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More history, and things that helped, and can further help to move NPP forward

Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 11384 articles, as of 06:00, 10 May 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot

The coordinators and other leading members of the NPP team are looking for ways to reduce the backlog.

Following the community's threat to do WP:ACPERM its own way by means of a local script, a 2017 WMF report of their investigation into NPP, was published onWiki in the form of an essay. They got a lot of things wrong and it was met on its talk page with heavy criticism from the community. Although senior staff have changed since then, the WMF's philosophy has nevertheless remained basically unchanged to this day and they have provided rationales that don't gel for keeping Page Triage on a back burner.

In response to the Foundation's report, one of the campaign tools to get WP:ACTRIAL finally done was this seminal essay which with its equally important talk page discussion, was largely instrumental in getting the WMF to take another look.

Now that fresh appeals are being made to the WMF to finally address bugs and requested features, it's well to note that WP:ACTRIAL which took about 5 years to get done after its rude dismissal by the WMF, was an absolute major milestone in progress. Its WP:ACPERM rollout proved a huge success - at the time, but with the recent increases in Internet coverage in developing countries and cheap smartphones in Asia at less than $100, the flood of new articles has reached new peaks. Improving the PageTriage software is one thing, but where it is proving almost impossible to motivate more than around 100 of the 750 New Page Reviewers and recruit new patrollers of the right calibre, additional measures will need to be investigated such as, for example:

1. increasing the ACPERM level to Extended confirmed
2. Finally creating an appropriate splash page in a compelling aesthetic design, that will significantly help new users who have the sole intention of creating an article at the moment of their registration.
3. A vastly improved genuinely interactive Article Wizard, in a compelling aesthetic design, one that provides new users with tips and quick-tutorials.

Suggestions

There's no denying that the profile of the content of the New Pages Feed has mutated in recent years and the advatage brought by ACPERM has now been largely lost.

1. Like the first attempt for ACTRIAL which neverteless commanded a huge consensus, increasing the ACPERM level would probably be met with resistance again from the WMF whose philosophy can be loosely perceived as 'quantity is more important than quality', such a proposal for another increase might not receive such an overwhelming consensus and a trial should naturally first be conducted.

2. A welcome page was already discussed way back in 2011 at the same time as PageTriage was being developed. Some interesting wire frames for a lightweight inter-active system were produced by WMF chief engineer Brandon Harris following some talks with me and I believe Scottywong. Easily created by linking custom Wiki pages, the only MediaWiki programming required would be for it to appear immediately a new user completes their registration. At the time however, with the focus on developing the new feed and its curation tools, the new-user feature was 'abandoned' and received no further attention after Brandon left the WMF. Instead of this, over the past 2 years or so the Growth Team have been developing a cross-Wiki mobile phone based mentorship system. This has its merits and is a hugely expensive project, but it's not the same thing as a quick and easy solution on the lines of Brandon's wire frames, and it's probably underused. At first blush it seems to be targeted at younger users, and the signed-up 'mentors' may possibly not have a sufficiently rich experience (I would have thought that the hosts at the Teahouse might already be doing a better job on the en.Wiki).

3. The third idea, which could avoid the need to increase the access level for creating new pages, could be to force new users with less than 500/90 to create articles through a new Article Wizard for which its 14 templates of a new system, created in 2017 but not implemented, and push them through AfC. This alternative Article Wizard could replace the current version very quickly and easily and requires no coding or MediaWiki extensions.

I'm suggesting that the NPP coords and seriously interested NPPers take a look at the essays and these suggestions before going public with them. I'd be happy to stick around for discussion and eventual development if there is any interest and take on the role of protagonist if need be. @MB, Novem Linguae, WereSpielChequers, Atsme, Barkeep49, Scottywong, The Blade of the Northern Lights, Insertcleverphrasehere, TonyBallioni, North8000, Rosguill, and Joe Roe:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:31, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for these ideas. If informal discussions on this page garner support, I think we should run these ideas by WT:NPPR. We need to figure out if NPPs think that stuff like raising the threshold to extendedconfirmed would help, or if they think the status quo is OK. There is also the issue of anything we do to change the article creation edit count requirements to reduce our own backlog, would probably just move the backlog over to AFC, resulting in no net change to the combined backlogs. There is also an issue of AFC being looked down upon by some in the community, who perceive it as a backdoor to deletion, and who perceive it as an unpleasant process for article writers due to its own months-long backlog. I think your point about the Article Creation Wizard being a "Welcome Page-lite" is a good point, and it can certainly take the place of it for awhile or indefinitely. I was recently involved in a successful effort to increase traffic to the Article Creation Wizard. We got a link to it placed at MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new-nocreate and MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new, which is displayed to users when they search for a non-existent article. The old link was a link to the disused requested articles project, so I see this as a clear improvement. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:41, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

IMO, Solutions usually mean identifying key fixable "problems" and fixing them. IMO The MOST key problems and solutions are:

At the broadest level:

1. Not enough active-at the moment "bigger number" NPP'ers
2. Not enough active NPP'ers
3. The NPP job is a little more painful and difficult than it needs to be.
4. The burden for seeing if GNG sources exist (for articles relying on GNG) is in the wrong place. Should be on editors, not NPP'ers

And at one level more specific:

1. It's unnecessarily difficult for a new NPP'er (who already knows policies and guidelines) to get started and later get fluent. Solution: we need to provide more doable effective help here
2. The NPP job is difficult and painful. Mostly not solvable, but providing more doable effective help here would help a bit. So would fixing the next item.
3. Need to put the burden on editors that it's their job to find GNG sourcing for article s that need it but don't have it. Three ways to help that:

• Establish that the normal process is that these go to draft for the editors to do that.
• Get rid of 90 day draft "rule" or change it to 6 months.
• Get rid of wp:before

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:31, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

@North8000. Great ideas, thanks North. Got anything specific in mind for #1 and #2? Your #3 gives me an idea... how about we use the software to enforce a rule (either by a modification to MediaWiki core, a MediaWiki extension, or an edit filter) that all newly created articles require 3 inline citations (e.g. 3 <ref> tags)? Easy to implement, isn't retroactive, and isn't quite as dramatic as draftifying or deleting a bunch of stuff. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:20, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Novem Linguae Thanks for asking. Have me write a guide/tips for newer NPP'ers placed somewhere where it will get read. Step one will be to learn wp:not and wp:notability well and to learn a few SNG's although most new NPP'ers would already have done that. Next will be the mechanics of the basic tasks and which tools to use / not use to do them. New will be practical advice which is that it's mostly about whether or not an article should exist or not. After that it will be advice to have a thick skin when appropriate. Later on it will be to learn relevant areas (e.g. more SNG's, wp:common outcomes) and then how to make pretty good decisions somewhat quickly, including weighing other considerations. North8000 (talk) 20:44, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

@North8000. Those all sound like great ideas. Perhaps we should make you the NPP Tutorial Coordinator or NPP Training Manual Coordinator or something similar and you could be in charge of that, if you're interested and if folks think it's a good idea. I have some of my own notes [1][2][3] that could be useful, and I'm sure others do too. The amount of noise, dated information, and unclear information in the formal notability policies is quite high, and in my opinion there is a need for "practical guides". The practical knowledge is locked in the heads of the high volume NPPers. I wrote a lot of the notes I linked by peppering my NPP school trainer Onel with questions. Would be great to get it out of people's heads and onto paper. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:52, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: (I thought I responded yesterday but don't see it) The short version is "Yes I'd be happy to" but I don't want to encroach on anybody's current work. I haven't learned the current situation yet regarding who is active at what. North8000 (talk) 14:23, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

@North8000. I envision you modifying a different page than the main tutorial at Wikipedia:New pages patrol, so I don't think you'd be stepping on anyone's toes. I'd recommend creating Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Practical tips or Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Training guide or however you want to structure it. Feel free to keep me in the loop, I'd be happy to copy edit it or give advice. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:56, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: I'll do that. Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Practical tips. And maybe if we add "assistant" before one of the titles that you mentioned that would be a good one for me. Like "Assistant NPP tutorial co-ordinator" and let people know, that would take care of what I was after. And my first action will be to recognize that you are someone who also know what's needed and knowledgeable in those areas. And to suggest that once I get it started, if you feel like it, that we both just boldly wail away on this thing without worrying about stepping on each other's toes. North8000 (talk) 15:49, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

@North8000. Sounds good to me! Let's move forward with that plan. Thanks for stepping up. I'll watchlist Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Practical tips and we can collaborate on it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:28, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Cool. I fixed a significant error in my post. I fixed it but to repeat here for emphasis I meant (the bolded part was the missing text) : .....that we both just boldly wail away on this thing without worrying about stepping on each other's toes. North8000 (talk) 17:09, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Even for one experienced on guidelines and policies, it's too difficult to learn NPP

• There are three relatively easy changes that I think could both get community support and also WMF support. The first is to raise the bar against spammers by some sort of sticky prod for corporations. Is it a new article or draft on a commercial entity? Does it cite two reliable sources that are independent of the entity? Yes to the first question and No to the second - {{CorpProd}}.
• Second enable BLPProd in draftspace.
• Third borrow DE wiki's system for prompting editors for their source.

ϢereSpielChequers 16:50, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers can you say more about how the DE system works? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:14, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

My understanding is that a prompt comes up when you edit on DE. But my German is not good enough to check how it works. Someone such as SoWhy may be able to say more. ϢereSpielChequers 08:15, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

(pinged) @WereSpielChequers: I'd like to help but I cannot recall seeing such a prompt before, probably because I have reviewer-rights on de-wiki. Does it appear when you add something without a source to an article? I can try with my alt accounts if I know what to look for. Regards SoWhy 09:13, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks SoWhy, that's how I remember it being described to me. I'm pretty sure it was on DE wiki. ϢereSpielChequers 09:38, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

• In general, my kneejerk reaction is that I'd be opposed to raising the bar for article creation to extended-confirmed. EC is a much higher bar than autoconfirmed, and takes a lot longer to achieve. While it would definitely dramatically reduce the volume of shitty new articles being created, I think there would also be too many negative side effects of such a drastic move. I'm much more in favor of #2 and #3, improving the user interface to provide better information to new users about Wikipedia policies, teach new users how to create better articles, set expectations for what is likely to happen to their new article in various scenarios, etc., etc., etc. Currently, the user interface doesn't provide much of this information (instead it's scattered about the WP namespace and likely takes the average user months to find and absorb), and what it does provide is not presented particularly well. I think this is an ideal task for WMF staffers to take on, because it's difficult to ask WP volunteers to do this kind of work (and do it well). Very few of us are genuine user interface / user experience experts. And even if we do have a few UX experts, it's unlikely that any of them would have the time to do a deep analysis of the situation and design a thoughtful user interface that meets all of the needs. This needs to be a deeply thorough and time-consuming exercise, and ideally it would involve hiring an external UX firm to do much of the work (unless WMF truly has the experienced staff to do it themselves). WMF surely has pockets deep enough to afford such a venture (which really wouldn't even be that expensive), and I think it would make a significant impact. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 17:29, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

break

• Thanks everyone for responding. It's good to see people having some serious thoughts about it. I agree that raising the ACPERM bar to Extended Confirmed (90/500) might dampen new users' enthusiasm, but allowing them to create by forcing them through the Article Wizard and then eventually, optionally through AfC is not the same, and it doesn't infringe upon the traditionalists' philosophy of 'anyone can edit'. If I have time in the coming days, I'll draw a very simple flow chart of what I mean - or of course others are more than welcome to come up with ideas, ICPH is pretty good at flow charts.

AFC might well be looked down upon by some in the community, who perceive it as a backdoor to deletion - but that is only for the drafts that are dumped on Wikipedia by creators who have no intention of improving them. More aptly, AfC is regarded by some spammers and UPEists as a backdoor channel to publication (proof exists) because they think AfC is a softer touch than NPP.

A new landing page and a new Article Wizard have existed for a long time already but are not operational. I didn't link to them because I wanted to get feedback on the ideas first. The Foundation's pockets are indeed deep and well lined but the reason we are having this discussion is precisely because they apparently refuse to spend money on the systems that control the relevance and quality of new pages. They are conspicuously concerned with maintaining their typical paradigm that quantity is better than quality and that there are thousands of unpaid editors standing by to turn even the worst junk into appropriate and notable articles. However, the average reader is not a registered user, and the average registered editor is not interested in what makes Wiki tick, but there are 100s of qualified UX people among core backroom participants (for example, I studied Kommunikationswissenschaften for 8 years in Berlin and it was my career for the next 32 years).

I don't see the need to employ an outside UX firm. Admittedly the WMF are rarely any good at it themselves, they have a firmly established reputation of developing stuff whether it's wanted/needed or not and bullying the communities into using it. Furthermore they already waste a lot of money by unnecessary outsourcing (because they are swimming in cash). If not already done so, please do read the 2017 WMF essay of their investigation into NPP and the response to it.

There's no denying that NPP has a steep learning curve, but so has adminship, or driving a car (at least in the UK and EU), or learning to fly a simple Cessna 150. A guide/tips for newer NPP'ers placed somewhere where it will get read' - we we already have a comprehensive handbook and video and anyone who wants to be a New Page Reviewer should have read it first. Before asking for the right they should also be cognisant of the notability and deletion policies. Analogy: We don't give a driving licence to a teenager (or anyone else) who has never driven and send them on their own to a German autobahn and tell them to go and learn to drive their car, and read a highway code if they feel like it. We have an NPP School and the effort should be to make reviewers use it. The problem with insisting things get read is you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, and those of us who regularly respond at ORCP are well aware how the candidates blatantly refuse to read the in-your-face instructions and troll away wasting everyone's time.

Finally, it will never be possible to either motivate the 600 inactive reviewers or recruit a significant number of new ones who will be truly active. @MB, Novem Linguae, WereSpielChequers, Atsme, Barkeep49, Scottywong, The Blade of the Northern Lights, Insertcleverphrasehere, TonyBallioni, North8000, Rosguill, and Joe Roe:Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:16, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

A decade ago we had a similar issue with trying to recruit people to fix the backlog of unreferenced BLPs. I remember finding someone who was doing that well, nominating them for adminship and making a big thing about their referencing unreferenced BLPs in my nomination statement. Given that RFA is now more widely advertised and on average gets rather more participation, I think that nominating a good NPPer at RFA would send the message that doing this well is a route to adminship. No need to mention our problems, just find someone who does NPP well and can reference and save things worth saving as well as tagging stuff for deletion and is ready to run, use the nomination process to remind people of the importance of NPP and how it is a good preparation for adminship. Many of the hundreds of people who watch RFA are wannabe admins. We could also write a signpost article, but I'm not convinced a "doom and gloom" article actually sells this as something to donate time to. ϢereSpielChequers 10:01, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

I would agree that finding positive ways to build excitement is great and I think the new coordinators have been doing that intentionally and just by the virtue that they exist. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:07, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers and Barkeep49: A lightweight article on NPP already appeared in The Signpost, at NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers. It was aimed at clearing up some misconceptions about the process and at the same time encouraging users to sign up for NPP. It wasn't at all doom-and-gloom but being 4 years ago it is not read by more recent editors. It's time for a new article and I have already drafted one which is waiting, according to journalistic courtesy, for the invited comments from some mentioned parties, upon which it will be adapted and improved. It won't be expressing a feeling or attitude that things are only getting worse either; more to the point it will be an encouragement for editors to become NPPers while nevertheless outlining why we need them.

It's great that after a long hiatus we finally have some coordinators again. Awaking interest in coordination has been an arduous and winding road, especially where some users have stated that NPP needs no coordination. I hope that myth has been dispelled. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:37, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm of the mind that by offering a productive and somewhat fun NPPSCHOOL experience will greatly help market NPPSCHOOL. I mention in my tutorial that "NPP is not a cakewalk and has been referred to as a step toward becoming an administrator." I graduated one patroller who went on to become an admin, later worked with another who was an admin, and also had a student tell me upfront they had no intention of ever becoming an amin. :-) I try to make my tutorials a fun learning experience with no pressure, no deadlines, and not by making students follow rigid rules at the onset, but letting them share with me how they interpret specific PAGs, which opens the door to discussion between mentor and student. They also participate in a hands-on experience and we talk about why they took a certain action. It helps me to evaluate a student's critical thinking skills, as well as their behavior, both of which speaks volumes to whether or not they are truly suited for the rights. Granted, it's not foolproof, but for me and my students (I hope), it has been fun learning experience. Atsme 💬 📧 17:37, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Popping in to say that Atsme's NPPS course is one of the best things I have had the pleasure of partaking in onwiki. Cannot recommend it enough. Thinking about what made it a good experience, Atsme is just a great person to interact with. Unfortunately, we cannot clone Atsme, so let's look at the course itself. I liked seeing the entirety of the course on the page before I began. This eliminated any chance of feeling surprised by the course itself. Another big positive I can think of off the top of my head was the ability to go back and fix mistakes on my own, to show my new understanding of the concept. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Atsme was (and is!) extremely open to questions. The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked. It made NPPS feel more like the learning part of school, and less like the testing part of school.

On a semi-related note, it appears that Kudpung changed the introduction at WP:NPPS to say that NPPS is for people who still feel unsure after reading the tutorial. I feel that this should be reverted; I would have been less likely to enroll in NPPS if I encountered this wording. I would have felt looked down upon for failing to understand the "easy-to-read" tutorial. HouseBlaster^talk 02:47, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks HouseBlaster. User feedback is extremely important. The tutorial is easy to read, but it is comprehensive and there is no denying that the learning curve for NPP is steep and while it requires a near-admin knowledge of notability and deletion, it is not the role of the tutorial to teach these policies. Most users who go for adminship have been around a long time while many NPPers are (by comparison) relatively recent registrations.

Do feel free to make any positive changes. Like the the tutorial which I wrote most of, I created the school single-handed, and only because no one else was doing these things at the time but I don't own either of them. I think what I was trying to do in that sentence was encourage people to use the school, but despite my experience with comm and UX, I'm sure that there are often better ways of saying things. The main thing is that some users, like yourself, are interactive and don't take everything we do for granted as gospel, and rather than just being critical or accusatory which on Wiki is too often the result, they make suggestions. Its also what has made Atsme such a good teacher. The truth is however, that some editors aspiring to be NPPer (or who already are) indeed appear not to have read the tutorial at all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:49, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Replying to ping – thank you both for the kind words. It was a great way to start my day! Of course, working with top notch students like HouseBlaster, who began with an enthusiastic, open-minded approach, adds "pleasurable" to the teaching experience. Words cannot express my gratitude to Kudz for all the work he has done for this project, and how valuable he is to us now, despite being semi-retired. But I feel obligated to come clean about my motivations, sooo...for me, teaching at NPPS is self-indulgence because I truly do enjoy assisting others, and working collaboratively with editors in an effort to advance, preserve, and help protect this great project. I think an even greater experience for new patrollers comes after graduation, knowing they are now part of a unique collaboration with other NPPS alumni - all of whom are certified with user rights and capable of doing the job. How well they perform is up to the individual. They can always go back to their tutor and ask questions, or present their issue on this project's discussion page, all the while knowing they are part of a bold and beautiful team of NPP reviewers, although not privileged by any stretch of the imagination. All of us must keep a fresh piece of humble pie nearby, unless crow or hat is preferred. Atsme 💬 📧 10:56, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Good to hear that a Signpost article is coming, I don't know how the 2018 article affected the backlog or to what extent the Signpost reaches the currently active editors. But I've had past success in recruiting participants for other projects via the Signpost. ϢereSpielChequers 06:30, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

break

Further up I mentioned ways of reducing the flow of inappropriate new articles and how this could be done with a combination of two systems which would avoid raising the bar beyond ACPERM for newly registered users who want to create a page immediately:

1. A proper welcome page that opens immediately on competing the registration.
2. Forcing those users through the Article Wizard who want to create a page.

Templates for these have existed for some years already. Jorm made the ones for the welcom page and I made a new Wizard. I recently found this flowchart I made a long time ago. Perhaps it would help understand what I am suggesting. It's very basic. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:08, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

• I recall now having suggested this solution at the Community Wishlist in 2016. It received a lot of discussion and quite a few supports, but was not taken on by the devs. Probably because it ads just one simple step to aid newly registered users to create their first article (see the flowchart) and due to their unwritten perceived policy that it would conflict with one of the Five Pillars, but I'm not sure which one, if any. If NPP is to be helped to keep the backlog at sustainable levels and if this cannot be achieved by increasing the number of active patrollers, then this is clearly a solution that should now be examined.

The NPP letter to the WMF now approaches 300 signatories. This is something that the Foundation will not be able to ignore and onboarding new users in a quick an easy way should be one of their prioritities. @MB, Novem Linguae, WereSpielChequers, Atsme, Barkeep49, Scottywong, The Blade of the Northern Lights, Insertcleverphrasehere, TonyBallioni, North8000, Rosguill, and Joe Roe:. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:05, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I hate to say it, but trying to start a new article is a really bad way to start editing Wikipedia and probably will not end well. If today was your first day in Wikipedia, what new article would you write? North8000 (talk) 20:44, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree with North8000. Article writing is not for beginners. I'd say it's almost a right of passage for a new editor to have an article deleted at AFD. I've been on the receiving end of that. I think the complexity of our notability guidelines is the main reason for this. Solutions that come to mind would be a huge simplification of the notability guidelines down to a bulleted list of clear criteria (red lines) that you could pick from a combo box (would never gain consensus though), or making AFC and the article wizard mandatory for more folks (right now it's just mandatory for non-autoconfirmed). The village pump / non-NPPers don't really seem to like draftspace/AFC though, and somewhat understandably (if the article is at all borderline, wait times are 4 months for a review). So we may end up stuck in our current equilibrium for awhile. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:58, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

• I really truly would like to see more of a push toward cleaning up the articles that were draftified. Organize what we have by topic in a central location (I believe it is already centralized so please wikilink for me.) If we could find some dedicated teachers to work with newbies and use those articles to demonstrate the problems and why they were draftified while teaching them how to fix those problems, they would be learning how to create articles correctly. Think editathons, and other teaching programs in schools/universities that turn students loose on WP to create articles - what a mess that creates!! The draftified articles are a win-win with all kinds of positive benefits. The latter is similar to the plan I discussed with Bluerasberry who has a valuable resource, re: students/researchers, etc. that we could put to good use for WP, and for NPP. It's too much for me to do it alone, and would require paid dedicated teachers – and this is also where I was hoping we could get 2 full time techs. Atsme 💬 📧 22:30, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

• Of course 'trying to start a new article is a really bad way to start editing Wikipedia' even if getting it deleted is a right of passage, but not every serious new user's first article gets deleted. There's no doubt either that AfC does a grand job even if it takes a few months for a review; drafts aren't in mainspace and no draft is so urgent that it can't wait to be processed. So, back on track, what is being done, or can be done, to stem the tide of inappropriate new pages before they even get further down the road before finally being rejected and deleted? Our mission here is to reduce a permanent backlog at NPP before unreviewed articles drop off the edge into Googleland. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:49, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
• I'm belatedly catching up on this and other coordination-related discussions and I think there are many good ideas. However, we need to be careful about falling into an echo chamber. For example, no matter how many people here think it's a good idea, restricting article creation further than it is already is simply unrealistic. To be blunt, statements like "article writing is not for beginners" do not carry much weight coming from editors who have only written a handful of articles themselves, and are going to get a strong pushback from highly successful, article creation-focused wikiprojects like Women in Red and outreach programmes like WikiEd whose bread and butter is getting new editors to write short articles and editathons, not to mention the hundreds of editors who (like me) first understood that Wikipedia really is something that "anyone can edit" when they clicked on a red link. It's just a non-starter.

Kudpung's original suggestion of improving the tools and guidance offered to new editors when they want to write an article seems much more realistic to me. However, for that we need help from the WMF, and we know that isn't easy. One thing that seemed to help with both the original creation of PageTriage and WP:ACPERM was that they were backed by preliminary trials and research. For better or worse, the WMF is a cautious bureaucracy and it is much more likely to respond to quantitative data and external consultants' finding than it is to letters from enwiki editors. It's also much more focused on movement diversity than it was in the PageTriage days, and therefore much less likely to invest in something that only helps enwiki. On the other hand, it's also jumped hard on the "countering disinformation" bandwagon, which is something NPP could probably attach itself to (we're the most important firewall against disinformation on their most important project). So I'd suggest the best use of our energy would be to first try and get the WMF to commission new research into the article creation and curation process, emphasising that new articles are a major "vulnerability" in terms of disinformation, then lobby for cross-project tool improvements that we could benefit from. – Joe (talk) 11:21, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

• Another belated catcher-upper here, but recent events have raised concern. I can relate to and appreciate the above suggestions, and can see things objectively from various perspectives. What I am not seeing is how we can resolve the backlogs if we do not (a) get the bot creations resolved, and (b) raise the bar on our most important user rights. I am also of the mind that our little handful of active NPPers cannot possibly keep the pace of the global bot creations that are coming at us from every direction; for example, Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Dams article. Our fluctuating (and shrinking) numbers of active editors w/advanced-rights are an attestation of weaknesses in the current system. Our current low bar on user rights has not helped, and may be contributing to the problem. Granting user rights goes beyond routine editing, and the bar for acquiring those rights should include closer scrutiny on a user's editing background. I do not believe 90 days of editing and 500 edits is a good baseline as it tells us very little, but then each editor should be evaluated based on the merits of their edits, and a prelim interview of some sort. I have seen users granted autopatrolled rights after easily racking up 1500 edits in 90 days by simply adding wikilinks, and making minor grammar corrections, and in some instances the result is wikilink overkill and poor grammar corrections. Autopatrolled should not be given away as freely as it has been because of the problems it creates, including UPE/PE, bots, and WP:CIR issues. Questions that needs thoughtful answers:
  1. Why is there a backlog at AfD? We should be looking deeper for the root cause vs treating the symptoms, such as a shortage of closers.
  2. Why are we allowing redirects for articles that should be deleted, particularly articles with a history of reverted redirects, and no updates that warrant the revert? Redirects are not cheap – they can and do cost us valuable time. We currently have 4973 redirects in the NPP queue, which is down from the 8k+ but it is still high.
  3. How many individual autopatrolled articles become redirects or end up at AfD? If I'm not mistaken, autopatrolled articles don't get reviewed by NPP, correct?
  4. How many speedies and PRODs were reverted by admins, and ended up as noms at AfD that were deleted vs kept?
• Are we really reducing our backlog if we're giving autopatrolled or NPP rights to editors who need schooling? Novem Linguae, perhaps we could create a community authorized prelim evaluation process here at NPP for editors wanting autopatrolled + other advanced rights (relative to NPP), and allow trained reviewers to evaluate them before an admin can grant them the rights? I am not implying that NPP reviewers are perfect, or that admins are not – it would be very helpful to have the stats – but the flaws in the current process are real and need fixing. Atsme 💬 📧 13:46, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

  Hey Atsme. Thanks for the ideas. However I am mildly opposed to making autopatrolled harder to get and to making NPP harder to get. Both would increase the size of our backlog, and I do not feel sufficient evidence of systemic problems/abuse has been presented. Got any diffs of egregious conduct by multiple NPPs or multiple autopatrolled users? If so then maybe I will change my opinion, but it'd have to be multiple diffs from multiple users in order to paint a picture that this is a major problem and not just a one-off. Hope that make sense. I have seen users granted autopatrolled rights after easily racking up 1500 edits in 90 days by simply adding wikilinks, and making minor grammar corrections. The standard for autopatrol is usually 25 non-maintenance tagged, non-sub-stub article creations within the last year. This can vary a bit based on the admin at WP:PERM/A, but seems to be the average standard used. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not really following much of this. The requirements for Autopatrol are at least 25 articles of good quality, it's not based on edit count. The more people that have AP, the fewer articles need review by NPP. So this does help out the NPP backlog. If there are problems with AP being granted too leniently, that would need to be taken up elsewhere, first with the Admin. I do think there are some editors with AP that create too many stubs on topics that have questionable notability. But this is really outside of NPP.

  As far as redirects, if there were fewer redirect to review, would people spend more time on articles? I don't know. Personally, I usually do some redirects when I am too burned out to look at articles. If we want to cut down on the effort spent reviewing redirects, we should discuss not reviewing Move redirects. When an article is moved, there is no "new" article to look at. An existing article is re-titled, and a redirect is created automatically so it implicitly "correct". The only thing to check for is whether the move itself was invalid, but we really aren't the "move police". Lot's of other people can do that too.

  Is there a shortage of closers creating a backlog at AFD? I have never heard that before. The problems with AFD are mostly too many nominations and two few participants causing relists and not enough comments to solidly determine consensus. We can't force people to do anything, let alone participate in AFDs. But again, how is this directly related to NPP? MB 21:45, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

  MB, "not reviewing move redirects" seems like something that can be explored. If a human reviewer is (almost) always marking these as reviewed, then it can be done by a bot as well. Maybe take to the general discussion page? -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:48, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

  I brought this up directly with @Rosguill six months ago on his TP. As long as he is doing 50-60k redirects himself every year and redirects really aren't a big issue for NPP, I think we should focus on more important things right now. But this is the first thing I think we should look at if the redirect backlog ever starts growing significantly. MB 23:31, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

  Actually, I too had a somewhat relevant thought, a few days back: We should add Autopatrolled recruitment and monitoring as a co-ordinator task. That co-ordinator would look at the eligible for autopatrolled report, and other data, and recommend article creators for autopatrolled. Nobody but NPP (and UPE/SPAM editors) should care about autopatrolled, so we should be the ones doing this. I know a few reviewers are doing this already, but this should be managed better. The monitoring part of my suggestion would be to periodically look at a random assortment of new autopatrolled articles to see if they would still be marked as reviewed by an NPP. This is just to check that the autopatrolled creators are maintaining their standards. If the monitoring part of my suggestion is deemed to be out of NPP's scope, then that can be skipped. Also, we might as well add the pseudo permission redirect-autopatrolled under this task. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  Sounds like a promising idea. I went ahead and added it as a potential coordinator task. With the release of my "edits by autopatrolled users" patch, auditing autopatrolled users should be easier nowadays. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:05, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Signatories

@MB and Novem Linguae: One signatory is indeffed for CIR. Should that signature be removed or allowed to stand? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:48, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I have been removing other blocked users. This was a block for multiple accounts, but I see no evidence of that and there is denial in an unanswered appeal. I think we should leave this one for now, but remove it later if the block is still in place when we send the letter. The announcement in the Admin newsletter was a few days ago, as in the SP. Signatures have slowed to a trickle, so it is probably time to end the signature phase. MB 16:13, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

@MB and Novem Linguae: The announcement on the Admin Newsletter probably brought about the sudden flurry of signatures from 6 admins. Some people get round to reading The Signpost quite late and I think there is a good chance of reaching 500. Which means the distribution campaign could start before the end of the month with publication in the next issue of The Signpost being one of the venues as well as the direct mailing and other WMF project pages. By then, also the results of the BoT election will have been made and the fundraising probably let loose on unsuspecting donors. If Legotkm and Mike Peel are successful, the encyclopedias will have two board members concerned with the WMF providing more technical support to the communities. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:19, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Too many inactive Reviewers

Could somebody, MB? make that list of NPR rights holders who have not yet signed the petition. I would naturally have done it myself but I'm not a software engineer and I don't know how to do it and I'm not ashamed to admit it - I'm a pre-SQL and Regex generation and such stuff was never my line of study. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:40, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung, NL did it and sent it to you via email days ago. MB 05:43, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@MB and Novem Linguae: never received. Checked junk, spam, trash, on my computers, and all mails and trash on my server. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:04, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung I just resent it, you should have it. MB 06:12, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

MB, nothing received. Please check your mail. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:29, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

quarry:query/67299 has all patrollers who have neither their user page nor user talk page linked from the petition. There's some alt accounts on there (User:DGGnyc jumped out at me, for example), and if any signatories have neither their user nor talk page directly linked, they'll show up on the list too. —Cryptic 15:12, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Cryptic the email finally got through, so new we have two lists. Thanks. MB 01:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Cryptic and Novem Linguae: and anyone else who provided the list. It was a very useful and revealing exercise but my original intention for it is probably not such a good idea after all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:22, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

New article banner

It looks like we have NPP consensus to do this. Where do we go from here? Do we need propose this at WP:VPR? It would affect 10,000 articles, but that is only 0.15%.

There are technical details to work out also. The first mock-up is using {{ombox}} which is not supposed to be for articles. The second box is with {{ambox}} which IS for articles. With the existing parameters, I made a similar version, that can be left aligned and doesn't have the yellow border. It does have a fat bar on the left that is supposed to match the "type" (blue for info). I got rid of the blue in the third example (by setting the "type" to "protection"). I think I would like to have it without the left bar. There is a {{Asbox}} for the stub tags at the bottom of articles, so there is a precedent for a special-type box on articles. Maybe a special {{Npbox}} just for this?

Then there is the matter of what adds and removes it. I was assuming we would need a bot to take care of that, but NL thinks he can patch the Page Triage code? I'll let you take the lead on that. MB 04:19, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Like NOINDEX, this is likely to be another tough one, both from the consensus side and the implementation side. Sadly I am busy with my day job for another month or two so I won't be able to take the lead on this one or do any difficult programming work in general. My recommended ideal implementation would be to have PageTriage display the banner, since we could do this with 0 SQL queries and 0 edits.

A bot would also work, but then we add 2 edits to every unreviewed page, possibly more if there is a BLAR-style edit war. A bot algorithm could be done two ways: 1) do a daily cron job that gets a list of all unreviewed mainspace pages (using an SQL query on the pagetriage_pages table), then check each page's wikicode for the presence of the template, and add if needed, or 2) try to listen to the new pages feed using the API for this (I know it exists but I have no experience with it).

For consensus, perhaps we should proceed the same way we did with NOINDEX, and place a {{subst:Please see|}} at one or more village pumps. This would keep the discussion centralized on the NPPR talk page.

Maybe we should use our current discussion to hammer out which template is the most supported, and then run a second survey (probably tagged RFC) that just has two options: the best banner from the first survey, or status quo. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:38, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm generally supportive of this idea but we're talking about adding a prominent new template to every single new article; that absolutely won't happen as a result of local consensus at WP:NPR, there needs to be a WP:CENT-advertised RfC somewhere central like WP:VPR. I'd get the technical details hammered out first, too. People hate vague proposals. – Joe (talk) 09:50, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Joe Roe, if the WMF were to do what they are supposed to do, here wouldn't be any need for this banner at all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:23, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Assuming you're talking about NOINDEX, I think a major reason "the WMF" is (rightfully) leery about doing it is precisely because there wasn't a clear consensus in such a widely-seen discussion. I tried to point this out several times, but at times NPP seems almost afraid of checking whether the wider community agrees with it. But NPP isn't the only part of the project with a stake in article creation and WT:NPR is never going to be somewhere where you can get project-wide changes implemented. – Joe (talk) 06:15, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

That's an interesting observation Joe but it's not the reason and I for one can't think of any viable objections anyway to extending NOINDEX and/or adding this proposed mini banner to new articles; regular article creators are not affected by it and their submissions are usually quickly processed. NPP is the only firewall against inappropriate content and new creators have a right to be informed (and educated) why their articles are not promptly reviewed. Only those who actually review new articles are aware of the serious issues that are at stake and which affect their work.

It doesn't matter how 'leery' the WMF is, it's not their call and they are not even aware of what life is like here in the trenches. Like on the German Wiki it's a no-brainer and a local requirement and the devs are paid to respond to the communities' requirements for keeping the Foundation's cherished projects clean. Like many requests at Phab, it's something that we could go ahead and fix ourselves if we knew how. The only problem is that it needs something tweaking in the MediaWiki software. The Foundation is currently resisting all and any requests to improve the NPP system that is already unable to meet the new challenges of the NewPagesFeed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

One more idea. We could also skip the message and add an icon to the top right. There is sample on this page now (not the icon we would actually use). It is even less obtrusive than any banner, probably too much so. Those icons are not displayed in mobile view, so a lot of readers would entirely miss it. We have clear support of NPP for a small, relatively "unobtrusive", banner notice. We could offer an icon as an alternative in a formal RFC if the larger community doesn't agree with the banner.

(unsigned by MB 02:49, September 12, 2022‎ )

• IMO, Any of the above small banner examples would be fine. Until the WMF understands the need for NOINDEX to be extended, something like this needs to be done and it needs to be sufficiently visible as a warning to readers that what they are about to read may not be accurate or neutral. An almost invisible icon is not worth the stress of working out the technicalities and running the whole thing through a site-wide RfC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:18, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

• It seems the "Top Icon" does not actually have to be an icon. I have added a more visible "Not Reviewed" message (the icon is still there too but the final could be just words or could combine the two). This is more like the German WP version. There is no "learn more" link as there is in the banner, but hovering on the icon takes you to the help page. The biggest problem is still that this won't show on mobile view. MB 15:24, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

No Index

@Novem Linguae, thinking about when we get NoIndex extended, that is going to generate more questions at the Help Desk and other places asking "why can't I find my article with google?" I made that proposal at NPR/R to add a Maint Tag to noindexed articles, and then there was a suggestion to do something less obtrusive like on the German site. I asked at VPT (here) if anyone knew anything about that, but the thread was archived with no response. There have been other threads about coordinates not displaying properly on certain skins, so I'm wondering if anything like that might be more trouble than it is worth. Any ideas on where to turn? I could just repost at VPT as that is the most techy place we have. If you don't remember this, this is a German with the "Nicht gesichtet" message in the upper right. MB 04:43, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Workaround: I created a user script that displays article review status. User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/ReviewStatus.

I think manually tagging tens of thousands of articles with a new maintenance tag... has some challenges, both for consensus and for technical implementation. Would probably need a bot to place them upon article creation, and then PageTriage and Twinkle to remove them upon getting marked as reviewed. Or would need to add something to MediaWiki:common.js, but that would cost an extra API query for every mainspace page. I'm a bit hesitant about this proposal.

The German icon appears to be coming from mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs, which is a little different from PageTriage's "mark as reviewed" system. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:57, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

• @MB and Novem Linguae: Has the NOINDEX project fizzled out? Is it now at stalemate? It may not be realised by everyone here, but 'NoIndex - Indefinite' was an original feature of the Page Curation development process in 2012. IMO this therefore doesn't even need debating. It just needs implementing. The people working at, or in charge of Phab may not have been around at the time. Why do the devs have to play God and invent policy just to wangle out of things they are not interested in doing? Their salaries come from our unpaid work... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:51, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

  It's stuck in code review. The following feedback was given that I need to find the time and brainpower to address. Unfortunately I am busy at my day job for another few weeks so it will be hard to prioritize this. However there were around 4 other feedbacks which were easier and which I already addressed: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/PageTriage/+/815835 "I think I found a loophole in this logic. Say the age is at 90 days, and the other variable is indefinite. Now if I have an unreviewed article that's 100 days old, wouldn't adding actually remove the noindex property from that article? To fix this I think the logic needs to be fixed so that there's one variable for all unreviewed articles and a second variable for all other articles. -Majavah" The good news though is, the vibe I am getting is that once I fix this, everything will probably proceed smoothly. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:00, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the update NL. I guess that's kind of good news, but I still think that having to do the WMF's work for free is totally unacceptable. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:02, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

NOINDEX update

Quick update on NOINDEX. I'm currently busy with my day job for a month or two so will be able to do very little programming work. NOINDEX is currently held up by a patch I need to make some changes to, https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/PageTriage/+/815835. Some of the initial objections in the Phab ticket were withdrawn or resolved, so after I make the changes, it is likely to proceed. It's at the top of my list of patches to work on, since it seems to be something that NPPs really want, and the queue is way over 90 days right now so unreviewed articles are getting indexed. I saw a really terrible article the other day that was indexed... was talking about ejaculation and masturbation and stuff. Would be great to keep that kind of thing out of mainspace. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:05, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

The answer is to insist that the active reviewers all review from the back of the queue for a while. That's all we a can do. Launching yet yet another backlog drive for barnstars will just annoy people. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:27, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Kudpung, this was the latest thread on NOINDEX before you revived the earlier one. As this is expected to happen when NL can get to it and get the necessary reviews, I have been working on the related parts. You and I have drafted Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Unreviewed_article_help. Unless you plan to do more on that, I will ask on the discussion page for other NPPers to take a look now. Also, did you notice the big red "Not Reviewed" message at the top of this page? I think that is similar to the German notice - its about the same size. We can accomplish that with {{Top icon}}, unless someone has a technical objection to "misusing" that template for something that is not really an icon. I think that is a viable option, in addition to the banner. MB 17:18, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

MB, yes, I saw that thing in the top right hand corner. It will go ignored by most people. It's not evident that a mouseover will produce a popup with more info. I mentioned elsewhere that the proper mini banner (there are three versions of it somewhere) is the way to go if people want to know why their article has still not been reviewed. I will continue going through the Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Unreviewed_article_help, I had nearly finished but the Open Letter action is more urgent right now and there are only 24 hours in my day despite my time zone! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:32, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Backlog drive

@MB, Novem Linguae, Buidhe, Zippybonzo, and MPGuy2824: I'm really not sure that yet another backlog drive so close on the heels of the last one is a good idea - it remains to be seen. IMO the reviewers will by now be fed up of constantly being told to do more and we know already that generally they don't, at least not the 600 inactive ones. IMO It will not only dilute the the importance of such drives and reduce their impact, but also the value of barnstars. NPP has to start looking outside the box for solutions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:58, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

When's the next backlog drive scheduled? Was there a consensus for it or was it an executive decision? If the latter, perhaps starting a thread at WT:NPPR asking if NPPs want another backlog drive would help gauge the appetite for it. Personally I am pro backlog drive, but we should also try to address Kudpung's legitimate concern. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:06, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae, there was some discussion two weeks ago at the newsletter TP if you missed that. The drive is October, a mass message went out ~ eight hours ago and 40 people have signed up. It looks like appetite to me. MB 04:12, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree with MB, 40 people signing up in 8 hours is definitely adequate for determining consensus. Thanks, Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 09:07, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Getting new reviewers

Would someone like to consider making a template like this:

{{Hi. {{BASEPAGENAME}} .Your editing demonstrates a consistent dedication to Wikipedia content. Have you considered joining the team that reviews new articles and passes them for inclusion? Do read [[WP:NPR]] and [[WP:NPP]] first and if you think you're up to it (be warned - it's hard work 😉), you can apply at [[WP:PERM]]. |~~~~}}}}

No frame, no background. Should create a L2 header: New Page Review. It should populate a new cat 'NPR invitations' so that we can track its performance. The idea is to make it look like a highly personalised talk page message. I think it has a more modern and streamlined approach to the previous banner-style one. Preferably targeted at newish users with more than 12 months and more than 1,000 non automated mainspace edits and an excellent command of English and not editing only from a phone. (example). Looks like this:

Hi. New pages patrol/Coordination. Your editing demonstrates a consistent dedication to Wikipedia content. Have you considered joining the team that reviews new articles and passes them for inclusion? Do read WP:NPR and WP:NPP first and if you think you're up to it (Be warned - it's hard work 😉), you can apply at WP:PERM. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:30, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:30, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey Kudpung. Have you seen Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination#Outreach and invitations? That is a similar template, created by Insertcleverphrasehere. buidhe and Dr vulpes inherited that template and a screening process from ICPH and, when they have had time, have been going through the list and inviting folks. Are you OK with that process, or were you thinking something different? Also buidhe and Dr vulpes, how many invites did you send out and how effective were your efforts? –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:56, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Probably around 100 invites total for me, a few of whom actually applied for npp rights (t · c) buidhe 02:09, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Let me go back and check, but as a guess I think I've reached out to ~40-50 and two or three said they were interested. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 02:12, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both for your efforts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:20, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

It's been a long day and I messed those numbers up. I've reviewed about 50 editors, reached out to six, two said they were interested, zero have applied for NPP privileges. I've screened another 50 and have a few more I"m going to reach out to later this week. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 02:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Novem Linguae, of course I've seen it: I think it has a more modern and streamlined approach to the previous banner-style one. that's why I suggest the more personal, less obviously 'stock message' version above. UX studies from even the earliest Internet times, suggest that personal messages come across better. Way back in the old days I had a whole repertoire of self-written messages stored on my computer in Typinator. Then there finally came a project where a group of editors including me and DGG cleaned up a lot of template messages. Perhaps an AB test would be an interesting experiment but the sample sizes would probably need to be larger than Dr vulpes's and Buidhe's campaigns. I've sent out many invites over the years but in those days I was always too busy to follow up on any effect they had. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:05, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Use MMS for NPP recruitment?

If we want to get serious about recruitment, we may want to look into something higher volume. The current workflow that we're using involves a thorough screening and then individually delivering each message, which are both time consuming. Perhaps we should change the wording of the template a bit, do a WP:MMS to hundreds or thousands of candidates generated from a Quarry query, then WP:PERM/NPP can do the screening for us for those that apply. This would be much more efficient because we're currently doing unnecessary WP:PERM/NPP style screenings for folks that don't apply. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:28, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Like I said above, a larger sample size, and some AB testing may be worthwhile before launching such a major campaign. I totally agree with the admins' predicament at PERM - perhaps the threshold should be raised, but based on the new trend for requiring a major RfC for every minor nut and bolt, particularly ones affecting user rights issues, the RfC will always be met with resistance from the hat collectors. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:05, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

The new challenges facing the reviewers

We've mentioned the exponetial growth in the expansion of the Internet in some regions and the availability of low-cost smart phones there - well noted that we got some flak from two users for mentioning it in the first draft of the Open Letter - but this excellent article in August by Akhil George in The Times of India, one of the country's most respected newspapers, makes no bones about it: "India recently became the second largest contributor to the English Wikipedia after the US".

If that doesn't confirm the need for reviewers who can read sources in Indic languages, I don't know what does. Any campaigns to recruit new reviewers should bear this in mind, but we want to avoid another Wifione| (former admin) which is another reason why reviewers should always be on their mettle and not patrol too quickly. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Newsletter

I have the next newsletter ready to send if anyone wants to take a look. MB 15:16, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

It's possible nobody is watching its talk page. Interested contributors could consider the new 'subscribe' feature for threads. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:14, 10 October 2022 (UTC)