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This page contains a technical description of how the peer review process functions, and a list of templates and other tools associated with peer review.

Templates for editors

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The following template may be used to advertise the peer review process: {{Wikipedia ad|14}}

Barnstar

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There is a barnstar to thank editors who have made a significant contribution to peer review, or who have contributed a high quality peer review. To use the barnstar, copy and paste the following onto an editor's talk page: {{subst:Peer review barnstar}}. This will generate the following:

The Peer Review Barnstar
For your excellent contributions to Wikipedia peer review, I present to you the peer review barnstar. Nice work! ~~~~

To celebrate an editor who has contributed a great peer review, copy and paste the following, and then include the article's name: {{subst:Peer review barnstar|review=ARTICLENAME}}. For example, {{subst:Peer review barnstar|review=Anatomy}} will generate:

The Peer Review Barnstar
For your excellent peer review of Anatomy, I present to you the peer review barnstar. Nice work! ~~~~

In both examples, the compliment can be changed if required, for example: {{subst:Peer review barnstar|description=stellar}} will generate:

The Peer Review Barnstar
For your stellar contributions to Wikipedia peer review, I present to you the peer review barnstar. Nice work! ~~~~

Userbox

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Copying {{Wikipedia peer reviewer|N}} to your talk page produces :

This editor has contributed to N peer reviews on Wikipedia.

For volunteers, adding {{Peer review volunteer}} to your user page produces:

This editor is a volunteer at Wikipedia peer review. I can help at your peer review! (learn more)

Welcome

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To welcome a user, copy {{Peer review/welcome}} to their talk page. This produces:

Backlog templates

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Two sidebars display backlogs:

Closure script

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Developed by User:Writ Keeper, there is a script to help automate closing peer reviews. To use the script:

  • Copy importScript('User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/peerReviewCloser.js'); into your Special:MyPage/common.js
  • When you view a review, click on the tab that says "More" and then "Close peer review". The tab can be found near the "History" tab
  • The article talk page will have the PR template updated, and the peer review page will be marked as closed.

Technical templates

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From 2014, this image has been used to represent peer review; if it is changed, please check where it is used to update those instances.

All pages have the following two templates are on all peer review process pages:

Shortcuts

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The following shortcuts are used to represent the peer review process:

Edit notices

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Edit notices are displayed to editors who are making edits on these pages:

Documentation

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Templates used in the peer review process are listed here:

The documentation page for the template set is here: Template:CF/doc

Review list

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To transclude the review list onto new pages:

  1. To transclude all reviews, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=transclude}}
  2. To transclude a readable list of entries, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=list}}
  3. To transclude entries in raw form, insert into a page: {{Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews|mode=raw}}

Peer review process - technical details

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This section is intended to document the technical processes that make peer review work. It is not intended as instructions for editors. Instructions can be found here.

When a review is created

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Editors request a peer review by putting {{subst:PR}} onto an article's talk page. The template displays a choice of topics for the review which the user can choose from. Clicking on a topic will create a new page for the review. The new page is preloaded based on the article's topic from templates {{Peer review/preload1}} to {{Peer review/preload10}}

These templates create a review by including {{subst:Peer review/subst}}, {{Peer review page|topic=X}}, and some text. "Subst" uses subtemplates to:

How reviews are displayed

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The page for the peer review is added to a category via {{Peer review page}}, which is included on every review page. Based on the short name of the topic (eg 'langlit') the page is added to a category relating to the topic. The category is named based on the topic's full title (eg. 'Language and literature peer reviews'). This is done via the template {{Peer review/Topic}}.

A bot called AnomieBOT (operated by Carl) automatically creates a page listing all the reviews in each category. Reviews are listed in a unique format. Each review is recorded chronologically alongside the alongside the name of the item , its namespace number, and a timestamp indicating when it was added to the category. Reviews are formatted according to {{PRentry}}. The short name, long name, category and listing are displayed below.

Short name Long name Category Listing
arts Arts Category:Arts peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Arts peer reviews
engtech Engineering and technology Category:Engineering and technology peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Engineering and technology peer reviews
everydaylife Everyday life Category:Everyday life peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Everyday life peer reviews
general General Category:General peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/General peer reviews
geography Geography and places Category:Geography and places peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Geography and places peer reviews
history History Category:History peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/History peer reviews
langlit Language and literature Category:Language and literature peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Language and literature peer reviews
list List Category:List peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/List peer reviews
natsci Natural sciences and mathematics Category:Natural sciences and mathematics peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Natural sciences and mathematics peer reviews
philrelig Philosophy and religion Category:Philosophy and religion peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Philosophy and religion peer reviews
socsci Social sciences and society Category:Social sciences and society peer reviews User:AnomieBOT/C/Social sciences and society peer reviews
Displaying a human-readable list of reviews

The list of reviews is then transcluded onto a page in a human-readable format. The full list, separated by subject area, is fully transcluded at: Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews. A parameter called 'mode' can be used to set the format of how reviews display.

  1. If 'mode' is set to 'transclude', all reviews will be displayed in full. As of 2014, this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer review/Current
  2. If 'mode' is set to 'list', all reviews will be displayed by name, with a list of links to the review, the article and talk page, and an invitation to watch the page. As of 2014, this is the default setting for reviews and can be seen at Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews
  3. If 'mode' is set to 'raw', or any other value is used, all reviews will be displayed only by their name and the date and time they were added. As of 2014, this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date
Example
  1. An editor transcludes {{Peer review}} onto a page and clicks 'Language & Literature'.
  2. A new page is created for the review based on {{Peer review/preload4}} and preloaded with headings based on {{subst:Peer review/subst}}.
  3. The article is added to the category Category:Language and literature peer reviews.
  4. AnomieBOT adds the page to a list of all language reviews here: User:AnomieBOT/C/Language and literature peer reviews.
  5. These reviews are then transcluded on peer review main page and displayed to the end user.

How a review is closed

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When a review is closed, two things happen:

  1. On the article's talk page, an editor replaces {{Peer review}} with {{Old peer review|archive = N}}. This changes the statement on the talk page to tell other editors and readers the peer review is closed. It also adds the talk page to Category:Old requests for peer review.
  2. On the peer review page, the editor replaces {{Peer review page|topic = X}} with {{Closed peer review page}}. This removes the review from the category of active reviews of a topic.

Maintenance

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This page is intended to provide information on how to maintain the peer review process.

Updating the monthly archive

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From February 2015, links to archived peer reviews are provided in category form at Wikipedia:Peer review/Archive. To update the archive for this month:

  1. Create the category Category:November 2024 peer reviews
  2. Add a link to the category on the archive page: "* [[:Category:November 2024 peer reviews|November]]"

Troubleshooting: The peer review page is listed as a peer review

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It happens from time to time that the peer review page is placed in one of the categories for articles under peer review. This causes the peer review page to list itself as a peer review, which is obviously not a good thing (thankfully, the servers do not admit infinite regress, and simply give up trying to display content).

There are several ways this can happen, but they usually involve an individual peer review placing itself in a peer review category, without surrounding this category by "noincludes". Since the review is transcluded on the peer review page, the category gets added to the peer review page too.

To find the culprit, visit the AnomieBOT page corresponding to the topic under which the entire peer review page is listed, and look for strange entries. The entry immediately below the mess is likely to be the cause of the problem.

Troubleshooting: "Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full"

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Wikipedia has a limit to how much information can be transcluded onto a page. That is called the post-expand size. This takes into account the reviews that are transcluded and anything that is transcluded onto the review pages (... and anything transcluded onto those pages, and so on). When the post-expand size is about to be reached, AnomieBOT will start posting messages on the peer review talk page. What to do about this?

  1. Check the log of reviews, scroll to the bottom for the oldest reviews, and close them.
  2. If there is still a problem, then go to the main page, select an active topic, and change mode to mode. This will transclude only the names of the reviews and links to the reviews for that topic. When some of that topic's reviews have been archived, the 'list' can be changed back to 'transclude'

Troubleshooting: No reviews are transcluded

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This occurs when the "post-expand size" has been exceeded. See above for methods for dealing with this.

Troubleshooting: A review is "too long" to display in full

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In 2015 there came a number of times when the peer review process was so active that the post-transclusion size (see above) was exceeded, or close to being exceeded. At the time, all reviews were always transcluded in full. This was very problematic, because if exceeded editors would not be able to see the list of active reviews. Even closing reviews that were inactive would leave too many reviews open. In order to prevent this, reviews that were over a certain arbitrary length would instead display a message that they were "too long" to display in full. Being so long, such reviews are likely already to be active and are unlikely to benefit as much from being transcluded in full.

Troubleshooting: My review doesn't display on the 'unanswered reviews' list

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The unanswered reviews list is automated. It only displays reviews where the date of creation matches the date of the last edit, ie. if they have not been edited.

If your review isn't displaying, it is probably because you've made a slight change to your request (even a small as correcting a typo). Please add your review to the list of reviews not displaying here: Template:Peer review/Unanswered peer reviews sidebar