Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 40

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Archive 35

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Archive 38

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Junk DNA

Below is an e-mail sent to me after I reverted the content at Junk DNA. Sharing here as this is a clear COI and might appear again on the feed. on

Dear Polyamorph My name is redacted, and redacted is my Graduate Student. I have written three books on Molecular Evolution and ~200 articles on the subject. Junk DNA is not non-coding DNA and non-coding DNA is not Junk DNA. We need to stop the confusion. Please read our paper at redacted We intend to fix the misunderstanding as far as genomic classifications are concerned, and I would like to ask please do not restore our changes to the erroneous text currently in wikipedia. We will let you know when we are finished. redacted

Polyamorph (talk) 16:35, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Please also note, Diannaa has revdel'd some of the history at Junk DNA for copyright violations. Polyamorph (talk) 16:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. --John B123 (talk) 18:33, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Suspect run of health related articles

I just passed Sexual anomalies though I had some concerns about it, before noticing a whole slew of health and medical related articles suddenly appearing in 31 March and April 2021. They’re all long and detailed and on the surface, each appears fine. As a whole though they suggest someone creating a series of hoaxes or some sort of sock farm churning out apparently neutral articles with some other intent. They might also be student editors writing for class but my guess is not. Has anyone else looked at them? Mccapra (talk) 21:05, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Mccapra, I just had a quick look at a few, they seem to follow a format and are well formed articles with plenty of references (not checked) in the right places. All the creators have <100 edits . Strange that the random five or six I looked at were all edited by at least two new editors, so I looked around their pages and saw this. JW 1961^Talk 21:58, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Based on these activities, this looks like a coordinated, largely off-line article development process that is finished off in draft space. No problems with that, on the face of it. Articles generally look good, hopefully some WP:MEDRS-affiliated people will also do checks. 1233, could you comment on the background here? Is this the output of one specific course at HKU? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:03, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Replying everyone: yes it is a course run by HKU and the Hong Kobg community is involved in it. The Hong Kong User Group's Annual report in the last two years said so. However it is this late only because of incidents regarding the Hong Kong community as a whole.

To @Elmidae, Mccapra, and Joseywales1961: I am notified and informed (and checked) that all these titles the students wrote are from the Requested articles from the Requested articles list, so I just skip the notability check. There should be some minor formatting problems that, I, had already tried fixing some of them. Should have written it on footnotes. --1233 ( T / C） 06:46, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@1233: In future please add the appropriate templates to article talk pages and student editor pages, so that it is clear that they are associated with your courses. See Wikipedia:Student_assignments#Advice_for_instructors. Thanks. PamD 07:33, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Ok noted with thanks. My bad.--1233 ( T / C） 07:48, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

1233, I just want to call out what appears to be a misconception: the requested articles lists are not pre-screened for notability. Anyone can request an article on those pages, so just being on the list doesn't mean that the topic is notable. Schazjmd (talk) 14:40, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

As an important addendum here, as a medical editor also active at RA, the medical RA list specifically is particularly problematic and appears to be a dump from some sort of uncurated source. Vaticidalprophet 05:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Great thanks very much everyone I'm glad that wasn't too hard to clear up. Mccapra (talk) 09:13, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Template:NPPaction

I created {{nppaction}} last year when I was starting to do a lot of NPP reviews. But, it's been almost a year, that I have not been able to focus on Wikipedia activities at all because of real-world issues. I had thought the template would give a disclaimer as to it being a job rather than personal or deletionism, and help us track what percent of AFD is by NPPers. I haven't even told anyone it exists because I don't know what the template rules are; I see a lot of discussion on templates that are hard to make sense of with common sense alone. Usedtobecool ☎️ 05:55, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
@Usedtobecool: there aren't really strict rules about templates like you might thing, at least not in this sense - such a template is fine. I might try to see about getting this integrated into page curation and Twinkle? I'd certainly use it. Certainly would be good for tracking data. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:59, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
I guess the main question I have is whether the template needs to be substituted, and if it does, (a) subst probably doesn't add to "what links here"; so what else would need to be added for keeping track of its uses? and (b) might a bot be able to go around substing it, rather than having to tell editors not to forget to subst:, which most editors do?
If the project can agree on this or similar template to incorporate into standard practice, I think NPPers would find less friction when nominating articles, we'd have some data, and we'd advertise the project and the need for volunteers with every single such nomination. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 06:11, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
@Usedtobecool: it wouldn't need to be substituted - you could also use unsubst to make sure it's never substituted (as to have accurate data). Elli (talk | contribs) 16:22, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Could also use a custom redirect or a tracking category built into the template, but just not substing it would be easier as it wouldn't be possible for the data to be muddied with invalid links/cats. Requiring less cleanup is always better IMO. ASUKITE 13:46, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

barnstars are overdue

as per the newsletter above, "allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue",,,,with all due respect it would be nice if those of us who may not be in the 'top 10' every year, but that contribute every day and are in the top 15, 20, etc[1] , would receive some acknowledgement (I'm not speaking just for myself,,,we all contribute to some degree) thank you --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:51, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not bothered about barnstars as such but it's been noticeable that NPP seems only to be about the top half-dozen high achievers. This discussion is only happening because the project has lost two very close together. As for the rest of us, it generally feels as though we may as well not be here. This is the first newsletter for ages, for example. So I second what User:Ozzie10aaaa says. What's required surely is a larger stable group of editors chugging away regularly, even if not spectacularly quickly, and something more in terms of project / group management - cf Guild of Copy Editors, which has been mentioned above. Otherwise all you are likely to end up with is more CommanderWaterfords. Ingratis (talk) 14:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa and Ingratis: In the list of 100 top reviewers, the 100th reviewer has over 100 reviews - are we saying these 100 reviews are not appreciated? If more appreciation is shown to these reviewers it is likely they will be more inclined to continue reviewing. I think setting goals lower (awards for 100s of reviews) would be more effective at encouraging reviewers than rewarding a few "super reviewers" who probably aren't doing it for barnstars anyway! Polyamorph (talk) 08:41, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

You're answering points I didn't think I'd made, to an extent, but I'm sure they're good points. No, I don't think there is much if any appreciation further down the list (I speak as #55). I don't know how I feel personally about barnstars - one per 100 reviews? - but if people like them and are motivated by them then absolutely, by all means hand them out (and I'm sure I wouldn't refuse one). I was thinking rather more however of the apparent lack of much sense in NPP that any contribution is of value, even if it's modest. (My impression is that GOCE, for example, have managed this, so their methods could be learnt from). I don't know that barnstars would address that. Ingratis (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I was essentially agreeing with you, that I don't think there is much apparent appreciation for those lower down the list, but collectively these do represent a substantial number of reviews. Polyamorph (talk) 21:32, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021

Hello New pages patrol/Reviewers,

Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.

Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.

At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.

There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.

Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:33, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled.^{[citation needed]}. We had a year-long case of autopatrol infiltration that was just caught, but otherwise I'm not aware of any particular uptick in these problems. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 04:51, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Rosguill,There are plenty of sources available if one were to look or if one has institutional memory going back less than a couple of years - I exposed plenty of them myself. I think the entire newsletter should be read in the spirit in which it is intended rather than criticise it, otherwise it's exactly what puts people off wanting to help. Perhaps if one or more editors would show some concern for the coordination of this project, sweeping statements might be avoided, and more, and better quality patrolling might get done. I rrealise you are one of the most prolific reviewers, but Checks and balances are needed to be done. I shouldn't really be caring or even here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

As WP became more important over the 15 years I have been here, there has been an inherently greater pressure from coi editors. In 2006, after all, who, outside of a few special fields, really cared if they had an article in WP? Everyone knew that outside computer technology and some forms of adolescent entertainment, nobody much used WP for any real purpose. But it's different now. The world has become much more dependent on us for what they imagine will be objective information. It has nothing to do with our intrinsic merits--people always use the most convenient information source regardless of reliability, and if they're using the internet anyway for both the vocational and recreational parts of their life, they'll use WP. And since people always think that whatever information source they are using is reliable--that's what justifies them to themselves in using it, rather than going to the trouble of finding something better), an article--and a favorable article--in WP has become a necessity to any business, or any professional, entertainer, politician, cultist, or attention-seeker. The pressure will not decrease. It's NPP and AFC that must deal with it, and we can only deal with it by having more people, doing more work, and doing it better. I may be a heretic here, but I think the result has been remarkably satisfactory--compare the quality of articles now to those in 2006--compare their NPOV and absence of original "research", compare the quality of their sourcing.

there's something called Zipf's law, which applies to all work by independent agents--most of the work will be done by a small percentage of the people. Why this is an invariable rule I do not truly understand; the specific proportions vary, but the basic principle seems to be universal. Our way forward must always be to get more people, in the expectation that some few of them will be highly active. It's not reasonable to expect that most people who want to do a little patrolling, will want to devote themselves to it.

Asfor the specifics of why the NPP backlog is up again, it tends to have a reciprocal relationship to the AfC backlog--the same people tend to work at both processes,, and they necessarily concentrate on one or the other. DGG ( talk ) 07:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Re "If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software." I suggest rephrasing this to be more supportive of "the long tail" within the community. Hundreds of people doing a little bit is good model to go for. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:18, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree @WereSpielChequers: if a user logs rarely but reviews a few articles when they do, then their contributions are still appreciated. How will asking people to leave help monitor NPP performance when we can already sort users by their activity. Unless we're worried about compromised accounts I see little point in adding this sentence at all. Polyamorph (talk) 10:50, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I’ve no idea if there is any current informal coordination of NPP but I’ve felt for a while that more coordination might be a good thing (onboarding, training, monitoring, early identification of problem reviewers, promoting greater consistency etc.). I haven’t the mind or the appetite to attempt this myself but would be willing to work with three or four others to try and achieve it if it was felt to be useful. Mccapra (talk) 14:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that having a group of around 5 experienced reviewers who could chat about the issues Mccapra brings up, as well as taking turns handling the housekeeping tasks (e.g. barnstars) would be what I would consider ideal. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 14:16, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Onell5969 and Mccapra, looks like a good idea JW 1961^Talk 14:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah. Not sure if this is really the best page for a question-board - I think it feels maybe a bit uninviting? A "New Page Patrol noticeboard" separate from this might help. Elli (talk | contribs) 14:52, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the above on the idea of a co-ordination group. (I'd be happy to help with that.) One topic think that I haven't seen mentioned here is NPP school. I went through training there before I got started at NPP and I think it's a great way to get people up to speed. However, after having patrolled for about year, I felt that it didn't prepare me for some of the more difficult issues that come up (e.g. individual users spamming lots of deficient pages, UPE, how to deal with socks etc.). I'm not sure whether the school is monitored much at the moment and I think it could benefit from some attention from an eventual co-ordination group. Modussiccandi (talk) 08:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination and Wikipedia talk:The future of NPP and AfC were both used for this in the past. As you might have gathered from Kudpung's comments above, the high rate of turnover at NPP leads to a lot of repeating patterns. NPP has had coordinators before—informal and formal, individuals or a group—and anecdotally I think it has worked best when one person takes the reins (notably the reigns of Kudpung and then Barkeep). That said, we have also had highly-prolific reviewers resign (or be blocked) before, very large backlogs before, arguments about "deadweight" reviewers before... and it always seems to tick along. I don't say this to minimise any current problems; only to suggest that the solutions that are more likely to stick are ones that take into account the fact that people's interest naturally waxes and wanes. – Joe (talk) 13:55, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

A suggestion: New NPP rights holder (anyone less than 1 year of NPP experience) should get attached to seasoned NPP rights holders i.e., mentors (one who volunteers). And, mentorship should be extended or NPP rights should be withdrawn based on an assessment. Do not allow anyone to hold NPP rights indefinitely in the first go. -Hatchens (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

And, why dont we make it mandatory for all NPP applicants and existing NPP rights holders (like us) go through mandatory, periodic/volunteered "checkuser" check. -Hatchens (talk) 14:49, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

+1 to this. At the moment we AGF until something shows up to indicate that someone is not behaving themselves, and then we can have a major problem. NPP is a position of trust and I'd have no objection to being subjected to checkuser at any time by anyone who wants to see what I'm up to. We need to deter and weed out problematic reviewers pre-emptively rather than finding a problem and having to release hundreds of articles back into the queue. Mccapra (talk) 15:38, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Not sure if that's currently within checkuser policy, but it doesn't seem unreasonable for users applying for any advanced right to be checked (and checked occasionally while they have the right). Elli (talk | contribs) 20:50, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hatchens: we kinda do this already, at least a decent number of admins at WP:PERM do. I'd be in favor of increasing the mentorship system, but I'm not sure the best way for non-admins to help with that would be (also, if it's not mandatory, then admins could bypass it at PERM). Elli (talk | contribs) 20:50, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Elli, we need to use mixed tactics. Even if a page get tagged by us via NPP tool for deletion, then also we face very difficult situation at the AfD discussion by getting overwhelmed with so many interpretations and opinions which eventually leads to "No Consensus". The infiltrators are actually quite well versed with Wikipedia guidelines and they know very well how to circumvent and hijack the discussion. There motto is simple - "If you can't convince them, confuse them". And, at the same time - it has been found that the kind of camaraderie these IDs share among themselves (at discussions) is not at all traceable in Wikipedia via "Editorial Interaction Tool" i.e., they know meatpuppet/sockpuppet rules thoroughly. It seems each ID is working on Silo mode and during emergency situation they collaborate and if things goes south, then they sacrifice the low hanging fruits to save the bigger fish. This is a pure cat and mouse game - to fight this effectively, mandatory/periodic sock check is must for all NPP rights holder (new and old alike). -Hatchens (talk) 02:52, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hatchens: reasonable. I haven't run into too many of these paid editors myself, and I don't know many people working in both SPI and NPP (the one I know most well is Tamzin, who might be helpful here?) - if you could link some closed AfDs like this I'd be quite interested. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:56, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I think we should be very careful about how much we say in so visible a venue. I guarantee you that there are UPEs reading this discussion. Keep in mind these people's bottom line depends on how closely they monitor our anti-abuse strategies. If someone suspects votestacking in an AfD, they should file an SPI. If someone suspects something more complex, the best step is probably to privately reach out to someone who's active at SPI and ask them to take a look. On that note, my inbox is always open to any NPPs with concerns about sockpuppetry. I'd politely discourage this discussion from getting into any further detail of how UPEs operate. As to the general question, Hatchens, what do you mean by a "periodic sock check"? Use of CheckUser for something like that is forbidden by both enwiki and global policy. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 03:46, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Tamzin thank you for asking the question. Users like me are just one year old, and we are still learning how Wikipedia works. So, please do forgive me for my naiveness. Currently, there are 706 New Page Reviewers, and we are approved by admins via WP:PERM. Just don't scrutinize us at the time of the application process, make it periodic but unannounced. Most of the right seekers behave extremely well till they get the rights, once the rights are given then only you can judge a true character of a particular user and that is possible only when you keep the pressure on us as an admin. One can distribute NPPs among the admins at a ratio 1:1.5 (1080 admins/706 NPP reviewers). And, this suggestion I'm giving as an NPP reviewer and there is nothing to hide from UPEs who are reading this discussion. We need to push the fear across and take a stand against them. -Hatchens (talk) 04:29, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Elli Irrespective of NPP; just check the AfC arguments and closures 1.Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Shaurya_Doval_(3rd_nomination) - RECENTLY CLOSED! | Verdict: KEEP : This is the most outstanding one where a SPA is involved who deleted his user page history in which he clearly stated that he is a Political Consultant and his expertise lies in public policy, electioneering, and strategy - BIGGEST RED FLAG - and still the page survived (This information I saw just after the closure of AfD or else I would had used it in the discussion). Other examples; 2.Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/WazirX - RECENTLY CLOSED | Verdict: REDIRECT: The level of conviction shown by the creator amazed me. I had surrendered! 3.Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Olaf_Carlson-Wee - RECENTLY CLOSED WITH NO CONSENSUS | Verdict: KEEP: I surrendered! 4.Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alshair_Fiyaz - RECENTLY CLOSED | Verdict: KEEP: I surrendered! 5.Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Sayantani_Guhathakurta_(2nd_nomination) = RECENTLY CLOSED | Verdict: DELETE : Sad part is the fight was led by Wikipedia volunteers from a local chapter. 6.Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Zetwerk - ONGOING: Classic corporate push: The page source analysis (enhanced by HighKing) has been clearly declared as JUNK. 7.Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Stalwart_Esports - ONGOING: Classic corporate push and check the message to closing admin by the creator -"... request Admins to look into their accounts as well because the information they're trying to push into this AfD is incorrect". The irony is the creator is the one who declared COI on the entity's page and removed it from his/her user page because he/she feels no more interested to edit this entity's page but yes if AfD happens he/she will definitely jump in. Ridiculous. They are gaming the AfD discussions beyond all-of-our-imaginations combined. Just follow these pages and see who edits and argue for them and you will have your answer. Period! -Hatchens (talk) 03:59, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

NPP scripts

Hello. As part of my NPP and AFC work, I have made some scripts that I think might be useful. Feel free to check them out.

CiteHighlighter - Highlights 1,800 sources green, yellow, or red depending on reliability. Mainly pulls its data from WP:RSP, WP:NPPSG and WikiProject reliable sources lists.
DetectSNG.js - Scans a list of 1,600 SNG keywords such as "National Football League" and, if found, displays them at the top of the article page, to help with determining SNG eligibility.
NotSoFast.js - In Special:NewPagesFeed, highlights articles newer than 15 minutes red and newer than 1 hour yellow, to remind you not to patrol them yet. (WP:NPP says to wait at least 15 minutes before patrolling new pages.)
NPPLinks - Adds WP:BEFORE, copyvio check, duplicate article check, and other useful New Page Patrol links to the left menu. I like to mouse wheel click these links, which opens them in new tabs without losing focus on the current tab. Includes a professor h-index search.
VoteCounter.js - Displays keep and delete counts at the top of AFDs and MFDs.
WatchlistAFD.js - Automatically watchlists the AFD pages of your AFC accepts and NPP curations for 6 months, so you can see when stuff is AFD'd and you can calibrate your reviewing. By default, the patroller is not notified of AFD nominations, so this helps fix that.

I have some others in the pipeline, but they are not quite ready yet. I will post those later. Feel free to leave feedback. Also feel free to make requests. Enjoy. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:18, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks! Mccapra (talk) 22:10, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Awesome, gonna give these a try! Elli (talk | contribs) 01:32, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm on holidays looking at this on phone so will definitely try these out when I'm back reviewing next Monday JW 1961^Talk 14:24, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

These are wonderful. NotSoFast.js especially – I've been considering bringing up adding an "on-by-default" filter to remove new pages from the queue, which this accomplishes without actually hiding anything that may be problematic. Thanks, always looking for new scripts to try. ASUKITE 16:57, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Wow. This is great. Thanks. --Gazal world (talk) 20:21, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The CiteHighlighter is amazing!!! Thank you!! JSFarman (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Awesome work! Thank you for this. - The9Man ^(Talk) 18:46, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

This looks greatm I've got way too many scripts already, but I think I'll try some of these. ― Qwerfjkl talk 19:22, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Two more bot task proposals

The trial run for the rather narrow task discussed above is going well, so I thought I'd suggest two more tasks that I could code for User:'zinbot. Both would, like the first one, skim off a few dozen pointless reviews per week.

Automatically review any article or redirect that is created as the result of someone self-reverting a change between the two states. This would include things like someone turning a redirect into a pseudo-article and self-reverting for {{Wikidata redirect}} purposes.
I propose the following criteria:
1. No minimum perms. (Or autoconfirmed. But I don't see much potential for abuse here.)
2. Maximum one hour between edit and self-revert.
3. No requirement that the restored page be identical to the original page. (Or: Such a requirement for non-extendedconfirmed users, no such requirement others.)
Automatically review any article or redirect that is created as the result of someone reverting a non-constructive edit that changed it to the other state. For instance, User:Vandal turns a redirect into "dick butt lol", and User:RCPer reverts.
I propose the following criteria:
1. Revert must be tagged as rollback, or must be tagged as undo and marked as minor (this covers pseudo-rollbacks with scripts like Twinkle).
2. Reverted editor must not be extendedconfirmed.
3. Reverting editor must be a rollbacker or new page reviewer. (Or maybe a pending changes reviewer? Going any lower than that, though, I think risks obfuscating abuse.)
4. Maximum one hour between original edit and revert.
5. Restored page must be identical to the original page.

What do y'all think? Very open to feedback on tweaking any of these criteria, just a rough draft. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 18:03, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I have noticed pages of both of these types in the NPP queue - and almost always unnecessarily, but as a manual reviewer they involve some investigation to see if something weird happened. As such, I think automating the handling of the ones which are clearly non-problematic is a worthwhile task, and the criteria you've laid out seem to be fine (if anything, a bit too restrictive). Elli (talk | contribs) 01:36, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Bumping this. Given all the focus on the backlog right now, I'd really like to set these up, since they'll take a few of the easiest reviews out of the backlog every day, and let people focus more on the things that need human review. But some amount of consensus is required before I can file a BRFA for these. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:59, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
This makes sense to me. I endorse the proposal. Vexations (talk) 22:12, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good! Tol (talk | contribs) @ 23:50, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Newsletter

Hi everyone. I came across the coordinator task through the latest newsletter issue. I'm wondering if any of the following were taken?

Answer questions at any of the talk pages.
Provide help to new patrollers, monitor and coordinate the NPP School (largely inactive), or co-opt additional users to serve this task.
Sending out barnstars and other appreciation to active reviewers (bronze and above tier awards).
Warn patrollers when they are getting things wrong.
Act as editorial board for a quarterly (or any other period) newsletter or co-opt additional users to serve this task (drafted in the newsletter archive below).
Exchange feedback with other language Wikipedias.

I don't have all the time in the world, nor am I extremely experienced, but I would be really happy to contribute in any way. PK650 (talk) 01:48, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

you would be a very positive addition/contributor ...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:02, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, I sure hope so! Is there anyone centrally coordinating the tasks or everyone just does what they can? Thanks again, PK650 (talk) 02:07, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

NewPagesFeed timezone

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291675
Resolved

There appears to have been a change to Special:NewPagesFeed, where a time zone has been added to the time when a page was created. Unfortunately, it takes up a great deal of space, especially where editors are working with a splitscreen. While it was a nice idea in theory, could the change please be reverted back? I assume it's not something that's been caused by one of my scripts, given when I'm logged out the issue still stands. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:52, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm guessing someone enabled the wrong datetime formatting for whatever reason here. I don't see anything in the changelog suggesting this was on purpose, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:17, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah, yep, looks like Tol already filed this on Phab. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:20, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Tamzin: Yep; thanks for the ping! My apologies, I probably should have posted here that yes, this is a bug. Particularly, it uses your local browser timezone instead of the timezone set in preferences (or UTC). Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:23, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I was wondering what was wrong, tried changing my preferences etc., Thanks for letting us know JW 1961^Talk 13:28, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

School of Management Sciences

There was a dab page at this title with zero entries after redlinks had been deleted. It is now a new article, but because of the history of the title, it is not in the queue. Could someone un-patrol this. Thanks. MB 19:08, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

No problem,

Done @MB ― Qwerfjkl talk 19:14, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Chanda dynasty

I just created this when un-doing the usurption of another title. It also needs be put into the queue. MB 19:35, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Done @MB ― Qwerfjkl talk 19:40, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

MB, I see you have the NPP permission, so unless I'm missing something you should have an unpatrol button you can click. I think it's the "Add to the New Pages Feed" link in the left menu (under Tools). Screenshot. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:41, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

You can't do it to your own articles; or NPR would become a loophole on autopatrol. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I spot checked one of my own articles just now. The "Add to the New Pages Feed" button is present. I am not autopatrolled, but I suspect that wouldn't change things. If I'm wrong or misunderstanding something, this might be worth a Phabricator ticket. Autopatrolled users not being able to unpatrol their own pages would be worth fixing, in my opinion. Example: An AFC reviewer that accepts AFC drafts should be able to unpatrol them in case they want a second set of eyes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:51, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 33#unreview an article MB 18:22, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I couldn't find the 2019 Phabricator ticket, but here's a 2021 one. phab:T280890. I left a comment just now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:36, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Relevant RfC on an SNG proposal underway

An RfC on a proposed Television series SNG is underway at the proposed guideline's talk page. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 20:17, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

AFC reviewer Olaf Kosinsky

I notice that pages accepted by former AFC reviewer Olaf Kosinsky have now been added to the NPP queue by MER-C. It would have been nice if there had been discussion here first, or at least notification. --John B123 (talk) 22:21, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Given the findings in Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Olaf Kosinsky and dewiki (it seems the trigger to this was coverage on paid editing in a late night show on ZDF), it seems reasonable that reviews from this editor should not be trusted.--Eostrix (^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 08:54, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

They have submitted to AfC drafts from one account which was a declared paid account and accepted these drafts from their main account, which did not declare any connection. This means the drafts must indeed go back to the queue.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:26, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: I agree in general, but as this has been an abuse at AfC, then the articles need to be looked at again at AfC, not NPP. The articles I looked at yesterday were from June 2020, so are not "New Pages" therefore adding to the NPP queue is inappropriate. --John B123 (talk) 16:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

This was abuse of both. The articles became patrolled.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

If it was an abuse of both then why are only NPP being expected to sort it out? --John B123 (talk) 16:44, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

You may move them to back to draft if you want.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:50, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that would be compliant with WP:DRAFTIFY as these are not new articles. That aside, I don't see why this is being pushed exclusively on NPP. --John B123 (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

They had autopatrolled, so the drafts faced no scrutiny whatsoever. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Olaf Kosinsky blocked for sockpuppetry and spamming.

Incidentally, in his request for autopatrolled, he said "Autopatrolled would help me a lot.". Yep. MER-C 12:00, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@MER-C: In addition to my comments above to Ymblanter, having a discussion at AfC about what is to be done to resolve the situation and deciding to let NPP sort it out without any consultation with NPP is fundamentally wrong. Whilst you may think that NPP are too lowly to have a valid opinion, as you are increasing their workload common courtesy would suggest as a minimum you let them know about this. --John B123 (talk) 16:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

By virtue of them being in the queue means NPP knows...PRAXIDICAE🌈 17:05, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

I spent some time investigating why these articles were now in the queue, which could have been prevented by a short notification here, so no I don't accept that them being in the queue is enough. --John B123 (talk) 17:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

MER-C included a summary explaining exactly why they unreviewed. See here, for instance. The logs are a significantly more reasonable place to explain one's reasoning than a noticeboard many NPRs never check. Personalizing this as being about demeaning NPP is absurd. If a page escapes NPP scrutiny due to abuse, obviously it should be flagged for NPP scrutiny. Not doing that would be the real insult. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 18:48, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Very handy if you can read German, but not a lot of good on the en WP --John B123 (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

If a page escapes NPP scrutiny due to abuse, obviously it should be flagged for NPP scrutiny and equally if it escapes AfC scrutiny due to abuse, obviously it should be flagged for AfC scrutiny, which was one of my original points. --John B123 (talk) 19:10, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Obviously banging my head against a brick wall here..... --John B123 (talk) 19:14, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

If it feels that way, perhaps the issue isn't that others don't understand, but that, frankly, your complaint doesn't make sense? The unreviews were valid. There was no obligation to notify this noticeboard. An explanation was offered in the appropriate places, which you apparently missed. ("Sockpuppetry and UPE" is English, and is enough of an answer to satisfy one's curiosity as to why old pages are in NewPagesFeed. Meanwhile User talk:Olaf Kosinsky links to the enwiki SPI.) If the outstanding issue is that AfC should have been notified (which I'm not sure I agree with, since the pages are in mainspace, but either way...), WP:SOFIXIT. Go notify them. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 19:25, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Please actually read what I wrote above: having a discussion at AfC - see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Olaf Kosinsky blocked for sockpuppetry and spamming. How that is interpreted as I have an issue with AfC not being informed when the 'solution' was decided there I've got no idea. I've also no idea why you think heaping more work on NPP when they're already struggling is ok, or even why the abuse effects both AfC and NPP but only NPP are expected to deal with it. --John B123 (talk) 19:44, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

The nature of what you're complaining about seems to change with every comment, which is why I got a bit lost. Are you actually suggesting an alternate course of action here? I really can't think of any other way this could have been handled. You said AfC should review the articles, but also said they shouldn't be mass-draftified, which is the only way AfC could review the articles... So they're in mainspace, which makes them our problem. If you want to be pissed at someone, be pissed at the deceitful spammer who made this happen. Now can we just cut out the NPP/AfC tribalism and go review these articles? (Or if you don't want to review them, don't.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 20:08, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Let me clarify for you then: A problem occurred with an AfC reviewer and at AfC it was decided to pass the buck to NPP to resolve the problem without any consultation with the people who are expected to give their time to sort it out. These are not new pages, the ones I looked at last night were from June 2020, so are outside the NPP remit. --John B123 (talk) 20:41, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

So what would you rather everyone do? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:07, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Communicate before the event rather than argue after. For one person who clearly doesn't want to do the work themselves to arbitrarily decide that they are going to commit another group to put the effort in is totally unacceptable. This situation isn't the fault of either AfC or NPP reviewers, and is an anomaly outside either groups remit, but I'm sure if asked first both groups would pull together to resolve it. That is how collaboration works, which is a fundamental of WP. The way this has been handled is more like dictatorship. --John B123 (talk) 21:31, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

What should have happened is that all articles introduced by Olaf should have been summarily deleted. There's no reason for our volunteers digging through good-faith contributions to be given more work sorting through bad-faith spam. The prevalence of inclusionism on this website is for the entertainment of the fandom editors; it's not appropriate for the gnomes. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:45, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Most of these are articles that others created and Olaf reviewed, so it would be unfair to delete them just for the sins of the reviewer. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:51, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

John, I ask again: What else should have been done? What possible way forward is there other than what happened? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:51, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

What should of happened, or what should happen now? If the former, sending the articles back to draft wouldn't be acceptable as pointed out above, equally, adding to the NPP queue isn't appropriate as these are not new articles. The problem should have been discussed. I would have happily given the articles a second look on a voluntary basis, but baulk when it's forced on NP patrollers. What should happen now? I don't really care. We have lost one of the best and most prolific patrollers this week because they feel unsupported by the community. I'm going to join them now due to lack of support by (mainly) admins (with a few exceptions who are very supportive). Whilst it may be inaccurate, I can only tell things as I see them. Some admins I cannot praise highly enough and go way beyond what is expected from them. A few others show the wisdom of Solomon when closing difficult discussions, but the majority come across as arrogant with a 'I am God, what I say goes attitude'. Whilst this particular episode isn't particularly major in the scheme of things, it's the straw that broke the camels back. I wish everybody all the best for the future. --John B123 (talk) 23:15, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@John B123: who did we lose? I was unaware of this.

I hope you reconsider yourself though... your work is very valuable around here. ::::::::: (talk | contribs) 23:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi talk, thanks, but my mind's made up. I'm fed up of putting in a lot of time to get grief in return. The other patroller is Onel5969. Regards. --John B123 (talk) 07:38, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

John B123, I sincerely hope that both yourself and Onel5969 will re-consider your decisions. Between you there were more than 100,000 reviews in the last year, that is an incredible amount of work! I'm sure the rest of the reviewers agree that you both are invaluable to the NPP project and thank you for that. JW 1961^Talk 14:49, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

The articles I looked at yesterday were from June 2020, so are not "New Pages" therefore adding to the NPP queue is inappropriate. and adding to the NPP queue isn't appropriate as these are not new articles - these statements demonstrate a total misunderstanding of the importance of NPP. NPP is a higher authority than AfC which to this day is still not even an official function and has no coordination infrastructure. Instead of everyone here bleating about AfC/NPP 'tribalism', something needs to be organised to reduce the monumental backlog of 6,000 articles. No project coordination has been done for nearly a year or more and something needs to be done. If not, the very articles NPP is supposed to weed out and delete will slip unnoticed into the indexed corpus and paid editors will be having a ball. Chris troutman above hits the nail on the head - the time for Wikipedia's fake inclusionism for spammers and paid editors is over - with 6 mio articles (nearly a third of which probably shouldn't exist anyway) the encyclopedia is big enough and can stand some radical pruning for quality. Instead of appealing to the two most industrious reviewers to come back and do more work, figure out who and what the rest of the 706 New page reviewers are and what they are doing other than hat collecting. Time for the likes of leaders such as Insertcleverphrasehere and Barkeep49 to come back and exert some influence and encouragement. I wonder what DGG would be thinking if he knew what was going on here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:25, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Ultimately when we find someone who has infiltrated our review systems like this it is going to require manual reviewing and it's going to add to a backlog. We've certainly seen this when we've had NPP who were discovered to be doing UPE before. This does feel different but ultimately I can't fault MER-C for unreviewing the lot of them, though I definitely agree with John B123 that some sort of heads up would have been courteous. I also can't disagree with Kudpung that I have taken my eyes off the NPP ball. I was doing OK when I was only on ArbCom but the UCoC work distracted me further and most of my other onwiki work has suffered as a result. Anyhow I agree with his statement that having others step up with coordination will help NPP. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:51, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

break

The problem of getting volunteers to step up and accept a position of responsibility and/or leadership, Barkeep49, is never easy when no carrots are being dangled for the job. Prestige comes with election to higher office or working on off-Wiki projects that may or not be compensated by support for meetings or conferences. I was always of the opinion that a leader, even a defacto one, should make some provision for the work of coordinator(s) to be continued. I tried it once when I retired from NPP, but the election was not a success. The job of coord for NPP is just not sexy enough, although the Guild of Copy Editors seems to function well. Is there anything to be learned from that project? The coordination tasks don't actually take up a lot of time. I mentioned many many times about the 706 New page reviewers being largely inactive and needing to be severely pruned, but the 'rights protectionist' lobby won the day. It's easier to get an admin desysoped! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:53, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Rosguill , MER-C, Ymblanter, Chris troutman, Onel5969, DGG, Primefac, Atsme, Girth Summit, ONUnicorn, Scope creep, Vexations, Elmidae, WereSpielChequers, Celestina007, TonyBallioni - any suggestions? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:28, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Some things that set us apart from the GOCE is that there's both a higher barrier to entry for NPP, and NPP is a task that naturally creates friction with other editors and thus has a higher rate of burnout than other workflows. With that in mind, while I'm not opposed to good ideas that people can bring from other centralized projects on Wikipedia, I wouldn't get your hopes too high as far as finding a magic bullet practice that will address our retention and coordination issues. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 18:54, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, normally on a project like this I would suggest an article in the Signpost setting out the problem and calling for volunteers. But the signpost is less frequent these days and has only just published recently, so the next issue may not be in time to be useful. Another possibility is to ask the WikiProjects for help The-Pope did this to some effect several years ago when we had the unreferenced BLP cleanup. A bot was used to send lists of articles involved to WikiProjects that the articles were tagged for, along with an explanation of the problem, and some of those wikiprojects were very helpful. More broadly two ways to help NPP are to appoint more editors as autopatrolled, HJ Mitchell and I have both gone through lists of likely suspects in the past; Or persuade an NPPatroller to run at RFA with a big part of their qualification for adminship being their good work at NPP. This sends a message to a big crowd of editors who watch or participate in RFAs. Ϣere SpielChequers 19:17, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, The Signpost has become somewhat of a challenge for the two who have been trying valiantly to hold it together since I dropped the reins on my short tenure there. Again, like motivating coordinators or reviewers for NPP, however, someone would need to take the initiative to write the article, and it won't be Bri or Smallbones. It's a bit chicken-egg. The newspaper has become little more than a newsletter and yet another platform for the WMF's self-aggrandisement who seem to squat most of its pages (that's probably an illusion actually, due to the current lack of other content) and its readership seems to wax and wane.

There is a danger in appointing yet more autopatrolled editors as recent revelations have demonstrated yet again how it gets abused. Your last suggestion is appealing, not least of course that an NPP coord ideally should have access to the admin tools. But who wants to run for adminship these days? That said, according to my research of post 2015 RfAs, most of the voters appear to be a volatile drive-by group, and because each RfA is an individual page it's hard to say how many watchers the RfA process actually has. Maybe Ritchie333 as the master candidate-finder-general knows someone. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:10, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
This was a couple of paragraphs I wrote for the signpost re the death anomaly project, it was well worthwhile in terms of the large number of people who then turned up and did a few anomalies each. As for appointing more autopatrollers, I'm nervous of people who request the userright, pretty relaxed about people on this list Wikipedia:Database_reports/Editors_eligible_for_Autopatrol_privilege. OK a fair proportion of them you look, and move on to the next. But this is the place to find uncontentious wikipedians who start new articles every week or every fortnight, have done so for ages and will likely continue to do so. The ones who create wodges of articles get picked up and others make them Autopatroller - but the people on this list, a bit of time invested now will reduce the NPP workload for years to come. Ϣere SpielChequers 21:12, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
The editors who can be autopatrolled don't write articles that waste reviewer time. So they are not a burden at all. In fact, it may lift a reviewer's mood to finally come across one article they can pass without reservations. The problem comes from new COI and UPEs who will edit war, copy-paste move, remove tags using socks and IPs if you give up and decide to tag the article and move on, and you can't or don't want to go to AFD because AFD is a lottery even when it is not actively hostile at you for "being a deletionist".
I doubt anyone can give an example of when an editor who wrote a promotional draft and engaged in abusive editing to get it mainspace turned out to be a good faith editor who went on to become an asset to the project; and yet we must assume good faith and not bite these newbies as far as the vast majority of PAG-read editors and admins who've never actually dealt with them are concerned. But that's not even all. Suppose you are a new NPPer and you know you are being watched, you may even be on probation. You find a UPE article that is more likely notable than not (not notable notable, but enough non-SIGCOV-qualifying junk in reliable looking sources). You draftify it and it is moved back, or worse copy-pasted back, so you can't draftify it again. If you were to bring it to the community, unless you are very very lucky, you will meet editors who will say AFD is not cleanup, and you should not be a deletionist. That would suggest that you should mark the article reviewed with tags. But the editors who are watching you for your NPP prowess are looking for precisely this thing: whether you are a UPE trying to get advanced rights to pass UPE articles through quality control. So, marking the article as reviewed, the least you can expect is some spam-fighting veteran who doesn't care about the rules scolding you for not catching an obvious UPE. More likely, you will get NPP pulled, maybe blocked for UPE. Now only if it were that easy to get the spam-creators blocked. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:03, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
But the editors who are watching you for your NPP prowess are looking for precisely [a UPE article accepted with tags], as the admin who hands out the lions' share of new page reviewer permissions, I can say that accepting with tags is 100% what you should be doing in this situation and I would never take that as evidence that an editor shouldn't be conferred the permission. The UPE editors aren't placing tags on their own articles. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 03:14, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Usedtobecool, While I appreciate that the occasional decent article can lift the mood of patrollers, there are other ways to achieve that. For example I sometimes visit FAC and review an article or just read one. The whole point of Autopatrol is to pre patrol the articles of people whose articles no longer need go through the NPP process, the more effective we are at appointing such people the lower the average quality level of what gets left in the unpatrolled queue. Of course it is also useful to have some patrolling eyes on reviewed articles, and if you want to do that you can opt to include "reviewed" in special newpages. Most of our need, and I expect most patrolling time, will hopefully remain on patrolling unreviewed articles. Many articles by people who merit autopatroller are indeed relatively quick to check, but not all and even just reading the whole thing can take time. Ϣere SpielChequers 17:13, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm in the middle of moving and have taken a 3 mo. hiatus, although I do try to check-in from time to time. Apologies but I simply do not have the time right now. Atsme 💬 📧 19:35, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I an fluent in German, and I've got a week off work, so I could probably take on some of articles that have been promoted by Olaf. I have to think about how to filter those though. Is there an easy way? Vexations (talk) 20:20, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, Kudpung. When I backed away from the project a couple of weeks ago, Usedtobecool brought up the very salient point that NPP is just one of several "drama boards", which seem to be lightning rods for contention. I've been active on WP for just under 8 years. During that time, in addition to content creation, I have attempted to help out on certain projects. The first was GOCE, which I found very rewarding, and very little contention. It's a different dynamic there, as Rosguill points out. I also spent a year or two over at AfC, reviewing over ______ articles. While not as contentious as NPP, it can be stressful, especially with such a large backlog. I also did a stint at account creation, I did not stay there long, as I was not very good at it. There were several other projects I've also chipped in at over the years, such as the redlink project. I've always tried to spend some time on something other than content creation (which is my passion), with a task which is necessary, but not necessarily rewarding. Lord knows that the folks that do NPP aren't doing it for the rewards. Projects like this are going to draw contention, if you don't expect that, you're not being realistic. What I found disappointing was the lack of support at ANI. I know that there will be pushback, but I don't think we need more reviewers, but more quality reviewers. Folks who make the commitment to review 10-100 articles a week. It's been about 10 days since I stopped patrolling, and with the subsequent departure of John B123, the queue has already jumped 1000 in that short span of time. Unless admins start supporting the work that is done at NPP, it's going to be difficult to retain editors. Which is a shame, since I consider it a very vital function of the project. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:25, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Onel5969, NPP is not just a very vital function, it's the most important single process on the entire en.Wiki even if some people and the WMF don't see it that way. It's the only firewall against unwanted and inappropriate new articles, and as such it should have the highest possible priority. I don't think NPP is a drama board per se. When I set about getting it structured many years ago and appealing for better software, and then creating the user right, it's talk page entered a new of dynamic which nowadays gets more traffic in a week than it used to in a year - and this is a good thing. It shows that at least some people are interested in doing this thankless task properly and even use that very complex flow chart that Insertcleverphrasehere designed. I'm just disappointed that the work and coordination I was doing has not been followed through. It reinforces every decision I have made to retire from Wikipedia whatever the original catalyst happened to be - and that, ironically, was because I was just doing my job on NPP. And while I occasionally still throw in the odd comment now and again, or vote on a major RFC, or correct a typo on-the-fly, I won't raise a finger now to help out in any maintenance tasks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:10, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
My comment that is being referenced is here. I was highlighting the differences in understanding that there can be, between editors who do the actual work and those who only know theory from the PAGs. I remember, for example, a certain arb, in their very recent RFA, being scolded for trying to force the optional AFC on to users by adding AFC template to draftified articles (which the script does).
I have been mulling over the consequences of certain editor base's (which includes me) dislike of ANI, etc. and how it affects the project. We have, with some editors, the most egregious violations for no discernible good reason, being defended vehemently over years and years; and on the other hand, we have an NPP reviewer draftifying twice instead of once and being told basically to stop harassing the article creator, no one noticing that that was uncalled for. Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:40, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi folks, @Kudpung: I burnt out, on it, about 4-5 months ago. Now back. I like WereSpielChequers idea. Many of these other boards seem to be oversubscribed with admins, probably because they see it as doing an important job, that's worth doing. Can that be communicated somehow? I agree with onel5969 There has been a slight disconnect with administration and often you don't get the support you need; that makes it more unattractive as a long-term proposition. I was warned by an admin 4-5 months ago, for following the process exactly. It's a bit of a nippy sweetie. scope_creep^Talk 20:44, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
One thing to consider which ironically would be an excellent project for an NPP coordinator would be enshrining practices that reduce burnout as part of the flowchart to try to steer editors away from getting in over their head. Some practices that I feel have helped keep me out of trouble have been to 1) limit how many articles I nominate for deletion or ATD in a day or week; once I hit ~10 open deletion proposals, I back off and stick to patrolling easier-looking articles because I know that if I keep going I will not be able to deal with the proportion of editors that lose their cool at me over it 2) going out of my way to welcome newer editors if I take any action that could be perceived as hostile to an article they're contributing. Erring on the side of being cloying has probably defused some situations before they escalated to conflicts, and has increased the amount of polite interactions that I have, which in turn reduces the knee-jerk stress I get whenever I see I have an unread notification because now there's a higher chance that it's something nice instead of someone mad at me. 3) Work as a team--avoid doubling down on tagging and then nominating for deletion, PROD-->AfD, or repeatedly reverting the same editor; instead, back off and let the next reviewer deal with it. By having multiple editors respond to inappropriate content, you can sometimes avoid defensiveness that would otherwise be a pretty reasonable reaction for an inexperienced editor who suddenly sees a new page reviewer repeatedly coming after their contributions _signed,Rosguill ^talk 21:26, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) What I was hoping to achieve by this short visit back to Wikipedia and NPP which I worked on and at for several years, scope_creep, was to knee-jerk some motivation to restart some interest in coordination, and which would lead to some solutions to the prevailing problems of NPP. I'm really sorry you were scolded by an admin for just doing your job - ironically some admins loose their bits for just doing theirs; yes, it was an unnecessary altercation due to an unnecessary and distinctly unfriendly and unsupportive comment by an admin. The number of reviews you do will receive a proportionate amount of pushback, but drive-by admins seeking to assert their authority won't realise that and their intervention does more harm than good. Anyway. I'm glad to see today that you requested your reviewer right back. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:50, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Kudpung. I noticed there was quite a few folk asking for new permission on page reviewer. Hopefully you have breathed (pneuma) some life back into the project. scope_creep^Talk 22:04, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
The problem, apart from the NPPers not having the backing of fellow NPPers and admins as much as they deserve, is that a good NPPer is not an effective NPPer. I almost always follow the rules to the best of my knowledge and ability, but if everyone worked like me, we'd need thousands of active NPP reviewers. An admin, just yesterday, draftified twice and protected the title. That's very effective, and I'd be able to make thousands of reviews myself if I could do that, but even if I had the ability to create-protect pages, that's not the law. Someday, said admin might make enemies, and it might end up being another piece of evidence on the "abuse of tools" list, instead of the very effective way of handling a bad editor with crap articles. It's probably within the rules to warn editors with a singular fixation and no competence to see it through to drop the topic or get topic banned or blocked; but we don't have enough admins, if any, doing that. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:21, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Mulling over on this a bit, I think that an additional factor behind the disconnect between NPP editors and admins without an NPP background is that there's really almost no guidance for when you're actually allowed to block an editor for UPE or what process to follow. Unlike edit warring or POV-pushing, we're not clear about standards of evidence or the extent to which the community is expected to participate in the process. Unlike sockpuppetry, there's no recourse to technical evidence. Now, part of the lack of clarity around UPE is because of an intentional aura of secrecy around UPE-hunting, so that black hat editors can't find the list of tells we watch out for. But we could probably articulate a clearer outline of verbotene behaviors than what we have now that would both motivate admin action and reduce friction.

Similarly, I wonder if it would be possible to reframe some of the deletion processes in NPP to better communicate that nominating an article that doesn't meet notability guidelines doesn't make you a deletionist. When an article is obscure and poorly referenced, there shouldn't be any shame with referring it to the community to decide instead of making a blind bet on your knowledge of an obscure topic, with your reputation at stake. Everyone loves a bolded vote, so we could even come up with a procedural nomination or some such for articles nominated for deletion in the NPP process. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 05:43, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
I forget where, but a respected admin made a comment last year, that it's not necessary to dwell on proving socking (which is the easiest way to rid of UPE editors) when the editors can just be blocked for UPE? I think I tried that once or twice, ending my SPI report with: "this is obviously UPE, so could you block it for that if you determine there's not enough for sock block?" but that doesn't happen. You can go to COIN and make a cumbersome report and notify the editor being reported; so there can be an endless discussion that admins would rather not read, or you can go to MER-C or Justlettersandnumbers (anybody else?) and hope they're not too busy. Usedtobecool ☎️ 06:19, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Kudpung You asked what I thought. I think AfC a preliminary part of NPP--the distinction is that at NPP it's assumed most articles will not need to be deleted, but just tagged as necessary ; at AfC it's assumed that most articles will be unsatisfactory and at least half of them unlikely to be fixable. -- that it has two quite different purposes--to help new good faith editors get acceptable articles., and as a preliminary screen to keep junk, promotional or otherwise, out of WP. It's difficult to do both at the same time, and I think we might therefore need to rethink the general organization and work flow. . (And there's the auxiliary question of whether we should even try to fix paid / coi editing, but take the attitude that is it isn't initially good enough, to let it get rejected. But that's for later--let's work with what we have: The justification for the afc procedure for possibly promotional articles is that there is so much junk, that it really needs two looks, or there will be a great deal to much of it getting into the encyclopedia , as can be seen by looking at earlier articles from before we required it. I do not consider either a definitive process--only afd is a definitive process. They requires equal skill at knowing the guidelines and judging articles. AfC , however, does require more experience and tact, because it's more often necessary to deal with angry coi editors. Those who have admin rights are much more likely to find a use for them at afc, as are those doing SPI. In general I advise new reviewers to start with NPP--they are likely to do less harm there while they are learning.

The qualities needed to oversee the projects are about the same--the most important is to have the judgement to accept, edducate, and if necessary to remove reviewers. I think we need a unified project and a single control group:I do not think it should be an y single person, but somesort of committee--and I think we pretty much informally have one--and if you, Kudpung, would get active in this again, we;'d probably have enough people to do it. One of the reasons I do not want a single person for either is I don't think there;'s sufficient agreement on the standards--those here with the most experience do things differently, but still compatibly. I especialy think it too risky to have any structure or workflow that depends at any step on a single person. I willingto do my share of leadership, but i dont want anybody to be Czar, not even myself.

What I think was truly unpleasant and unproductive is the original quarrel here--the two processes are not opponents. As with everything in WP there are multiple possible venues, and it's almsot never worthwhile trying to divide up everything between them . The important thing is that uncertain or questioned actions get discussed, and it does not matter where. There's no room at wp for personal jealousy or domination or resentment--the only way we can work is toleance of each other. (along with the realization that none of us is individually of any particular importance or indispensability). DGG ( talk ) 05:44, 14 September 2021 (UTC).

Thank you so much DGG for putting a clear perspective on the issues. There has been a lot of positive reaction in this thread so far, let's hope something will come of it. You are of course correct in your assertion that no single person be ‘Czar’. Leadership and coordination are not the same thing. But there is an overlap and some people have a knack of convincing their peers, while others have organizational skills. In the best case scenario, some people have both qualities. I always wanted NPP to be coordinated by a team and for a short while after I retired from it, it worked.

The time is certainly ripe to begin a new, serious dialogue on the functions of AfC/NPP. In 2017 I created a work project on this very topic. It successfully resulted in encouraging the WMF to spend some time on improving the workflows of AfC and NPP, but while a 22,000 NPP backlog ended up being significantly reduced, discussions stalled on the question of rivalry vs collaboration of NPP & AfC. It has a mailing list for sending mass message invites to discussions. Perhaps someone would like to kickstart that project back into life, but I do not have any designs on returning to active editing any time soon. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:43, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

This is a long discussion (and interesting), and I have only read part of it, but I wanted to acknowledge that I was pinged and am reading through this and intend to provide thoughts at some point. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 23:21, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
came from the NPP newsletter and am doing the same.^Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 04:48, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- I have been doing NPP for about 12 months now. I had a somewhat challenging time on NPPSORT where I picked one category, reviewed that for months until I got into a flow, and became thoroughly sick of waiting for Google Translate to translate Korean boy bands. I mean, I put in two hours editing and only end up with 10 articles patrolled sometimes, because of checking references and waiting for Google translate. Count, Primary, no, Secondary, yes, one, two, three, no, no, four, like this, translating. Ditto references for folks in the Russian Army, and Armenian imams. I'll confess, I kinda shied away from some Japanese references this morning. I mean, EVERY reference was in Japanese.
- I am sorry to see John B123 go, he was a prolific and reliable reviewer. His tags on articles, in my estimation, were spot on and I learned a lot seeing his work pass by. Ditto Onel5969, who also put in yards and yards of yeoman work as a reviewer. I an not sorry CommanderWaterford is gone, he hit the newcomers too hard, and everyone else, too. Of late, in the last two weeks, I am horrified by what passes as autopatrolled: no references, no categories, One sentence articles. My sense is that there needs to be an avenue, other than ANI, where a Patroller can give feedback on autopatrolled articles that don't meet the mark. Some autopatrolled editors behave like autocrats.
- I was only talking with Onel5969 the other day, he told me he was training two newbies to NPP. I replied to him that morning with the comment that there were 700 new page patrollers, and on that morning, only 6 or 7 were active.
- Later on, I tag an article and get one editor replying, "Don't template the regulars"... I'm supposed to check that this or the other editor has 130,000 edits and leave their articles alone, even if there are no references or no categories? These are not strawman arguments. Rosguil said that NPP is often a scene of drama, abrasive messages, and conflict, and yes, it can be like so.
- One issue I have come across with NPP is that some editors behave as if they "own" an article, and revert your edit, your tag, your short desc. How dare you molest and touch their precious baby on their watchlist! There was a mention before about admins saying "'I am God, what I say goes attitude'." Deus ibi est, don't answer an admin who has changed your work. Its almost if you are in the chicken coop, and there is this pecking order... The other problem with NPP is your edits are seen in "recent changes" and then another recent changes editor will change your work, or some other editor says, "You know nothing about this subject, I'll revert your good faith edit". I think John B123 alluded to a lack of appreciation or respect for the work Patrollers do.
- With reviewing, my complaint is that when an article is previously deleted, I can't view that. Over at Admin review Issues there is a suggestion of unbundling some tools from the Admin pack. The ability to see previously deleted versions of an article being reviewed would be a useful tool. I support Rosguil's suggestion for a procedural nomination available to NPP that can be evaluated something like undeletion review or such like. We need more options on NPP than going to AfD and getting thumped for nominations. If NPP is the primary gatekeeper, you need to give active NPP the tools they need. --Whiteguru (talk) 11:27, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
  I agree about being able to view contents of some previously-deleted pages. I can see an argument for that, especially to help look for recurring issues. There may be some technical concerns with that, for example, we probably don't want non-admins to be able to view attack pages, and copyright violations may or may not be okay based on the legal considerations (which I am not qualified to even consider talking about). I haven't been super-prolific reviewing pages lately because most of my editing is done from work and our firewall has gotten more restrictive, making looking at sources pretty difficult. I will certainly try to step up when I can, however. This discussion has me feeling that I should occasionally take a closer look at autopatrolled pages, which I usually don't.
  
  I can absolutely see a procedural nomination being a good place to start. I try not to be too much of a deletionist, for example in AfC, it seems the majority of articles I check are probably eligible for some sort of deletion. One thing I shy away from is introducing more process to the existing processes, as I feel part of the reason we are having issues is that it's genuinely hard for somebody new to grasp the variety of policies and procedures involved in reviewing pages. If anything new is introduced from this, we should definitely try to keep it as simple as possible. ASUKITE 16:11, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I'm a dummy / non-dummy mineshaft canary

I'm on vacation and mostly off the grid so please excuse if I don't actively engage enough. I started NPP maybe a 1/2 year ago did a bunch, then faded out but do want to help. I'm sure that most of what everybody already said is true so I'm just adding a few thoughts that many would not be aware of. I've done about 57,000 diverse manual edits in Wikipedia, am pretty knowlegable on policies and guidelines, and active on those pages. My real life work is heavily immersed in engineering, technology physics & sciences. When I work at something I like to do it properly. I don't need or want any rewards, I just do what I enjoy and can enjoy many different areas of Wikipedia. I realize that a fully tidy definition of "properly" doesn't exist in Wikipedia, but but I can't see anything even remotely resembling it existing for NPP patrol. Some standards seem to be immensely high.......super expert and thorough at detecting copy vio, super expert at detecting lots of other wiki-sins. And the central task is trying to understand what the actual wp:notability standard works, which after 11 years and 57,000 edits is I might have finally figured out ( Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works ). So seemingly one needs to be a thorough expert and take a 1/2 hour per article, but when a newcomer rockstar does 1,000 articles per week that lower standard also seems OK. Also, the main (curation) tool that we're supposed to use has no instructions on it's mechanics of how to use it or precisely what it does. And the experts say that they don't use it because it doesn't work. They use personal hacks or twinkle which also has no info on the details of what it does and how to do it. So it's extremely frustrating to set a goal of what constitutes doing NPP properly. So Kudos to those that make this work!

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I realize that a fully tidy definition of "properly" doesn't exist in Wikipedia, but but I can't see anything even remotely resembling it existing for NPP patrol. I think File:NPP flowchart.svg is kind of the gold standard of new page patrolling, and I'd like to see us move in the direction of that being the standard process that everyone uses. I have some ideas for what can be updated in the flowchart, if we ever want to discuss updating it. In regards to the curation tool, because I have heard the stories about it being buggy, I don't use it except for the "mark as reviewed" button. Instead I use Twinkle for maintenance tags, AFDs, PROD, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:26, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Regarding standards, what I really meant, is: How thoroughly is it expected that and article will be reviewed for problems other than wp:notability? I can imaging a non-NPP expert might have to spend 1 hour per article to catch most of them? Should I feel guilty if I don't do that? And regarding instructions, what I mentioned is the nuts and bolts of exactly what the curation toolset does.North8000 (talk) 14:29, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

North8000, you should not feel guilty for not contributing enough. We're volunteers. It is not feasible to check for everything. Definitively proving UPE can be extraordinarily laborious. Actually tracking down and reading all the sources is not reasonable unless you're doing GA or FA review. A channel where NPPers can get a quick sanity check would be nice though. We used to have something on Discord. Vexations (talk) 15:32, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Vexations: Now, how would chart a course? Following the flowchart thoroughly would require strong expertise in a about 8 areas and about 2 hours per article. I'm not criticizing the flow chart; IMO it's great and should stay as-is.....we need to know the ideal full scope even if the reality is less. But for NPP it's very hard to learn what a reasonable expectation is for a "just good enough" page patrol. Maybe we need a "for dummies" guide on that. :-) North8000 (talk) 14:03, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

North8000, To see how much time it takes me, I reviewed an article that was creates by a "newcomer" and C-class. It took me almost an hour to fully read all the sources and check that the article correctly reflected what they say. Was that really necessary? Probably not. I could have figured out that something was off if before going through the workflow I had noticed that: the first version of the article was created on 5 July 2021‎ by an IP from Chicago who only every made a single edit, citing only one source. The next day another IP from Vietnam comes along and added some more claims, but no sources. Then nothing, until August 29. A relatively new user (account created August 21) starts adding citations to the article, all in one day. The next day, the new user moves the page from Draft to mainspace. That's a bit unusual. How does a new user know to find things in the Draft namespace? The flowchart doesn't really help you see any of that kind of behaviour. Can we teach people how to detect such anomalies? Of course, but there is a lot of understandable reluctance to create a how-to guide, because paid editors will want to learn it too. My advice is perhaps a bit counterintuitive, but I like woking this way. Before I read the article, I read all the sources. Then I try to imagine what kind o article I could have written with that material. If it's close, then the rest of the review is pretty quick. I'll notice If it's really different, something else is going on and I'm going to have to spend more time. I have built some tools for my own use (I'm too embarrassed to share my shitty code) that speed things up a little. For example, rather than searching for the name of the subject of an article in a browser, I use the command line with a few commands that get the html, convert it to text and find matches for a search string and highlight those in red. Something like

 curl -s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/Reviewers | textutil -stdin -stdout -convert txt  | grep --color Vexations

for example would quickly tell me if I am mentioned on this page, for example. Vexations (talk) 21:32, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Vexations Thanks. I really wasn't thinking about a "how to" guide (except maybe on exactly how the curation tools function). It was more something like "well, doing the whole flow chart is ideal, but if you just do a good job at checking for wp:notability, and complience with wp:not, and giving it an extra close look for that if you suspect COI editing, you're doing OK" North8000 (talk) 17:48, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

There seems some spam articles in their contributions related to business and entertainment. I think NPP participants should AfD or CSD spam articles than tagging with "notability", "more sources needed" etc. (see Björn Rosengren (manager) or Sami Atiya, no indication of notability). My poor and probably a worst opinion says that Autopatrolled user right should be removed from the Wikipedia to prevent further abuse of Autopatrolled privileges/ or modify NPP "set filter" and remove the option "reviewed" and "unreviewed" pages in NPP log. This way, NPP participants can also take a look at the pages created by Autopatrolled users without skipping them. TheBirdsShedTears (talk) 07:20, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

We could create some filters to help as well, if they don't exist already, such as "pages created by autopatrolled users with fewer than x references" and whatever other red flags we can think of. Removing the perm would be a tough sell, we would easily be outnumbered there, and it would cause harm as there are definitely plenty of autopatrolled who do genuinely good work. Incorporating some of these filters into the new pages feed would enable us to find autopatrolled pages that are more likely to be problematic, rather than spending time going through everything. The only issue is that it might become an arms race if people discover how to game the filters. ASUKITE 13:25, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I know I’m late to the party, okay, I haven’t bothered to read all entries here but this is my thought process, Autopatrol, NPR and AFC pseudo rights are very imperative perms which ought to be given out after thorough scrutiny has been carried out. If any of the aforementioned perms are infiltrated by Paid editors then we are heading towards becoming another LINKEDIN. I wrote this essay to guide admins. Furthermore I’m currently developing this major project to aid new page reviewers if they come across any Nigeria related articles. In my candid opinion, Although a rather daunting task, I believe an academy just as the one in which Rosguill and Barkeep49 run & teach in, should be implemented for Autopatrol & AFC pseudo rights, in which after graduation from the hypothetical academy, the students may now apply for the perm. Furthermore i believe an editor significantly indicted in Undeclared Paid editing should indefinitely have no business with all the aforementioned perms. I also want to appreciate DGG as one of those system operators who review articles created by editors with Autopatrol which is as ironic as it is bizarre seeing as the aim of editors with Autopatrol is thus defeated if it needs to be re-checked but that’s the calamity we find ourselves in now. In-fact it was predominantly due to the help of DGG & MER-C that this UPE editor was nabbed. Celestina007 (talk) 21:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- This happened today. MER-C 08:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
  - User:MER-C, on the plus side they were caught by NPP. I first came across this sockmaster after I approved some of their new articles (if I remember right, Kharkiv Bicycle Plant, maybe others). After that sock was blocked and the page(s?) I approved was (were?) G5ed, I committed their profile to memory and have since filed several SPIs against their socks that fit the same profile.--Eostrix (^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 09:18, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
The original proposal was more than what could be reasonably called NPP--it came close to GA review. the original idea behind the way articles would get improved in WP was that the would get improved gradually and cooperatively by many people over many edits. The proper role of NPP in my view is less than that: The basic function is to deal with the articles that should not be in mainspace, or at least should not be in mainspace yet. This means checking for apparent notability , absence of blatant advertising, and freedom from apparent copyvio, and sending them on the appropriate pathway or , if easily fixable, (optionally) fixing them. The second necessary step is to tag for the most obvious and important problems that remain. The third, which Celestina007 alludes to, is to keep a general sense of when something isn't right.
Ideally, I should have gone one important step further, and left custom messages to some of the editors, giving advice beyond the templates. I rarely do this, except when I see a good faith editor who seems to have the portential to be a good contributor, but is approaching things wrong, or doesn't understand one of the basic rules.
Revising or rewriting beyond this level is something I normally do only when I want t keep an article from deletion, and there's no way except rewriting.
Knowing how to spot the basics and how to deal with the range of situations is the fundamental knowledge, and the basic skill is the ability to work slowly enough to be careful. For someone experienced working with articles in a defined field, that can sometimes be pretty fast, but for general run of articles, I just timed myself, and I did 10, to this level of superficiality, in 17 minutes--but none were particularly difficult. I've seen people do 1 per minute, and it can be done well if one selects carefully, and works on a group of formulaic articles. If I see someone going much faster, or for longer than a half hour at a time, then comes the next level, which is checking the work of other reviewers. We have to give permissions to the relatively inexperienced, because they will only learn by using them. But they, and everyone needs to be at least occasionally audited. DGG ( talk ) 02:36, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
My nigh perfect & accurate conversion rate when nabbing UPE is generally having a feeling that “something isn’t right” as DGG correctly stated above. In a different entry made here down below, @Usedtobecool made a brilliant suggestion I think would be salient when tackling possible less than ethical practices. Celestina007 (talk) 21:00, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

A second board

...to discuss specific articles or groups, and how to handle them, etc.? So this can be reserved for more general issues. I am thinking if we had one where reviewers could bring questions about every article they want to ask about, we might get more reviews and fast-learning. This board seems ill-suited for many reviewers to do that on a regular basis, though the banner says we can. It could be a sort of a Teahouse for new reviewers, or NPPschool, and would be less annoying to editors who only watch this page for important developments within the project. Another use could be to discuss articles at the back of the queue that even experienced reviewers have been passing over for some time, so it can be two/three/four reviewer decision, which reviewers may be more comfortable doing. Bringing an article here could be taken personally by article creators; I am thinking that would be less likely for a board whose whole purpose is to discuss new articles. Thoughts? Usedtobecool ☎️ 05:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 05:03, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

This page has 289 watchers. A new page might start with 20 watchers or so. I wonder if splitting this page would result in the new page not getting much traffic. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:36, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good. Those people who review pages regularly can post their questions at the new place. --Gazal world (talk) 08:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

That would probably work - just put a nice big notice here asking regulars to watchlist the new page. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 20:05, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

289 out of 706. I think that pretty much sums up what I've been saying - considering the newsletter itself went out to 827. Pathetic. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:50, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm ok with the idea, but maybe it would be better to make everyone more aware that any kind of doubt by reviewers is welcome here, and then create the board if there's a significant amount of that kind of traffic? Either way, I'll take the offer and ask some questions :D MarioGom (talk) 13:44, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I too. I will ask question whenever I come across to any doubtful article. --Gazal world (talk) 13:58, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I would be happy to watchlist any new board and help out if I can. I'll admit I only just started watching this one, the newsletter was effective in getting my attention, so maybe it won't hurt to send a new one announcing the board? ASUKITE 14:05, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I think new noticeboards face an uphill climb and a singular busy talk page, as this has been recently, is better than two which might cause less activity overall as people notice the inactivity and become less likely to post anywhere. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:07, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Barkeep is wise. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:40, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I also agree with Barkeep and Kudpung, while this page is on my watchlist I'm not inclined to comment very often but I do keep an eye on it a few times a week - it's easy enough to keep up date with everything being here on one board JW 1961^Talk 22:15, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why we should resign before we try. There are 700 NPRs who thought this might be for them but found out for some reason they could not do much. We should try a better support page to encourage new NPRs to bring their questions and thoughts in. This is not that page. It is true that activity begets activity, but the nature of that activity is often limited to what is already on the page. People who come here and see general discussion are not going to be comfortable enough to ask if they just did their first review correctly. If this started to become that page, people who watch this page for general updates will stop clicking their watchlist updates altogether. So, I think we should leave this page for general discussions that one may look into once a week or so, and have a different page, much like the teahouse where we support each other, and reviewers who are new to NPP or particular area of NPP. All we need is a few editors willing to try this. The numbers of watchers is a feel-good number, but I think we will agree that most pages function by a handful of dedicated editors. We don't need 100 watchers; we need a few people to commit to clicking the page once or twice a week. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 13:07, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

There are 700 NPRs who thought this might be for them but found out for some reason they could not do much, might need some further research. It's possible that many of them did not read up on what it entails before they went to PERM. A common phenomenon - most candidates at ORCP don't first read the instructions either. New admins such as Rosguill are making good use of the new 'probationary' feature at PERM, and it seems to be working as intended. Perhaps if that feature had been around from 2016 there would not be today's misleading figure of 700.

On the development/evolution of talk pages for noticeboards or processes of this kind, for those who are not familiar with the 2016 restructuring of NPR and the years before it, a quick comparison of of this page's history with that of its predecessor will probably demonstrate that this talk page doesn't do too bad in its mission. It gets more traffic in a week than the other one got in a year - well noting that the Patrolling of New Pages had been a Wikipedia process for many years (since 2004) until 2016 when it was properly organised and the user right introduced. NPR still has a some way to go but it's certainly far more accurate and its talk page far more dynamic than they used to be. And there are now more than enough tutorials, video guides, and plenty of resources; they just need to be read. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:00, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I wanna join!!

Hi, I wanna be a reviewer, since I have over 100 edits in a week. And I wanna make sure Wikipedia always is clean, yes I have questionable edits in the past, now I know what to do and not to do, there are thousands of pages that need to be review.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mohammed12313893 (talk • contribs) 22:00, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Mohammed12313893 Welcome to this noticeboard. The place to ask for user rights is here, but I would respectfully suggest that you wait a while and gain more experience editing and finding your way around Wikipedia and our policies as your account is only 9 days old. JW 1961^Talk 22:22, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mohammed12313893 not quite, as stated by Joseywales1961 this isn’t the place to request for perms, furthermore you do not meet the threshold for requesting for that perm. NPR, is easily the most important perm and you need to show thorough proficiency as a prerequisite before even thinking of applying. You show proficiency by demonstrating to the community that you comprehend to utmost satisfaction that you comprehend our policy on notability, copyvio's, SNG's and a plethora of other vital policies. I would not bother to show you where to request, because your application would outrightly be declined. Infact, that you came here to request for the npr perm is indicative of the fact that you still have a long way to go & clearly aren’t proficient enough just yet. Feel free to visit the WP:TEAHOUSE where you can ask questions and get instantaneous replies. Celestina007 (talk) 00:39, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the account is now blocked for various reasons, including NOTHERE and CU-confirmed socking. Java Hurricane 05:55, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Thai Railroad stations

There are about 65 in the queue right now. They all seem to have two (or more) offline, Japanese books as sources. e.g. Nong Sang railway station. Not sure what to do with them. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 08:33, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that there were a good few yesterday and had to pass over the few I looked at - first thought is we might ask Stations if anyone has access to the sources? Will wait for further input JW 1961^Talk 10:29, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a discussion on Thai Railway stations occurring at this AfD. --Whiteguru (talk) 20:05, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

The consensus there seems to be converging on Keep. The problem is that I can't justify marking one of these as reviewed, without being able to read the reference. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:19, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Asking the Wikiproject, either stations or Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains, might help.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:57, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Why? As far as I know the consensus is that we can AGF in relation to offline sources. JBchrch talk 19:34, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

My sense is that railway stations serve a community. Several articles for stations cited timetables of trains that stopped there. I responded with References about the actual railway station and district served are necessary. Timetables of individual rail services are insufficient and do not confer notability. --Whiteguru (talk) 20:27, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

It would be useful to have a notability guideline mentioning rail stations - they don't appear in WP:NBUILD. I have the impression that the general pattern is to accept verifiable rail stations as notable, but the PROD of Hasimara railway station suggests otherwise. We certainly have a lot of articles about individual stations on both main line and metro systems, quite a few of which identify the line and connections but not a lot else. PamD 20:52, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Apparent AFD extortion ring

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sanketio31. Two of the blocked accounts

TheChronium (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Riteboke (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

had NPP privileges at some point, so their reviews have been undone. Be on the lookout for similar shenanigans at AFD, these spammers appear to be of the kind that don't give up easily. MER-C 18:13, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this to attention. Can a reviewer, however, review the page Nathan Harris (novelist). It has been unreviewed as a result. Οἶδα (talk) 18:49, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Οἶδα personally this seems like a case where Harris may or may not be notable but the book is so I'd be more inclined to move the article, focus on the book, and mark it reviewed. If you're OK with that I'll do it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:28, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49 Thank you for the suggestion. I have moved the articles myself, creating The Sweetness of Water. Οἶδα (talk) 17:11, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

I’m as sad as I am disappointed of the fact that technical evidence exposed TheChronium for engaging in this egregious transgression and a rather salient breach of trust. They often came across to me as an editor willing to learn, if I’m not mistaken, they also did a relatively good job at weeding promotional non notable articles from mainspace, but then again here we are. I feel like at this juncture it’s behoove of us to design and implement a system that curbs less than ethical editing. For example, an extensive period of time must have passed before sensitive perms such as Autopatrol and NPR be given out, that way editors who aren’t here to build an encyclopedia would be discouraged. I once tried to initiate a proposal where 365 days must have passed before the perms are giving out to any editor(s) Who are quite active in the related areas. my proposal was met with criticism and understandably so as it came off as rather mean. My dream is someday a mechanism would be implemented by the community which would curb unethical practices as anti spam/UPE editors are very few and frankly speaking we wouldn’t be here forever hence the need for “an effective mechanism” or “a system” that fights spamming or UPE be created. Celestina007 (talk) 21:13, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Completely agree, extending permissions for NPP and AFC reviewers to 6 months and 1000 edits would also be an improvement as it gives more time for undeclared paid editors and sockpuppets to be weeded out. I would also suggest a requirement for creating at least 3 non-stub articles but that would be controversial as even quite a few admins would not reach that threshold, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:29, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Completely agree, extending permissions for NPP and AFC reviewers to 6 months and 1000 edits would also be an improvement as it gives more time for undeclared paid editors and sockpuppets to be weeded out. Thank you Atlantic306, finally someone talking sense. It's all my fault if course, but at the time I got the right created, it was still a time when Wikipedia was determined to give power to people on the flimsiest of qualifications. 90/500 was the most I dared to ask for, otherwise the RfC for the creation would never have passed. Time also to severely cull that list of 700 reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:16, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

@Atlantic306, tbh that’s a good idea. @Kudpung, I believe you did the best you could do within your capacity. I do not believe you (or anyone for that matter) at that point in time envisaged perilous times such as this when the NPR would be abused. This isn’t an isolated incident, neither is peculiar to NPR alone. Autopatrol is also greatly abused, if it weren’t for DGG and other editors who every now & again patrol articles created by users with the Autopatrol perm, an inordinate amount of unethical editing would have gone unnoticed. Furthermore, the AFC pseudo right is currently becoming the most abused as the threshold is rather low. I wrote WP:TRIO for incidences such as this which we are currently discussing. Celestina007 (talk) 19:29, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

If it hadn't been for @Kudpung: things would be much worse. Also agree about autopatrol rights as apart from upes and socks there are quite a number of rights holders who produce lazy one line mini stubs on an industrial scale which set a poor example for new editors who can't understand why their own articles are subject to much higher standards. Perhaps it's time to abolish the autopatrol right or at least make each right holder subject to review every 6 months, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 01:30, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Abolishing autopatrolled would be much worse. One-line SNG stubs may be annoying but aren't a severe issue and would most likely just get a tag slapped on them at NPP. The sheer number of them created would distract us from dealing with more severe issues. If you want people to stop creating one-line stubs, talk to them or get the relevant notability guidelines changed. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:56, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007 and Kudpung: I disagree that a formal tick the box requirement of tenure/edit-count will solve the issue. I do think that UPE/extortion editing rings gaining NPR is a severe problem (e.g. also this recent one that was blocked just as they asked for it), however most of these editing rings have enough sleeper socks in the drawer so that any tenure requirement that is lower than several years will not be effective against socks, while it will also drive out genuine good faith new editors. Focusing on edit count is also a problem, as edit counts can be gamed (as they were here). These editing rings are tenacious, and are willing to spend the requisite time and effort to "mature" accounts. In my opinion, proper discretion should be applied at the right granting stage (to separate out account gaming editing to achieve permissions from genuine newbies) and further vetting and investigation should be applied after the right was granted, which is already done to an extent. Reviewing NPP accepts of accounts and finding accounts that accept promotional content on borderline modern-day organizations and biographies with borderline notability is not a difficult task - upon finding such a user at a minimum NPR should be revoked. In essence, I am suggesting some more PNPP (Patrol of New Page Patrol) and possibly likewise occasional patrol of autopatrolled.--Eostrix (^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 06:32, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

There are 4,188 users with the autopatrolled right explicitly granted, and a total of 5,265 users with the permission (the difference is made up of administrators, who automatically have this right). Elli, It shouldn't be too difficult for someone with a penchant for quarrying to produce some stats to clearly confirm or dismiss the claims that 'autopatrolled' still relieves NPR of a lot of work. A filter or something could be made that still forces autopatrolled users' very short or unsourced articles through the new page feed. My random stabs (until I retired) at the autopatrolled new articles, including those by admins, showed that there are more than enough such articles to at least justify thinking about this. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:13, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

If we had an infinite supply of effort for NPP I'd agree. A lot of stuff at NPP has problems now though which encourages reviewers to scrutinize articles. If lots of non-problematic but sucky sports/geo/whatever-people-are-mass-creaitng stubs were added, they'd be waved through quickly which might allow problematic articles through. If you want to deal with this, take them to ANI or reassess the SNGs. New page patrollers really do not have a lot we can do, given that these articles would usually survive AfD. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:23, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
With over 700 users, you have more than sufficient supply of potential effort. It has been clearly established - and not just recently - that there is significant abuse by autopatrolled users. The cases have been reported over recent years on this talk page. I'm curious to know how you are dealing with this by taking them to ANI Elli if you're not smoking them out first I would suggest that to avoid conjecture, some stats might prove one thing or the other. Otherwise NPR is a self-defeating process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:41, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure exactly what your point is? No, I'm not taking these people to ANI, because I'm dealing with pages that are currently in the queue. If an autopatrolled editor is routinely making non-notable stubs, yank the perm, but if they continue doing it they'll have to be sanctioned to get it to stop. NPP is not a silver bullet. We patrol pages for content issues, notability, then move on. If you dump a ton of cookie-cutter stubs on us, review just doesn't make sense. Spot checks of autopatrolled users might. And I'm just as unhappy about mass stub creation as anyone, but dumping a ton of busywork on NPPs won't fix that. Elli (talk | contribs) 05:44, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
So yank the perm. But but you first need to know who they are. New Page Reviewers do more than just button mashing, they are Wikipedia's only firewall against all the things that should not constitute new pages. It's an intrinsic responsibility that goes with the user right to recognise what the problems are, what needs to be improved, and organise themselves into lobbying for more and better filters and software. At least that's what they used to do when NPR had some coordinators. And it worked. Besides which, if every one of your 700 reviewers did just 10 patrols (15 - 20 minutes work), your current backlog would be gone in 24 hours. What do users who are still active such as ICH, Barkeep49, Celestina, Rosguill, MER-C, and DGG suggest? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:26, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
For autopatrolled, I think it's a perm almost nobody should self-request. There is no legitimate reason why someone would want autopatrolled. I think autopatrolled should be granted exclusively based on nomination by admins or NPR. NPR are in a good position to determine if someone is creating many articles and none of them really needs patrolling, hence the nomination system. MarioGom (talk) 08:38, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
I would also support this. Autopatrolled isn't a benefit for the user who has it - indeed it can be a risk, as they are responsible for ensuring that all their article creations meet the relevant standards - and therefore there is no reason for someone to self-request it. firefly ( t · c ) 09:04, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
I think this idea has been floated a couple times around here to positive reception. I suspect the broader community will be less receptive but the only way to find out is to try. I have my fill of major change RfCs at the moment but would encourage someone to draft this to see what happens. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:25, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If an autopatrolled editor is making routine stubs that would survive AfD there is no reason to remove the autopatrolled userright, because he's doing what he's allowed to do. Since there's a clear consensus decision to permit them, it's not wrong for anyone to make them. I'd even say that this is one of the things autopatrolled is specifically intended for, so their stubs won't clutter up the reviewing process. I've granted it to people for the purpose--I've even suggested it to people doing this, if I'm convinced their stubs are consistently sourced and in an area where we permit them. If an autopatrolled editor is making stubs that might not survive AfD, that's another matter -- just ping me. Seeing this thread earlier, I did a quick check of a few hundred autopatrolled articles from today: I identified only one potential problem: a geostub where I wasn't sure it would pass afd, so I went to the NGEO page and checked for the specific situation--and it would pass. (A currently abandoned village that had a good source for having had a few inhabitants in a previous census--this exact situation is provided for explicitly.) I recall that in previous checks I found more problems--possibly we have already removed or taught some of the problem editors. DGG ( talk ) 07:00, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

While I entirely agree with Eostrix that increasing the guideline thresholds for granting won't make the problem go away, it would make it harder for UPEs to gain the right. I would happily support an increase to something like 6 months and 1000 edits (with the obvious caveat that it's a guideline rather than an absolute). That said, I think the key issue is ensuring that granting admins fully review users' contributions to check for gaming behaviour before granting the right. Things like perfunctory "per nom" AfD votes, relisting AfDs, etc. shouldn't count towards "having knowledge" of NPR/deletion processes. As with most things, human review is the best defense. I do not doubt that this happens in most cases, and indeed I've seen many requests declined on the basis of insufficient meaningful experience - we just need to make sure this happens consistently. firefly ( t · c ) 08:55, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

NPR and AfC rights are the only ones that actually involve scrutinizing content, thus essentially "moderating" what makes it to mainspace and what doesn't. Autopatrolled is in a similar vein in that it decreases the level of scrutiny on a writer's content. Just within the Sanketio group there were accounts working with two of those perms (NPR & AfC) plus co-ordinated AfD voting, which gives them a lot of influence. I like the idea of raising the bar for some of these permissions – it would probably decrease the number of UPEs that aquire those rights, but maybe we need also to have a page (or just some information somewhere) with tips spotting and reporting UPE (with a focus on PERM and its AfC equivalent). I'm not sure whether that would be possible without serving lunch, but maybe it's worth a shot. Thanks, Giraffer ^{(talk·contribs)} 13:50, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Eostrix, I think you geniuely misunderstand what Atlantic306 and myself are trying to say, but regardless you are correct in the sense that a (tick the box) method for granting NPR is not going to eradicate the problem, that’s why we (aren’t saying that) what we are saying is that a criterion or certain criteria should be implemented as a prerequisite and not a requisite. That is, even if you have satisfied the criteria you still aren’t guaranteed anything. The imperative factor as someone here mentioned is absolute discretion when giving out this sensitive perms. As for Autopatrol, I think Kudpung mentioned some years ago that it should be abolished and I couldn’t fathom why, but now i think I agree with them. I believe it does more harm than good & moving forward, if at all it wouldn’t be abolished, just as stated by MarioGom & Firefly, it should be a perm where you are nominated for and the community decides if or not you are an ideal candidate for the perm. Needless to say, anyone with a history of undisclosed paid editing shouldn’t have any business requesting for either NPR or Autopatrol. I spoke about this all the time in the past and decided to stop talking about this. As to the issue of mass creation of stub I’m in agreement with DGG, I do not see anything particularly wrong insofar as WP:PSA is met, but I understand perfectly well what Kudpung is saying and anyone who has ever done a deep search in this collaborative project would appreciate Kudpung's point of view. I believe in the end we are all correct as the underlying question in our mind is “How do we curb unethical practices?” & We have theories & ideas but implementation is another tedious, daunting and tiresome political part of this collaborative project which I totally abhor and do not have the time nor patience for. Furthermore Giraffer makes a point where they imply that having a formal criteria may do the inverse of curbing UPE as we would be invariably teaching NOTHERE editors how to evade scrutiny or know the relevant criteria to meet prior requesting the perm, so as for now it comes down to competent Admins granting the perm, hypothetically speaking perhaps sysops familiar with UPE or spam be the ones handling NPR/Autopatrol requests? or perhaps granting Admins 'check' (the requesting candidate) with Sysops familiar with Spam/UPE say MER-C for a historical background of the editor? These are merely my thoughts, I really don’t know, or perhaps anyone nabbed in UPE be made to pass their article through WP:AFC indefinitely? Celestina007 (talk) 17:01, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

My point was largely about how I think we should try to have more awareness about UPE at locations where content-related perms are requested. Relying on sysops familiar with spam to handle questionable permission requests just highlights the problem we have with admins unaware of UPE granting UPEs perms. I share Firefly's opinion that autopatrol largely shouldn't be self-nominated – the point of the flag is to decrease work on reviewers, so it makes sense for reviewers to be (somewhat) influencing who has it, rather than admins. Maybe just a simple page with notes on common UPE traits and how to spot them, or a checklist for administrators granting NPR/AfC/AP would work. It's almost impossible to stop UPE occurring, but stopping them getting perms is much easier. Giraffer ^{(talk·contribs)} 17:51, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Celestina007: the point I'm trying to make is that what's generally needed is more vetting after it is granted. UPEs will game any waiting/edit-count requirements. UPEs will be on their best behavior if they are granted the right on a trial basis for a month (or three), trials are great to see if an editor is competent enough to do NPP but won't usually help with UPE. UPEs are probably on fairly good behavior the first few months after they get the right, because they know they are more likely to be checked. The UPEs that are going after permissions are on the experienced side of UPE in Wikipedia, they have been around here for a while, they aren't technical writers that are moonlighting on Wikipedia for the first time. If patrols of BLPs and organizations were to be under greater scrutiny, it is likely we would find more UPE editors. The recent finds of UPE at NPP that I aware of came from reviewing other vectors (A German TV show on paid editing and AfD votes), and not from reviewing the patrols themselves.--Eostrix (^{🦉 hoot} _hoot🦉) 05:23, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The way I'm reading this conversation, it's as if editors are automatically granted NPR if they pass the threshold. In my case, Rosguill put me through a one-month probationary period and only extended the rights to indefinite after an assessment of my track record during this period. While watching WP:PERM/NPR, I've also noticed that admins routinely reject applications on the basis of problematic edits in the past. Do we really need anything else? The problem is that we are understaffed and I'm not sure that we can afford to lose good and motivated candidates by telling them that they need to wait 1 year or whatever for fear of UPE. This is exactly the type of bureaucracy that this website needs less of. And let me hit you with another hot take: we will never stop corrupt editors from integrating the top ranks of this website—including admins and crats—because no organization really can. The question is, therefore, until where will we push the suspicion and red-taping? I don't have a definitive answer to this question, but let's just be aware that there is never any end to the logic that we contemplating ("there are corrupt NPRers so we need to increase the requirements"), because some degree of corruption will continue to happen no matter what we do. JBchrch talk 18:02, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@JBchrch, It is wonderful you mention Rosguill, as I was about to add an addendum in my comment above that they are one of the few sysops that “gets it right” for example, when I requested for Autopatrol they said something along the lines of “well yes, your articles look good, but can you create more articles outside of Actors, because that’s an area easily affected by unethical practices” I didn’t understand then what they meant but in retrospect I know now that they were protecting the integrity of the encyclopedia. He would eventually grant me the rights after scrutiny, so yes Rosguill is very much thorough. Furthermore, I do not believe you are reading what is being said correctly, we haven’t said “anything” yet we are merely sharing thoughts and ideas as intellects and Infact thus far we have said meeting a requirement isn’t going to solve the problem. Look JB, I understand you, you are correct, we aren’t going to be corruption free, or perfect and when you imply that this corruption goes all the way up to the highest echelon, trust me, I understand perfectly and a deep web search(if you know where to look) reveals a lot of jaw dropping unethical editing amongst the 1% / 4th estate so yes JB I agree with you, but whilst we can’t have a perfect environment or a utopia, we can at least try to eradicate this problem as much as we can so if we can’t get a “paradise” we can get the next best thing. Celestina007 (talk) 18:50, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I note above that someone mentioned AFC as being equally as important as NPR & Autopatrol, & another “right” which can easily be abused and less than ethical practices perpetuated and yes I totally agree but luckily for us Primefac & Usedtobecool taught me a method in which I can see articles accepted at AFC by a particular user. I found this extremely imperative and a teaching I’m eternally grateful For, it makes detecting spam or upe quite easy to nab for we anti spam editors. For example via that method I was able to nab this. This is the sought of mechanism that is beyond imperative and beyond words can describe that we anti spam editors need, that way, less than ethical practices at AFC can be caught. I’m happy to share this method as well as other very clandestine and very potent methods to nab undisclosed paid editing only to functionaries/admins and anti spam editors via e-mail. Celestina007 (talk) 23:13, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

NPP backlog drive

In July 2021 the AfC reviewers did a backlog drive with even better results than we got at GAN: the entire backlog was cleared! I think a backlog drive with more generous barnstar awards (we award on a sliding scale during GAN drives depending on how many articles are reviewed) might help get people more engaged with NPP. I have experience with drives and would be willing to help set it up/coordinate if desired. (t · c) buidhe 13:36, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Buidhe. --Gazal world (talk) 16:20, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

yup sounds great. Mccapra (talk) 18:48, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, great - it has to be worth a try. Ingratis (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Good idea buidhe Polyamorph (talk) 08:29, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks like there is sufficient interest, so I'm working on getting this set up. Right now I think good dates would be 15 October to 15 November, giving sufficient time to set it up while ending before Thanksgiving. However, that's very tentative. I've also asked Enterprisey if it would be possible to modify his bot, which helped out on the AfC drive, for NPP reviewing.

For GAN drives there are typically three coordinators, I would prefer if 1-2 other people are willing to help coordinate. (t · c) buidhe 17:57, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe: I haven't coordinated something like this before - but I'd be willing to help, if that would be useful. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:46, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe: I'd also be open to helping you with coordination. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 18:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

The historical issue with NPP drives is that they have prioritized speed over accuracy. So the structure of such a drive needs to be carefully thought through. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:08, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

We're planning on including a re-reviewing component, as the AfC drive did, to help ensure quality. (t · c) buidhe 23:20, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Has anyone considered that a NPP drive might completely clog up AFD, PROD and CSD? This occurred to me when I realized that we can clearly identify on the NPP graph the spike linked to the AFC drive. We should probably consult the folks who run these before moving forward. JBchrch talk 16:11, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

A backlog at NPP is more critical than a backlog at AFD, PROD, or CSD because it means articles completely unworthy of a article can become indexed by search engines. Of course it is always worthwhile giving others a heads up that a drive is happening but I don't see this as a justifiable reason not to reduce the NPP backlog. Polyamorph (talk) 07:17, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

This sounds like a good reason to encourage a drive working from the back of the queue. Mccapra (talk) 09:42, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Patrollers should generally always be working from the back of the queue, unless there are policy breaches that need urgent attention. Polyamorph (talk) 11:15, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Is someone working on this? MarioGom (talk) 15:39, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

MarioGom We've pushed the date back and are planning to run in November. For more info see the talk page where it's being discussed: Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Backlog drives/November 2021 (t · c) buidhe 15:48, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

How to handle an editor who keeps deleting comments?

Any suggestions for how best to respond to an editor who repeatedly removes AFC comments? I've restored my comment, but can't help thinking that I'm engaging in a pointless and childish edit war. I didn't want to decline his article (that might seem too personal), but I did want him to sort out the draft sourcing before resubmitting it. Salimfadhley (talk) 09:56, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I think you should just leave this draft for another reviewer. The other editor has clearly heard what you have to say and really there is no particular reason that comments have to stay on a draft. – Joe (talk) 11:39, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I think you are right. --Salimfadhley (talk) 12:34, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Salimfadhley, you tell them not to, if they persist, you warn them again and tell them about vandalism and mention to them also that they are being disruptive, if they continue then I think reporting the incident should suffice. Celestina007 (talk) 23:11, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Fun with queries

Quarry is a web interface for queries of Wikimedia databases. It lets you Run SQL queries against the Wikipedia database. One of the (fun?) things you can do with that is create your own views of the NPP backlog (!fun). I've created two queries that produce results that I find interesting/helpful. [3] gives a list of users with 5 or more unreviewed articles, another sorts unreviewed articles by number of (logged in) contributors, number of edits and creation date. I need to updates these by hand, which I do occasionally, or you can fork them, and then run/rewrite them yourself, with changes. I'm not a competent SQL programmer (I taught myself just enough that I could do this), so if someone knows how to improve the code, constructive suggestions are very welcome. Thanks! Vexations (talk) 19:58, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take a look at this this weekend, I'm always looking for new tools. ASUKITE 20:47, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Michelle Jaffe

It is G11 territory, except for the first revision which is a redirect to a different topic. I restored the redirect and advised the editor to create a draft. They've reverted me instead. Looking at their contribs, they'd managed to get Ted Stamm to mainspace 9 years ago, and have now made it into spam as well. I am disinclined to put any effort into improving the articles before the editor is blocked, because they're just gonna revert me again. I don't see a process that would work well to address content. Draftification is not advised over objections; AFD is not cleanup. And ANI is probably premature? My question to admins is, is it? Can one of you do something about this editor? My question to non-admins is, what do you think we should do or can do in these situations? I am thinking UPE, but I am not sure if it is COIN-level UPE. If I were the king of Wikipedia, I would delete the article under G11 and undelete the first revision only. But I've never seen anyone do something like that. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 13:54, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Ted Stamm may well meet WP:NARTIST but the present text is at least partly taken verbatim from the Lisson Gallery website (although that could well be by their permission), so the answer to this one is probably a complete rewrite, if anyone has the time/interest. No idea, I'm afraid, about your wider question or Michelle Jaffe.Ingratis (talk) 14:27, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I'll agree on the rewrite.. The tone is not encyclopedic at all. I have been trying to see if the text was copied from somewhere, the work section for example almost reads like the sort of review one would find in a handout at an exhibition. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a copyvio, but Earwig's tool isn't finding it. (Also, what the heck is an "experiential experience"?) ASUKITE 15:43, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Removed 11k of content per WP:NOTCV. Happy to follow up with talk page discussion and RfC if needed. JBchrch talk 15:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Cleaned up more content on sourcing and WP:NOTCV grounds. JBchrch talk 15:57, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Tagged Ted Stamm for G11 deletion. JBchrch talk 16:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see this and draftified the page after coming across it in the queue. It does not belong in mainspace in its current state. Polyamorph (talk) 16:09, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Just noting a couple of things: Her last name is Jaffé, not Jaffe. Also, her own website https://michellejaffe.com/bio links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Jaffe. I'm not convinced that https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michelle_Jaffe_photograph.jpg is own work by Eashleyfox (it is © Laura J Gerlach), who also claims https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Stamm_Photograph.jpg as own work. Vexations (talk) 17:16, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I have wanted to say something but don't yet know what to take away from all this, just yet. I guess we still have to see what happens after the block expires tomorrow. But, I would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and contributions, and Vexations specially for the amount of time and effort they've spent on the editor's talk page and elsewhere. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:46, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Copyvio detection in Special:NewPagesFeed temporarily broken

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T293692
Resolved

This is a courtesy notice that until phab:T293692 (or phab:T293688) is fixed, Special:NewPagesFeed unfortunately will no longer indicate whether copyright violations were detected in articles. This data is fed by User:EranBot which needs to be updated to use the new way of fetching tokens in the MediaWiki API. The copyvios are still exposed in toolforge:copyvios, however, so they will still ultimately be noticed and addressed by regular users of CopyPatrol. Apologies for the inconvenience. — MusikAnimal ^talk 20:03, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I've resolved T293692, so it is working again. — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:32, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

I came here to give JJMC89 his much deserved praise. So here it is :) Thank for the quick fix! — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:39, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Eostrix

I imagine most of you are aware by now that this account, which had recently started getting more involved with NPP, was blocked as a sockpuppet mid-RFA. Ironic, as I noticed them first from their involvement in the thread about abusive NPPers, up above. Though the RFA might lead one to believe otherwise, their NPP NPPing seems modest. And probably good too, as they were working toward adminship in a topic area they don't care about. Still, it maybe a good idea to spot-check some of them, especially if they are related to Eastern Europe and Israel-related politics. In any case, I thought this was one of those things that needed to be noted/discussed on this page. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 08:46, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Yikes! I supported their RFA as well. Polyamorph (talk) 11:26, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Same here, having seen them around AfD and AIV, I guess we never know JW 1961^Talk 14:17, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

It was a kind of fresh and quiet and "good" start in areas they don't have strong feelings about and are unlikely to meet editors they had been in conflict with or might recognise their style (editors note the excessive use of parenthesis, which is actually exactly what I do too), perhaps with a plan to be bad after getting the bit, so I don't think anyone should feel bad for falling for it. Although, in hindsight, content work in low-traffic areas, and admin-y work in CSD and UAA only (as pointed out today) is pretty suspicious. Would have been interesting to see how Kudpung, SoWhy and TonyBallioni might have voted. Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:32, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

speaking for myself, I hope I would have seen that the the afd work was in non-contentious cases--it's much safer it you want to be an admin to avoid anything requiring judgement This was an extremely skilled attempt at subversion. DGG ( talk ) 02:44, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Since March 2020 I no longer waste my time researching and voting on RfA, unless by coincidence or instinct I were to come across something particularly egregious. Most RfA nowadays garner more than enough drive-by support votes for a consensus to promote. The Eostrix RfA was nominated by an well respected and highly experienced admin, who as in my 2019 nomination of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GRuban even with the most careful research, could never have known what other users would turn up. These are things we would never find even if nominators vaguely knew where to look.

An RfA like Eostrix, stopped dead in its tracks, is unique in Wikipedia's history. But it wasn't stopped by the RfA process itself. Most cases of extreme misuse or abuse of privileges, such as for example Pastor Theo, Archtransit, admins who edit for pay, and former admin Sherlock under one of his many guises, don't get discovered until later (and woe betide the admin who dares to expose them). This brings the community with a knee-jerk to the reality that Wikipedia, along with holders of advanced positions, is increasingly being used for promoting personal, political, or corporate agendas. The recent discussions on this very page have somewhat heightened awareness to the rot within the ranks of reviewers.

The thought of what goes on undetected these days is positively frightening. I have always said that RfA generally does its job, but this time - indirectly - it failed dramatically. The day will come when the strickt rules of CU will have to be changed. Candidates for NPP - the only firewall against inappropriate new pages, and adminship will need to be systematically cleared by CU first. SoWhy and TonyBallioni were not pinged in the mention above, so I'm doing it here, and it would be interesting to hear the opinions of Barkeep49, Chris troutman, Rosguill, Hatchens, Celestina007 and anyone else watching this page, because as we speak, the backlog is now nearly 10,000 and doing the ostrich won't help. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:45, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

If we want more people to help review pages, then CU'ing them is not the solution, I think. Not that I would mind getting CU'd: It doesn't HURT, does it?. But what we could try perhaps is work with people from the WikiProjects. I ran a little query to see which projects are most represented in the backlog. Biography, obviously, and (of course) Film. We could also use help on India, Military history, Albums, Television, Songs, Africa, Women and Football. Some outreach to the Wikiprojects might bring in the right people. Vexations (talk) 11:21, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

This was tried a few years ago Vexations, and it fell on as much stony ground as NPP newsletters. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:08, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

What recruiting has been most succesful in the past? Vexations (talk) 12:26, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Practically none of it. Most of what it it brings is more hat collectors and a few with hidden agendas. Those who work really hard and do a good job generally found their own way here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:22, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know that there's any way we could have identified that Eostrix was up to no good when they were applying for and working at NPP, even if we had been explicitly on watch. For every editor keeping a low profile to avoid scrutiny, there's probably dozens of good faith editors who just don't want to get involved with editing contentious topics (hell, if we denied NPP for focusing on uncontentious projects, Barkeep49 wouldn't be here with us). Generally speaking, I'm also a fan of anti-abuse measures that, rather than trying to head off all abuse, instead force would-be abusers to complete mountains of high quality work that helps the project and then promptly sack them the moment they break cover (although given the difficulty of rescinding the admin toolkit compared to NPP perms, I'm not suggesting that we should liberally hand out adminship). As for the unrelated issue of the NPP backlog, yeah it's becoming concerning again. I haven't been keeping up with new permission requests this week because my off-wiki life has been throwing me a hailstorm of curveballs, so it would help a little if other admins could step in there (although that is unlikely to solve our backlog woes by itself). Based on past experience, badgering some of our NPP all-stars into returning from retirement is probably the most likely to help with the situation, but that's not really a solution either. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 16:04, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

I think some spot checking would be good though as Kudpung notes the backlog is very large at the moment so there's a balance there in terms of how reviewers spend their time. That said the whole point of Eostrix was to be a productive helpful editor. Unlike when we catch UPE, I don't think Eostrix posed any threat to NPP. Instead, as Kudpung and Rosguill have noted, our issue at the moment is too few reviewers to tackle the backlog. Articles are going to get indexed which shouldn't which is truly unfortunate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:49, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Update on the November 2021 backlog drive and request for mass message

So, the backlog drive is going ahead! It will start on November 1, and hopefully we'll be able to get the backlog down to a more manageable level. I'd like to thank my fellow coordinators, Tol and Elli, for making this drive possible.

I know there are mass message senders who follow this board so I'd appreciate if someone would post this message to the same set of people contacted with NPP newsletters:

New Page Patrol \| November 2021 Backlog Drive
On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. (t · c) buidhe

Thanks so much, (t · c) buidhe 01:04, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe

Done Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:58, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

November 2021 backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| November 2021 Backlog Drive
On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. (t · c) buidhe 01:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Backlog

Count me in for the backlog this time. I missed the last for reason. scope_creep^Talk 11:26, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

If everyone who has signed up does around 24 reviews a day for the next 10 days, the backlog will be gone. Completely. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:23, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

24 reviews a day is probably way too much for me, but I'll do my best to contribute. MarioGom (talk) 17:19, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I've been working on reviews all day, and I've only done 10 so far. Vexations (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Peer review

I would love to go through some peer review process. I signed up for WP:NPRSCHOOL#Peer review cohort, but I'm open to other arrangements. The way I imagine it is someone going through some of my reviews (maybe live?), check my thought process, and point out issues or suggest improvements. And also the reverse, observing reviews by experienced reviewers can also be a nice way to learn. Is something like that planned? Someone else interested? MarioGom (talk) 08:54, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@MarioGom, are you proposing that others sign up as well, and we launch the "peer review cohort" some time soon? I guess that will take time; I don't want to say yes to that, because I don't know how much time I can give (assuming I even understand what it would be, going by the description), and I don't want to say no, because I might find some time after all if it actually ends up happening.

Though, in the meantime, if you'd like some feedback on your first month of reviews, I'd be happy to look into them. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:09, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Usedtobecool: Yes, to both. If we can launch the "peer review cohort", great. But if someone can give me some feedback about my previous reviews, that would be great too. MarioGom (talk) 14:16, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, from your reviews from between 4 and 19 October, I started this list because I thought I would have something to say, but it turned out not really, since the "marking as reviewed" part is all good. Anyway, since I already wrote, I will post. I would be interested to hear your thoughts as well.

Bot prevention: I added orphan and expand lead tags; it comes under the "if needed, additional tags starting with the most relevant (max 3-4)" of the NPP flowchart. I don't always check for orphan when I'm being lazy but I do look over the article and see if it needs some tags that article creator might find a helpful feedback. I also added short description, which is not part of NPP, just something I sometimes do (hoping the article creator notices that that's one of the things they had best do).
cadCAD: Not a feedback: I don't mark AFD articles nominated by others as reviewed unless I'm sure the article won't be speedy kept without actual review, i.e. the nominator is a trusted experienced editor or it has a delete vote from a trusted experienced editor.
Microsoft Office 2021: It's part of a series, so I would also mark it as reviewed and let the regulars handle it from there. But it's a stub that needed tagging as one. Marking stub (and if possible sorting as well) gets its own step in the NPP flowchart; so I have always assumed this one should not be skipped.
SuperSU: I don't know if this is wikipedia-notable, I also don't know what AFD would do with this. It is obviously important and in no need of advertising, so this may be one of those articles that reviewers are hesitant to mark reviewed and also hesitant to challenge when someone eventually does.

The rest I have no comment on (they are fine). That's all I have so far. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:20, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

MarioGom -- Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:20, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm taking this feedback onboard. I missed more things than I expected, indeed! And the advice about AFD is particularly helpful. Note that for cadCAD, I wanted to draftify on COI grounds, but I didn't since the AFD was open. Thank you a lot for taking the time to do the peer review. MarioGom (talk) 21:01, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

@MarioGom, I would not be too hard on yourself. They're best practices that editors who worry about the quality of their work might make a point of not forgoing. The important part is to not pass obvious spam, copyvios, etc. or unilaterally remove notable articles and goodfaith newbies. The backlog drive should give you, I and everyone else much needed peer review this month. So, that's going to be one of the unintended benefits of the drive. If we manage to get the backlog below 5,000 as well, and if AFC drive is any indication, we probably and hopefully will, that would be something. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Message

Hello all. How to send message to article creator by using the page curation toolbar, without reviewing the article? --Gazal world (talk) 13:24, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Hey Gazal world. This screenshot should hopefully explain it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:30, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Novem Linguae. --Gazal world (talk) 13:32, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Draftifying redirect expansions

Ideally, we would wish, I imagine, that NPRs could split the history: leave the redirect behind with proper attribution to its creator and draftify the expansion attempt. But since we can't do that, there's a choice between reverting to redirect and missing out on potentially positive addition to the encyclopedia (article and contributor), or marking as reviewed and approving subpar, even potentially non-notable content, or draftifying the whole article, along with the redirect's history. Because we routinely overwrite redirects with articles, it ought to be ok, legally speaking, but I would like to know your thoughts on that last one. Of course, we would recreate the redirect after the move so the mainspace isn't affected, content-wise. If the draft later gets accepted, it will be as if the draftification never happened, so that's fine too. Where I see potential issue is, if the draft gets G13ed, then the end result is the NPR has deleted attribution to the original author and stolen their idea for the redirect. Is that an issue worth considering? I guess we could attribute the original author for the redirect when recreating it after draftification; is that unnecessary or not enough? It gets even more complicated with redirects with non-trivial histories and multiple expansion attempts. I would like your thoughts. Also experiences. What have you been doing in these cases (and what's your rationale for it)? Other than AFD and NPRs (unintentionally) tag-teaming to restore redirect, that is. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:49, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

While I did not do this often, on occasion I did draftify the recently created article, leaving a note for the article creator why I felt it unsuitable for the mainspace. I then recreated the redirect. I'll be honest and say I did not consider the attribution aspect for the original redirect, but I think that could be dealt with in the edit summary for the draftification. That doesn't help with the issue of the draft being G13'd, but I think it's better to encourage the redirect to become an article. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 11:30, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there's a legal issue with copyvio for the redirect, because it's too simple for copyright protection. Ideally you would attribute the original creator but I don't think it's necessary. (t · c) buidhe 12:05, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I just did this with Freespace -> Draft:Freespace. It had been a redirect for 15+ years. Sometimes, redirects have all sorts of history (disagreements over the target), so is this really the best way to handle this. It would nice to copy/paste the "new" article into the draft, revert to the redirect, and have all the normal Draftify logging and notifications. MB 05:06, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

The lack of opposition here leads me to believe there's no problem draftifying redirect expansions, even those with non-trivial histories. If someone disagrees, now would be the time to give us a heads-up. One place I can see it definitely being an issue is if the redirect has attribution that needs preserving, from previous merges, for example. I feel like we need to say so somewhere so that our NPPs don't unwittingly get those histories deleted. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:18, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Usedtobecool: I'd rather revert and ask the person to work on it in draftspace. Draftifying the expansion attempt will lose the redirect's history which in a lot of these cases would be non-negligible. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Be careful about these, at least one spam sockpuppeteer (BolsaOObsequios) uses this as a way of avoiding attention. MER-C 19:15, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

NPP question, which new pages feed?

I was limbering up to work on the NPP backlog. When I was looking for a list of pages that I'd patrolled, I noticed that on the top of this page it says "Only newly created pages can be marked as patrolled." However, it seems like a lot of the pages that are showing up on the New Pages Feed, if sorted by oldest first, are really old. I just wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing, patrolling old pages if they're showing up in that feed is okay, yes? Or should I only be using this new pages feed? I haven't done a lot of patrolling in the past and I'm looking forward to doing some more this month but wanted to make sure I wasn't off base. Thank you! Jessamyn (talk) 00:57, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jessamyn: when redirects are converted to articles, they're listed in the New Pages Feed, but with the original creation date. Those should indeed still be patrolled. Also, when an AfC draft is moved to mainspace, but the person who reviewed it isn't an NPP, it's added to the queue with its original creation date. So yes, these old pages should be patrolled, and you are looking at the right place. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:10, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you @Elli:, so I shouldn't worry if my patrolled pages aren't showing up on my patrol log? Maybe there's a lag or something? Jessamyn (talk) 02:35, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jessamyn: if you mark them as patrolled using the toolbar, they should show up in the log. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:35, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Elli: Thanks. I can confirm that they don't. This was my process: 1. Go to New Pages Feed 2. Select a page (this one) 3. Review it for issues. It looks good, add short description and click the grey check mark to mark the page as reviewed and then the green "mark as Reviewed" box to complete this task (as shown here). Check mark is now green. 4. Check my patrol list and it still doesn't show this or any other pages I've patrolled in the last 24 hours. When I choose a page from this new pages feed it shows up as patrolled like I'd expect. So for me, I'll just start using the NewPages page and not the NewPagesFeed page, but it seems like possibly something is wrong with the latter page in that pages may be showing up on there that, when patrolled, do not show up as patrolled. Or the patrolled list is only showing patrolling from newly created pages? And some of the patroller documentation does still point to the NewPagesFeed page. So, to recap:

NewPagesFeed - shows some very old pages, some with hundreds or thousands of edits. When patrolled, these pages do not show up on the patrolled list, possibly because they are not actually new.
NewPages - slightly less user-friendly, but when pages from this list are patrolled they show up on the patrolled list.

Jessamyn (talk) 17:17, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jessamyn: I can't reproduce this. For example I marked Virtue Field, created back in 2016, as patrolled, and that showed up in the log. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Also, your patrol of that page does show up, just as "reviewed", not "patrolled". Your "page curation log" should show all such actions. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:23, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Elli: Thank you, good to know. It looks like all the pages I've patrolled are showing up on the leaderboard; I'm just surprised they're not showing up on my patrol log, though they are on the curation log as you point out. I'll just assume this is reflecting more of a weirdness with the patrol log than with anything to do with how I'm finding articles for review. Appreciate your time on this. Jessamyn (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Jessamyn. Try checking the page curation log instead. The patrol log uses a different MediaWiki extension, and it does not always correspond 1:1 with hitting the "mark as reviewed" button. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:28, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, will do. Jessamyn (talk) 00:37, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Backlog chart

Is there a way to set the backlog chart to just the last year / 18 months? I don't think showing 3 years of data is useful. Polyamorph (talk) 08:32, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

There is. This recent change was not helpful, unless it's an attempt to show how 'low' the backlog is since NPR started to be properly managed. However, 10,000 is absolutely nothing to be proud of. The default should always be less than 2,000 and this is possible. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Currently, there appear to be options for periods of one week, six months or all time only. No 18 months. Other timeframes can be set by admins at User:MusikBot/NPPChart/config. One assumes one ought to be familiar with the bot to try to change its config. BTW, I have just reverted Tol's recent changes, and now the chart only shows the last six months. Which one do you like best? Or shall we call on the bot operator and admins to set it to show monthly data over 18 months? Usedtobecool ☎️ 10:09, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Great, 6 months is fine. It's the current backlog that we need to know. Polyamorph (talk) 13:15, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool: I'm fine with either, I just prefer a longer-term view. Does anybody mind if I add buttons to toggle between them (with the default being 6 months)? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 17:57, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Seems like a great idea - let the viewer choose their own preferences JW 1961^Talk 18:49, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Banner (similar to Guild of Copy Editors)

would it be a good idea to place up at the top of this page something similar to the 'Guild' as it would look more professional .....(see link/ top of their page)

The Guild of Copy Editors....Welcome to WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:25, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

It's not a terrible idea. this is the actual box template, seems it would be fairly easy to modify. ASUKITE 16:08, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

thanks, it would give our page a better/more organized look...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

The GCE box uses SVG (vector graphics) for the main text, which I don't have much experience with, but I'm sure somebody does. It would need to fit with our tabs, which have a different design, so maybe something else would be better. I could see a nice call-to-action link or button encouraging eligible editors to join, it might help with membership. ASUKITE 16:27, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

that would be another good idea, what do you think about (below) and here--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:45, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I think this looks really nice. Jessamyn (talk) 18:53, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

thank you --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:01, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the font might be showing bigger than you intended. For me it is about double the height of the WP:GOCE box. Screenshot. I am using Chrome, 1080p, 150% zoom. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:32, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

New pages patrol/Reviewers
Welcome to New pages patrol/Reviewers
The official new article firewall
"We process, approve, or tag newly created pages"

Useful accessories

I was surprised to learn recently that many admins and reviewers are not aware of Preferences>Gadgets>Strike out usernames that have been blocked.
It italicises and strikes through the names of blocked users making them instantly recognisable. It's probably one of the most useful gadgets out there for anyone seriously engaged in maintenance work. It's nothing new. I've been using it for a very long time and find it indispensable. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:05, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, I've been using this for some time now. It's very useful. Polyamorph (talk) 08:51, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

True, this saves a lot of time where you might have wanted to report the user to AIV etc., for example JW 1961^Talk 10:12, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Beware the leaf

Not strictly underhanded, but it seems to me there's WP:UPE going on in connection with The Leaf Label. This, I first came across, at Nightports. The creator has not edited since I draftified it, but please be on the lookout for new articles of artists, etc. connected to this label. I say not underhanded only in reference to BenPowling, but there are/were (and probably will be) other accounts such as JackLeafy which one might findd in histories of other Leaf Label artists. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

For the diffophiliacs among us, which is surely, all of us: [4][5] etc. Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:54, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Conduct Evaluation & Strong UPE concern.

Following my resolution to tackle undisclosed paid editing in Nigeria with little to no confrontation, i stumbled on this Victor Ngumah created by DaviesBridge. This article, from my experience, is blatant undisclosed paid editing, I decided to look into the article with the extra toolset at my disposal & I saw this, meaning the article had been flagged as possible article spamming in the past prior my “noticing it” yesterday. I have gone ahead to affix the upe template to the article and also directly to the editor who created the article and left a message see here. I’d like feedback on if or not the UPE template was/is justifiable. Celestina007 (talk) 19:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I would have had some concerns over a potential conflict of interest with an editor who claims a photograph of the subject of an article as "own work", but here I don't see the behavioral patterns that I usually see with paid editors. Vexations (talk) 19:47, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vexations, my dear colleague, you aren’t necessarily wrong, without spilling much, my concerns are the article is an attempt to promote both the subject and their organization, note how the article explains the subject is the owner of a non notable organization which is just a manner of promoting the organization, this is a major red flag when dealing with UPE. Furthermore, when dealing with UPE in Nigeria, I also look at the sources used, a common trick optimized is to use Nigerian RS but upon scrutiny of the RS used, we find the RS(the piece used) to be unreliable in the context as most are guest editors, announcements and sources without a byline, which this article is predominantly riddled with anyone inexperienced in tackling UPE wouldn’t think much of it, but having tackled UPE for three years I know UPE when I see one, Infact take a look at the TP of the editor here, note how many times they have created non notable articles which have all been deleted? when I, with the help of DGG & the community brought down a UPE ring in the past this was exactly their modus operandi. Furthermore a typical UPE optimizes a tactic where the content of the article try to painstakingly explain how the subject of the article passes our notability guideline. For example in the lede section of the article they are quick to say the subject has won an award (which is a non notable category by the way). Celestina007 (talk) 22:32, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, press coverage deserves extra scrutiny. Standards for separation of editorial and advertising vary. Some newspapers are corrupt, and will publish anything for money. That happens all over the world, not just in Nigeria. Check that an article was actually written by the editorial staff, and not syndicated from another publication, as with https://www.modernghana.com, which sourced its content from nollywoodgists.com. Awards also deserve scrutiny. The "African Royalty Awards" are not a notable award. Neither is the "City People Magazine Award". And if a writer (as is the case with leadership.ng, used here) has an instagram profile that says: "For online and on newspapers promotion Contact (redacted)@gmail.com" we know that's not editorial content. Another one, writing for thenigerianvoice.com, is someone who describes himself as a publicist and "A creative & versatile multi gifted individual with a deep and wide interest in Media & Communication". A publicist, not a journalist. And then there is the quality of the articles themselves and their complete lack of any semblance of objectivity: "Ngumah has been adjudged in Africa and beyond as a perfect example of a youth persona, who has broken free from imposed and self-imposed blockades that usually dragged behind ... ". Vexations (talk) 23:13, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vexations, thank you for the feedback it is appreciated, I mention Nigeria, not because it is peculiar to Nigeria, but because that happens to be the country I reside in and have a ton of experience on, and I do know it is not an isolated incident but a global one. Moving to sources, in fact, I think DGG May be the only one who agrees with me that there isn’t anything like a “Reliable source” but only “reliable pieces from sources with a reputation for fact checking and a good editorial oversight” Moving to the awards they won, Generally TheCity People Award is actually a recognized distinguished award but the category in this case seems fishy to me. Vexations, thank you for your feedback it is very much appreciated. I’m going ahead to remove the promotional statements made throughout the article, after which I’d remove the non notable RS and see if I can nominate it for deletion. Thanks once again. Celestina007 (talk) 19:40, 14 November 2021 (UTC)