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2004 discussion

Seems to me this idea died quickly. I think I have an idea why: people like me who enjoy monitoring the new pages would rather just do it rather than fuss with time slots; in the time it takes to do an edit here, I could have caught several new bogus articles. Obviously, there are lots of people with the same sorta hobby. --Jpgordon 21:55, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Discussion moved from the Village pump:


After noticing how many new pages we're getting now, and how many of them do need a little help along the way, I'd like to propose Wikipedia:New pages patrol as an entirely voluntary and low-obligation way of keeping up with Special:Newpages and the flood of new stub articles. As a community, we have a vested interest in watching new pages as they come in and gently offering advice and support to new contributors in order to keep the quality of our article database high. If people think that this is a good idea, I think it'd be ideal to link to this from a header in Special:Newpages much like we do on Special:Recentchanges. -- Seth Ilys 22:55, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

All we really have to pay attention to is that newly created articles are not immediately put up for deletion. See Wikipedia talk:List of encyclopedia topics (17 March 2004), where I have tried to point this out in some detail. <KF> 23:03, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There's also a tremendous number of new articles which are very poorly written (for instance, incomplete sentences, no wiki markup, no wikilinks, etc.) Especially with a link from the search page, a larger proportion of new articles are orphans or improperly titled. If nobody's watching Special:Newpages and helping these pages along as they come in, they can sit around for days or even weeks before anything meaningful happens to them. I proposed the new pages patrol as a way of helping keep the quality of our articles high. Folks are much more likely to contribute and add to an article that's properly formatted than one which is badly formatted. That's my interest in proposing this, because I know that there are other like-minded folks out there. -- Seth Ilys 23:30, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)
P.S. By helping make sure that new articles are improved and worked by veteran Wikipedians soon after their creation, it would seem to me that this article would actually lead to fewer VfD nominations. Most articles can be improved and made meaningful, if there's incentive and support for doing so. This is a way of doing just that. -- Seth Ilys
I already mentioned this on IRC, but I'll repeat it here for completeness. I think this idea is going to turn out detrimental. Currently, I think a lot of people watch Special:Newpages because they have a feeling of worry, i.e. they are worrying that rubbish articles may go through unnoticed. I think if this patrol system is going to be introduced, this worry will partly go away. People will start thinking they no longer need to watch it because other people are already organising it. Of course, this is a theory, which it probably wouldn't hurt to verify by experiment. &mdash; Timwi 23:58, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)


The current problem is that much of the time Special:Newpages is not being watched, and great deal of rubbish slips through and sits around for weeks. Part of the aim of this proposal is to ensure comprehensive, around-the-clock watching of new pages -- the proposal is intended to help solve the problem (a problem which already exists) that you suggest it might create. -- Seth Ilys 00:47, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I dunno about anyone else, but when I'm trolling (in a positive sense) for articles to clean up brainlessly before calling it a night, I always go to Newpages. And it seems that half the time that I pick an article to check, someone else has already been in and wikied and formatted it. I think I might be deterred if I thought that that proportion was going to be higher because there were people assigning themselves to new-page partrol--just wastes my time to click links that someone else has already managed. Just my initial reaction. Elf | Talk 02:09, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
But with the new pages patrol, you'd be able to find the pages that are least likely to have been looked over, and focus your efforts on those; it'd make you more productive, not less. -- Seth Ilys 02:49, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Maybe the new pages partol would be more effective if it were possible to have a way to mark the article as "already wikified". Then those still in bad state will show up better. However then we'd have the problem whom we allow to mark an article as such. If the one posting the nonsense sets the flag as well it will slip through much easier (similar like the worry Timwi issued before). And maybe the biggest problem - we'd need a mediawiki developer implement this feature. andy 09:12, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Also, I think smaller packages would be good, say 15 minute intervals, in case one hour seems too daunting. Also, give people the possibility of signing up in advance for a specific time slot, then crossing it off once they have completed it. That way, there is no overlap, and people can plan ahead. Danny 13:53, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Early text

How do you sign up?

how do you sign up for the new pages patrol User: Physik

Hi, sorry, but since your comment wasn't in a section, I put it in one for you. Thanks! --HAL2008 05:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
You don't need to sign up – you just start doing it! You can follow the instructions on this page (not this talk page; click on the "project" tab above). ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Stubs and short non-stubs

I've come here at the suggestion of another editor on the WikiProject Cricket Talk page (section heading: "I can't win!"). The discussion there was provoked by the fact that a short biographical article I wrote about a cricketer, William Adshead, had a stub tag added to it just a few minutes after I submitted it. There is a fair consensus in the WikiProject that articles such as Adshead's are not actually stubs despite their brevity: there are many cricketers about whom not that much is known, yet who pass the standards for notability (which in the case of cricketers means having played at first-class or List A level). Adshead is one of those, and since all the available significant details are already covered in his article, it shouldn't really be classed as a stub even though it's not all that long. Loganberry (Talk) 21:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Volunteering

I'm volunterringmy efforts, let me know if I should report that on a different page :) Mathiastck 10:55, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

"It is advisable to patrol new pages from the bottom of the first page of the log."

Does anyone actually do this? I could cite dozens of examples of pages that got littered with tags (especially speedy tags) within minutes of creation. Morgan Wick 17:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I do it (I added it to the page). The idea is it can be bitish to speedy a page created in good faith within one or two minutes of creation. Vandalism and obvious garbage I don't wait for.--Chaser - T 17:37, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone else? Morgan Wick 05:46, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm doing that, but I just started doing new page patrol a few days ago, qualifying me as a newbie.--Evil1987 19:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

User:Speedy Deletion Bot

Hi I created this bot to make reports here of users removing speedy tag on articles they created, I'm just waiting on approval for a trial run. --Chris g 11:47, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to add 10 day delay into A7 CSD process

There is discussion about adding a ten day delay into the A7 CSD process, since that would affect this wiki project significantly, I am posting a link to the discussion to obtain wider input from the community. --Fredrick day 14:14, 30 September 2007 (UTC)Proposal to add 10 day delay into A7 CSD process

[WikiEN-l] Anonymous page creation will be reenabled on English Wikipedia

From the mailing list:


Original post: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-October/084292.html . Better optimize those speedy deletion scripts, we're going to need them a lot more.

Discussion to WP:VPP#Anonymous page creation will be reenabled on English Wikipedia please. MER-C 09:55, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Patrolling enabled

New pages patrolling seems to have been enabled. So now you can mark a page as patrolled, making it easier for new page patrollers to coordinate patrolling. Thue | talk 19:03, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this should be reflected in the text of this page as well. huji—TALK 08:58, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Learning to rate new articles

I've been a vandal patroller for a long time. Now I think I'll help out with New pages patrol - but it's a lot harder. I've read WP:CSD, etc. but many articles are judgment calls and judgment is something that takes time to develop. What I'd like to do is list some pages that I patrolled and ask the experts why they rated {{db-bio}}, {{notability}}, or a pass. Here's the first one: Ralph Pulitzer. At the very least it should get an {{unreferenced}}, but does it deserve db-bio or a notability tag or any other tags? Sbowers3 (talk) 03:15, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Ralph Pulitzer (1879-1939) son of newspaper magnate, etc. makes it very likely there is reliable sources material for the article. No A7. -- Jreferee t/c 02:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's the second: Pearl Slaghoople, a fictional character from Fred Flintstone. I would have given it a CSD-A7 but another new pages patroller apparently accepted it (it wasn't marked yellow). Wikipedia has a LOT of articles about TV shows - are ALL of them notable? Sbowers3 (talk) 03:25, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I would CSD-A7 Pearl Slaghoople. -- Jreferee t/c 02:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Is William Donner Roosevelt notable?

The speedy delete question is not notable (WP:N), the speedy delete question is whether the article lists reasonable assertion of "importance/significance." William Donner Roosevelt is not a speedy delete candidate. -- Jreferee t/c 02:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Should I just go ahead and mark things for CSD knowing that someone else will review in case I am wrong? Sbowers3 (talk) 03:40, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes. No other way to learn. I usually pick up the candidates on this page: Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. -- Jreferee t/c 02:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
No. You should be trying to improve the encyclopedia. Sometimes that means deleting stuff, but usually it means finding references (which won't always be found on the first Google page) and adding information. Dan Beale-Cocks 18:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

India is one of the worst culprits for spamming the English Wikipedia

A high number of adverts, copyright infringements and incoherent pages are obviously related to India. It can be understood given the country's massive population and the fact that the people with Internet access are very likely to understand English, but on the whole they definitely seem less likely to understand Wikipedia's purpose than those in places such as Europe or the USA - it seems to be a sad fact. This is certainly not to say that no spam comes from Europe or the USA - very far from it - but India is probably the country that generates the greatest number of these types of pages when I'm looking over new pages patrol. Thoughts?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 13:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

My experience is that the kind of spammish new pages we get ebbs and flows with the time of day, who happens to be actively creating pages, etc. But assuming the section title is true, so what? What difference does it make except that perhaps some of our Indian editors are better placed to judge whether something qualifies as A7 or should go through another process?--chaser - t 10:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I've noticed this trend as well. It is what it is and new page patrollers need to treat these like any other new article and tag it appropriately. While its great that we are getting so many new articles on small villiages in India. It's very very rare that there are any references included at all. I have to remind myself of WP:BITE after tagging the 10th autobiography in a row on some non-notable engineer.

--RadioFan (talk) 14:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Essay that touches on New pages patrol

Newpage patrollers may be interested in the essay Write the Article First, which touches on NPP. Comments/changes/additions are of course welcome. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

View oldest non-patrolled?

By experimenting with the offset parameter in the url I discovered that there are more than 14,000 pages that have not been patrolled - and who knows how many older than one month. Could we get an "oldest" button to make it easier to patrol old articles before they disappear unpatrolled from the list of new pages? Sbowers3 (talk) 00:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Moving to VPR. Sbowers3 (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Help for the Spanish wiki

Hello fellows from the English wikipedia, I work hard patroling new pages in the Spanish wikipedia and have 2 questions for you. Since, your community is much bigger than ours, maybe you came up with tools that could help us, you are probably top hi-tech here. I a looking for a way to filter the authors of new pages. I do rely on a lot of authors and don't really need to double check their new pages. It would be great to filter the new pages with the authors than I don't include in a trusted authors page. The another thing I was wondering is if you have discovered a way to find out which wikipedia user (if any) is behind an IP address. You can also use me as link to the Spanish wikipedia in the case that you need anything and don't know whom to talk. If possible, please drop me an answer HERE as well. Thanks a lot in advance, all the best, --Little by little (talk) 22:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Bite the newbies and get rewarded with an adminship

Over at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship, new page patrols are being discussed. I keep coming across things like the following. The article titled Bochica was tagged for speedy deletion on the grounds that it's "patent nonsense", then deleted on the grounds that there's not enough context to identify the subject. That is irresponsible newbie-biting. That is willful stupidity. I had never heard of the topic, but found hits on Wikipedia and Google right away. Apparently the two users who did this didn't bother. That's how new pages are getting patrolled. I restored the page.

Why must new page patrolling be done only by people who are idiots because they choose to be idiots? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

  • I gently agree with some of your comments - some people seem to be a bit over-zealous when patrolling new pages or new usernames. There should be some guidelines about deleting pages or reporting new users - at least use the (Welcome) template first unless the new user is making clearly bad-faith contributions. Dan Beale-Cocks 18:25, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
This thread is more active atWT:RFA. Please go there so as to avoid forking the discussion. Thanks!--chaser - t 18:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I'll comment here, because my comments are directed at people doing new page patrol and not people going for adminship. Dan Beale-Cocks 21:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Here's an example of odd tagging. The tag says "This does not include poor writing, vandalism, material not in English, badly translated material", thus the article is inappropriately tagged, and the tagger did not bother to contact the articles author. Dan Beale-Cocks 21:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Commenting here because I am making a suggestion for this project page, rather than commenting on practice or behaviour. I see one of the articles mentioned as inappropriately tagged for speedy deletion at WT:RFA was the article entitled Bochica, which was actually listed as a missing encyclopaedia article ( presumably because the EB has an article on the subject). Would it be useful to have a few more hints on the project page including something like: "Even if the article appears to be nonsense, or notability is not asserted, if there is any doubt consider checking "What links here" to see if the article has been requested? If so, make a special effort to find references or otherwise improve the article in order to avoid the article being inappropriately tagged. --Boson (talk) 22:21, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. I'll try to keep that in mind even if it doesn't get to the project page. Sbowers3 (talk) 23:09, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Fictional numbers, policies, etc.

I agree with Boson, and I proposed that policy a few months ago and got shot down. The occasion was the idiotic proposed speedy deletion of the venerable article MathWorld as allegedly "blatant advertising". It was created when Wikipedia was unknown and the MathWorld website was universally known and respected, so the idea that it was intended as advertising is laughable, and there was no link to the company allegedly being advertised. Nearly 1500 pages linked to it! Most of those links were added by respectable professionals with no interest in advertising MathWorld, but acutely aware (as who is not?) of its renown. So I proposed a policy at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion: CHECK FOR LINKS TO THE ARTICLE. If there are more than 1000 of them, as in that case, check out the situation before speedily deleting.

I keep seeing good article tagged for speedy deletion thoughtlessly. So I raised this issue. As a result, I found out that there is such a thing as "new page patrols", and that this present page with policies on it exist. I have been told repeatedly that 90% or 95% of pages marked for speedy deletions really should be speedily deleted. I think those numbers are just fiction. They're simply made up. Maybe someone counts the cases where someone complains and is proved right. How do we know there aren't MANY good article speedily deleted whose newbie authors then go away disenchanted with Wikipedia and are never heard from again?

The answer would have to be some kind of systematic patrolling of the patrols. I don't know how best to do that efficiently. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that some speedy deletion is wrong, or borderline. THere are a few occasions when PRODding would have been better. Good luck trying to get some numbers on it though. Dan Beale-Cocks 08:32, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Ahhhh ... y'know, I've been commenting for a while now on AfD my wonderment at some of these lightning AfD nominations, saying "What, is there a prize for being the one who gets the most articles deleted in three minutes or less?" Now I find out that this is true. For my money, for anything less than a blatant CSD candidate, there's no way any editor alive can take the time to assess the notability and verifiability less than ninety seconds after creation, and I will aggressively Oppose any RfA candidate who engages in this practice. Heck, I would be pleased as punch if a new rule was put in forbidding filing an AfD on anything short of a WP:BLP violation within 72 hours of an article's creation. We're supposed to be building an encyclopedia here, not treating WP:NPP as a bloody competitive video game, and it would be a good thing if more experienced admins clued in the more rabid bombardiers.  RGTraynor  17:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

"Watching" this page

Is there a way to "watch" the new pages page, or a simple way to click there, other than manually typing in the address, or clicking help and searching for new page patrolling? Tool2Die4 (talk) 13:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you asking about Special:NewPages? No, you can't watch it, but there are two easy ways to get to it. On the left side of just about every page, under the Search box, you can click Special pages, then click New pages. Or you can use your browser to make a bookmark to the NewPages page. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I usually use the link in the NPP userbox on my user page as a quick link to Special:Newpages. (Side note: I also created a similar box of my own with a link to the deletion log, as I frequently troll that page looking for blue links.) --Finngall talk 21:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

To encourage not biting newbies...

Could people please make sure to use the {{welcome}} and {{firstarticle}} templates instead of the usual speedy warnings when creating user-talk pages? I tend to look through WP:LSD for badly-tagged speedies when I've got the time, and I've noticed that few of the users who've created these pages have been welcomed. Their talk pages are usually just a single {{nn-warn}} or {{spam-warn}} or something like that. The first interaction these users are having is with the WP:NPP and it doesn't appear that they're being notified about the speedies courteously. WP:NPP#Being nice already suggests welcoming new users, but I'd suggest also adding that, when creating a user talk page with a warning template, the {{firstarticle}} template should be used. Thanks. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 22:52, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree with this. Some editors sign up with what appears to be a role account, and then either create articles about their organisation, or add links to their website to relevant articles. They're clearly violating several important WP policies, and that needs to stop. But huge numbers of potentially useful editors are being driven away (and blocked) when a quick explanation of COI and role account policy could turn them into useful editors. Dan Beale-Cocks 15:49, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
People don't seem to be giving any time either, as suggested by the project page, as many articles are being csd'd 1 minute after creation. xenocidic (talk) 22:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Template to help new page patrollers

A lot of people are tagging new pages with CSD:A7 minutes after they are created. I am very lazy and was hoping there was a template to add to these peoples talk pages to suggest they patrol from the bottom up and not bite the newbies. Azazyel (talk) 10:49, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, per my comment above. xenocidic (talk) 22:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Reporting House

There have been three speedy delete tags for spam placed on the article Reporting House today, two by me and a third by another editor.[1] All three have been removed by the writer of the piece. (I also removed two fake references on the page, which have so far remained deleted). Is there anyone this should be reported to? --seahamlass 18:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Hide patrolled pages?

Is it just me that no longer has this option? I still have the hide bots option on Special:newpages. Paulbrock (talk) 02:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

seems to have fixed itself! Paulbrock (talk) 23:18, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Spotting page recereations

I've noticed some pages have tags on their initial creation e.g. Dan Lucas, which has a tag dating from 6 months before creation. Now this to me says a recreated page, but I can't find it under Special:Log under Dan Lucas or Dan lucas. Should I be looking somewhere else to see if it's been deleted in the past, or am I missing something? Paulbrock (talk) 13:56, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Flag templates for deletion warnings

Hello, fellow editors ...

In an effort to deal with the problem of proposed deletions and speedy deletions that occur Too Quickly, I have created a Protocol to minimize friction from proposed deletions and speedy deletions to flag dubious articles and possibly improve them, or else delete them according to the established policies.

As an example, I have flagged Dan Lucas (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) using the WP:FLAG-BIO protocol ... I have placed messages on both the article's and the author's talk pages, and will check it again next week.

I invite any comments or feedback from you about these templates and the protocols, which are designed to be used as "stencils" or "templates" in a second browser tab for easy copy&paste while editing ... so far, the biggest complaint has been, "It's too complicated," to which my reply has been, "Well, then just forget you ever saw it, and Move On." :-)

Happy Editing! — 72.75.78.69 (talk · contribs) 08:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, though a bit tricky to get my head round on first glance. So as I see it - there would now be an explanation of prod/speedy on the article's talk page and notify the user before moving onto speedy? Would you want to add Template:Flag-editor, then Template:prodwarning/Template:adw as well? And presumably this would only be used when you weren't sure about deletion, or would it be used all the time?
Speedy criteria are supposed to be applied on sight as I understand it, the point is the article is unsalvageable. Prods are different but at least there's 5 days of recovery time available. The easiest way to not bite the newbies is to patrol pages from the START of the list not the pages that are only 2 minutes old and under construction. Paulbrock (talk) 10:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
The idea is to flag it (with Template:Flag-editor and Template:Flag-article), wait a few days, and then see how it looks ... if you decide then to PROD or CSD, then you would also place a Template:prodwarning/Template:adw as a courtesy ... also, if a PROD is contested, it should be documented with a Template:Oldprodfull so that it won't be PRODed again.
If it's a blatantly obvious "Kill it before it grows" (unsalvageable) then the courtesy message after the tagging is sufficient, and you don't need the protocol ... it's not for every article, just the ones that might be WP:COI, WP:SPAM, or similar unsubstantiated self-promotion.
See the talk page for Daryn Jones (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for an example of an article that was improved by flagging it ... so it's only for the "potentially salvageable." —72.75.78.69 (talk) 14:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
You might also want to take a look at {{Hasty}}, which deals with hasty tagging after the fact. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 14:04, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Thnx! Never knew it was there ... I'll try to work it into the most appropriate place(s). —72.75.78.69 (talk) 14:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

What's that template?

Help!! ... What is the name of the template that says, "This article was deleted by CSD or PROD, but it has been restored."?? ... I saw it on some article, and I want to add its usage to the WP:FLAG-PROTOCOLs ... Happy Editing! — 72.75.78.69 (talk · contribs) 16:32, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

patrol whitelist bot

Hi, I have been running a bot of Wikisource that automatically marks new pages as patrolled if they meet certain criteria. It has been suggested to me that I run the bot on enWP as well, so I have initiated a request. Please comment at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JVbot 2. --John Vandenberg (chat) 10:07, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Flag templates redux

Hello again ...

I have modified Template:Flag-article and Template:Flag-editor so that (a) failure to "subst:" generates an error, (b) offering to assist in the message is optional, and (c) they populate Category:Flagged articles and Category:Flagged editors ... any feedback?

Happy Editing! — The Bipolar Anon-IP Gnome (talk · contribs) 10:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Oldest unpatrolled pages

Further to the thread up above, unpatrolled pages remain flagged as such for 720 hours, or 30 days. This link shows the end of the queue.

There are currently unpatrolled pages going back a month. In other words, they are expiring from the queue. Many are legitimate articles that deserve to stay, but there are many that have never had another set of eyes on them, slipped through with only a bot tagging or so, that can be speedied, prodded or AfD'd.

Can some NP patrollers drop in on the other end from time to time? A concerted effort will reduce the backlog and ensure every new page gets patrolled by at least one experienced user. There'll be a lot less friction, and no accusations of biting new contributors as they'll have be given more days to get things in order. Thanks. --Stephen 01:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I really don't see the point in patrolling 3-minute old pages which may well be in the midst of further editing, when there are 20 and 30 day old stubs that need attention. Admittedly by a lot of the obviously unsuitable stuff has long gone by then, but like Stephen says, that end of the queue still needs attention. I wonder as well if there's any way to automatically tick off the pages which have been tagged or afded/proded/speedied? From my understanding, editors have to explicitly click "mark as patrolled", which only appears if you go to the page from New Pages...Paulbrock (talk) 12:39, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure there is a bot who does this. At least, there was. Plrk (talk) 11:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Patrolling

I imagine that patrolling my own articles is out of the question? What about talk pages I create, ie adding templates for Wikiprojects/assessments? Typically, talk pages do not appear on the default New Pages log, so often go unnoticed. Do they even need patrolling? -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 04:06, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Issues with a patroller

There is a "recent changes patroller" named Rami who is uncivil and should be monitored. I believe he is letting the power go to his head. He threatens and he appears to be omniscient. He is in Israel and does not want to change dates and add events on the Jonathan Pollard page which are factually correct. i am giving up on your website. I don't like being bullied by unknown creepy people, especially when i have specific facts to improve a page. Kindly refer to my messages in "my talk" to a supervisor for review. You have some dangerous people "volunteering". I'll stick to published encyclopedias for the time being. The Pollard Page is an example of omissions and deletions.

This website appears to be excellent for movies,& celebrity trivia which is now the only reason i will take your word for anything.

Furtive admirer (talk) 23:43, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

First, the recent changes patrol isn't here, but I'll attempt to field this anyway. It appears that some of your edits to Jonathan Pollard are somewhat less than useful (using the diff given by User:Rami R), and he is correct to warn you about them. I suggest you take a look at our policies on verifiability and original research as well as our biographies of living persons policy, then hopefully you will see what is wrong with adding those sorts of statements to articles. Some of your assumptions about Rami R are also way off base, we are all volunteers here and to assume otherwise is a gross violation of some of our behavioural guidelines. I suggest you take some time and cool off, then go back to editing somewhere else. There are 2.3 million articles on the English Wikipedia, I'm sure you can find something interesting where you won't run into Rami. If problems continue after you have moved on, I suggest taking the issues to dispute resolution. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 23:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

thanx 4 the rsvp. i really have had enough. this is very time consuming and offers no personal satisfaction. it is not like i want any credit, just the facts published correctly and not sourced out with propaganda written as 'ostensible fact" in articles in national magagzines. i'll let someone else take the reins.

thanx again. Furtive admirer (talk) 01:06, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Notification of speedy deletion tags

Hi. There is a current discussion at talk:CSD about the possibility of strengthening the encouragement of CSD taggers to notify creators. Please feel free to join in there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Redirects?

Apologies in advance if this question has been asked before. It appears that new redirects do not appear on Special:NewPages (can someone confirm?). Since there is a WP:CSD reason (R3) that allows for speedy deletion of certain redirects, but only if they are newly created, it would seem valuable to patrol new redirects as well (either on Special:NewPages or through a different mechanism like a separate Special page). I have run into a number of cases where I would have liked to have deleted the redirect under R3, but since there was no way to pick it up on pator, I missed the window and had to go through the much greater PITA RfD process. Thoughts? UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:17, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

New essay about spam, business articles, and notability.

Greetings all. As an occasional new page patroller and longtime contributor, I recently wrote an essay about the use and misuse of speedy deletion, entitled "Not all business articles are spam". Please, read it and give me your feedback, either on the essay's talk page or my own user talk page. I am eager to hear your opinions about this subject. --Eastlaw (talk) 05:51, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Private equity articles

I wanted to bring your attention to some of the work we, the Private Equity Task Force, are doing in the private equity and venture capital universe. We know that for most Wikipedians it is difficult to discern a notable PE or VC firm from the hundreds if not thousands of non-notable firms.

We have created a list of some of the most notable private equity firms not currently on Wikipedia. This is not a comprehensive list but should you notice a firm on that list we would ask that you give the firm the benefit of the doubt from a notability perspective and quickly alert the PE Task Force so we can help rescue a troubled article. Also, we have collected some PE-related resources and some thoughts on what to look for in discerning whether a firm may be notable. If you want to discuss any new articles or stubs we can help with any of those discussions and would ask to be alerted to any proposed AfD debates.

Our goals are :

  • Protect and nurture notable PE related articles
  • Prevent Wikipedia from clogging up with non-notable articles
  • Encouraging new Wikipedians with an interest in finance and private equity

Thanks |► ϋrbanяenewaℓ • TALK ◄| 14:21, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

NPP: guideline for Categorization needs a minor modification

Problem: There are thousands of uncategorized pages in system as of now and they are sort of lost pages and remain so till someone hits them accidentally and puts it in proper category after that chances of page improvement/maintenance improves.
The current guideline says either tag it with 'uncat' or try to find a category for it, can this be modified a bit to say either find and add a category for it (may be Category:Fundamental category) or ask page creator to do that (since page creater is a registered Wikipedian so this shouldn't be tough part). Another thing that could be done is create fundamental uncat-categories on lines of Category:Fundamental and assign the page to that (I would prefer former approach). Pl note I am not saying adding 'stub category' as I find it as good as 'uncat' category and both leads to lost pages and page creation time is the best time to tackle this problem (nip it in the bud). Vjdchauhan (talk) 14:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC) (my main contribution on WP is related to page categorization)

Reviewing tool

While reviewing talk pages, I see many semi-automatic creation of rating page. Is there a way to tag all of them automatically, Is there a tool\bot that doing so? --OsamaK 22:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

NEW user association of Wikimedia to represent interests of all people who patrol in ALL wiki's

Greetings, ALL!

For those of you who are familiar with Wikipedian associations, specifically the ones on Wikimedia, I have started a new one for people who patrol wiki's or are interested in patrolling. For those not familiar with these associations, drop by and check it out. It's open to all people so come and see what you want it to become. Feel free to start new pages when you get there!!

More information can be found here.

Thanks!

fr33kman (talk) 03:53, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

PS: This is NOT spam or an inappropriate post it is about a genuine new Wikipedian association on wikimedia.org!

Special:Log/patrol

On the Swedish Wikipedia, sv:Special:Log/patrol lists the version number of each revision patrolled - even though it is only new pages (like here).en:Special:Log/patrol does not. Does anyone know what MediaWiki system message to edit to remove this? Plrk (talk) 15:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it: MediaWiki:Patrol-log-line. Plrk (talk) 15:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot to help index pages that slip through

I have made a bot request (Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 22#Index of unpatrolled, expired "New Pages") that, if created, would help new page patrollers manage the backlog of unpatrolled pages. You may want to voice your ideas at the bot request. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that could be a good idea. I know that a lot of them are by newbies that don't know their way around, but the backlog of ridiculous new pages is getting... well ridiculous! We must come up with a better system for dealing with this. Skeletor 0 (talk) 18:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to limit the creation of new articles

I've written down some thoughts about a proposal to limit the creation of new articles, while allowing anonymous users to create articles (which is not the case now). Your thoughts and comments will be highly valued, see User:Plrk/On the creation of articles. Plrk (talk) 21:24, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Automatic patrolling after a tag is added

I don't know if this is the best place to ask this, but I'll carry on regardless! Myself and User:Otherlleft wondered whether it would be possible for the software to be updated somehow so that if a tag is added (eg a speedy, PROD, XfD, notability etc) the article is automatically marked as being patrolled. The reasoning behind this is that when I NPP, I (and I'm sure many others) often find an article that hasn't been patrolled, but has been tagged.

It may be better suited to a bot to go through unpatrolled pages looking for a tag, and then marking it as patrolled, but I know nothing about scripting such things.

Any thoughts or comments? --Ged UK (talk) 11:01, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a somewhat similar bot already; see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JVbot 2 and User:JVbot. Contact the author and ask if that functionality could be added! (You could also point him to this discussion, of course.) I think it's a great idea. Plrk (talk) 14:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! --Ged UK (talk) 14:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
My bot could do this without much trouble; I would probably implement it as a second whitelist of tags that would indicate the page has been sufficiently "acted upon". Before I implement it, it would be nice to see some discussion and agreement on some tags which mean a page no longer needs more NPP eyes on it. John Vandenberg (chat) 15:16, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Brilliant! Let's see what we can come up with then, then I'll get back to you. --Ged UK (talk) 15:19, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I'd sure like to see that since it'd cut down on the number of things needed to do when tagging. Eeekster (talk) 10:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I would fully support setting pages marked with speedy delete tags as patrolled, but not pages marked with tags such as advert, notability, prod. . .Rcawsey (talk) 11:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
What is the issue around the PROD tag? Are you OK with XfD tags (usually AfD), or would you rather just CSD? --GedUK  11:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Rcawsey. I think this is a great idea and will cut back on redundancy and save users' time. ~ ωαdεstεr16«talkstalk» 11:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Please see questions benethe Rcawsey's response. --GedUK  11:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
This is a good idea. For users of Twinkle, it automatically marks a page as patrolled when you tag it, but this would be good for all those tags that get placed by other methods. -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 13:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Does it? I'd not noticed that! --GedUK  13:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Supported. Babakathy (talk) 14:47, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
To echo someone else's comment, yes, Twinkle does this automatically, and it's very nice. Judging from the way this is implemented in the MediaWiki PHP code (since NPP is controlled by a query string on the URL), it would probably be more complicated for one of the devs to implement natively than it is for us to use TW. §FreeRangeFrog 16:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I just stumbled across something that I hadn't thought of. If, for example, you are patrolling from here instead of here Twinkle won't mark the page as patrolled. That should be showing up as a bug (or FR) there soon. -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 17:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
No, because if you look at the format of the URLs that take you to the pages in the standard NPP section you'll see something like ...rcid=281178407&redirect=no, which is what makes the MW software place the small "mark as patrolled" link at the bottom and also what Twinkle uses to do mark the page for you when you place a tag in it. §FreeRangeFrog 17:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I knew that, but I thought maybe there'd be a way with Twinkle to have it hit a different url when you execute the tag. But maybe that's asking too much. -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 17:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
There was some new MediaWiki functionality (bugzilla:15936) that allowed marking a page as patrolled from wherever you came, but it was disabled again since it had a performance impact (and some other problems). Once it's re-enabled Twinkle can be taught to mark it patrolled no matter where you came from, it can't be done without the rcid. --Amalthea 22:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Support. I agree also. This is a good idea. Marek.69 talk 17:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a great idea to make NPP easier. I'd say the bot should patrol every page that is tagged with deletion or maintenance tags by someone other than the creator, an IP or newbie editor as to avoid that people can circumvent this bot. Regards SoWhy 20:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I Disagree. If a page is marked as patrolled then it becomes a race between the admin patrolling CSD and the author as to whether the article gets deleted or the tag is removed, and with our current admin shortage I'm often looking at speedies that were tagged many hours ago. I think what we really need is a three colour system for new articles: patrolled, unpatrolled and tagged for speedy but not yet deleted, that way if the author untags an article it would revert to unpatrolled. ϢereSpielChequers 12:18, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, to a point, but I for one have started patrolling the abuse filter log, which provides admins (possibly other editors too, i can't remember) with a list of articles that have had speedy tags removed. I then go back through the history, check who removed the template, and delete as necessary. --GedUK  12:50, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Whitelist suggestions

My intial thoughts are:

  • any of the CSD tags (eg {{db-bio}} or any other at Wikipedia:CSD)
  • {{advert}}
  • {{likeresume}}
  • {{notability}}
  • {{PROD}}
  • {{afd1}}

I'm sure there are plenty of others, however, sometimes articles are started with tags included, like wikify or unreferenced, because the author knows that work needs to be done, but can't do it themselves. --Ged UK (talk) 15:46, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

A full list of CSD tags can be found at Category:Speedy deletion templates. Cheers. lifebaka++ 19:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I am in full support for this suggestion. Also can be auto patrol articles which are created by well - established editors? --Anshuk (talk) 00:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I guess the problem with that is settling on a definition of 'well-established'. I can think of a few editors who've been here for years but still create what I would call less than high-quality articles and edits. I think that the effort of working out a list of criteria or of users would be more hassle than it's worth. --Ged UK (talk) 07:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Currently the only users who are auto-patrolled are administrators and bots. lifebaka++ 16:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
i like it, an excellent idea. not sure if advert indicates sufficiently acted upon tho. Mission Fleg (talk) 03:11, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I've no problem with taking out advert, though clearly keep the speedy-spam. --Ged UK (talk) 07:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
yup agreed, definitely keep the speedy-spam. Mission Fleg (talk) 06:06, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
All deletion nominations should be considered as having the article patrolled - CSD, PROD and AFD. Plrk (talk) 10:38, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Just those, or others as well? --Ged UK (talk) 11:46, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Are there any deletion processes except speedy deletion, proposed deletion and articles for deletion? Plrk (talk) 13:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
No, that's it as far as I know. What I meant was any other tags, like {{notability}} or {{advert}}, which might also indicate a page has been patrolled, as it's unlikely an author would attach those themselves. --Ged UK (talk) 13:28, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
There are other WP:XFD processes for other namespaces, but WP:CSD, WP:PROD, and XFD represent all the forms of deletion. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a great idea, it will save time and cut back on the amount that has to be doneMacromonkey (talk) 20:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Other Tags

I agree with the deletion tags, but other frequently-used ones might be worth considering, as they suggest patrolling by their nature. Especially when patrolling the backlog of new pages I tend to use less CSD and more tags like {{verify}}, {{references}}, and {{uncategorized}}. When added by an editor I think those should be sufficient, although I don't know if I would agree if it were bot-added.--otherlleft (talk) 13:49, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about this, embarassingly, but anyway. Do we have consensus, or should I try and get some regular patrollers to comment? --Ged UK (talk) 08:43, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree on the above list, but expand to any of the clean-up tags. Babakathy (talk) 14:47, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the cleanup tags; some people do put them on in the first draft, while making an article. I know I've seen a couple people add {{references}} right off, recognizing that their start may not be sufficient. But I wouldn't have any great problem with the bot marking those as patrolled, and it would be lovely for it to do the basic deletion tags at least. —Switchercat talkcont 15:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree with CSD, PROD, AfD, because I think it can be assumed that whoever applies one of those tags will watchlist the article and keep an eye on it case, say the tag is removed and/or the article is improved. Not so sure about the other tags - maybe better to leave it up to the tagging editor to choose whether to mark "patrolled" if he's satisfied no more needs to be done, but to leave it "unpatrolled" if he thinks some more eyes would be helpful. JohnCD (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

What about when a bot adds a tag? Will that tag make the article be marked patrolled even though no one has looked at the article? (Orphan tagging come to mind...) ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, the discussion certainly seems to be leaning towards only deletion tags, in which case no bot would tag things with a deletion tag. --GedUK  19:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
You guys need to think about how easy to game this would be before going any further. I create a new account, write up a long gushing article about my unremarkable company or post-goth nerdcore christian synthpop band, then I log off, add a bunch of tags, check the patrol log for a while until I see my page being given the thumbs up by the bot, log back in and Bob's my uncle. Once a page makes it past NPP, it's clear sailing and blue skies for spammers, vandals, nigerian princes and hoax purveyors. I'm not saying this isn't a good idea, just that you need to look at it from other angles. §FreeRangeFrog 19:11, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I understand your concerns, but that is what this discussion is for. I think we should keep the auto patrol bot to the deletion tags. I am not convinced that this will be excessively abused by people 'gaming' the system. I am all for moving forward with the deletion tagged articles.--Adam in MO Talk 19:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I think those are fair points. I would suggest therefore that we limit it to deletion tags. In your example, the only tags that you could add that would trigger the bot would be CSD, AfD or PROD, any of which would mean that the article would get reviewd by either an admin or the AFD people, or it would be deleted after 5 days. The only issue I could see there is that you could get a lot of publicity off a poor page in 5 days, so perhaps we shouldn't have PRODs, thus ensuring that all articles tagged by the pot as being patrolled would get at least one other human looking at them. Is that an adequate check and balance process? --GedUK  19:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
PRODs are checked by a number of prod patrollers soon after they are added, including myself--I check every one that is relevant to things I know about once every day or two. anything which cannot sit around for 5 days should be speedied. Prod as well as speedy and XfD could be included. DGG (talk) 01:36, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Not really, because anyone can add a CSD or PROD tag to an article, and anyone can remove them as well. PROD, specifically, and even CSD if I'm quick enough to avoid having an admin see it in the queue. So again, I can create my page, add a PROD tag using another IP or account, sit back and wait for it to be marked by the bot, then go back in and remove it. The only tag that wouldn't fly in these cases would be AfD, but I don't need it because I have PROD anyway. Does that make sense? I understand where this discussion is coming from, I routinely load articles in the NPP queue jut to see they already have a CSD tag. But I think there ar good reasons as to why this process has to involve sentient beings :) §FreeRangeFrog 19:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
What would stop you from creating an article and marking it patrolled on another account now? I didn't realize this proposal is for tags where human involvement was evident. I think that's reasonable. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure. I know that you can't do it from your own account (can't patrol what you created), but internally it might be IP-based, rather than account-based, in which case it would certainly be more robust. I'd need to look at the code and I don't have it in this computer. I've honestly never tried logging off and trying to patrol something I've created. §FreeRangeFrog 19:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
I was about to say much the same thing. The current system isn't foolproof, and i'm really not sure how likely your scenario is to happen. Plenty of articles near the end of the NPP a month after creation shouldhave been tagged long before, and hopefully this bot can free up time for more human eyes to look at articles sooner. --GedUK  19:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
The key is whether or not the check for self-patrol is IP address or account based. If the former then it really makes no difference. On the other hand if the check is by IP then the bot would make it easy to game. I don't have another account so I can't test this (and I'm behind a proxy right now anyway). I can look at the MediaWiki code when I get home and figure it out. §FreeRangeFrog 20:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Looking at Article.php@1650 and thereabouts, it seems that the patrol is not IP-based, so I guess this bot won't make much difference from an abuse standpoint. §FreeRangeFrog 02:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Sounds real good to me. Twinkle automatically does this, but only if the page was accessed from Special:Newpages. Aside from the effort it would place on bot designers/maintainers, I don't see much reason not to go with this. Although yeah, let's keep it to deletion tags. - Vianello (talk) 02:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't know if this is off-topic, but if the bot could write the name of the tagger, the kind of tag, and the wikilinked name of the page into an edit summary and/or onto some kind of log page every time a page is tagged for speedy deletion, then I could get an RSS feed of that bot's contribs (AFAIK, only contrib pages have RSS feeds) to be notified that there are deletions to be made in real time. If I particularly want to jump on any db-attack or db-copyvio pages but don't have time for more, I could filter the feed. Likewise, if I've been working with a particular set of taggers and want to keep an eye on them, I could filter the feed to watch for just their tags. I could also filter to look just for speedies, even if the bot makes a notation for XfD and prods as well. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 04:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The action of patrolling does not permit a log message to be recorded. However, the bot could write its own log on a page in the bots userspace, or it could email the log to a NPP mailing list hourly/daily/whatever.
      The bot will be inspecting the tags, so it is feasible that it could set of alarm bells :- if you want a feed of just those I can generate one from the toolserver. John Vandenberg (chat) 10:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Something on the toolserver would be great; people are asking for feedback on CSD tagging a lot, and without data, it's hard to answer the questions. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 12:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
If this is implemented, it would be a good thing to make sure it only applies to tags added by autoconfirmed users who are not the ones who created the page. DS (talk) 17:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Consensus

Right, I think we've probably reached a consensus. As I see it, all the deletion tags are acceptable to just about everybody, with a couple of concerns over PRODs. Other maintanence tags are slightly more tricky, so I would suggest that we leave those for now and see how we get on. I'll steer John Vandenberg back here as it's his bot that will do this. --GedUK  09:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Auto archiving threads on this talk page

We can use User:MiszaBot II to auto archive threads on this page. I don't see a con. But I need to have a consensus from everyone before I can configure it. Let me know if you have any views on this. --Anshuk (talk) 09:18, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

In 18months or so, there's 40 threads, including this one. I would have thought archiving threads over 3 months old would be fine, as we don't want the page to be blank. If, and I've a vague feeling Miszabot can make sure that there's content left, the page maintains content, maybe even a month. I wouldn't have thought shorter than that was necessary, this doesn't seem to get a lot of talk. --Ged UK (talk) 09:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

New templates

Hi, I'm trying to set up something based on this

10 latest anon edits
{{:Special:Recentchanges/10,hideliu,hidepatrolled}}

but for new templates. I can work around new pages,

10 newest page
{{Special:Newpages/10}}

but can't figure out how to modify the code to show only new templates. Can anyone helps? Thanks. Bennylin (talk) 06:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Using the drop-down menu at Special:Newpages, you can set the namespace on "template". Does that solve your problem? (Direct link: [2]) -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 06:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
But I can't wrap it around {{}} like this {{:Special:NewPages&namespace=10}}, can I?
{{:Special:NewPages&namespace=10}}
nope, I can't. Anyway, the case is that I want to put that shiny box in my user page. Going to the Special page is defeating the purpose. Bennylin (talk) 11:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I have documented the transclusion interface of mw:Help:New_pages.
You want {{Special:Newpages/limit=10,namespace=Template}}
10 newest templates
{{Special:Newpages/limit=10,namespace=Template}}
Another interesting use of transclusion is imperfect "last seven days of unpatrolled pages"; see User:Jayvdb/NPP7 (it hurts the database so dont load it often)
John Vandenberg (chat) 10:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. It doesn't work on Recentchanges though:
10 RC on Template namespace
{{Special:Recentchanges/limit=10,namespace=Template}}
Bennylin (talk) 16:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


  • Hello, transcluding the templates in this thread was causing issues with UNIQ tags and other stuff (at least on my version of Firefox). I have added nowiki tags to the transclusions above to suppress the issue. If the thread continues, please remember to remove nowiki tags where appropriate so the templates look as the contributor expected them to. ZabMilenkoHow am I driving? 04:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

My patrolling not in logs

I patrol lots of pages and now it doesnt show up in my logs. AlioTheFool (talk) 16:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a "Show patrol log" link that you have to click before it'll show up. See here for how it looks after you click it. I don't know when that got put in, but that's probably why you weren't seeing them. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
thank you. yeah it used to show it to me without having to click a special thing Alio The 'Fool 16:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Why I hate Speedy Deleters

Well, I posted this at WP:RfA and WP:CSD, where I saw it has having the most relevance. At WP:CSD, they suggested that I share it with the NPP crowd as well. I'm looking for thoughts/feedback on my most recent essay. If you are a NPP/CSD'er and thinking of running for Admin down the road, I particularly encourage you to read it!---Balloonman PoppaBalloon 17:08, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

A true CSD survey

Well, I've gone through a number of CSD nominations from the past month and found about 40 that I thought might pose interesting questions on how people perform CSD's. Basically, I'm asking people to review the article in question and answering the question, "how would you handle this" with one of four options:

1. Agree with criteria for deletion.

2. Disagree with criteria for deletion, but would delete the article under another criteria.

3. Disagree with the criteria for deletion, but this is a situation where IAR applies.

4. Disagree with speedily deleting the article.

To see the surveys, go to this page. I'm hoping to get a good mix of people to participate in the surveys---people who agree with my interpretation of CSD and people who have different views. I'll post the results in a couple of weeks after getting a decent return.---Balloonman PoppaBalloon 23:34, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've posted the results for the CSD survey---Balloonman PoppaBalloonTake the CSD Survey 02:01, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Enforcement of Speedy Deletion Template Removal via Bot

I have recently filed a BRFA as well as opened a thread on the village pump concerning enforcement of the speedy deletion template via a bot. Any comments or concerns about such bot would be appreciated at either page. —Nn123645 (talk) 06:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Cautious approach

I've added a paragraph near the top [3] about being respectful of inuse and underconstruction notices, largely in response to this ANI thread. Kim Bruning has already pointed out that NPP's should be working from the back of the log anyway, but I think it may be a good idea to formalize the approach of not moving too soon.

I'm not happy about my wording which appears to give special privilege to established editors, but after all they do generally know what they're about and will generally deliver correct results when they're done.

Comments welcome... Franamax (talk) 22:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I may add that in German WP it is an unwritten law to first step in 15 minutes after the creator made his/her last edit, as long as the article is not a blatant policy violation. This should give the creator time to build the article, if s/he wishes to save in between paragraphs. This also should give the NPP enough time to do a little research themselves. Counter examples are this diff as well as the above mentioned case, where the article currently seems to survive the AfD per WP:SNOW (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Them Terribles). --Avant-garde a clue-hexaChord2 22:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I stole the idea for 15 minutes from HexaChord :) Franamax (talk) 22:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Very sensible idea. I've always thought that there seems to be a desperate race on to tag things first, with all the pitfalls about doing it that way, like forgetting to actually mark a page as patrolled so that everyone else doesn't end up looking at it, and of course all the mistagging that goes on. --GedUK  22:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
People should be aware that Wikipedia is no first-person shooter, yes. There also is no capture the flag to be found here. --Avant-garde a clue-hexaChord2 22:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Another problem to be considered here is competence. This isn't trivial work. It actually requires an understanding of the various CSD criteria, especially A7. Possessing the ability to install Twinkle is not sufficient. If a new page patroller doesn't know what he's doing he can do far more damage here than anywhere else on Wikipedia. I think it's time we raise the bar for who gets to do this work. EconomicsGuy (talk) 08:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Heh, well, I'm pretty sure the competence issue is one that goes right across the wiki! --GedUK  08:22, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
I came here from the thread at WP:AN/I, & I have to agree that the presence of {{inuse}} or the like ought to alert patrollers to wait a while before tagging an article for deletion. Give the editor the benefit of the doubt, for petessake -- it'll help make Wikipedia a more hospitable place to work in! -- llywrch (talk) 21:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
And in the very few situations where I've come across unsuitable new articles on my journeys, I've usually tried to persuade new editors to move the article into their uspace for further work and even move it for them. I think I have a 100% success rate on the persuasion and approx. 100% failure on it ever becoming a mainspace article (i.e. they give up) - but it still just feels like a nicer way to do things. Of course it takes time, attention and discussion; I don't do regular NPP; and I wouldn't want to dump on the valuable work that our NPPers do - but unless it's "my firend Paul and me have this new band" or "Apollo 13 never landed on the moon", if the article is being actively edited it doesn't immediately need a CSD (or AFD or prod) tag. However this does not fit with the NPpatrol model, which is to work from the current log.
What would be ideal would be a separate NPWatchlist so that a NPPer could mark the new article as "watching" then check up on it 1-2 days later. Franamax (talk) 22:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

For db-copyvio, db-attack, and db-spam (in cases where the community believes the article to be an attempt to use Wikipedia to advertise a non-notable person or product), you need competent taggers and admins working together to delete these articles immediately. Pages get copied to mirror sites and indexed by search sites very quickly, sometimes within 10 minutes, and once they're on the web, they're there forever. With db-copyvio and db-attack, the issue is that we're subject to the same copyright and defamation laws that everyone else is; with db-spam, the issue is that we only encourage spammers if we hold off for 10 minutes before deleting, because much of the damage is already done by that time. For every other category of speedy deletion, I completely agree with the above sentiments ... and I'd like to point out that there's a standard WP:WARN template in these cases, {{hasty}}, which says basically "I agree with the tagger, but give them 1 hour from the time of creation". - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 22:46, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's certainly true, and it's clear that admins who deal with CSDs target these reports as the priority, which is as it should be. It's just trying to get teh balance right on the other ones so that they are tagged correctlty and at the right time, so that no-one's (admin, the author and the NPPer) time is wasted. --GedUK  14:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, but with a note that some editors may use the technique of copy-pasting in a copyvio to start an article, then progressively rewrite the whole thing into an original presentation. In that case, it's the end result that matters, so a 15-minute wait is still reasonable if it looks like the editor is making an effort. Of course, an obvious attack page should be tagged immediately, no matter how much effort the author is making to pretty it up. Franamax (talk) 18:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
It's not a big problem if the copyvio stuff is rewritten, because then the copyvio will be replaced on the mirror and archiving sites. The problem comes if the article is deleted rather than improved, which happens in my experience 90% of the time. Then the archived version is the only version that ever exists, and then we're violating both the rule of DMCA (we're not taking down copyright violations as soon as we see them), and the spirit of DMCA (because we're knowingly preserving the copyright violations, by waiting until they get archived before we delete). My understanding is that the WMF lawyer, Mike Godwin, is aware of the language at WP:CV. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 20:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, IANAL but I think that if we can show ourselves to be diligent in our efforts, we're clean. 15 minutes is pretty darn prudent and is far far better than most other websites, also if the author is actively working on remedying the situation, again we can show dilgent efforts. To me, a gentle note that starting off with a copyvio is not a good plan in future would be the best route. You're likely right in your estimated percentage though - most copyvios are just put there and left by new editors who just don't understand what copyright is and have no idea that if they spend many hours decipehering wiki-ese they'll discover it's against the rules.
And again NAL, but I think DMCA applies to WMF itself (in the letter of the law) and acting promptly upon receiving notification - and "as soon as" would be at least a day (and "immediately" for lawyers means anything from three days to three months :( ) As to the spirit of the act, it's not our problem how other sites do their mirroring. If they use an RSS feed, they get the article the second it's created. All that said, yes, we do aggressively patrol for copyvios and we don't compromise on them. It comes down to a judgement call though - if it's clear that the editor is already working on solving the problem, there's no need to jump on them with a tag. Hence my suggestion that 15 minutes is reasonable discretion. Franamax (talk) 01:15, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
Versageek had what sounds like an excellent suggestion ... edit out the copyvio part immediately, but leave them a nice message and give them some time to get their act together before deleting the article (unless there's some other reason to speedy; many db-copyvios could be and are deleted as db-spam). Is that acceptable? - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 15:58, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
That's pretty reasonable. The text is stll available in the history for the author to reference (which is not copyvio as far as I know, since it's not on public display) and at the same time it won't get propagated. Franamax (talk) 20:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Patrolling Issue

Greetings, When i check the log, and select a page not highlighted, i dont see the Mark this page as patrolled link? Any help would be appreciated :) --English836 (talk) 23:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

If the page is not highlighted, it has already been patrolled unless maybe you created the page yourself?(15:20, 21 March 2009 (UTC)). Each page only needs to be patrolled once. You can still edit the page. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Also, unless you are an admin, you can't mark pages that you have created. This is so that your new page gets seen by a fresh pair of eyes - sometimes it is hard to criticise your own work objectively. In your case (and I'm saying this in an entirely collaborative spirit) this means that someone like me gets to point out that your citation in Ghent (NYCRR station) doesn't actually support the statement, and your Craryville (NYCRR station) and Martindale (NYCRR station) articles are entirely unreferenced. Of course, I don't really suppose that you're some Walter Mitty type busily inventing fantasy rail services, but if your articles don't cite reliable sources it's hard for readers to know whether to trust them. So it would be great if you could polish up the new pages you created today. Thanks! - Pointillist (talk) 23:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
P.S. I forgot to say—some editors don't know how to do references (or think they can just create new pages but leave someone else to establish notability/verifiability!)—so if I can help you improve your NYCRR station articles, please let me know. - Pointillist (talk) 00:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Okay cool, I have a few book references that cover like 3-4 of the articles, but just need a few for the remaining 4--English836 (talk) 00:04, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for replying and good luck. You might find that the same reference works for a lot of the articles. For example, you talk about cessation of NYCRR passenger services in 1972 in several articles, so once you have a reference for it you can just paste it in everywhere (including the main New York Central Railroad article which doesn't mention the year 1972 yet). - Pointillist (talk) 00:12, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
You can check whether a page has been patrolled by going to Special:Logs, typing the name of the page in the righthand box and clicking "go". Patrolled pages have a log entry stating that a user has patrolled them. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:20, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Competition!

I'm proposing a competition as follows, perhaps first of a series; others may edit it. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The task

Each team will try to create the longest possible stretch free of unpatrolled articles starting from the earlier end of their stretch (bottom of the list) and working forwards. The time periods contained 500 unpatrolled articles each when I checked a few minutes ago. (as of 14:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)))

  • Team A: between March 6 00:00 and March 7 16:43 2009 (UTC) Patrol from the bottom of this list, which starts from March 6 00:00 at the bottom.
  • Team B: between March 9 00:00 and March 10 04:36 2009 (UTC). Patrol from the bottom of this list, which starts from March 9 00:00 at the bottom.

Rules

  • Canvassing is allowed for this competition! Get all your friends to come and help with new page patrol. However, avoid posting messages where they're likely to be unwelcome.
  • Competition begins as soon as at least one person has signed up for each team. Others may join throughout the competition.

The team members

Sign yourself up! Participants pledge to put quality of patrolling and the good of the project ahead of winning the competition, and to also spend some time during the competition patrolling from the very back end of the unpatrolled log.

Team A

Team B

Progress

Team A

Team B

How to determine the winning team

The competition ends when either all the articles in one stretch are patrolled, or one of the stretches reaches the back end of the log (around April 5). The winning team is the first one to finish their stretch, or, if neither did, then the one with a consecutive stretch free of unpatrolled articles beginning from the earlier end of their stretch and covering a larger proportion of the time period than the other team's.

However, the other team can then argue that the reason they didn't patrol as many articles is that the quality of their patrolling was better or that they spent more time patrolling the back end; the first team can retort that if the other team had spent more time patrolling than arguing over who was better, they might have had a chance of winning; the other team can edit the rules to define them as winning, and everybody can end up with that warm fuzzy feeling that consensus is on their side and that we're all working together to build the best encyclopedia in the world.

Discussion

Competitions are evil

Already-deleted pages are not patrolled!?

Poking around at the back of the pagepatrol log, I noted that a good deal of the pages that have not been patrolled simply don't exist anymore. I am assuming this is a bug, in which case it should be fixed so that deleted pages don't show up in the newpages log anymore. ~user:orngjce223 ☺ how am I typing? 23:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Backlog clearing effort

On IRC we are working to clear the newpage backlog, any help would be appreciated.--Ipatrol (talk) 03:38, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

CSD checking bot

After some discussion on the RFA talk page concerning the difficulty in getting feedback about the accuracy of CSD work, an idea was proposed to have a bot check the outcomes of people's speedies, and notifying editors if they have CSD tags denied or if the page they tagged was deleted under a different criteria than the one they tagged it for. I am currently working out the implementation for such a bot on the the bot requests page and would appreciate feedback from frequent CSDers. One of the key things that needs working out is if people would find it objectionable if the bot worked on an opt-out system, giving notifications to everyone who does not opt out, or if it should only notify people who explicitly opt in. I would appreciate any feedback anyone has, but please leave it on the bot request page so I can keep it all in one place.--Dycedarg ж 17:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Expansion of A7 for "individual animals"

CSD A7 has been expanded to cover individual animals. Please note that this is intended to cover articles on pets and the like and is not for any sort of class of animals, such as a species.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:05, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion I made re: welcoming new users.

I made a suggestion over at Wikipedia_talk:Friendly#Feature_request:_TAG_page_-_Automatic_welcome and if anyone that happens to patroll pages often thinks the idea is good/bad/OK/ or has any other comments (or happens to know how to do the two in one scenario of tagging/welcoming) the feel free to let me know. Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 12:38, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

New Page Patrollers, are they mindreaders?

Take a look at a new essay that may be useful in explaining to editors who are displeased with their article is tagged for speedy deletion, prod'd or AFD'd protesting that it was just created and they had intentions of adding more detail with exemplary citations to reliable sources.

WP:MINDREADER

Additions, modifications, etc. are welcome to the essay as always.

--RadioFan (talk) 03:06, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Excellent essay RadioFan.Calaka (talk) 05:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Userfication

Wikipedia:Userfication is not mentioned on the main page, nor is it mentioned on this talk page (update: see below), is it something that has been considered a nicer alternative to speedy delete or taking something to WP:AFD.

Have any editors here made a practice of moving articles to user subspace, instead of tagging them for deletion? Ikip (talk) 20:11, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I would love to do this for articles that are appropriate for userification. Would it be possible (I know I like to make things really easy for me but...) if it can be all done with a click of a button? I.e. click on friendly, click on "userify", page automatically moved to user sub page + note/welcome message given on their talk page. It would be a nice alternative to doing CSD all the time for articles that might have potential.Calaka (talk) 05:56, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Wow, what a great idea! I will talk to the friendly folks. :) and add link here. Ikip (talk) 07:22, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Friendly#Adding_userfication_to_friendly Ikip (talk) 07:36, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions or help solicited

There's a new way to start articles. Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0. The good news is that many new editors are using it. Over 400 articles are in Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard. The bad news is that a lot of new editors are using it, and following the advice to go to WP:FEED for feedback. The small number of people that watch that page are overwhelmed.

The solution may be something like NPP - maybe even editors who signed up for NPP would like to add WP:FEED (hint, hint) to their watchlist, and pitch in.

If the editors who are part of NPP don't see providing feedback as a good fit, perhaps you can offer some advice on how to create a FeedPatrol, with a sexy template and everything.--SPhilbrickT 22:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Highlighted articles

How do you get the article to be un-highlighted when they have been checked on the Special:NewPages page?--Pianoplonkers (talk) 17:42, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

If you click on the article on Special:NewPages, you will notice a link at the bottom right of the article page: "Mark this page as patrolled". If you click on that, the article will be marked as patrolled and no longer highlighted. If you edit the article, you must remember to go back to the original display; otherwise you will not see the link. --Boson (talk) 18:07, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Colours?

Why are some articles highlighted yellow? Could this be explained on the project page? Thanks. --Jubilee♫clipman 06:22, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

There's a banner at the very top of the project page that states "Wondering why Special:Newpages has highlighting? See here for full details about this cool software feature." Jezebel'sPonyoshhh 23:00, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

New Pages from User:Justaway213

Apologies if this is not the right place for this. The user has created several new pages with partial japanese text. I don't want to bite the newcomer but how best approach this? They may be useful just not in EN wiki! &#0149;xytram&#0149; tkctgy 12:39, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I would have thought a nice simple message on their talk page would do the job, not yet another template that doesn't explain the particulars of this circumstance. No need to overcompliacte things! GedUK  13:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Can't patrol a page due to move

‎Paul W. Clayborn was moved to User:Paulclayborn. How do we get this out of the new pages list? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Marking a page as patrolled

The instructions say to mark any “page with a tag explaining that it needs major improvement” as patrolled. However, I tagged a new page as needing improvement, and the “mark as patrolled” link disappeared. I then checked the “patrol log” and did not see the page was marked as patrolled. Why did the link to “mark as patrolled” disappear if the page was not automatically marked as patrolled by virtue of me tagging it and the patrol log shows no indication that somebody else marked it as “patrolled”? Bwrs (talk) 01:45, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The "Mark page as patrolled" link only shows up if you open the page from the New Pages list. I usually mark the page patrolled before I tag it for cleanup. Bobby Tables (talk) 04:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
If you go back to Special:Newpages and open it again, it will give you a new "Mark page as patrolled" link for the updated page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
The page you return to after editing lacks the rcid. Clicking the back button twice should bring you back to the page that has the [Mark this page as patrolled] link. Reach Out to the Truth 18:50, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

As some of you may be aware, many new articles are being created via the relatively new article wizard. A percentage of these articles are created as userspace drafts and only later moved to the mainspace and thus bypass listing at newpages. But many of these articles will be in Category:Unreviewed new articles, placed by the tag, {{New unreviewed article}}. Though the wizard will hopefully cause a better percentage of these article to not meet any CSD than article created without it, these are "new pages" and need all the same review as those at special:newpages. So if some of you would keep in mind to check that category and patrol there as well, that would be great.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Userbox: change of attitude please

Patrollers are invited to use this template on their userpage:


The patroller is raising his/her hand saying STOP HERE. I would prefer to have a patroller starting with both hands on his/her back. Saying STOP from start is not civil, not wiki, and also biting the newbies. Also it precludes helping. Request change of image. -DePiep (talk) 12:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

A picture of a customs officer would appropriately illustrate the NPP, maybe an armed US border patroller. Fences&Windows 22:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I like Fences idea. Ikip (talk) 20:07, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Nothing with guns please, there are parts of the world where that would be somewhat contentious. ϢereSpielChequers 17:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I like this though ϢereSpielChequers 17:26, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't serious. Fences&Windows 00:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted pages showing up on unpatrolled list

When viewing the list of unpatrolled pages, there are usually a few pages listed that have already been deleted. The last three on the list right now (Mandee Rene, ‎Lg versa, and ST. PETER'S school kodaikanal) have been deleted but are still marked unpatrolled. Is there any way for a non-admin to mark these articles as patrolled, or is there another way to remove them from the list? Bobby Tables (talk) 17:21, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Adding &action=markpatrolled to the URL will mark the page as patrolled. I've tested it and it works for deleted pages as well. Reach Out to the Truth 16:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Lightening the load

Just a reminder in case anyone wasn't aware of this. If you see someone doing lots of consistently patrollable quality articles and they seem to have a fair grasp of BLP and notability its worth nominating them for Autoreviewer status so that all their future articles are pre patrolled. OK that means an even higher proportion of what appears at Special:NewPages will be crud, but the total workload will drop. ϢereSpielChequers 17:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Make patrol-on-edit default for experienced users

The "Mark page patrolled" link should be replaced with: "[checkbox] Mark page patrolled on edit" and "Mark now" with the check-box pre-filled for experienced editors.

Optionally, make the check-box setting a user preference.

This would make NPP a lot easier since most edits by experienced users would auto-mark the pages as patrolled, in much the same way that editors with the autoreviewer have new articles automatically marked patrolled.

Having a check-box gives editors a chance to say "no, wait, I want to edit this but not mark it patrolled." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Strongly disagree with having "the check-box pre-filled for experienced editors". "Patrolled" means the editor takes some responsibility for the quality of the article, but in your scenario they might have just dropped by to correct a link in "See also" or "External links" – they haven't even glanced at the body of the article. It's completely different from trusting some editors to create satisfactory articles. We let experienced soldiers decide when to pull out the pin from their grenades, but that doesn't mean the system should pull the pin out for them without warning, does it? - Pointillist (talk) 01:20, 28 November 2009 (UTC)0

User preference: Always show patrolled status

If I run across a page during non-NPP work, I still want to see if it's been patrolled, and if not, mark it. Does anyone else think this is worth asking for at the technical village pump? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:12, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree in principle. When it comes to a discussion I'd like to fold in the related question whether "patrolled" should mean "safe for Google to index". - Pointillist (talk) 00:57, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I like this idea alot. I'm not sure if it's technically feasible, and I assume it would have to be an 'opt in' function, but if the kinks could be worked out I think this could be a great enhancement to new page patrolling. I hate seeing articles fall off the back-end of the list without being patrolled - the idea that these "lost" new pages could be marked as patrolled down the road is enticing. --Jezebel'sPonyoshhh 01:10, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Safe for Google index? If by that you mean factually correct and not full of opinion and not one-sided, unfortunately significant parts of the project would fail in that regard, including pretty much by definition most articles that are fully protected due to edit disputes. If you mean no COPYVIO, BLP issues, or unnecessary-for-the-article NSFW content, yeah, that's a realistic goal. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:38, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
I just think the community here (and the grown ups) should decide what 'safe for Google index' should mean, and how an article gains or even loses that status. NPP is just a part of the picture, though an important part, given the growing size of en.wikipedia and the apparent ceiling in the number of people interested in maintenance. - Pointillist (talk) 01:46, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Patroll Bot

Hey there, I made a proposal for a bot that hits 'patrol' when a page is marked for CSD or PROD but is not officially patrolled. See the full discussion here. Tim1357 (talk) 00:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi there. I made a similar proposal last year (it's here in the archives). I've replied at the pump. GedUK  13:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Userspace Pages

Just created a userbox here at 05:03 today (god, I need to sleep) and went to the new pages list to patrol it so someone else didn't have to, but it's not showing up. Are all pages created in userspace exempt from New Page Patrol, or is there some sort of lag that's preventing it from showing up? --ThejadefalconSing your songThe bird's seeds 05:14, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You can't patrol pages you've created (far too easy for vandals who know the system then!). Not sure about the userpages, I'll see if I can find it in the NP log. GedUK  10:16, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I can't see your article/userbox in the NP log, so I guess that userspace pages don't show. GedUK  10:18, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. Just curious because surely a vandal who knew the system could create an attack page which Recent Changes Patrollers may not catch. --ThejadefalconSing your songThe bird's seeds 12:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
There will always be ways to reduce your chance of getting caught. We do what we can to revert vandalism but we can't catch everything. I would give you some ideas but then I would have to do something I shouldn't. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 12:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Feel free to e-mail ideas to me so I use them for the 2011 Wikipedia riots. :P --ThejadefalconSing your songThe bird's seeds 13:07, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
How will this be any different from the ongoing riots? :) davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Because it will... be... you know what? Point taken. XD! I've only been there a week and I'm already starting to dislike it. --ThejadefalconSing your songThe bird's seeds 14:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Userspace is by no means exempt from newpage patrol, but most NPP is done with the filter defaulting to article space. I've just marked your userbox as patrolled [4] ϢereSpielChequers 14:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Ah, thank you! --ThejadefalconSing your songThe bird's seeds 14:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I would like an automated way to jump 1 day in, 15 days in, and RANDOM time into the list

Resolved
 – {{Newpagesbox}} added to WP:NPP with several times to choose from. No random though. It would make a useful addition *hint hint*. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Right now, there are quick-links for us to start patrolling the newest pages and a quick link to patrol the list from 30 days out in reverse order.

I would like a quick-link to jump in after 24 hours, by which time articles should have some work done already, halfway into the list, and a random time period into the list. The last two links will reduce the amount of junk that sticks around a whole month.

Yes, I know I can do this manually, I'm lazy, I want an easy way to do it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Err, I hate when people answer my questions with links but this is pretty much a perfect answer for question number 3. Special:Random/Special:NewPages returns a random, un patrolled page. Good luck! Tim1357 (talk) 01:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Odd, I don't have the option to mark those pages patrolled when I use this link. Either I got very lucky and had several already-patrolled pages shown to me or this link won't work for the purpose I want. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Solved for now. I added a template to WP:NPP that does the job. Eventually this or something like it should be moved to Special:NewPages but for now this will do. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
I have added the timing options (but for random) to MediaWiki:Newpages-summary. See this diff.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:33, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Update: The functionality of {{Newpagesbox}} has been added to MediaWiki:Newpages-summary which is used by Special:Newpages, so I pulled it from WP:New page patrol as redundant. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:59, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

discussion on user rights that would impact NPP

See: Wikipedia talk:User access levels#Be autoconfirmed to create a page? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:48, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

New tool for NPP

<spam>Kissle is in testing right now. Contact me on my talk page if you want to try it out. </spam>Tim Song (talk) 20:49, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Bot to patrol pages that have been tagged for deletion.

Hey NPPers, I made a bot that marks pages as patrolled if they have a CSD, a PROD, or a AFD template. (The conversation here was what I took as consensus.) If you want to check out some of the finer details or give your two cents, go to the bot's approval page here. Thanks! Tim1357 (talk) 02:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Advice on new article

I just created a new article on Energy Management Software and was looking for some feedback. See the discussion page for a brief note of how it is different from some similarly named articles. I'm trying to add references, any help would be appreciated —Preceding unsigned comment added by AHR Canuck37 (talk • contribs) 01:11, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Filtering Special:Newpages

I've set up an RSS feed to filter only video-game related articles from the new pages feed. Maybe other WikiProject want to do the same. See: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games#New articles RSS feed. JACOPLANE • 2007-12-17 22:19 —Preceding undated comment added 22:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC).

Is this a new trick?

The authors of GreenDogg seem to have found a way around NPP.

  1. Create not-too-bad looking advert
  2. use a SPA to mark the page as patrolled

Or have I assumed bad faith? Josh Parris 06:16, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

(1)It wasn't patrolled, though the "unreviewed article" tag has been taken off, the patrol log says that it has not been patrolled after the first deletion. (2) I don't think your guess is off the mark here; either that, or the "reviewing" account is really clueless - you shouldn't be reviewing stuff when you are not even autoconfirmed. (3) There are many ways to get around NPP - I won't mention them at the risk of getting beansy, but it is a problem. (4)I'd recommend a SPI here. Timotheus Canens (talk) 07:05, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Time delay before tagging?

I've got a proposal for a disambiguation tagging bot at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot. An issue has come up with how soon it should edit the article after creation. If NPPers have an opinion, feel free to express it. Josh Parris 08:11, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

When template-bombing new articles...

I think that new page patrollers need to be reminded that they are expected to give at least a meaningful edit summary, and typically to start a section on the discussion page of an article whenever they add a maintenance template to it. I see a lot of templates being added with nothing more than an automatic edit summary of the following kind, without any followup message on the talk page or even attempt to notify the creator of the article:

Added {{article issues}} with parameters cleanup, context and essay-like {{expert}} tag to article. using Friendly

This is not acceptable. For templates that imply a very subjective assessment (such as {{essay-like}}), the need for giving an explanation of why the tag was added is especially true. Some templates (the {{expert}} tag being one of them) a talk-page message is mandatory, since otherwise no one but the placer of the template will have any clue what it is about. Sławomir Biały (talk) 09:09, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Could you give a few examples. My recollection is that when I have seen tags like "Essay-like" on a new article (particularly when combined with other tags) it has usually been abundantly obvious from the article why the tag was added: articles full of expressions like "should", "despite", "the most important . . .", etc. and obviously looking like an essay or seminar notes (and usually without references). Such things may not be obvious to a new editor, but it might then be better to discuss possibilities for improvement on the user's talk page, following the Welcome template. It may, of course, be that you are generally looking at different types of articles. It is my impression, though, that such tags may be somewhat persistent: the most egregious instances of non-encyclopedic writing are improved but nobody feels justified in removing the tag. --Boson (talk) 12:49, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm not a fan of maintenance templates and would like to see many of them rephrased to be less obtrusive, or even replace them with categories. But I think some are sufficiently clear that they don't need a talkpage note or a note to the author. For example, I still regard somebody categorising one of my first articles as part of my welcome to Wikipedia. It was probably months after that before I started using categories, but nowadays I have installed wp:hotcat, a lot of my edits are categorisation, and I'm one of those editors who keeps Category:Uncategorized pages under control. So whilst I would prefer that someone tagging a page with {{uncategorised}} actually categorised it instead, and I would much rather have uncategorised as a category than a template, I don't see a need for it to be accompanied with messages on talkpages. ϢereSpielChequers 13:42, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that there certain templates whose placement is somewhat obvious. However, the {{expert}} tag clearly requires more than just an automated message, and its documentation mandates a thread on the talk page. Moreover, in the bulk of my own experience as an almost exclusively mathematics-related editor, new page patrollers have not generally shown good judgment in the application of maintenance templates. One example is orbital integral: [5]. None of the tags added here were remotely obvious to anyone else, and essay-like is a farcical stretch of the imagination. (Currently the topic of a discussion at WT:WPM, as well as the patroller's talk page.) User:Michael Hardy has more examples, and both of us have seen this sort of cavalier templating more often than we would like. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:01, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Be careful with this. I do new-page patrol and many of the cleanup templates are so obvious that a note on the article talk page would be redundant. When it comes to edit summaries I may do something as simple as "+{{notability|bio}}" or I may give a detailed line, depending whether I think it's necessary. One place I probably could do better is putting a note on the author's talk page welcoming him and explaining the cleanup templates. Also, if an editor were "required" or "heavily recommended" to use detailed edit summaries and article talk page explainations, he might use his wiki-time elsewhere, leaving articles un-patrolled. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:48, 19 December 2009 (UTC) Grammar fixed davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:07, 20 December 2009 (UTC).

Looking at the example, I think I see where you are coming from, Sławomir Biały, but I don't know if a comment on the talk page would help much. To me, it seems fairly obvious why the tag was placed; it seems almost as obvious, to me, why some mathemeticians might object to the tagging. I think it has more to do with different people's understanding of how accessible mathematical articles can and should be made to the general reader with little knowledge of mathematics and mathemeticians conventions. In other words, I think the debate should perhaps be about whether (or with what reservations) new page patrollers should add certain tags to articles on subjects which they know little about. --Boson (talk) 18:56, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
+1. However requiring a more detailed assessment or reasoning for the tag, forces people to tag only things, they have some knowledge about and blocks the temptation of quick, superficial mass taggings, which can become a quality issue on their own. Falsely or needlessly tagged articles are not really helping anybody, they just causes quarrels, cause additional work and bind resources and distract people from really important issues. The current discussion might even serve as an example or proof for those effects.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:28, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it would be a mistake to restrict taggers to "tag only things, they have some knowledge about". Tags like {{unreferencedBLP}} and {{wikify}} don't require you to understand the article, if you did you might be able to fix it yourself. Far better would be to encourage people to fix a few articles rather than tagging a larger number. ϢereSpielChequers 09:59, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
ok let me put it this way: When they tag something, they should understand enough to know which tag is appropriate. Requiring a short reason for the tag aside from the very obvious cases in not in contradiction to your examples. Using {{wikify}} for an article not having any wikilinks at all is pretty obvious. However simply using the tag because the wikilinks in the article seems to be "below average" or not enough for the editor's taste being unfamiliar with the content and not knowing which terms could or should be linked is a bad thing. Similarly using {{{unreferencedBLP}} for an article without sources is obvious, but using is for well sourced article that just happened to use not enough footnotes for the editor's taste is a bad idea as well. In those "bad" cases, you essentially turn mere differences in writing style into alleged quality problems, which will result in unnecessary quarrels and a waste of resources.
I agree that encouraging people to fix/improve an articles directly is always preferable to tagging. Generally speaking the guidelines should make editors aware that large numbers of "bad" tags do create a problem of their own and hence some moderation and due diligence is desirable.--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:13, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Tagging a referenced BLP as unreferenced sounds like troutworthy behaviour. Absolutely people should only use the correct tag. ϢereSpielChequers 20:15, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps Sławomir Biały would consider asking the folks that maintain Friendly and Twinkle to figure out which common tags require talk page messages (e.g., {{globalize}}, which I have seen misused to complain that "____ in [Name of Single Country Here]" is focused on the named subject instead of "____ in the entire world"), and prompt editors to leave the necessary talk page messages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all of the very thoughtful replies. I believe that there is some consensus on the need to emphasize the following:

  • Make sure to tag only articles that need it. For example, tagging an article as {{unreferenced}} simply because footnotes are not used (e.g., if Harvard citations are employed instead) is inappropriate—I see this happen a lot, actually, and not just from new page patrollers.
  • Be aware that the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia allow for considerable differences in style: writing style, citation style, and so forth. Do not use automated tools to tag an article simply because it has a different "style" than the one to which you are accustomed. Exercise due diligence in the application of templates to an article.
  • Only use automatic edit summaries when applying tags that are especially obvious. For instance, tagging an article that consists only of straight text {{wikify}} does not require any further explanation (the tag is self-explanatory). Tagging an article with gross errors in spelling, grammar, and so forth with {{cleanup}} is fairly self-explanatory, although a more specific template like {{copyediting}} might be a good idea instead. However, tagging an article with {{cleanup}} simply because it is written in an unfamiliar style or on a highly technical subject with which one is unfamiliar is not appropriate without further clarification on the talk page.
  • In some cases, a descriptive edit summary and/or explanation on the talk page is mandatory. The {{expert}} tag absolutely mandates more than an automated edit summary. {{Globalize}} seems to be one of those very subjective templates that would require an explanation on the talk page, as should {{NPOV}}.
  • Due diligence is the key. Obviously there are going to be a lot of exceptions to any kind of attempt to mandate talk-page messages, but I think the project seems to endorse a de facto standard of drive-by tagging.

--Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:37, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

+1 In addition I'd like to add that the use of the {{unreferenced}} is not only unappropriate in the footnotes versus Harvard style scenario, but for some cases with a lack of inline citations as well. Short articles only using a few specific sources often have no need for any inline citations at all. In such cases it is good enough to simply list the sources under references.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:01, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
IMO, tagging an article as "unreferenced" because it uses general refs, embedded citations, or parenthetical refs (etc.) makes both Wikipedia and the individual editor placing the tag look stupid. Alternatives like {{No footnotes}} or {{Refimprove}} might be useful, but "There are no sources named here... well, if you ignore the sources you listed on the page..." is unfortunate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:14, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Indeed - unfortunately it happens. And even for the other 2 tags you can have a similar problems. This mostly due to some editors adding tags quickly without actually fully reading/checking content and its sources and often do so bot supported. For obvious cases that usually doesn't cause a problem, but in the less obvious cases it occasionally or even often simply creates stupid tagging. For instance the case triggering this whole discussion was an editor being unable or unwilling to distinguish between "we" as manner of speech (as often used in science literature in particular) and "we" as expressing a personal point of view and insisted on the latter though it was obviously not the case. Similarly if you have a short article relying on very few (short) sources listed at the end under references, there is usually no need for explicit citations/footnotes, which is kinda clear to everybody taking the time to read the article and the references. However somebody just judging at first glance without actually looking at the sources might (falsely) argue none of the stated facts are really sourced because they have no footnote and we end up with a stupid tagging again.--Kmhkmh (talk) 23:45, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Backlog is now cleared

Mostly thanks to Ironholds and other NPPers out there. Good work! –MuZemike 03:56, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I thought the log was broken when clicking to patrol from the back gave me titles identical to those when patrolling from the front - that's terrific! Well done to those who took part. Gonzonoir (talk) 10:19, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced BLPs

What are NPPers doing about unsourced BLPs? As there's a war going on over these articles at the moment, it'd be good if the NPP could help avoid any more making it into the encyclopedia. I'm not proposing we delete them all on sight, but rather that instead of just tagging a BLP as unsourced and marking it patrolled, NPPers should actually add sources to new, notable unsourced BLPs. Thoughts? Fences&Windows 15:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

For reference, see discussions here and here. Older discussions exist, as well, but I don't know their locations offhand. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Also see here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people--Kmhkmh (talk) 23:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't work

In the Patrolling new pages in the subsection Improving new pages in the part for Foreign language articles. There is a link provided for a page to analyze text to determine what language it is. When you click the link it takes you to a page that says "It works!", nothing more. --Rent A Troop (talk) 12:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I've hidden the link for now. I'm not sure how it's supposed to work, but I certainly can't get anything from it! GedUK  13:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Autoreview requests

I went through the DYK archives and made a shit-ton of autoreview requests for good candidates. Acalamari has been reviewing them single-handedly and there are a few that he would like a second opinion on. Considering the benefit NPPatrollers would receive from having more users with autoreview privileges and considering the strong possibility that I will be dumping more requests there in the next few days, it would be in the best interest of any NPP admins to head on over to WP:RFP/A and help out. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, please comment in this discussion. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:30, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Hasty tagging?

New-page patrollers might be interested in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Over-hasty tagging of new articles = off-putting to new users. Maurreen (talk) 20:38, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Sticky prod

See WP:STICKY. Any new BLP that lacks sourcing can now be prodded with {{Prod blp}} and must be sourced to avoid deletion in 10 days. Please feel free to join in using this.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:56, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

removing article wizard tags when patrolling

I admit, I'm bad at removing article creation wizard cruft from articles when patrolling them and wonder if this could somehow be automated. When marking a new article patrolled, could the {{tl:New unreviewed article}} template be removed from the article and the article removed from Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard as a part of that process? Also it would be nice to remove the External links section if it is empty (I wonder how many articles there are that link to example.com ?--RadioFan (talk) 12:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Possible Feedback Patrol - overlap with NPP or a separate niche?

I stumbled across Category:Requests to move a userspace draft, containing (at the time) 242 requests, some several months old. I've started reducing the backlog, but it prompted me to consider creating a Feedback Patrol - see initial thoughts here. One obvious question is the extent to which the mandate for this type of group would overlap with NPP. I see some differences, but I would love to hear the feedback from regulars here. (And, of course, if anyone wants to pitch in with the backlog, I'd be appreciative.)--SPhilbrickT 23:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahhh!

All the highlights are gone. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (talk) 21:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

It's visible for me. What URL are you using?`` WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Never mind. sSome sort of caching effect. Marcus Qwertius (talk) 22:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

How do you patrol?

I don't get it... Do you just click the link and look at it, and if it's fine you just leave and welcome them if they are new? Am I missing something? Do you have to have one of those programs? Lateley I seem to find something and it tells you all about it... but not the basic how to do it. Syntheticalconnections (talk)(my contribs) 05:00, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Click the [mark this page as patrolled] thing on the bottom of the page to patrol it. No editing gadjets required. -- Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 05:08, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Okay thanks. I see nowhere that tells me that... Hmmm... Thanks. Syntheticalconnections (talk)(my contribs) 05:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
The other point to note is that you may also want to edit the article to wikify, add references, categories etc. (or flag their absence), in which case you will have to return to the original display to find the link to "mark as patrolled" (unless you clicked that before making the changes). --Boson (talk) 10:59, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Special:NewPages should have a link on the sidebar like Special:RecentChanges. That would make getting to it MUCH easier. Sumsum2010 · Talk · Contributions 00:07, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Reordering some paragraphs

I have re-ordered some paragraphs/sections (Patrolling new pages and Being nice) to try to improve the flow of the instructions. Hope it is OK. Was also thinking about a little "in a nutshell box". (Msrasnw (talk) 13:57, 26 July 2010 (UTC))

length of queue

I've made a proposal at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Increase_Special_New_Pages_from_30_days_to_60_days which is rather relevant to this page. ϢereSpielChequers 16:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Counter

Where can I find a tool counting the number of pages patrolled by a single editor during a chosen period of time (for wikis with enabled New pages patrol)? Thanks, --Microcell (talk) 13:46, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

BLPs - special rules

Why is there no mention of being extra careful about biographies of living people on the instructions page? No mention of the WP:BLPPROD system, no mention that they are a special category that we now no longer accept new articles being created without referencing? Surely this has to be added somewhere. Regards, The-Pope (talk) 11:56, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Because, as this talk page demonstrates, the project is all but dead. However, I'm canvassing for people to actively maintain it, and I will shortly be making some suggestion when I get some feed back from the bot handlers. In the meantime, do feel free to add anything you feel is missing.--Kudpung (talk) 21:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I've added something. ϢereSpielChequers 22:31, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Problematic patroller

I've recently stumbled upon an editor who is habitually marking pages as patrolled without really patrolling them at all. The user is Sopher99 (talk · contribs). There is evidence on their talk page that multiple editors have criticized their work at NPP and tried to give advice, although the user is generally unresponsive. I have also recently pointed out some shortcomings at User talk:Sopher99#New page patrolling. The user didn't respond to my comments, but also didn't patrol any articles for awhile. They recently quietly resumed patrolling articles and haven't improved at all. See my comments on their talk page for specific examples. Is there anything that can be done about this? SnottyWong speak 14:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I second Snottywong's concerns. Sopher99 has been having issues for a year now with little sign of improvement. There have been a couple of AN/I threads [6] [7] about this, and I think more serious action is required. I believe Sopher99 has demonstrated that s/he is unable to properly patrol new pages, and ought to find some other tasks on Wikipedia, whether this action is voluntary or involuntary. P. D. Cook Talk to me! 14:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Should we bring this issue back to AN/I? It might get more attention there. P. D. Cook Talk to me! 15:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I have noticed too but I have held back on making any new warnings on their talk page as there are so many already. I think the editor is not a native English speaker. Probably the only solution is to watch for more poor patrolls and make the four incremental warnings, and if it still has no effect, then a short procedural block. --Kudpung (talk) 15:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Is there a templated warning for "inadequate new page patrolling"? I've given the user two separate warnings myself, there's got to be at least 2 more on their talk page. I'm not looking to get the user blocked, I just want them to either communicate with us and learn how to patrol correctly, or stop patrolling. If they refuse to do either, then a block might be a last resort. SnottyWong gab 16:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm certainly not advocating blocking per se, my suggestion above was more one of agent provocateur - too many admins already dish out blocks for all the wrong reasons, but what's happening now could be considered disruptive editing. The user's page has a lot (around 20) complaints and warnings about NPP and two ANI reports, although I have not been able to locate them in the archives. It appears that Sopher uses AWB a lot. Are they using it to patrol the new pages? That would definitely not be an area for automation. AFAIK, permission to use AWB can be withdrawn. I've also left a message on their tp. Kudpung (talk) 02:10, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
While I haven't looked at the editor's work, the comments on the talk page suggest that the problem is really just one of style—a difference in what NPPers should do. For example, someone is unhappy that Sopher has not spammed tags into a sufficient proportion of new articles. Someone else demands that a check for orphaned articles be done for every single article.
These are not actually requirements for marking pages as patrolled. There is no "proper" way to do it. The main purpose of NPP is to make sure that absolute garbage gets prod'd or sent to CSD, especially if it's outright vandalism or obvious libel. Spamming a variety of tags into an article under the guise of "helping" (a type of "help" that many editors find confusing or irritating) is a strictly optional, non-integral part of the process. If you want to do it while you're there, then that's okay (within reason), and if you don't, then don't. There's no policy or guideline that says you have to tag any article, ever.
Really, you should think this through: If (for example) we wanted every new article that wasn't already linked to three other articles to have an {{orphan}} tag on it, we'd set up a bot to do just that. This is a trivial task for a bot: pull data here, count there, spam that. You can take the fact that the community has never approved any such bot as proof that this behavior is not generally wanted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Cleanup tags aside, this user is really not doing anything to the articles they are patrolling. Take the example I left on their talk page (which has since been speedily deleted). There was a redlink template on the top of the page. How can you possibly miss that? Surely something like Template:Doesn't exist at the very top of the page is something that should be addressed by a new page patroller. I think the issue here is more than just style. SnottyWong talk 02:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Again, I agree with Snottywong, having observed Sopher99's edits for a year now. It's beyond style. Yes, there are different ways to patrol new pages, but this user has demonstrated significant misunderstandings of, for example, WP:N, WP:V and WP:BLP, not to mention WP:CSD. I have on numerous occasions gone through this user's contributions and fixed errors. The user also doesn't communicate very much about this issue. It would be easier if s/he left new page patrol to folks with a firmer understanding of these policies. I hate being so harsh on someone who clearly wishes to be a constructive part of the community, but I don't think it's right that many of us have to keep correcting these mistakes. P. D. Cook Talk to me! 04:08, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Well sopher99's behaviour might be somewhat problematic or at least not particularly helpful, but reading the comments/suggestions on his user page, I must say I agree with talk. Plastering new pages with various service tags in a rather formalistic manner (like the orphan tag suggestion) is not a good idea, in doubt it just diverts resources from real problems, which is a bad thing.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:24, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)This NPP projects clearly defines its objectives, and its recommendations what New Page Patrollers should be doing. I agree that the orphan tag is not strictly necessary (and I don't use it myself). However, if new pages cannot be patrolled properly in the spirit of the NPP project, tagging articles where they need attention, making some improvements on the fly as per Wikipedia:New pages patrol#Improving new pages, doing WP:BEFORE CSD, PROD or AfD, checking on page histories for logs of previous deletions, checking on creator contribs for possible patterns of vandalism, copyvio, COI, and sock, then there is no point in the NPP project at all, and we are all wasting our time in trying to maintain quality for this encyclopedia, and can all go home.
In the meantime, I too have gone through all the users edits for January, and it took a lot of time, and I too conclude that while this editor is clearly acting in GF, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of core policies. Their edits introduce too many false positives, grammatical, and spelling errors, and the new page patrolling should definitely be left well alone. Kudpung (talk) 04:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Kmhkmh, (and WhatamIdoing), we are not here to redebate the entire NPP project. We are discussing something that over 20 editors have considered is a problem concerning a user whose editing editing pattern may not be entirely constructive to building this encyclopedia and maintaining its quality. Kudpung (talk) 04:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm not not objecting against "relieving" this user from NPP work or getting him a mentor - that's all fine with me. However if we are talking about him or how he should improve, we need to consider what was suggested to him and that's the point that WhatamIdoing raised. If that user now shifts from "doing nothing" to a "formalistic tagging", such as adding te oprhan tag to any article not having 3 links pointing to it, then from my perspective we've replaced one problem by another and that's not a solution in my eyes.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:01, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Kmhkmh, what exactly is the problem with adding cleanup tags (like {{orphan}}) to articles? Not only do they notify the author of problems with the article that they may not have been aware of (or perhaps didn't even know that they were problems), but they also categorize the article so that other editors can easily find them and fix them in the future if the original author doesn't. There is no downside, unless of course you are worried that authors will be insulted or annoyed by a cleanup tag at the top of their article (although I fail to see how that is a major problem, it's more of an incentive for them to quickly fix the problem). SnottyWong spill the beans 14:56, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I think I can understand the concern here. We have an editor who only seems to be able to do robotic things, to an exact formula, following rules by rote, and (with no insult to them intended), doesn't seem to be very good at thinking things through and assessing articles individually. Tagging articles appropriately is great, but I think we have an editor who really should only use tags if there's a genuine hard and fast rule that never requires interpretation or analysis - "orphan" and "uncategorized" may well satisfy that (but then, do we want all new stubs to be festooned with tags? Maybe we do - I'm not sure of policy here). Even "unreferenced" was too hard, even after it was spelled out that there had to be *no* references for it to be tagged unreferenced, and we got articles tagged because the references were in a section called "Notes". So I really wonder if there is any rote task that this editor should be doing - as NPP is a very important area, which can impact on the likelihood of new editors staying to contribute, I'd be reluctant for someone to be doing even the simplest tagging when they have repeatedly shown that they don't really understand the reasons for tags and don't really seem to have much analytical ability - they appear capable, essentially, of only doing bot tasks, but we have bots for those. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
It's difficult to determine what this editor is capable of, since they've been entirely unresponsive and uncommunicative. He/she is essentially being a bull in a china shop. SnottyWong express 15:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Yep, that's a good point (and I hadn't seen that essay before - it's good). -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I've read through these comments and had a look back on this user's Talk page, and it's sad to see them still having the same problems I tried to help with months ago (as did a number of others). We've got someone here who is young and keen, but sadly doesn't seem to have the required competence - they keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and don't engage in any discussions aimed at helping. In an earlier discussion, I suggested they should stop NPP altogether unless they get a mentor - and I think that should be enforced now. I don't think this person should be doing any "maintenance/management" work of any description - NPP, vandal patrol, CSD, etc - unless they can at least get a mentor who can lead them by the hand. (I actually fear that won't succeed anyway, and that such a mentor will be very hard to find, but I think it is the only possibility if they wish to continue with the stuff they are doing). One essential for this kind of work is that you need to be fluent, and able and willing to talk to people, explain what you're doing and why, and actually help newcomers rather than just slapping labels on things. So I think the time has come to enforce a break from NPP, sadly, and insist this person moves into other areas if they wish to exercise their obvious willingness to help. I'm sure there must be something else they can do - maybe rather than slapping tags on articles, do some work trying to resolve tags - look for sources, etc? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Kudpung, with all due respect, this little group does not own new page patrolling. This is nothing more than an unlabeled WikiProject: a group of editors who happen to like working on something and happen to want a place to talk about it. (In fact, I suggest that you rename the page and advertise the project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.) The community has adopted exactly zero policies and zero guidelines requiring anyone to follow your advice. Bluntly, it simply doesn't matter what you want other people to do when they mark pages as patrolled. You can make recommendations, but you cannot force compliance and you cannot punish people for following WP:NOTAG rather than your personal preference, which I believe you'll find described at WP:OVERTAGGING, and which earns this group regular complaints for biting newbies, providing unhelpful tags, and (among those who focus on the front end) creating edit conflicts.
Now—this editor may have a WP:COMPETENCE problem. The editor may well have earned a ban on CSD tagging. But it doesn't follow from there that the editor is failing to patrol pages "properly". There is no "proper" way to do it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
This editor clearly is doing things poorly though, wouldn't you agree? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
No one is claiming ownership of anything. I think we all need to calm down and look at the situation rationally. All we're asking is that if you're not going to actually try to identify or fix obvious problems with the article, then don't hit the "Mark this page as patrolled" button, because there are other editors who would like to fix the article. Once the page is marked as patrolled, there is no way for actual new page patrollers to find it. I don't think anyone can argue that marking a revision like this one as patrolled (which is one of the pages this user patrolled) is useful in any way. SnottyWong express 18:40, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
The only real difference between what that editor did and what I would have done is that I wouldn't have accidentally used double-curly braces instead of triple apostrophes when placing the article name at the top. (Instead, I would have removed the ==Definitions== section heading and used that section as the introduction.) Since I had the page open anyway, I probably would have changed the other section heading to use sentence case rather than title case to comply with the Manual of Style and removed the double blank line between spaces, but that's really optional. The subject is obviously notable, it's not vandalism, and it not obviously a copyright violation. It therefore meets my minimum standards for something that can be marked as patrolled. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


WhatamIdoing, you are as much a part of this discussion as anyone else here. Please discuss the matter in hand and not your collaborators who have devoted a lot of time to it and who are trying to solve a problem in the best of GF. If you don't like the concept of collective problem solving, please consider another Wikipedia area for discussing it.--Kudpung (talk) 19:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Back on track, I think we should be extremely cautious about belittling New Page Patrol. It's possibly one of the most fundamental and crucial functions of this encyclopdia. It has site-wide implications because it affects every new article that arrives here (except the few that are created by trusted users who have autopatroller rights). As I've said before, if we want the Wikipedia to become a free-for-all, we can all stop patrolling new pages, pack up, and go home. It stands to reason therefore, that there exists a Wikipedia project to look after it, and a forum to discuss and better organise it, and to discuss solutions for any problems that arise.
Sopher99's way of patrolling has become a problem. We can either try to handle it from here by making suggestions in a civil manner, or we can escalate the issue to a noticeboard where Sopher will get torn to shreds, and probably retire. Take it or leave it, but I'm in favour of finding a solution that may not necessarily end in a total block for Sopher. They may not be very communicative, and they are not a native English speaker, but there was an acknowledgment to my message this morning. They are well aware of what's going on here and I think perhaps it might be an idea just to keep an eye on their contrib history for the next few days, and take it from there.--Kudpung (talk) 19:34, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Kudpung, I am discussing "the matter at hand". The problem at hand is that the erroneous belief that your personally preferred methods for patrolling pages are somehow mandatory policies, and that editors who don't review pages as thoroughly as you do should be punished (e.g., by being banned from patrolling pages). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, are you saying you think Sopher99's page patrolling has been going splendidly then, with nary a fault? Are those masses of repeat warnings and attempts at discussion on their Talk page just the collective imaginings of a dozen or more editors? Are the experienced editors voicing concerns here all just nasty people who only want things done their own way? Or is it just possible that there really might be a problem here? The example just discussed is just that - an example. If it were just this one instance, or even just a handful, and if Sopher99 was responding to concerns, then none of us would be here making any comments. But that simply isn't the case - it's a problem that has been going on for a long time, and it's not really getting any closer to being solved. What do you suggest? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
We don't need a specific policy which says "Don't hit the 'mark this page as patrolled' button if you don't plan on fixing or identifying even the most basic issues with a new article". If you need a bureaucratic paper trail in order to understand what we're trying to do here, try WP:IAR or WP:COMMONSENSE. If you really want to get crazy, we could probably wikilawyer our way into proving that marking pages as patrolled without fixing blatantly obvious issues could be characterized as vandalism. I don't see the need for any of this bureaucracy. The problem here is beyond obvious. No one is trying to enforce our "personal preferences". We're just trying to uphold an extremely minimal standard of what patrolling actually means. If you think it's ok to leave redlink templates at the top of articles with no leads, and mark such pages as patrolled without fixing or identifying such issues, then I'm done with this conversation. Let's relax and get back to reality. SnottyWong comment 20:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree we got a bit sidetracked here, mainly due to 2 different issues getting mixed here.
  • a) concrete suggestions made to Sopher99, there we don't agree on all the suggestions having been made
  • b) you should not mark pages as patrolled, if you do not perform basic checks and either fix or mark obvious, undisputable errors.
while we have disagreements regarding a), I think we can all agree on b). and if b) applies to Sopher99's behaviour then he should refrain from patrolling or get a mentor.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Agree 100%. SnottyWong squeal 06:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
As I said above, there was an acknowledgment to my friendly message on Sopher's talk page. They are well aware of what's going on here and they haven't made any edits since that are a cause for concern, and as I suggested, I think perhaps it might be an idea just to keep an eye on their contrib history for the next few days, and take it from there. Kudpung (talk) 06:47, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

DashBot patrolling sub standard pages as suitable for the encyclopedia!?

Can anyone explain how DashBot can patrol articles such as Sudarshana Model School as suitable for the encyclopedia? See: Tag filter:

  • 16:30, 19 September 2010 DASHBot (talk | contribs) marked Sudarshana Model School patrolled
    ‎

--Kudpung (talk) 07:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can see, for a very simple reason: Patrolling means that someone noticed it and reacted to its present. You did so by tagging it for PROD 2 minutes before. Per Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages, the purpose of patrolling pages is not to determine whether they are suitable for the encyclopedia but whether someone looked at it and decided whether it needs to be handled. The problem is thus not with the bot but with your actions imho. Also, you should take this article to WP:AFD. Per WP:PROD: If any person objects to the deletion (usually by removing the {{proposed deletion}} tag), the proposal is aborted and may not be re-proposed. (emphasis added) Regards SoWhy 07:57, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. We know about this already, and we know what the purpose of NPP is. Problem solved. The page has been redirected. My only error was that I did not look back far enough in the history when this resurfaced.--Kudpung (talk) 08:11, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Twinkle: CSD, PROD, etc and NPP

I was always under the impression that Twinkle automatically marks pages as patrolled when applying a CSD or PROD tag. Is this so, and if i tis, why does it sometimes not work? The reason for the question is that DashBot looks for pages with CSD & PROD that have not been manually marked as 'patrolled' and markes them automatically; This can have awkward consequences if the creator then removed the CSD or PROD out of process. --Kudpung (talk) 08:55, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Twinkle will only mark a page as patrolled if you are on a page that has a "mark this page as patrolled" link on it presently. So, for instance, if from Special:Newpages you click on a link to an article, and then fix a typo or make some kind of edit to that article, and then csd/prod/afd it, then twinkle won't mark it as patrolled. SnottyWong yak 15:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Back of the unpatrolled backlog

Thread moved to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Unpatrolled articles SnottyWong gab 18:13, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Clarification on patrolling + CSD

Folks, if I mark one of the unpatrolled pages with CSD, do I have to mark it as patrolled, or should it stay unpatrolled so that admins can notice the CSD ? It's been mocking me ever since I've started patrolling. Thanks in advance! --Ezhuks (talk) 18:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Articles tagged for speedy deletion should be marked as patrolled. Admins typically find CSD-tagged articles by monitoring CAT:CSD, not Special:Newpages. I believe there's actually a bot out there that looks through all of the CSD-tagged pages and marks them as patrolled. What I usually do is keep the page on my watchlist so that if the speedy is declined for some reason, I'll be aware of it and take the next appropriate step with the article. SnottyWong prattle 18:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for a swift response! I'll follow this guideline from now on. --Ezhuks (talk) 18:56, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
I notice a glitch with TW and marking pages as patrolled—when adding a CSD tag to an article TW shows, in its activity window, that it is 'marking the page as 'patrolled'. When this completes and the page reloads the 'mark' link disappears; however, if I then reload Special:Newpages the page I have just tagged is still showing as 'unpatrolled' and I have to reload the page from Special:Newpages and click the 'mark' link before the page with clear from Special:Newpages Pol430 talk to me 01:33, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

User:Sinharib99

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

Resolved
 – Moved to WP:ANI Pol430 talk to me 00:58, 26 February 2011 (UTC).

Is currently creating dozens of very short articles about rulers named on List of Assyrian kings these articles do not really expand on what is already contained at 'List of Assyrian kings'. Anybody else feel these should be tagged as CSD A10? Pol430 talk to me 00:41, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

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

Would everyone please, please, PLEASE remember...

that Twinkle isn't marking things as patrolled now? I'm trying to clear out a little under 500 pages, and the great majority of them already have tags on them. This is really annoying, because it means that it's taking two people to do one person's job. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Patrol checklist

Wikipedia data structure
Namespaces
Subject namespaces Talk namespaces
0 (Main/Article) Talk 1
2 User User talk 3
4 Wikipedia Wikipedia talk 5
6 File File talk 7
8 MediaWiki MediaWiki talk 9
10 Template Template talk 11
12 Help Help talk 13
14 Category Category talk 15
100 Portal Portal talk 101
118 Draft Draft talk 119
126 MOS MOS talk 127
710 TimedText TimedText talk 711
828 Module Module talk 829
Former namespaces
108 Book Book talk 109
442 Course Course talk 443
444 Institution Institution talk 445
446 Education Program Education Program talk 447
2300 Gadget Gadget talk 2301
2302 Gadget definition Gadget definition talk 2303
2600 Topic 2601
Virtual namespaces
-1 Special
-2 Media
Current list

I've recently noticed some prolific patrollers out there who are marking a lot of articles as patrolled, but not actually doing much to the articles. I drafted a patrolling checklist that could help them better understand all of the tasks that can/should be done when patrolling an article. The checklist also gives them quick access to most of the policies/guidelines/other pages they'd need to reference during patrolling. Feel free to take a look at it and modify it if you feel the need; see User:Snottywong/NPP checklist. I'd like to eventually move this to the WP namespace. Does anyone have any opinions on where it would be best located? I'm thinking of either adding it to WP:NPP or just making it a standalone essay. Thanks. —SW— communicate 15:32, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it should replace the Improving new pages section. --Kudpung (talk) 16:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
That's great! I've avoided working article namespace pages 'cause I'm not so familiar with the cleanup tags etc. Move it to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Article namespace checklist and then trasclude it into Wikipedia:New pages patrol. Each namespace has its own twists when it comes to new pages. I'll work on developing Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Wikipedia namespace checklist, which is what I've been focusing on. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
It would also be nice if the appropriate WikiProject banners are added to the talk page, although I understand that it can be difficult to know which WikiProjects exist. Reach Out to the Truth 14:14, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Deleted page on new page

Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/REPLACE THIS TEXT WITH ARTICLE NAME shows up as a new page, but when I open it, I see that it is a deleted page with no way to mark as patrolled. Is there a fix? -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:03, 17 March 2011 (UTC) Actually, the page that shows up in New Page special pages is this page. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:05, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

patrol.py

Some of you may remember I used to run a NPP bot (User:JVbot) between June 2008 and April 2009. It is active again. More importantly, the code has been checked in[8] because another wiki needs this functionality. The heuristics are simple, but anyone can now improve it. ;-) I've rewritten it to use the mwlib parser, so it is feasible to create heuristics based on the new-page content. I won't have a lot of time to make improvements, but if there are some sensible and simple heuristics which can be added, I'll attempt it when I have time, and/or help any budding python developers who bug me on IRC(jayvdb). If anyone does want to play with this, please do not use the -autopatroluserns option here on English Wikipedia, as a lot of junk is created in the user namespace, and there are people who actively check these pages for various violations which must be deleted promptly. That option is only suitable for wikis where the stream of User page junk is limited or managed by other methods. John Vandenberg (chat) 02:23, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at VPM

There is a discussion going on here that may be of interest, and has drawn a good deal of discussion already. Basically, I'm looking for one or both of two things; more New Page Patrollers and/or requiring editors to be autoconfirmed before creating articles. That a giant backlog has built up at Special:NewPages in the 4 days I haven't been able to be active is making my point for me, as far as I'm concerned; please join in the discussion there. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:05, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

New Pages and New Users

I've recently been doing some thinking (and a great deal of consultation with Philippe and James at the WMF's community department) on how to keep new users around and participating, particularly in light of Sue's March update. One of the things we'd like to test is whether the reception they get when they make their first article is key. In a lot of cases, people don't stay around; their article is deleted and that's that. By the time any contact is made, in other words, it's often too late.

What we're thinking of doing is running a project to gather data on if this occurs, how often it occurs, and so on, and in the mean time try to save as many pages (and new contributors) as possible. Basically, involved users would go through the deletion logs and through Special:NewPages looking for new articles which are at risk of being deleted, but could have something made of them - in other words, non-notable pages that are potentially notable, or spammy pages that could be rewritten in more neutral language. This would be entirely based on the judgment of the user reviewing pages - no finnicky CSD standards. These pages would be incubated instead of deleted, and the creator contacted and shepherded through how to turn the article into something useful. If they respond and it goes well, we have a decent article and maybe a new long-term editor. If they don't respond, the draft can be deleted after a certain period of time.

I know this isn't necessarily your standard fare, but with this project's main focus being on dealing with new content, individual editors might find it intriguing. If you're interested, read Wikipedia:Wiki Guides/New pages, sign up and get involved; questions can be dropped on the talkpage or directed at me. Ironholds (talk) 01:27, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed RfC

A formal Request for Comment has now been started on this topic. Feel free to contribute; best, Ironholds (talk) 21:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Marking deleted pages as patrolled

I was going through some pages from the back of the backlog, and (Hertzka) Haft remains on the page although it was deleted some time ago. Is there any way to mark pages that have been deleted as patrolled? --Banana (talk) 18:45, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe you can just add &action=markpatrolled to the url. It used to work for me when I was doing NPP. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 20:36, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
It's a technical glitch; you can also recreate the page with a db-unpatrolled template. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:21, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
Adding the "markpatrolled" results in a "Session failure" error; probably because the "token" parameter is missing. If a page has been moved, it's still possible to patrol it by following the link from Special:NewPages, replacing the name in the URL with the new page name, and then using the "mark this page as patrolled" link. The patrol log shows the original name of the page[9], so I assume it can be determined by the system from the "rcid" number (this isn't the same as the revision number). Peter E. James (talk) 22:28, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

30 day crunch

Special:NewPages is once again getting close to the 30 day mark. I know everyone watching this page is already making efforts to work through the log, so I was posting more to see if anyone had a new bright idea to get assistance? I have made a plea on the Community Portal. Any other thoughts on immediate help? Any thoughts on longer term fixes so we don't keep having this problem? --Tbennert (talk) 17:44, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I've already asked Snottywong to get his bot ready again. The current RfC on whether new creations should be limited to autoconfirmed users is now closed and awaiting a summary for consensus. If consensus is positive, many of the problems associated with NPP will be dramatically reduced. What needs to be borne in mind at NPP is that accuracy of tagging is more important that speed of tagging. The ones that remain in the backlog are mainly the difficult ones that have been passed over by the less experienced patrollers. It's fair to say however, that most new articles that are totally inappropriate get deleted quickly enough, while the majority of those that are left mainly need serious maintenance tagging such as 'refimprove' or PRODing for lack of the right kind of sources, or notability issues, and WP:BEFORE, etc. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
The backlog has now reached 30 days again having caught up from the hard work that was done to clear it in January. Emphasis is nevertheless on quality rather than speed of tagging - poor NPP work (both tagging and not tagging) is the cause of many peripheral problems that may not seem evident to everyone here. The Snotbot has now been relaunched to keep these 30+ day pages on the radar. Consensus has now been reached to start a trial on allowing autoconfirmed users only to create new pages. Once in place, this may have the effect of reducing the number of inappropriate pages that need patrolling. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
It is good to know the autoconfirmed users trial has been agreed on. I hope this pulls some load off the front end. Now that my brain is working better I have had a few thoughts on help with the back-end. My concern is that even with the obvious garbage removed, we still have a large number of good faith articles created which need a decent amount of work.
  1. Is there any way of flagging disambugation pages and pulling them into a separate list? Most times they will have {{Disamb}} at the bottom so I would think something could be set up to catch them. Since these pages generally have little cleanup they could be worked through more quickly.
  2. Has there ever been discussion of a search within article name or the edit summary? It may be easier for some editors to work through a chunk of articles on a similar topic. Those who have an interest in a particular area may be willing to patrol articles on a topic they are knowledgable about but have not patrolled because they cannot find the articles. If the front-end is less intense those editors could benefit from searching "song" or "FC" for example, because there are likely to be issues.
  3. Having a second chance to "Mark page as patrolled" would remove several articles. There are generally about 200 articles in a day once they reach the bottom of the list. Of those 200 usually at least 20 will have already been reviewed by one of the regular patrollers (My numbers are anecdotal). I've done this many times myself - I click the article, scan through and immediately know what changes or tags to apply, then I click edit without ever clicking the little "Mark page". If you're working in the middle of the list you don't notice that the article is still in yellow and move on.
Hopefully my fears are unfounded, and maybe we need to wait for the trial before considering any other changes. Just thought I would share in case anyone else feels similarly. --Tbennert (talk) 04:15, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
The new rule was accepted by a substantial consensus and a pre-discussion for the trial is at User talk:Rd232/RfC for trial (draft phase). However, the start of the trial should not get delayed or bogged down by yet another round of needless discussion and dozens of suggestions for implementing it. The new rule will have an enormous impact towards reducin the creation of inappropriate articles, so it's probably best to wait now rather than making any software changes to the Special:new pages system. the fears that the new rule will lose new, serious, editors is IMHO unfounded and causing too much concern. There is no physical metric for knowing how many possible potential long-term editors would be put off by having to wait to gain autoconfirmed status. We currently have around 80% deletions of the 30,000 new articles per month, so if the 20% number of new articles that are kept, remains roughly the same, our questions are answered. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:31, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
I clearly did not write this well. I fully support the trial and am very excited to see it moving forward. In no way would I suggest doing anything to jeopardize the implementation. My ideas were not intended as a formal proposal, more of a food for thought. When I say "consider other changes" I literally mean think about. Should we continue to have backlogs, others will have had a chance to think through these other areas of hang-up, and may have ideas on how to address them. I apologize for any misunderstanding. --Tbennert (talk) 05:04, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
No need to appologise. What you said was perfectly clear, and are excellent suggestions. I just meant that as it is possible that this trial will go ahead very soon, it would probably be best to hold off with any changes to the yellow page system for the time being. We need all the support we can get to improve New Page Patrolling and to reduce the load on it, and the new rule for creators is clearly the way to go and was reached by consensus. Your support for the trial is not only welcome, but it is essential. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages in Category:Unreviewed new articles can be sorted out using CatScan. Guoguo12 (Talk)  19:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

New toolserver tool

I've recently created a new tool at http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/cgi-bin/patrolreport.cgi which allows you to get information about users who are currently patrolling new articles. You may be able to use this information to better coordinate which articles you're patrolling. If you find any problems or have any suggestions for improvement, feel free to contact me on my talk page. Thanks. —SW— soliloquize 22:33, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

When proposing articles for deletion, try to pick the right venue from jumpstreet

This is the pattern I frequently see...

1. New editor creates a new article.

2. A new page patroller tags it for speedy deletion.

3. Admin declines the speedy.

4. Patroller PRODs it.

5. New editor removes the PROD. (or he doesn't know that he can and erroneously posts to WP:REFUND.

6. NPPer sends it to AFD.

After all this, the new editor gets 3 nasty tags on his talk page. (likely more if he also uploads images). By now the new editor doesn't feel warm and fuzzy about Wikipedia. Here's a better idea...

1. New editor creates a new article.

2. New page patroller evaluates the article but only tags it for speedy deletion if it unambiguously meets a speedy criteria. If it doesn't and he still thinks it should be deleted he does some WP:BEFORE homework and if he can't find supersources he sends it straight to AFD if it has recent edit activity and PRODs it if it doesn't. (which should only happen when patrolling from the back of the log)

This way the new editor only gets 1 nasty tag on his talk page, has a chance to defend his article at AFD, and has 7 days to correct problems and/or provide sources. If the PPPer doesn't have time to do a proper AFD he can put a {{notability}} tag on it and come back to it later. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:56, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with some of the above, especially for the need to avoid three deletion tags straight after each other on the new user's talk page. Specifically, we need to be clearer on the difference between A7 speedy deletions and PROD/AfD due to lack of notability.
Where I disagree, though, is going to AfD instead of PROD. PROD is there for a reason, and 7/10 I find that an article I PROD'd doesn't have the deletion disputed. AfD is already overloaded, and if is, for example, an article is created that specifically says it is about a game that was just recently invented a few days ago, it should go to PROD versus AfD. If the new user disputes the PROD, fine, but I'm not in favour of needlessly adding more of a burden to an already overloaded AfD process.
What I would be in favour for is a system where if a PROD is disputed and goes to AfD, there is a different type of message then thte normal AfD notice - like an add-on to the prior PROD notice. Singularity42 (talk) 02:10, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

New defcon userbox

As you probably know, new articles which haven't been patrolled for 30 days after their creation are removed from Special:NewPages. I've created a defcon style userbox that will update hourly to let you know how close Special:NewPages is to the 30-day limit. You can add it to your user page or user talk page just by adding the following text: {{User:Snottywong/NPPdefcon}} For now, I've defined the defcon levels based on the number of days in the NewPages queue as shown below, let me know if you think the levels should be adjusted:

Level 1 - 29 days or higher
Level 2 - 28-29 days
Level 3 - 25-28 days
Level 4 - 15-25 days
Level 5 - less than 15 days

—SW— confer 20:00, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

What happen if we send different types of messages to editors?

Will an off-topic but friendly message increase the recipient' editing motivation or just be ignored? Will a negative but constructive feedback harm editors' motivation? If so, how can we phrase the message so as to minimize the negative impact? We (Robert E. Kraut, Haiyi Zhu, Aniket Kittur, Jenny He, Amy Zhang) are researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. We want to conduct experiments to investigate the effects of messages on participation in Wikipedia. Specifically, we would like to post different kinds of responses to creators of newly-created articles (like any new page patroller does) and examine their activities after receiving the messages.

For more details of the study, please come to User:Haiyizhu. Please leave your concern, comments and suggestions. We really appreciate your help!

Have a good day! Haiyizhu (talk) 19:12, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I started a proposal

Please have a look at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Changing_Howto_article:_Wikipedia:So_you_made_a_userspace_draft and vote. mabdul 00:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if this is a FAQ, but

  1. why aren't edits to unpatrolled pages by experienced editors (autoreviewers?) automatically marked as being patrolled? This article caught my eye the other day when it was marked as dropping off the 30 day list. But three very experienced editors had seen it, checked it, made minor fixes, but because we didn't get to the article via the NPP page, we never knew it wasn't patrolled.
  2. Why isn't there an option (on by default for registered users) to ALWAYS show the little tiny [Mark this page as patrolled] link on EVERY unpatrolled page, regardless of how you got to the page (ie even without &rcid= in the URL). Or is there a setting already and I just don't have it turned on. The-Pope (talk) 15:31, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
  1. Pages which haven't been patrolled within 30 days drop off the Special:Newpages list. At this time, a bot finds the articles which have dropped off the list before they were patrolled and adds an "unreviewed" template to the article, so that the article can continue to be tracked as potentially unreviewed. The bot is not smart enough to look through the edit history and determine whether users who have edited the article are "experienced", simply because this is not a straightforward thing for a bot to do. But, simply removing the template from the article will indicate to the bot that it has now been reviewed, and the bot will leave the article alone.
  2. This has been a popular request lately , but it would require changes to the mediawiki software. I'm not sure of the status of this request, you may want to look through the archives at WP:VPT and/or start a thread there. I'm thoroughly in favor of this request, but my thoughts are that there should really be a user right for patrollers first. Then, for any user that has the patroller user right, the patrol link would appear on any article which hasn't been patrolled. I don't think it would be a good idea to add patrol links for all users. —SW— soliloquize 18:02, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
  1. I didn't want the bot to do anything smart, I wanted any non-minor edit by an auto-reviewer editor to automatically remove the unpatrolled flag.The-Pope (talk) 01:14, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi, guys. I don't know if you've noticed, but Corensearchbot (which compares new articles to the web) is no longer functioning due to a change in Yahoo's service. This is a serious problem, as CSB has caught literally thousands of copyright problems at inception. Coren is looking for alternatives (see thread at his talk page), but CSB has been nonfunctional for days. Please, please, please (if you can) keep an eye out for this issue until we have something working again? Even if you just snag a sentence or two and do an internet search to see if it hits on any matches, that could be an astronomical help to keeping copyright problems under control until something automated is in place again. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:50, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Any update on an ETA when Corensearchbot will be back up? I've been catching a lot of copyvios lately, and I know a lot are slipping by as well... It is surprising what doesn't look like a copy/paste turns out to be one. Singularity42 (talk) 02:10, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:CSD A1

We are having a debate at Wikipedia_talk:Four_Award#Creation_date regarding the May 2006 state of an article and whether it was encyclopedic or should have been WP:CSD#A1ed. Please comment there if you are knowledgeable on this matter.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:43, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Avoid censorship

Please be cautious in acting with Immediatism and deleting articles quickly if they conform to only one of numerous deletion criterion. When this occurs, it reeks of censorship, or the notion of picking and choosing from a diverse list of criterion as a justification to delete articles based upon an immediatist mindset or mentality. Sometimes articles are created as stubs with the intention of expansion, sometimes they're noteworthy but lacking noteworthy points and need time for expansion, and sometimes people may think obtusely without considering other variables.Northamerica1000 (talk) 13:06, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Is there any particular example which prompted this comment? If an article conforms to only one speedy deletion criteria, that's all that is required to delete it (although, brand new articles shouldn't be immediately tagged with A1 or A3, per the instructions on Special:Newpages). If it doesn't fit any speedy deletion criteria, then I agree that it should often be given a chance to improve, and not AfD'd or PRODded within minutes after being created. —SW— squeal 17:13, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
See Keep Portland Weird (revision before being deleted and restored for DRV); that would seem to be what the OP is referring to. I'd have probably tagged it G11 myself if I saw the article in the state it was in when it was tagged, and I'd have PRODded it if I was looking at the last revision before being deleted; however, my word is far from The TruthTM, so other views would be appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:53, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Ahhrrrr!!! How can you stand it here????

"Ahhrrrr!!! " said Alan in an uncharacteristic display of emotion.

"How can you people put up with all this shit that is coming through from new user accounts?"

"I does my head in!"

But seriously, I think the ability to create new articles needs to be tightened. We waste far too much time fighting fires at WP:NPP rather than fixing up what we already have. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:38, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. See WP:ACTRIAL. —SW— confabulate 21:37, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Trial duration. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
To be honest, most experienced users just give up and do something else; Snottywong, Kudpung, and I are three of the very few experienced editors who will touch NPP. Though I must say, the occasional Got curled? or Uiolentapneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosising lightens the mood (I've contributed to WP:DAFT). But yeah, we're trying to get the devs to stop dragging their feet and implement the rather easy change needed to implement the consensus on this. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposal of additional bullet point at top of Special:NewPages (while CorenSearchBot is down)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
I have re-posted this discussion at WP:VPR, which is probably where it should have been in the first place. Singularity42 (talk) 19:41, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

CorenSearchBot is still down. There is definitely a problem with new editors creating articles that are copyright violations, and there is currently no automated process to deal with it. I have often looked at recently patrolled new pages to discover that the articles are copyright violations. Other times, I see an article tagged for A7 or G11, an admin decline the speedy deletions, only for me (or another editor) to discover afterwards that the article should have been tagged with G12. Therefore, while CorenSearchBot is down, I would like to propose an additionl bullet point at the top of Special:NewPages, which will say the following:

  • CorenSearchBot is temporarily not working; there is no current automated process for detected copyright violations. Therefore, when reviewing a new page, please consider 1) for single reference articles, comparing the article's content to the reference and looking for copy/pastes or close paraphrasing, and 2) running a random passage of text from the article through a search engine (such as Google) for that exact phrase to see if it has been copied from anywhere. If appropriate, tag an article that is a blatant copyright violation for speedy deletion under G12.

Thoughts? Singularity42 (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Kudpung! But I was also proposing that it be added as a fourth bullet point at the top of Special:NewPages. Singularity42 (talk) 02:20, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Note: given the small amount of replies here, the fact that it should probably have been raised at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and the Op-Ed piece in the recent Signpost, I have re-posted this propoal at WP:VPR#Proposal of additional bullet point at top of Special:NewPages (while CorenSearchBot is down). Singularity42 (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

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

Deletion nominations for new articles - guidelines?

As an experienced gnoming editor who only occasionally creates new articles, I have recently experienced at first hand what new editors can expect from the new page patrollers, and I hope my experience isn't typical. I noticed that quite a few articles mentioned a Japanese heavy metal magazine called Burrn!, which WP didn't have an article about. After a bit of Googling. it became clear to me that this was in fact a notable magazine, so I created a stub. Within 15 minutes of my creating the article, a new page patroller had nominated it for speedy deletion. Now admittedly I hadn't at that stage added any references, but why not then simply tag it as unreferenced? I've been around here a long while so I knew how to respond (and even after I added the refs, this user is still trying to delete the article) but a new editor would have simply walked away and never come back. Are there any guidelines for how long to wait, and how to tag bona-fide but incomplete articles? What I've experienced here is a guaranteed way to drive away new editors. Colonies Chris (talk) 16:41, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The advantage of a deletion request straight away, compared to just tagging or waiting is that it probably gets the originator whilst they are online, logged in and thinking about the article. Wait or just tag, and they may never be back to see it, so then it's up to others to fix up the mess. Of course a check of contribution history will help identify if you are an established editor. I must say, though, I'm not a fan of super-short stubs like that, I'd recommend keeping it in your user space until you can flesh it out a bit. There should be a filter that just prevents unreferenced stubs from being created. The-Pope (talk) 17:01, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree that the behaviour described isn't appropriate, however the new page patroller is hardly typical: they're only 13 years old, have been blocked several times for disruption, and this problem is currently being discussed at ANI. Hut 8.5 17:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the behaviour and age range are indeed absolutely typical. As no qualifications are required to patrol new pages, it's exactly the place the youngest and least experienced users head for, and they rarely, if ever, read the instructions at WP;NPP, WP:DELETION, and WP:CSD. Patrolling pages provides them with a sense of power within the structure of one of the world's biggest web sites, and something to impress their Grade 6 girlfriends with. They even organise competitions among themselves to see who can tag the most pages in a given time. The winners get a barnstar. NPP is a known dysfunctional process, and since around October 2010 a small group of experienced users and admins have been patrolling the patrollers, re-patrolling patrolled pages, and gathering statistics. A solution to the problem was reached in March by a clear consensus following a discussion by around 500 editors. A planned trial of the solution was overruled last week by a member of the WMF. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:04, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
What was the solution and their reason for overruling.Warburton1368 (talk) 19:01, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Quite simple: Restriction of creation in mainspace to autoconfirmed users only. But with three options for creators of serious articles to fast-track publication: 1. Going through WP;AfC; 2. Going through the Article Creation Wizard; 3. Creation in a user sub-page. All three types of drafts, if suitable for publication or only needing minor maintenance tags, could then be moved to mainspace by an established reviewer. The reasons for overruling the consensus were the personal opinions of two WMF employees who claimed that not enough research and preparation had been made for the trial, and that the proponents were a bunch of hard exclusionists. In actual fact the proposition for the new rule was based on 7 months of research and stats - the research for the solution, and the design of the trial were carried out by experienced editors, myself included, who are neither inclusionists nor exclusionists. Other commentators who opposed the software request and who had not been bothered to !vote on the RfC tried to turn the software request into a re-debate of the new rule that was adopted by consensus. Interesting to note is that that the request to the developers was to make the necessary software changes for a trial only, and not at all for a permanent implementation at this stage. The results of the trial were to be further examined in conjunction with 'before', 'during', and 'after' data, and then a decision would have been made by consensus to implement permanently or not. The proposal for the design of the trial was carried almost unanimously by a further, well publicised central RfC. The full story is at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30208. It needs to be all read carefully in detail, and then you will be able to form your own opinion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:30, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Kudpung, are you "cs" in that bugzilla thread? Thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:48, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Eric, are you an admin? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Wow, that is ridiculous! To think the WMF can just veto a consensus like that just because they don't agree with it. That bugzilla page needs to be posted somewhere for review (such as the village pump). ThemFromSpace 03:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, and it was even more fun being told to "approach the MW idea with an open mind" after that. The community should know that they've been shot down by a few people who injected their own personal analysis as opposed to using the actual facts. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 31 March 2022

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved to "Redirect autopatrol list". After much-extended time for discussion, there is a solid consensus to move to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect autopatrol list. BD2412 T 06:02, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist → Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect allowlist – Per the reasoning at mw:Inclusive language, I believe that "whitelist" should be changed to "allowlist" to be more inclusive with language. Other documentation and related pages should be updated too (I can do this if the RM is closed successfully), and the bot code needs updating as well (I can open a pull request). Cheers! 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 18:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

PR opened; hopefully this'll make it easier to implement the change. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 22:56, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Noticeboard change

MrX, I reinserted a tab where noticeboard was, but changed it to discussion and had it link to WT:NPR. I think this way people will know where to go for general discussion. If you disagree, feel free to revert. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Good TonyBallioni. After I made the edit, it occurred to me that that would have been a good idea. Thanks.- MrX 14:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
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