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caution please

With 146 articles in the unreviewed queue User:Gihan Jayaweera is our most prolific contributor. I have some concerns over their conributions, triggered by how non-English sources were summarized. Please exercise caution when reviewing, many of the articles appear to be intended for the African Cinema Contest. Thanks, Vexations (talk) 16:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

It looks as if although that contest gives points for references it doesn't give any credit for wikilinks - the articles are pretty much dead ends, consistently. PamD 18:56, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I was wondering why they suddenly switched from South Asian species to North African films. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:21, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Vexations Would it be worth asking at ANI for a ban on mainspace article creation for this editor, so they had to go through AfC? I know such restrictions have worked fairly well for some other editors such as FloridaArmy who were creating a high volume of substandard articles. (t · c) buidhe 03:32, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

I have thought about that, but I think I would have to put together a solid case before I bring it to AN/I. This appears to be temporary. Once the contest is over, perhaps things will improve. Also, I don't want to shift the burden of work to AfC. I much prefer that we convince the user that they need to fact-check their work better, and that something about their methodology is causing a lot of errors. Educate, not punish. I've tried to be be firm with them, not cruel. I'm not sure it's working. I'll try to reach out to the organizers of the competition. I don't think they intended for something like this to happen. Vexations (talk) 10:16, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe, Usedtobecool, Vexations, PamD, I was about to open a new discussion about this user, when I saw this, it appears they are still binge creating articles, I’m not so sure how to go about this one but clearly something needs to be done. Celestina007 (talk) 21:06, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

500$ is a lot of money; I don't why that's even allowed. It appears it will go on another two weeks. I have not looked at their creations closely though. They used to create South Asian species articles which would be in article alerts for WP NEPAL; that's all I know of them. It's probably more the contest to blame, as otherwise they appeared to be doing good work. If there are problems that could be addressed but have not been addressed after warnings, it would probably work to tell them that you'd try to get them disqualified from the contest if they created another article with the same problems. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:13, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Wow, I hadn't noticed how much money was involved. Interesting that the competition rules say "No automated, semi-automated tools, scripts or manual templates to mass generate content are permitted for the contest. Any indication that editors are cheating by using a cookie-cutter template or script to mass-generate through lists may lead to disqualification.", when you look at User_talk:Gihan_Jayaweera#Pascaline where they talk about "I have a source code format used in creating the article. It is a mistake of that name." Hmm. PamD 07:59, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to post on the talk page of the contest with gaming concerns. (t · c) buidhe 08:10, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool & PamD, $500? you say? Oh! I see, that’s ₦250,000 (quarter of a million in the Nigerian naira) & roughly ₹38,000 (Indian rupee) & I can see why they are binge creating articles(that sure is motivation right there) having said, as one who hasn’t made any dime of editing here and do not ever intend to, I really couldn’t care less about a competition that leaves very tiring jobs for new page reviewers because the (contestants are in a rush that they are unable(unwilling?) to create a decent article) imho, contests such as this ought to be scrapped. I believe this point been raised elsewhere in the past & I think it should emphasized upon once again. @Buidhe, yes please make that report, I’m tired of seeing the same copy-pasted material (with article title variations) from that particular user. I wish there was a way I could opt out from seeing their creations on the new pages feed. Celestina007 (talk) 10:25, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

(not a NPP reviewer - I reached this discussion following budihe's comment on the contest page). I am also concerned with such mass creation as discussed here, and I think it also exists at a lower level with other users (a look at the major contributors at Wikipedia:WikiProject AfroCine/Months of African Cinema/Users By Articles would be a good place to start looking). However, I do want to state that there is value to prizes for such competitions. Personally, as a student who doesn't have now as much time for Wiki-editing, I got a very good feeling getting rewarded with a small financial prize for contests I participated in (such as WiR, Summer Disambig Challenge, and Afrocine contest). I do think the judging and accepting of articles for such contests should be more tightly regulated, and that would create better articles (such as WiR which was very well checked each article). --SuperJew (talk) 13:01, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I also am not against contests, some like Core Contest have produced very good results. However, they have to be carefully designed to have the right incentives. For the AfroCine contest, rules like "Article is only counted if it is at least 500 words long and cites at least 3 independent film reviews" would cut down on abuse and encourage participants to focus on quality over mass-creation. (t · c) buidhe 17:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Search among unreviewed pages?

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but can we search among the new pages feed? I know there are filters, but I'm talking about an actual search bar (or analogue). The reason I ask is because I enjoy reviewing sport bios against WP:NSPORTS, and I'm trying to figure out a way to filter these quickly. JBchrch talk 22:13, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Funny you should ask, I have to opposite problem. I'm not particularly fond of sports bios, but very glad that you are. I don't have a way of filtering in the NewPagesFeed, but it is possible to write SQL queries in https://quarry.wmcloud.org/. For example https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/59966 looks for articles that are of interest to WikiProject Football. It's also possible to look at specific categories. Such queries are pretty easy to adjust to fit your needs. I'd be happy to help write some custom queries if that would help you. Vexations (talk) 23:06, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Have you tried viewing them via the sorted feed? Here. Schazjmd (talk) 23:11, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vexations: Thank you so much for your kind proposition, which I'll definitely keep in mind once I'll have explored if the sorted feed can suit my needs! @Schazjmd: See — That's why you always begin any question with "Sorry if this is a stupid question", because the answer will often have been right in front of you all along. Thanks so much. JBchrch talk 23:39, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Not so stupid a question. I knew it existed, and still had to hunt around to find the link to it. Schazjmd (talk) 23:53, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

There's one at the top of this page. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:50, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Template:Expand language

It would be useful if the toolbar gave the option to add the language code and the name of article. Bada Kaji (talk • श्रीमान् गम्भीर) 13:39, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Great suggestion, I hope someone with the know how could look into this JW 1961 ^Talk 14:16, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Bada Kaji and Joseywales1961: you may wish to add it to the suggestions page. Maybe Barkeep has that page on his watchlist and will add it to the [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey Community Wish List, or if you know how the wish list works, you could easily do it yourselves, but be sure to publish the request, perhaps in a NPR newsletter - canvassing for the wishlist is expressly allowed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Y JW 1961 ^Talk 13:44, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Dubious articles created by a serial abuser

I’m not so sure how to go about this but I’d be moving most of the articles created by this LTA back to the new pages feed & the clear non notable ones ones such as Jennifer Uchendu, I’d be nominating for deletion. Celestina007 (talk) 17:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

it appears out of 16 articles they created 14 have have been deleted the two remaining are the named one which is a blatant ADMASQ above and one other which seems borderline legitimate. Celestina007 (talk) 17:37, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Backlog (2)

We are halfway through a backlog drive - after an initial reduction the backlog is actually now increasing. Polyamorph (talk) 06:12, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

maybe the end of year festivities (Thanksgiving, Christmas , New Year) are directly or indirectly the cause of more new articles (just a guess)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

New Pages Feed / Curation toolbar improvements or new features

The Wishlist makes NPR wishes come true!

For those who are not aware, there is a link at the top of this page to the suggestions page. Several users have that page on their watchlists. Adding those ideas to the Community Wish List at Meta, has proven to be highly effective in the recent past. To ensure maximum participation, the request on the wish list should be well advertised, especially in a NPR newsletter - canvassing for the wish list entries is expressly allowed. If the deadline for this year's list has passed, be sure to earmark it for the next campaign. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:30, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Update

The WMF Community Wish List will indeed be taking place in January 2022. There is more than enough time to process new requests. All ideas for improvements and/or new features to the suite of software for reviewing new pages should be listed on Suggested improvements. They will then be triaged and someone here with experience of it will prepare the arguments for the wish list and the NPR newsletters.

It's only by offering engaging and bug-free tools that more reviewers will be encouraged to do more patrolling and reduce the backlogs. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:27, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Maybe we can advertise this phase on the newsletter? Practical steps for everyone would be:

1. Go to Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements and add any page curation improvements you'd like, making sure to avoid duplicates.
2. Voice your opinion about current suggestions to help with prioritization.

In December we triage and prepare a small subset for the Community Wishlist, possibly drafting at meta:Community Wishlist Survey/Sandbox. MarioGom (talk) 10:57, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

• @Kudpung: when you say someone with experience will prepare the arguments for the wish list, do you have someone in mind who will do this? Polyamorph (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Polyamorph, no, not at all, and far be it from me to suggest anyone. Unfortunately however, those best qualified and having the required institutional memory have recently stated that they are not available, so anyone else would first have to familiarise themselves with the kind of features that successfully get addressed, and how to go about presenting a case for them at the wish list. So theoretically anyone who feels suitably experienced and is very familiar with NPP and it's history can do it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:50, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung: thanks, I guess my concern was if someone doesn't pick it up on time. I would say that this is something I could help with, although the timescale for me is a bit tight - I try not to commit as I am very busy in real life. Wikipedia is a way to relax for me (ha ha, I know, it's usually anything but relaxing). Well, anyway, all that said I can help if needed.Polyamorph (talk) 06:36, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung and MarioGom: how do we go about resolving the many Phabricator tickets that are still open at Suggestions that were requested a long time ago? Polyamorph (talk) 08:39, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

By reviewing them again carefully and deciding if they are really necessary. If New Page Reviewing has been able to mange without them, they are probably not essential. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Festivities and undisclosed paid editing

I came across this article yesterday & I thought it wise to mention to you my colleagues to be on the watch out for articles such as the aforementioned. In my experience when approaching festive periods such as Christmas there tends to be a spike in possible undisclosed editing (in my experience these occurs between October to December) & A study of this report I filed to ANI showed that most of the dubious articles the editor named Nnadigoodluck created where around the aforementioned months. Please if you note any articles as the article in question here you are possibly looking at undisclosed paid editing. Celestina007 (talk) 21:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa thanks, a quintessential example of possible undeclared paid-for would be this. I have reported the user accordingly to ANI. Celestina007 (talk) 01:15, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Reviewing Articles From Africa & Asia

I have notified Barkeep49 about this, but thought it wise to notify you, my co reviewers about this. Whilst this isn’t an isolated incident pertaining to just Africa and Asia as it occurs on all articles from all continents, it is my opinion that as of now it is quite prevalent and exponentially increasing in the named continents. Any reviewer reviewing articles from the aforementioned continents should take extra care in reviewing the pieces used in the article as opposed to accessing based on known and trusted “reliable sources” allow me expatiate, I live in Nigeria, so I’d use Nigeria as an example, please do not go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Africa Sources List#Nigeria and mark as reviewed because you see some RS there being optimized in the article you are reviewing, rather what you want to do is scrutinize the piece used by the “RS” Forgive the verbose, but if you take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Africa Sources List#Nigeria you’d see The Punch listed as a “reliable source” but take a look at one of their recent publication here, a pre packaged sponsored post they failed to tag as such & tried to pass of as an objective publication independent of the subject which clearly isn’t the case here, what is most forlorn about this, is the fact that this is a news media that has won an award for their “integrity” clearly that integrity is atrophying or already dead. Celestina007 (talk) 11:36, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I think this is why the lists for West Africa and South Asia are so huge - the sources are a real challenge to evaluate and it’s slow work. Mccapra (talk) 12:21, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mccapra, yes, you are very correct there, thankfully I’m very proficient with Nigerian reliable sources and know how to dissect the pieces produced by the so called “Reliable sources” very easily as I am well acquainted with all “Nigerian RS” which may prove a challenge for non Nigerians & that is the reason I ask my American & European editors here to always leave a message on my talk page to do a source analysis for them if they ever encounter any Nigerian article. Usedtobecool has been kind enough to handle Nepalese articles and sources dissection and analysis. Celestina007 (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Comment - I agree that it is important to assess each source based on it's own merits but I don't want us to be hasty in discrediting Punch Nigeria as a source simply because of a post that is clearly an interview with some preceding journalistic voice. Sponsored posts published by Punch Nigeria are listed here. Regards,
Princess of Ara 22:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Wrong it isn’t clearly an interview, secondly wrong again, The “preceding journalist voice” is pre-packaged material and if you can’t tell this, then I don’t mean to be rude, then you shouldn’t be posting here, there’s a reason it’s space for new page reviewers who are versed and knowledgeable in new page reviewing and have the relevant tools to carry out there duties, Furthermore you are wrong again, no one was discrediting the source(at least not right now) an observation emphatically about the piece was made & lastly, you are wrong again, the word atrophy implies a retrogression or gradual decay, thus a history of announcing sponsored posts doesn’t invalidate its (possible) degradation. might I humbly suggest you do less posting here until such a time you have garnered sufficient knowledge? I advise going to the WP:TEAHOUSE if you want questions asked about editing in this collaborative project or make comments at WP:RSP? Celestina007 (talk) 23:40, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

this is a news media that has won an award for their “integrity” clearly that integrity is atrophying or already dead. IS discrediting Punch as a source. Besides, advising me to go to the teahouse is disingenuous.
Princess of Ara 07:01, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Question

I closed the page review toolbar and can't figure out how to reopen it. I have done everything from closing my browsers to logging out. How do I reopen it? Bobherry Talk Edits 13:31, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

|, Wikipedia:Page_Curation/Help states: "If you close the Curation Toolbar accidentally, you can open it again by clicking on 'Curation Toolbar' or 'Curate this article' in the 'Toolbox' section of the left sidebar" (t · c) buidhe 13:37, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

There should be "Open Page Curation" in the "Toolbox" section of the left sidebar. Bada Kaji (talk • श्रीमान् गम्भीर) 14:59, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Page curation toolbar

I think it would help if reviewers could leave notes for the next reviewer using the tool, ideally somewhere all NPRs, and possibly but not necessarily, only NPRs can see. Notes could be used to alert reviewers to potential issues or garner consensus informally for certain actions or just note that we're waiting for something such as the original creator to address an issue they've been alerted about. Does anyone miss this feature? And would it be possible to get it, if we agreed we want it? Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 08:22, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree it could be useful. AfC has a comment feature but it inserts into the wikitext and anyone can see it. If the feature you're proposing were implemented ideally it wouldn't change wikitext so I'm not sure how it would work. (t · c) buidhe 08:36, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Theoretically, it could write somewhere (a page or a database) the article, the reviewer and the comment, and pull it at the time of request by matching article title. I am thinking a button which opens a window like the "info" tab showing previous comments and an option to add yours. But I don't know how complicated the implementation would be. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 08:45, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea as we often see pages tagged but not marked reviewed earlier by another reviewer and might not get their reasoning or agree with it at first glance. JW 1961 ^Talk 11:15, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Why not just add comments to the talk page? Mccapra (talk) 06:21, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

That is a good suggestion, but I think talk page comments may be overlooked. (t · c) buidhe 08:10, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Posting to talk page takes long, and it would be impractical to check talk page all the time without knowing if there'll be something there. Besides, not everything may be appropriate for the talk page. There are a few conduct considerations that go into NPP. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 13:48, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Usedtobecool, If you use the "Send a message to" feature of the check box section of the toolbar, it posts the comment to the talk page and then puts up a red flag for any other reviewers that come by. This should be made more intuitive and transparent that it works this way, but the coding is already there. — Insertcleverphrasehere^{(or here)_{(or here)(or here)}} 11:09, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there should be notes attached to articles that are only accessible to certain classes of users. Arbcom handles information that has to remain strictly private, but people with only NPP rights should not be trusted with non-public information without a clear community mandate and a non-disclosure-agreement. Vexations (talk) 14:16, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I was about to say the same thing. There really isn't a basis for having private conversations on Wikipedia itself, maybe IRC to an extent, but I don't see the community agreeing with us having private discussions as some may see them as "off the books" or at least lacking in transparency. If there are private concerns that should be addressed confidentially, the best way to do so is via IRC or email. I do like the idea of leaving notes though, that would be helpful. ASUKITE 14:22, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Adding to this, I could see one option being another toolbar button with a popout to add a comment. Comments could be added to a template on the talk page which could perhaps be transcluded onto the popout, which could have a badge notification to show when there are comments for the reviewer to check. Not sure how practical that would all be, but it would allow the comments to be visible to anybody. ASUKITE 17:19, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Asukite, This already exists... but is porrly worded so I can't blame people for not realising it is there. If you use the "Send a message to" feature of the check box section of the toolbar, it posts the comment to the talk page and then puts up a red flag for any other reviewers that come by. — Insertcleverphrasehere^{(or here)_{(or here)(or here)}} 11:10, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

That makes sense. I've honestly probably not noticed.. I tend to automatically look for a blue link on the talk page and check it these days. ASUKITE 13:59, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

This would be great. It is possible to leave a comment with the log entry when marking a page as (un)reviewed via the API, though I don't think the tool supports this. That would be a good start, at least, so I could explain my logic when marking pages as reviewed. These notes would be accessible to anyone, but at least somewhat obscure. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:31, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Especially when accepting AFC drafts, I'll often create a talk page section called "notability" and explain my reasoning. I'll either list my 3 GNG sources, or which SNG it passes. In general, I think it'd be a good idea for Wikipedia's software to collect and display more notability information, both from the article creator (why not ask them for their best sources when they create the article?) and the reviewer. Or modify the citation templates to have a |gng=yes field that highlights a source a certain color in the reflist if it passes GNG. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Some of us hang out at the NPP Discord server (invite link at the top of this page). I'll be happy to have more casual chats about reviews there. Also, I think it would be a good venue to do things like live pair reviews. MarioGom (talk) 20:06, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I also support this idea. In order for it to happen we, most likely, would need to get on a Community Wishlist. And if we're going for Community Wishlist - and to be clear I don't think we've done the prepwork that Kudpung and Insertcleverphrasehere did a few years ago - my #1 vote would be that we just ask for the code base to be modernized. Right now the curation toolbar uses old methods and practices and cannot be enabled at any other wikis. Fixing this - so that one day NPR doesn't break in a way that can't be patched - feels like one of those important but not urgent projects that can fall through the cracks. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:36, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I was always of the firm opinion that NPR, being a major and essential process, should be a case for ongoing priority development. It started out that way when we got the WMF to build the new Curation Tool ten years ago. They understood what we wanted but the actual devs went about coding it the wrong way. I was therefore very disappointed when Community Tech decided that the dozens of improvements that we pushed for 3 or 4 years ago should be requested through the wish list - which is basically a letter to Santa for gadgets and convenience tools. We were just lucky that we applied sufficient pressure that enough people voted for the improvements that Community Tech could no longer ignore them. The GUI and its features are now excellent but there is still a lot more to be done; the WMF is nowadays so awash with funds that there are no credible arguments not to rebuild the code from the ground up as a proper MediaWiki extension for the Wikipedia encyclopedias.

A whole bunch of C-Level have recently walked out, including Negrin who, if I recall correctly, was the overall boss of product including Comm.Tech. and other spheres of interest. With their replacements and the current onboarding of a new CEO and with DannyH (WMF) (unless he has moved on) still fully understanding what is required, perhaps there is a chance on the horizon. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:49, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I just don't understand how an organisation that's swimming in money, money it gets as donation from readers of the English Wikipedia, for the English Wikipedia, can find a zillion projects to do outside Wikipedia but can not hire enough developers so we don't have to choose between our most needed improvements. This community, seems to me, has failed somewhere, when it can not use even part of the money it raises to fund infrastructure that it needs, when that's exactly what the donors gave it for. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:47, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Usedtobecool you may wish to add it to the suggestions page. Maybe Barkeep49 has that page on his watchlist and will add it to the wish list, or if you know how the wish list works, you could eaily do it yourself, but be sure to pubish the request, perhaps in a NPR newsletter - canvassing for the wishlist is expressly allowed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:14, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The Wishlist isn't starting until January this year. That said I think we haven't done the prepwork to make sure enwiki is behind a push as was done by @Kudpungand @Insertcleverphrasehere last time and would be reluctant to do it without some support building first. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:03, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Barkeep49 could you check that out please, I think you may have meant January next year - if that is the case.

That said, as other Wikipedias grow which may want to use the same system, there is indeed a very good case for rewriting the code base as a proper MediaWiki extension to make it Wiki-agnostic. However, This would be beyond the remit of the WMF gadget makers' department. The confusion would be in knowing whom to lobby for it now that Negrin and many other C-Level have left leaving the Foundation with no one apparently in overall control. One thing is for sure, there cannot possibly be a lack of funds. Maybe MusicAnimal and MMiller (WMF) (aka Cloud atlas) could shed some light. They are fairly knowledgeable about what goes on there and have always been a huge help for NPP and AFC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:10, 10 November 2021 (UTC) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:10, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello @Kudpung and other reviewers! Thanks for tagging me as you think about future improvements for NPP, and I think it's great to be thinking about what tools other wikis need beyond just English Wikipedia. There will be a Community Tech wishlist in 2022, with the survey kicking off the process in January 2022. I understand that you're interested to hear whether there are other resources available for this sort of work beyond the wishlist, and I'll do some fact-finding to learn more. In the meantime, I'm tagging @NRodriguez (WMF), who is the product manager with the Community Tech team. She'll have all the info about the wishlist, and is a great person to be in touch with! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Wrto. the codebase (don't really know what that is about) vs this particular feature, it does not have to be an "either" "or" situation, does it? Except for the wishlist, where we would go for a targeted campaign for just one thing, we can push for both in all other conversations. If the upgrade thing happens, we would want them to add/modify the features that we would like them to as they do that, and if they don't, we would at least want the few features we miss added. Adding to the suggestions page is a great suggestion, esp. since some things listed seem to have actually happened in time. Though I would like it best if we had the NPP minds, the policy minds and the technical minds help figure out the specifics of the suggestion, answering questions like (to begin):

• Does policy allow for a NEEDTOKNOW system where the comments would be NPP eyes only? On the one hand, NPP is a low-level perm, so the privilege-level is not high and we could self-regulate as to the appropriateness of what's discussed. On the other, all the things the previous sentence downplays. If policy does not allow it, the alternative would be a public system, which could be implemented with a script(probably? Novem Linguae (for the expertise, not a commitment)). We could, for example, simply(?) write to a project subpage and overwrite them some months after the article is marked as reviewed or deleted.
• Another issue is, at least half the things we would want to say would be about the article contributors. And of course, such a system does not allow for pinging and discussing/defence. We discuss editors behind their backs at SPI, for example, but nowhere else, notably not at WP:COIN. So, would such a system have to be limited to discussing content issues only?
  ​​Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:27, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm following everything you are asking here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:12, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. A user script that assist NPPers with placing partially hidden comments on articles would be technically possible. A user script could check and write to a page that isn't the page in question. However you'd want to get consensus first, as some might view this idea as not transparent enough or not needed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:07, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Usedtobecool, your comment above seems to have wandered off your original basic suggestion. The point I and Barkeep49 were making was simply that your idea could well be a request worth listing on the suggestions page where it would be examined by the NPP community and if considered sufficiently relevant, it would be pushed for developer attention through the Wish List scheme. The code base is a separate issue which nevertheless still needs to be addressed by one faction of the devs if significant changes and/or improvements are desired to be made on the actual NPP software. That said, NPR is not a 'low level PERM'. Quite to the contrary - because it directly affects the retention and quality of the very content of what Wikipedia is, New Page Reviewers probably carry more responsibility than any other PERM bar that of Admin. Don't underestimate the importance of what you do here 😉 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:49, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung, my original suggestion was that we need a feature to add notes to each other about new articles we come across but leave without marking reviewed or proposing deletion. Barkeep says above that (a) he supports it (b) the best way to get something like it would be a wishlist campaign (c) for a wishlist campaign, he would proritise upgrading the codebase instead of my idea. That makes perfect sense, but that sort of leaves my idea stranded, doesn't it? Are we going to wait a year or many trying to get them to upgrade the codebase via the wishlist and in the meantime put everything else on the shelf, or can we pursue these ideas independent of our wishlist push? Some editors express concern above about a system that would be NPP eyes only. Functionaries do things functionary eyes only. So does ArbCom. And onwiki, at least at one place (SPI), we can discuss editors without notifying them. I agree with you that what we do is important. So, would policy/community allow us to have an NPP eyes only system where we could discuss signs of UPE and socking that we see in the articles before we are ready to confront the users in question? If they would, that would ideally be the suggestion I would make. I say that it's a low-level perm only in the sense that it is easily and quickly obtained. If policy doesn't allow for a NPP-only discussion system, we might be able to build a public one with a script ourselves, as indeed NL confirms above that we can. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:53, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't know Usedtobecool, I've come (reluctantly) partly out if semi-retirement to get things moved forward here that said, the first priority here should be to get the backlog down before anythinig else at all.. As a former admin of many years, 'PERM' to me means User Permissions. I created (following consensus of course) the New Page Reviewer permission, after I got the page feed and curation system developed with the devs some 10 years ago. You wouldn't want to go back to the system we had before any more than you would want to go back to Windows after using Mac for 30 years. NPP is an official process (unlike AfC for example) and does theoretically have the support of the WMF bceause they wrote the original code base around what Scottywong and I wanted. However, we make the policy and permissions for controlling new pages here locally, not the WMF. Whether the WMF would first address a rebuild of the code or make some temporary bolt-on features to the existing tools is a million dollar question. You have to try both, but among the devs at the WMF are many volunteers who are a law unto themselves and ultimately they decide what they want to do and most of it is whether they find the work interesting enough, not whether it is urgently required or not. But if they are not interested, their usual stock excuse is lack of manpower, or funds, or both, which we all know to be blatantly untrue. If there are enough community votes on the wish list for a new feature, the WMF Community Tech can hardly refuse, but they will not undertake a major rebuild of the software. That decision is for a higher authority and could take literally years because there is currently no one in charge at the WMF. The bottom line is that if something can be done by a local bot or a script, then do it, it's not worth the hassle of lobbying the Foundation or trying to get a local consensus where a lot of totally uninvolved editors who are not even familiar with NPP will vote it down. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:20, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed answer, @Kudpung. Your guidance is always appreciated. I think it is clear by now that the backlog won't even come down to manageable level in this drive. And I think it is time we try to divine what's ailing us and try to address that. That is where my recent posts to this board are coming from. Someone has started a separate thread about the backlog, so I will put the rest of what I was planning to say there. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:04, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Usedtobecool, NPP is an ephemeral task. Few people have the 'spark' that means that they continue to slog through it year after year. Some of our best reviewers show up for six months, or a couple years, then trail off. That's not to say it's doomed, just that it needs new blood. Some people naturally find their way here, but I have found previously that inviting new people to the project was the most productive thing I could do with my time User:Insertcleverphrasehere/NPP User:Insertcleverphrasehere/NPR_invite_list. I'd suggest posting an "advert" on the relevant noticeboards, at the very least (see User:Insertcleverphrasehere/NPP_awards#Sorry_for_bothering_you,_but...). I found that individual invites were also very effective, but required some technical know how to sort through and find who to invite (it was also fairly time consuming as it required checking over each potential applicant). I think my response rate was less than 10%, and of those many never reviewed much at all. But I tracked the numbers and it didn't take long before the people I had invited had surpassed the number of reviews that I could have done in the same amount of time that I spent inviting people, and it also wasn't long before the numbers where more than I had ever reviewed... period.

Checking through recent AfD listings and noticeboards is a good place to find potential applicants too. — Insertcleverphrasehere^{(or here)_{(or here)(or here)}} 17:00, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

One of the problems with NPR at the moment, Usedtobecool, is that since I, Insertcleverphrasehere, and Barkeep49 have in turn retired from managing it, it no longer has a strong leadership. Some will argue that the word 'leader' evokes bossyness and is not required on a collaborative Internet platform, but a leader manages the project simply by keeping it up to date and tidy, recognising the qualities of other individuals on the team and encouraging them to take on responsibility for some of the tasks. That means also recognising the priorities and delegating them to the best people. Take the newsletter for example. Once a regular two-monthly periodical , nobody is bothered although there are plenty of things that need to be brought to the reviewers' attention. But also, to have any impact a newsletter needs to be presented in a compelling prose and layout. Rewards: Some people, especially volunteers, are motivated by receiving rewards; NPR has a reward system but nobody is keeping an eye on the reviewers' performance and handing out the medals when they become due. Help and advice: Some people are better at giving it than others; one needs to have a good knowledge of the processes involved, and also be good at explaining them to others. Every little helps, but most of the projects on this Wikipedia that work well do have their coordinators who take care of the myriad of tasks, and some have a 'lead coordinator'. Talk it over with Celestina007, she's got some great ideas. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:47, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• Back on track, the WMF has just posted so I've moved their message down here so it doesn't get overlooked. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:07, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello all, and thanks for writing @Usedtobecool and @Kudpung! Good to meet you virtually. First off, I appreciate and admire what reviewers do for the quality of Wikipedia. I understand that having a functional suite of tools for your tasks will help sustain neutrality and reliability. I agree with @MMiller (WMF) that it is great to be thinking about what wishes you would like to propose to the 2022 wishlist happening in January. We hope to see your proposal(s) there. Once the wishes go through the general voting-- they will go through our prioritization process. We've created a sandbox for folks who have ideas of wishes and want to start working on the details for the proposals prior to January.

Inside this thread, I identified several ideas for how to improve the New Page Patrol tools. The ideas ranged from a larger change to Media Wiki to an annotations feature for articles that are neither marked for review or deletion.

What functionalities are you envisioning for the annotations and how do they help the problems encountered in the reviewing experience? I believe discussing each improvement idea as as individual wishes will benefit the larger goal because if you split the functionality into contained pieces and each wish scores high in terms of popularity, then it will help us tackle the most urgent and popular chunks of what is outlined here. Thanks again and let me know if you have any questions. NRodriguez (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• An imperative and brilliant comment Usedtobecool made caught my attention they said “I think it would help if reviewers could leave notes for the next reviewer using the tool, ideally somewhere all NPRs, and possibly but not necessarily, only NPRs can see” if there was a feature like that I think it would be super helpful, I should also add that Usedtobecool is arguably the most knowledgeable non admin I have ever encountered & their suggestions are always helpful. On leadership on NPP I agree with Kudpung that a leader or coordinator is more often than not a good thing, but I also want to note that a decentralized leadership is sometimes a good thing as well. Kudpung, could you please come out fully out of your semi-retirement and continue to fully engage in the collaborative project (most especially NPR, which you created) or even RFA which I think you’d pass quite easily. My thinking is Barkeep49 & Rosguill are doing their best which imho is good. @Insertcleverphrasehere, I do not share your belief that NPP is ephemeral, and at the same time I don’t think you are necessary wrong, but for me that isn’t the case, for example I have a couple of perms and NPR is the one I utilize the most due to its demanding, complex and sometimes arduous nature & ironically basically why I’m in love with it. Pertaining to me, I think it’s only fair to say (my) “spark” for new page reviewing isn’t atrophying, nor will it ever. My affinity for NPP stems from the fact it enables me tackle unethical practices such as undisclosed paid editing which I’m predominantly most known for in this collaborative project. Forgive my digression you all, back to what Usedtobecool said if such a feature is in existence I believe it would be a great positive for we new page reviewers as it would exponentially tackle undisclosed paid editing and exponentially raise the bar for getting the perm, I don’t believe, Backlog or not I don’t think we need more new page reviewers, a dozen trusted NP reviewers is way better than a million reviewers who may be dubious. Celestina007 (talk) 10:58, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Celestina007, Usedtobecool, Notably.. the 'notes' system is something we asked for previously and it is partially implemented. If you leave a "note for creator", it posts it to the talk page and then puts up a red flag for other reviewers who view the page that notes have been left for the page creator/other reviewers. — Insertcleverphrasehere^{(or here)_{(or here)(or here)}} 11:06, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere, thanks for the response, I’m familiar with that, what I am or was referring to is the aspect or a feature where an imperative clandestine note which only editors with the NPR perm can access. Celestina007 (talk) 11:12, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Celestina007, Oh... I don't like that. The NPR process should be transparent to other users IMO. — Insertcleverphrasehere^{(or here)_{(or here)(or here)}} 18:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere, an opinion which I respect but I don’t think you are understanding what I’m trying to say, the note function would still be available for all to see, but what I am advocating for is a different feature that allows for only NPR to see a more important message, look, we may never agree on this & I respect that, but as a serial anti UPE editor that I am, im in full support of such feature. Celestina007 (talk) 21:40, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere, in theory this little project of mine, see here would only be visible to new page reviewers during their course of reviewing an article, That was a project I begun but have halted for now, because I realized it is too tedious and may require at least a full year to catalog and structure perfectly, secondly, i haven’t ran it through Barkeep49 or Rosguill, Primefac & DGG or any admin I trust and have respect for on their opinion on this, thirdly I believe it may be “Poisoning the well” whilst that project of mine was supposed to be for the benefit of new page reviewers, it also appears to be subtly (as aforementioned) poisoning the well on editors who once engaged in sock puppetry or undisclosed paid editing but were given a second chance, I really do not know, I mentioned (elsewhere) to Barkeep49 that I believe people who came into this collaborative project for the purpose for financial benefits or SPA reasons are incapable of changing or turning a new leaf but my opinion on that has changed, as I believe people can change. My fear is the aforementioned project of mine may not look good on editors who might have turned a new leaf and given a WP:FRESHSTART. Theoretically speaking if such a feature was available & the aforementioned project of mine(after extreme fine tuning) were to be integrated with new page reviewing, this may be beneficial for the new page reviewer as the reviewer can examine the project then take a look at the article being created and it’s creator and evaluate the article with due diligence and check for potential promonalism in the famous words of DGG, In all, even though I’m with Usedtobecool on this sort of feature for NPP only, i respect your opinion. Thank you for your time. Celestina007 (talk) 18:43, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Surge in creation of possible Dubious articles

Whist I note this previously here; Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers#Festivities and undisclosed paid editing, I believe there is a need for me to reiterate. Generally speaking I believe there is a serious exponential surge. I took a 24-hour break and upon my return, I saw this note by my mate Dan ardnt who left me this which I believe has been very helpful. Celestina007 (talk) 22:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Rastakwere alert, dubious articles

Hello NPP's, Rastakwere made close to a 100 articles based on questionable sources, of which a batch of 25 are currently under discussion in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2020 May Kado massacre (2nd nomination), another discussion took place here [[1]] per recommendation to give 3 sample articles(i can give many more examples), Megab massacre, Debre Genet massacre, Da'iro Hafash massacre makes misuse of CBC, Euronews, The Guardian and World Radio sources that doesn't mention these events. These misleading use of sources gives articles the false appearance of being well sourced, when it's actually reliant on self published sources now under scrutiny in AFD. NPP's reviewed and approved his articles without properly, or not at all the checking if the sources matched the claimed event, so this is a alert to page patrollers/reviewers, please verify sources of articles created by Rastakwere, and whether events are actually mentioned in the sources. Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 01:34, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Dawit S Gondaria, Thanks for the heads up, if it can be proven that this is done intentionally why can’t we take them to ANI? and even if unintentionally done, I think CIR would still be a major issue here. Celestina007 (talk) 11:16, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I moved Tanqua Millash because the sources didn’t seem to bear much relationship with the article content, but Rastakwere moved it back into mainspace without improvement. So it’s not just the massacre articles that look dodgy, it’s everything from this editor. Mccapra (talk) 13:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mccapra, correct, that’s why I suggested ani. Celestina007 (talk) 14:57, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I think this user's behavior is certainly deserving of greater scrutiny (they were quite belligerent and engaged in personal attacks on multiple occasions during the last AfD), but it is also worth noting that the last time Dawit brought them to ANI, nothing happened. WMSR (talk) 22:23, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Actually in the case of Tanqua Millash, it looks like it got AFC accepted. It was moved back to mainspace by a different person. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:49, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

sorry yes you’re right. Mccapra (talk) 18:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 & Mccapra It just goes to show that the creator is not totally incompetent, he is comptent enough to create decent non-controversial articles about places, but he also is able to fool NPP on claimed controversial events based on self published, by using/bombing articles with a list of reliable names CBC, Euronews, Guardian etc, that do not mention events. Should i open an ani? Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 19:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I think we should take a careful look at the 3 example articles mentioned above and decide if these were correctly marked as reviewed by NPP. If this person truly created a bunch of non notable articles, how did so many of them get marked as reviewed? Or maybe they are notable and this isn't a big issue. More opinions needed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:24, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae yes please do, none of those events are mentioned outside the self published Research gate source, the creator uses the names of reliable sources none of them mention the claimed event, you can also google search nothing there. I can provide at least 35 more articles(which i also did before check) that are similarly structured where the creator Rastakwere makes use of sources that don't mention the claimed event.Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 19:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Let's look at Megab massacre for instance. Some of the sources are not considered reliable ( Tigray: Atlas of the humanitarian situation, https://www.tghat.com/victim-list/), the others, as far as I can tell, don't mention this massacre at all. There are no results on Google News. This would be easy to miss if you are not familiar with the topic or did not check the sources, but ideally it would be caught at the NPP stage. It seems that such misleading use of sources is common with this editor so I agree ANI is an option (t · c) buidhe 19:00, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Rastakwere does need some strong, friendly guidance on article writing and notability, but there is no consensus to describe the two major sources of victim lists as unreliable. University researchers' preprints are often better fact-checked than mainstream media articles: these types of university researchers are critically dependent on their reputations for accuracy; and Desta Haileselassie's list was found to have 30 out of 30 cases confirmed by Associated Press. Boud (talk) 21:24, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
    • @Boud: Spot-checking 1% of Desta Haileselassie's list of 3,080 alleged victims is hardly a confirmation (of the other 3,050 entries). AP News didn't say they endorse his complete list; the gist of AP's article was how horrible the job was and how humanitarian it was to let others know information about their loved ones. All but one of the victims specifically mentioned by AP News are in the database as being sourced from relatives/family. However, 429 (14%) of the entries are sourced solely by Facebook and Twitter posts. At least 99 (3.2%) have no name listed, meaning they could be duplicates of others. And since it's a one-man project, there's no editorial oversight and no one mentioned as cross checking his work (something we value at Wikipedia as an indication of whether a source is reliable or not). So I'm not sure why you think this database is a reliable source. Platonk (talk) 03:04, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
      • @Platonk: Checking 30 randomly chosen cases out of 3080 does not "confirm" all 3080, but it imples that the most likely number of the 3080 cases that are valid, based on the available independent evidence, to be 3080 (100%). "Most likely" in either Bayesian or frequentist interpretations of probability and statistics does not mean certainty. If the GNU Octave script N=10000; for i=1:N; m(i)=max(randi(3080,1,30)); endfor; length(find(m<2651))/N is correct, then, for example, if 429 cases are wrong (and we sort the list to put these 429 cases at the end of the list for the purposes of the calculation), then there is a 1% chance that the AP survey missed all the wrong cases, misleadingly giving the estimate that 100% are correct. So that's not very likely; it's more likely that a much smaller number than 429 are wrong. Taking the additional info into account of the sources stated on the list, quite a few of would not be acceptable on Wikipedia, it's quite likely that a few percent will turn out to be wrong when checked further. However, there's a difference between using a source as always reliable or as generally reliable. The AP article describes the task as a one-man project, but there's clearly cooperation with Tghat, and it's generally in the "human interest" side of a news article to cast a single person as a hero(ine), so the "one-man" show is not completely credible. Regular newspapers don't usually publish details of their editorial oversight - it is generally guessed based on anecdotes and reputations, or formal roles. I do not think that the list is sufficient on its own as a source to say that any particular one of the smaller massacres happened in the sense of a standalone article (and a single source is only enough for a stub article in cases with uncontroversial reasons for notability, e.g. national-level minister), but taken along with other sources, I think it is reasonable to use it as a source for a massacre (not necessarily in a separate article). In the Timeline articles, I think it should generally be reasonable to use, in moderation. Some cases will, in the long term, turn out to be wrong as more sources become available; this is also the case with information based on western mainstream media sources. Boud (talk) 00:27, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• I've been involved in this topic which is under "Horn of Africa" discretionary sanctions. The first AFD discussion had over 100 articles, some of which had at least one source about the topic that was considered reliable, but most of which did not -- as a result it was a Procedural Keep. Currently there's a second batch of 25 articles at AFD which will not be procedurally closed. At this pace, all of these articles should be re-reviewed and handled by the end of the year. I think Rastakwere has agreed to stop creating articles that are poorly sourced; if there are any new articles that rely only on sources that are unreliable white propaganda or don't mention the subject of the article I will be filing at WP:AE. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 19:04, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Heads up, the creator Rastakwere is adding more sources that do not mention the claimed events [[2]] & and in the case of 2021 Shire massacre [[3]], he changed the dates and tries to present 2 separate events as one, one claimed extra-judicial killings by the self published source, and one after a protest event by the Nation Kenya source. Read carefully if sources introduced by this user matches claimed events! Is the creator doing this to make it time consuming? Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 19:44, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• @Dawit S Gondaria: concerning Begashaka, the reference to the Telegraph does (barely) mention that topic: Survivors told the Telegraph that civilians, mainly farmers, had been massacred in Abi Addi and the villages of Adi Asmiean, Bega Sheka, Adichilo, Amberswa, Wetlaqo, Semret, Guya, Zelakme, Arena, Mitsawerki, Yeqyer and Shilum Emni - villages about 60 miles from Tigray's capital. Obviously this kind of coverage does not justify a dozen separate "massacre in this town" articles, but it's not fraudulent. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 19:48, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
  • 力 1) The place Begasheka Tsion is not mentioned, 2) Date, the incidents discussed in the Telegraph are incidents in February, the claimed event is in December 2020. 3) Question, where did he place this source? In all articles, check whether sources mention the events, the name places, the dates, victim counts, read the whole articles Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
    • My apologies @力 as you pointed out, the place Begasheka is mentioned as Bega Sheka. The creator placed the Telegraph source right after the date 6 December 2020, which is unsupported by the Telegraph, which mentions incidents in February. The claimed event itself, the date 06 December, the number of victims, is only mentioned in the Atlas (Researchgate) source.Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Neutrality with respect to which "sides" are responsible for more massacres: Just for the record, the creator of the article Chenna massacre, a massacre in the Amhara region by the TDF, is Rastakwere. (On the other hand, the big quote boxes do give the impression that there's an attempt to justify the killings because the civilians were fighting the TDF, and to highlight the Tigray government denial. And the template texts about massacres and non-reaction reactions are also included.) Boud (talk) 02:39, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

• This is COI and refspam for "Tigray: Atlas of the humanitarian situation". Following up at SPI. MarioGom (talk) 11:51, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

  See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jnyssen. MarioGom (talk) 13:27, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Rastakwere now blocked as a sock. Mccapra (talk) 20:09, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Quick estimate

From a quick eyeball of the leaderboard it looks like we’ve patrolled 9000 or so articles in November, but over the same period, a nearly equal number of new articles has been created. That’s a lot of paddling for not much progress…… Mccapra (talk) 19:12, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah. A bit unexpected considering how successful the AFC backlog drive was. It looks like losing some of our high volume reviewers a few months ago really lowered our velocity. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:18, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

on the other hand, without the drive we might be about to hit 18,000 in the queue! Mccapra (talk) 23:35, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I know I knocked off some 300 articles more than I would have otherwise. It's not a lot compared to other reviewers but that's 300 articles that aren't in the queue. (t · c) buidhe 23:38, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like a lot....I did 22 :-) North8000 (talk) 01:48, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I use the New Pages Feed on the "show me the oldest" setting so that I can patrol kind of slowly and I have seen a lot of what feels like bulk redirect-removals of things like Mad Men episodes and Woody Woodpecker Episodes that used to be all on one page when the individual shows were deemed non-noteworthy but someone is maybe trying again. Do we have any stats on how much of the backlog is newly created pages and how much is older pages that for whatever reason are showing up as unpatrolled (like these old episode articles)? Jessamyn (talk) 04:23, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I tend to patrol from the latest articles and mainly check copyvio and notability. What surprises me is how few articles need deletion, at AfC the ratios are reversed. I guess it works at keeping a lot of the crap out of mainspace to begin with. (t · c) buidhe 04:48, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

That’s interesting if you’re checking thoroughly and systematically. Apart from CSD junk I also don’t find many that clearly and unambiguously need to be deleted. However there is an enormous number where I either have no idea (sports) or where it’s so much work to find out (53 refs in Korean) that I tend to just leave them in the queue. For this reason I suspect there are several thousand deletion candidates in the queue that no reviewer has yet wanted to tackle. Mccapra (talk) 08:14, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I used to always work from the back of the queue. I've started using the sorted feed at: User:SDZeroBot/NPP_sorting. It would be useful if we could recruit some NPPs interested in sports and other subjects massively contributing to the backlog, as like you I tend to leave sports articles. Polyamorph (talk) 08:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I've been spending a bit of time in the sports section during the backlog drive. If I'm being blunt, a lot of articles are low-quality: poorly sourced, only primary sources, dubious notability etc. If I was honest, I would PROD, AfD or draftify a large number of them. I'm worried about being perceived as too agressive though, so until now I've been mostly looking for articles I could mark as reviewed. Any feedback is appreciated. JBchrch talk 16:22, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

There was a slew of American football stubs that were created recently. Some of them were clear SNG passes, as they had played in the NFL (and were pretty quickly reviewed). Others, of university amateurs, are not. Given how many were created by the same editor, I too am wary of mass-prodding them, potentially overloading their talk page. Sdrqaz (talk) 16:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't check over sports articles. It's likely that different topics have different average quality. With sports some editors will argue for keeping at AfD even in absence of GNG coverage so it's tricky. (t · c) buidhe 04:44, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that another type that are very difficult and where we need to connect a specialist with is where the references are not English language. North8000 (talk) 14:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Can non-NPPers reject a premature AfC submission?

I am patrolling for AfCs for new and upcoming films that fail to pass WP:NFF guidelines. Am I (as not an NPP reviewer) able to reject such submissions? If not, how should I tag an article to communicate to an NPP-reviewer that a particular article would fail NFF (because film hasn't been released and film production hasn't been notable)? These prematurely created articles are either fancruft or operate as advertising for upcoming films, and are based solely on churnalism of press releases. Platonk (talk) 17:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Platonk You should decline the article at AfC as a non-notable film. (t · c) buidhe 18:05, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe: I would love to, but I do not have any page reviewer privileges/rights and I don't see any button/link for me (a regular editor) to 'decline'. Article is Draft:Terror on the Prairie which was draftified per AfD WP:Articles for deletion/Terror on the Prairie. I don't, however, see any bold/obvious notation for an NPP-reviewer to see that it was draftified for failing NFF and to specifically look for whether it now passes. (In this case, it doesn't.)

I don't suppose I would mind becoming a page reviewer, but I never thought about it before. I checked the guidelines; the only experience I don't have is "moving pages", though I suppose I could acquire that. Platonk (talk) 18:27, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Platonk If you're already patrolling drafts why not apply for the AfC perm? I think it's granted more easily than NPP and we can always use more reviewers! (t · c) buidhe 18:35, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe: Wow, more as yet undiscovered corners of Wikipedia! I'll look into that. I thought that was NPP's bailiwick. Platonk (talk) 18:54, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

One more question

I don't have 'Afc reviewer' rights, but have NPP rights. Can I accept/decline draft at Afc? --Gazal world (talk) 18:48, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Gazal world No, you have to apply for AfC permissions separately. But they will almost certainly be granted if you are already reviewing at NPP and are a trusted editor. (t · c) buidhe 18:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Not officially. You're supposed to apply for the right at WP:AFCP, get added to the list, then install and use the WP:AFCH helper script. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:04, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I see. 'll apply if needed. Thanks. --Gazal world (talk) 19:47, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@Gazal world I went ahead and added you to the AFC list. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:39, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Barkeep49. --Gazal world (talk) 09:25, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Malfunction or my mistake?

Sometimes when I use the curation tool to leave a message for the creator, it instead leaves a message on my talk page, addressing me as the creator. Is this a malfunction of the tool, or am I doing something wrong? North8000 (talk) 18:16, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Could be a bug but more information is needed, under what circumstances does this occur? Are you redirecting the articles so that the system thinks you are the creator? Or is it random? Polyamorph (talk) 09:19, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Polyamorph:, your post made me take a closer look. For the last two times that occurred, ([4],[5]) I didn't redirect the articles, but they were both articles which were originally created as a redirect. BTW I've been working the oldest end of the cue, which is mostly articles just converted from redirects. Your making me look has solidified something that I've been changing. I probably shouldn't use the "note to creator" tool because that isn't going to go the the person who recently created the article. Thanks. North8000 (talk) 14:30, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Removing autopatrol from admins

The +sysop user group (aka Admins) is about to lose autopatrol out of WP:RFA2021/P. Admins will be able to grant it to themselves. But several have already indicated that they are likely to not grant it to themselves. As such don't be surprised when you start to see new articles created by admins appearing in the feeds. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:37, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

good to know, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:51, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Reviewing older articles

I followed the November backlog drive and noticed that articles created from pages which were started as redirects in previous years come at the start of the Special:NewPagesFeed, for example Welsh republicanism was created as a redirect on 10 May 2006‎, published as an article on 23 November 2021‎ and reviewed on 27 November 2021 (4 days after publication). As a result there are still 662 unreviewed articles in the date range From 23 June 2021 to 31 July 2021, which would have been eligible for indexing by Google at the start of the drive. Would it be possible to prioritise these for review in December? I have to declare an interest as I published an article in late July, but I am not asking for special treatment for it.

buidhe, could you consider mentioning unreviewed articles from June and July in your closing report for the backlog drive? TSventon (talk) 10:59, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Reviewers should consider reviewing from the back of the queue, i.e. oldest first. Polyamorph (talk) 16:57, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think articles become automatically indexed by google after 90 days. So your July article should already be indexed, just not formally reviewed. Try searching for it in Google to confirm. Reviewers use various methodologies to pick what they review. Some folks are rockstars and focus on the harder articles at the back of the queue, some folks work the front of the queue, and some folks use topic lists that have them reviewing a variety of date ranges. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:50, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Novem Linguae, Google did index my article shortly after 90 days and I obviously don't think it is a danger to the encyclopedia. And thank you to project members for your important work. TSventon (talk) 13:19, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

End of the New Page Patrol drive

Thanks so much to everyone who participated and expect barnstars to be out in the next few days. My only question is how can I access the database cited by MusikBot's NPP chart? I'd like to figure out exactly how much we were able to cut the backlog during the drive. (t · c) buidhe 04:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

My thanks as well to everyone who participated, and especially coordinators, @Elli, Buidhe, and Tol:. I would be interested to see figures on exactly how many more articles than usual were reviewed in the drive. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 15:17, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Moving articles from the draft by creators

I have noticed a trend recently: When an new article is being moved to a draft because a patroller thinks it is not ready for the main space, the creator goes and movis it back without improving it. Today, I noticed that Khivabad and a few other articles of the same creator (and the articles, to be honest, are problematic, there are doubts as of whether these localities currently exist); the creator just move them back to the main space without any comment. Recently, I have seen Tammy Flores Garman Schoenen of another creator moved to the draft, the creator added a couple of sentences and moved it back. I am not sure it would survive an AfD. Should we do something about this practice?--Ymblanter (talk) 11:14, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I believe there's nothing you can do about it because draftification (unless ordered by consensus at an AfD) is supposed to be voluntary. If the article content is very bad other solutions can be tried, such as AfD, stubbing etc. (t · c) buidhe 11:17, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:DRAFTOBJECT doesn't really advise re-draftifying. I think we're supposed to AFD these if they're bad enough. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:28, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Once you draftify, even if they don't move it themselves, but simply object to the draftification, you must return it to mainspace. At that point, you can make any necessary edits (e.g. remove any and all uncited material, which then can't be re-added without valid citations as per WP:BURDEN, or add appropriate tags) or take it to AfD. I just had the same issue with a list of weapons article. It's aggravating and a headache, and imho shows a lack of intent to build an encyclopedia on the article's creator's behalf, but that's what it is. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 15:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to think that AfC is not optional for paid editors and editors with a conflict of interest. For the others; yes, they can do that, but they ought to understand that draftification is an alternative to deletion: Either the article is improved or all non-verifiable content is removed. Vexations (talk) 21:14, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

If you find the right admins, you can get a paid/COI editor sanctioned for refusing to use AFC or edit requests. But community has rejected efforts to change the "should" to "must" in the COI editing guidelines. So, if such an editor reads the guidelines, says it only says "should", then takes you to ANI, what the outcome will be is a matter of who participate in the discussion. It's one of those areas where common sense and policy are at odds and community has deliberately left it that way. Usedtobecool ☎️ 08:48, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I concur with others -- even for COI editors, AfD is the way to go here. Move-warring between draft- and article- space is counterproductive and not a good reflection on our project. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:DBLDRAFT. Usedtobecool ☎️ 08:51, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Should certain categories of redirect be autopatrolled?

The last couple days I have been going through and patrolling a number of redirects (using a script I wrote which opens all visible links at Special:NewPagesFeed). One thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of unreviewed userpage redirects clogging up the queue. Currently, there are 941 of them between November 12 and now (I can't link to this view of the queue directly, but it is "unreviewed pages" in the "user" namespace). After going through about a hundred of these, it seems like the vast majority are simply left behind from users being renamed, users changing the names of their own subpages, and drafts being moved into draftspace/mainspace. Additionally, a very large number of them have {{R from move}} on them; this one is a good example. With this in mind, I was able to come up with a list of twenty (manually reviewed beforehand) and run a script on them to automatically mark the batch as patrolled. This took a little under a minute.

However, it seems to me that manual review of each redirect left behind when a user moves a draft into mainspace is quite unnecessary. I can't think of a reason why these need to be patrolled -- what would we be patrolling them for? If they are being created abusively (someone creating "User:Example/Gigantic stupid piece of shit" and redirecting it to a BLP's article), this seems like something that could be picked out at a glance from scrolling down a list of pages -- would there be any objection to me writing a script or bot to process these automatically, similar to DannyS712 bot III's Task 66 (approved to patrol redirects automatically following this RfC)? jp×g 02:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

• Potential scopes for autopatrolling include:

1. Only redirects created as part of a user renaming, moves within a user's own userspace, or a move to draft/mainspace page at the same title (i.e. "User:Example/John H. Smith" → "John H. Smith" would be automatically patrolled but "User:Example/John Smith" → "John H. Smith" would not)
2. All redirects within userspace targeted to draftspace or userspace
3. All redirects within userspace with {{R from move}}

I don't know which of these would make the most sense -- would be interested in hearing some perspectives on this. jp×g 02:42, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Also worth mentioning is the fact that there are currently 9,266 pages in the NPP queue, of which it appears that 7,070 are redirects; I am giving some consideration to ideas regarding autopatrolling redirects (or at least writing tools which make patrolling them less time-consuming). jp×g 02:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@JPxG, you don't need to patrol any pages outside of the article space at all. Getting their numbers down doesn't help NPP goals, and they are not what we count under our backlog. At this moment, there are 9,164 non-reviewed non-redirect articles in mainspace. Those are our number one priority. Then there are 7050 more unreviewed redirects in mainspace which are not as urgent as the articles but have to eventually be looked anyway. The userspace stuff we can leave to be discovered in the course of normal editing and patrolling. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 09:01, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know how to do NPP for redirects; I'm also not sure why we do NPP for redirects. It is surely useful to have someone checking for Neelix-style bad redirects en masse, but clicking for every redirect feels like a bit much. That goes triple for userspace redirects; unless there's obscenity or BLP violations I'm not sure why anyone could possibly care about a redirect created by a user in their own userspace. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 02:50, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

力, I've been doing a day's worth of backlog pretty much daily for redirects for the past year or so and feel like I run into enough redirects that need correction or deletion for it to have been worthwhile (it also doesn't take too long, ~20 min a day). I agree about the non-mainspace redirects though, those are not worth our time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 06:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

If you're finding several issues per day, and it only takes one person 20 minutes to clear the daily backlog, I stand corrected regarding mainspace. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 16:44, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Poorly sourced geostubs passing NPP

I just came across Kheo17's creations which seem to have made it past NPP. As I'm sure many of you are aware, this type of geostub mass creation based on tabular data is problematic and probably should have raised some red flags. Just a reminder of an editing pattern that folks should look out for and put a stop to if they see it. –dlthewave ☎ 03:20, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Dlthewave, I’m sorry are you concerned because the article is a stub or because it comprises tabular data? If references are in the article and the article clearly passes GNG or the relevant SNG, insofar as it meets WP:PSA I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong. Of course that is just my own understanding. Celestina007 (talk) 19:56, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Celestina007 is correct. The relevant SNG here is WP:GEOLAND. Populated, legally recognized places are presumed notable. The stubs should be tagged for improvement if needed, otherwise if there are no other issues these articles should be marked as reviewed. Polyamorph (talk) 20:05, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Since the headline is "poorly sourced" I assume the issue is that the source is not reliable and/or does not support the claim to passing GEOLAND—an especially important issue to evaluate in the case of mass creation. (t · c) buidhe 21:31, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

While I agree with Celestina007 and Polyamorph, I do not think these articles are sourced well enough to pass GEOLAND, let alone GNG. Unlike Geostubs which are solely sourced to government censuses, these appear to be solely sourced by this link... although I only looked at about 10 of the articles. This is not good enough to establish GEOLAND. A similar case came up a couple of years ago regarding US stubs which relied on GNIS entries to establish notability, and I think this is a similar instance. An alternative to prodding them would be to draftify them, to allow Kheo17 to provide better sourcing. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 22:10, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

That's correct, Buidhe. The two main issues I see are that A) the source does not show incorporation or other legal recognition for these villages and B) WP:NGEO specifically excludes maps and tables from being used to establish notability. When similar mass creation efforts have been discussed at ANI and other venues, the consensus has been that these types of stubs should not be created en masse from databases without secondary sourcing. They often end up being redirected or deleted which requires massive amounts of time and energy from other editors who must do the legwork of establishing notability (or lack thereof) which was never done by the article creator. –dlthewave ☎ 22:35, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Onel5969, Buidhe, My interpretation or rather what I idiosyncratically deduced from the entry was Dlthewave was unhappy with the article being a stub thus the statement I made above which reads “are you concerned because the article is a stub or because it comprises tabular data?” to which I further stated that if the said article or articles as the case might be met WP:PSA then there wasn’t any inherent problem with that. But as Buidhe, Onel5969 pointed above, it seems Dlthewave's major concern was that the articles were poorly sourced. If that is the case then it raises one question, who reviewed the articles? especially when it is a stub that doesn’t meet the relevant SNG? From what I can see from here, Dlthewave mentioned that this articles has passed through NPP, which means from my understanding’ means they have been reviewed. This then brings to my mind the grievance of Doomsdayer520 who stated that most new page reviewers are too quick to use the green button rather than take up the time to perform due diligence before marking as reviewed. Celestina007 (talk) 15:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

To find out who marked the geo stubs as reviewed, just check the log of the articles concerned Polyamorph (talk) 18:45, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@Polyamorph, thanks Poly, I did know how to check to see the creator of an article I was just too tired and fatigued to actually bother to check who. Celestina007 (talk) 14:56, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

If it is clear that stubs that fail GNG, SNG and/or WP:GEOLAND are being passed, then they should be either redirected to the nearest sttlement that has an article that complies with notability, or sent to draft and the reviewer should be cautioned. At least the drafts will expire by G13 so they are not actually increasing the workload at AfC where they can be declined with a mouseclick. Imprecise patrolling is the very reason the NPR right was created. There may be backlogs but filling the encyclopedia up with needless junk is a waste of everyone's time and patience sorting it out. Noting BTW, that the November backlog drive wasn't exactly a roaring success. Have the year-end barnstars been prepared? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:35, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I had the same issue with Belanov87's geostubs. I initially objected to them because they seemed to be created by a unapproved bot. The user denied it, which I took at face value. Then I saw other reviewers were just accepting these articles, so I capitulated. In retrospect, since sources were tables and some autogenerated web profiles, I guess they could have been PROD'd or draftified? MarioGom (talk) 17:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I think you have to be familiar with the specific issues surrounding mass geostub creation in order to pick up on these patterns; it's understandable that someone could take a good look at the source, recognize it as an Official Government Document™ and give it the green light with the assumption that it will be expanded in the near future. That's why I wanted to educate folks on a red flag to look out for that they might not be aware of. However, it seems like the NPP process is set up to review the content of individual articles rather than identify and address larger editing patterns. Folks should certainly be using draft space more and sending incomplete stubs there as well; I think it's fair to expect all editors to develop articles in draft space until they have enough sources to establish notability (SNG or GNG) at the very least. –dlthewave ☎ 05:04, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm with Dlthewave in spirit but not in blaming NPP. According to the SNG. populated, legally recognized places are presumed notable. They don't need sources to meet the SNG and so the exclusions of source types for establishment of notability are moot. Also our well-supported effort to add wording to discourage mass ceation of stubs got marked as "no consensus" (Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 73#Adding one new thing to the current SNG text) This isn't the way I want it, but it's the reality at AFD. If a NPP person takes it to AFD, they'll get verbally beat up with things like "Didn't you read the SNG?" North8000 (talk) 19:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Except that at minimum you need a source that supports the assertion that the place is legally recognized in order to pass the SNG. (t · c) buidhe 19:54, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but but that's not the normal meaning of a source establishing notability. North8000 (talk) 20:34, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@North8000, whilst I agree that I’m not familiar with GEOLAND and whatnot, Semantics and linguists ambiguities aside, I totally agree with Buidhe that an article must have at least one reliable source present, if there are SNG's that give leeway for certain types of articles to be unsourced then that SNG needs to be re-written as it is not in agreement with WP:V. Celestina007 (talk) 15:02, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007: I agree with you 100% that that is how is SHOULD be. I'd probably start with the "did it for a living for one day" sports SNG and then move on to geostubs. But my previous post was about how it IS rather than what it should be.North8000 (talk) 20:48, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty new to the NPP, but I think this relates to a broader debate about the level of "agressivity" that reviewers should have. While I'm inclined to agree with Kudpung's philosophy, it's not easy to go ahead and draftify/PROD 20+ articles of a series in one go, unless you're a very experienced reviewer and you know that you can trust your judgment. I've already expressed this. JBchrch talk 20:01, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• We need to be clear that tabular data sourcing refers to sources that have the village only on a list that gives minimal information. It does not mean that settlement specific entries on a national government census do not count for notability when they have significant coverage such as 1000-2000 word + detailed statistics for the specific location. I had a recent conversation at RSN about this with a member of WP:GEO who explained this, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 02:58, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
• This reminds me of my previous question I asked here about what to do with poorly sourced professors and politicians. SNG passes with poor sourcing appear to be one of those gray areas where you can't get a consistently straight answer. Some people say draftify, some people say mark as reviewed, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:06, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
• I think the key is does a stub, even though poorly, or sparsely sourced, show that the article's subject passes the SNG? For example, an article on a geostub, which is sourced to that government's census data, clearly indicates it is a legally recognized populated place, and therefore passes GEOLAND. While a geostub which is simply referenced to a source which shows that it exists, but doesn't not categorically state it is a legally recognized populated place, does not pass the SNG. In the former, I would mark it reviewed, and tag it for a single source. In addition, if there was other unsourced material in the I would either tag it as needing more refs, or if there were only 1 or two lines, I might simply place CN tags instead. In the latter instance, I would make a judgement call about whether to draft, redirect (if appropriate, and a logical target is available), or PROD/CSD if I don't find any info on the subject. For foreign country articles, unless it's obviously a hoax, or a one line unsourced stub like, "XXXXX is a village in Vietnam", I would rarely go the PROD/CSD route. Politicians are similar. If there is a state senator from Nebraska with a single ref, but that ref is to the official Nebraska legislature page showing they are a member, then that person satisfies the SNG. Of late, I'm seeing a spate of MP articles for Indian politicians which fall into this category. But if the only source is a newspaper article saying, State Senator XXXX officiated at the grand opening...", then again, draftify or redirect. While the newspaper may be a reliable source, it's not an official source. Some reviewers may disagree with that, but there was a stub about 7 years ago, where this was exactly the case. The newspaper said "State senator", but that was an error, they were running for State Senator, but they were only a local councilman at the time. NACADEMIC is even dicier. If there is a person who due to their position (president of a college, for instance), and there is a single cite, they pass the SNG. Similarly, if there is a line in the stub which says that the person is cited frequently, and then adds a google scholar link which shows high citation counts, they pass the SNG. But often, neither of those is present. That's when the redirect/draft/tag option comes into play. However, since a google scholar search is relatively easy, if they are an associate professor with a high citation count of 10, I'm going to PROD them. Sorry to blather on, but I thought a look into reviewing thought processes might be beneficial. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 15:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• Your argument about the newspaper is the caution about using secondary sources or third-party sources. The ultimate solution to the incorrect info would be utilizing multiple secondary or third-party sources so the statements could be verified. I think it is merely understanding if there are lower quality sources about a geostub at its article creation - it most likely won't be expanded. – The Grid (talk) 15:41, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

  Ultimately, what matters is whether an AFD will delete the article. If the topic is notable, it almost always survives AFD regardless of its state. Any article that would survive an AFD should be marked as reviewed, per current NPP guidelines. If you look at the NPP flowchart, you are supposed to pass articles on notable topics even if they are completely unsourced. Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:28, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

"... an article on a geostub, which is sourced to that government's census data, clearly indicates it is a legally recognized populated place, and therefore passes GEOLAND." It's not that simple though. Census tracts are not inherently notable under the SNG even though they're sourced to official government documents; this was the root of the whole Iranian "village" debacle where articles were created for the lowest-level census areas which sometimes turned out to be individual farms. I fear that reviewers may see a government source and assume that it establishes notability without even clicking on it to see what it actually says. –dlthewave ☎ 16:42, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

As I mentioned before, I'm with you in spirit but I've been talking about the current realities. With that in mind in comments we need to be clear which of these we are talking about:

1. Where it appears established that they a populated, legally recognized place (but still questioning wp:notability)
2. Where it is not been established that it is a populated, legally recognized place

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:51, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm talking about when an editor finds a government source that they believe is a list of "populated, legally recognized" places but turns out to be something else, for example census tracts. The source is in the article and appears at first glance to meet GEOLAND #1 which is why these are getting past NPP. –dlthewave ☎ 21:22, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

In many countries census tracts are in fact "lists of populated, legally recognized places". Not every country is like the US. This is already the third time I am trying to point this out to you, but you do not seem to be interested in listening.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Beware of WP:SLEEPER Accounts

Please if you can take up little time to read this it would serve as a bedrock/prerequisite to what I’m about to say pertaining the sudden awakening of Sleeper accounts. Now, On December 14th I draftified this article created by the editor named Jefak007 (they are now blocked). Upon further observation I noticed this was a sleeper account who prior creating this article was inactive since 2017, at the time they were 10 years old with less than 90 edits, who basically re-awakened to create the promotional article. Now, today whilst patrolling new articles I stumbled upon another account Hazelnike who apparently has been here for 14 years with 540 edits, they created this article which I draftified on the basis of a strong COI suspicion, & as is required, I initiated a conversation with them over 40 minutes ago and they are yet to to respond. In summary, I think we should be on the lookout for sleepers I’m seeing a lot of well written articles by WP:SLEEPER accounts which I believe are alternate accounts of blocked editors, or, for bad faith editors still editing here. Coincidentally it appears as though the first editor I speak about who is now blocked was in communication with the (in my opinion) LTA editor named Oluwa2Chainz, see this, this & this. I believe we need to take this seriously by being on the lookout for Sleepers. Celestina007 (talk) 23:28, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Gaviscon

Gaviscon was redirected without discussion in 2016 to Antacid. Gaviscon is possibly the most widely used over-the-counter and prescribed antacid/heartburn/reflux remedy in the UK. If Maalox is allowed an article, why not Gaviscon which seems to me to be a highly likely target for Wikipedia searches? Gaviscon is Wikilinked from 72 pages including GERD. In addition to its existing sources, admittedly many of which are primary, reliable sources are at least available about it by the UK government NHS, and the US government articles and the Thai government's FDA site, and peer reviewed papers, and in Le VIDAL, the official French pharmacopeia. At one stage (around 2005) , according to the UK Govt. Office of Fair Trading 49% of the sales of Gaviscon were through NHS prescritpions]. So, see WP:MEDRS:

Ideal sources for biomedical information include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields and from respected publishers; and guidelines or position statements from national or international expert bodies. – (The bolding is mine)

If Maalox is allowed an article, why not Gaviscon which seems to me to be a highly likely target for Wikipedia searches? If there is no response within 7 days I will add the NHS and NCBI sources and republish it in mainspace. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:31, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung: I don't see why you're asking here? The user who redirected it is now blocked and the redirection was never due to a strong community consensus. If you can write a decent article on the subject, I don't see why anyone here would object... Elli (talk | contribs) 06:33, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Elli I thought someone would like to do it. You'd be surprised what people object to when I do something! I'm trying to retire from this circus ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:36, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

UPE with an autopatrolled and AfC reviewer rights

This is copy pasted from This AN REPORT. I have moved most of the articles back to the new pages feed and would be proceeding to nominating them for deletion, I believe our collective effort would be required here. Celestina007 (talk) 15:18, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Aid in cleaning up mass Creation of spam articles

In response to this serious mess I have mass nominated most of their spam articles see here can anyone be kind enough to in cleaning this serious mess? Celestina007 (talk) 16:05, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Note that if the account gets blocked, G5 will apply to most creations that haven't gone through AfD yet. I would just hold off a bit. MarioGom (talk) 11:40, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Help with Russian sources

Could a Russian speaker help assessing reliability of sources at NUTSon? Thank you. MarioGom (talk) 15:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

MarioGom I don't recognize any of the sources on-sight, which is a bad sign. A cursory glance at content, bylines and editorial policy pages leaves me with the impression that these sources are churnalism or churnalism-adjacent. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:06, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I will have a look later today, in three to four hours.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

First, there are not 16 sources as one could think but only 5. Second, none of them is a mainstream established source (which in Russia often also have issues, but still). As Rosguill correctly says, they are churnalism, of the same type as the sources in the articles about our Nigerian friends, though prersumably not affiliated and not direct advertisement. Probably AfD is the safest route.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:06, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

And the credentials of the creator are not inspiring either.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

The only other articles I could find where any of the sources from NUTson have been used are YooMoney and Nanosemantics. Vexations (talk) 13:36, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a Çelebicihan article. Deleted, sock blocked. MER-C 17:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! MarioGom (talk) 12:47, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Help with new page patrolling

A page created about 10 days ago is pending patrol at: RobOps Please do the needful. Wickedwiki2 (talk) 15:45, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick review User:Chris_troutman Happy Holidays.Wickedwiki2 (talk) 16:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Wickedwiki2: Yes, harassing us volunteers to patrol a page you made is a quick way to get the thing nominated for deletion. I did "the needful". Chris Troutman (talk) 16:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

PSA: Keep an eye out for uncredited translations

In many cases of article topics not from the English speaking world, the article is a translation from another language Wikipedia but is not marked as such. Always check to see if the article exists on another language wiki and if so, whether the new enwiki article is original. If not, it is a copyright violation and breaking Wikipedia licensing. Just today I uncovered cross-wiki sockpuppetry by a user blocked on another language wiki for source fabrication, who was translating his articles deleted on German wikipedia into English. Several of these articles were passed by NPPers who never checked German wiki to see the history. (t · c) buidhe 01:16, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

::sigh:: another case of poor reviewing. It's being suggested in other places already that if NPR is not being done thoroughly and/or too little interest from the 750 reviewers to reduce the backlog : 'Why bother reviewing new articles at all?' particularly ones that are hardly likely to be the source of a search. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:59, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

• It would be nice if File:NPP flowchart.svg had a final step to check for reuse attributions (translations, splits from existing articles). MarioGom (talk) 15:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

The file is here. The creator is semi-retired and currently has no intentions of returning to regular editing. He won't object. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:41, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

We should probably get consensus for changes to the flowchart, especially if adding work. Also, the original files are lost, so updates may not be as easy as they appear. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:41, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Novem Linguae, There is no need to get consensus to improve it, any more than there would be to change my earlier, simpler, chart. It's a private offering and it's freely licenced. A flow chart like that can be put together with patience in a very short time if one already knows thre content for it. ICPH already did all the hard work with his conceptual design. There are dozens of free online flowchart builders out there. ICPH used Draw.io, now known as Diagrams.net, but Inkscape is another, and one could just as easily use Apple Pages, part of the default Mac suite of apps. Bear in mind however, that while that flowchart is excellent, we did NPP for years with just my simple one and there is no substitute for experience, and learning all the deletion and notability policies -and that's the steep side of the learning curve. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

enwiki new page patrol flowchart - color coded

@Kudpung. I think the flowchart is a summary of and codification of correct NPP reviewing, and changing its steps should get consensus, since it affects a lot of people's workflows. As to the SVG thing, I am proficient in Inkscape, just now I downloaded a couple SVG versions of the flowchart to investigate modifying it, and the file appears to be a c:Template:Fake SVG, which means that it would be difficult to modify. I suspect an SVG file in the proper vector format would also be difficult to modify without its original Microsoft Visio-style underlying generating program, since you'd have to individually move around boxes and lines, instead of having them auto generated for you. I have been interested in flowchart updates in the past so that is why I am commenting on this issue. I left a list of 8 flowchart update ideas here in July 2021, and I have also color coded the flowchart before, see here. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:12, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Page views at the tutorial are quite good over the last five years at a monthly average of 2,178, but over the last 12 months page views have dropped to 1,692. This is still fairly good for a relatively obscure and niche help page, but the hits are probably due to new reviewers referring back to the page or its flowchart many times. However, as I mentioned above, the knowledge of deletions and notability are the hard bit. The flowcharts are quick reference of what to do next. Inkscape is a very elementary but nice piece of free software, it does all you want in just a few minutes. It's very intuitive and doesn't even need a user manual. It just depends how much time you want to spend on it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:46, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages converted to articles

Are disambiguation pages converted to articles relevant to this project? I believe that they do not feature on the feed, but they can be entirely new articles. An example is Environmental defender, written by Larataguera, which I saw at DYK. TSventon (talk) 22:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

buidhe, the history of the disambiguation page is now split to Environmental defender (disambiguation) so should Environmental defender now go through NPP? TSventon (talk) 11:09, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@TSventon: The page shows as unreviewed, so yes it's relevant and will be reviewed in due course. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:02, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Elli: the page didn't show as unreviewed on 27 December. @GeoffreyT2000: requested a history split today and then added the new page to the page feed today, which probably shows that the article was of interest to the project. TSventon (talk) 17:16, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion going on

Currently there is a discussion over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football#Notability of several CFB players which NPPer's might have some interest in. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 15:54, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:33, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Caliadi

Hi -- not sure this is the right place to ask, but could someone look over the above article, and hopefully give it the NPP seal of approval, please? The subject recently died, article was created by an experienced editor from Indonesian press coverage, and it is now up for In the News (Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates#RD:_Caliadi). It's already been ok'd by a couple of reviewers who read Indonesian. I found no obvious problems but I don't read Indonesian so hesitated to tick it myself. Thanks! Espresso Addict (talk) 07:31, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done I was reading the ITN entry (mainly because the term was new to me). No obvious issues stand out. The review that's happened at ITNC is better than most NPP reviews, as we don't have reviewers by language/region. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:35, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I think it's had a fairly comprehensive review, all told! Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 07:38, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Removal of Autopatrol from admins - done

is now done. Some have given themselves the right again, others who had Autopatrol before they were admins have been given the right again. There are nevertheless some admins who have abused this right in the past. Not assuming bad faith, but pragmatism dictates that a watchfull eye on new articles is required. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:30, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Kudpung, After the original announcement, my mind came to you. If I recollect correctly it appears some years ago you advocated for this and spoke extensively on why admins should not have automatic Autopatrol rights amongst other rights that are granted to sysops after they haves passed an RFA. If I’m reading all the entries correctly, it appears sysops can still give themselves the rights. Furthermore I agree that certain sysops have abused this right in the past. Celestina007 (talk) 09:02, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Already 248 admins have either given themselves autopatrolled or had it assigned to them because they had it before, which is about a quarter of all admins and just over half of active admins, so unfortunately it seems the RfC will have a limited effect in practice. – Joe (talk) 11:56, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't understand why they think they need it so badly. Polyamorph (talk) 13:22, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you really want to patrol all my new articles? I am not a high-volume creator, but I still make about a dozen per week.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:29, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Autopatrolled is meant for trusted users who regularly create articles. You would fall into that category so it seems appropriate for you to have it. But not all admins are content creators, it seems strange that 1/2 all active admins are bothered enough to give it to themselves. Admins make mistakes too. Polyamorph (talk) 14:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I do not think it is a correct description of what happened. Most admins who are now autopatrolled were autopatrolled before getting the admin flag, and had the autopatrolled flag restored by bot. Some (including myself) had autopatrol before and re-assigned themselves the flag, and some decided to go through the request. I guess it is only a handful of admins who have never been autoparolled and who assigned themselves the flag.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:11, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Not to split hairs, but I don't think Barkeep49 is a bot Sdrqaz (talk) 17:31, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Joe Roe didn't specify the fraction of those who held the perm previously. So I guess that would be useful to know. Polyamorph (talk) 17:54, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Approximately 129 admins held the usergroup at one time. It was this group that I restored the permission to. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:15, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Barkeep49. In other words 119 admins decided to grant themselves the perm for reasons unknown. Polyamorph (talk) 18:29, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I think there's a variety of reasons admins may have made this choice. I know some admins want to do it for a reasons talked about by Xaosflux as they may create new pages (rather than new articles as per autopatrol) and don't want those pages to need reviewed. Another example would be, I know of one admin who got admin before autopatrol existed but who has been enough of a content creator that they'd have had autopatrol if it had existed. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:16, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty much going to drop this note and not look back here unless asked, but there are various perspectives where this flagging is at play - for example, on this page, despite the being called "New pages patrol" doesn't seem to be frequented heavily by editors primarily concerned with new pages, only by those actually doing "New article patrol". Patrol marks are useful elsewhere as well, for example when patrolling Special:NewFiles. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:10, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I am not on the list which means those who had autopartol but granted it to themselves are not included.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:40, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll just note that this change was made as part of an RfA change not some broader look at adminship. The change does allow candidates who are worried about content creation criticism to declare they will not take the flag. In that way it's going to have the intended effect, which I agree will not be substantial. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

This is not correct. It is not done. It will be done next week. See this phab task if you want to know more or follow the actual implementation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:11, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

• I did support it in fact, and Celestina007 is not wrong, but it's actually a toothless new piece of policy because it won't prevent admins from abusing it again as they have done in the past. It might however ensure that new RfA candidates have created sufficient content to avoid arbitrary opposes on the lines of 'Not enough content work'.

That said, in the feed there are plenty of list display options to select in the 'Set filters' panel . I'll ask Phab to include a new one: 'Created by Autopatrolled users'. I didn't think of it at the time of its development because the extent of the abuse had not come to light. There are currently 4,252 users with the autopatrolled right, it might be an idea to run a Quarry to see exactly how many articles are being created by Autopatrollers and what level of burden it would be on NPP if the right were scrapped altogether. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:22, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

There are ways admins create new pages other than writing articles. For example, if I'm working an SPI case and block a bunch of socks, I usually tag them, which usually means creating user pages for them all. An active SPI clerk might easily create dozens of new user pages in a single session - don't need reviewing. I'm in the 'autopatrolled before I was an admin' camp, which is why I reinstated it, but I wouldn't assume someone else reinstating it on their own account is doing it without good reason. Girth Summit _(blether) 13:14, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

But there's no real need to mark pages outside the mainspace as patrolled – NPP has better things to do. A candidate who goes to WP:PERM/A with the primary reason of non-mainspace creation would probably be laughed out of there. I know that autoreviewer is sometimes given to SPI and Committee clerks, but there's no real demand to do so. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:20, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)NPP is (or was) primarily concerned with mainspace. New articles are the pages that appear in the feed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:25, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Kudpung, I agree a quarry report showing how many articles are being created by autopatrollers would be useful. Would that need to include drafts created by other users and moved to mainspace by autopatrollers, as part of AfC or otherwise? The number of articles being created by non autopatrollers in the same period would be an interesting comparison. TSventon (talk) 17:19, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

It would be extremely useful TSventon. The two other types of New Pages to include are, as you say, drafts created by other users and moved to mainspace by autopatrollers, and of course redirects 'undireted' and turned into new articles. This has often been a method to usurp a redirect for the purpose of evading scrutiny at NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:49, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're aware, but pages are often marked as Reviewed when they're converted from redirect to article. Bahçeköy, Düzce would be an example. –dlthewave ☎ 02:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Autopatrol stats in quarry

Here is the # of autopatrolled articles created in or sent to mainspace per month. Looks like it's around 25,000-35,000 per month. We can refresh this query in a month or two to see if this goes down. Let me know if you need the data in a different format. We get 12 months of data before the PageCuration extension deletes the old data. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:43, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Novem Linguae, does that mean that twice or three times as many autopatrolled articles are created as non autopatrolled articles? TSventon (talk) 00:49, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@TSventon. Good question. According to this slightly adjusted query, NPP marks around 25,000-31,000 mainspace articles as reviewed per month. So it looks like half of all new articles in mainspace are autopatrolled, and half of mainspace articles are manually reviewed by an NPP. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Novem Linguae (and Kudpung), those figures seem to include redirects, e.g. 40,022 November NPP reviews on the report compares to the latest Wikipedia:Database_reports/Top new article reviewers 30 day figures of 43,111, comprising DannyS712 bot III 24,147, Rosguill 5,980 and others 12,984. Could redirects be excluded from the reports you linked? TSventon (talk) 15:54, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Good catch. Updated. Looks like it's about 10,000 per month marked as reviewed, and 10,000 per month autopatrolled. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Novem Linguae. The monthly NPP figures show what you would expect from the backlog chart: around 11,000 reviews per month until August, falling to around 8,000 in September and October, while the backlog increased from 5,000 to almost 10,000. TSventon (talk) 17:16, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

We lost our two highest volume patrollers around then I think. They were unsung heroes, doing a ton of work. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:20, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Novem Linguae, I had read about the lost patrollers. I wonder if it would be possible to improve the visibility of some of this information, for example could there be a leaderboard for autopatrols, with the same format as for Top new article reviewers? TSventon (talk) 18:18, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Hey @TSventon. Here's some queries. Most autopatrols in the last month. Most autopatrols in the last year. If there is enough demand I could turn this into a bot that posts daily to one of the database report pages, but that would take some work. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm frankly gobsmacked by this revelation. After having been involved in NPP for more years than most other users have been registered, It never previously crossed my mind until recently to have such a set of stats extracted. I have absolutely no clue how to quarry for stats, but is it possible to refine that search into:

• Number of creations by admins
• Number of creations by relative new users
• Autopatrolled users who created more than 200 (for example) mainspace articles in those periods?

Sorry to say, but this is looking as if the Autopatrolled right is wortheless and all new mainspace articles should be patrolled. Totally impossible of course with only a tiny handful of the 750 New page reviewers prepared to use the right they asked for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:20, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, wow, I would have guessed maybe 10–20% are being autopatrolled at most... but half?? That's frightening. Having been one of the main admins working WP:PERM/A for a while now, our standards for granting autopatrolled are extremely low, and that's not counting all the people given it on the whim of some admin friend way back when. We really need to look into this further and consider making changes to the right. I tried to do this before (see Wikipedia_talk:Autopatrolled#Reviewing_and_removing_autopatrolled and Wikipedia_talk:Autopatrolled#Reviewing_and_removing_autopatrolled) but didn't get much interest, and I think the problem is that we need to show hard data to convince editors not involved in NPP/COIN/etc. that autopatrolled is a risk and should not be handed out willy-nilly. – Joe (talk) 15:52, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Let me suggest something from a different angle. We have X amount of editor capacity to review articles. Novem's great stats suggests it's roughly 10,000 articles a month. Are we allocating that capacity in the best, or if not the best a good, way? Now I am always in favor of increasing this capacity... assuming we can do it with qualified people but I also think, as noted, our review capacity is somewhat fragile and top heavy so even doing that doesn't change the question. While I think Joe is right that our standard for autopatrol might be lower than ideal, we're not operating in an ideal environment and I am not so sure we're mis-allocating our reviewer capacity/focus. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:17, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe we should consider lowering adjusting our standards. I often find myself looking over a day's worth of new additions to the queue to see if there's something that's within my area of expertise, and as a I look over the list, I notice nothing that really stands out as particularly problematic. I don't really want to mark them as reviewed without a better look, but they're probably just fine. If that happens to other reviewers as well, that's a lot of lost capacity. So I decided to see what happens when I do review at maximum speed, choosing a similar set of articles to work on. I got through 137 in a single day, and after a few days, found that I made two mistakes where an article was AfD'd that I should have nominated, but didn't. I typically average about 5 articles per day, so that's a big change in my productivity, but it comes at a cost in quality. Is 98.5% accuracy good enough? Probably. If I had an easier way to measure that, I might be able to make some adjustments to my reviewing, increase productivity while maintaining a level of accuracy that is acceptable. Vexations (talk) 21:33, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a really interesting train of thought. What can be done to speed up reviewing? User scripts is a big one, scripts like rater and stubsort speed things up. As Vexations mentions above, a less thorough check of sources greatly increases speed while slightly reducing quality. Another idea might be to simplify the NPP flowchart, for example by focusing on CSD and notability, and leaving all the gnoming at the end of the flowchart (stub, tags, wikiprojects) to others. Sometimes I've wondered if we should have 2 "marked as revieweds": one for notability, and one for gnome tags (easier perm to get, or give to all ecp). The shorter the checklist for each queue, the faster the velocity. Oh, and another big velocity booster idea: an RFC to get rid of WP:BEFORE and require GNG and SNG sources to be in the articles for all articles created after the RFC date. AFC does this and I find AFC reviewing to be easier as a result. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:13, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Splitting the review process could have a lot of bureaucratic overhead...I would, however, support reorienting the emphasis of new page reviewing to focus strictly on identifying threats to the encyclopedia (hoaxes, UPE, BLP violations, POV-pushing on sensitive topics, copyright) rather than the strict enforcement of notability guidelines that forms the bulk of actual review time (and which also causes the most disputes with contributors and thus burnout). Quite frankly, if the editors who write sports articles want there to be articles on every decent NCAA prospect or video game fans want to write a 30k word character bio largely relying on the designer's own commentary about the character's development (to name two genres of article filling up the queue yesterday), that's their problem and I don't think it's a productive use of our time to fight them on it. I think that any solution that is premised around us being more reckless in sending things to AFD, however, is a non-starter as it just kicks the backlog can down the road (not to mention that it's going to receive a LOT more pushback from the rest of the editing community). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that's an intriguing idea, not sure how I feel but I think it's worth thinking about. Is it speedy deletable, UPE, BLP vio, etc? NPP should be doing something about it. Is it potentially not notable? Tag and up to someone else to do the BEFORE to decide whether or not to send to AfD. AfD scars also tends to be one of the leading causes of NPP burnout so in addition to cutting down on review time it could cut down on reviewer fatigue. Curious what the pre-ACPERM people have to say. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:20, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

One nuance that's probably worth bearing in mind is that while I think we could do to deemphasize the centrality of notability checks in reviewing, notability will nonetheless continue to be an important tool in fighting hoaxes, UPE and BLP issues. Companies, BLPs, recent media works and any other topic with a potential for self-promotion or abuse should still get the full notability evaluation. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:09, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm a pre-ACPERM person, I suppose? We've had a fixation on the question of delete-or-not for as long as I've been involved, but my sense is that, over time, NPPers have become more and more hesitant to use AfD and have instead slowly expanded the scope of alternative routes to deletion – most notably the massive creep of draftification over the past five years combined with the advent of WP:G13. I think I've made it clear enough elsewhere that I think this is a regrettable trend. The things that make AfD (understandably) unpleasant from an NPPer's perspective—the slow process, the onerous BEFORE requirements, that being 'wrong' is a black mark if you ever go for RfA—are the same things that make it good at preserving good content and more importantly, the motivation of article writers. In other words, they're there by design. Conversely, the increasingly bureacraticized draft process is terrible for inexperienced editors, who often (understandably) feel like their work is subject to the whim of a single faceless and unaccountable 'moderator'. It's a bit of a stalemate but I agree that expecting NPPers to use AfD more is a less plausible solution than getting them to use alternative deletion methods less.

I like Rosguill's idea too. In principle there's no reason why NPPers shouldn't be content to slap an article with {{notability}} and then mark it as reviewed, as long as it doesn't have serious content problems. But one rub: what's to stop the creator then simply removing {{notability}}? And who would notice? – Joe (talk) 12:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Nothing obviously. But in this theoretical NPP it would be out of scope. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:45, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Inactive autopatrollers

At the moment, 630 users who have the autoreviewer (Autopatrolled) user right have not made any edits to Wikipedia in the last five years. Vexations (talk) 21:58, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd pull all of those and have them reapply if they become active again. It could be dangerous in the case of hijacked accounts or changing notability standards. (t · c) buidhe 22:14, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Be my guest:

Vexations (talk) 23:23, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, not an admin. (t · c) buidhe 23:32, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it's a great idea to pull autopatrol perms from these folks, for motivation reasons (never feels good to get a perm taken away), and also because of our huge backlog. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:58, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Per WP:HATSHOP, I'd like to think that these editors listed above wouldn't let their egos get in the way of the project. A few of those listed above have already been blocked, so I don't think it's unreasonable to insist that tools are for getting work done, not awards for longterm gameplayers. Surely you agree. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Just like removing autopatrol from admins, what demonstrable problem does this solve? Is there evidence that these folks cause greater than average disruption with their perm? –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:48, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

It's not a demonstrable problem nor do I have evidence for you. It's a principle. We don't give userrights as political favors. They have tools in order to edit the wiki just as we expect those with "teh bit" to be actively swinging a mop. No edits in the past five years tells me those editors don't need tools, at all. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:19, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Someone should start an RfC on (i) what are conditions fpor removing autopatrolled flag for inactivity; (ii) what are the conditions for a flag restoration. I do not think unilateral removal of a flag in the absence of misconduct is a good solution.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

NPP backlog, October 2017–present

@Novem Linguae: The principle of least privilege says that we should not assign advanced permissions to accounts that do not need them. We already apply this logic to practically every permission from sysop up, and I would argue that autopatrolled carries a substantial amount of risk compared to other minor perms. As for the backlog, I understand that NPP always feels put-upon, but putting it in larger perspective: we had a perrenial backlog of around 20,000 for many years until 2017. In the last year, we have gone from a historic low back to the level it was last autumn. These cycles are natural and since, as a baseline, NPP handles hundreds of articles a day, pulling autopatrolled from small numbers of people will not have a significant effect on the backlog. In this case, it will have no effect, because these editors have created zero articles in the last five years. – Joe (talk) 11:50, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Clarification; it's not just that they haven't created any new articles; these users have not made any edits at all in the past five years. Vexations (talk) 14:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Whilst I agree with Ymblanter that prior consensus is needed to remove these en masse, there seem to be plenty of individual cases in this list that should be looked into: indef blocked users, sockpuppets, an account that has never edited enwiki, etc. I'd encourage other admins to scan through it and see if there are any that should be pulled immediately. – Joe (talk) 14:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

On that note, @Vexations: is there a quarry query behind this list? And/or is it easy for you to reorder by edit count? – Joe (talk) 14:50, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

yes, https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/60773 I’d have to look into edit count. Vexations (talk) 16:23, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Joe Roe This query yields a list of autopatrolled users, sorted by editcount, who have not made any edits in the past five years: https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/60800 It's not very efficient, my apologies for that. If anyone has suggestions for improvement, I'd love to know what I could do better. Vexations (talk) 21:52, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Joe Roe, Vexations, Ymblanter, Chris troutman, Novem Linguae, and Barkeep49: I don't believe that a broader removal of the Autopatroll right would impact on NPP. Indeed, IMO the threshold for obtaining it has been reduced by steps to a dangerously easy level. I would advocate returning it to its origial, 100 'near perfect' articles.

BTW, has anyone though to open a Phab ticket to get 'Articles by Autopatrollers' added to the search prefs of the New Pages Feed?

There is enough consensus in this short sub-thread to get that RfC for the rights removal started. The sucess of an RfC depends on its carefully worded proposition statement, and holding it in the correct venue. The hat collectors would naturally object to losing their rights, they always do, and the same problem exists for stripping the NPP right from the 600 people who don't use it.

It's interesting to note however that the monumental backlog began to fall once the (with Wikipedia's traditional lethargy) effects of the new NPR right kicked in, and then when ACPERM was rolled out in April 2018. It's most likely that the new high backlogs are far more due to a lack of interest on the part of the vast majoity of rights holders than any huge increases in New Articles. Naturally the burn out of some of the most prolific reviewers is to be taken into consideration, but that's to be expected after leaving them to all the work, and the lack of consequential coordination since other coords retired from Wikipedia or put their talents to work in venues at higher levels of equal importance and which also require urgent attention. All these milestones are easily recognisable in the graphic.

There is no point in appealing to the hat collectors to do some work - they won't. OTOH, recruitment and according the NPR right must be done carefully and with a high degree of due diligence. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:39, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Redirects

I understand there were reasons to remove autopatrol from admins generally, but perhaps we can automatically review redirects created by admins? Surely there wouldn't be issues with those, right? If yes, it should be fairly simple to add to DannyS712 bot III. Thoughts? --DannyS712 (talk) 00:25, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Since the whitelist is fully protected, administrators can add themselves to it if they wish (just as they can self-assign autoreviewer). Alternatively, they can request it on the talk page if they want greater scrutiny (just as some administrators requested at WP:PERM/A). As many of the thousand-ish administrators don't frequently create redirects, I'm more in favour of a case-by-case basis being used rather than the pre-emptive addition of all of them. Sdrqaz (talk) 00:34, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I was going to have a dedicated query instead of just using that list - even if they don't frequently create redirects, do we expect there to be any inappropriate ones? DannyS712 (talk) 00:40, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I guess the stock answer to that question (because someone is going to bring it up) is to invoke the case of Neelix and its accompanying speedy deletion criterion. I'm curious to see what other patrollers think. Sdrqaz (talk) 00:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

A new board for complaints

As this talk page does not appear to be on the mailing list for the admin newsletter, I assume that reviewers are familiar with:

• Consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

This board aims specifically to deal with issues arising from the use of all advanced user rights, including New Page Reviewer. Recent discussion reveals mixed opinions on its implementation. Starting from this thread on its talk page the authority for the actual roll out and scope of this new board are being questioned. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

MEDRS issue

Should SARS-CoV-2 Ihu variant be draftified for lack of medical sources? (t · c) buidhe 20:36, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The Daily Mirror isn't a reliable source but I would have though https://www.medrxiv.org/ was good enough for a medical source. Regards. --John B123 (talk) 20:57, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

https://www.medrxiv.org/ is a preprint website, so WP:SELFPUBLISH and not WP:MEDRS. Daily Mirror is actually yellow at WP:RSP. Anyway, article definitely doesn't meet MEDRS, but not sure if that's enough to draftify. Curious what others think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:01, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Agree that the article in its current stubby state, and later if relevant content remains absent, does not need to be MEDRS-compliant. But basing ANY article on a preprint and a somewhat-dodgy newspaper seems like a bad idea. I would suggest moving to draft, then if the study passes peer review and is officially published, haul it back out. We are always better off being slow & reliable than fast. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:17, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and moved the article to draftspace. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:33, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

agree ...though WHO Official Downplays New COVID IHU Variant Found in France Time has it--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:01, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd just like to note SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.640.2, which I created (as a draft) 18 hours before this page was created (in mainspace). This page was draftified less than two hours after it was created, and I published the draft I created about two hours later, unaware of this other page. I think the sourcing here is better, but would welcome your input. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:11, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tol and Ozzie10aaaa: I have no objection to moving the article back or copying the content with attribution. I was persuaded by Elmidae's reasoning that the article as it stood wasn't fit for mainspace and think that with COVID, more than other topics, we should err on the side of caution with removing information that isn't well-sourced. Elli (talk | contribs) 06:32, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2#Merge_of_B.1.640.2. Fences&Windows 10:44, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

thanks, commented there[6]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:06, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Note that I added a redirect a minute ago, before that it was a redlink. The draft being discussed here is at Draft:SARS-CoV-2 Ihu variant.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:42, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

AfD discussion

I seem to remember there is a guideline about giving the best 2 or 3 sources at AfD rather than a long list. Anybody got any idea where to find it? --John B123 (talk) 21:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@John B123: WP:THREE. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:04, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Elli: Thanks, Regards. --John B123 (talk) 21:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Please also see Special:Diff/1064085898. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:05, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@RoySmith I think we've talked about that before and I am largely sympathetic to your view. But I am also sympathetic to the idea of "policies and guidelines are what we treat as policies and guidelines" and so THREE could, just by common acceptance, effectively be a guideline. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:22, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Guideline vs. User Essay

There are several steps in the WP hierarchy of advice/help pages. it goes something like this Policy - Guideline - WP Essay - User essay. When giving advice, especially to new patrollers, it's best to be clear on what are official recommendations and what are good, practical suggestions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:29, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it is a simple reality here. The GNG requires two. If you give a long list, beyond two, and reviewers still cannot find two that meet the GNG, then you are wasting reviewers’ time. If the best sources are not good enough, then no number of worse sources will be good enough. SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think GNG actually specifies a number. And I think that's done purposefully. If I'm wrong, please point to where it does say that. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 21:12, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

GNG says "sources" and then "multiple". The minimum that makes either is two, that's what Joe was getting at. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:57, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree, Usedtobecool - I agree, however my point is that "two" is an interpretation. Not what the guideline actually says. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 21:15, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Technically onel5969 is very correct, as in, there really is no number specified and I believe they stating that out expressly is very important. @SmokeyJoe is also correct as anything more than “one” is considered multiple, thus invariably making just “two sources” “sufficient” enough to be classified as “multiple” although, for record purposes I personally would not review an article with just two sources(if I do, I’m tagging for more sources, that is, assuming I don’t DRAFTIFY the article) @RoySmith, I honestly believe you are correct and that an RFC is imperative to this effect, I honestly do, I think it is the right thing to do. I have been in positions whereby editors expressly state that anything more than 1 is multiple thus sufficient. They furthermore also point to the fact that THREE isn’t a policy, so yes, I really believe an RFC to this effect is long overdue. Lastly Kudpung is correct when they state “When giving advice, especially to new patrollers, it's best to be clear on what are official recommendations and what are good, practical suggestions.” I believe this to be imperative and should be given a special slot in the scheme of work at the NPP academy. Now, Whilst we await an RFC to this effect which may or may not come I believe the doctrine of THREE sources should be encouraged for now. Celestina007 (talk) 21:54, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Barnstars

WP:NPPC has them starting from 1000+ reviews. I would like to bring the threshold down to 365. Could we? Either one new barnstar for 365-999 range or two new barnstars for 365-499 and 500-999 each would be great. And, one special barnstar for the bot-maintainer whose bot is the top reviewer is perhaps in order. Also, can we get a top reviewers list for "non-redirect articles only" in the period "00:00 01/01/2021 to 23:59 31/12/2021"? Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:10, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support. Mccapra (talk) 18:56, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support. --Gazal world (talk) 19:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose I do not see any reason to lower the threshold for the bronze, silver, gold etc. awards. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a new entry level barnstar to encourage new users. Polyamorph (talk) 20:26, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I hope this is is right, a list of patrollers sorted by number of reviews of non-redirects https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/61278 It's only an approximation, because I can't tell if the pages were redirects when they were reviewed, only what they are now. Vexations (talk) 20:27, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Date range might need adjusting. I see a couple people on the list who weren't active in 2021. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:56, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I do not particularly care about barnstars, but I do not see myself on the list, meaning that either I do not search properly or there is something wrong with the way it is compiled.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:48, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Ymblanter, the query appears to be for new page reviewers only and you seem to be doing it with your admin package. Barkeep has the NPR right in addition to the bit, and they're on the list. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I see, thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:10, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Vexations, I believe this query might fix the two issues above: incorrect date range, and not including admins. Take a look and see if you like it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:15, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah, yes, thank you. I've fixed my query. I shouldn't have needed the user group, but it is interesting to look at the different groups admins vs non-admins. Vexations (talk) 16:36, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae, @Vexations, so you are both sure the second list is good to go, yeah? I can use that for barnstars as long as I don't quote exact figures (as some of them might have been reviewed as redirects)? Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:16, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

My spot checks are passing. For example the two inactive reviewers I saw in the original query are no longer on the list. And admins are now on the list. Also a quick comparison to Wikipedia:Database reports/Top new article reviewers#Last 365 days (snapshot from 12/31/21), which appears to include redirects in the counts, shows roughly the same order for the top reviewers. Feel free to do more checks if you can think of how to do them. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:39, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

My revised version and @Novem Linguae's one both give approximately the same results, with one major difference; I only list people who now have the sysop and patroller user right and ignore everyone else; NLs query includes people who have since lost those rights The user with the most patrolled articles is the now banned CommanderWaterford with 998. Others have much lower numbers, sockpuppet Amkgp is the runner-up with 114. Vexations (talk) 13:09, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae@Vexations, can you make a query for patrols not page curation in the same period? You would have to filter for "mainspace" "non-redirects" only. Vincelord appears to be one reviewer that we miss when leaving out patrols, but I remember someone asking about these same things during the backlog drive. So, I'd like to know just how many reviews are done as patrols. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:38, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool. Sure. Here you go. I strongly recommend against using this though. Patrols are something much different than page curations. They are left over from before the PageTriage extension was developed, and while they sometimes overlap with page curations (page curations = clicking the green check mark), it is my impression that more often than not they do NOT overlap. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:48, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support new set of awards for lower ranges even patrolling 300 articles (excluding redirects) is an awful lot of work and deserves recognition in some form. (See the drive for possible barnstars that could be handed out). (t · c) buidhe 20:32, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Buidhe, maybe {{The Reviewer Barnstar}} for 365-500 and the standard barnstar from WP:NPPC for 500-1000? Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:29, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

  And {{The New Page Patrol Medal of Merit}} perhaps for the bot maintainer? Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:37, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

  My thinking is: 1 review/day is a reasonable expectation we can set ourselves and any other reviewers. So, we should recognise that average, then have another level at 500 to incentivise some to push toward 2/day. Past that, we hand out barnstars not just encouragement but also as recognition of their great service. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:35, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support The lower range might encourage new recruits/returners to stay on the team a while and the rest might just appreciate the little award every now and again to keep them going JW 1961 ^Talk 21:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
• Neutral: Scrap the NPP barnstar system. Nobody administers it since NPP no longer has any coordinators and I'm beginning t think I made a mistake when I created it for NPP. Other awards for editors, such as Wikicup or EOW are one thing in recognition for achievement, but they are based on an entirely different processes and criteria. When Barnstars were included in the Wikilove project they are handedout so willy-nilly that their intrinsic value is now practically worthless. For some users, backlogs fuelled by targets for barnstars just invite reviewing for speed rather than quality. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:59, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

  Kudpung, Exactly this. When I did the coordination I tracked it and issued them, but it was a massive pain. In addition, lowering the criteria would mean even more that needed to be issued each year. No thanks. We already have a base NPP barstar, why can't that be issued instead? — Insertcleverphrasehere^{(or here)_{(or here)(or here)}} 17:32, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't disagree., Insertcleverphrasehere. At the time, I thought barnstars would encourage more patrolling. I was wrong. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:11, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I think we should scrap the reviewer of the year award. It was given out in the last years when I didn't see barnstars awarded. I really don't see the point of it. Barnstars, I am working on this year and unless someone beats me to it, I will hand out to everyone who's done more than 365 last year, best I can tell. If it doesn't change anything next year, perhaps I'll not do it again. Usedtobecool ☎️ 08:05, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Usedtobecool, I mean... I think we need to put Danny's name on the cup in any case, since his bot is doing a hell of a job. — Insertcleverphrasehere^{(or here)_{(or here)(or here)}} 23:45, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Neutral - I do not think Kudpung's instinct that Barnstars would encourage folks, but not sure it has any long term benefit. I for one don't do it for the hope of barnstars, etc., but because I think it is a vital component of keeping up the quality of the project. If folks above my pay grade think it would help, then by all means, go to it. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 14:29, 11 January 2022 (UTC)