessary. Atsme📞📧 14:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
-
-
I've always thought the same, and I was going to post this in suggestions section.
On a few rare instances, I have seen the creator's account going inactive after creating an article with a good subject (not about organisation, or any type of COI).
In any case, it always felt wrong to give tips regarding an article to one particular editor.
I think, the first note should go to creators talk page like it does now. And like Nick suggested, a copy of this note, with a little difference in automated content, should go on the the article talkpage. The tool already has an option, while marking the page reviewed, a message can be sent only to the creator. Other than that, all the messages through tool should go on talk pages of the article, and the creator. That would also be helpful to spread a word around about NPR flag. —usernamekiran(talk) 15:08, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
- I've just noticed a similar idea, relating to redirects was added to the Suggestions page earlier this month (I should have checked first!). So, is the best way for those of us in favour of leaving a comment on the article talk page to pile over there and add their voices in support? Nick Moyes (talk) 15:32, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Is there still a character limit for comments?
I thought the 250 character limit had been resolved Was I wrong?
So, I've just crafted a long and very detailed reply to an editor whilst tagging an article that neeed more references. It contained quite a few hyperlinks to suggested references and wikilinks to other relevant articles. But this is how my comments appeared on their talk page:
- {{{3}}}
This has happened once before when I left detailed feedback and just the character 3 appeared inside triple wavy brackets. At that time my comments did actually appear to have arrived at their destination via message notification, despite not being visible on the user's Talk Page. I don't know if this is the case here this time. To be frank, I'm not sure I can face registering and learning how to use Phabricator to report this as an issue. Any takers or similar experiences? Nick Moyes (talk) 22:37, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
- All you need to do is click on the Phab number to be redirected to the Phab case. Once there you can change its status (if necessary) and add a comment. I've done it for you. And I'm pinging MusikAnimal (WMF) who I belived closed it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:46, 15 July 2017 (UTC)