Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC to create a 'Special:NewDraftsFeed' system

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Consensus is in favor of creating a feed system for drafts, with the following details:
  • It is okay, but not required, for the code from NewPagesFeed to be applied to this system.
  • Drafts should appear in a separate feed from articles or any other type of pages.
  • Adding Draft as a namespace to NewPagesFeed would partially suffice, but Page Curation should not be used without modifications to it to account for the fact that drafts aren't articles yet.
(non-admin closure) Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:30, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal[edit]

For the 'Draft' namespace, create a feed and curation system based on the New Pages Feed/Page Curation model (see: Wikipedia:Page Curation).

Advantages
  • A live feed as a central locator for new submissions at WP:Articles for creation and new Drafts.
  • A Curation toolbar with appropriate selectable criteria would help standardise reviewing.
  • Tracking of who is doing the reviewing.
  • The message box feature would be used for suggestions for the creator.
  • Immediate tagging for CSD under appropriate CSD criteria.
  • An immediate overview of backlogs.

Such a feature, 'Special:DraftFeed', is technically quite possible. Current code from the NewPagesFeed system could be reused and adapted, or a new system built from scratch.

  1. NOTE: if this proposal is adopted, please discuss technical implementation and criteria for populating the curation toolbar in a future discussion.
  2. NOTE: This proposal is not to be confused with any possible suggestions elsewhere for a merging of the AfC & NPP processes.
  3. NOTE: Please do not use this RfC to suggest other systems for AfC. If you want to do that, please start your own proposal in a separate RfC.

This RfC will run for 30 days unless closed with an overwhelming consensus one way or the other.

Discussion[edit]

  • Question - I read the section about the New Pages Feed and it just says that its a replacement for Special:New Pages. That doesn't really explain what it is. Exactly what does the feed do? I have used it to review pages, but I didn't at the time question how the pages were selected and placed on the list. What would be different about the new proposed feed? I presume by "live" you mean that it will be a continuously running process that will seek out the new pages. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:55, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I think some way to view and browse drafts is essential, which is why I have brought it up before (see question #3 here). Just the RecentChanges feed and Special:AllPages/Draft is already getting a bit overwhelming with the relatively small number of drafts. A couple quibbles...
  1. We should just move this to a subpage of Wikipedia:Drafts. Drafts isn't only for AfC, and AfC guidelines don't apply to all drafts. This has an impact on the potential feature. re: "Tracking who is doing the reviewing". Keep in mind that drafts don't have official reviewers. They're edited collaboratively just like articles.
  2. I wouldn't restrict this to "New" drafts. You probably want to be able to browse drafts that aren't just new, and having things fall off the queue after 30 days like New Page Patrol is probably undesirable. Or at least, it's not part of the proposal.
  3. I don't really support the idea of focusing on triage of drafts like they were new pages. Drafts don't really need triage, except for checking for pure linkspam and copyvio. CSD and other negative actions should not be the focus. Instead, let's focus on how to help promising drafts get published. You can see this focus on how to improve drafts in our Future enhancements and experimental ideas being designed.
Other than that, thanks for proposing this. I fully agree that we need to make it easier to find and edit drafts. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:01, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for commenting Steven. Some responses to your various points:
  • I made the original suggestion for a 'feed' on your talk page five months ago.
  • 'Drafts' isn't just for AfC, but I will point out again that its creation was the result of an AfC initiative.
  • There is no suggestion in this proposal 'to focus on triage of drafts like they were new pages' . The suggestion is simply to to take the software as a model and adapt it.
  • Considering the backlogs both at G13 and current submissions, I don't believe the suggestion for a feed to be 'a bit overwhelming with the relatively small number of drafts'
  • There is no suggestion that drafts should 'fall off the queue' after 30 days - the proposal is to clone and adapt the NPP software for AfC and/or Draft purposes.
  • Let's also keep in mind that although drafts don't have official reviewers (although consensus was reached for some minimum 'qualifications') , neither does NPP (yet), and that, IMO, is most likely the reason for the core issues associated with AfC and NPP.
  • The proposals and 'to do' list at Future enhancements and experimental ideas look good, but we have been down this road before and two years later nothing has been done that can be shown to the community. Also, that venue is unlikely to get the participation that is required from the volunteers who know from their editing experience what they want, and I see a risk of new, top-down solutions that might not meet with the community's expectations. Such projects require an established line of Foundation-MedWiki-Community coordination, but not one that is heavily biased towards what the WMF or its engineers at Bugzilla want. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:06, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Steven, You said "drafts don't have official reviewers". This is true also for AfC. Anyone, even unregistered users, can come to AfC and review or edit an article. There was a recent agreement of qualifications for reviewers but that hasn't been put into practice yet.
Also you said that drafts don't need triage. But every edit on the wiki needs patrolling for the obvious problems: nonsense, defamation, self-promotion and so on. If 'Drafts' is a success, and I hope it will be, it will attract these problems, and the sooner we delete them, the less distraction we have from collaborating on the promising articles.
--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 11:19, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Certainly we need a feed for Drafts; however Drafts is going to work, this will be basic. Myself, I very much do want to see the new drafts space, incorporate both user talk space drafts and AfC, as well as whatever else we can find, including material that used to be sent to the Incubator. We do not need additional processes, we need better ones, and few enough ones that we can keep track of them(I think Kudpung & I think the same here). I also want to see NPP incorporated, though this may be conceptually harder, running afoul of our interpretation of anybody can edit by which we interpret it as anyone can create a new article in mainspace, and if its bad, its up to us to remove it. (I suspect Kudpung more or less agrees here also) . I do not want to make differences in procedure for drafts depending upon how things get there--we will have enough trouble doing it tight in a single procedure. With respect to the WMF, the only controlling role the WMF engineers have is to tell us what is not feasible, or what , though feasible, is not actually practical with the available resources. With respect to the procedures on WP, we tell them what we need--tho we are very glad to have suggests from them also. They set priorities for the core software; the enWP sets priorities for the enWP. (I know this sounds a little hostile, but I word it this strongly only for clarity--in practice the priorities would I hope be cooperative. DGG ( talk ) 06:29, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Kudpung invited me to comment. I support this, with the understanding that only the general speedy deletion criteria would apply, not the criteria for articles. Also I'd ask that WP:BITE be kept in mind when implementing this. —rybec 06:53, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rybec, I want to put a big bold border round your response, as to me, don't apply the article speedy deletion criteria is the most important facet of this proposal. Drafts exists to promote editor retention, and if Drafts is run well, it could achieve that. We should, permit (and perhaps encourage) patrollers to use Proposed Deletion (PROD) and Articles For Deletion discussions (AfD) for draft articles that meet the article speedy deletion criteria. Deletion is always disappointing to the original poster, but we don't help newcomers when we keep a draft article that has no hope, (nor would that help readers or other visitors to the draft namespace.) --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Err, what about attacks, copyvios and blatant hoaxes? Are they to be left lying around like they often were at AfC? There are obvious attack pages, hoaxes and copyvios still coming up from years ago there as the bot and patrollers root out the G13s. And how about the blatant spam that has no chance short of demolition and (if reasonably notable) total reconstruction? Peridon (talk) 12:08, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Good questions. These things should be rooted out from any namespace, not just articles or drafts. I suggest that, in drafts, blatant attacks copyvios, spam and hoaxes get speedily deleted (as they are now: CSD#G3 #G10 #G11 and #G12): but all of this should be developed thoroughly outside this RFP, as others' views will differ. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:52, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could be interesting, but I don't think there's any sense of urgency around it. If the question is "should we adapt NewPagesFeed for drafts" - absolutely. In a year, when there's some way of actually doing that that isn't a colossal hack. Last time I checked hacks were what got us into this mess. Ironholds (talk) 06:58, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is a system separate from Special:NewPagesFeed necessary, and if so why? I'd echo Ironholds's comment above as well; if the question is as simple as he puts it, then the answer probably doesn't even need saying. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 07:03, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, because although similar from the reviewing process concept, AfC and NPP serve quite different purposes. I think the proposal is clear that this discussion is not about merging AfC and NPP or adapting NPP to cater for AfC, but about taking the NPP software as a basic model (because it exists, it's easy to copy, it works, it's easy to use) and using it for AfC. No hacks needed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:58, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's an open invitation for errors. You want to fork an existing extension, install it on top of a wiki with the original extension on it (god knows what that'll do) and then try to maintain both in parallel? I'm totally okay with us (a) including drafts in NPF, and/or (b) building Workflows into NPF to make it a better transition, but using NPF as a template for AFC is destined for failure. Ironholds (talk) 23:21, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am supporting this in a cautious manner. We should not "do it because we can." Instead we need to consider that, while something is likely to be needed, the form it should take is the first thing to discuss. I am, for example, substantially more in favour of an additional field or two in the new pages feed, especially if it catches the fact that an article is both new in the main userspace and in Draft: than I am for another bright and shiny new feed. New articles are new articles. We simply have subtly different retention criteria in the main namespace and in Draft:. New articles need different help. Fiddle Faddle 09:04, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fiddle Faddle's idea of merging the proposed functionality into New Pages Feed is a great one. We need to bear in mind that we, as patrollers, want to treat different namespaces differently, so if possible, lets automatically show different curation tools. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am looking at this from the perspective of keeping life simple while allowing the extra 'privileges' that Draft: brings. Those who patrol new pages need to continue to have simple tools to help. Overcomplicating the issue by having a new, extra system is inadvisable. We must consider Human Factors (yes I used to work for Wang Labs) in any scheme we design. Ergonomic design of the user experience is vital. Fiddle Faddle 12:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dear all. I oppose a separate system; another namespace should be an option in the existing feed. --Gryllida (talk) 09:22, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • ^ This essentially. I think it is technically feasible and much simpler to add a namespace filter to Special:NewPagesFeed rather than adding yet another special page on top of the hundreds that are now piling up unseen at Special:SpecialPages. Barring that I have no opinion yet to comment on how appropriate this is for the new Draft namespace, except the initial look at StevenW's comment will show that this proposal might come with hard opposition. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 10:15, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • On the contrary: I think we absolutely need a feed of drafts. If the volume of drafts increases to anything close to AfC, the community is going to need a better way to browse and find drafts than what we have now. I'm merely skeptical that reusing NewPagesFeed is the right solution for a variety of reasons, both technical and design-related. I also think I should be honest that my team is the only one who has any leeway to work on drafts support at the Wikimedia Foundation, and right now building a comprehensive review tool for drafts is just not going to happen. If this RFC closes with support, the complete feature set isn't going to happen for quite some time. That seems okay, since there is only a tiny trickle of drafts being created right now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:55, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Isn't it fantastic that we are discussing this in depth before anyone posts a vote? I hope that more parts of Wikipedia will work like this RFP page. I hope that template spam can be avoided this time around: users of the page curation toolbar tend to bombard new articles with templates, often technical templates that already have massive backlogs, and are more relevant to mature articles. It would be great to limit the scope of templates that can be applied automatically to drafts. We want to engage in dialogue with unregistered editors and COI editors, not to template them. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am very happy with the current AfC workflow and I don't understand what these proposed improvements are trying to achieve. The benefits are listed but I'd like to see a statement of the problem we're trying to solve here. ~KvnG 21:34, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What we can do right now[edit]

Right now, those monitoring Special:Newpages can select the "Draft" namespace. Here is the direct URL. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:01, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Interim proposal: Add Drafts to Special:NewPagesFeed[edit]

If this interim proposal gets "snow" support in the next week, go ahead and do it while the discussion on the main proposal is ongoing.

Proposed Add "Drafts" to the list of namespaces that are available in Special:NewPagesFeed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:01, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support as a no-brainer. Whether the current template regime works for the draft namespace is another question entirely. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 19:21, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, assuming engineering time can be provided (and noting that the engineering time I mentioned below is going to be maintenance, not new features); it won't have any impact on the new pages queue for the mainspace, so shouldn't worry existing patrollers. My one concern would be how applicable the existing CSD tags are to this namespace, but if they're valid, they're valid. It will require some engineering effort, though. Ironholds (talk) 23:19, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose if this means that typical NPP editors are going to be seeing AfC or Draft pages along with new pages in article space. If that isn't waht this would do, explin in lots more detail exactly what it would do. DES (talk) 23:57, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @DESiegel:, see my comment immediately above yours. If you look at NewPagesFeed you'll see that there are a variety of different namespaces; the default view is the article space, but it also allows for patrolling user space. This proposal is to add 'drafts' as one of those namespaces - it won't pollute the article namespace content with drafts, it will just make drafts available as a namespace to patrol if NPPers felt like it. Ironholds (talk) 01:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Then I continue to strongly oppose until and unless we have a revised training for NP Patrollers and a fair number of them take it. They are IMO often far to trigger happy on articles, The thought of inviting them to do the same to the drafts namespace fills me with horror. DES (talk) 11:19, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    If you have examples of NPPers violating policy, please do bring it up to me and I'm happy to talk to them. Ironholds (talk) 15:52, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not crazy about mandatory training for NPPers other than, perhaps, an editcount requirement beyond the autoconfirmed threshold. I really got my sea legs here doing NPP. Yes, I was guilty of being trigger happy at first, but then I got trouted and learned from it. I don't think it's likely I'd still be here if the barriers to doing that sort of background work were much higher than they already are in terms of the amount of policy you need to know to do it effectively. Anyway, bit of an aside. I can understand the concerns voiced here, though. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 18:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tentative Oppose I don't think this gives us what we want. First off, drafts are not new articles, and should be treated differently than what the Curation Toolbar etc. are optimized for. Perhaps more importantly, the NewPagesFeed system is still quite buggy and no one is actively maintaining it at this point. Understandably, hardly anyone is using the tool it seems... It doesn't seem like this really going to provide a feed that works well for helping drafts develop in to content that is worth publishing. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:55, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The newfeed tool is ok to do the job. If it's not, how? Gryllida (talk) 11:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on Interim proposal: Add Drafts to Special:NewPagesFeed[edit]

This opens up possibilities that I hadn't thought about. However, there are a couple of points to take into consideration:

  • There should be a filter to enable 'View drafts only'
  • The Curation toolbar would need to be expanded to include pre-set AfD accept/decline responses (encouraging standardising the criteria the reviewers apply to their judgment)
  • Possible technical incorporation of the AfC reviewer 'permission': Sorry, users must have at at least 500 edits and registered for at least 90 days to review this draft . Such a feature could also preempt a possible forthcoming minimum experience requirement for NPPers. This could eventually become a technically implementd NewPage/Draft reviewer user right; after all, we do have technical controls over PC reviewer and Rollback for example that require a much lower threshold of experience.
  • A need to avoid regular AfC reviewers feeling they have been relegated to NPPers.
  • Drafts must remain unindexed, and this raises the point again whether or not all new pages should remain unindexed until they have been reviewed.
  • If this proposal were to be accepted, there would need to be some clear understanding that when the Bugzilla request is logged, that those responsible for the tweaks accord due priority to it. I consider the NPP software to be still an unfinished work, and apart from Ironholds continuing to valiantly respond to malfunction reports, if I remember rightly official support for its maintenance has been closed down. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:20, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:20, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • The NPF team will be doing a couple of sprints to maintain the software in a few months, I'd note. What possible forthcoming minimum experience requirement? Ironholds (talk) 01:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, Maryana (WMF), the product manager on the team, has said they may take a few cycles from work on Flow to fix bugs from NewPagesFeed, Echo, and Thanks. But she says they certainly aren't going to build any new functionality, like configuring how the curation toolbar works on the drafts namespace. If we can't customize the curation tools to work on drafts we probably shouldn't enable it for NPF. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 04:32, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the reasoning behind how and why the Foundation can or cannot accord time to development is the issue for discussion here. If the community reaches a consensus for a technical solution then it should be done. History has shown that the WMF is quick enough to develop and roll out features which the community didn't directly ask for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The reality is that's not how it works, for reasons practical (technology, money, time), and (more rarely) principled. We want to do things that help the community, in fact that's our whole job, but that doesn't always mean doing what one particular subset of the Wikimedia community of readers or editors wants right at any given moment. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:57, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Steven (WMF), I and presumably Kudpung are perfectly aware of the reality. We realize that in any organization central technical staff inevitably has the problem that people elsewhere in the organization are not usually aware of competing demands, and in particular may ask for things which to them appear very simple, but have complications or ramifications that make them more costly than they appear, or even impossible, There has to be a balance between the various needs, of the projects, and it is inevitable here or in any organization that the people in control of the technical resources will in practice adjust the balance, and are thus in a key position to support or undermine the work of everyone else in the organization. We both--as do many others here--have long experience with such situations, some of us from both sides of the fence.
But there needs to be fair open-minded discussion before you say that you will or will not do something. There is a special difficulty here that in conventional organizations everyone is under the same administrative umbrella, and there is thus opportunity for the customary internal politics, lobbying, and intervention. WP is different, for, while we editors cannot operate without your services, we are not under anyone's administrative control, On one hand, you cannot prevent us from being as wholly unreasonable and vocal about it as any individual one of the thousands of us may decide to be, since the usual fiscal and personnel controls do not apply. On the one hand, if you ignore reasonable requests, it is almost impossible for us to mobilize countervailing power (colloquially known as our boss leaning on your boss), because we have no formal representative in the hierarchy.
There needs to be good faith negotiation. You shouldn't really be definitively pronouncing of what you'll do until it is clearer what the alternatives are. As you know what can be readily programmed , we should be able to rely on your for guidance, as none of us wish to make these changes harder than necessary, or take an extended time. We, in turn, have not really been at all clear an deciding on our own priorities and the acceptability or need for various options--and we have a well-known inability to ever make such decisions. Indeed, this gives you an expanded possibility of affected our decisions, for your can lead the discussion in one direct or another. But I'm sure you know our side of reality: the way WPedians work is that if anyone tries to compel us to do something, we simply will not do it. DGG ( talk ) 01:29, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, I was replying to the idea of a minimum requirement for NPP, not AfC. Ironholds (talk) 01:42, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Which is becoming an even more crucial issue for debate (but somewhere else, please) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:48, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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