Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 50

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Declined: Draft: Brian E. Kinsella

Hi New pages patrol/Reviewers,

I am new on here, and had my first article in the draft review queue. I worked really hard on making sure I adhered to all the guidelines, but am of course not a super user or perfect at both reviewing other articles (I reviewed a lot) nor being perfect in my own draft I had submitted. My article was just declined today by User:Johannes Maximilian although other veteran reviewers told me my article looked perfect, and I was in the draft queue listed as a predicted Class-B with no issues page.

I’m a little discouraged of course, because I tried really hard, but not quite ready to give up.

I know everyone is busy on here, but if you have any time to perhaps look at my article and provide feedback on what I can improve, I would be so grateful. The assessor only said I was lacking reliable sources, but I have 28 sources listed, from publications like The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo! Finance, FOX Business, and more, which I thought was reliable sources.

Thank you in advance for any help on this :-)

Best,

Mwikiforce Mwikiforce (talk) 16:49, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you might want WP:AFC rather than here. New Page Patrol is for reviewing articles that have already been moved out draftspace. For general help, WP:TEAHOUSE is often helpful. Thanks. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:59, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
@Mwikiforce It's courteous to other editors if you provide a clickable link to the draft you're discussing, ie Draft:Brian E. Kinsella, to save them time. PamD 17:00, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
@Mwikiforce And of course the above editor, with whom I edit-conflicted, has got it right: if you read the pink "Submission declined" box, the 3rd bullet point has a link to the AFC Help Desk. PamD 17:03, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Hi PamD, thank you so much for the quick response. I didn’t know that, that is really helpful. I have checked out WP:TEAHOUSE as well. Still trying to figure things out. I also did look at the submission box, and found the IRC chat. That was really helpful. So, I think I have at least enough to try to improve the article.
Thank you again for your time!
Best,
Mwikiforce Mwikiforce (talk) 18:32, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Mwikiforce, I should also add, you don't need to write your name at the end of messages, as it's already part of your signature anyway. -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:45, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Haha, ah! Another lesson learned! Thank you so much KJ Cheetham :-) Mwikiforce (talk) 19:30, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Change of the NPF AfD template

Following discussion at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers#AfD notice from Page Curation tool, I have boldly edited the AfD template to remove the "I edit here too" and "welcome to Wikipedia" parts. Based on my tests in userspace it does not mess up anything but if someone with tech expertise can double check and see if any tweaks are needed that would be great. Pinging Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824. Thanks. VickKiang (talk) 02:07, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Template:AfD-notice-NPF Elli (talk | contribs) 02:29, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
From a technical perspective, the change looks all right. I tweaked the wording a bit as it seemed slightly off. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:30, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Curation tools revoked?

I cannot longer review pages I do not know if it's because my powers were revoked or some configuration that does not let me access the curation menu. How can I check? ReyHahn (talk) 21:56, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi @ReyHahn, it looks like you were granted trial permissions a couple of years ago. These have now been automatically removed. You'll need to submit a new request at Wikipedia:PERM/NPR for renewed access to the curation bar. Hope this helps! Schminnte (talk • contribs) 22:13, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 Done Thanks for clearing that up!--ReyHahn (talk) 22:14, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
They're not 'powers'... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 18:58, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

October 2023 backlog drive progress

With the October 2023 NPP backlog drive about halfway through, I thought it would be a good time to provide an update on the progress that we've made so far. Schminnte is currently at the top of the leaderboard (1997.75 points), Utopes is in second place (1,248.75 points), and Hey man im josh is in third (1,035 points). As a group, we've reviewed a whopping 9,057 articles and 15,690 redirects. That's amazing, but there's still a long way to go, and it's not too late for anybody to sign up and contribute. Note that we are aware of an issue where redirects nominated at RfD are being counted as 1 points instead of 0.25 points and we plan to fix the totals at the end of the drive.

October 2023 NPP backlog drive progress
Page
type		 Unreviewed
at start		 Currently
unreviewed		 Backlog
reduced (count)		 Backlog
reduced (%)		 Total reviewed
by participants
Articles 11,626 8,610 -3,016 -26% 9,057
Redirects 16,985 7,570 -9,415 -55% 15,690

Some other relevant numbers from the drive so far:

  • 99 users have signed up and reviewed an article or redirect
    • 97 of these users have reviewed at least 1 article
    • 83 of these users have reviewed at least 1 redirect
  • 82 users have already qualified for a barnstar based on their participation in the drive
  • 50 users are currently on pace for a streak award
    • 7 of which are on pace for the highest streak award (unnecessarily complicated Gears, 150 pts / week)

Keep it up everybody, but please do try to prioritize article reviewing over redirect reviewing when you can. Pease also don't be afraid to sign up here by adding your talk page if you haven't already! Hey man im josh (talk) 13:41, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Good to see the progress and thanks for the efforts of Hey man im josh and the entire coördination team. (And all NPPers.)
Hey man im josh, I'm not quite confident to fix this myself, but in the the body text should the "xx"s in a whopping xx articles and xx redirects by 9,057 and 15,690, respectively? (Or the updated numbers.) Skynxnex (talk) 14:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Yikes, thanks for pointing out my placeholders weren't updated @Skynxnex. I blame @Illusion Flame because I asked them to proof read the post and neither of us caught that lol. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:59, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello all - advice needed about draft

In patrol I moved an article to Draft:2023 Georgia Tech vs. Miami football game. Rather than referencing the article the article creator @WhoIsDanielHord: quickly submitted it twice to AFC and both submissions were rejected. But I see the author has overrode the draft because I now see 2023 Georgia Tech vs. Miami football game with the edit summary this game is basically the cfb version of the miracle at the meadowlands. That game has its own page, so why not this? I was not sure what to do in because of WP:DRAFTOBJECT and what to do with two separate articles. Thank you all in advance. Lightburst (talk) 18:27, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

"Declined" and "rejected" at AFC have two different meanings. Rejected means that they are blocked from re-submitting it. Declined is the more common one and is what happened here. Just a little terminology FYI.
Yeap, due to WP:DRAFTOBJECT, we should honor this author's wishes and keep the article in mainspace. Up to you or another patroller if you want to mark it as reviewed or use a deletion process. I see Buidhe has applied a notability tag, so it sounds like this article has both sourcing problems and notability problems. May want to AFD it.
Because this editor did a copy paste move to put the article back in mainspace, the history is messed up. I'll go ahead and delete the copy paste and then move the draft back to mainspace to fix it.
Thanks for new page patrolling and for asking questions on this page. Please keep up the good work! –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
It does have some news coverage but it's unclear whether it's likely to meet WP:NEVENT. (t · c) buidhe 22:52, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: Thanks for the response and for fixing that history. And @Buidhe: thanks for looking out. Lightburst (talk) 23:24, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Update: The problematic article was marked as reviewed. It also had 15 sources added. Looks like this one naturally improved on its own, which is always a great outcome. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Some draft advice

Hello all. I recently declined a technical request at WP:RM/TR to move a draft into mainspace, as another reviewer had expressed concerns about WP:NSONG, and I have similar concerns as well. (Draft in question is Draft:While We're Young (Jhené Aiko song), by the way.) I have received on my talk page an objection by the creator, seen here. I'd like if someone else might take a quick look and just confirm this. EggRoll97 (talk) 17:47, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

That seems out of scope for NPP to me really, so being a NPR or not shouldn't make any difference. Perhaps this is a question better suited for the RM talk page? (I'm sure I've seen this raised before, but I can't remember where offhand.) -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:01, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
On the basis of the creator being autoconfirmed already, I would move it if not for possible problems, so I'm not entirely sure the RM talk page would really be the proper place for it either. EggRoll97 (talk) 00:53, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't think it should be like this. The draft seems to have enough content and sources, and if the creator believes it should be in mainspace, we shouldn't force it to go through AfC, unless there's a COI issue. After moving it into mainspace, you can then send it to AfD for the community to give their opinion on its notability. 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚁𝚒𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚞𝚜𝚜 02:06, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
DreamRimmer That seems like the best tactic to me. -Kj cheetham (talk) 08:54, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Because of WP:DRAFTOBJECT, I think we should honor requests to move drafts to mainspace, unless the proper title is salted, or the main draft author(s) object, or something like that. The essence of DRAFTOBJECT is that editors have a right to request a proper deletion discussion (AFD) rather than having their article be stuck in draftspace. Hope that makes sense. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:08, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
As an update, following a bit of discussion on my talk page as well, I've moved the article in question as well as another draft the user requested to mainspace. EggRoll97 (talk) 23:58, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Reviewer not tagging draft redirects for R2

I noticed an experienced reviewer often failing to tag the resulting redirect in R2 or notify the creator after moving an article to draft (examples of failing to tag under R2: 1, 2, 3, 4). A similar thread started by another user. I subsequently raised the issue again with the reviewer here, which was not responded despite them actively reviewing.

Any thoughts? IMO, it is surprising that a veteran reviewer (a NPR for two years) is unfamiliar with tagging redirects for R2 after moving new articles to draftspace and to notify creators after nominating a page for deletion or drafting it. VickKiang (talk) 23:09, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Said reviewer should consider installing the user script User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft, which would take care of this automatically. Would love to see this reviewer improve their R2 tagging habits. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:19, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

FYI: Special:NewPagesFeed will be updated on Thursday 19th October

A quick heads up that the default NewPagesFeed interface will change from the old version to the new one tomorrow (Thursday 19th October). We've done a lot of testing and the only change should be some minor spacing/styling differences. That said, if you run into any issues please let me know or file a task on Phabricator, and you can access the old version of the UI at Special:NewPagesFeed?pagetriage_ui=old. We'll give it a few weeks and then remove the old interface if all seems well. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:37, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
Just a quick update that this is now live. We're already aware of a couple of issues, please let me know if you find more: T349339, T349338. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

WMF Moderator Tools project: Final update

Hi all, I just wanted to let you know that, following the note right above this one, I've posted the final update for the Wikimedia Foundation Moderator Tools' team's work on PageTriage. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

first review

Hi, I just reviewed my first article: Christopher Lewinton. It looks to meet all relevant criteria, and so I marked it as reviewed. The message that I wrote to the creator with this tool, however, did not appear on their talk page. Is there a delay on this, or have I done something wrong?

Thanks, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 15:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to commend you on your first review; it was well done. Regarding your question about message delivery, I'd like to mention that the Curation toolbar sends messages instantly. It's possible that you composed the message in the Curation tool's message box but may have forgotten to click the "send message" button. This could be the reason why your message wasn't published on the creator's talk page. 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚁𝚒𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚞𝚜𝚜 16:14, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
Okay, I clicked "Mark as reviewed" assuming that would also send what I wrote, which instead seems to have vanished. One point, however, has already (!) been addressed by another editor. In the future, I'll click the "Send message" first.
Thanks, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:31, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Where to apply for NPP rights

Simple question: where do I apply for NPP rights? Qwerty284651 (talk) 05:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Qwerty284651, you can simply request NPR rights at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/New page reviewer. 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚁𝚒𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚞𝚜𝚜 05:42, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Did it. Tnx. Qwerty284651 (talk) 05:44, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

copyvio tag removed by editor

The creator of Elise List removed a cut-and-paste flag that I added yesterday from the page while it remains 85.8% similar to a single website as identified by Earwig's Copyvio Detector. I've reapplied the flag and notified the user, who is new to Wikipedia, that this is not acceptable. Is there anything further that should be done?

Thanks, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 19:09, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Have you left a warning on their talk page for removing a maintenance tag without resolving it? Might even be worth cutting out the material on the article too if it's actually a copyright infringement. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:17, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, both times now I have included a note that posted to the editor's talk page via the page curation tool. They seem well-intentioned, but it's not at all clear to me how they think the issue was resolved.
If I removed all the offending material, there would not be much left. For now I'm just leaving it on my watchlist in the hopes the editor actually fixes it on second notice.
It remains unapproved as a new page. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 20:33, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I was thinking more a warning like Template:Uw-copyright-new, not just a note. Or Template:Uw-copyright to be a bit stronger. I've not looked if it is actually copyrighted material, but if it is and it's not sorted before too long, WP:STUBIFY is an option, and potentially also WP:REVDEL. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:42, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
For copyright issues more generally, Wikipedia:Copyright problems might be worth a look at. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:43, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that template! Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:11, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Is only showing up 37% match now (two paragraphs copy pasted). I guess the user listened to you and is making an effort to fix.
FYI, {{Copypaste}} exists, but isn't the normal way to deal with copyright violations. In a case like this where there's 2 paragraphs out of 10 copy pasted like in the article you linked, I'd recommend deleting the two paragraphs, tagging the article for WP:RD1 using a tool such as User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel, then warning the user with {{Uw-copyright-new}}.
If most of the article were copyright violations instead of just 2 paragraphs, tag it {{Db-g12}} for speedy deletion instead.
Users should not edit war to remove the revdel or G12 templates. If they do it multiple times and their behavior does not improve after talking to them, would want to take them to ANI, in my opinion.
Hope this helps. Happy editing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:04, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! I have installed that script and will try to familiarize myself with it.
As to nominations for deletion, I'm new to new page patrol and have been chastised a few times for being too quick to propose these. So, I'm trying to be more supportive when plausibly appropriate, which in this case appears to have been a good call. I think it might have been the {{Uw-copyright-new}} template that made the difference.
If the article read as promotional or anything like that, I definitely would have nominated for deletion anyway. This editor, however, appears to be mostly interested in the representation of women in 19th-century art, which seems a most welcome addition to the encyclopedia.
I will follow up on any remaining issues and, as appropriate, encourage the editor, who appears responsive to the issue now that it has been explained.
Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 22:57, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment: This article is part of an interesting cluster of recent additions by the same editor, all of which share the distinction of being about women who are represented in a 19th century German portrait collection (see Gallery of Beauties). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 10:25, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

That was a fun 10 minutes of looking at portraits. Very interesting, thanks for linking. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:36, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#About page reviewing

Notifying that a discussion on whether to merge NPR rights with extended confirmed is currently being discussed at VPP. VickKiang (talk) 01:22, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

It was speedy closed (t · c) buidhe 03:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

November Articles for creation backlog drive

Hello New pages patrol:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.

There is a backlog of over 2500 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to do a NPP review right after passing an article at AFC?

I started helping at AFC and passed an article and then immediately did the NPP review. When doing NPP work, I've noticed some pages where a senior NPP'er passed an article at AFC but then did not do the NPP review. Which made me wonder..... Is there any reason not to do a NPP review right after passing an article at AFC? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:12, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Just the principle that the more eyes on a new article, the better. One person may notice what another overlooked. Mccapra (talk) 17:18, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I was just about to say pretty much what Mccapra just did. -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:20, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
right... I think its better if one person does the AFC and another individual the NPP (IMO) ...more people involved allows for more opinions--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I've asked this at WT:AFC before. Some folks were pro "mark as reviewed" to save NPP work. Some preferred not to, preferring a second set of eyes. No one said it was not allowed. I'd say go ahead if you want to. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:40, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Curation Tool vanished

I went to review some pages this morning and no longer seem to have access to the Curation Tool. It seems not to be present on pages that have not been reviewed, even after re-installing it and clearing my cache. Is anybody else experiencing a problem with it today? FULBERT (talk) 15:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Still shows up for me. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:09, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
@FULBERT, Yes luckily you're not the only one who faced the issue. Trying clearing cookies and caches. Hopefully that should resolve it. Enjoy:) C1K98V (💬 ✒️ 📂) 17:41, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps you closed it. To un close it, open the left menu and click "Open Page Curation" –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:42, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae et voila!! I had never seen the "Open Page Curation" link on the left, and would have never noticed it had you not shared it. Wow, what a strange mystery I was at a loss to explain. It is now restored. Many thanks!! Thank you also for your suggestions @Elli and @C1K98V. FULBERT (talk) 17:50, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Small proposal

How would everybody here feel about a link to Special:NewPagesFeed being added to the top bar if you have the reviewer right? I do know there's a script that does this for you, but I was wondering if this could be made a native feature, maybe by adding it to common.js or something like that. Deauthorized. (talk) 18:05, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I like the idea of keeping it optional. The script is widely advertised, even on Special:NewPagesFeed, so people can add it if they want. - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 01:20, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Oppose. I like to keep my top bar de-cluttered so I choose not to use the user script. I have a different script that adds to my left menu right below "Donate": User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/NPPLinks –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:28, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

WMF New Article Creation research outreach invite

Hello all! I'm a researcher at the Foundation conducting interviews for the article creation process, and our Growth and Apps teams are hoping to gather insights from both the perspectives of new page patrollers/mods and also of newer editors. Specifically for patrollers, I'd love to hear your biggest pain points faced when reviewing the new page feed, and what interventions or solutions may be possible/desired.

If you'd like to contribute your point of view, feel free to reply here, ping my talk page, or email me for more details. Your participation in this project would be deeply appreciated; thanks in advance and hope to hear from you! Dchen (WMF) (talk) 08:21, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@Dchen (WMF): Sounds great, I'd be happy to participate. – Joe (talk) 08:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Open Knowledge Association

Now call me a nasty, suspicious person, but in the course of reviewing a number of pages yesterday, I came across some very natty creations where the author has declared they receive a stipend from the Open Knowledge Association. The first couple of these I let fly by, automatically thinking of them as some sort of Wikipedian in residence some sort of where, but then I took a closer look at OKA and, indeed, at the pages in question. In a number, not all, of these pages I found lavish, loving detail that, while tangential to the main page topic, nevertheless seemed to give unnecessary focus to what may in fact be a sponsoring organisation. So this here article had daft amounts of detail about the newly installed church organ, attributing it to the manufacturer. This article didn't fail to make several mentions of books by a redlinked author that are set around the historical subject, while this one took great care to give attribution for recent archeology to a specific institute. It might be nothing, I might be tilting at windmills. In each case I removed the content and bookmarked the page and sat back to see what happens. Right now I don't have the time to do a huge amount of sleuthing beyond this - but it would seem to me that there are a number of these new creations being made with a promotional purpose that is quite smart - build links to the subject by writing/translating articles about another subject. And that would be, by my reading of consensus on paid editing, naughty. Any views out there? Is my reading right? If so, is this to be tolerated? Is my 'root out the promo target and remove it then mark as reviewed as normal' methodology worth adopting for these OKA paid articles? Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 04:51, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@Alexandermcnabb: I think it would be worth following up on this at WP:COIN. I've long thought that OKA's model sounds suspicious, but hadn't seen any actual problematic articles until now. – Joe (talk) 09:07, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, @Joe Roe - I copied this here post over there and here's the handy dandy link to that discussion for anyone who wants to further contribute to this! Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 10:25, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Did the reviewers database stop updating?

Did the reviewers database stop updating? I believe the numbers have been frozen for at least a few days. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:00, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

What data are you referring to? The stats in Special:NewPagesFeed's footer? –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:46, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Sorry that I was not clearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Top_new_article_reviewers Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:54, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Hmm. There's no replag. The bot is updating twice a day like it's supposed to. The diffs aren't null edits with zero change, they have some changes. Can you give an example of a frozen reviewer/number? –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:40, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
What caught my eye is that I've been doing a few reviews every day for the last several days and I think I checked and was never listed in the "last 24 hours" on any of those days. North8000 (talk) 19:50, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
This requires a fix to the bot which generates the report. I've asked for a change here. Please subscribe to that topic if you are interested. Anyone else who runs queries regarding page reviews should also see that topic. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:35, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 Resolved This has now been fixed. The latest version of the report does have your name in the "Last 24 hours section". -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:17, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Cool! North8000 (talk) 11:23, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Reviews vs. Patrols

Is there anywhere that says how many total "reviews" you've done? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 23:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

You can check your total reviews and patrols for the last 12 months in this database report. There's also a Quarry query available here to tally up your total reviews. I hope this helps. – DreamRimmer (talk) 02:21, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Here's another quarry query. It can be forked and changed to have the target person's name. Keep in mind this will not include CSD tagging. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:27, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Feedback on NewPagesFeed design changes (Codex conversion)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T347732

Hey, as part of the recent efforts to convert the feed to use the Vue/Codex, I have proposed some UI changes to bring the NewPages feed inline with the Wikimedia styling guidelines. Let me know if there are any objections/suggestions/other comments wrt to the change :)

Changes in the filter select screen
Changes to the feed in general

Sohom (talk) 10:35, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks good to me! I will be the first to speak up if I feel that changes to the UI are too big or are moving us backwards, but these changes are small and seem fine. Thanks for your work on this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:41, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Looks good. 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚁𝚒𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚞𝚜𝚜 12:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
@Sohom Datta: I think these are significant improvements, but where have the "predicted class" and "potential issues" parts of the filter and feed gone? – Joe (talk) 08:04, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
And on a much more minor note, the issue 'chips' could have smaller text: with the added padding and background, they draw more attention than anything else on the page. – Joe (talk) 08:07, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
In regards to predicted class and potential issues disappearing, I don't think mw:Extension:ORES is installed on PatchDemo. I think those will return once the patch is merged and we are able to check it on the mw:Beta Cluster. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:21, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
@Joe Roe The predicted class and potential issues don't show up on the patchdemo version since the relevant configurations are not present, This and this are how the latest iteration looks on my current development setup with the (mostly) correct enough configurations.
Wrt to the chips, that is definitely a good point, I will look into lowering the font size for those elements. Sohom (talk) 08:25, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Looks fine then, thanks. – Joe (talk) 09:38, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Accessibility feedback. I am an AfC and so didn't see this feedback request. I would have objected pretty strongly if I'd have known.
  1. the lack of colour banding makes the entire page stark white, which is a strain on the eyes and makes it harder to differentiate submissions.
  2. massive white space between the metadata and the article text, reducing the amount of articles I can view at once from 6 to 3. Apparently this is a bug?
  3. inconsistency in button colours: the Review button is light-grey-on-white, so harder to distinguish than before, but the Set filter button in the filter float menu is blue.
  4. header bar is a lighter grey than before which reduces the visual differentiation between it and surrounding UI elements, i.e. the hover to switch between NPP and AfC is light grey, with a lighter grey highlight, and a white button.
Overall its the whole "white-ification" of all UI elements that I really struggle with. You need to use colour a bit in order to make these elements stand out, otherwise it all gets lost in a see of white. Qcne (talk) 19:41, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I kinda like the old one better. Is there a way to choose? :) WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:51, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
    You can currently use the old version however, the general idea is to phase out the old feed in favour of this new version since the old version is pretty difficult to maintain from a code quality point of view. If you have feedback, let us know and we can hopefully fix most of the sticking points. Sohom (talk) 19:56, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
    I definitely like the old version better. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Missing article count

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T351471
Resolved
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T353497

The new feed doesn't say how many articles are left to review. The old version had the total above the newest/oldest button towards the top right. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 20:04, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

You're right, @WikiOriginal-9. This is a big oversight @Sohom Datta? Qcne (talk) 20:07, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Right, good point, this was reported by @MPGuy2824 as well, it can't be placed in that exact spot (due to it being hard to do in Codex), however, I think it can be placed next to the Set filters button, would that work ? Sohom (talk) 20:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
We'll place it somewhere. We can workshop the details at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T351471 –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:17, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Is this about the AfC pending draft counts? That's is what I came by to report as its missing. If so, I suggest keeping it simple by adding the AfC counts to where ever the NPP counts are (currently at the bottom, but it in looking below that may change), like XXX Drafts are pending review (one place to look for counts). If this is not about AfC counts, let me know and I will start a new section. S0091 (talk) 16:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
I think this section is about "X pages in your filtered list" that used to appear above Newest/Oldest in the "list control nav" (topbar). It displays exactly how many articles exist with the currently specified filter parameters. See screenshots in the phabricator ticket. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:33, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Whitespace

The whitespace issue is a bug, a fix for it is being worked on at gerrit:974103. Sohom (talk) 19:43, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

The whitespace issue is fixed. That was the biggest obvious bug so we rushed that one out. Will work on these other issues at a slower pace. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:16, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

One of the things multiple people have commented on here is that we're seeing fewer articles at a time. The current 'margins' for the page information are small, so there ends up being so much white space in the middle of the feed, and each of the entries is much thicker. In the two images above, none of the articles have much information, so the problem I'm seeing doesn't exist. How hard would it be to address the margins? Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 21:32, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

@Significa liberdade This has been fixed as of a few minutes ago. If it doesn't show up, try refreshing your browser cache :) Sohom (talk) 22:07, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Resolved
–Novem Linguae (talk) 22:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Floating footer

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T349886

Why have we got a new grey bar at the bottom of the new pages feed, which obscures the, err, new pages feed? Why do UI deigners think their UI controls are so important that they should obscure the stuff that we actually want to see? It's way way way stupid. Please remove it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 07:23, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Tagishsimon The bar (the one with the unreviewed articles count on it) has been there for a while (as far as I can see is still present on the 'old' feed on enwiki).
Personally, I am not attached to the bottom bar and have considered moving the refresh button+autorefresh toggle beside the set filter toggle (but I'm unsure if that would break somebodies workflow) :) Sohom (talk) 07:49, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
If we're talking about the bar that has statistics on how many pages are reviewed and unreviewed, it's always been there: see this video tour from when NewPagesFeed was released, for example. – Joe (talk) 07:52, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
I am not attached to the bottom bar and have considered moving the refresh button+autorefresh toggle beside the set filter toggle. Me neither. I don't like floating stuff. Would anyone object if we deleted the floating bottom bar and moved that stuff into the topbar as Sohom suggested? If no objections let's do it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:54, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea. It's incidentally one of the main things that makes the mobile view of Special:NewPagesFeed unusable (it floats over half the actual list). – Joe (talk) 08:00, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
The ticket to remove the floating footer and put its info in the non-floating header is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T349886. We can move forward with this as soon as someone writes a patch. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Merged

The changes have been merged and you can test them out on the beta wiki. They should be deployed on enwiki in two weeks this week. Sohom (talk) 23:26, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm bad at calculating merge windows apparently :) Sohom (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Some feedback
  • The grey box at the top is now much bigger, because each of the three elements of the left side has been changed, arguably not to any good effect
  • Tracked in Phabricator
    Task T351474
    Resolved
    What was previously a comprehensible radio button UI selection between New Page Patrol and Articles for Creation is now two large titles which don't actually look like controls (i.e. they're not actually a button, they could be a header, who knows). I naively think UI controls should look like controls.
  • It's not absolutely clear why Set Filters (now a big button) cannot be on the same line as Active filters.
  • The number of Articles for Creation in the queue has been lost from the left side of grey box. It was quite important information.
  • The sort by box has lost the words 'Sort by', so the user just has to guess what that selection box is all about
  • Tracked in Phabricator
    Task T351483
    Resolved
    The statistics at the foot of the page are incomprehesible to me. When Articles for Creation is selected, stats at the bottom talk about 50319 articles and 688 redirects are unreviewed (oldest: 4594 days) 28 articles and 0 redirects were reviewed this week but I don't recognise those as figures that have anything todo with Articles for Creation, the queue for which is about 170 drafts right now, AFAIK. Change to New Page Patrol and we're informed 9862 articles and 10582 redirects are unreviewed (oldest: 4407 days) 1496 articles and 3426 redirects were reviewed this week which who knows, may be true, but begs the question why the figures change so much between the two views, when the terminology suggests they are reporting on the same thing.
  • Tracked in Phabricator
    Task T349886
    Sadly the floating bottom bar has not yet been removed.
  • There just does not seem to be any design coherence. Compare the New Page Patrol and Articles for Creation selector, with the Newest Oldest selector when New Page Patrol is selected. Newest and Oldest are both in boxes. The selected button is highlighted in blue. New Page Patrol and Articles for Creation are not in boxes. The selected label is highlighted in white. The control for filters is blue text in a blue box. No coherenece; every UI element a new design surprise :(
On the plus side, you got rid of the drop shadow, so well done for that. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:25, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Some of the issues that you point out have phabricator tickets tracked against them. See the above-subsections. The stats shown in the "Articles for Creation" mode is a new issue and there is now a ticket for it. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:42, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
  • It's not absolutely clear why Set Filters (now a big button) cannot be on the same line as Active filters. The technical reason for this is due to CSS constraints, having a large wrappable list in the middle of two buttons isn't the easiest to maintain in the long term not to mention, it will cause issues wrt to responsiveness
  • The grey box at the top is now much bigger, because each of the three elements of the left side has been changed, arguably not to any good effect The only reason the topbar seems bigger is due to the set filters button moving down, which, is due to a technical reason :)
Sohom (talk) 10:08, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Question

I don't really understand how the redirects autopatrolled list works, as well as its requirements. Toadette (Happy Thanksgiving!) 08:45, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Please have a look at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect autopatrol list#Procedures. – DreamRimmer (talk) 09:10, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
You might be referring to being whitelisted for the bot which marks them as reviewed. North8000 (talk) 16:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Sprint

We need another sprint after christmas and no messing about. It needs to come down to about 1200. scope_creepTalk 08:57, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

We're thinking about doing a backlog drive in March. Could potentially move it to February or January. Folks, please feel free to weigh in at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination#Next NPP drive in March 2024? –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:24, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Faster redirect patrolling

Hey! Just wanted to let y'all know that I've created User:Sohom_Datta/fastreview.js a small script that register two hotkeys to allow users to use r to review redirects and n to go to next redirect in the queue in relation to T352418 :) Sohom (talk) 16:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Student papers

Hello, NPP folks,

We are coming to the end of a school term and are entering a phase where well-intentioned students that are participating in Wiki-Ed courses move their user sandboxes into main space. I ran into 7 just yesterday, 2 were actually decent articles but the other 5 could be identified by the fact that the sandbox tag had not even been removed from the draft, now main space article. Instead of tagging these pages for deletion, consider moving them to Draft space or back to the User page where they came from. If you're already doing this, well thank you! I've alerted Ian who works with WikiEd instructors but they don't necessarily influence the actions of students who are proud of their work. Thanks for all of your help. Liz Read! Talk! 01:47, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

If these are tagged for issues or draftified, it's unlikely IME that the student will come back and fix them up. (t · c) buidhe 01:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Moving to draftspace should only ever be done in cases where something is WP:TOOSOON, if something passes GNG moving it into draftspace is just in effect a soft deletion.★Trekker (talk) 02:37, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Model for Emulating Wikipedia Articles

Hello, I'm part of a research project as part of Stanford's OVAL. We are studying building tools that are factually grounded which I'm sure you can imagine is quite a challenge. We have built a model that appears to be relatively accurate and are hoping for Wikipedia Collaborators to participate in evaluation. We have built a UI tool to display a human written article and an article from our model and would score both. The UI tool has been built to streamline the evaluation process, even including the snippets of cited sources relevant. We have monetary compensation available for participants.

While none of the articles produced by our model are intended to be published There is potential for the tool to be integrated as part of New Page Patrol efforts, perhaps as a comparison between draft articles our the models outputs to see where improvement could be necessary. There is more information in our m:Research:Wikipedia type Articles Generated by LLM (Not for Publication on Wikipedia) Talk area.

If you are interested please fill out this form. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfaivclenvs9pdnW7cFcsTyvYy-wSCR_Vr_oYzJx_2bm-ZAqA/viewform?usp=sf_link

We are beginning Evaluation currently so potentially only earlier responders will be able to participate as funding is limited.

Thank you Terribilis11 (talk) 19:14, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:37, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

October 2023 backlog drive results

It has just come to my attention that I never posted the stats from the last backlog drive, for which I'm extremely sorry for. This is a failure on my part as a backlog drive coordinator and, rest assured, I'll be much more timely in posting the results for future backlog drives. So, without further adieu... here is the message that I had originally crafted:

As a group, we reviewed a whopping 14,719 articles and 22,828 redirects during the October 2023 NPP backlog drive.

October 2023 NPP backlog drive progress
Unreviewed
at start		 Unreviewed
at end		 Backlog
reduced (count)		 Backlog
reduced (%)		 Total reviewed
by participants
11,626 7,609 -4,017 -34.6% 14,719
16,985 6,431 -10,554 -62.1% 22,828

The winner of the drive is Schminnte, with an amazing 2,343.5 points! They reviewed 1,671 articles and 2,386 redirects during the month of October. Utopes also received a redirect ninja award for having reviewed 4,684 redirects during the drive, the most of any participant. The top 5, in terms of points scored, are:

1st place – Schminnte (2,343.5 points)
2nd place – Utopes (1,562 points)
3rd place – Hey man im josh (1,318.75 points)
4th place – JTtheOG (1,307.25 points)
5th place – Thilsebatti (1,032.75 points)

Some other relevant numbers from the drive:

  • 112 users signed up and reviewed an article or redirect
    • 111 of these users reviewed at least 1 article
    • 93 of these users reviewed at least 1 redirect
  • 99 users qualified for a points based barnstar by accumulating at least 5 points in the drive
  • 39 users received a streak award
    • 6 of which qualified the highest available streak award of the unnecessarily complicated Gears for accumulating at least 150 pts a week

Thank you so much to everybody that participated, every review matters and every bit you contributed helps! Special thanks to Illusion Flame and DreamRimmer for coordinating this drive with me. Unfortunately, we didn't quite hit our goal for reducing the article backlog, so please consider signing up for the January, 2024, NPP article backlog drive (sign up link here). Hey man im josh (talk) 16:16, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

 Thanks - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 16:17, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for volunteering. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:18, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

"Common" section of toolbar is gone

The "Common" tags section has disappeared from the toolbar. That was pretty useful. Thoughts? ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 17:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T347539
It was intentionally removed because we thought the filter tag feature was better and had mostly replaced the "common" tags. But if a bunch of people say they want the common tags back, we can look into adding it back. Are the common tags a big part of anyone else's workflow? –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Hi Novem Linguae, thanks for your comment. By filter tag, do you mean the search bar? I think it's a little faster to have certain ones available than having to type what you want. Maybe there could be an option to personalize it? ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 17:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the search bar is what I was thinking when I said filter tag feature. Personalization is probably a bit too much work. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
OK, thank you for the info. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm. Was coming here to report the loss of the 'Common tags' section. Personally, I found it pretty handy... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 07:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Common tags list

Why did the Common selection go from the tools? I found that the most useful. Govvy (talk) 11:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers#"Common" section of toolbar is gone. Although I think enough people have asked for it back now that we'll go ahead and put it back. Let me work on a patch. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Hmm, I did search for some, trying to add tags, like no categories, and I just get a spinning wheel of doom instead! The tools feature does seem a bit laggy/buggy of late. Govvy (talk) 12:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
I tried to reproduce your error by typing "catego" in the top bar, then ticking "uncategorized", then clicking "Add 1 selected items". It worked fine for me without a spinning wheel of death. Diff. Did you do any of these steps to reproduce differently than what I just mentioned? –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Yay! *little Common selection back dance* Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 14:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Quick PSA: CSD tagging partially broken

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T353571
Resolved

CSD tagging using the curation toolbar is broken this weekend :( Sohom (talk) 13:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

n.b. for anyone tagging a page for CSD: user talk page messages will not be sent while this bug remains unfixed. Please use Twinkle to send notices of speedy deletion. Chlod (say hi!) 13:45, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
We've scheduled an emergency fix. Will deploy on Monday I think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:34, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
n.b. again: this affects all paths that require notifying the user. It also unfortunately subsequently breaks tagging the talk page of the article, if applicable. Both of these must be done manually. Thanks @MPGuy2824 for pointing this out. Chlod (say hi!) 03:35, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
This should now be  fixed. Thanks to everyone involved in debugging/deploying: @FormalDude, @Novem Linguae, @Sohom Datta, @MPGuy2824! Chlod (say hi!) 15:09, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Huzzah! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 15:11, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
One cannot just say "Huzzah!", without throwing a glass into a fireplace. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 15:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Feed incorrectly tagging pages as orphans

I've noticed that a decent amount of articles in the new pages feed are tagged as orphans but they actually aren't. The feed says Efraín Sarmiento Cuero is an orphan. Thoughts? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:40, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Looks like mw:Extension:PageTriage only updates the Orphan tag when the page itself is edited. I just edited Efraín Sarmiento Cuero and the tag correctly went away. It'd probably be too expensive to calculate it on edits to every single page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:24, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
OK thanks. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:57, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Since this summer, I am doing Orphan tag removal on "old orphan" articles. My working subpage is at User:JoeNMLC/Article orphan query. For 2015, I untagged over 2,000 articles. Yes, some are from recent months, but these may just be an accumulation over the years. Occasionally on the last week of the month, I run that Query to cleanup the current months "not-orphans". Anyone here who would like to help is most welcome. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 19:23, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • PROPOSAL: - How about changing the actual "Orphan" tag to Orphan? instead, indicating the article needs to be checked (What links here) before tagging. I have no knowledge of the procedure to change other than to Discuss first. Expert help here would be great. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 17:43, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
    That seems reasonable. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 20:59, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
    @JoeNMLC Feel free to make a phabricator ticket. I'm not really sure about the exact "fix" being proposed here, but it might be worth it to losen up the language surrounding the "Orphan" warning and/or see if we can make it more accurate. Sohom (talk) 15:45, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
    @Sohom - There was prior discussion/mention last year of NPP Orphan not being accurate here. Also, I recall a note of an Orphan fix being very difficult to do. Yes, if the flagging cannot be made more accurate, adding the "?" on the flag may at least help people understand to check the article before possibly adding the Orphan tag. For "phabricator ticket", I am clueless how to do that & not sure how long (months?/years?) to get done. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 16:23, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
    Tracked in Phabricator
    Task T351656
    Resolved
    @JoeNMLC I've filed a phabricator ticket in relation to this thread. I don't think the text "Orphan?" is a good way of representing this, I would personally suggest "Maybe orphan" instead. Sohom (talk) 17:39, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
    I have gone ahead and implemented a fix for this, it should make it into production over the coming weeks/months. Sohom (talk) 14:52, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
    @Sohom - Thank you for doing this. Is there any way of knowing when this change does "go live"? Other than seeing the Orphan flag being different. JoeNMLC (talk) 15:27, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
    It's complicated. When the gerrit patch is approved, it will go out on the next train. The cutoff for a same week train is around Monday evening. Enwiki is group 2, so deploys on Thursdays. Not all weeks have a train. wikitech:Deployments/Yearly calendar –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:37, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
    @Novem Linguae - Thanks for the deployment info. I read through the patch description and it looks spot-on. Hopefully, it will insure greater accuracy only tagging of articles actually orphans, or fixing those without incoming links. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 21:08, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Tracked in Phabricator
    Task T351359
    Resolved
    I also filed a ticket last week to address this by adding a link in the tag to Special:WhatLinksHere/[Title] to help reviewers check that it is really orphaned. SilverLocust 💬 15:04, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
    As @Novem Linguae mentioned, the review and deployment process does take a non-trivial amount of time. It does seem like @MPGuy2824 has submitted a fix and the fix is in review. Sohom (talk) 15:18, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, I know. This wasn't a complaint about it not having been immediately rolled out. SilverLocust 💬 15:25, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
    Oh :) No issues, I mean it purely informationally :) Sohom (talk) 15:32, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
     Done - Thankyou to everyone who worked on this. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 20:27, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol | January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
  • On 1 January 2024, 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.
  • Each review will earn 1 point.
  • 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.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:11, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

AI Bots

It's time to wake up, folks. There is a pattern that is either being overlooked or completely ignored, I choose to believe the former. Just look at the number of articles created in each hour of the day. I count 9 to 10 every hour–it's rhythmic, and far beyond what human beings working NPP will be able to keep up with for any length of time. I don't doubt for one minute that most of the people and company articles are coming from paid editing firms with AI Bots, probably PR firms who are spitting them out faster than we can review them. Then there are the movies, sports, games, etc. - all of which have PR departments or contract outside firms. Casinos are even known to hire social media PR people and have done that for years. Just look at the trend of our NPP feed over the past few days, and the timing between each new article during each hour. Look at the repeated pattern of the bios and companies - a 2 to 3 sentence lead with 2 sections in the body text. There's no end to this if it is allowed to continue. Wikipedia will become another Botipedia. Atsme 💬 📧 15:37, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

While there undoubtedly are AI-generated artices being added, you wil have to provide some actual examples, e.g. take 3 consecutive hours and link to the new articles which you believe fit in that pattern. 9 to 10 articles per hour is peanuts, we used to have 1000 or 1200 new articles per day, including then as well many PR pieces and spam. Fram (talk) 15:44, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
Really? NYTimes...later. Atsme 💬 📧 00:12, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes really @Atsme. You've been quite vague about the problem, claiming that it exists (it does) to a level that others may not agree with. As the NPP school coordinator, I'd expect you to be able to provide examples and coach others on how to find these types of articles. What's the dead giveaway? How are we actually supposed to catch these? It's quite rude to be so dismissive when @Fram had a perfectly reasonable response. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Others? You're talking about you and one other. I'm done here. Happy editing! Atsme 💬 📧 00:38, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
@Atsme, are you trolling being serious right now? You've posted a nonsensical comment and you're refusing to substantiate it as well as being dismissive of those who have questions or want examples. When I asked about it you replied with this and an edit summary of waste of my time. This doesn't seem like a conversation started with intents of actually addressing an issue and it feels as though you're wasting other's time. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:03, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
@Atsme: You may very well be onto something here, what evidence do you have which would allow us to get a grasp of the issue? If I may offer some reassurances... If it does turn out to be an issue I wouldn't worry too much about it, I believe that there are a large number of human editors like myself who have traditionally shied away from NPP as overly bureaucratic who would rally against such a threat if it was serious. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:07, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Horse Eye's Back, I would rather not discuss this topic any further in this venue in light of the untoward "trolling" question by josh, who has been an admin barely 3 months, and has already demonstrated behavior unbecoming an admin. I'm happy to discuss with you on my UTP. Recommended reading: WMF reports and NYTimes linked above. BTW, BOT stubs and starter articles are not new to NPP. It's not far-fetched, either – after all, there is an entire encyclopedia built on AI called Botipedia. Being in denial prepares no one for anything. Being prepared and knowing what to do, if anything, is paramount for NPP reviewers. These types of articles may not be transparent enough for the inexperienced reviewer to spot, but that is by design. I seriously doubt that all of the company articles and bios are widely publicized as AI because paid editors are typically very guarded and quite defensive. AI is happening: Draft talk:Clone trooper Fives, Talk:Leniolisib, Category:Articles generated by AI. Atsme 💬 📧 09:05, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
@Atsme: If you want to help then share how to do so, we're here to help and we want to. I'm not sure why it's like pulling teeth and why you're so unwilling to share information and participate in a discussion. Hey man im josh (talk) 11:23, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't have the magic bullet josh, but I am of the mind that the things we need to do may be shot down as they have been in the past, due in part to concealed COI and anonymous editing. Unfortunately, corruption is inevitable in situations of anonymity. The WMF is finally coming to that realization with IP editing and being able to protect IDs, but at what cost? I believe in AGF but it has limits, especially when it comes to our expectations for human reviewers. Our burn-out rate here is high, in part because of the many restrictions placed on reviewers. Our tech gurus have done an amazing job to help streamline and speed-up the process but we are mere humans trying to get a handle on an automated process. I believe there are already BOT detectors in place, but what if the bot has clearance? We cannot control paid editing because WMF allows it. This is why I brought it up here...for discussion. Allow our reviewers to make suggestions. I'm not tech savvy enough to even offer a solution. What I do know is that times are a changing, and I think it would be wise to prepare for those changes as a team effort with ideas from our top techs like Sam Walton and MusikAnimal. So far, the pattern I see is as I mentioned above - rhythmic editing, a short lead, and a 2 paragraph body. Can we automate what constitutes notability? Atsme 💬 📧 15:14, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
@Atsme I agree that it would really be helpful to share examples, say from the past few hours, of these rhythmically-created AI-generated articles with this article layout pattern that you're seeing. Sam Walton (talk) 15:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
"Can we automate what constitutes notability?" do you understand how notability works? It can't be determined from the contents of an article alone. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:54, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

IMO the main NPP challenges are much bigger and more obvious than the above. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:36, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

And what do you see as the main challenges, North? Sam - all the examples you need are in the NPP feed which I explained above. I may be wrong, but look at this. If you don't see a problem, then I'll move along. Atsme 💬 📧 15:56, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Although I'm curious how this user is creating these pages so rapidly (perhaps offline drafting?), from an AI perspective these don't look AI-generated to me. They all seem to be about real people, with real sources, full of all the formatting (including categories) one would expect in a Wikipedia article. AI generated content isn't yet good enough to make articles that are this well structured with actual sources. In short, these articles look too good to be AI generated. Are there other users also producing these kinds of rapid-fire articles? Scanning through the NewPagesFeed I'm not seeing them. Sam Walton (talk) 16:36, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Sam - go to the NPP feed and click on AfC, and you'll see plenty. As far as I'm concerned and the responses I've been reading here indicate no problem. Atsme 💬 📧 20:08, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't think anybody is saying that there isn't AI generated content making its way onto Wikipedia, I think the disagreement is how big of a problem it is and how to properly address it. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
The commonality between most of that account's edit subjects is odd for an AI being abused by promoters... They're almost all people who died during the COVID-19 pandemic. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:53, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Daimarru is a sock (yes, I opened the SPI, no accusation without one) and many of their creations are recreations of articles previously created by other sock-incarnations. No AI seems to have been used for these. Fram (talk) 17:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Responding to ASTM, it's because the job is painful, impossible to do 100%, will inevitably have people criticizing you and saying that you did something wrong, and requires a very high level of broad expertise and experience to even do 80% and for active reviewers is sort of like production line type work. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:53, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Sam - see the following all AI generated quickie article - all I did for the sake of this discussion was add the wikimarkup for sections:
Example AI-generated article

Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi is an American journalist and author best known for his work on politics, finance, and culture. He has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications, and is the author of several books, including The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire (2008) and Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another (2019).

Early life

Matt Taibbi was born in 1970 in San Francisco, California. He is the son of Mike Taibbi, an NBC News correspondent, and his wife, Anne C. Taibbi. He attended Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he studied Russian literature. In the early 1990s, Taibbi began writing for The Boston Phoenix, a weekly alternative newspaper. He then moved to New York City and wrote for The eXile, an English-language newspaper published in Moscow. In 1998, he joined the staff of Rolling Stone magazine, where he wrote about politics, finance, and culture.

In 2008, Taibbi published The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, which was a New York Times bestseller. In 2010, he published Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, which was also a New York Times bestseller.

In 2014, Taibbi joined First Look Media, a media company founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. He wrote for First Look's publication, The Intercept, until 2018. In 2019, Taibbi published Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another, which was a New York Times bestseller.

Writing Style

Taibbi is known for his irreverent and often humorous writing style. His work often focuses on the intersection of politics, finance, and culture, and he has been described as a "gonzo journalist" for his willingness to take risks and challenge conventional wisdom. Taibbi has also been praised for his ability to explain complex topics in an accessible way. In a review of The Great Derangement, The New York Times wrote, "Taibbi has a knack for making the complex understandable and the outrageous seem plausible" (Klein, 2008).

Criticism

Taibbi has been criticized for his writing style, which some have argued is too flippant and sensationalistic. In a review of Griftopia, The New York Times wrote, "Taibbi's writing can be so over the top that it's hard to take it seriously" (Klein, 2010).

Taibbi has also been criticized for his tendency to make sweeping generalizations and for relying too heavily on anecdotal evidence. In a review of Hate Inc., The New York Times wrote, "Taibbi's arguments are often too broad and his evidence too anecdotal" (Klein, 2019).

References

V 3

Happy editing! Atsme 💬 📧 17:19, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

  • Adding: "Where does this text come from? This text was generated by AI using content found on the web as source material. See the full search results for more details." 17:22, 20 December 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atsme (talk • contribs)
    • No one is arguing that AI can't create articles. What we would like is some credible evidence for the claims in your opening post. Fram (talk) 17:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
      • Agreed... The boy cried wolf and the town woke up... So the boy had better be able to present credible evidence that there was a wolf and not a dog or a fox. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:36, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Is there a reason that this AI is incompetent when it comes to sourcing? This does not demonstrate that an AI can create an article which would survive inspection, its actually a piece of evidence in the opposite direction... Whatever you used can't do it yet (or at least not without better prompts). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:40, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
concur, at this point "AI" still sucks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:58, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
  • moved two replies here from higher up, and corrected the layout so this ... thing.. at least isn't ruining the flow of this page any more. Fram (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Collapsing example generated by Atsme so it doesn't look like it's a part of the discussion. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:34, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Ok, no problem. Don't let me get in the way of your backlogs. If you get a chance, take a look at this UTP and the "interaction" between reviewers and this particular article creator. Oh, wait - there is no interaction. Hmmm. Oh well, that's not nearly enough evidence so no worries. I've got it straight now. WP's AfC and NPP are not the training grounds for AI, and the NYTimes must be out of their minds to even think that was possible, as bad as AI sucks, and all. It's chock-full of flaws that we don't ever see in articles crafted by humans. What the hell was I thinking? I need to lay-off the Holiday moose goose! I'll just bow out so you can resume business as usual - forget I was here. Cheers! Atsme 💬 📧 19:47, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
I think that it's a valid concern and I don't think that anybody is ruling out those things that you describe in this post. I think that the requests for specifics relate more to the "current article creation" items in your OP. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:12, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't understand the reason for the hostility here. I don't think anyone disagrees that AI created articles are a bad thing. I don't think anyone disagrees that eventually, or maybe even now, the rate of creation of credible-looking AI articles will exceed the possible rate of review, and we will have a problem. So, I (and I am sure others here as well) would like to know which articles actually prompted you to make these observations, and your thoughts on how we could better detect them, etc. Instead, you appear to be convinced for no reason at all that everyone is against you and even cast aspersions of undisclosed COIs and corruption. I genuinely cannot understand where this reaction is coming from. Fermiboson (talk) 22:48, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Concur. Data required to evaluate and formulate effective strategy. Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, you're accusing this obvious child editor of being an AI? Andre🚐 05:21, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Moderately tricky situation on new page

Okay, I started working on reviewing a new page Richard Lee Bugbee. I ran into the problem that the first paragraph was taken from an obituary in News from Native California (It is behind a paywall, but accessible through the Wikipedia Library). The editor says she is the writer of the obituary, Eleanora Robbins, on the talk page. I'm not 100% sure that she can release the copyright on what she wrote and there is also the issue of some conflict of interest that was not previously declared. I would appreciate advice on the best way to handle this. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:49, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, the copyright notice at the bottom of the article in the publication is pretty clear: "Copyright of News from Native California is the property of News From Native California and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use." My guess is that the article is a work for hire so that the copyright is owned by the publication, not the author. The burden would be on the user trying to use the copied language in the Wikipedia article to establish either (a) she has permission from the owner (e.g. a formal release for use) or (b) she is the copyright holder. Geoff | Who, me? 18:12, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
There are chunks of it that aren't sourced, I would just remove those sections for now, do a quick paraphrasing so that it doesn't violate copyright, and let the editor know what the next steps are. Might be nice to let them know that it's nothing personal and it's all copyright legal stuff. Dr vulpes (Talk) 18:38, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
And if they are the copyright holder, they can give permission to use the material, see WP:DONATETEXT Onel5969 TT me 18:52, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Previously deleted — page curation

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T354154

Twice now, I've had PageCuration alert me that the page I'm looking at has been previously deleted, but when I look at the logs, nothing appears. Example: Lutfulla Sadullayev. Is this a bug, or is there something funny with the logs, or something else? Maybe the answer's obvious, but I don't see it. Thanks, 🎄Cremastra 🎄 (talk) 15:33, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I can totally relate. This has happened to me countless times. It turns out there's a glitch with old logs. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:39, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for reporting. Ticket filed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:09, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Requesting help/info

Tracked in github.com
Issue #1922

Hello, I nominated Ranch House Estates, California [1] and for a reason I don't understand it messed up. It was listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2024 January 5, but it transcribed an old AfD Indian Lakes Estates, California that Ranch House Estates, California was group nom'd with. Since I'm not sure how to fix this without possibly making it worse I have posted here.

I'm glad to cleanup after myself, I'm just not sure if a series of undos will fix it and don't want to make a bigger problem. Just as important I'm not sure how this was messed up and what I should have done differently. Thanks for any help. Greetings from Los Angeles,  // Timothy :: talk  01:27, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Could you share why you're nominating this? I'll be happy to create an AfD for you. – DreamRimmer (talk) 01:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@TimothyBlue: I've undone the transclusion of the old discussion on the AfD log page. Could you try to nominate the article again to see if the issue persists? If it does, you might want to check in with the Twinkle team to resolve whatever's causing the bug. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 01:42, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with the Twinkle. Ranch House Estates, California has an AfD page (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ranch House Estates, California), but it redirects to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indian Lakes Estates, California because it was nominated alongside some other articles, and the discussion took place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indian Lakes Estates, California. This is why Twinkle got confused. Now we have to create a new nomination at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ranch House Estates, California (2nd nomination). – DreamRimmer (talk) 01:55, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Ah, that would do it. At this point, it might just be easier to do the whole nomination manually, as I don't think you can tell Twinkle to create the AfD page at a specific title. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 02:41, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Thank you both for your help.
DreamRimmer, here is my rationale,
Fails GNG per NGEO. Unneeded CFORK of Pine Grove, Amador County, California. BEFORE found nothing that meets WP:IS WP:RS with WP:SIGCOV addressing the subject directly and indepth. I don't think the title is a good redirect, but if there is a consensus I have no objection.
I'll watch your steps and see how you properly cleanup and avoid the problem.  // Timothy :: talk  04:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@TimothyBlue, I've fixed the nomination page. Now, could you please replace my signature with yours in the AfD discussion? A bot will soon transclude the new AfD page into the logs. – DreamRimmer (talk) 04:21, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Looks like a Twinkle bug. Bug report filed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:48, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion to mention the backlog drive in the new pages feed header

There is a discussion about adding a brief mention of the backlog drive to the new pages feed header. ––FormalDude (talk) 00:59, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Am I doing this right?

So I've just started as a New Page Patroller, and I'm mostly following the handy flowchart available at Wikipedia:New pages patrol. This indicates that in most cases, I should eventually be marking a page as reviewed. However, I'm coming across a lot of pages where someone else has already 'patrolled' the page, possibly added some tags, and/or sent a message to the page creator, but the page isn't marked as reviewed. Am I being too generous with marking pages as reviewed, or should others be more generous (for want of a better term)? Cheers, BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 18:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Can you provide examples? I didn't notice any cases of what you describe from your recent patrols, which look fine by the way. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:41, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Not offhand, but I'll keep an eye out over the next couple of days if I notice more. Thanks. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 19:56, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
I have, and seen others, left pages unreviewed after adding things like sources needed or notability tags if the page otherwise would be draftifed or prod/afd'd, but seems likely to be able to be improved, to give a chance to the creator (or anyone else) to fix it. I, at least, am more likely to do that if it's a fairly recent creation as opposed to working from the back of the review backlog. In general if that is your intention, it may make sense to check back on the article in some number of days time and see if any improvements have been made. I see it kind of as part of if you don't know what you do with an article, you can always leave it to another reviewer while is trying to help move the process along. Skynxnex (talk) 22:54, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
It is common for folks to only do some of the flowchart, not mark as reviewed, and leave a complete review for someone else. This is a natural part of crowdsourcing and volunteering: folks will often do what is easy or what they are motivated to do or what they are knowledgeable about, and skip the harder parts. This is fine, since every little bit helps, and they are not pressing the review button. But yeah, if you press the "mark as reviewed" button, please make sure all the essential things have been done (copyvio check, CSD check, notability check including evaluating all sources in and out of the article for WP:GNG if appropriate, etc.) Thank you for asking your question here, feel free to ask more. Quality is more important than quantity for NPP reviewing. When in doubt, leave it in the queue. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:08, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I think (my opinion) reviewers often reseach a page and come to no conclusions, so they add tags letting others know their concerns, and leave the page unreviewed for other editors to consider.  // Timothy :: talk  01:33, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, folks, much appreciated. I'm not going to list examples, for fear of being seen to "call people out", and the explanations all make sense. I guess my interpretation was/is "there are issues, sure, and now they're tagged, but the article is fine to remain and so I'll mark this as reviewed", whereas others are more cautious, and both approaches are fine. Cheers, BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 13:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Just wanted to say thank you for asking about this, as I'm also a new new page patroller and had been noticing & wondering about the same thing! Cheers, Chocmilk03 (talk) 23:37, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Tips in the new pages feed header

I've been doing a touch of spring cleaning of the header of Special:NewPagesFeed and was thinking about the 'tips' that are presented as being particularly important. These are currently:

  • Quality and depth of patrolling is more important than speed
  • Not over-tagging - many maintenance queues continuously grow, and many tags won't necessarily bring additional attention to the article
  • Making use of the message and WikiLove features - communicating specific feedback with new articles creators creates a more welcoming and constructive environment

This isn't bad advice by any means, but I don't think it really reflects the most important concerns of NPP in 2024 (tagging used to be a core part of the workflow, for example, but now is just one of several optional follow-up tasks). I'm sure we can do better. If you had to pick three things that should be at the forefront of someone's mind when reviewing new pages, what would they be? – Joe (talk) 15:36, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

New header

Hi @Joe Roe! I am an AfC reviewer and just came to the NPP Talk page to see what was going on. A massive new header has appeared on the Feed - it is so large it pushes the feed off my screen and means my screen is... just header for the entire size of the window.
I will note that this header is utterly irrelevant to AfC reviewers, who use the AfC part of the feed. Clicking the Articles for Creation does not remove the irrelevant NPP header.
Can you revert this to how it was previously, if it was you who changed the UI? It is totally disruptive and irrelevant to AfC reviewers who share this tool.
Thanks! Qcne (talk) 17:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree the huge header is a bit much :( Sohom (talk) 17:30, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@Sohom Datta Thanks to @TheresNoTime, adding
#mwe-pt-list-warnings { display: none !important; }
to your common.css file in User Prefs hides it entirely. I now no longer have to scroll down an entire page to see the feed. :) Qcne (talk) 17:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I've added that code snippet to my common.css, which hides everything. It would be nice to have that massive header on the top atleast be hidden by default. Sohom (talk) 18:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I've reverted the changes for now. No need to go hiding the banner with CSS. Let's instead workshop a banner that we all like, or leave the status quo ante one. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:23, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@Qcne: I'm not surprised at the revert and am happy to workshop further. However, please note that a) my changes only increased the height of the header to approximately that of the old Special:NewPages; b) were collapsible; and c) the old (now restored) header also exclusively concerns NPP, not AfC.
Otherwise I'd be grateful if we could keep discussion to the topic at hand and perhaps discuss other changes on the relevant talk page. – Joe (talk) 20:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@Joe Roe
a) no it didn't.
b) no they weren't.
c) fair point.
Please do point me to the relevant Talk page as it would be nice to be notified next time NPPatrolers thrust another UI change on us. Qcne (talk) 20:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
@Joe Roe I think having the whole top header collapsed by default (note, not collapsible) would be a good start. Additionally, the tips section seems mostly fine. I personally would not remove the red "quality and depth" wording from the first line, and I would like a link to a general overview of notability somewhere in the mix. Sohom (talk) 13:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Joe Roe January 8th edits

Having it collapsed by default does not make sense to me. That's going to significantly decrease the amount of editors who see it. Having it collapsible (but open on default) ensures new patrollers will see it while still allowing anyone to hide it if they prefer. ––FormalDude (talk) 08:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Roe has made WP:BOLD edits through full protection again, after being reverted. Here's the edits. Thoughts on these edits? Are they worth reverting again? I don't have an opinion on the edits yet but I think it is insensitive and unorthodox to not sandbox these and ask for permission first. Full protected pages, like template protected pages, are not the place for WP:BOLD edits, especially when they've been objected to. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:39, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree, it's not hard to propose your change and reach a consensus, like this. ––FormalDude (talk) 08:45, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
See WP:EDITCON. – Joe (talk) 08:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
EDITCON, which I'm well aware of, says in the second sentence that an edit has presumed consensus until it is disputed or reverted. You were reverted, yet you partially restored it anyway. It also says the encyclopedia is best improved through collaboration and consensus, and I'm not really seeing an effort from you to try to achieve either of those. It would be nice if you would collaborate first instead of making a change unilaterally and waiting for someone to explicitly object. ––FormalDude (talk) 09:00, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Especially for highly visible system messages and templates, EDITCON generally should not be the guideline to follow. The much stricter and conservative TPECON should be applied, especially since multiple reversion/content changes means that the software needs to rerendered these messages for almost every user every time a edit is made, which might cause a significant amount of additional strain to the server. Sohom (talk) 09:18, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree and note that WP:TPECON only applies to templated-protected pages, which this is not. Undue reluctance to edit templates, editnotices, and UI text is why we have so many crappily-worded templates, editnotices and UI text. I'm sure the WMF will contact me if I've burned one of their servers. – Joe (talk) 09:22, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
As I explained below, I restored only those parts of the edit that were not objected to, being careful not to increase the height, which was the main concern. If you have a problemn with making a change unilaterally and waiting for someone to explicitly object, then I'm afraid you might be on the wrong project... – Joe (talk) 09:18, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
@Joe Roe I don't have a issue with bold-revert-discuss in most cases, however, it honestly wouldn't hurt to post a version here ask for feedback and then making the change, instead of doing it the other way around :) Sohom (talk) 09:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
That is exactly what I'm asking for. Not necessarily required, but nevertheless a common courtesy that your peers would greatly appreciate, Joe. ––FormalDude (talk) 09:26, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I will certainly do so in future, now that I know that there are such strong feelings about the contents of that message. I didn't expect that to be the case, considering that no prior edits to it had been discussed to any significant extent. At the beginning of the this section, as it happens, is a proactive request for feedback, which I'd still very much like to discuss. – Joe (talk) 09:31, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
There is nothing "unorthodox" about it, Novem. Qcne above objected to the increased height and NPP-focused content, so I of course left that reverted. I merely restored the textual edits that didn't increase the height, which nobody objected to. That's called collaboration and I see nothing "insensitive" about it. The entire previous text of the page was written through bold edits. It is protected for procedural reasons (because it's part of the interface) not because the content is particularly sensitive.
Collapsed-by-default was suggested by Sohom above. I thought it was a good idea, but if others disagree I'll happily self-revert. – Joe (talk) 08:49, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
So my issue now is, is that I like to be able to quickly glance down the AfC feed and having a header pushes things down the page so I have to scroll. The Hide button works once, but on every subsequent refresh the header re-appears and pushes stuff down the page. That is annoying. Using the custom .css code to hide the header entirely is actually a nicer and cleaner UI and makes reviewing much faster. Qcne (talk) 08:59, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Personally I find scrolling half an inch to be less annoying than editors speed patrolling, tag bombing, and failing to communicate, so I'm willing to put up with the three simple messages designed to combat that. ––FormalDude (talk) 09:03, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Except that, again, it only applies to NPPers not AfCers. AfCers are a much smaller bunch of people and hopefully don't speed review, tag bomb, or fail to communicate. Qcne (talk) 09:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
As an AfCer myself, the only one of those that isn't also applicable to AfC is tagging, so I'm still of the position that the benefits of having it visible significantly outweigh the benefits of hiding it. ––FormalDude (talk) 09:12, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
That's fair enough, but not everybody who visits Special:NewPagesFeed is an experienced NPP/AfC reviewer. Some will come across it and think "hey, what the hell is this?". Some will be newbie patrollers who need some help, or returning patrollers who need a refresher. We have to strike a balance between the different needs. – Joe (talk) 09:15, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Okay, I can understand that and I take your point My suggestion would be to make the wording applicable to both NPP/AfC, so (emphasis mine) perhaps:
  • Quality and depth of patrolling and reviewing is more important than speed
  • Making use of the message and WikiLove features - communicating specific feedback with new article creators creates a more welcoming and constructive environment
I think my only annoyance then is that the Hide button doesn't stick. I have no knowledge of coding so not sure if that is something that can be set via cookies or not. Qcne (talk) 10:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I think that's a good idea. We could just say "reviewing", because that's usually the verb we use for NPP too (admittedly the terminology is a mess). But based on the response above I don't want to make any further changes myself. – Joe (talk) 10:22, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Reviewed status for articles that aren't viable

Uhhh... If I CSD an article, should I mark it as reviewed? I have been under the impression that I should be doing so, just to remove it from the queue. Is this proper? (I also am watchlisting to ensure the process is carried out) Acebulf (talk | contribs) 04:53, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Acebulf. No, please do not mark pages as reviewed when you nominate them for SD. This is mentioned at WP:NPPBIG3. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 05:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
Crap, let me go back through my CSD to see if I can undo any problems. Thanks for the help. Acebulf (talk | contribs) 05:11, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
@Firefangledfeathers: I want to double check too, I should be marking articles that I nominated for AfD or a merge request as reviewed before the AfD/merge consensus is settled? I'm finding a handful of these articles I go in detail looking at and find someone else marked it as reviewed during or after I make the proposal. Darcyisverycute (talk) 15:06, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
Hello Darcyisverycute. AFD: definitely mark as reviewed. For merge, I'm not sure, and I'm not aware of any written guideline. I would default to not marking the page reviewed. The problem is that merge discussions don't have any defined length, and some are never closed. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:22, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
I think we can mark as reviewed for merge. After a merge, it will become a redirect. If it gets flipped from redirect to article, that will automatically put it back in the queue, so I don't think it can be gamed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:21, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: if the NPPer merges and redirects on their own, sure they can review the redirect. I thought Darcy was asking about proposed merges. They can get gummed up for so long, with 14 articles in Category:Articles to be merged from April 2023. I'm worried marking those as reviewed will lead to many timing out of our queue with no real review. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:28, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
The article queue becomes indexed after 90 days but is otherwise infinite (will still be in the queue until reviewed). The redirect queue autopatrols redirects after 6 months. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:04, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Also, I appreciate that you want to avoid duplicating work for other reviewers, but Special:NewPagesFeed already detects whether an article has been tagged for speedy deletion and marks the entry as such. Basically, don't worry too much about bad articles remaining in the queue, they'll probably get taken care of by an administrator soon enough. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
Just to explain the reasoning behind this: we don't mark CSD or PROD as reviewed because the author could remove the tag, then they have basically gamed NPP and skipped the queue. Or it's also possible that an admin declines the CSD, and then more action is needed such as an AFD. We do mark AFD as reviewed because there is no way to game it (an admin will close the AFD and action the community's consensus no matter what). Hope this helps! –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Neverending NPP backlog

When the January NPP drive began, there were over 13,000 unreviewed articles in the queue. As of 9 January, around 11,000 articles are still in the queue. We've tried almost every method to invite potential reviewers, and many have joined us, doing an excellent job. According to the leaderboard, we've reviewed 5,167 articles in these 9 days, including approximately 2,000 from the old queue and over 3,000 new ones. That's great, but from my experience as a reviewer, when I plan to review some articles and mark 5-6 of them, I often encounter many borderline articles in the queue. I ultimately refrain from reviewing them because I don't want to deal with the bold reviewing or deletion process. I've observed some cases where reviewers who marked borderline articles or nominated many for deletion received cautions. I believe other reviewers avoid these for the same reason.

I think we need to discuss additional processes to identify these borderline pages and remove them from the queue. In my opinion, about 80-85% of the articles fall into this borderline category. We need to prioritize quality over quantity, but we should also brainstorm more ideas. At this rate, in the remaining 20 days, we might only review approximately 5,000 articles. If the creation ratio continues, we'll face an endless backlog, necessitating monthly drives for articles and redirects. We could also consider requesting Onel5969 to rejoin us; personally, I don't think it's a bad idea. Furthermore, within the NPP, we have many experienced reviewers and administrators who need to guide us moving forward. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:10, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

If my above comment is upsetting, I apologize, but I feel it's necessary for someone to step forward and start discussing this because the backlog is still under our control, and with a little more effort, we can reduce it. However, if it continues, we might face a backlog that never ends. We need to be prepared for this because continuously organizing drives might discourage a significant number of reviewers from joining. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Entirely off the top of my head, a major factor is the erosion of inherent notability as a means of deciding. It's still straightforward to whizz through articles (for example) covered by NPOL or listed national monuments, but a minefield once away from that sort of clear criteria. Not that NPP will have much if any influence on the relevant discussions. Otherwise what you seem to be suggesting is a sort of second Draftspace - surely not, given how the first one has turned out? Ingratis (talk) 13:32, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
  • The problem is that pretty much all of these articles are borderline. Wikipedia has been around for 20+ years. Everything that is super notable already has an article. You basically have to do a full WP:BEFORE on all of these new articles but who wants to do that for thousands of articles. And even if you do find some GNG sources, it's still probably borderline. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 13:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    I have to agree with this latter point, that much of what is highly notable in the world of knowledge is already the subject of a Wikipedia article. We're in many respects victims of Wikipedia's success, in that its ubiquity and popularity has created a rather large demand by every person, their bother, sister, father, mother and all their various nieces, nephews and other relations for their own article (or one for their company or favourite place or project). This has driven an ever-growing demand being addressed by undisclosed paid editing. I'm in favour of exploring any and all potential solutions to addressing what has now become a constantly growing perennial issue. I try my best to help in my small way as an occasional NPP reviewer, but the prospects for the future are indeed daunting. Geoff | Who, me? 14:07, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    Oh come on now, people! If we're close to done, we probably maybe are on topics that are most obvious to the predominant editor base of the current Wikipedia. But in the world of knowledge? We've barely begun. Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    +1 (t · c) buidhe 22:56, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    Thank you, yes, we really need to nip this "Wikipedia is finished" meme in the bud. I invite anyone who thinks that to peruse Category:Wikipedia red link lists. – Joe (talk) 08:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Concern about the backlog is literally as old as NPP itself. It has ebbed and flowed (when I started, we had a perennial backlog of 20,000+ articles; for much of last year, it was less than 2000), but its continuous presence for nearly twenty years proves that it isn't a matter of this or that reviewing practice, this or that policy change, or the (in)activity of a particular reviewer. It's just in the nature of Wikipedia that creating articles is more intrinsically motivating to more people than reviewing them, so the reviewers are always on the back foot. I don't think we will ever get rid of the backlog. What I hope we can do is stop it being so cyclical, because every time the backlog peaks (which, incidentally, is almost always caused by a highly-active reviewer leaving, and almost always persists until a new one steps up to replace them) it causes a panic, which causes demoralisation, which excerbates the underlying problem of lack of motivation to review. – Joe (talk) 14:50, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
  • First of all, I have to second Joe. NPP is supposed to have a perennial backlog, because we're supposed to be actively building the encyclopedia, and because ideally we should have more content creation than more administration. That said, back when I was actively thinking about this stuff, we did discuss a lot, propose a few things, try even fewer things. I took a break when notability guidelines began to get overhauled hoping to come back once things settled down, which I haven't done. Anyway, I remember a few things, which may be a lot for that time period since we only ever try very few things, but it was a narrow period starting in 2019.
    1. We were discussing streamlining the flowchart back then to reduce the workload. I am sure the history will show who actually did the work. Anyway, idea was reviewers should forgo checking for orphan, talk page tags, categories and other non-essentials that non-NPP reviewers mostly handle anyway. What do most reviewers do nowadays?
    2. Another thing that kinda was gaining consensus was that reviewers should take a little less stress about the outcome. When you nominate at AFD or for merge or when you redirect, do your work, and leave it up to the community to take it from there. Watch the AFDs to make sure it gets a proper close, otherwise leave it be wherever it heads. I even created a template at Template:NPPaction for reviewers to identify their NPP nominations so that people know you're doing it as part of the process, and not to satisfy a personal vendetta against the creator, WikiProject or inclusionist philosophy. I used it for a while, but it did not catch on.
    3. I remembering proposing that we establish a separate page, a noticeboard of sorts for editors to bring concerns about a particular case or discuss borderline issues. If we had it and used it, we could, for example, decide what to do with the Irani Cup series of articles that recently showed up. Irani Cup is notable but we've now got articles for individual seasons and each season is one match, so it's not a season at all, and regardless the articles were barebone, and we needed to talk to the creators about writing better articles, ideally with the backing of NPP admins. The proposal didn't go anywhere mainly because this very page is that page. But this page is also for meta discussions like the one we're having, and I bet we'd really quickly lose control if every reviewer started making 2-3 posts a day on this page. So, I still think we need that page, something that looks like the Teahouse.
    4. Another proposal that was rejected included having an innotation system where reviewers could leave notes about what they saw and why they are leaving the article without taking an action. I don't think it would go anywhere even now. So rule that out.
  • I do not think there's much more to be done. We can't do much because a reviewer has very little power to actually address all the issues that come up during a review. But, I'd be interested to see what proposals we can come up with now. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    NPP is supposed to have a perennial backlog. I'd like to push back against this idea of a perennial backlog being OK or being the ideal state of things. AFC has cleared their backlog during backlog drives twice in the last three years. That is what we should be shooting for. The backlog is like a slider, with zero backlog being on one side (hitting zero backlog is an amazing feeling by the way, very motivating), and an unclearable backlog that can never be fixed (like WP:CCI) on the other.
    The NPP coordination team is conscious of where this metaphorical slider is, and as it gets too high, we increase our recruitment efforts, frequency of backlog drives, etc. If the backlog ever gets 20,000 or higher again, we will likely discuss and get consensus for even more drastic steps, such as simplifying the flowchart more or letting articles fall off the back of the queue.
    We were discussing streamlining the flowchart back then to reduce the workload. This was executed. The gnoming steps of the flowchart have been marked as optional in the InsertCleverPhraseHere flowchart for about a year and an half I think. Things like maintenance tags, categories, WikiProject tags, etc. are optional for NPP reviewers. We should instead focus on the essential steps of copyright check, CSD, correct title, and notability.
    I remembering proposing that we establish a separate page, a noticeboard of sorts for editors to bring concerns about a particular case or discuss borderline issues. I think it'd be great to discuss notability more often on this talk page. Folks can also discuss notability and get second opinions on the NPP Discord. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:29, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    If we can have a second venue offwiki, we can certainly have one on-. I don't like it when I see people cite offwiki consensus or communication as a basis for their onwiki action, outside of CUOS stuff. Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:40, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I think it is important to think of a backlog only as "things that are getting indexed because we were unable to review them in time". Everything else, for me, is just the queue and it's fine to have a large queue (though smaller is better). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Too many articles that need to go to AfD sit in the queue for far too long. I think that if circumstances were different I would probably put twice as many articles from NPP into AfD than I currently do. Reasons for not doing so - the time it takes to do a full BEFORE; the difficulty of accessing sources in Malayalam or Marathi, and my lack of knowledge about what constitutes RS in that language; and not wishing to put up too many borderline cases on my own judgment. Personally I feel we could be more effective working as a team than as a swarm of individuals. If each article had an NPP checklist I could check for e.g. copyvio and Turkish sources and rate the article. If I came to an article that had been part-reviewed by three other NPPers who’d completed 80% of the checklist and rated it low I’d feel happier doing a final review myself and taking it to AfD if appropriate. At the moment 12 or 15 of us might look over the same article and all individually decide we don’t really think it’s good enough but not really feel confident enough to AfD it. If three or four of us could see each others thinking I feel we’d get through more faster. And/or I’d be happy to work in a squad that does collective reviews working from the back of the queue. Mccapra (talk) 16:33, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    I guess #3 and #4 from my comment could make that happen. And Rosguill was working on making a database of all sources NPP encounter in all major languages. I don't think anyone lent a big hand there either. So, again, the problem is, as we say, we are a swarm of individuals. We don't come together and decide and do things. Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:41, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    WP:NPPSG is Rosguill's source list I think. They get the "ratings" on that list from WP:RSN discussions, I think. And I have incorporated the sources and ratings into the colors used in User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:32, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    Just a thought, for some of these articles, say a Nepalese singer/model/business etc (nothing against Nepalese people just an example), with all the sources in their own language and no hits on an English language google search, could we not set the bar that we don't accept these unless there were at least a stub on their own Wikipedia? Josey Wales Parley 18:22, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    Coincidentally, being a Nepali, I can tell you the answer is no. Nepali Wikipedia is run by like five people and most of them do it for their careers rather than the mission. One admin was a NPP here and was caught advertising Wikipedia services. Another admin I for sure know has done COI editing here, and showed up once to proxy for a banned COI editor. English media in Nepal has barely started. Online media in Nepal has barely started. Online English papers, even reputable ones, you can tell, especially in popular culture, that they've published something not because someone serious has looked at a topic but because someone who had a decent grasp of English was interested in writing about it. It will be more likely that whatever topic you can find in English and online will be the one being pushed by SEO businesses.
    I know your point was not specific to Nepal. But anyway, for Nepali articles' GNG investigation, you can use the list at User:Usedtobecool/PSN and google translate. For the general case, again, that thing that Rosguill was working on. Let's agree to build it and use it together, I say. I will try to find it. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    Found it: Wikipedia:New page patrol source guide. I also found Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Reviewers with language specialties. There's a similar list for AFC at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/List of reviewers by subject. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:07, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    I like that we're thinking of ideas to make NPP/AFC/notability workflows more efficient. Doing something about foreign sources (which are hard for folks to evaluate), such as set the bar that we don't accept these unless there were at least a stub on their own Wikipedia?, would certainly help. Or getting rid of WP:BEFORE and requiring article authors to include enough notability-relevant sources in articles. Or making notability guidelines more numerical, such as specifying an exact # of GNG passing sources or an exact # of WP:NACTOR movies/TV shows or an exact WP:NPROF#C1 h-index instead of leaving it ambiguous.
    Sadly though I think these kinds of proposals are often declined by the wider community. I once proposed that WP:GNG's significant coverage examples be made more specific than its current guidance of "somewhere in length between one sentence and a book", and that was firmly shot down on the talk page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:44, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    I agree that there are massive efficiency gains to be made in how NPP handles notability, but in my view these suggestions are backwards. Maintenance processes like new pages patrol exist to support the creation of encyclopaedic articles, not the other way around. If reviewers find they're spending too much time assessing notability, then my recommendation is simply to stop doing it, rather than expecting article creators or AfD participants to work around them. There has never been a requirement that NPPers should come to a definitive conclusion about notability in every case, nor is it realistic to expect them to. – Joe (talk) 10:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Greetings, Let me start by saying that I occasionally visit NPP but have not signed up to be a reviewer. Majority of my wikipedia time I'm working on the Orphan article backlog here. So thankful for that Query tool to produce a plain-text list of de-orphan candidate articles. By "hammering away" untagging old orphan articles, "the backlog" total Orphan count is being reduced, even with the daily tagging of new orphan articles. I'm certain if I stop helping, the backlog will increase again. Sometimes I feel like an army-of-one.
    Now, to the point of Unreviewed article backlog, imo what is needed is a tool (another) that can send a new Talk section Notice to the article's Wikiproject(s) along with a Class-B checklist type of request, asking for the article to be reviewed. When I add a Wikiproject Talk page help request, there is almost always a prompt and helpful response. Here is an example from my archive.

Article assessment checklist

  1. Referencing and citation:  ToDo
  2. Coverage and accuracy:  ToDo
  3. Structure:  ToDo
  4. Grammar and style:  ToDo
  5. Supporting materials: ToDo
  6. Accessibility:  ToDo

Status:  ToDo  •  Yes •  No

The above example could be changed from "assessment" to "review" checklist, with two additional lines "Proposing an article for deletion" and "Afd:Nominated for deletion". All this is subject to discussion by others with more expertise than mine. I agree there has to be a better way to expedite NPP unreviewed articles. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  • I have to 'fess I haven't been too active lately - many commitments etc. However, the growing queue is evident! I recall suggesting last time we hit about 15,000 that we change the new article searchable flag to indefinite rather than 3 months, not sure if that got done (it seemed to have support at the time), but that would take away the imperative to act in a shorter timescale to review articles. I agree the gnarly ones are the 'borderline notables', you think they could possible survive AfD but also feel they could well go to AfD. And flooding AfD is all too easy (and getting zero input on an AfD resulting in 'No Consensus' closes is infinitely frustrating, especially after three relists) and yet unproductive. Relaxing the 'send to Draft' rules would be very helpful (Onel5969 made extensive use of 'send to draft' and got hammered for it, resulting in that there retirement from NPP) but seems to have consistently met strong resistance. One idea might be a tag/flag where a reviewer could tag the article with 'This looks like an AfD candidate' and if another two agree, it goes to AfD with the three delete votes automacically appended. The article could therefore be salvaged with strong opposition but Deleted by default based on the NPP feedback. I can only imagine this is one technically complicated scheme to implement and would require a robust RfC to even contemplate. But it would spread the load of those borderline decisions, which I think many of us feel unable to take alone. I could, of course, be tilting at windmills here... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 12:07, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    Hey everyone, I really appreciate all your thoughtful opinions! I believe the previous NPP (pre-20) and the current NPP aren't the same. Personally, I think LLM has played a significant role in the increasing creation ratio. NPP conducted two drives in 2018, two in 2021, and two in 2022, all of which were successful. However, during the October 2023 NPP drive (although which included a combo of redirects and articles), we couldn't reduce the backlog. Now, in 2024, even after our January drive, we might still have at least 6000 unreviewed articles in the queue. Considering the current creation ratio (3000 articles in 10 days), we're likely to encounter an article backlog again in April.
    It's disheartening to see that despite organizing two drives back-to-back, we've been unable to reduce the backlog. It seems that without these drives, we can't make a dent in it, potentially leading to the necessity of organizing drives every two months. This repetitive cycle might discourage many reviewers from participating in these drives.
    AI has the capability to generate well-formatted articles, and with the launch of the freemium version of ChatGPT, it's become easily accessible to everyone, facilitating article generation. For instance, you can see articles in this category that were generated by AI. From my personal experience, I was surprised by this type of article created via AI. I'm not suggesting these articles are entirely generated by AI, but I can certainly say that AI can create borderline content. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    No comment yet on the rest of your comment, but that category is just wrong. Whoever is doing that needs to stop. Paola Borović is a person, not an article. OpenAI is a company, not an author. So, I must be completely out of the loop if there's anything sensible in all that that I'm missing. Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:12, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    And the article was autopatrolled, hmm... Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    @Usedtobecool, I wanted to refer to ChatGPT but mistakenly mentioned its parent company, fixed now. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    How is Paola Borović AI written? Looks like it was created by an experienced editor. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 17:30, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    I'm not sure; perhaps you should ask its creator since they're the ones who added the page to the category during its creation. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:38, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    Also, I'm pinging @RodRabelo7, the creator of this category, to ask about its purpose. Is it meant for maintenance? It doesn't seem to make sense as a content category. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    I already did. Their answer is on their talk page[2]. Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    I agree that LLM/AI makes our job harder, but I do not think it is the explanation for the increasing backlog. Luckily LLM/AI is still spottable by folks that are experienced with its tells and can see the patterns (it likes to restate the question, it sounds polished and formal, it is often very general without offering specifics, etc.) I think the category you meant to link is Category:Articles containing suspected AI-generated texts, which is the category placed by the {{AI-generated}} template. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:55, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

There's really only one main answer.....we need to make it less painful and difficult to do NPP. And making review of the no-brainer ones automated or whatever is NOT a help. Those are the articles that take only 1 minute to do NPP right, and there are articles which would take 100 minutes each to do NPP "right". North8000 (talk) 16:32, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Just as well no-one has suggested it, then. Ingratis (talk) 22:44, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Qautro G5s

There are currently 29 articles in the queue created by Qautro that are probably eligible for WP:CSD#G5. If anyone fancies checking the histories and tagging them, it's an easy chunk to take out of the backlog. – Joe (talk) 15:14, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Ok, Doing. Thanks! – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
I've also done some of them. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:31, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Workshop: draftifying

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Workshop: draftifying. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 15:39, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Useful tools gone

There used to be two really useful tools we could use to help get articles into shape while reviewing them. One here turned bare urls into properly formatted cite book refs and the other here turned them into proper cite web refs. Both have died at some point which is a great shame. Is anyone using other tools or is anyone tempted to do what I lack the ability to do and create new replacements? Thanks Mccapra (talk) 21:45, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I have only ever used refill. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks very much I will try that one. Mccapra (talk) 06:09, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Do you know those two tool's names, maintainer usernames, and/or links to source code? That would be some good information to start the process of getting those tools back up. Odd that they are hosted on third party websites instead of Toolforge. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:06, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
I’m afraid I don’t know those details. Mccapra (talk) 14:17, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
You can use the User:DreamRimmer/fixbarerefs.js script, which adds a "fix bare references" option to the general menu. This script allows you to address bare references on any specific page using the Refill tool. – DreamRimmer (talk) 09:52, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
thank you. Mccapra (talk) 14:17, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
There is also Citer. 94rain Talk 10:03, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
thanks I’m trying that one now. Mccapra (talk) 14:17, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

suggestion

  • hi, just a quick suggestion for this year instead of giving two awards, like 2023(redirect and article review)bottom of page it might be a good idea to give the total (or one award) per total column as its a combination of both efforts...IMO, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:39, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

PSA: Old interface is going away

This week, on Thursday (18th Jan 2024), the old NewPagesFeed UI which was available by appending ?pagetriage_ui=old to the URL will be going away. If there any specific bugs on the newer interface that need to be resolved, let us/me know on this thread :) Sohom (talk) 15:13, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like we're aware of 4 bugs at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/541/ in the "Vue migration bugs" column. Will create tickets for and add to that column any additional ones mentioned here. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Pages "reviewed" but editor not autopatrolled and nothing in review log?

I noticed that the creations of User:Moondragon21, who used to be autopatrolled but had the right removed in 2022, seem to be automatically marked as "reviewed" anyway (green checkmark on Special:NewPagesFeed). There is nothing in the review log, they have not been nominated for deletion, ... I have no issue with the pages as such, and this is not a complaint about the editor who has no influence over this AFAIK: it is just a question about how this is possible or what I am missing. Example pages are Aurélie Trouvé, Wallington Demesne, and Mayor of the East Midlands. Fram (talk) 11:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Everything seems fine to me. I haven't noticed any recent (post-2022) autopatrolled articles for this user in the NewPagesFeed. The three pages you mentioned seem to be reviewed, not autopatrolled. Maybe there was an error. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:04, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
How are you checking the logs? Here's what I see:
  • Aurélie Trouvé - 23:47, 15 January 2024 JTtheOG talk contribs block marked revision 1195973964 of page Aurélie Trouvé patrolled
  • Wallington Demesne - 03:47, 16 January 2024 JTtheOG talk contribs block marked revision 1196033968 of page Wallington Demesne patrolled
  • Mayor of the East Midlands - 00:25, 16 January 2024 JTtheOG talk contribs block marked revision 1195979401 of page Mayor of the East Midlands patrolled
Looks normal to me, but maybe I'm being dense? Girth Summit (blether) 12:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I think JT used the patrol button and Fram looked at the review logs. Fram, on the curation toolbar, click the "page info" button to see how a page got the checkmark that it got, or didn't. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I think, when you ask for all logs or curation log of an article, the patrols don't show because patrols happen to a particular revision of a page, any page. It's just technically set up so that when a revision gets patrolled for an unreviewed article, the system marks the page reviewed, without generating a curation log. Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:21, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I'll confess, I'm a bit woolly on what the difference between 'reviewed' and 'patrolled' is, or which buttons cause which flag to be applied. I probably knew once upon a time... Girth Summit (blether) 12:22, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I think curation came about from later work to steamline quality control. Patrolling might have been the system it replaced. Vague recollections of something I read somewhere.
Main difference is that "mark as reviewed" thing is for articles and only articles to indicate which articles are ready for indexing. You can patrol other pages to tell everyone, hey, I looked at this new page, and it's fine. Back when I first joined, I used to see many editors going about just marking, for example, newly created userpages, as patrolled. People who've been working new page patrol a long time probably still do this: browse all kinds of pages that get created and mark them patrolled or nominate for deletion. And some probably favour their old workflow without the new pages feed and the curation toolbar. Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:36, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Go to Draft:Sunni Bahishti Zewar and scroll to the bottom (right, right above the category box) to find the patrol button. Then go to an unreviewed article and close the curation toolbar, the same thing will pop up, same place. Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you all, I checked the review log (and the general page log), not the patrol log, didn't know that had an influence on the reviewed status. Fram (talk) 12:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Having two logs to check is not ideal. We hope to fix this someday. Folks can visit WP:NPP#Patrol_versus_review and phab:T346215 for more info. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Still getting newsletter

Hi - I removed myself from the mailing list for the newsletter a while ago but I am still getting it. Please remove me from the mailing list. Thanks Nightfury 10:09, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey there @Nightfury, I looked into the NPP subscribers list, and it seems like your user talk isn't on there. The last newsletter you received was the Administrators' newsletter. Was that the one you meant? If so, I've already taken care of it and removed you from the list. – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:24, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
@DreamRimmer: It wasnt; but I've since found the issue. It appears the two I have on my talkpage have slipped under the doormat and couldnt be archived. I will remove them now. Nightfury 20:50, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
As far as I can see you last got an NPP related message in September, and removed your name from the newsletter list in November. So everything is working as expected. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 10:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Is CLASS = disambiguation still valid?

Hi all, for WikiProject Disambiguation and the guidance at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Disambiguation checklist, is CLASS = disambiguation still valid? On the page preview it returns:

Preview warning: Page using Template:WikiProject Disambiguation with unexpected parameter "CLASS"

Guidance appreciated. Thanks, microbiologyMarcus (petri dish·growths) 03:56, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the intent is that you include WikiProject Disambiguation in the banner shell with no extra parameters. Then you also add any other relevant wikiprojects, adding class=disambiguation for each. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:01, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Adding on to that, in the spirit of WP:PIQA, try to keep the |class= parameter only in the banner shell; all of the WikiProject banners inside it (with the exception of WikiProject Military history, of course) will inherit the class through Lua magic. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
For Disambiguation pages in particular, I don't believe there's a need to manually specify it at all (though no harm in doing so), due to further magic. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:46, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:WikiProject Unreferenced articles

I am from that WikiProject and I want to participate in NPP because both have the same aim of checking and citing unreferenced articles. I know that you guys are incredibly busy dealing with your own backlog, so I just want to ask how did NPP organized backlog drives and what do you think are the most important factor towards an effective drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:47, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your willingness to help! I noticed that you've been granted NPP rights for a month. Wishing you a fantastic time reviewing! – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:16, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
@CactiStaccingCrane, feel free to join the ongoing NPP drive! You can sign up at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Backlog drives/January 2024/Participants. Your participation would be much appreciated! – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:18, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for being so friendly! I will focus on citing sources and learn how to make an effective backlog drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:24, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
One month backlog drives 2–3 times a year seem to be a pretty good formula. Make sure to advertise it heavily, for example via WP:MMS to project members and possibly via a watchlist notice. Reaching zero backlog is an incredible morale booster and should always be the goal. A point system and a bot that updates a leaderboard frequently (daily) seems to be an important aspect so that folks can get mildly competitive about it. Make sure to award bling (barnstars) after the drive. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:08, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your tips! I am planning to make a backlog drive from July-December 2023, which consists of 3000 articles, in a span of one month. This page Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Test backlog drive is not an actual backlog drive but a fake one which I'm making in order to smooth out operations during the actual backlog drive. What do you think about it? How should it be improved? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:18, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
The real drive Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024 is now online! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:40, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Unreferenced articles February 2024 backlog drive

WikiProject Unreferenced articles | February 2024 Backlog Drive
There is a substantial backlog of unsourced articles on Wikipedia, and we need your help! The purpose of this drive is to add sources to these unsourced articles and make a meaningful impact.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles cited.
  • Remember to tag your edit summary with [[WP:FEB24]], both to advertise the event and tally the points later using Edit Summary Search.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you have subscribed to the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

NPP folks are skilled at finding and checking reliable sources, so they might be interested in joining this drive. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:59, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

This drive is excellent for those that want to get in some action after the January 2024 drive has ended :) Besides, there's a fair amount of articles in new-ish categories of Category:Articles without sources that haven't been patrolled, so there's that. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:23, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Does anyone find the stats in the Special:NewPagesFeed footer useful?

I'm thinking about deleting them. Feel free to comment here or on Phabricator. Here's my reasoning: phab:T349886#9469062. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:12, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The backlog number of articles and redirects is something that I regularly keep a watch on. I can't get those numbers without explicitly going to one of the sub-pages within WP:New Pages Patrol. The number of articles and reviews weekly, isn't particularly interesting to me, but might be for the AFC folk in that tab. I think the "oldest" number would be useful if it was accurate. I'd be fine with removing it until we are able to make it accurate somehow. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 07:45, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
I extensively do, yeah. I find use out of the "5005 days old in queue" feature during both redirect patrolling and article patrolling, especially due to the BLAR-catcher bit. When looking at redirects, there may be one from 10 years ago that pops up, which would come about from a page that either got BLAR'd, or a redirect that got turned into a new page and immediately BLAR'd again. In all situations, this BLAR needs to get marked as reviewed, so these are some of the first things I do when patrolling redirects (is taking care of the pages that got BLAR'd and show up at the backend of the queue, which is where I typically start from.) As for looking at "10 year old unpatrolled articles" that were created from redirects, this is also good to look at, because there's a good chance its the source of an edit war, or of a page that just got created from a previously established title (meaning there's very little chance of deletion, just revision). But that's just about the 5005 days thing from phab, idk much about the second line but I'd use it if it wasn't bugged. I didn't realize it was broken, but if it gets working, it does seem helpful because it's good to see how quickly the queue is moving along and if straits are dire for any reason. @Novem Linguae: Utopes (talk / cont) 02:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Chinese Characters

While reviewing there seems to be a large number of chinese characters appearing in the list. Example [3] , [4] and [5] all placed by one user and are all redirects. Do these belong on English wikipedia? I can't find any policy for deletion, can anyone advise? Regards. Hughesdarren (talk) 04:17, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I just asked the same question on the NPP Discord and would appreciate some discussion on this, as I was also unable to find any written guidelines for the situation. Also, Hughesdarren, I'm guessing you meant to say that they're disambiguation pages, not redirects? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:32, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Sorry TechnoSquirrel69, yes they are disambiguation pages. My main concern is that pages without an english title don't belong on english wikipedia but WP:Notenglish only talks about recommending pages for translation which isn't really possible in this case. Regards. Hughesdarren (talk) 05:38, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Interpreting Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Titles_of_works#Translations, it should be ok to have a redirect from a non-english title to the actual article. I would think that the same applies to disambiguation pages too. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 05:44, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
That makes sense. Redirects in non-Latin scripts are nothing new, but I doubt the encyclopedic utility of disambiguation pages at those titles. I guess let's start moving those pages over to transliterated titles. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:26, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Maybe try a pilot AfD. You'd get some opinions from non-NPPers too then. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:37, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm not really trying to get them deleted, as most of them look like legitimate disambiguation pages. Maybe an RM? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:42, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
BTW, AfD is Articles for discussion, not deletion. But, yeah WP:RM#CM seems to be the better place given that you are recommending a move. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 06:46, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
@MPGuy2824: You're thinking of RfD and FfD; AfD is still very much Articles for deletion. :P —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:59, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Aargh. Brain fart. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 07:02, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
These are generally fine, see Wikipedia:Redirects in languages other than English. If a redirect is valid, then a disambiguation page at that title is ipso facto valid, because a disambiguation page is what happens when there are multiple redirect targets for a title. – Joe (talk) 07:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Addition to curation tool

Hi folks. There are really useful tags in the curation tool for marking an article as uncategorised or that categories need improvement. I would like to propose adding a 'needs infobox' checkbox, and more importantly, checkboxes for 'This article is not included in any Wikiprojects' and/or 'Needs inclusion in additional Wikiprojects', similar to the 'Categories' ones - I find this is one of the most common recommendations I make. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 16:41, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Do these maintenance tag templates exist yet? If so, please share the wikilinks. If not, you'd probably want to get consensus to create them at a place such as Wikipedia talk:Template index/Cleanup. Also, the idea of maintenance tag templates for talk pages might not be popular, since maintenance tag templates are normally only for articles. Also, it is well accepted that every article should have a category, but it is not well accepted that every infobox-able article should have an infobox. My gut instinct is that the addition of an infobox is editor discretion and correlates to the size of the article and if there are indisputable facts available that could be placed in the infobox. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:52, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the feeback. No, they don't exist as yet, as far as I'm aware. I'll investigate further. Cheers, BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 00:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
If you use WP:RATER, then quite a few of the wikiproject templates allow you to add a needs-infobox OR inobox-needed tag. Should help. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:47, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Whether or not to include an infobox in an article is—surprisingly or not surprisingly, depending on your view of this website—highly controversial and has been the subject of a record three ArbCom cases. I think it'd be wise if NPPers didn't concern themselves with it. – Joe (talk) 08:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
… unless they have a death wish. I just had a flashback to the Infobox wars. Mccapra (talk) 08:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
We already have tracking categories for articles without WikiProjects, so I don't see any benefit of tagging them manually. I'm not even going to comment on infoboxes. :) -Kj cheetham (talk) 13:42, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

What criteria for this?

I just saw the page 清宮 in the new pages feed. Obviously this violates WP:ENGLISHTITLE, what should it be tagged with? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 20:01, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

It's fine, it's a disambiguation page, not an article. See #Chinese Characters and Category:Disambiguation pages with Chinese character titles. – Joe (talk) 21:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Glad I asked rather than jumping into it. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 22:01, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Drafts in Special:NewPages

Is there a way to hide all the drafts from Special:NewPages? Any setting I can toggle? JTtheOG (talk) 04:17, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

It's easy! Just set the namespace to 'article,' and it'll display only articles for you. – DreamRimmer (talk) 04:21, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
You can also set the namespace to 'draft' and then check the "Invert selection" box. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:25, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
Thank you both. JTtheOG (talk) 04:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Notability of political parties

Hi Folks!! I was wondering what makes a political notable. Regarding Lithuania - For Everyone. Would that notable with 12k people voting for them. Would that be considered notable. I notice there is a lot of small political parties over the last week. They are no trouble unlike the reams of wrestling articles but it would nice to know what the criteria is here. Any help is appreciated. scope_creepTalk 16:24, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Political parties need to meet the WP:GNG or WP:NCORP for inclusion. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:27, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Pretty sure you already know all the written rules.So, assuming you are asking for unwritten rules or heuristics, I would suggest "won a seat to state parliament" or better. Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
I would say that WP:NORG applies here. I don't think that their number of votes attained should create a special exception- the party only won <1% of the vote and zero seats, so I would argue that applying NORG would be fine. VickKiang (talk) 03:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
If the political party is a one-man vehicle, it is often better to merge into the candidate's article. It should only have a separate article if WP:NORG is met. (t · c) buidhe 03:16, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Agree with Usedtobecool that in practice, parties which have won at least one seat to a state or national legislature tend to be notable. Elli (talk | contribs) 06:53, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Help patrolling a page

Hiya! was wondering if anyone could assist me in the manual patrolling of this page: James Marriott (musician) as I would like it to surpass the 90 day wait. Thank you! George (talk) 02:45, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Georgeykiwi: It appears James Marriott (musician) was patrolled by Chris troutman and is now indexable by search engines. Is that what you were asking? —Sirdog (talk) 03:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Leading me to believe that Georgeykiwi is an undeclared paid editor who has to get the "client's Wikipedia article" in search engine results. I have found that condemnable fans are content with the article existing. Only paid editors care about SEO. The subject passes MUSICBIO so that's the end of it. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes it was! Thank you Sirdog :) Also Chris_troutman, I would like to say that i am not a paid editor / employed by him in any way, to put that assumption to sleep haha. Also Hey_man_im_josh, noted, thanks for your help :) George (talk) 11:48, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Moving forward, please wait patiently and do not post to ask to have your page patrolled. We have a lot of pages in the backlog and reviewers are always doing their best to get through it. Hey man im josh (talk) 04:05, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
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