Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/Archive 12

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Joseph Kaipayil

After reviewing this article, when I accepted the article, added {{Persondata}} and project tags and tried to move it I got the following error message:

Error info:protectedtitle : The destination article has been protected from creation

What's up? Has it been salted (if so, shame one me--while the current version isn't great, I didn't see any glaring reason to decline it)? Miniapolis (talk) 16:06, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it has been salted. I'd contact WP:RFPP. Huon (talk) 16:37, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks; I've requested full protection. All the best, Miniapolis (talk) 03:19, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

My request for full protection was declined (which reassures me about my original judgment :-)), and I've now requested unsalting. Miniapolis (talk) 17:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry, we will fix this when we implement the enhanced error handling. Until then, mark it as reviewing and leave a comment that you have requested unsalting at RFPP. If the deletion calls for it, you may have to go to DRV. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 19:27, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

The drive is on!

The backlog elimination drive was quietly started this morning! Everyone get out and start reviewing! --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 20:07, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

New wizard criterion for corporation AfCs

A suggestion: Plug the hole in the dyke. Stop worthless corp AfCs from entering the system in the first place because once they do, the persistent "employees" keep resubmitting the same non-notables. Why not add/modify a wizard criterion to ask "Have you found 12 independent references?" Thoughts? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 15:30, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

We don't need to lie to them. If a company really is notable we don't require 12 independent refs. I don't think there's anything we can do preemptively. We could warn or block them if they abuse AfC by submitting the same article over and over without addressing the reason for decline though. Gigs (talk) 16:55, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely no per Gigs. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Not lying, rather asking for plenty of references ahead of time to prevent the flood of non-notable company AfCs. I'm talking about trying to filter those out. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:20, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

If an AfC article is blatantly promotional and insufficient references are forthcoming, you can try nominating it for WP:CSD#G11 speedy deletion. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:59, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

That's after the AfC has been created. The problem is the amount of non-notables entering the system. Also, as was pointed out at IRC, the time to speedy is before the thing gets submitted and rejected. This is because upon rejection, a notice is placed at the author's talk page asking for improvements. When the author clicks the link, the article has been deleted. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:18, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Might be worth looking at the talk page message the script sends out to see if the wording can be modified depending on the decline reason? Pol430 talk to me 18:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Script error?

What the? -- KTC (talk) 23:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Haha! Well it was very clean... Seriously though, I've had similar problems with the script malforming ref tags. Also, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Picinsico which I declined as a copyvio and asked for the optional 'tag for CSD' criteria, is not listed at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations. Pol430 talk to me 23:41, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It's under Category:Candidates for speedy deletion for unspecified reason. I'll have a look. KTC (talk) 23:49, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess it must be a limitation of way the CSD tag piggybacks on {{Afc cleared}}. Nathan is the script guru; I'm sure he'll drop by this thread soon enough and look into the blanking issue. Pol430 talk to me 00:00, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah...never seen that one before. Apparently the script decided that that article wasn't ready for creation. Huh, and I thought I left the artificial intelligence functionality out of this update. Seriously though, I can't find anything that could have caused this kind of bug, and mabdul seems to be purposefully ignoring me. The CSD tag is a bug in the existing super-template's code, if there is consensus to modify it I can reprogram it to add to a different category. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 19:23, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

If the script add all CSD tagged page to the same category, then leave it as not every AFC page tagged for CSD are for the same reason. KTC (talk) 21:10, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree with KTC, now I know that they do show up as pending CSD requests, my mind is at ease. As long as CV submissions are blanked as well, I see no pressing reason to expedite their deletion by ensuring they show up in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations. They will almost certainly be deleted within 24hrs regardless. Pol430 talk to me 18:19, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It did it again Pol430 talk to me 21:31, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Reviewer - improving article

Is a reviewer encouraged to improve the article so that it would pass, or is that frowned upon? I was perusing articles for review, when I ran across Sejo John. The subject is obviously notable, he is music director for three films with their own wikipedia articles, and the (bare url) references are full articles in major newspapers. However, as it stands I don't think I can pass the article based on the referencing and the serious MoS issues. I could fix it, and then pass it, but in general I haven't seen it done. What are best practices in this situation? 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 07:51, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the reviewer can make edits to the article to make it pass (there's no rule that says you can't). The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 08:04, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, when I revamped the guide, I'm pretty sure I stuck it in there somewhere. After all, nobody WP:OWNs Wikipedia pages. Pol430 talk to me 18:26, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

What standard should articles be before moving to article namespace?

What standard should articles be before they are moved to article namespace? Some of the ones that I have seen recently needed some really basic editing to be presentable. Lawrence Blume is the latest example. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The only firm standard is that they should have at least a 50% chance of survival at AfD. The original purpose of this project was to give annon editors a forum to create articles that they could not physically create in the mainspace. Since then, it's grown arms and legs and is now used by registered editors as well. To expand on my answer to your question: the reviewing instructions encourage reviewers to make stylistic changes to submissions, in order that they are more presentable, but AfC is not a system of review in the same way, or to anything like the standards, as GAN. Pol430 talk to me 11:41, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

IMHO the bare minimum requirement should be that it meets WP:Notability and WP:Verifiability without violating rules such as WP:Copyvio, WP:Attack, WP:BLP, etc. - the type of violations that would earn it a WP:Speedy. Roger (talk) 11:49, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

That is already, more or less, the bare minimum requirement. Submissions that meet the standard you suggest, would generally have at least a 50% chance of survival at AfD. Pol430 talk to me 12:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree. That's the exact standard that I follow. Is it notable and verifiable? Check. Upgrade to article status. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 05:05, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Article posting

<redacted article posting> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ddkatv (talk • contribs) 00:59, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for letting us know about this! Certainly very interesting. But, an internet forum is probably the best place for information like this. See WP:OUTLETDIR for some ideas. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:03, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I have redacted the article from this page just on the off chance they copied it from somewhere. However, it is still readable here if the author still needs it. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 01:52, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Review request

heY I SUBMITTED MY ARTICLE WITH RELIABLE SOURCES PLS.REVIEW IT — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiassociate (talk • contribs) 16:06, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Please direct any queries regarding your submission to the help desk. Thanks, Mephistophelian (contact) 11:00, 7 January 2013 (UTC).

FYI

A thread concerning the work at AfC may/should be of interest to the AfC operators: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention#Input from newly registered user: User:Anne Delong. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting, it ties in with has been discussed a few sections above. I agree that a page landing system is what is really needed </sigh> Pol430 talk to me 11:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

What do we do when....

...someone keeps removing the AfC declines? Like at The Park Centre??? Second time for this article. — ^Wylie_Coyote 20:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

These declined templates are provisional and don’t instruct newcomers specifically against their removal, so it’s reasonable to speculate that they didn’t intend disruption or realise the inconvenience to other reviewers. Mephistophelian (contact) 04:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

Speedy deleting AfCs

We get a lot of AfCs that have zero chance. Can we speedy them before the author comes to IRC pitching, pleading, adding a blog or two, resubmitting, etc?

Current procedure is to google it for copyvios and notability. If it comes up non-notable, we often do a google news archives search to be sure (most are small businesses/business people and not going to get matches at google books). If it's totally hopeless, we tell the author to dig for refs, or decline it, or tell the author it has no hope. Then the pleading and debating starts. It often goes on for weeks, with a blog ref or two added, and more pleading and IDHT.

Can we speedy these? Someone at IRC suggested zapping them before they're declined so the user doesn't receive a decline template with a link that goes nowhere. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:00, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• AfCs should not get anywhere near article namespace if they are just goint to be deleted. That just wastes everybody's time. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem is, there's no CSD criterion that applies in those cases. There's nothing at CSD for "this is clearly a non-notable thing because the author can't provide sources". See WP:NOTCSD. A7 and A9 don't apply in most cases, because the author makes a credible claim of notability, even if they can't back it up with sources. A1 and A3 don't apply because there's generally content and context in the proposed article. In order to be able to speedy the proposed articles, you'd have propose this type of deletion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion and gain consensus there. —Darkwind (talk) 05:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

If it passes through CSD it may be PRODed or go to AfD. Editors who approve AfCs should have some idea of what is likely to pass any deletion process. IMO. LOL! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Non of the article based CSD criteria (A7 etc) apply to AFC submissions because they do not exist in the article namespace -- they exist in the Wikipedia Talk: namespace. Only the general CSD criteria apply, and submissions that meet these criteria -- usually copyright vios or blatant promotion -- are nominated for speedy deletion. Pol430 talk to me 11:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

This has been discussed numerous times before, Old AfC submissions that are dormant can usually be tagged as {{db-g6}} (uncontroversial maintenance/house keeping) unless they come under something like {{db-g2}} (tests), {{db-g3}} (Vandalism), {{db-g11}} (advertising/spam} or {{db-g12}} (Copy-vio) (though the last 4 can usually be done at the declining stage rather than later on). Though it's also been said, that we need an admin who is willing to just go through and delete them rather than us tag them and clog up the mainstream CSD process - Happysailor ^(Talk) 11:58, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The wheat from chaff plan

Another aim of weeding out the non-notable company/business people drafts is to expose the notable remainder for review. Then those can be fast tracked.

A solution is to have the wizard ask if the subject is a "company/business person". If not, then auto-add a category. This category will contain much better product -- product I would like to review, but which is right now mixed in the the rubbish. I proposed this recently, and it sort of went stale: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2012 4#Corporation AfCs burying better AfCs.

This category idea is simple, and doesn't change the system. It just adds on a useful feature. Can it be done? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:03, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I am no expert on coding but I think it may be possible. There is a similar thing with the upload wizard but in that case it assigns the approp template. Anyway, given that editors are leaving and it is hard to keep them and we struggle with keeping out vandalism and there is a huge backlog of tasks we really should be making it harder to edit WP. Fighting words but that is the reality and that is what has been happening over most of WP history anyway. Given the popularity of WP and the number of WP enemies should we go back to the Nupedia model? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:49, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

We must not utter the "Nupedia" word here. :) Make it harder to edit? Better: easier to edit but harder to clog systems. Right now, the entire business world is racing to use Wikipedia as free ad space. That should stop. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:20, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

It would be very easy to add a parameter that subcategorizes future submissions by topic through the use of the article wizard preload and a minor change to the articles for creation template. It would also be possible to create a very tiny template that tags a submission as "new". This would allow us to prioritize newer submissions over resubmits. If there is consensus for it, I could do it in an hour or so timewise. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 07:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We certainly should try and keep the barriers to editing as low as possible to avoid editor bias dictating what is included. But this is exactly the sort of thing that is ruining WP. The barriers are now too low for its popularity. Everyone knows that they can edit WP so they all have a go, with the disastrous results that we are now seeing.

I agree that we have to stop the flood of spam. We are in desperate need of a prescriptive notability guideline for commercial orgs. I have tried but I gave up beating my head against the wiki-brick wall. I don't know if it is me but it seems that getting new guidelines in place is no longer possible. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:33, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

One thing I just thought of. If I make the changes to add a "new submission" template, then the AFC script would need to be updated to run a simple find and replace to remove the template. In order to do that, we would need an admin to update it and someone who understands the script to code it. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 07:36, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

As for technicalities, I can't comment, but I totally agree with Alan Liefting, too big and it's RfCs, bureaucracy, and it will fizzle. Better to get something non-controversial proposed here -- something small and useful that we can get a dozen "supports" for right here and now. Let's go baby steps and get something done that can lead to further improvements. So, can someone make a simple sentence proposal here and ask for a list of supports? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:58, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• The one problem with speedy deletion is the fact that it puts the admin on the spot. There are many administrators that don't want to perform a controversial action for fear of community reprisal. They want to see consensus for the deletion of something before they do it, which is understandable. Unfortunately we can't use AFD because the articles are in mainspace. We could use MFD, but then we have to put up with people that will blanket keep votes saying "It's articles for creation. It can be improved with time." Then we have to deal with the editors confused as to why a submission is up for deletion when we can simply decline.

I do believe we need some way to delete submissions that don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever passing. This is especially true for submissions comprised of badly referenced BLPs which may or may not have invalid information. So, with that said I would like to make a proposal to create a subpage for Articles for Creation at Wikipedia:Articles for Creation/Submission deletion. Pages will be eligible for nomination under criteria that will be described below. An entry will be listed for 2 days. If anyone contests the nomination (other than the article's creator), then the deletion process is canceled. If the nominator still believes the article needs to be deleted, then a discussion will be started on this talk page. After the two days with no controversy, the submission is slapped with a specially created CSD G6 tag and deleted by any administrator.

Criteria for deletion would be any one of the following:

1. Unsourced BLPs - The submission is an unsourced or poorly sourced Biography of a living person. There is not a significant amount of coverage in reliable sources and the nominator has done a reasonable job searching for sources.
2. Advertisment for a Non-notable organization - The submission is a promotional article on an organization. The organization itself fails the general notability guidelines (or any other notability guideline) and there is no substantial coverage in reliable third party sources. Note: If the topic has even one (1) reliable source with substantial coverage, then it would be exempt the submission from this criteria.
3. Non-notable object/entity that just won't go away™ - The submission is usually pure advertising with no useful sources or content and the topic of the submission fails the notability guidelines. The reviewer has tried time and time again to explain that the article needs to be neutral, well sourced, and the topic notable; yet the submitter just refuses to listen. This type of article would have died long ago if it had even dared set foot in mainspace, yet it survives for eons in AFC. It haunts the AFC reviewers, coming back like a zombie that just won't die, clogging up the review queue due to a very stubborn submitter who does nothing to improve it. It's the type of submission that makes a reviewer want to ignore all rules and slap a CSD G11 up and hope for an admin who thinks the same way.
4. Pointless spam submissions - Submissions that have been very clearly submitted by an obviously bored school student. This would include obvious hoaxes, vandalism, drafts of love letters for other students, rants about teachers/students/other entities that doesn't quite meet G10, and similar.
5. Unencyclopedic topics - How-to articles, personal reflection essays, essays about obscure business philosophies, or any other topic covered under Wikipedia is not for publishing that non-encyclopedia entry topic you have always had that urge to write about.

I think that covers 99.99% of the articles that will never be accepted. If we can get this passed, our workload would be lightened significantly. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 09:13, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support With the understanding that the system is not a replacement for conventionally CSDing submissions that already meet applicable criteria. For example, obvious hoaxes and vandalism already fall under G3. I particularly like criteria number 3™, AQ. I think any of us who have been here for a while know exactly the kind of submission you describe -- good to see you around again by the way. Pol430 talk to me 11:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, this process would be for submissions that can't fall to the quick CSD. And thanks, glad to be back. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 12:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support Provided that we all err on the side of caution, I think this will do the trick. I don't know who will root through death row looking for drafts to contest. Perhaps those will come at the request of the author, which is fine by me. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

How about we require reviewers to endorse purging the article in addition to the two day arbitrary time span. Shall we say endorses from two other AfC reviewers plus the nominator in order to delete the article. That would make a total of four people looking over the article before it was deleted. (The fourth being the purging admin). Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 12:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I would think two reviewers signing off on it then one admin that purge it without having to do a google check. That should be pretty safe with due diligence done. It's within our resources to keep up and have this whole thing end up a net gain and with the backlog permanently gone. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:13, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

And I do love the idea of more than one set of eyes on it. Very good idea. Safe, and standards become consistent. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:15, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose firstly because I don't entirely understand the need to delete submissions that won't get anywhere near mainspace so are relatively harmless, secondly because it adds another layer of scrutiny for AfC reviewers when we are already short-staffed and dealing with very long backlogs, thirdly because AfC is often the first point of contact for new editors who we don't really want to 'bite'. AfC is only a first line of defence against the very worst articles, after all. And if we speedy delete AfC's its quite easy for the persistent editor to paste from their sandbox into a new submission, isn't it? Sionk (talk) 16:28, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

In small quantities, yes, submissions with no chance of going to mainspace is very harmless to this project. At the time of writing, 157 of 558 unreviewed submissions are resubmits. That is over a 1:5 ratio which will only get higher as the backlog decreases. Out of those resubmits, I am willing to bet that 120 of them all the author did was add one or two sources or reword one or two sentences. The other 30 will be articles where the author actually cares enough about our time to actually try to follow the review advice. The single most common argument from new users in IRC as to why there article should be accepted is "I looked at article "X", and my article is marginally better than article "X", so why is article "X" live and mine is not?" The only way to fix this argument is to improve the overall quality of mainspace articles, which is out of the scope of AfC.

I fully agree that we shouldn't bite new editor, and that is something we need to be very careful about. However, the purpose of this project has shifted from just helping IP editors to helping every new editor on the project using the article wizard. We need to draw the line at some point between helping new editors write articles and cutting through the bad articles preventing us from helping legitimate editors. We need a criteria to get rid of persistent resubmits and we need a process of getting rid of BLP violations (i.e. unsourced articles with no google sources on the subject), it is killing this project's ability to handle the workload.

Which would you rather, a formal AfC process where bad resubmits are handled internally. Or, would you rather that frustrated reviewers accept the bad submissions before sending them off to AFD, a process we have no control over. That is how we have dealt with some very bad cases in the past, but doing so is incredibly bitey. So, would you rather we break it to them softly here before deleting it, doing minimal damage to their interest in editing. Or, would you rather we accept, send to AFD, and let the sometimes rude commenters have at the new user's creation before it is deleted. The latter would do far more damage to their interest in editing. We have to be willing to say no means not ever. Reviewers here are smart, most of us have worked with hundreds if not thousands of submissions. We know which submissions will never stand a chance in AFD even if they were written decently. So why should we go though an endless cycle with the submitter when we know it will never pass. It wastes our time that we could be spending on other articles and it wastes their time they could be spending on something else. All it does is slowly discourages them until they cease resubmitting, leaving the project. And the ones that don't will push their submission into the queue for months, if not years.

So the too long didn't read version, I agree with you Sionk, deletion should never be our first reaction to a newly submitted article (with the exception of G3, G10, and G12 content). With that said, we need to draw the line for persistent resubmits with no chance of surviving an AFD ever, non-attack BLP violations (significant legal concerns here, it may not be an attack page, but what if the information is blatantly wrong?), spam submissions (We have all seen these, the author clearly has no interest in writing an article), and other content where it is clear that the author is just trying to use Articles for Creation as if it's Pastebin. Deletion at AFC has long been an unsteady topic, but it is a process we will ultimately need if we are to rise to the task of handling a sizable portion of incoming new articles. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 19:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Retaining editors

Does speedy deletion help us to convert new editors into good editors? How can we best encourage them to either improve their draft articles to the point where they can be published, or to work instead on something more suitable for Wikipedia? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't, but letting them flog a dead horse for 2 weeks is even more discouraging. Better to give them the bad news at once, and at their talk page encourage them to create other content and console them a bit.

But keep in mind, most of these non-notables are for promo purposes, mainly by coi employees of an org. These sorts are not interested in becoming editors. On the other hand, getting rid of this chaff exposes good articles that we can fast track. The authors of these can get our special care, attention and recruitment. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 14:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

What I've noticed, is that when I decline some unreferenced AFC for an organization, and go to put the decline notification on the user's talk page; the username is usually the name of the organization. This almost proves what Anna is saying, they just created an account to advertise their organization, and then leave. --Jakob 15:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

If you see that then give them a {{subst:uw-username|it's the name of your organization}} ~~~~ Anna Frodesiak (talk) 15:27, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

And when that isn't the case..? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:39, 5 January 2013 (UTC)March 22-24th, 2013 TBA Curtis Arnott, Darrel Guilbeau, David Vincent, Laura Post, Lisle Wilkerson,

Clarify? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

When the username is not the name of the organization..? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:01, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what you're getting at. Then you don't tell them their username is inappropriate. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 16:07, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

How do you encourage them to either improve their draft articles to the point where they can be published, or to work instead on something more suitable for Wikipedia?

Do you mean that the username is the organization + something like 999 at the end, Andy? Jakob 18:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

No. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I am unsure how this discussion about the various nuances of the username policy relates to editor retention at AfC!? Andy, to veto this suggestion on the basis that that it's bitey and we should be focusing on turning new editors, that come through AfC, into 'good' editors, largely ignores the problem Anna, Alan and AQ have described and is not at variance with what this project has always tried to do. The point is that a very large number of AfC contributors come here with the single purpose of enhancing their product/company/organization's web-presence. They have no interest in contributing to Wikipedia, in any wider sense, and the only efforts they make to improve their submissions are to further the chance it will be accepted. Many editors involved in this project attempt to guide these new users into 'The ways of Wikipedia', some listen, some don't want to listen, and some are so fundamentally lacking in clue that it really isn't worth the time it takes to explain. AfC is not a school, it is an overburdened, under-resourced project that simply cannot continue on its present course forever, lest it implode. Pol430 talk to me 20:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I explained in the main section above my thoughts about why deletion here is better so I won't go into that. On the topic of retention, ultimately, Articles for Creation's job is to help IP editors create good articles that will not be nominated for deletion. Now, with the expansion of the article wizard publicity, we had a large influx of new user article submissions. As a result, we inherited the task of efficiently teaching the sumbitters to create new articles. We are not here to persuade every submitter to stay onboard with the project. And to be honest, 95% of the submitters are here to write a new article or two they found to be missing. After that is done, they have no more interest in Wikipedia. If you don't believe me, just ask one of the many submitters that pop into the Wikipedia IRC help channel. They have no interest, so why should we force them. Of the 5% that sticks around, some of them create accounts and others remain prolific IP creators. For example, four of AfC's largest content contributors; the Canadian astronomy IP (for a long time the shining star of AfC, created countless articles over the course of at least 4 years), the Pacific wrestler IP (usually B class wrestling articles), the Canadian News Organization IP (lots of redirects and a few start class news related articles, and the American Civil War IP (writes borderline GA class articles). It's because of these IPs that we are here. We are also here to help ease the learning curve. If the topic isn't notable, then the topic isn't notable. Lulling them into false hope for weeks on end will not change that fact of life. All it will do is frustrate them and they will leave the project anyway. It's better to break it to them sooner rather than later. And if they leave the project over it? Well, there is a high statistical probability they would have done that anyway. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 21:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Let's get this sorted out. No action is a terrible choice.

This whole thread boils down to two choices. There's a darn good argument for B, and I've heard none for A.

The editors here are fed up with marketing agency employees pitching blog-supported drafts. Editor retention? We are editors working AfC at IRC and review and you're losing us. For what? Because we're afraid of losing an editor??

A: Status quo. Reviewers disgusted, exhausted, and walking away. Huge backlogs of mostly rubbish. Stringing along "company employees" with hopeless drafts for fear of biting them. Decent drafts by prospective long-term editors lost in the thousand bits of rubbish, waiting...

B: Get two sets of eyes on the rubbish to be sure. Give them the bad news, and chop the draft in a few days instead of months. Console the "company employee" and encourage him to stay. Clear the backlog revealing the good drafts by good editors, give them special care, and recruit them.

If you support "A", please say why, okay?

• Support B Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support B Gtwfan52 (talk) 06:38, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support B Pol430 talk to me 09:16, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support B Jakob 14:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support B Cerebellum (talk) 15:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Comment What purpose does this vote serve? 'A' seems a heavily biased and questionable description of the status quo. Sionk (talk) 19:59, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
• Comment Positions put in highly biased way. Not a fair vote. 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 21:08, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

  Comment Agreed, the positions are loaded and biased; however, that does not preclude editors from describing the status quo differently or stating what their personal position is. Feel free to come up with alternative ideas that address the underlying concerns raised over the past 3/4 sections. Pol430 talk to me 22:29, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, in my experience I find the persistent editors quite rare. True, they are annoying but are quite quick and easy to decline again. If they are being truly disruptive why not warn them and ultimately block them? As for 'huge backlogs of rubbish', well, that is normally because of newby misunderstanding of Wikipedia. Only a tiny minority of articles at AfC are 'good to go' at the first attempt. I'm not quite sure of the benefits of speedy deleting poor articles (unless that is something that is already done anyway in the name of housekeeping). Though I suppose BLP attack pages may be one good example that needs to be zapped promptly! Do AfC drafts get indexed by search engines? Sionk (talk) 11:49, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I see your point. At AfC we do get plenty of time-wasting pushing for approval of hopeless articles. This is not a question of "not good to go". We're talking about cases of "probably not ever going to be notable". And we don't want to warn them or block them because that's bureaucratic and "bites". We want to seek their understanding. Deleting is an honest response. A message explaining helps them to understand. Isn't that better than warnings and blocks? Why isn't this the best approach? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:32, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Does deletion solve the problem? Imagine the scenario. Persistent COI editor comes back to try to get their article approved for the umpteenth time. They find it's been deleted. There's a nice message on their talk page explaining that. They ignore the nice message, and approach other editors with "please help please help". I ask them for a link to the page they're talking about; all I can now see is that it's been deleted. I can't see deleted pages, so I can't explain to them exactly why it's been deleted. Does this help? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:04, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Ask an admin to tell you or the author why (but don't ask the same one every time unless they volunteer for it...). Peridon (talk) 14:04, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Needing to do that dozens of times per week would likely result in just not bothering. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 14:50, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

A persistent editor can easily re-submit their draft (from their sandbox/DOC file) to AfC and the process starts again. They're unlikely to go away if they are persistent/determined. Maybe they will become cross and mean! After all, there were numerous new editors submitting multiple copies of the same article when the backlog was 1000+.

I would also think we want to avoid spending time proving something isn't notable. Shouldn't the onus be on the submitters to prove their subject is suitable? Proving something isn't notable is the job of AfD, or other processes.

All the same, I can understand the frustration of some AfC activists when their Talk page is filled with demands from pushy newbies. We can choose to spend as much or as little time helping them as we want, can't we? Sionk (talk) 01:42, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense. So, if we don't spending time proving something isn't notable, they just accumulate leading to the problem I really want solved: Good drafts by good prospective editors getting lost in the mix.

So, I knew the dry, neutral presentation would be met with opposes and the thing would stall. I tried the elephant in the room approach, and still insufficient traction.

So, how about solving the problem with "plan B"? Simply add another checkbox in the wizard to make a category for non-commercial and maybe non-person. It is what remains that will contain the goodies that I want to get my hands on. This is non-destructive and could really help. Any traction on that? Cheers, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Nobody's explaining how we stop an editor easily resubmitting a fresh draft (losing the AfC edit history in the process). Sionk (talk) 02:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

True. Maybe there's a way to automatically add a "previously deleted" template.

So, what about the "wheat from chaff plan B"? What do you think? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:12, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I've already given my response to Plan B. Firstly I still can't see a compelling reason to devote scarce voluntary resources to deleting AfC submissions (with the exception maybe of BLP attack pages). After all, AfC isn't main article space. Copyright violations are automatically blanked. We already have decline templates to label submissions as 'adverts'. Secondly deletion doesn't solve the problem because it is easy to re-submit an AfC draft. Thirdly it seems Wikipedia wants as many new articles as possible to be channelled via AfC, so it would be counterproductive to make it more 'bitey'. Sionk (talk) 13:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, my fault. I wasn't clear. I was referring to: Simply add another checkbox in the wizard to make a category for non-commercial and maybe non-person. It is what remains that will contain the goodies that I want to get my hands on. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:08, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

• Sideline note In case people haven't seen it, there is a thread at http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Expanding_A-criteria_to_include_fitting_WP:AFC-submissions_and_others that could be relevant here. Peridon (talk) 12:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Somebody reaallllllly wants this guy approved!

• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob Rubinovitz
  
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob Rubinovitz (2)
  
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob Rubinovitz (3)
  
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob rubinovitz
  
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob Rubinovitz2
  

Am tempted to blank them all. — ^Wylie_Coyote 16:36, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Probably a newbie. Refer him to WP:TEAHOUSE, approve the article, and create redirects rather than blanking. :P —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 19:32, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I've removed some AfC req's from a few of them and suggested he/she work on/merge to the oldest one. — ^Wylie_Coyote 20:22, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Someone is reviewing Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob Rubinovitz (3), but the others have been redir to the original. — ^Wylie_Coyote 20:34, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

When I looked at all the links above the only one awaiting review was Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jacob Rubinovitz (3); which I have duly reviewed. This appeared to be the most up-to-date version. Your copy and paste merge and resubmit has effectively split the page histories which will now require a patient admin to sort out. Pol430 talk to me 21:00, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

This is why I don't like doing AfC reviews. We decline them, they start another duplicate (or 5) and we (or I) get made out to be the bad guy? Sorry I suggested another drive. — ^Wylie_Coyote 21:19, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

If I must, I'll revert all the redirects and let you all sort it out. — ^Wylie_Coyote 21:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

You're not the bad guy. I know you thought that was the best solution but you just need to remember that copy and paste page moves should generally be avoided. 1) for attribution reasons 2) for reasons of preserving a pages history. 3) for not unnecessarily adding to peoples deleted contribs should a page with many edits get permanently deleted. All of those redirects are not really needed, so there was always going to be a need to merge some histories. Just leave it as is for now and I'll take a more indepth look at what may, or may not, need a hist merge. Pol430 talk to me 21:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a flashing neon Resubmit button would work for these people? — ^Wylie_Coyote 21:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

They'd still end up creating something new at some obscure title in the wrong namespace... I've messaged Anthony Appleyard (talk · contribs) to see if he can sort it out. TBH, your copy and paste move probably hasn't made much difference as each redirect already has significant history attached to it. Pol430 talk to me 21:48, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll do it... *sigh* KTC (talk) 21:50, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Haven't the Corps told you yet KTC!? Because we are short on admins, and there is almost no prospect of RfA reform anytime soon, the community has adopted a new idea. The same people that made ClueBat have just produced AdminStick... Pol430 talk to me 22:03, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I wonder how many AfC reviewers do not take the time, when moving articles out of sandboxes, to suggest working on the originals and simply add a (2) or (3) to the titles? Surely, new creators, who appear to not know much about editing, aren't crafty enough to add the numbers. To me, this looks like page-movers fault for the duplicates. If that's the case, shame shame. Again, I could be wrong. — ^Wylie_Coyote 08:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

It has been the practice, for quite some time, to add numbers to the end of the title because it is presumed editors will only work on one version at a time -- which can be fairly easily fixed. The above case of parallel histories is very rare, but I agree that we should probably do away with the unwritten rule of adding numbers; however, copy and pasting (even if attribution is provided) is not the right way to go about it. The best course of action would be to request a hist-merge or technical page move at the time of moving (if the title already exists). Pol430 talk to me 11:39, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Attribution isn't an issue if all the content come from one account/IP. It doesn't matter if someone added the content in 100 edits or one, as long as the content all came from them. KTC (talk) 11:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I was referring to copy and paste moves by an editor other that original contributor. For example, a reviewer moving a sandbox to AfC space. Pol430 talk to me 13:20, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I usually check for sandboxes before I review normally. (For some reason, it bothers me.) Whenever I move one into AfC space and the original pops up, I always remove the AfC request (from the sandbox) and suggest working on the original AfC. I never blank the sandbox in case they worked a long time on it and forgot about/didn't notice the original. I used to add numbers when I first joined AfC, but don't now for the above reasons. Today I saw a sneaky one where they changed the spelling of an AfC BLP title to try an duplicate it. Sneaky.... — ^Wylie_Coyote 19:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

The River Restoration Centre

How can we get this back into AfC as it clearly has not been fixed since Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The River Restoration Centre? — ^Wylie_Coyote 11:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd speculate (with some confidence) that the author has simply pasted the AfC submission into mainspace. After all, the AfC draft still exists at AfC so we don't need to 'get it back'. I'd suggest trying to Speedy Delete the new article - it makes no claims of notability (unless you count being a charity working nationally). Sionk (talk) 11:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Promoting a AfC to mainspace

Just a reminder: When you promote a AfC creation to article space, Please verify that you have the reviewer and timestamp parameters filled in correctly. I've been crawling through Category:Undated_AfC_submissions to try and reduce the number of entries on the list and I'm finding several that have basic issues with the timestamp parameter not being filled in. Thank you. Hasteur (talk) 17:32, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

What exactly is the purpose of the reviewer and timestamp parameters? I believe a bot (EarwigBot?) tends to automatically fill them in (or at least it did so in the past for various submissions I accepted), but to me it seemed to be bureaucratic make-work without any significant benefit. Huon (talk) 17:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

You would think so, however when I took a look at the category yesterday, we were over 200 articles as members. The category is a failure category. In some cases Earwig bot kept re-stamping the articles over and over again. In other cases the article must have been promoted to articlespace so fast that earwig didn't get a chance at it. The reviewier is who promoted the article (adds extra text just like the decliner on declined AfCs). The timestamp moves the talk page out of the category. Every editor should endeavour to not create more busywork later down the pipeline for other editors. Anything that's been in the category for more than a month has had multiple passes from Earwig bot and still not been fixed. Hasteur (talk) 18:09, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I had expected that the magic words {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and {{REVISIONUSER}} would accompany similar templates for the timing of the previous revision, earliest revision, creator, and last editor, which would certainly expedite the process of correcting those parameters. Mephistophelian (talk) 18:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

Question on tallying articles for the drive

Hey guys. So, last year I did a majority of the reviewing and a lot of this was kept in check. Now we have these backlog drives, and I was wondering if we have a way of tallying these reviews. I'm extremely wary of tallying this stuff because it is so cumbersome and takes away from the drive, and if I do participate in this thing, it will be off the record. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 18:09, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Kevin, Excirial has developed a script for this: User:Excirial/AFCBuddy. Mephistophelian (talk) 18:12, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

Beautiful! Thank you. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 18:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Latest counts should be up for everyone. And since i like linked lists a few thingies i thought i should mention:

• I quickly wrote some code that generates a new totals list as well. It will list the amount of entries on the page, and the amount AFCBuddy would generate if it were to be used instead. Can be off if people don't update the list a while (AVS5221), missed a review in their list (Bonkers the Clown) or if AFCBuddy runs into something that causes it bug out. (Rcsprinter123 - Will try to fix it before tomorrows run)
• A few people are down a review or two, in cases where they were done manually instead of using the AFCH tool. If you really wish to track those, you need to keep a separate list.

Besides that i made quite a few changes to AFCBuddy's code today, so if anyone sees anything odd - drop me a note :). Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 23:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

generator manuel

I have a onan 5 k diesel marine generator pulled out of the boat in mazatlan no one seems to know how to fix it I will shortly receive the model and serial numbers but was wishing someone could direct me to where i can get a manuel am in LA area and if parts are needed I can save a lot of money if there is any left THANK YOU — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bprigger (talk • contribs) 22:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect, Wikipedia is not guide, and even if it were this would be an inappropriate place to ask this question. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so while we might have information on your parts somewhere (unlikely, given that they are usually non-notable) we are not able to answer your question. I personally cannot answer your query, and would advise against posting a serial number as those are usually unique and would expose you to identity theft. Wer900 • talk 00:24, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

You may be able to get some help from the Wikipedia Reference Desk. It works like a library reference desk. You can post a question there, and somebody might be able to help you find the manual you are looking for.--Fagles (talk) 17:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Wal-mart. :) ^Wylie_Coyote 18:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Bug or no?

When you click the "Clean the submission" button in the "Review", it doesn't remove the arrowed "This will add a notice..." part. Is that because it's hidden or is that a later bot fix? It's no biggie, but surprising to find those parts in manual cleanups after the AfC jumps up top. — ^Wylie_Coyote 19:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

For some reason, I think this has been going on for months. While we're here, is it normal for the script to no longer notify those whose articles we have just created, as I seem to remember this happening in the past. Thanks! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Number of reviews

Is there any way of knowing how many reviews has a user performed? — Yash ^[talk] 06:04, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

If an editor refrains from using the AFCH, then calculating the figure is difficult, but you could nonetheless search through their contributions for obvious indicators using SW’s Edit Summary Search and perhaps restrict the appropriate namespace. Mephistophelian (contact) 15:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC).

Another possibility is to identify some ubiquitous sentence from the existing templates, then use pre-parsing in AutoWikiBrowser to include anything in the user's contributions that contains that text string. Mephistophelian (contact) 15:56, 10 January 2013 (UTC).

I have 4,325 reviews...damn. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:56, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

0 pending submissions

"Clear 0 pending submissions" - Well done everyone! -- KTC (talk) 02:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I have noticed a substantial number of human errors, where reviewers add rationales that are incongruous, e.g. applying the 'insufficient context' template where the identity of the subject is manifest, or decline a submission due to stylistic concerns. If I combine Excirial's concerns above with my personal experiences of other submissions, then it seems that the proportion of hasty, substandard reviews easily surpasses that of the previous drive from October 2012. Mephistophelian (contact) 04:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC).

I applied that one sparingly, although one could have been a few other reasons. In terms of submissions right now, either someone is clearing them out, or we are getting one an hour, which is very strange for this time of day. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

If this talk page is indicative of trends, it seems people are declining articles like no tomorrow. What seems to have happened here is, without further indication on the specific problem, the article's creator seems to have just added more and more sources, instead of fixing the problems with the existing ones. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:52, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this page is indicative of the average review quality. The editor has persistently removed both comments and review templates and hasn't bothered contacting the helpdesk in any way. Combine that with adding review requests at high speed and having a different reviewer at each review, i cannot be surprised that this resulted in a mass of declines.

Even so, i did notice multiple reviews that caused me to raise an eyebrow. Especially the "No Context" review criteria is quite often completely off the mark. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 14:38, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Frank Caruso Jr.

Could somebody else take a look at this? It's a improperly sourced article about somebody being (apparently) most notable for being a criminal and serving 8 years in jail, but I can't find anything on a news search. I've declined it for violating WP:BLP, and it duplicates content in an existing article Frank T. Caruso (whose content is also tagged {{cn}}), but the IP who created keeps re-adding the badly sourced BLP violation. I'm going to assume good faith that they don't understand what they're doing, but I don't want to revert again as I'll fall foul of the three revert rule. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:56, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the unsourced (and off-topic) content from Frank T. Caruso. WP:3RR has an exemption for unsourced BLP violations, but I'll keep an additional eye on the draft. Huon (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

AFC drive and review quality.

Hello there people,

I just reopened 34 declined reviews to the "open" status because they were declined on incorrect grounds. I send the reviewer a note and i equally marked them on the respective review page in case anyone wants to see the rationale behind this action of mine. Note that not all of these reopened pages were good quality and at least half will simply be declined again; Even so, the editors who wrote them will at least see a rationale that they can work on.

Now i honestly haven't checked any other editors, but please, please keep in mind that we are mostly dealing with new editors here who often haven't got a clue what they are doing. Incorrect rationales and declines are just going to confuse them, and i can guarantee you that some editors don't even know how a talk page works so they cannot even ask what is wrong. Result? They abandon ship and move somewhere else while they might otherwise have made a decent article or even sticked around for more. Morale of the story? When not sure about a review - recheck it. Still not sure? Simply move to the next one. Mistakes are always possible of course, but if we can prevent them all the better.

Oh, and sorry if this happens to sounds condescending - Writing this type of text has never been my cup of tea. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 22:17, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to echo Excirial here, in that we really need to remember that even if this is the internet, and we're essentially a customer service agency for Wikipeia and should remember that we need to hold everyone's hand here. Last year during my review stretch, I had a stretch where it was utter hell to help out everyone who came to me, but I did it because I could not bear losing any potential editors. It is extremely easy to be cold on the internet, but if we can make people's experiences here positive, we're doing it right. Besides, it is easier to re-train a new editor and focus their passions on something more productive than having them walk away and be faced with a situation where we have to recruit a new editor. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:29, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Obviously many of those seem indefensible, but in a few cases, such as #139 in the diff above, I wonder whether the reviewer hasn't been misled by the decline template. The "bio" comment at the moment is "This submission's references do not adequately evidence the subject's notability", i. e., there's nothing to substantiate any claims to notability made in the article, rather than "This submission hasn't credibly asserted notability" or something along those lines. A rewrite would remove any ambiguity. The guide to the helper script would then have to be changed to make it clear that if an article makes any claim to notability which, if it were true, would be enough for the subject to merit an entry on Wikipedia, but is currently unreferenced or inadequately referenced, then the notability declines (bio, &c.) shouldn't be used, and "v" should be used instead. At the moment the guide merely directs reviewers to make a judgement about likely notability, but doesn't tell them to restrict their judgement solely to claims made in the submission, or to take those claims at face value. (#139 is particularly tricky because none of the claims in the article would make the subject notable according to WP:ACADEMIC. Perhaps there should be three notability decline templates: (1) no claim to notability; (2) a claim to notability that doesn't meet the specific criteria in one of the specialized guidelines (the reviewer would need to add the specific guideline in a comment); (3) a credible claim to notability that's unreferenced or poorly referenced.) Thoughts? Alexrexpvt (talk) 23:29, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I see where you're coming from, but worry that this makes things more complicated for reviewers; particularly, as is the case for the reviewer in question here, they appear to lack experience of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Pol430 talk to me 12:30, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I've been using the bio tag (and other notability tags) because of what the message says. When a submission makes a claim of notability, but uses non-independent sources or fails to back it up entirely, I think that message is the best one; it's more specific than the v message, which doesn't mention secondary-ness or independence. I don't really care what it says to us behind the scenes; the message that the submitter is getting is more important than making sure the "correct" boxes are ticked back here. Danger ^{High voltage!} 12:44, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Another issue I see with the above suggestion, is that a submission makes no claim to notability and is declined for that reason. So, the submitter adds a claim of notability and resubmits. It then gets declined for not making a claim of notability that meets specific guidelines (such as CORP). So, the submitter makes a claim of notability which meets CORP and resubmits. It gets declined again, for not having sufficient references to back up its claim(s) of notability. It's now taken 3 reviews and the submitter is seriously frustrated that they don't appear to be getting anywhere. Ultimately, the submission is never going to be accepted because it's an inherently non-notable load of WP:VSCA. Pol430 talk to me 14:13, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Editors need to make use of the "Comment" box when declining submissions. If you leave boilerplate text, without explaning why they relate to that specific submission, then it's small wonder you end up with the scenario that Pol430 describes. Declining a submission should be done as a pointer to its writer of how to improve it, not as "go away and be quiet so I can increase my backlog drive score." --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:41, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I have just handled this complaint on Editor Assistance/Requests who is annoyed or upset about getting repeated canned responses, and I've handled another complaint on the help desk this morning along similar lines. Can I please remind everyone that if you're not prepared to handle feedback from the article's author about what the specific problems are with their submission to slow down on the reviews, as I would find it totally unacceptable for quality of reviews to drop as a by-product of the backlog drive. In fact, I would go as far as saying any reviewer not following up questions on the help desk about their reviews to have the review failed and be penalised for causing work for other people. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Completely agree with your sentiments that editors should be prepared to accept the consequences of their decisions and handle feedback. But I've never visited the Helpdesk before and would have no idea if a newbie was raising their problems there. If newbies raise a problem somewhere other than their (or the AfC reviewer's) Talk page, then that is their choice. They're probably looking for independent advice. Sionk (talk) 11:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

The submission declined box explicitly mentions the help desk and invites editors to go there if they need help. Therefore it's little surprise that questions appear there all the time. I assume you mean you've never visited WP:EAR, which is a fair comment - I only noticed because I have that page on my watchlist. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:36, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I thought you meant the main Helpdesk! I've stuck my head into the AfC Helpdesk and the Teahouse regularly. Huon in particular seems to quickly and comprehensively answer every question at the AfC Helpdesk, which means I haven't scrutinised it recently. I can't remember ever seeing one of 'my' declines raised there (and I've been working at AfC for 12 months). Sionk (talk) 18:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Entirely agree with the point you are raising. Even so, i would point out that the value of the templates shouldn't be underestimated either. The templates DO contain a rather complete description of a specific problem - a description that is probably of higher quality than a manually written one would be in most cases. Additionally, keep in mind that the AFC backlog is most times quite bad (600 pages is normal, 1000-1500 page backlogs do occur). At those times i personally prefer to use templates to help many people float over teaching a small group to swim while the rest drowns. Having said that - some common sense is also required. Templating a user with the exact same template the fifth time obviously isn't going to help either.

If anything i would suggest keeping an eye out for complains such as these. If one is raised it may be wise to check a few reviews of the reviewer to determine if this is a persistent problem or just an incident. The backlog did cause an influx of new reviewers, and some might need some help just as much as the AFC article writers need. Not to say that a slight nudge back in the right direction every now and then isn't a good thing for experienced editors either. Also, Huon is a walking miracle as far as i am concerned. Helping new people can be quite tedious at times, yet i have seen nothing but high quality assistance from him (Same thing in the IRC help channel by the way). Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 19:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I semi-regularly hand out barnstars to Huon for reasons you just described - the Help Desk would fall apart without his contributions. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone noticed this AfC editor's Talk page which discourages anyone from contacting them? Maybe someone should have a word. I see a newbie has complained about it today at the Helpdesk. Sionk (talk) 12:54, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I've left a message. Mephistophelian / discuss / email 17:25, 12 January 2013 (UTC).

Viable?

I started User:Canoe1967/List of acute angle buildings a while ago. I don't want to move it to article space yet. I was just wondering if the whole idea of this article is viable. 'List' may be the wrong title, is there a codified term for them, which buildings to include, etc. The gallery needs work yet. Thoughts?--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:36, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

'Wedged-shaped' seems intuitive: "As with numerous other wedge-shaped buildings, the name "Flatiron" derives from its resemblance to a cast-iron clothes iron" (Flatiron Building). Mephistophelian (talk) 19:46, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

'Triangular buildings' may be a better subject. Acute angle buildings could include any building that is not built with right-angled corners. There seems to be some attention paid to triangular buildings because they are few and far between. Sionk (talk) 22:08, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

These suggestions fail to differentiate wedge-shaped, triangular foundations from silhouettes, thus a distinctive phrase common to archaeology is perhaps necessary to prevent the inclusion of inappropriate buildings, e.g. Khufu's Pyramid. Mephistophelian (talk) 23:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I joined an architect online forum and asked if there is a correct term. Is it a viable article then and ready for prime time so others can kick it around? We can always write a qualifier for inclusion on the talk page and change the title weekly just for fun.--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:01, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion. Ask this question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Architecture. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 00:46, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm a member of WikiProject Architecture and I agree, it is probably a better place to discuss the problem than here. I notice that "flatiron" is used to describe these sorts of buildings in the States. "Acute angle buildings" is definitely a problematic description. Sionk (talk) 01:46, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

 Done here. Continue at the project talk.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:18, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Statistical Compassion

i.m.o. there is great need for a Wikipedia article on "Statistical Compassion." (The idea in medicine that it is okay to kill, for example, ten patients if it saves thousands.) With increasing suspicion of adverse psychological side-effects from medications, school children being forced by their schools to take flu vaccines or not attend school, and other ethical and potentially legal issues, I feel this concept is going to become of great importance in the next few months and years.

68.199.204.112 (talk) 06:44, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

This page is for discussions or notices relating to the administration of the project, whereas a more appropriate place for requesting articles on subtopics in medical ethics is Wikipedia: Requested articles. Thanks, Mephistophelian / discuss / email 08:40, 13 January 2013 (UTC).

Clinton watch co. of chicago

I cant find anything on the clinton watch company of chicago can you help? I know they were around 1900s 70-80's ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.251.132 (talk) 21:44, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

This page is for user working on this project's administration, not general questions. Please ask this question at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what the Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. Pol430 talk to me 23:38, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Need help with Open IPTV Forum

Resolved

 – taken care of. :-) mabdul 18:37, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi folks,

I need some help with:

• Open IPTV Forum,
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Open IPTV Forum, and
• User:DJDonkey/Open iptv forum

For some weird reason this is being marked as spam even though this is a legit organization referenced with reliable sources. See [1] (The Register) and [2] (Ericsson).

This is getting speedy deleted, then moved back to WP:AFC, and then blanked.

Neither the author, reviewer, nor the project is being notified of these actions.

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 01:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Editnotice

It seems that most attempts to create new articles that come to Teahouse are stalled on WP:GNG. Can we have an edit notice that explains the multiple, reliable, independent source requirement? Of course it can link to the policy, for exceptions, etc., but I really think this will avoid 90% of the heartache at AFC. Rich Farmbrough, 06:26, 13 January 2013 (UTC).

Rich, the standard template does refer to the criteria, namely with the following sentence: '[this] submission’s references do not adequately evidence the subject's notability—see the general guideline on notability and the golden rule.' Mephistophelian / discuss / email 10:29, 13 January 2013 (UTC).

I think Mephistophelian makes a good point. If the submitter does not read or follow the links on the decline template, I don't see why they would do so for an editnotice. I think some of the problems with how we communicate with new editors at AfC stem from the mixed messages that the templates send out. For example: the above decline wording (yes, I'm aware that it's largely my wording) gives rise to the impression that the problem is the references. New editors don't have the in-depth knowledge of policy required to know that simply adding more poor quality references will not fix the problem; so they carry on editing and re-submitting the article. Having said that, there is a genuine requirement for the canned decline reasons to cover a broad range of eventualities and not be Tl;dr. Equally, if a submission is declined for being a copyvio then the standard 'you are welcome to improve the submission' and 'click here to resubmit when ready' are also confusing. Pol430 talk to me 11:31, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

This is a coincidence! I only stumbled across this project recently when I found a case of an article dating back to May 2011 that was rejected for notability, when the simplest of google searches would have shown that the article was on our hotlist. See my comments here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Visual arts#Zanobi Strozzi. Without stepping on anybody's toes, I would like to respectfully submit the idea that this project is equally effective in preventing vandalism as it is in protecting Wikipedia from good faith contributions, and as such, is no longer useful, despite all its cleverness and good intentions. Jane (talk) 16:10, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm of the opposite opinion. I think the "restrict create article to autoconfirmed" was an opportunity missed, people still get WP:CSDs, particularly A7s wrong (and expecting newbies to successfully contest them with proper policy is wishful thinking), creating new articles from scratch is a minefield, and this project is, generally, a nicer way of getting newbies up to speed. As to whether that works, I'd like to know about is how many people who make a start here go on to create good articles or apply to adminship? --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:58, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I wonder the same thing. In particular, I wonder whether the scoringspercentage of successful articles (and/or successfully retained new editors) here compares favorably or unfavorable with the circus over at AfD, which is what happens with lots of the new content that rolls in on recent changes. Somehow I feel AfD has cleaned up their act to the point of channelling article candidates to responsible projects that can receive them, whereas general-purpose projects like this can't work with the masses of contributions pouring in every minute. Jane (talk) 17:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

You wrote "I found a case of an article dating back to May 2011 that was rejected for notability, when the simplest of google searches would have shown that the article was on our hotlist." No, in May 2011 the mainspace article did not exist. The submitter was given instructions on how to improve the article, but elected not to. I don't understand your concerns. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:30, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Ritchie, the hotlist refers to our list of wanted articles, not our list of existing articles. Jane (talk) 18:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

There's something else I don't understand. At its most basic, this project's purpose is to allow IP editors to create articles. If we were to close this project down, should IP editors be unable to ever again create articles? Or are you saying, Jane, that we should again open up article creation for everybody? Neither strikes me as a good idea. Huon (talk) 17:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Huon, that is exactly what I am suggesting, and alternatively, this project can be a last resort at the other end of the AfD process. Jane (talk) 18:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Jane, I'm not convinced you understand the difference between WP:AfD, WP:CSD and WP:NPP. But what would be your proposal for the vast majority of articles that get created (whether here or in namespace) that don't come under the remit of your project? --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:50, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I must have missed something here, but as far as I can tell from events, somebody created an article in AfC in May 2011 and was (correctly) declined for not having enough sources for a valid individual article. The submission box in that revision says : "You are encouraged to make improvements by clicking on the "Edit" tab at the top of this page. When you are ready to resubmit, click here." This never happened. There is a discussion about clearing out inactive submissions at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Expanding A-criteria to include fitting WP:AFC-submissions and others.

As for "let their new stubs survive in the gigantic maelstrom of recent edits" - have a look at WP:NEWT or spend some time looking at the articles tagged for A7 speedy deletion - I think this is a far worse way of newcomers getting involved in articles - they get thrown to the wolves and spat out in minutes, probably never to try again. If I hadn't intervened, this would look like this. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Check your diff - "This submission's references do not adequately evidence the subject's notability" is how the template begins, wrongly. Johnbod (talk) 17:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Ritchie, the article *did* contain a valid reference, and strangely, it was even in good wiki syntax: <ref> {{Cite book| last = Strehlke | first = Carl Brandon | year = 1994| editor = Laurence B. Kanter and Barbara Drake Boehm | title = Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300-1450 | publisher = The Metropolitan Museum of Art | location = New York | pages = 349-50}}</ref> Did you look at the first edit? It was precisely the validity of the first submission that prompted my complaint. As for your second remark, I agree with John's comment above that somehow the channel function to this project has been lost and AfC is thus a degradation of service to newcomers, not an improvement, over the AfD process. Jane (talk) 17:50, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I looked at the reference, and it's fine, but you need significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources - "multiple" is "more than one", which is what the template is supposed to imply in a less bitey way. Or are you telling me with a straight face that {{db-a7}} is friendlier to newbies? Anyway, there's a parallel discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Editnotice, so let's try and keep things in one place. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I was afraid you would say something like that, which only proves that this AfC project has gone way off course. I am uncertain where to begin in responding to you; 1) your objection to my bringing the subject up at AfC, which is the subject of this discussion, 2) Your mention of significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources for new articles, or 3) your usage of WP: terms. This is exactly the kind of behavior that drives new editors away. Sigh. Jane (talk) 18:52, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

All I'm doing is disagreeing with you, and pointing out where core Wikipedia policies support my argument. May I humbly suggest chilling out, taking a deep breath, or possibly a WikiBreak and doing something else - I personally recommend a trip to Belgium and Trappist beer but what works for me might not work for you. Have fun in what you do. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:03, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Zanobi Strozzi was raised at WikiProject Visual Arts. I can see where Jane is coming from on this specific May 2011 example. In my view too, an artist who is still being talked about 600 years after their death is likely to be notable and a rigid application of WP:GNG was probably innappropriate. We always need to apply common sense at AfC. However, Zanobi Strozzi is a very atypical example of the sort of thing that comes through AfC. There are large numbers of draft articles promoting businesses, or bands, or other organisations, as well as plenty of poorly sourced BLP's. AfC seems to work very well for these sorts of thing. Sionk (talk) 19:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm of a slightly different viewpoint. An article on a notable Renaissance artist ought to have at least two sources, for the simple fact of ensuring a neutral point of view - isn't "history written by the winners" who leave out bits of information, leaving a skewed viewpoint? Maybe something that is inherently notable, such as historic kings and queens can get by with one source, but I don't think there's too much. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning that a decline at AfC does not prevent the author from creating an article directly in the mainpsace, if they wish to. I think this project does a great deal of good work in assisting new editors in getting to grips with Wikipedia and creating sound articles that are broadly policy compliant. In this regard, AfC deflects a lot work from NPP and Page Curation as well as AfD and candidates for speedy deletion. If new editors are to blossom into fruitful editors, then they need to gain a solid understanding of the ways and wherefores of Wikipedia -- AfC is as good a place as any. It seems to me that AfC, as a project, is quick to receive criticism but seldom receives praise. It should be remembered that the only criteria, for becoming a reviewer at AfC, is that you are autoconfirmed. We have editors with a broad range of experience, some very new, some very experienced, and it is hardly surprising that sometimes things are missed/'got wrong' during some reviews. It is equally unsurprising that due to frequent high backlogs, editors involved in this project cannot always give new editors the one-on-one attention they need to understand and navigate Wikipedia. Pol430 talk to me 19:52, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Of course we as experienced editors know that an article denied in AfC can still be created directly in the mainspace, and this case that I have been discussing could easily have been created in main namespace. The 64 cent question is whether the editor would have hung around in that case, and whether the article would have survived. We know that when articles by new editors are deleted that those editors tend to give up and leave. The AfC project is dealing mostly with this sort of editor, and should be a funnel to channel articles (and their authors!) to the proper project, and that is not happening. Page curation needs to be more precisely spread over the various parts of Wikipedia, even if those parts of Wikipedia are completely foreign to the project members at AfC. I find it very alarming to read that Zanobi Strozzi is a very atypical example of the sort of thing that comes through AfC. I would humbly suggest that there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of Strozzi-equivalents in the archives, articles suited to some specific Wikiproject that are now waiting silently for some Wikipedian to stumble upon them. Jane (talk) 21:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I think it's good practice to assign any articles I pass at AfC to an appropriate WikiProject, and I think all reviewers should strive to do the same. From my experience, there seem to be a lot of not notable or barely notable bands, and quite a lot of Indian people and businesses. Historical figures do turn up, such as William Wright (engineer), which I passed yesterday. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Well India really is a huge country, and perhaps there should be a separate Wikiproject specifically for their contributions at AfC? Same thing for garage bands. As I see it, everyone here is doing their best to fight fires, but without hard stats, there is no way to measure the effects. It must be pretty discouraging if there is no way to see what added value your efforts are bringing. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the only AfC successes are cases where a new editor suggested an article that happened to trigger the interest of an AfC reviewer. If that is the case, then I do feel that the new editors are better off in the "recent edits" queue. Perhaps Rich Farmborough can say where he based his observation on regarding "stalled at WP:GNG". I would be interested in more stats, if they are available. Jane (talk) 21:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Vasthu Sidhanthi Ramana garu

(unreferenced bio snipped) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 183.82.171.222 (talk) 15:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

This page is for users working on the project's administration. Please use the Article Wizard to create new articles. Also, if you add a biography of a living person without citing any references or sources, it may be deleted because of our policies on these. --Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:42, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I've added some templates to this page's editnotice for ease of access, we seem to be getting a lot of misplaced queries here lately. Pol430 talk to me 21:17, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

An AFC FAQ

Hello,

I have tried to create a general FAQ for the AfCs, with the original intention of having it as a resource for the Teahouse. It can be found here - User:TheOriginalSoni/AFC FAQ. Feel free to look into it, and add anything you think ought to be helpful. Also, dont forget to leave your comments at the talk page.

The relevant discussion at the Teahouse can also be found here - Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse/Host_lounge.

Cheers, TheOriginalSoni (talk) 07:08, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Good idea, provided that people actually bother to read it. I did try to create something similar not to long ago but never really finished it. In case it may be useful, these are the pages that i created for it:

• User:Excirial/AFC Assistance wizard/introduction
• User:Excirial/AFC Assistance wizard/ArticleIssues
• User:Excirial/AFC Assistance wizard/OtherIssues
• User:Excirial/AFC Assistance wizard/GeneralQuestions

A handful of the questions in these pages have an answer, but i never proofread or polished them. Still, they may be useful as a start for some FAQ answers. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 11:18, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, simply move it to a something more official place and hope that others help and link them! Such pages should also be more integrated into the wizard! mabdul 23:25, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

A question for you all

Okay, so this is a bit of a rant, and I apologize ahead of time for those who have to read it. I generally consider myself a fairly flexible guy when it comes to notability on Wikipedia, although I know that when it comes to this project, I walk on glass at all times, for fear of screwing up. At the same time, there are other editors (none who come to mind, because everyone has probably done this at one time or another, including myself on multiple occassions) who are insisting that we need to go by the book. Take the Dennis Ayling article for example. I've been working with his son on and off for around a week to get that thing published. I know that at first I was a bit wary, since I was slammed with a ton of requests at first (which is odd, since the more reviewing I did later on, no one messaged me), but I responded and tried to help him. He finally was able to submit the article again...and it was rejected for lack of sources. The issue that I have here, is that this guy is notable. He won a god damn Oscar, and that is a pretty good award! I at first declined it because it didn't have a ton of sources, but he told me he had almost nothing to work on, so I tried to help him. Once he was declined again, he left the following on my talk page:

Have just had the article rejected again Kevin, so I give up. I am making very small claims about a known notable figure. This has totally eroded any confidence I had in Wikipedia and I certainly wouldn't ever respond to one of your founder's requests for a donation.

— Tim Ayling (talk) 06:54, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

My question is, how many people here are flexible enough to accept one citation, based on the fact that most times we're looking for at least three, or a million. I ended up creating the article after I went on his IMDB site, and there is a photo of him holding the award with Farrah Fawcett and a few others. To me, that's notable, so I really am perplexed as to if we should start notifying editors about the fact that it is okay to bend the rules, because oftentimes we have people in first world nations who are notable, but almost nothing exists on them online. Again, sorry for the rant, but it has been bugging me that we almost lost an editor for something as simple as this. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 07:22, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I've seen worse get created (notice I said "created" and not "approved"). I added a cite today for the Oscar award. I've been in Tim's position before and have cursed Wikipedia at times myself over my short 14-month editing career here. Sometimes it's best to circumvent/bypass the AfC process and just create one. Some editors out there (like me and Ktr) try to help those in this situation, if possible. But those with the Wiki-hammer scare the Tims away. — ^Wylie_Coyote 08:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Mind you, in this case the Oscar was awarded to the film, Alien, and five people (including Ayling) were named. It's a very borderline case, in my view, especially if based on only one source (not really a strong stick to beat AfC with). It seems he was part of a team that created the special effects, wasn't he? One would think that close relatives of the deceased would know of other significant coverage, if it existed. Mind you, many of the recently approved articles show a very low threshold of notability, so maybe my 'bar' is way too high! Sionk (talk) 14:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Could someone please tell me how that article satisfies either the WP:GNG or WP:V? "He is best known for his miniature effects cinematography for the 1979 science fiction film Alien"? Says who? Not the given source. And somehow I doubt his RAF service record will actually confirm he "covered many key events" (not that it's a published source in the first place). Most of the article is simply a rehash of the IMDb page, with some aggrandizing phrases thrown in. Besides IMDb I don't see a single secondary source, and I, for one, am very skeptical about basing notability solely on an IMDb entry. Huon (talk) 15:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

IMDB is not a reliable secondary source. Its user generated content.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Some quick observations. First, Tim Ayling is too close to the subject. This may be off putting to the AFC crowd. It isn't strictly against the rules, but not having reliable sources means no article. At least one is required for a stub and two or three is preferred. As for notablity....if one cannot source the article in an adequate manner, it is likely not a notable subject regardless of the award. I know loads of stuff about the second film and the young female actor that portrayed "Newt". Good for me, but of no relevance to Wikipedia. Claims need sourcing and we would probably stick to the book in regards to a biography from the subjects son.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Sadly the article lacks secondary souces completely and uses only primary sources. This is a good candidate for an AFD. Let me see if there is anything I can do.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:46, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Here's a silly question. Why does Mr. Ayling's "son" not know that his "father" went by a different spelling? It might be helpful to use the name he uses, which is Denys Ayling . I am not even totally sure it isn't the actual name of this subject as I can't find anything on it. But it will help you in searching sources. You can start here.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:58, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Just WP:BEBOLD and approve it next time. The guy is dead so WP:BLP does not apply and references are not needed for the article to exist. Tag it with {{unreferenced}} and post in the talk page why he meets WP:GNG, WP:BIO, and WP:FILMMAKER, but that you were unable to find WP:RS on it. Remember, WP:V is required solely on WP:BLPs and operating WP:CORPs. Everything else is fair game as long as the subject/topic is notable. Understand that our Wikipedia:policies and guidelines are not written in stone, that you can WP:IAR and apply WP:COMMONSENSE. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 08:04, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

By the way, he meets criterion #5 of WP:FILMMAKER easily:

The person's work […] has won significant critical attention[…]

I think this is just a case of the reviewer not knowing how to leverage our policies in our advantage.

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 08:12, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Well that's an interesting way to....put it. But a single award is not significant critical attention. Multiple awards is. And a correction, an article must contain at least one reliable secondary source or may be deleted. I would also note that it is not wise to recommned editors be "bold" and approve articles with no sources at all. That goes against the projects goals and guidelines, which state: "AfC submissions can be declined based on having no content whatsoever, consisting of vandalism or personal attacks, consisting of a copyright violation, failing to provide sufficient context, not asserting notability, and most often for not being properly sourced. Articles that already exist, sometimes under another name, are also declined. AfC is rather strict about the sourcing requirement, which makes it a more strenuous effort than registering an account in order to create an article."--Amadscientist (talk) 08:37, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I also note the statement: "Remember, WP:V is required solely on WP:BLPs and operating WP:CORPs. Everything else is fair game as long as the subject/topic is notable" is absolutely innaccurate.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:39, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

No, that is NOT how Wikipedia operates. You need to understand that our Wikipedia:policies and guidelines are just there to help us create quality articles and to diminish conflict. They are not rules nor they are firm, they are merely accepted standards that editors should attempt to follow but are not strictly required to. Nowhere on Wikipedia do we have a firm set rule that says that all articles must be sourced. The only exceptions to this are WP:BLPs and operating WP:ORGs which, due to libel, must always be sourced. Everything else can exist on Wikipedia without sources due to our Wikipedia:General disclaimer, Wikipedia:Content disclaimer, and Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer. Please make sure that you understand our legal stances before making statements on the matter. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

That's not correct. WP:CREATIVE does not state that the professional must have "multiple awards". It solely states that the person's work (in this case Ayling's cinematography) must have won significant critical attention; which it did by winning an Oscar. It does not mention awards anywhere, nor that it needs multiple. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 09:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Then you lost your own argument. I never said it had to be mulitple awards, but that multiple awards would be significant. A single award is not that. So you claim every single Acadamy Award Winner is notable enough for a Wikipedia article? Uhm....no. It places undue weight to the Acadamy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A wonderful organisation, but not the standard of notablility for Wikipedia.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:06, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

You have a problem understanding much about Wikipedia Ahnoneemoos, as was demonstrated by discussions on WER. If you do not understand the brightline rules that exist that is something you must deal with. Articles may be deleted without a single source with an AFD or by an admin if needed for other violations with a speedy delete. A BLP may be deleted with no discussion without at least on valid RS. As I have said, and will repeat, do not tell editors to violate the spirit and guidelines of this project.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:06, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I lean toward the argument that he is not independently notable; although he received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, this award was, seemingly, given for the cumulative efforts of the visual effects team -- of which, he is one of five members. Each of the other members are included in Wikipedia; however, it seems the breadth of their contributions is much greater than Ayling's. While this may not be true it is, nonetheless, what appears verifiable at this time. To answer Kevin's original question, if the award had been presented to Ayling individually, then I would probably think him notable enough to accept. I would judge such an article to have at least a 50% chance of surviving an AfD nomination. In its present state, I would have declined it also. Pol430 talk to me 14:49, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I cannot see that Ayling's work has "won significant critical attention" while we cannot find a critic actually writing a single sentence about Ayling's work. Giger's work for Alien is widely discussed in secondary sources; Ayling's apparently is not. Huon (talk) 17:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Collaboration

I think a great deal of progress has been made in recent months to promote collaboration on the Wiki, and I would like to update this page to reflect that. It has seen no major updates since 2007, and it would be nice to get some input on how it could promote collaboration. The page currently gets upwards of 1400 views a month and is linked from the Community Portal via the {Cotm} template. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 20:38, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Submission review

Having read the comments above, I thought I'd ask for a second opinion regarding a review I did yesterday. I declined Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Ronnie Pollock (DySFUNCTIONAL) due to it failing WP:MUSICBIO. The author requested an explanation on my talk page shortly after. His argument was that it does meet the requirements due to the artist meeting "coverage by multiple, reliable sources" (WP:BASIC). My take is that the article is overly reliant on secondary sources which merely namecheck the artist for promotional purposes. Do the sources given adequately meet the notability criteria? Funny ^Pika! 14:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, the author is evidently winging it based on blogs and the MTV facebook page. There's no evidence he meets WP:GNG. Sionk (talk) 00:30, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't say winging it. I sourced all the information and there are links to other notable figures who have played on radio shows and nominated for awards pollock. These local djs known for identifying up and coming talent in Scotland. Pollock has been recognised by each local entity both bbc Scotland and Jim gallery of clyde1. The MTV press states virtuoso. This although on Facebook is a hefty claim IMO if added with the other recognition. being broadcast and recognised by just one major media corporation makes a person notable, having been recognised by 2 or more (BBC, MTV, and Gellatly / Sottland's greatest album (SUN news paper and STV))means it should not be in doubt. I do believe that with a few more articles and sourced broadcast details from mainstream media networks etc there will be no room for argument. 30 thousand verified fans for a new Scottish artist is a lot, there are bands having page made based on only bbc exposure and reviews. Most of them from England.

I'd say the fact your statement has completely ignored the nomination Pollock received to be included in the "Greatest Scottish Album". again shows that the bigger picture is often ignored. While in some cases, exposure from 1 network counts as notable. This contest is recognized on Gellatly's page, under citation 8 http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Jim_Gellatly. nomination for this contest in Scotland is a great honor http://programmes.stv.tv/scotlands-greatest-album/ and one of the few possible for a a Scottish artist to achieve. The page linked to STV actually shows Pollock must have had some exposure on the Stv channel and the SUN news paper in relation to this contest.

Again this all combined makes for a fair amount of coverage — Preceding unsigned comment added by Truth, reality and justice (talk • contribs) 06:53, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I question the consistency of the sources and articles accepted. The process is frustrating and disappointing when it's not balanced.

Truth, reality and justice (talk) 05:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

It is equally frustrating and disappointing for reviewers to look at submission, that appears to contain many properly formatted references, and then go through those references only to find we are dealing with a WP:Bombardment issue. Pol430 talk to me 15:24, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. Wasn't sure whether I was being harsh or not. At least the standard's set now. Funny ^Pika! 18:53, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

No I am afraid again I disagree. to show enough coverage I have linked as much info as I can. These links are independent and not overly used. To say they are not of a quality is fine but to claim they were put there for the purpose of forcing an article through is malicious and fine example of the wiki hammer being struck. Thanks fir assuming me to be sinister or plotting.

Lets take a look at WWE Wiki pages shall we or perhaps the wiki for the band Sweet Electra.

Constancy is a the most important thing across all articles, its clearly not shown. WWE is not a credible source yet these supposed wins and losses are recorded on Wikipedia as history.

This attitude of some people who use this site is what leads to Wikipedia being a walking abomination used by large corporations and media organisations to falsify history and sell merchandise.

Your so off the mark its unreal. However I'll keep working on this article as deeply believe in this artist.

Regards

Truth, reality and justice (talk) 19:27, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

"Truth, reality and justince" (TRJ), First of all we are considering only this article. Your claim that because WWE or Sweet Electra get away with it your pet project should get away with is is an argument in the line of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. This is generally a frowned upon reasoning. Out of curiosity I took a look at the article and I see several significant problems with it. I've restored the AfC-Declined header (which you seem to have removed) as it's still declined. I'm taking a crack at it by cleaning up a lot of the problems so you can see what a article should look like. Please try to remain civil and calm as yelling and harranging is not encouraging volunteers here to help you get your article into shape for moving to article space.Hasteur (talk) 20:04, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey Hasteur, thanks for your help, much appreciated and my apologies to all.

I'm finding your edits of my article really strange. You seem to have gone against everything the other users said by keeping the material they claim uses invalid sources and have removed every single other piece of information and the source links to these articles.

I'd love an explanation to this, seems quite strange the inconsistent information i'm being fed by reviews and editors.

No one else questioned these sources or this info.

regards

Truth, reality and justice (talk) 21:14, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Read the edit summaries... It's quite clear. It's not your article. You irrevocably agreed to give it to the WP community based on the license immediately above the save button. Lots of your links were inappropriate for various reasons (Social media, non-Reliable sources, Blogs, IMDB, etc.) Some I had to outright cut, others were moved to the external link section. Each volunteer looks at different things. While I look intensively at the links and know the Reliable Source guideline inside and out, I don't have as much expertise on image usage. Obviously some portions are now unsourced, it's unlikely that someone will challange that he got an educational degree. Hasteur (talk) 21:22, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Again you leave me confused, you have left Social media links and removed the Wikipedia links connecting Pollock to well known Djs. No one has accepted these social links but leave only them.

Musicmetric is recognized stat tracker. that is not social media.

E.g it has been used to track entrants in contests that have referenced by current wiki articles adding or proving notability for likes of Conner Maynard. If the award he won in the MTV contest stands then so should all stats held in the musicmetric tracker.

Your edits are questionable in my opinion.

You have removed the entire article and left only what others have classified as useless.

Thanks for your help.

Truth, reality and justice (talk) 21:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Since you fail at INDENTING I'll explain it again. The iTunes album/single links only prove that there was such a thing, not demonstrate notability so it gets dumped. I moved the artist's Youtube and Twitter links to the bottom because that's what we're supposed to do. I moved the artist's IMDB page because IMDB biographies are self submitted and have been judged to be non-reliable sources. Musicmetric is not a recognized stat tracker. Musicmetric is a synthesis of the number of mentions a artist has on social media. WP:CHARTS lists the recognized charting/stats that are to be used for musicians. Prove your claim that it is being used in other articles because I sincerely doubt that the usage in those articles is appropriate (or would stand up to the Reliable Sources Noticeboard evaluation). Your edits have been simply to promote a wikipedia non-notable artist and continually ignore advice given to you by experienced editors when considering your creation. Hasteur (talk) 23:13, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

This discussion should be moved to the author Help desk, considering it quickly ceased to be a general discussion about reviewing guidelines. Sionk (talk) 19:59, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Attack pages

I am not sure how this project is organised, and am posting here something that should be drawn to the attention of all reviewers.

Recently SuperMarioMan (talk) has been doing a good job of flagging attack pages which have been lurking, for weeks or months, in the declined AfC submissions. I have been alarmed to find myself deleting pages which had been declined for reasons like "seems to be a non-notable person" or "lacks reliable sources" and left in that state, although their content, about named people, included things like:

• "is a jewbooby nigger"
• "a kid that is 10 years old and has a lot of issues including ADD"
• "eats garbage that other people throw away, and reeks to high heaven of feces and body odor"

I would like to remind all reviewers that the policy on WP:Biographies of living persons includes:

"Contentious material about living persons... that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable – should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion."

so that AfC submission pages like that should not be declined, but immediately tagged with {{db-g10}}, and the author warned with {{uw-attack}}.

Is there a "guidance to reviewers" page where this could be added? JohnCD (talk) 21:36, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

yes, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions. mabdul 23:22, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I have added a note there, JohnCD (talk) 13:10, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

• The reviewing instructions do state which WP:CSD criteria apply. In my experience, however, enforcement of this particular rule is not as rigorous as it could be. Over the last couple of months (whenever I've had a spare hour or two, really), I've attempted various searches based on "Intitle:Articles for creation" and every time have quickly found large numbers of ill-intentioned pages—many of them simply childish vandalism, some whose only purpose is clearly to defame or deride a living person. Although some had been created fairly recently, others dated back as far as 2008 and 2009. Of course, not all AfC entries are immediately put forward for assessment in the first place, which makes it all the more easy for highly inappropriate pages to linger for months and years. A tough stance must be taken on this kind of content. SuperMarioMan 02:42, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

It is indeed disturbing that these pages linger in the AfC namespace. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that everyone who reviews AfC submissions has actually read the reviewing guidelines. Indeed, it can be a re-occurring problem that new editors, who actually submit drafts to AfC, turn their hand to reviewing far too early. In terms of project organisation, we have almost no housekeeping set up for historical declined and draft submissions. We have previously held discussions about arbitrarily deleting submissions that have not been edited for more than X period of time, but such discussions have failed to reach a definitive consensus. I'll try and lend a hand to weeding out these problematic pages for deletion, but in the long term we really need to reach consensus on deleting pages from the archives and a dedicated adminbot to carry it out. Pol430 talk to me 18:35, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Script thing

AfCH is a very useful easy and quick way to get doing things with submissions, but when accepting an article and the defaultsort has been coloned out, could it be adjusted to undo that as well as the categories, for instance this edit did the categories but not the defaultsort. If the script could be amended I would be most grateful. Rcsprinter (talkin' to me?) @ 09:22, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I will add it to the beta. mabdul 14:40, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

 Done diff. mabdul 14:42, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Looking at your diff it seems the colon is still between the curly braces and the DEFAULTSORT. Was this a mistake or is that supposed to happen? Rcsprinter (shout) @ 10:53, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Template limit means backlog list doesn't show up in /Submissions

The backlog is currently over 500. Most of today I've been getting

!-- WARNING: template omitted, post-expand include size too large --

HTML comments in Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions when it tries to expand {{AFC statistics}} See Wikipedia:Template limits.

I'm going to leave a note on the bot-operator's talk page to see if he can split the output up into multiple files which can be transcluded separately. In the meantime, let's get that backlog down.

On an unrelated note, I redid the "submission" tab so you can choose whether you want to view recent activity as a list or as a category. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:29, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Promoting a AfC to mainspace (Redux)

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2013 1#Promoting a AfC to mainspace

I finally cleaned out the remainder of Category:Undated AfC submissions. To assist with future reminders I've made a simple reminder template called User:Hasteur/afc date for the purpose of gently reminding AfC volunteers to fill in the parameters. I'd like to get the community's feedback on this prior to my using it on editors talk pages. Hasteur (talk) 19:54, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe not using the AFCH script for the few reviews I do makes me an anachronism, but firstly, adding timestamps manually is unnecessarily complicated (or do we have a template or a magic word that creates the correct timestamp automatically? It's not just a five-tilde timestamp), and secondly, if the sole purpose of the timestamp is to prevent accepted AfCs from appearing in a certain maintenance category where they don't belong, why do we add un-stamped accepted AfCs to that maintenance category in the first place? Huon (talk) 20:30, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

The date stamp also moves the the talk page to a specific "Articles Created" category that indicates when the article was promoted to mainspace. It's basically a minor nag to encourage the reviewer to verify that before they leave from promoting the article they filled in everything that's needed to keep it out of maintanance categories and put it into the right categories. Hasteur (talk) 21:22, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Categorization of AFC's

Is there a policy of whether submitted potential articles should be categorized? and, if so, should they be done as Category:Foo, with the extra colon to keep them out of categoryspace until approved? i sometimes see AFC's in categoryspace, which seem out of place. I am completely new to AFC, and am considering helping out a bit, once i have some idea how its done. If i dont help, i would like to at least know if i should add that colon when i find these in categories, or even add categories (w/ or w/o colons) to these requests.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:59, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Drafts should not be listed in article categories. In my opinion using the [[:Category:Foo]] method of showing which categories the draft should ultimately be placed in makes the accepting reviewer's job easier (the script will even un-colon categories automatically, I believe), but while it's still a draft it should be removed (via colon) from any article categories it was placed in. Huon (talk) 03:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Beta script

Currently using the beta version of the script and I don't have the review button anymore. Is anyone else having issues? --Nouniquenames 05:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Admin or privileged editor needed

Sorry about this, but I think someone who knows more than I do needs to fix this problem, even if it is likely to be a waste of time. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Certeon and Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Cooney_shawn. The first seems to be the original sandbox, now in AfC, the second is the currently submitted article which I have just declined, which is named for the contributor rather than the topic. I plan to leave a message at the contributor's talk page. Thanks in advance. David_FLXD (Talk) 17:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I have renamed the duplicate 'Certeon (2)'. I would assume that the user abandoned the submission designated 'Certeon', and probably tried to archive it somehow to facilitate moving the duplicate into the Wikipedia talk namespace also under the company's name. Mephistophelian / discuss / email 18:41, 26 January 2013 (UTC).

Thank you, Mephistophelian! David_FLXD (Talk) 18:38, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

puridone?

What kind of substance is this http://www.puridone.com/ does it have a generic name for an article or such? 24.20.95.50 (talk) 02:25, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Please note that Wikipedia does not provide medical advice, and nothing on this encyclopaedia is a substitute for information from a qualified medical professional, such as a chemist or pharmacologist. Mephistophelian / discuss / email 05:35, 28 January 2013 (UTC).

I'm no doctor, but it looks like it will help with your Wiki-withdrawals, but then so does reviewing AfCs... — Wyliepedia 19:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Subrata Roy (scientist)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Subrata Roy (scientist) contains content categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:46, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. Alexrexpvt (talk) 08:51, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

8x8 (or 8WD)

I've just tried to search Wikipedia for a well known form of All terrain Vehicle.. the 8x8. However Wikipedia DOES NOT go there.. but to some american 8x8 IT company? Huh? When I searched for 8WD all terrain? It went nowhere also.. But W8 .. There IS a page in Wikipedia SPECIFICALLY RELATED TO 8 WHEEL DRIVEN VEHICLES.. Yet with absolutely no way to "suggest" people go there when they "search" for either 8x8 or via 8WD ..?

• [3]

? [[Special:Contributions/QUIX4U (with floating ISP IP) 125.237.43.14|125.237.43.14] 29 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.237.43.14 (talk)

At the very top of 8x8 article, you will find exactly what you say should exist, a suggestion that you may be looking for 8WD. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:34, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Question

Apologies if this is not the place to ask, and I realise I am demonstrating some degree of density, but exactly how does one review an article? I mean, I can't see any controls to accept / decline etc, even after installing the AfC Script and signing up as a participant. Of course blindness is always a possibility... Thanks in advance for any advice, if this is the wrong page, hit me on my Talk Page if you want. Cheers! Basket _Feudalist 20:09, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

This is exactly the the right place to ask this question . You should see a review link near the top of page (around where your Twinkle buttons are (assuming you use twinkle. The 'Review' button will only display where you are in the Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/ namespace. Pol430 talk to me 20:33, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

If you bypass your browser's cache, then 'Review' should appear alongside the Twinkle (TW) controls, as indicated in this screenshot. Mephistophelian / discuss / email 21:49, 28 January 2013 (UTC).

To be specific, it appears in the drop-down arrow to the left of "TW". 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 22:28, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be a button if a submission is on a user page so you'll either have to move the page or manually review it. Good to see more help with the (900, going on 1k) backlog. Funny ^Pika! 01:31, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

And the best way to move a user page and/or "sandbox" is to click move the "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox (move)" link. This will take you to a move screen where you can replace the word "sandbox" with the desired article name, which is hopefully near the top of the article. Then, move it. You should have the Review ability then. I always hit the "Review>Other options>Clean the submission" buttons before reviewing to remove any sandbox-or-other page clutter. Hope all our advice helps! Let us know if it doesn't! — Wyliepedia 03:31, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much for all the advice. Seem to know what I'm doing now (or as much as I can at this stage). I've been loooking at this article:

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/The_Real_Estate_Institute_of_Queensland

Seems OK, perhaps under-referenced in the second section conpared to the first, but well-written (I thought it would read like a trade mag!). If it loooks good to go to any of you, I'll experiment. Basket _Feudalist 13:11, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

It looks rather promotional to me, the overall tone of the article is 'look how amazing REIQ is!' Also parts of the 'organization' section are very closely paraphrased from [4]. Finally, and I stress that I haven't had the time to fully examine the quality of the sources, the subject's notability seems marginal. Pol430 talk to me 18:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. With hindsight, I think you're probably right.Basket _Feudalist 19:02, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

AFC for COI?

Imagine someone who wants to create an article on a subject with which she has a substantial COI; she is confident that the subject is notable and believes that she can write neutrally, but wants to ensure that someone else sees it in order to avoid COI-related difficulties. Is it a good idea to advise that she submit it through AFC? I'm confident that I've asked this before, but despite searching throughout archives here and archives over at WP:HD, I can't find a thing. I'm not in the middle of advising anyone who's in this situation; I'm just looking for good general guidance. Nyttend (talk) 23:01, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

You could, but if she feels confident of their work and feel like they won't be at risk for doing anything haywire, they could push it out into the mainspace. Then again, they could also do it here, but there is the risk that it will get errantly denied. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

New to WIKIP, Not computers. Have contributions to make.. Bio, different inventions, NEED help please, advice on approach

Seems to be an advert - Mdann52 (talk) 13:15, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I've added some info in the TALK section of Brass Razoo entry.. a True story. I need help,/a helper, please on how to proceed w/o giving offense/brreaking rules etc. It was 'an invention ' as a product.. WILL be a Product again (I have a dying wife, need to raise money)... My linkedIn (partial) Profile may be found at Tinyurl.com/Jodee/WayneT... and mentions some of my other Inventions .. incl. 2 way remote radio telemetry (and control) to/From pit computers.. and a Broadcast quality out put which went too air .., HUGELY successful... Virtually every serious race Team in the world uses something based on precisely those concepts, but at the time (87i) it was an AUSTRALIAN World 1st... see Beyond 2000 story - PLS Check out myRacecar Invention Beyond 2k " The invention of Motor Racing Telemetry " at <spam link removed> AND READ THE COMMENTS PLS. c.f. Jameshorley.com- bloody failed race DRIVER Dennis horley who couldn't program a VCR is claiming HE did MY Work... lying scum. Notice wikip scam�/con :he has stolen YOUR logo and page style to maker his lying pages look like a wikipedia entry.- I think your legals shd do something about him - my humble opinion. I have personally, together with a reknowned, qualified lexicologistm/etymologist done considerable research over 30 years or so. After an enormous amount of research, I CREATED/gave reality to the very first "one and Only Original Brass Razoo" - back in '79- 80 - as a unique gift for my father, Kevin Joseph Pickett. (details in the TALK post) After huge interest was apparent, I partnered with Pom/aussie Peter russel and started 'minting' them. It is our creation which is pictured on the WIKI entry - which is appropriate since it was not only the first physical BR but with over 90,000 sold to Australians at ca. $5 ea. in 1980=83 money), with a heap of newspaper articles ("A place in the Sun", Column, Vic, Ran 2 almost complete columns on the item, Jeff Kennetr made statements Calling on the Federal Govt. ABOUT it) mags (e..g Cover story Australasian Post), TV (e.g. National 'Today show' amongst others) & other PR IT is what most Australians recognise as the genuine physical embodiment of what we never denied IS a Mythical Coin. Further, our scholarship has revealed truths behind the Phrase's origin, etymology and age: The reference books are all wrong: they say 1st world war. They're out by 60+ years... It's Goldfields slang from US/Oz diggings, early 1850s - can source it to Irish newspapers of 1853.. backed by Australia's most prominent Historian.. is still used in parts of US, ENG/UK incl. Ireland...France & others and, yes, research revealed other possible links to Maori (Testicles) and Hindi Kasu (the word fromn which we derive Cash...) but the stand out winner is mangles french (like Aussie PLONK for 'Vin Blanc').. "Pas un sous" or Brass Sous.. (many small value french and Belgian Coinns on the goldfields, whatever their real names were referred to as "Sous's"- presumably for simplicity.. apparently they all weighed much the same - and the metal content was what mattered (Digressing: The spanish Doubloon or 'Pieces of 8" were marked to be cut into 8 bits .. thus 2 bits = 25c, 4Bits was a half dollar... etc.. - thus the US sayings .. "For Two Bits, I'd .. (strangle the cat/whatever)) Interestingly, the, by definition, most worthless coin is actually worth quite a bit... they keep popping up on ebay (along with some definite frauds) and sell for $US30 to $US>100. People claim it's lucky, too (gambling etc...) - we always claimed that the most worthless coin WAS the most valuable because it provided the ultimate protection from being financially 'wiped out' / left without a Brass Razoo to your name ... because, as long as you HAD one, By DEFINITION, You couldn't possibly be BROKE !! - No one could say "he hasn't got a Razoo' QED. :) [tongue in cheek, obviously .. but in a funny way, True!] A bit of fun.. and playing with words of course - The Coin THat Coined a Phrase/The Phrase that Coined a Coin!! BUT a lot of people do believe in luck, lucky charms, other superstitions like astrology, Psychic hotlines and such - and our marketing was NEVER aimed at the gullible... rather at people who found the whole story interesting.. the 'Legend' funny/interesting and thought it'd make a great representative bit of Australiana As a gift - and represented Good Value!! (it certainly turned out to be a great Investment !!) They haven't been made legitimately since the miod 80s but there've been deliberate fakes n Frauds. (can supply examples, detail. I'll be filling 'OriginalBrassRazoo.com with info, warnings etc. A gent named Doug Barrie has produced a small booklet on the story of the B R File:/Users/g4/Pictures/Razoo\ front\ Cover\ IMG 0311.jpg front cover - not sure that worked... ISBN 978-0-9592783-6-1 but to summarise for now: I've added some info in the TALK section of Brass Razoo entry.. a True story. I need help,/a helper, please on how to proceed w/o giving offense/breaking rules etc. I'd be most grateful for the help and advice if someone is willing to work with me.. communicating via Skype perhaps.. I;m in OZ - GMT +10. Thank YOU, Wayne T (email and skype redacted) Wayne T — Preceding unsigned comment added by SemiGeniusOz (talk • contribs) 07:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Please don't accuse living people people of lying, or of being a "failed" anything, or of stealing, anywhere on Wikipedia, or you may end up blocked from editing.

The website you mention does indeed seem to be imitating Wikipedia's styling in a misleading way, which is pathetically foolish of them; but they're not actually using Wikipedia's trademarked logo so it's not (in my opinion) a matter for the WMF's legal beagles.

Good luck in finding help with... whatever it is you're on about. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 09:01, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

This page is for questions about the Articles for creation process. If you would like to start writing a new article, please use the Article wizard. If you have an idea for a new article, but would like to request that someone else write it, please see: Wikipedia:Requested articles. I hope this helps. I don't mean to have a go, but I recently observed any post that opens with the phrase "a True story." and hasn't signed their comment per our guidelines can generally be considered to be off-topic. I don't think there's anything here that requires the attention of AfC project members. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:27, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Question on IRC by Rolandar

This is a question that Rolandar asked on twitter about his Afc titled Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/ProtoTest

• "thanks for taking the time to help out! Also, just a quick question. If there was no real hope for the article in the first place, why not make a qualitative statement to that effect? Seems like it would be inefficient to ask for its resubmission over and over, followed by a statement along the lines of "Stop submitting this.""

Thanks for a prompt reply Hybirdd (talk) 20:10, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind a message like "If you cannot fix the issue properly, don't bother with half-hearted attempts" - but it's very hard to tell whether a draft that doesn't establish notability or cites too few sources can be fixed or not - and if they can, we should not tell the editors that they need not try. Huon (talk) 20:27, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Afc Submission declined on 30 January 2013 by Gigs reads "The cited sources are trivial passing mentions or are tangential to the subject and do not establish notability. Please stop submitting this to AfC.". No mention of specific ways to improve the article, no attached links to notability guidelines. Simply a declined submission, with a request to permanently stop the revision process. I'd argue that the entire Article for Creation process would be better served by providing concrete examples of "significant, independent, reliable sources" that the users could then use to gauge whether or not their provided sources meet the minimum requirements. Instead, the current process seems very arbitrary, vague, and lacks an detailed explanation of the editor's critiques. Rolandar (talk) 21:17, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

You had three previous messages that gave links to the notability guidelines. Those messages also contain links to WP:Identifying reliable sources and to the golden rule which gives a concise overview of what we want. Why, precisely, would giving you those links for a fourth time have had a better effect?

It seemed unprofessional and dissimilar to what the other editors provided in their responses. I've looked over those resources each time the article was declined, to see if I misinterpreted the requirements and to see where I could make improvements at the suggestion of the guidelines. Rolandar (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, reviewing drafts is very time-consuming (especially when there are multiple sources to check and dismiss), and we have a massive backlog of unreviewed submissions. We tend to use canned responses whenever possible to save a little time. If those canned responses are insufficient, they contain not just the links I mentioned above but also to the AfC help desk and to the live chat, where you can receive additional help and clarification if necessary. Huon (talk) 21:53, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

First, I would argue that the fact that the review process is very time consuming is highly related to this topic. It sheds light on the backend, which I as a contributor would not immediately recognize. I had hoped that each time the article was submitted, it would be seen that work had progressed on it - it was significantly more than a minor edit. Rolandar (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Plain and simple: You did not correct the underlying problem of the article being overly promotional. Now you're trying to WP:FORUMSHOP (by appealing on twitter, IRC channels and elsewhere) the article in question into being promoted to mainspace. If it were me, I'd roll back the text of the article to the first decline and try fixing it from that point (rather than stacking more unstable bricks on top of a unsound foundation). Hasteur (talk) 21:55, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

If it were me, I'd first go looking for significant coverage in reliable sources as mentioned in the golden rule, and if such sources can be found, rewrite the draft from scratch based on what they have to say about the company. Huon (talk) 21:59, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. At this point, I think that the sources I could find are insufficient based on the editors' standards. One of my sources was outright mocked instead of being politely pointed out, and then told exactly why it didn't work. Rolandar (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I attempted several times to correct the "promotional" issue, and the main issue for this particular article seemed to be notability. My main issue with the creation process was the canned responses and the lack of concrete examples of "minimum notability". After the fifth instance of article-declined, I sought help from the live help chat, but encountered separate issues that launched this discussion. If the article doesn't warrant creation, that's perfectly fine. But my requests for aid were met with hostility and attitude. Case in point here, I was never trying to forum shop to get the article into the mainspace. I just wanted some focused help to let me know where the article was insufficient. Now, your point about rolling the article back to the first decline is a good idea, and I thank you for that suggestion and your phrasing. Rolandar (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I think some general background data is needed, at the very least to make my intentions apparent. I started working for this company in early January 2013 (so less than a month now) and noticed that they didn't have a wikipedia page. Having previously done vandalism cleanup and basic contributing, I decided I wanted to help out more (and learn how to create an article). I read the guidelines on article creation, declared my apparent conflict of interest, and in my spare time began to build the article. No one at the company knew I was building the article and I'm not being paid for this service. It was to contribute to wikipedia, and to expand my own knowledge. The article hasn't been accepted, and that's fine. I thought the process was continuous-revision until accepted, and went to the live chat option for help after the fifth decline. Some editors were helpful, but I unfortunately encountered others that were rude and antagonizing. One editor in particular falsely claimed I called the process "corrupt" and blanked the article with an overly-simplified, authoritarian explanation. Ironically, this was the very issue that I sought help with at the beginning. I have no issue with the article creation requirements, but appreciate polite, direct help on the process itself. Thanks. Rolandar (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I also think that "If you continue, your account may be blocked from editing for disruption; your company name may also be blacklisted by Wikipedia. Some search engines automatically downrate any blacklisted names, so your company's search ranking may suffer significantly as a result." is an over-reaction and unjustly punishes others for my apparent wrong-doing. Rolandar (talk) 22:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Technically this isn't the help desk, so this is rather off-topic, but to give you some pointers: Several of your sources are press releases by ProtoTest and companies it's affiliated with; those aren't independent sources. Several others are by CORE about a CORE member - again not independent. Yet others, such as the one pointed out by Demiurge1000, mention the company name without providing any significant details. The CIO Magazine is another such passing mention: They mention ProtoTest exactly once, when they give some background on the person they're speaking with. As the golden rule says, "a cited reference must be about the subject – there must be at least one lengthy paragraph, and preferably more, directly covering it." There may be a few sources that actually satisfy these conditions (I haven't checked them all), but the vast majority does not - as Gigs said, they're "trivial passing mentions or are tangential to the subject and do not establish notability." Huon (talk) 00:23, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I sincerely thank you for this critique and suggestions. They're thoughtful, civil, and provide examples of what the sources should be. I wish that this had been the help I received when I went to the live help chat instead of mockery. Rolandar (talk) 06:24, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

One of the problems you've found stems from us having had a lot of professional PR firms or other paid editors appear on Wikipedia, creating blatantly promotional articles about themselves or their clients, and generally refusing to take "no" for an answer when we try and explain various policies, particularly those regarding conflict of interest and verifiability, and unfortunately you've been caught out by it. Another tangential problem that you've been caught out by is that the help desk and chat channels are staffed by volunteers who wouldn't necessary have the experience of working in a professional customer services environment. Having said all of that, Huon spends a lot of time in the help channels, so what he says is usually delivered in good faith and well worth listening to. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:18, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I've worked in a "professional customer services environment", but it was a long time ago ;) At least one of the regular helpers in that channel does customer services as their day job. Another apparently thinks that anyone editing for pay should be told to "fuck off". It's a proper kaleidoscope of different views and approaches, so it is. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:02, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You, Rolandar, should also try the other golden rule - treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself. When you came into the help chat you described Gigs' decline of your submission as "dictatorial", amongst other things. Given your apparent outrage, I went to look at the article submission fully expecting to find that there was a problem with the decline and that I would then have to contact Gigs to question their decline (I do that sort of thing sometimes [5] [6] [7]). Instead, while you continued your rhetoric about how unreasonable it all was, I found that the article submission contained absolutely nothing that would make it even come close to meeting WP:VRS.

So I asked you to name three of the sources that you considered met those requirements. I then looked through those one by one, just as Huon has done above (actually you gave more than three), and gave you just the same advice that he has done here - I explained that the first one appeared to be indistinguishable to a press release, and I explained that the second one gave nothing even remotely resembling significant coverage. It was only when you tried to pass off the pathetic T-shirt promotional stunt as significant coverage in an independent reliable source, that I pointed out the truth - that your behaviour was, quite frankly, embarrassing. Either to you or to your employer or both.

You're obviously not stupid, so how is it that you did not comprehend the meaning of WP:VRS when it was pointed out to you on 9th, 10th and 12th January, or Wikipedia:Notability when it was pointed out to you on 17th January? That you failed to comprehend to such an extent that you thought your company being mentioned as one of several hundred other companies in a TV promotional stunt counted as significant coverage? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:02, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I think my decline was reasonable and I would never use that sort of decline rationale on an article that had never been reviewed before. In the context of an article that had been repeatedly submitted with little improvement, I think that's an appropriate thing to say. To the larger question originally posed, I do think it's valuable to sometimes say to people "this really has no chance, you are probably wasting your time". That wasn't quite the case here, as they might establish notability, but their submission pattern was bordering on disruption. Thanks for letting me know about this discussion. Gigs (talk) 14:27, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

"An article for creation," not "A article." Please fix it.!Valleyspring (talk) 07:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

It might help if you told us where to fix it. Or you could simply fix it yourself. Huon (talk) 13:16, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

AFC backlog drive reviewing

Hi all! Just an appeal to get some more people to do some 'random assesssment' of reviews submitted in the recent backlog drive. No need to go through all of them just a random selection. Everyone who does 25 or more gets the teamwork barnstar, and I will also award extra barnstars to those who review a lot more than that. BTW, I am planning to give out rewards next week sometime. Thanks, Mdann52 (talk) 11:05, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Someone might also want to go over the recently accepted article's -I am always wary when i see the most recent 10 article's listed as "assessment unknown". I'm am fairly short on time right now but a quick glance release there is at least one article that is entirely self-sourced, while another article contains a clone of itself (Same article twice on a page).

Having said that - do we have any form of "new reviewer assistance" initiative? If we don't it may be worth the time to set this up since a reviewer may have done a ton of reviews before anyone even notices something is off. (Something akin to: Review 25 article's, then have someone run over them). Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 15:54, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Blimey, I didn't even know there was another backlog drive (the backlog has gone steadily up rather than down)! There have been quite a number of questionable acceptance decisions over recent days/weeks. It's not always entirely the reviewers fault because some article authors are very adept at adding a long list of sources that look impressive but say quite little. I'm philosophical, thinking its better to have a questionable review rather than none at all... Sionk (talk) 19:31, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

is there any tool for assessing articles quickly on the unassessed category? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Put simply, no Mdann52 (talk) 13:51, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Well that's a shame. It's too intense... FoCuSandLeArN (talk)

EFans (website)

Creator (who has a registered account) has gamed the system by moving it themselves after I declined a request. Disgraceful behaviour really, is there anything we can do apart from (someone else apart from me) looking at it and nominating if for deletion if needed. GAtechnical (talk) 23:02, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Users with registered accounts need not use AfC at all, and I don't think we can sanction users for disagreeing with a reviewer. I've nominated the article for deletion, though - lots of blogs and no truly reliable sources. Huon (talk) 00:24, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The last one of these I found was deleted under A10 in mainspace in the end. Mdann52 (talk) 11:11, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Vague on location

Where do all AfC submission templates go, precisely? I'm asking because of an auto-generated comment that said not to change anything in the edit box w/ the AfC Review Pending template. -_- —017Bluefield (talk) 08:34, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

It is my understanding that, when articles get submitted, the AfCRP template automatically gets put at the bottom. A bot is supposed to move it to the top, but either that doesn't always happen or it's backlogged. If the reviewer performs the auto-cleanup (usually on those with the WP:AFC header in the title), the template will get moved to the top, which is where it belongs. This prevents future reviewers and future fixers from having to track it down. The hidden editor's note will probably remain at the bottom and need removing. — Wyliepedia 15:55, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, that helps. Thanks! :) —017Bluefield (talk) 03:50, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome! — Wyliepedia 13:12, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cubana Bar Restaurant

Yesterday, I blocked the creator of this article as a spam only account and I nominated this AfC submission (blatant spam page) for deletion. My nomination has been declined, despite the fact that my recent nominations of this kind were deleted [8], [9]. Why do we preserve this stuff?

I admit that I'm not fully familiar with the AfC procedures, however, I find the AfC deletion nominations in the CAT:CSD a bit complicated to resolve, because often it is not apparent what is the reason for deletion and searching URLs of copyvios or clicking through an article's history is complicated and time consuming. Why don't we use standard CSD tags also for AfC deletion nominations? I apologize if this was discussed before or if I cause more confusion. Thanks for any answer, I'll post this also at WT:CSD. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 09:02, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

• I replied to the duplicate of this post here on WT:CSD. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:27, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Light trapping

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Light trapping has a content cat that needs removig. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:31, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done Pol430 talk to me 22:17, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Roma in the Holocaust !

Why is there no information about the terrible Medical Experiments and abuse that was done to the Rome People before, during, and after the Holocaust. Germany and the Allies of Germany were brutal to Roma during and pervious to the Second World War? The history is there! However there seem to be a resistance to providing this information accurately to the general public. WHY ???? Is Wikipedia part of some organizational force that wants to keep this information from the general public? If so, I would like to know why? The Honorable William A. Duna, former member of the United States Holocaust Council.#REDIRECT [[#REDIRECT [[#REDIRECT [[#REDIRECT [[]]]]]]]]

This page is for users involved in this project's administration. Please ask this question at the Wikipedia:Help desk. This is where other editors will try to answer questions about how to use Wikipedia. Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. Mdann52 (talk) 11:11, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You probably want to look at Holocaust and associated articles with it. If there is information about Roma people missing it is probably either because it hasn't been reliably sourced or that adding it would put undue weight on the existing main articles, in which case a sub article might be appropriate. Be aware that this is not a good topic for newcomers to edit, as emotions run high with it for reasons that should be obvious. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:40, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Uhm....that was not the best way to handle this editors concern. New comers have as much expectation to edit whatever they want regardless of the controversy and franklly...I agree with them. .--Amadscientist (talk) 07:04, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

The problem with that is, they might well find their edits get reverted and get dragged into an edit war and blocked because they violated 3RR, even though their edits were in good faith, then their unblock request of "the nasty man deleted my hard work - it's all true!" gets declined. I've seen it happen. Might as well give people a realistic heads up instead of shoving them into the bearpit. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:09, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

And anyway, it's already there. Porajmos, and Holocaust#Non-Jewish. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:31, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Error with AfC script

I keep getting "Unable to locate AFC submission template, aborting..." in a lot of recent submissions. Anybody know what's going on? The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 18:38, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Any pages with an example of this you can give us? Mdann52 (talk) 11:03, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Rajdeepsinh Sindhav

(submission removed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rajdeepsinh sindhav (talk • contribs)

This page is for the administration of the Articles for Creation project. Please use the Article wizard for new submissions. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

sandboxes

If a AFC template is placed inside a sandbox, do we ignore that? Kinkreet^{~♥moshi moshi♥~} 15:24, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd treat it like a user page submission and manually review it. It helps to get it out of the AFC backlog. You could also move viable pages to WT:Articlename if you'd like to use the AFC helper script. Funny ^Pika! 17:08, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I tend to treat any AfC template that is in a user sandbox that is not outright detectable as one of the cardinal sins (Copyright violation, Personal Attacks, Nonsense, etc.) as a submission that needs to be moved to the AfC space so that we have a single listing of these submissions and makes the AfC tool usage much easier. Hasteur (talk) 17:13, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Wale Ojo is a English and Nigerian actor he has been in many movies such us meet the adebangos and phone swap — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.148.180 (talk) 17:48, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Categories - again

I commented about AFC pages appearing in content categories in past discussions. They also appear in Wikipedia:Database reports/Deleted red-linked categories (and possibly others?). It makes maintenance somewhat harder. Can we please have AFCs kept out of categories? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

There is a bot that is supposed to go around and delink categories - it doesn't pick up 100% of them, specifically when they are added through templates. At the end of the day, it is hard to prevent all AFC's from not ending up in categories - it would just be too much work to go through checking all of them all the time, especially stale drafts. Mdann52 (talk) 11:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

What a lazy bot! We don't employ them to go off swanning about in cyberspace and leaving us to clean up after them! But seriously, we should have the categories prevented from showing up in content pages immediately or prevent them from being shown (the latter may be a Mediawiki software issue). -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Raised at WP:VPT. Mdann52 (talk) 11:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

{{AfC preload}} could have a comment at the bottom telling users to not add categories. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:35, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done. Is it worth getting an edit filter added too? Mdann52 (talk) 13:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of an edit filter as well. In my experience instructions are often ignored. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:30, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Which bot is it? I am finding quite a few AFCs with redlinked categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:35, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

User:EarwigBot is supposed to do it (Task 8), but, like all bots, it isn't perfect. I will bring up the idea of an edit filter at WT:EF — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdann52 (talk • contribs) 11:02, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposed changes to backlog-tracking templates for the March drive

Because Category:Pending AfC submissions is so large and {{AFC statistics}} is exceeding technical limitations, and because some of us like to work on either oldest- or newest-submissions first, I'm proposing some small changes to the AFC templates to create by-date categories for pending submissions instead of or in addition to the existing category.

Before I "go live" I wanted to see if anyone spots any errors or can think of a better way of doing this. Once it "goes live" documentation will need to be updated.

The changes:

• {{AFC_submission/sandbox}} diff
• {{AFC_submission/pending/sandbox}} diff
• {{AfC date category/sandbox}} diff

Testcase:

• {{AFC_submission/pending/sandbox/testcases}}

New categories that should be created and destroyed as needed:

• Category:Undated AFC pending submissions
• Category:AfC pending submissions by date/DD Month YYYY

The testcase above is in Category:AfC pending submissions by date/28 February 2013

Recommended "bot" activity:

• Pre-create upcoming :Category:AfC pending submissions by date/ per-day categories.
• Delete in-the-past EMPTY :Category:AfC pending submissions by date/ categories.
• Maintain a page that lists links to these categories along with their counts, similar to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions or {{AFC statistics}}.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:21, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Looks ok. However, the problem may come with deletion of the categories. You either need the bot to tag em {{db-g6}}, or get an adminbot to do it (of which I'm not aware of any). It's a good idea though. Mdann52 (talk) 11:07, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to try with a different tack, with categories like "less than 6 hours old," "6-24 hours old," "1 day old", "n" days old where n are some reasonable numbers, like 2-7, 14, 21, 30, 60+ days old, etc. so categories won't have to be deleted. This logic can also be used for draft-state submissions, but with longer time scales, like "drafts created less than 1 week ago," "drafts 1 week to 1 month old," "drafts 1 month to 6 months old," "very old drafts - consider accepting or rejecting if there has been no activity in the last several months". davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:37, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I've scrapped the above and created categories for Pending submissions that are 0-30 days old and 1-2 months old. It's functional now but far from perfect. For one thing, it loses items that are over 3 months old. For another, the "timing" isn't always up to date. See Category:AfC pending submissions by age for the parent category. I've put a link to this in the See also section of Category:Pending AfC submissions

• Um, wouldn't this only work if every submission was null-edit'd (or maybe just purged) daily? I don't think that's going to happen unless we schedule a script to do it. — Earwig ^talk 04:05, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

The original idea would require frequent purges, which is why I went with the by-age categories. Another editor pointed out that these may negatively impact the job queue. I'm open to ideas. The bottom line though is that a usable, frequently-updated list that shows what pending submissions where submitted when, and which clearly shows the "shape" of the backlog (i.e. an "age histogram" or "by-day histogram") is very useful not only for this backlog but for backlogs in general.

I've opened a new section to discuss the larger issue of how to handle "by day" or "by day old" pending submissions. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:04, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Bug!

Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/March 2013 Backlog Elimination Drive states "the backlog elimination drive Starts has already ended". — Wyliepedia 08:16, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. (The banner was showing, correctly as programmed, that the start of the backlog drive has been and done.) Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:05, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Impact of Category:AfC pending submissions by age sub-pages on job queue, input requested

This thread on my talk page (pasted in the box below) raises an issue about the new x-day-old Pending Submissions categories. I'm asking the community for input on whether there is a better way to have a per-day listing of pending submissions, sorted by age.

Hi, have these categories been discussed anywhere? I'm not totally convinced they are a good idea. One concern is that every day, thousands of pages are going to be moving categories, which may put a strain on the job queue. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:36, 1 March 2013 (UTC) These particular ones weren't discussed, but a different version of the same thing, with "dated categories" (e.g. "pending submissions by date/March 1, 2013") was discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Proposed changes to backlog-tracking templates for the March drive. There was a concern about bots having to maintain these categories. I was unaware of the impact on the job queue. I am open to suggestions. I am going to copy this thread to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation so it can get wider discussion. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:50, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

If it turns out the job-queue issue is a real problem, I've added entry-points into the full category for pending submissions of various ages. See the collapsible table "Pending by age" in Category:Pending AfC submissions. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:08, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

A technical question for the job-queue people: Would it be more or less efficient if the timestamps used to put things in the Category:AfC pending submissions by age sub-categories were accurate to the second as they are now or something coarser, like truncated to the hour? The current mechanism spreads out the load, but setting the minutes and seconds to zero mechanism would have many submissions change categories at the top of each hour, which may be more efficient for batch processing. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:08, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Backlog

The backlog has passed 2,000 articles, which I don't think I've seen before. It is time for another backlog drive? A trend I've noticed recently is for essay-like articles along the lines of "Influence of Belgian people in Antarctica" with 25 news articles as sources, which passes the letter of the submission rules by paraphrasing what they say, but not really the spirit as it's a bunch of tenuously related news pieces put together as an original research piece. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:31, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/March 2013 Backlog Elimination Drive created. EdwardsBot spamming mission starting shortly. Mdann52 (talk) 13:23, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Here's my issue with backlog drives: We are doing one every two months. I know that we are a volunteer project, but we should be having one, two, and maybe three a year, not one every two months. I think before we do this again and potentially burn out editors, we should have a talk on what we need to do, because clearly nothing that we have proposed has permanently created a situation where everything is manageable. Maybe this includes directing more new page patrollers here or setting it up so that submissions appear there, but whatever it is, we seriously should stop pulling backlog drives this often, because it could easily drive off editors who decide to review a ton of articles, then burn out at the end of the drive and don't come back here for six months. In a way, I am still burnt out from when I did the bulk of reviewing over a year ago, but I also know that with moderation, this project can be fun if you want to get some work done while helping others. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 16:17, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

That's an interesting point, but given the upturn of people who've appeared on the Help Desk wondering if they've made a mistake submitting their article because the backlog has left a lengthy turnaround, I think we at least need to get a quick short term solution, and a backlog drive seems to be the only way we know how to do that. The other risk, from last time, is that there's the risk of prolific reviewers chasing barnstars to neglect quality en route and making the whole AfC process worse, not better. I've left a note on WT:NPP, but I'm not expecting a rush. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:46, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm a relatively new reviewer so I'll give my thoughts:

I try to knock the low hanging fruit off the tree as often as possible (unreferenced, no-refs, short, etc.) but the problem I see too often is when the submitter makes corrections, they come back to me to get the pass. I keep telling them to re-submit it into the queue, but it's only when I take the process into my hands and do the AfC submission for them that they go away.

Is there a minimum level of competence that we can require from the user prior to taking action? I ask because In the month that I've been trying to clean out, I've gotten emails and page pings from impatient and outright disrespectful editors who want their article promoted, but aren't willing to put in the effort to get a pass.

Finally, I'm not certain, but I consider it bad form for the same reviewer to review a AfC more than once unless the problem that was pointed out is still remaining.

Thoughts? Hasteur (talk) 17:24, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Sionk's preferred mechanism to picking out AfC submissions

I tend to be the opposite, making my way up the tree to pick the best apples, peeling and de-coring them, then making them into a nice pie ;) It helps me forget all the absolutely rubbish and frustrating articles that pile up at AfC. Maybe I get a response from at least 10-15% of declined editors. I help the polite, constructive ones (common) and often ignore anyone that is rude and discourteous (rare).

I don't know the solution to the backlog. Are there more articles being submitted than last year? I expect there are generally too few 'activists' on Wikipedia and too many essential tasks. I'm beginning to think a little extra time leaving additional explanatory messages on the declined AfC drafts helps, because it points newbies to the main problem and stops them adding their article back to the queue after only a cosmetic tweak. Sionk (talk) 18:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I do a mix. I pick articles that match my areas of interest and expertise, that I'd be able to validate quickly. I do a bit of cleaning on the front of the queue occasionally for things that haven't got a hope in hell of getting through (usually unsourced stuff), but most of the time I assume somebody else takes care of that. Occasionally I'll pick up one article, source it, and generally improve it myself. I agree that adding comments and notes, and taking charge of stuff on the help desk is important as well - understanding how to make a good article (let alone a good article) is a skill that most newcomers won't have, but some can learn. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:28, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

What's the deal with doing a monthly drive? GOCE and Wikify do it to great success, even rewarding editors who participate in all drives. If that's what it's going to take, then so be it. Everyone knows that editors get worn out, and drives are a good way of bringing new blood to the mix, plus they give result-oriented incentives. Drives significantly lower backlogs, that's a fact. I don't comprehend that "drive reluctance", as if it were a taboo. That's what they're for. PS: Sionk, I laughed at your caption! Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 21:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Because if we do it monthly, then we're essentially just doing a yearly sweepstakes, and that really removes a lot of the fun behind the project. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:50, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

GOCE for instance, usually includes a list of objectives for each drive...and now that there are time categories, maybe drives focusing on a certain category could be implemented. i don't share the sweepstakes notion though. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Quick question

What's our policy on unreferenced BLP's in AFC? There's a user who repeatedly recreated a BLP without any references, and I've salted that page, but I see they've pasted the info into an AFC page. AFC doesn't really seem like a great place to let unreferenced BLP's sit forever, but I'm loath to delete the page if this kind of thing is encouraged somewhere. I know WT:AFC space is NOINDEXED; what do you folks usually do with something that would get a {{BLPPROD}} if it was in article space? --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:38, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Unless it's an attack page (CSD G10), I believe we let it live. WP:BLPPROD seems to cover only articles proper, not drafts. No opinion on whether it should include drafts. Huon (talk) 00:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks Huon. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:07, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Technically, WP:Miscellany for deletion is the right place to discuss deletions in Wikipedia_Talk: space. This may be one of the few cases where a discussion is needed for an AfC submission, as we almost never want to lose the archival value of an AfC submission that doesn't qualify for a speedy-deletion. If this an unreferenced AfC were brought up in MfD, I would probably !vote to keep or courtesy-blank without deletion if I were in a hurry. If I weren't in a hurry I'd dig around and find 1 or 2 possible sources so it was no longer completely unreferenced. By the way AfC may be noindexed, but when I do routine copyright checks against Google, I almost always get 1 hit that is from a web site that appears to be copying WP:AFC submissions (or, perhaps, all of Wikipedia). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Interviews as Sources

How good is an interview, either for establishing notability or sourcing content, as a source? I'm confused as to the reliability of an interview with the article's subject, in an otherwise reliable source. The article in question is Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Hans-Joachim Voth. Thanks. LM103 (talk) 03:18, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Not that good. Voth is surely a reliable source on economics, but for notability purposes, we'd need independent sources - and an interview with Voth is hardly independent of him. I don't think either of that draft's sources provide significant coverage of Voth. Huon (talk) 03:38, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Interviews can vary in quality, generally I agree they don't count much towards 'notability'. This is even more the case when the interview isn't about the interviewee, as is the case here! If he's an economics expert then he is only doing his job, giving advice and opinion about financial matters. If he was asked questions about himself, or the interview began with an overview of him written by the news source, I'd give it more weight. Sionk (talk) 20:55, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes the fact that a person is being interviewed, especially by multiple, independent people who only interview people who are already "notable" and he is being interviewed about himself or his own work (vs. being interviewed because he is a subject-matter expert in the topic being discussed) is a strong suggestion of notability. On the other hand, it can also be a strong sign that the person has a very good publicist. If someone is interviewed on The Tonight Show, The Daily Show, and Good Morning America about a book he has written or about his upcoming tour, it's extremely unlikely that they are not already notable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:50, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

In a truly reliable source, what the interviewee has had to say has been filtered and copyedited through the source's general policies and procedures. To give you an extreme example, try getting interviewed for Daily Star and see if what you say comes out verbatim in the paper afterwards ;-) Therefore, we can assume that we are writing about something with a neutral point of view (which, unlike notability, is a policy instead of merely a guideline). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:09, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• It depends I would say it really depends on the circumstances. If somebody is interviewed on 60 minutes or in the New York Times, then what the person says will be edited by somebody and any incorrect information will be countered by the interviewer. The focus of the interview is also important. If a small newspaper interviews people going to a county fair, it will probably not be important. If they are interviewing somebody that found a cure for cancer, that would be different. So I would say it really depends on the specifics of the situation. 64.40.54.87 (talk) 11:57, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

AfC main page's message to registered users

I recently joined WP and I created an article through the Article Wizard. I was waiting in the AfC queue when I asked around and learned registered users can simply move their article into article space, they don't need to use AfC.

From what I've heard, many people are in that same situation, they are using AfC because they believe it is the way to make new articles. So why is this? The Starting an article page and the Missing Manual both explain clearly you can just move the article into article space. I think it is the excellent "marketing" of the AfC project which leads users to find it first. When they find it the name "Articles for Creation" sounds generic, it sounds like the way to create articles, nothing about it suggests it is primarily for unregistered users.

In fact, the prose on the AfC main page today boils down to this:

1. If you don't have a WP account, submit your article here
2. If you do have a WP account, you can also submit your article here

While this is true, it's not giving people the complete picture. It certainly led me astray. Here is what I think it should say:

1. If you don't have a WP account, submit your article here
2. If you do have a WP account you have two options:
   • You can bypass the AfC queue entirely, here's how
   • You can submit your article here

Then there is the issue of the Article Wizard. The Article Wizard is a good thing for new users, registered or unregistered, because it basically just asks you bunch of questions you ought to be thinking about when creating your first article. The problem is the Article Wizard leads you to create page with a big "click here to submit your article" link on top, which submits to the AfC queue. Instead, if we are going to encourage even registered users to use the Article Wizard, it should give you an option at submission time:

1. If you want to wait in the queue and have your article reviewed before posting, click here
2. If you want to immediately add your article to Wikipedia, click here

Anyway I joined in January 2013 and submitted my first article early Feb. So this is based on that recent experience. So thought I would share my two cents. Silas Ropac (talk) 03:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd cite WP:BEANS here: Yes, everybody who has registered an account can create articles of his own, but not everybody who has registered an account should create articles of his own. Many of the drafts submitted here by registered users are so bad they would (or should) immediately be tagged for speedy deletion in the mainspace. This surely isn't a representative sample, but of the five oldest articles awaiting review right now, four were created by registered users. Three of those four had been declined at least once, and I wouldn't bet on the fourth's fate. The basic question is: Should new users have to go through the review process, or should we throw them into the WP:NPP shark tank? Huon (talk) 06:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Although I occasionally rescue stuff from CSD where the subject does actually appear notable enough to have an article, a lot of the time it happens despite the author's efforts, not because of them. See this diff for an example this morning where I managed to avoid a {{db-person}} largely by providing two sources and blowing up the original. The idea, at least as far as I'm concerned, at AfC is to basically get the article's creator to go through the exact same process as I did this morning, enabling them to learn key Wikipedia policies en-route so they can become more effective editors. Throw them to the NPP shark tank, and their opinion of Wikipedia will end up something like this. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:54, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree some users will have a better experience by going through AfC. The intent is fine, but do the ends justify the means? WP:BEANS does not apply: it says "don't give examples of how to cause disruption" because people will do it. Submitting new articles, even bad ones, is not a disruptive act. We have to assume good faith and consider it a genuine attempt to add useful content to the encyclopedia. We have to be able to handle bad articles, if we can't then the problem is NPP. So today we are trying to cut down bad articles how, by "encouraging" people to use AfC. I think that's fine in principle; the devil is really in the details of how things are presented. Encouraging and cajoling is okay, but there is an invisible line across which is tricking them or misleading them, which is not okay. That is how I felt, like I was mislead, which is not a good first experience either. I would say lay out the options, be honest:

1. "Use AfC if you want a review before your article is submitted, if you are at all unsure about your subject, or unsure how to write it up, use this option. Here are some happy testimonials by people that loved their AfC experience and some of the great articles that came out of it. Here is the current length of the queue."
2. "If you are confident that you can write an acceptable article off the bat, if you understand your article might be immediately deleted if it doesn't meet all the criteria, then here is how you can add it directly yourself in a matter of minutes. Don't say we didn't warn you"

That to me would be the up-front approach. Or else change the policy, change it so you have to create your first article through AfC, that would at least be fair and consistent. Silas Ropac (talk) 13:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I have always thought that autoconfirmed status should be required to create a new article, however, we will probably need another incident to get any such policy passed... Mdann52 (talk) 13:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe autoconfirmed is part of the solution. So today we treat two classes of editors like this:

unregistered: require them to use AfC

registered: trick them into using AfC

I suspect this is a local minimum. Meaning it does help address the problem, but it isn't the optimal solution, particularly if we value WP:HONEST. It says honesty in all processes, article creation is certainly a process. The wording on WP:AFC does not contain a falsehood, but the whole truth is intentionally left off the page, and it's not because there isn't room. The bottom line is: we should have a policy we are willing to tell people about. Silas Ropac (talk) 08:58, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The main page for AFC states clearly that AFC is for unregistered users and registered users can use the article Wizard. Am I mistaken that the article wizard publishes the new article to the main space?--Amadscientist (talk) 09:37, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The Article Wizard leaves a giant "click here to submit your article" banner at the top of your article. The link submits your article to AfC. Silas Ropac (talk) 09:45, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I started a similar thread on Jimbo's talk page. I don't see a conspiracy here. Instead I think the AfC main page was just written assuming the reader had already considered their options and had chosen to use AfC. When in fact what's happening is people are ending up at the AfC main page without understanding what AfC is or what their other options are. Given that realization, I think the only defensible thing to do is update the page, make it more clear what people's options are. We don't have to settle the debate about AfC vs. NPP and all the related issues, just tweak one page from being less clear to more clear. If someone stands up demands it remain less clear, then that's the start of an interesting discussion. Silas Ropac (talk) 22:13, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

---

mar 7 2012

I don't mind the policy, I have only submitted my first entry for approval, yet have been registered since 2011. I have previously only worked in the talk pages of a few select articles trying to encourage valid and source-able references. Step up to the plate and start reviewing articles, the reviewing process will fire up. I'm also seeing articles that have the appearance of being 'puff' pulp. And 'social' networking pulp. Serious researchers will be driven away if google starts returning useless and misdirected information. Google already returns about 97% pulp as it is, I, and hopefully, we, have a stake in preventing encyclopedic spam pulp for dinner. Jeffrey mcmahan (talk) 22:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

"Take me down to Sandbox City..."

1900 submissions at the moment and 1 out of 5 (or more) are sandboxes. I usually try to convert those I come across but not this time. We need a better "new editor" submission process to fix this. — Wyliepedia 04:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a job for a bot: Bot should 1) change submission from PENDING to DRAFT, 2) post a note to the talk page linking to a one-button script which will MOVE the draft THEN change it back to PENDING. Bot can run 3-4 times a day against articles pending review that are in User: or User_talk: space. Thoughts? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:12, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

It would be nice for the AFC Reviewer be able to auto-magically promote a submission to the AFC space (and not have to worry about flubbed moves) by telling it what the :subject is. I guess I can dream Hasteur (talk) 20:55, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Hasteur, if someone creates a userpage with the desired article title after the username forward slash (username/), then it can easily be moved to "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/XXXX". However, the sandboxes don't have that ability and have the generic "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox" move function. "Sandbox" can be replaced with the article's subject, but that requires that extra step than the userpage simpler move. — Wyliepedia 10:17, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Discussion involving AfC over at the Teahouse Talk page

I asked a question about Teahouse practices on the Teahouse Talk page. The topic has grown to include discussion of AfC processes and the synergy between the Teahouse and AfC. Roger (talk) 17:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Alerting people regarding COI

This isn't WP:AFC strictly-speaking, but we tend to get a lot of articles in mainspace and in WP:AFC that appear to be written by people with conflicts of interests.

I'm throwing out the idea of putting a BIG, BOLD editnotice in the default article-create windows saying

"If you are in any way, shape, or form related to, employed by, or otherwise have a personal or financial interest in the article you are creating, read Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest policy first. If you DO have a conflict of interest, please submit your article to Wikipedia:Articles for Creation first."

This will of course mean that we'll have to update our templates and instructions to 1) be explicitly welcoming to COI-originated articles, and 2) provide a formal, uniform way for such articles to be marked as being authored by someone with a declared conflict of interest. This means updating the Article Wizard.

So, guys, what do you think? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:09, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

When I review a article that appears to have a COI, I tend to give it a much harder look. If it's a username question I'll tag the page with {{uw-coi-un}} and decline the submission if it's marginal. COI is one of those real big "no nos" that I try to guard against. If there's no appearant COI/PoV/Promotional tone and the article looks decent, I'll approve it to mainspace. Hasteur (talk) 20:53, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

• Great idea, and how about mentioning Wikipedia:Autobiography too? Autobiographies are common and troublesome. —rybec 04:38, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I've seen enough COIs and autobiographies here to know that you can put up all the notices in the world and people will still create them regardless. "Whaddya mean our Facebook page isn't a reliable source? We're a real company, we really exist!" Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:16, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Article from mainspace moved to articles for creation

The article YYZ Artists' Outlet was moved to articles for creation with the edit summary "This article should be deleted, it is only about the website and has only references to the website". I've never encountered this before. Is this a new procedure? If the editor wants the article deleted, surely a PROD or AFD would be preferable, instead of hiding it away. I don't see where this is listed at all for anyone to work on it since it's not an article to be created but an article that's been around since 2008. I make no claims for the value of the article although the subject is probably notable and with work could possibly survive an AFD. It just happened to be on my watchlist so I saw the move. But again, I'd never seen this done as a move to delete an article already in mainspace. Is this now policy? Or am I completely out to lunch? freshacconci talktalk 01:04, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

This is rather bizarre. By now the article has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Pending Articles for Creation/YYZ Artists' Outlet, which is outside the usual AfC namespace and also means we will require an admin to move it back. Hiding articles in this fashion wasn't supported by policy the last time I checked. I've asked Kanuk for an explanation. I'd say it should be moved back into the mainspace and nominated for deletion if necessary. We're not Wikipedia's junkyard, and it's not acceptable to quasi-delete articles in this way without discussion. Huon (talk) 02:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC);:

This was in the Arts Portal stub list, it is not an article that can be fixed up in any way. I could not figure out the proper procedure for recommending that it be deleted. It is a blatant advertisement with the only references being to the website. If you could let me know the proper way to get this type of article in the process for deletion I would be grateful Kanuk (talk) 02:54, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I've moved it back into article space, if you think it should be deleted, please either nominate it for Speedy deletion (if it qualifies), PRopose a deletion, or send it to Articles for deletion. Moving it like that saying it should be deleted is not in line with policy and shouldn't happen. - Happysailor ^(Talk) 05:03, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Unanswered requests archived

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects/2013-03 is full of unanswered requests. There is at least one at the top relating to the pope and there are loads scattered throughout and down at the bottom, on the republic of china, on death, on wallace and gromit, and so on. Is this a common occurrence? Why have these been archived? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.40.193.140 (talk • contribs) 15:57, 11 March 2013‎

Because the bot archived the sections 2 days after the last comment in the section. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 16:43, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Ignoring them is a de facto decline. I sometimes feel some of the AFC/R regulars see redirect creation less in terms of what's useful than in terms of pattern completion. The Chinese requests, for example, were ill-advised and should not have been created in the fashion the requester wanted. In fact, I just checked the archive, and all of the unanswered requests seem to be ones I would have liked to decline if that wouldn't likely have led to lots of drama because the requester would argue that, say, "Wallace (Wallace and Gromit)" would be a likely search term or that budget articles should be put in the head of government's eponymous category. So I just ignore such requests, which leads to the same end result without the drama. Huon (talk) 17:14, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Personally I don't accept or decline ones that I am unsure on JayJay^{What did I do?} 14:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Reviewers: Please check for copyright violations!

Reviewers: please be sure to check for copyright violations. I have found many copyvios recently in AfC submissions. Here is a sampling of those I have found in the last day or so. Northamerica1000^(talk) 23:37, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Get extensive List of Orthopedic Surgeons in Singapore: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Guide to claim back your payment protection Insurance: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Ryans Computers Limited: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Selin Stone: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mekong Institute: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Life Song: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/How unhealthy cigarettes is?: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Capsuline, Inc: Nominated for speedy deletion per CSD G12, unambiguous copyright infringement – Result: delete

• Does User:CorenSearchBot not search the AFC pages? If not why not? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:26, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I would guess that the bot only works on mainspace pages - since all AfC are on talk pages they may be missed out. I'll ask User:Coren if he can confirm (and maybe adjust the bot).  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 15:45, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

That is correct, by default, CorenSearchBot only looks at the mainspace; it should be relatively easy to allow a specific part of some other namespace to be added to what it checks, though. That said, I'm not the one currently running the bot – that would be User:Madman at the moment. — Coren ^(talk) 15:51, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• That would be handy; although it's only a matter of Googling a chunk of text I guess. Basket _Feudalist 15:58, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I've left a note for User:Madman - hopefully he can add his input.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:50, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• A helpful tool There is the Copyvio Detector at tools:~earwig/copyvios that can help. But it sometimes says an article is a violation of a site that copies Wikipedia content, so it's best to check the results. Cheers. 64.40.54.122 (talk) 16:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• Great tool, ta! Basket _Feudalist 17:08, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• I'm still working on this (EarwigBot is approved for this task, but has been offline for a while), but as it's probably pretty clear, I won't have the bot ready soon-ish. If Madman wishes to have his bot run through the AFC space, that's fine. When EarwigBot is re-enabled, it can run alongside MadmanBot and tag things its misses and vice-versa. — Earwig ^talk 21:49, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • The only reason I haven't been doing this (there have been a couple requests in the past) was that EarwigBot was approved for the same function; I wasn't aware it wasn't actively doing it. I'll add AFC as soon as I can whip up some code and get BAG approval (other BAG members may disagree, but I think this is outside the scope of "mirroring" CSB's functions and it can't hurt to get the green light on that). Cheers, — madman 04:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Small update: BRFA filed. Cheers, — madman 20:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

MadmanBot is now actively checking new AFC submissions for copyright violations as part of an extended trial approved by the BAG. Please let me know if you notice any issues on my talk page (I'm very busy offline so I might not get back to you right away, but I'll try). Cheers! — madman 02:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed topic ban from AFC review - Pratyya Ghosh

Back in December 2012 I warned Pratyya Ghosh not to decline AFC submissions with rationales like "not too good" or "bad writing style", or for spurious reasons like the article not having an infobox, not to ignore queries from AFC submitters, and not to use comments like "not written writely" as a justification for declining an article.

Also visible in that talk page section is a concern from Cindamuse that Pratyya Ghosh had approved an AFC submission and rated it as B-class when in fact it was a blatant copyright violation.

Pratyya Ghosh's reply to these concerns was: nothing at all.

Please see here for an occasion in January 2013 where I raised with Pratyya Ghosh two completely inappropriate AFC declines he had made; an IP editor chimed in saying that Pratyya Ghosh should respond to queries on his talk page from AFC submitters (which he generally doesn't), and Pratyya Ghosh replied by saying "I don't understand what're you talking about".

Now this month we have a declined article where his comments include "Also no big informations. Need infobox too", another where the totality of his comments is "This submission reads like a paragraph. Just no sections. add sections. Also add infobox", another where the totality of his comments is "Needs to be added infoboxes also needs more information about the person. See a bio related article.", and finally one where he declines a submission as a non-notable person when the second sentence is "Global Strategies Group is a privately owned defence and national security company".

I am therefore proposing an 18 month topic ban from reviewing AFC submissions for Pratyya Ghosh.

• Support as proposer. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 10:58, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
• Support but would prefer it to be an indefinite ban because it's abundantly clear that Pratyya Ghosh is nowhere near adequately fluent in English to properly understand even a fraction of the material here and elsewhere on enWP (I have seen his/her contributions in other places on enWP, many are just as illogical/incoherent). This is a clear case of incompetence - he/she should be encouraged to leave en.WP and rather contribute to the WP in his/her native language. Roger (talk) 11:33, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

• Fair comment. My usual approach is to make massive assumptions of good faith, and then add my own assumption that if someone really desperately wanted to continue contributing to AFC in English, it would in theory be possible for them to move from basic familiarity with English to adequate competence in English within 18 months (by enrolling on a language course, for example). If the problem recurs in 18 months then it would still be possible to extend it at that time. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:14, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Support temp-ban I think a temporary topic ban, as Demiurge1000 proposed, makes sense, because it gives Pratyya Ghosh time to understand Wikipedia better, as well as time to become more fluent in the English language. I wouldn't say he/she doesn't understand "a fraction of the material here", considering he/she went successfully through CVU/A and is both reviewer and rollbacker. He/she seems perfectly competent in reverting vandalism. I can't say I know much about how he/she conducts him/herself in other areas of enWP, but I don't think he/she should be "encouraged to leave en.WP". The 18 months 6 months I agree with the arguments for less time and Demiurge's compromise Demiurge1000 proposes for topic ban is most likely enough time for Pratyya to better understand AfC. Greengreengreenred 13:26, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose just for the minute, though I'm not opposed per se to an eventual ban. We've got a backlog drive (again!) on, so anyone can review Pratyya's submissions and mark them accordingly. We'd have a lot stronger case to argue if we can point to a page full of challenged reviews and say "that's disruptive". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:33, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Neutral - I would just say to wait and see - wait for the end of the drive, so we have a nice page of diffs on there. FYI, Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/March 2013 Backlog Elimination Drive/Pratyya Ghosh is their latest AFC drive page. Mdann52 (talk) 13:49, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose - 18 months seems like an extraordinarily long ban! Why 18 months? While I agree they need tough love, maybe a short ban to encourage a period of reflection would be adequate. It's very useful to have reviewers with an expertise of other languages. Poor English isn't a reason to decline an article so it shouldn't be a reason to decline a reviewer. Sionk (talk) 18:31, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

• I don't follow the logic of your last sentence. The issue is not how good their English is (a total irrelevancy), but whether they are capable of providing meaningful reviews. Why 18 months? Because the last time I demanded on their talk page that they either stop doing AFC reviews or started doing them properly, their response was to ignore my message and stop doing reviews for 6 weeks. And then carried on just the same as before. Hit them with a 3 month ban and they'll do exactly the same. A "cool down" ban (or even a "reflection" ban) is not going to achieve anything here. The only reason that the proposal is 18 months instead of indefinite, is as I explained above. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:35, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

• I can't see any reason for such a long ban. It looks like Pratyya Ghosh has moved on to do some anti-vandalism work, so the problem doesn't seem to be such a major one. I can see their activities at AfC have been problematic. But your warning in December was rude and combative (Exciral's comments in January were far better). There are lots of questionable decisions taking place at AfC, which is a consequence of inviting new people to take part. Shouldn't we be encouraging and educating them? Sionk (talk) 00:09, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• Sionk, you mentioned above that you would support a "short ban". How long of a topic ban would you support? Six months? eight? 12? Cindy(talk to me) 02:10, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• So Exciral went to the trouble of re-opening thirty-four of this editor's AFC reviews in January, and presumably inspecting even more. And Exciral went to the trouble of explaining all of that in great detail, very politely, to the editor. And has it fixed the problem? Sadly not. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support a short ban as suggested by Cindy. As she says, 18 months is a lifetime for a teenager. People get blocked for a month for much worse!! Presumably they'd be able to appeal against the AfC ban? Unless Pratyya Ghosh starts to communicate properly (with AfC editors and article authors) they leave little alternative for us. Sionk (talk) 18:43, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support. In theory, I support the topic ban. I would propose a ban of six months, with a requirement that the editor complete an adoption school focusing on article creation and related policies and guidelines. After graduating from the adoption school, I think some kind of AFC mentoring might be helpful. If he screws up then, I would recommend a second ban of one year. The editor identifies as a teenager, as well as a native speaker of English. Clearly it's wishful thinking. That said, 18 months is a lifetime to teens. I think six months is manageable to the point that we wouldn't lose him as an editor altogether. As far as waiting until the drive is over, I really shake my head at that. I just don't understand quantity over quality. You just create more work in the end, when you need to go back and essentially "re-do" the crap articles. Focus on quantity and you get declined articles due to "not written writely" or "not too good" or "need infobox". Focusing on quality equates to editor retention. We don't need someone following others around. Seriously, how does that look to new editors? I would be inclined to think that Wikipedia overall is a disorganized mess. Let's work with integrity, focus on quality, offer training and mentoring, and monitor the progression of disruptive (but not malicious) editors. Just my thoughts. Cindy(talk to me) 02:10, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• For the sake of compromise, I would support six months. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• In an edit summary from yesterday, edit summary Mr. Ghosh indicated that he doesn't intend to go online for the next two weeks. —rybec 21:44, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

• Because of Pratyya's two week departure from Wikipedia, I believe that a topic ban of 6 months and two weeks would be sufficient. Thine Antique Pen (talk) 23:05, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

feedback on a review; marginal copyvio/plagiarism issue

Hi, i am new to reviewing at AFC and am trying to figure out how to contribute here. I am now using the AFC script, and placed 2 comments in Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Modernistic qualitative research. It seems to me the submitted article has some marginal copyvio/plagiarism issues, that could be corrected by some editing. If I had to make an accept/reject decision right now, I would reject. But I am inclined to wait to hear from the contributor, who is new to Wikipedia, and to try to work with the submission to improve it until it can be moved to mainspace. Looking at the article and my comments there, and perhaps at the submitter's talk page, is this about right?

Also, I have not found my way to past reviews by others. Is there a set of good quality reviews, that I can browse to see what best practices are here? Or simply how can i browse any/all past reviews? Thanks in advance for any comments. --doncram 02:26, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

An FFU on Commons

I've proposed that a counterpart for WP:FFU be created at commons:. For the proposal, see commons:COM:Requests_for_comment/Files_For_Upload -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 03:19, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Multiple submissions for the same subject

I don't mind moving submissions from user sandboxes to the AFC space, but too often the system notifies me that there is already a submission for the same subject -and not necessarily by the same user, sometimes it is a declined submission from the previous years by another editor. What is the right way to move these submissions to the AFC space? Maybe we can name them Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Subject (2nd nomination) like in Afd submissions. Nimuaq (talk) 07:12, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I have the same question. I've been adding "2nd copy" to the name and adding comments to both drafts, but I'm unsure that's the right way. One occasion in particular didn't seem to work out well: only one draft was marked as being ready for review; I moved the sandbox into AFC space as "2nd copy" and added comments; another reviewer came along, declined the one that was ready for review as a duplicate, and left the draft that wasn't ready alone. —rybec 22:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I think "2nd copy" is a good idea, I will also add "2nd copy" for consistency. Nimuaq (talk) 16:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

GARUVUPALEM

Garuvupalem is the village in Chebrolu mandal in Guntur district. Meritorious Professional student in this village is Yarlagadda Srinivasa Rao. Around 1200 members are there in this village. Historical bridge constructed by the Britishers in this village. Koneru river of 100 acres . There is a S.K.V.C.M Z.P.H school in this village. Buckingham canal passing through this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunilkumardasari (talk • contribs) 06:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

This page is for discussion of the Articles for creation WikiProject itself, not for the creation of new articles. Please use the Article Wizard. Please also add reliable sources such as newspapers so your draft's information can be verified. Huon (talk) 09:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Help request

HELP...There is something wrong with the AFC-dating system: Please someone who knows more than I about these things take a look at Category:AfC pending submissions by age, specifically Category:AfC pending submissions by age/0 days ago... Yesterday it had 740+ pending submissions and today is has 790 BUT some of us Backlog Drive participants have checked the dates on these and they are not all actually from *today*...for instance, March 10, February 25th, and March 8 were reported yesterday (March 14/15). Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 16:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/March 2013 Backlog Elimination Drive

Since elsewhere on this page people have said they were unaware of this Backlog Drive, here you go. Cheers, Shearonink (talk) 16:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Fictional baseball pitchers arriving at AFC

While requesting help on infoboxes for the submission Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Sean Bell (Pitcher), someone claiming to be the submission author informed me that Sean Bell is "a fictional baseball player". I have informed them that the format and style of the submission is completely inappropriate for a fictional character, but reviewers (or others) may want to keep a close eye on it anyway. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:35, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

cheers for that. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The ISBN was incorrect, it's actually the UPC Code for the 2004 Yearbook, no pages were provided for this supposed content, I cannot find this "Sean Bell" on the Anahein Angels roster anywhere , including 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2006 roster on Baseball Reference.Com as being on the Anaheim Angels roster ever. I have been unable to find any mentions of a Sean Bell ever playing baseball for Rice University. The only notable Sean Bell I have been able to find is the man who was shot & killed in Queens in 2006, Sean Bell shooting incident who played baseball in high school. From the writer's latest edits, it appears that this AfC submission is apparently tied-in to a PlayStation game called "MLB: The Show" that was just released earlier this month. ...Oh, and the writer has already submitted again. Shearonink (talk) 19:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

And it's been declined again. Shearonink (talk) 19:12, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Backlog Drive

Let me be clear that what I am about to say is by no means a criticism.

The success of the last backlog drive, I think, was due to the introduction of the AFCBuddy, which helped immensely with keeping track of what articles different editors reviewed. It automatically collects the data, but still require the developer (User:Excirial) to update on the drive page manually.

However, this was not kept up-to-date this drive, and the lag hasn't clear out as much. I appreciate having to manually add the reviews onto the drive pages takes a lot of time. Would it be possible to share Excirial's workload in some way, and keep the drive up-to-date? Kinkreet^{~♥moshi moshi♥~} 18:46, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for that from my side - i managed to get hit by another one of my jolly busy periods. During those i tend to have so little spare time that even thinking about the word "Wikipedia" won't fit in my schedule (Never mind actually editing anything). As for the drive, the drive page is now up-to-date and the user totals have been updates for the users who have requested this to be done. As for the edit counts: AFCBuddy can retroactively generate the edit list for a user so no one should have to worry about keeping track of that manually. Even so it may be convenient to maintain a simple count of the edits manually for scoreboard purposes, for cases where the scoreboard hasn't been updated automatically for some time (And since the edits list can be generated retroactively, cheating that tally wouldn't serve any purpose) Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 20:25, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm grateful to Excirial for running the Buddy, having the Accepts/Declines right up in front of the links on my Drive page is really helpful but what happened to everyone's Pass/Fail-Reviews of Reviews? Shearonink (talk) 20:52, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Note: Responded here. Since it is long i doubt its a good idea to copy-paste it here. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 22:01, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I must also restate my appreciation for AFCBuddy and thank Excirial for a prompt response! Kinkreet^{~♥moshi moshi♥~} 00:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The participants of the March drive have already reviewed a total of 2325 articles (which is coincidentally the current backlog, and we have 13 more days to go) while the January total was 5022. The total of the January drive was 3243 when it had 13 days to go, 1073 of which belonged to Excirial, so if you remove Excirial's contributions, we have already reviewed more articles than the previous drive at this point of month, but we still need more reviewers since there appears to be more submissions this month. Nimuaq (talk) 01:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Don't forget that we actually cleared out the entire review queue halfway that month, which slowed down the review speed. Also, keep in mind that there are about 200-300 new reviews requested every day (I am not certain if that statistic includes multiple reviews for the same page though). Using 200 reviews a day as an average we would need to review 3.600 pages over the course of 18 days just to ensure that the backlog doesn't increase in size (Let alone decrease it). We didn't hit that target during either drive so i suspect there was at least a fair share of reviewers who were not participating in the drive itself, while they still reviewed articles.

What i also suspect is that the previous drive caused some "review weariness". In February the amount of reviewed article's was quite a bit lower than during the previous month(s), which is why we suddenly ended up with a 2K page backlog in just a month. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 08:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

My theory for another variable is that we are now past the time for midterms in college semesters and final projects are starting to hit firm checkpoints on their way to course grades for the year. Shearonink (talk) 19:17, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Categories for pending AfC submissions

AfC submissions is still just one big hodge podge.

I'm still pitching child categories added via wizard options (while preserving the category of Category:Pending AfC submissions. More reasons to make child categories:

• Categories could generate interest in reviewing a particular type of draft.
• Categories could speed up unit processing time as editors get into a groove handling a certain type.
• Categories could isolate the backlog in one or two categories while eliminating it others. New ideas could then arise in handling the then more narrowly-defined backlog category.

No traction this time and I'll give up. I promise. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:27, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Seems on face to be a good idea. What kinds of categories? Topics similar to the deletion sorting categories? Danger ^{High voltage!} 15:46, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm thinking something like "commercial organizations", "people", and "other". I have little interest in the first two, but would love to pick through the "other" category. I know editors who are real people persons, and may like that category. As for "commercial organizations", well that's a bane for many of us, and is what's making decent drafts get lost in the weeds. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:45, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I think "other" might still be too generalised. I wouldn't want to sift through every non-org/bio submission. I'm liking the idea of a deletion sorting or Afd category subject type split though. Funny ^Pika! 03:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a critically needed improvement, and it is so badly needed, that any sort of categorization, even the very rough one used at AfD would be helpful. For example, I do not review sports , and just knowing that a bio is not in that group is a help. Whatever is done now can be refined later, DGG ( talk ) 05:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Probably a silly question...

...but am allowed to just sign up and start reviewing AFC submissions? Like, this isn't something reserved for Admins, or there isn't anything like an interview/review of my edits/swimsuit competition that I have to go through to participate, right? I'd like to help out, I'm just making sure I'm allowed to help. I told you it was a silly question. Cheers, Dawn Bard (talk) 15:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

All we require is that you understand basic policies that are required for an article to be kept in mainspace on Wikipedia - that's it. A good track record at AfD can be useful, but not essential. I'm glad we don't have a swimsuit competition, as I really didn't fancy getting into a mankini in order to pass "Wikipedia:Requests for reviewership"! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Anyone who can edit can decline, improve or comment on AFC drafts, but to accept an article, you have to be able to move it, so you have to be at least autoconfirmed. —rybec 00:24, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Well I'm definitely autoconfirmed. Perhaps I shall dive in! Cheers, Dawn Bard (talk) 14:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

You sem to have shown reasonably good judgement in your patrolling of new pages: almost always what you list for deletion should be deleted and does get deleted; you have however in a few cases been placing notability tags on very weak articles that I would have sent to prod or AfD such as Shoppink. Remwmeber that the criterion for accepting an article at AfC is not just that it will barely pass speedy, but that it is not likely to be reasonably challenged at afd. DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Procedure for abandoned failed submissions

Is there a procedure for failed submissions where the submitter does not attempt to improve or re-submit after some reasonable period of time? Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Believe (Band) (Mike Alex and Rev) came up at IFD. Were it an actual article, it would be tagged for BLP PROD as a completely unsourced BLP and deleted. But even for non-BLPs, there is no reason to provide indefinite free webhosting. Is there a procedure in place already for deleting abandoned AFCs? If not, maybe a rule could be established (like deleting them after six months?) --B (talk) 15:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

How many of these things do we have lying around? Tens of thousands? More? A new CSD criterion "AFC submission that has not been edited for at least one year" would probably be appropriate. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:53, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

We've got a ridiculous amount of these - this oft quoted example of mine should have been speedy deleted ages ago, let alone kept around for 7 months. I suggest an admin bites the bullet and just does it. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:06, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

How about "rejected a year ago with no recent edits" rather than no edits in the last year, just for the sake of being able to use dated categories to manage it? This could just be added to WP:CSD #G6 - a routine maintenance deletion. --B (talk) 16:58, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we could use G6, as that's only for uncontroversial deletions that nobody would argue with. If there's a chance somebody might return after a year's absence and say "where did my article go?" legitimately, it can't be used. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:12, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, if they return and want to improve it to the point of being usable, regardless of what process is used to delete it, I would think that we would restore it for them on demand. It would in essence be like a year-long PROD. (Any user can ask that a PRODded article be restored on demand.) The purpose of deleting it is to get rid of abandoned unsourced content, not to punish someone who just forgot to finish their submission. --B (talk) 17:17, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I was concerned about shoehorning this into G6. I think a different criteria, say "G13 : Abandoned drafts A page not in article space that is clearly a draft, but violates any article related speedy deletion criteria, and does not appear to be actively worked on" would do the trick. How does that sound? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:40, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

While I agree that that's a great CSD criterion, that doesn't really solve this problem. Not everything that ought to be deleted is speedyable. If the article submission has no hope of becoming an article, it doesn't need to be kept, even if there is no particular CSD criterion that applies. There needs to be another one for long-abandoned drafts that has the proviso that they can be restored on demand. Or PRODs could simply be expanded to include year-old article drafts (though personally I would find that to be a useless extra step - I'd rather just delete the thing than have to tag it.) --B (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think tagging is mandatory. Don't forget that an admin can delete anything that fits the CSD criteria without waiting if they sincerely believe it fits, particularly attack pages and blatant vandalism. You can just delete on the spot. I note that my stale AfD example was deleted per WP:CSD#G3 - I didn't tag it! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:03, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Having an edit-history of abandoned work is a good thing. However, when it comes to drafts which could potentially do real-world-harm, particularly BLPs or anything that contains patently false or misleading information that could result in real world harm, partial or complete courtesy blanking should be done and done quickly. Note that I'm not completely opposed to saying "if a draft isn't edited after x number of years it can be prodded away" I'm just saying that there is a loss associated with every such deletion, and before the deletion goes through, the loss must be offset by a gain. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:08, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

• As a speedy criterion, the proposed wording is unusable because it is non-specific. What counts as "does not appear to be actively worked on" ? If a time limit were accepted by consensus, that might be a usable criterion, but I would oppose any period shorter than a year. People do sometimes come back after several months and continue. A year would deal with the problem of preventing the old AfCs from expanding indefinitely. DGG ( talk ) 17:26, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

This has been discussed here before, but never really gained purchase. I have always been supportive of some mechanism for housekeeping this project's old drafts. I think one year without edits is a suitable time span. If anyone is serious about seeing this implemented, it will be probably need to go for centralized discussion (I don't have time myself, atm). Pol430 talk to me 17:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Please see the related discussion on the Teahouse Talk page. Although that topic is about drafts that would never become acceptable articles, rather than abandoned drafts, the problem is similar (both result in bloating the AfC backlog) and the same solution could be applicable to both. Roger (talk) 07:12, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I have been deleting spam articles in the AfC that haven't been edited in over a year (per speedy G11). I would support a new system that would allow the automatic deletion of every AfC article last declined more than a year ago, with no objection to recreation on request (if "age" was the only reason for the deletion). Fram (talk) 09:14, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's another question. Why does Category:AfC submissions declined as jokes exist? These should be deleted G3 already. Why does Category:AfC submissions declined as BLP violations exist? Sure, some of them are "BLP violations" inasmuch as they merely lack sourcing, but are not negative in tone. But really, many/most of these should just be deleted on the spot, not left around for all eternity. --B (talk) 21:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• Category:Declined AfC submissions contains 87,968 drafts. If the average length is less than 11,367 bytes (and I'm not saying it is), and ignoring overhead, these drafts occupy less than a gigabyte of storage space, and I estimate the cost of that much storage space as being in the neighborhood of 25 cents American. —rybec 23:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I realize you're being sarcastic, but cost is not the reason we delete things. (For one thing, even deleted pages are still retained in the server's database and can be undeleted - so it doesn't actually decrease storage space to delete something.) We delete things because we have an interest in eliminating libel, copyright violations, and other sorts of bad stuff from Wikipedia. Even failed submissions that are not libel and copyright violations are completely unwatched and unmaintained, so while they provide no positive benefit whatsoever, they have potential harm. An orderly deletion process, in addition to allowing us to get rid of things that really need to be deleted, will also provide at least one more set of eyeballs and give a second chance for articles that have possibilities to be moved into article space. Under the current system, there is zero chance of an abandoned submission ever turning into an article. Under my system, there is at least some > 0% chance that the person tagging it or the person deleting it will say, "hey this is potentially a worthwhile topic". --B (talk) 23:54, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

  TLDR: non-problem but suggest article wizard display abandoned drafts, and have bots patrol AFC thoroughly

This discussion was started with the remark "but even for non-BLPs, there is no reason to provide indefinite free webhosting." Then someone asked how many tens of thousands of abandoned drafts there are. It very much appeared to be a worry over the expense of hosting these drafts. I was attempting to point out that the rejected AFC drafts are just a tiny part of the project's data (let's not forget the Wikimedia Commons) and their incremental cost is negligible. If everyone agrees on that, great! Would you like to be more explicit about what your "system" is? It sounds as though you're asking that drafts be deleted, or become eligible to be deleted, after they go a certain amount of time without being edited. You mention "the person tagging it or the person deleting it." It sounds as though you want two people to look at each draft before it's deleted, and you want to make the age of a draft a valid criterion for deleting it. It seems likely that someone would take this as a Logan's Run-style mandate to list every qualifying draft as a candidate for deletion, creating a lot of work that wouldn't be a good use of the administrators' time (would the deletion be done by an administrator, or anyone?). It also doesn't seem terribly necessary: as others have pointed out, stuff that really should be deleted can be, and abandoned drafts may eventually be worked on by someone else in the future. You make the point that declined drafts "are completely unwatched and unmaintained." While they don't receive much attention, it's possible to add them to one's watch list and to edit them. I've noticed bots making changes to the pending AFC drafts; there's no compelling reason why the bots shouldn't monitor the abandoned ones for vandalism (I would be surprised to learn they don't already). One way these abandoned drafts don't get much attention is that it's unlikely someone will read them, so a vandal is likely to have a small or nonexistent audience. Perhaps it would be more constructive to have the article wizard search AFC when someone goes to create a new article. Another possibility would be to show some sort of warning or disclaimer—preferably in a box with a red background—to let readers know that what they're about to read is not a proper Wikipedia article. I looked at the history of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Believe (Band) (Mike Alex and Rev). It was reviewed in April just a day after its creation and wasn't edited after being reviewed. It isn't an example of an AFC draft that was vandalized with the vandalism going unnoticed for a long time. It looks to me like an example of attempted self-promotion. Having an expiration date for drafts seems unlikely to solve that problem. —rybec 00:34, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

It isn't the cost. it takes at least as much system resources to remove it as to keep it indefinitely, the cheapest thing about computers, and the only thing guaranteed to become still cheaper, is storage. The problem is that it is desirable to have a relatively clean system, where the contents will be, if not all of them yet articles in mainspace, articles with some potential. It is frankly dispiriting, at least to me, to keep useless material around. It confuses those who may find it in a search--even if we set the default search to not find it. It confuses those who conclude that we are in fact a web host. It also encourage people to actually improve articles if they know they really need to do so. (this is one of the advantages of NPP over AfC for the hopelessly non-notable.) I disagree with doing automatic deletion without checking--I do not think we have set up in our system , but material moved to speedy will need to be checked by an admin, who should be able to catch anything of promise. Most of us admins are reasonably careful at that DGG ( talk ) 04:09, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

• "Jokes" A question was raised about the category "Afc submissions declined as jokes." Looking at a sample, about half of the should be deleted as G2 test pages (sometimes as G3, undoubted hoaxes). But many are articles like " The most utterly amazing person in the world who resides in Los Angeles" (imaginary example). I am not sure all admins would class these as test pages. If they were in mainspace, we'd use A7. My own practice, is to stretch things a little ad if they are such that the person could not really think anyone would take seriously, to delete them as test pages. I may start cleaning this out, it would go quickly. DGG ( talk ) 04:22, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
• Why do we have Category:AfC submissions declined as copyright violations? If it is known that something is a copyright violation, it should just be deleted as G12. --Stefan2 (talk) 19:51, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

An alarm

Hey everyone. Currently, there is a backlog drive going on, and we have almost 2,200 articles currently in the queue. We should have around two thousand less than that, so something is seriously wrong here. Maybe it is because we have life going on, and I am in that category, but our oldest submission is from February 18th. Seriously, if this does not raise a need to reform, then I don't know what will. We should be in the middle of a backlog drive where our oldest submission is at most two days old. If we cannot figure out a way to deal with this backlog adequately, we should consider shutting down, because there is at least one editor e-mailing OTRS (I forgot to save the link when I responded, but here is another one asking about AFC and what is up). Do we need to recruit more editors, or create a bot that auto-declined certain types of submissions like no citations? Either way, there is something very wrong with this project if we are failing at our job. I am sorry for being overly harsh, and I definitely sympathize with reviewers who do a lot of the work, but we really need to sit down and stop doing things that don't work (reviewing drives that are poorly timed), because we are risking our reputation as a good way to get feedback and submit an article. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Look, at the end of the day, we are getting overstretched. We are being barrarged by more and more adverts and COI articles. At the end of the day, if we could make (auto)confirmed neccicery to create an article, we could redeploy NPP people onto here. It's a far-off idea, but may make it into policy one day.... Mdann52 (talk) 11:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you're harsh Kevin, you're just telling it like it is. I have come across several "I submitted my article 'n' weeks ago but nothing's happened - did I do it right?" queries on the Help Desk, and specifically split "severe backlog" into "very high" and "severe" just so I could advise people a review on a backlog of 2,000+ submissions was going to take substantially longer than a week. One trend I have noticed is that editors seem to be picking up on reviewers simply declining obviously badly sourced drafts, and have started to create articles with huge amounts of referencing in them in the hope that they might stick - for instance, the first example I saw, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Long-term effects of SSRIs which has 61 sources. Is it suitable for encyclopedia, is it an opinion piece, or is it a duplicate of Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor? It is NPOV or OR? There's only one way to find out, and that's to get stuck into the references, determine if they're reliable, then check them all against the article. Since it's not my area of expertise, I imagine reviewing that would take upwards of an hour, and I don't fancy my chances of doing it without making a mistake. So it's easy to see why I'd pass on something like that. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I didn't realise (again) there was another 'drive' going on. Where is it advertised? Sionk (talk) 11:53, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I did an Spam run with User:EdwardsBot - If you ain't subscribed to it, then you probably didn't realise Mdann52 (talk) 14:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

So, we have acknowledged that a severe problem exists. Now, what do we want to do to fix it? We could set up edit filters to catch the most egregious of material, and reserve the rest of the stuff for humans, but we need to do something fast, before things become unmanageable. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:58, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Have you thought about separating out disambiguation pages into a separate category system? If there's a significant number of those, then they can be separated out, since they are quicker to process (no pesky references to review) -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 05:44, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I have only ever found 1 dab page while reviewing - I doubt that would make much difference. Mdann52 (talk) 11:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I have been watching the mounting backlogs at AfC with some dismay and can track the current problems down to two changes which took place in December 2011:

• The "userspace draft" option was incorporated into AfC. This produced a massive increase in workload for AfC reviewers.
• The option to create a live article (for registered users) was removed from the wizard.

Frankly I think both of these changes could be reversed, because things are obviously not working currently. I was highly active with AfC in 2008-2010 and we never had these kind of backlogs then. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:50, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Strong agree. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree this is the reason why the backlog has increased, but is it really the best solution? AFC catches a lot of the spam/advert stuff, stopping it reaching mainspace, being CSD'D and adding to Admin backlog. At the end of the day, this situation can only get better; as the publicity people get the message, then the backlog will just disappear. Mdann52 (talk) 13:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to have to agree that the userspace draft thing should be removed, because otherwise we're shoving articles into the system that aren't ready. I know I worked with a friend on a class project and she had one in that space, and it was promptly moved and declined. The issue here is that it could easily turn off new users if they think it's getting declined for all the wrong reasons. Besides, they are all now automatically given to us, instead of asking the user whether or not they want to submit it. Maybe we can set up the userspace stuff so that one cannot move it directly into the mainspace, but have to have it approved through us. Of course, it would still allow for someone to move it by themselves, but I don't see why that would be any different from what we have now. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 18:50, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree also about username drafts, and was thinking about proposing this myself. we should not be moving them into AfC as a matter of routine. Most of the ones so moved have to be immediately declined. And most of the time, a userspace draft is something the editor knows very well is not yet ready, and does not intend to submit until they improve it. We should let them do so, at any reasonable speed. But I wouldn't try to route all created article for AfC There are advantages in having impossibly weak articles come directly into New Pages--first, it can be deleted there by A7 as well as G11, and for many hopelessly weak articles A7 is an easier course to take. Second, NPP at this point seems to have a smaller proportion of inexperienced and therefore not yet competent patrollers than AfC, so articles there will more likely get handled by someone who knows what needs to be quickly rejected. And when rejected, it's out of the system, not hanging around to be removed sometime later on. I patrol both, and it is much easier and quicker to deal with stuff at NPP--I do not normally use the page curation method, but that's quite helpful for those who have not yet memorized all the templates there and has been much better programmed-- it meets the usual situations much better than the current AfC templates. What I'd like to see AfC used for is articles that are reasonable potential candidates for articles, and need the guided improvement that AfC can provide. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Go for it, as I will support you. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

South Atlantic Bight

Can someone please make a page about this! Thanks, Edward Orde — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.53.100.71 (talk) 05:15, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

This page is for users involved in this project's administration. If you would like to start writing a new article, please use the Article wizard. If you have an idea for a new article, but would like to request that someone else write it, please see: Wikipedia:Requested articles. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 09:20, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

How do I get OIB

My name is Nevenka Markotic(Rasic).I would like to get the information about OIB> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.101.202.80 (talk)

This page is for users involved in this project's administration. Please ask this question at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. They specialize in answering knowledge questions (except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what the Help Desk is for). Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Reviews carried out by Ckenn18

Just a courtesy notification that i've raised an issue at AN/I which is definitely of interest here too - Reviews carried out by Ckenn18 --_nonsense ferret 16:20, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Seen, it, posted, and am reviewing his reviews atm - looks like he's doing quite a few things wrong - Happysailor ^(Talk) 17:05, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

small anomaly in "recent" list

Usually the name of the article's creator is shown, but this edit instead listed the reviewer's name. It would be nice to see who's accepting articles, but I'm sure it was unintended here. —rybec 03:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The reason why that happened is because with this edit, the reviewer (Nonsenseferret) submitted it themselves, after accidentally removing the existing AfC templates with this edit. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 04:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Guilty, your honours - mea culpa mea culpa --_nonsense ferret 15:38, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

If you ever have to submit a submission in someone else's name (the original author), just use

{{subst:Submit|user=<name of user>}}

That way the original author gets notified when the submission is accepted or declined, and the name shows up correctly on the recent list.

(To be honest, I never knew that the submit template had that functionality until I tested it in my sandbox just now.) The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:34, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Noted thanks - that's helpful. --_nonsense ferret 22:44, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Just got around to signing up - does this project have a Userbox?

As I have helped out with some of the (easier) questions on the Help page and I have done a few reviews, so I decided I might as well sign up to the project. Is there a Userbox for this project that I can put on my page? I've added myself to the Category as instructed at the participants list but I'd like to have a Userbox to add to my small collection. Roger (talk) 18:54, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

There's {{AFC status}}. —rybec 19:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

We also have {{User AfC}}. Huon (talk) 19:05, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Hand

Hello there! can anyone give me a hand or advice on what to do? If so, have a look at my talk page under "Vizzini (The Princess Bride) subimission denied". cheers, much appreciated! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:05, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

You've given sufficient advice to the new user. I'm not sure what else you'd be expected to do. You've no obligation to continue arguing with them. In my view, you should simply leave them to decide their own course of action. If they move the article to main space themselves they risk running the wrath of other editors ...as you've already pointed out! Sionk (talk) 14:32, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

cheers. i am starting to get a lot of these, learning how to cope :) FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:32, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Note

The page Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Đorđe Branković (count) should be deleted, as the article on this person, Đorđe Branković, Count of Podgorica, was created in the mean time. I'm not sure if WP:AFD is the right place to request the deletion, as this is not a real article. The single sentence in that text with an inline reference misrepresents the cited source. Two other sources are indicated at the end of the text. One of them is a wikipedia article, and the other is a book. I checked the book and found that it does not support claims included on that page. Moreover, some of these claims are directly opposite to what is stated in the book. In short, keeping that page is pointless. (Pay attention that the same text is redoubled on the page). Vladimir (talk) 17:25, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it. It's still being written on the one hand, and, on the other, it would be rejected by the AFC reviewer.LM103 (talk) 02:56, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, we cleared the January/February backlog

Now we need to clear the March backlog :) - or should that be :( ?. I had far less free time this month than I anticipated (I wanted the AFC barnstar, but I'll likely have to settle for an invisible one). I want to thank everyone who reviewed articles and who reviewed reviews this month, as well as everyone who did other things like managing the drive, helping editors improve draft articles, etc. etc. etc. during this drive. Thanks to all of you and most of all to the authors who submitted drafts for review, Wikipedia is a better encyclopedia than it was a month ago. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:19, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

I first want to ask your opinion about this submission and whether or not it was reviewed fairly. Secondly, as Ritchie333 stated before, Wikipedia:Citation overkill and Wikipedia:Masking the lack of notability is a huge problem and most reviewers don't want to spend hours checking 60+ links. Is there a possible way to remind the nominators that they shouldn't include "[s]ources that do not reference the main point of the subject, but rather trivial details that may not even belong. But the number of references does not matter when these sources do not meet the requirements for establishing notability." Not as a decline reason, but maybe as an automated comment which can be added to those bombarded submissions. Nimuaq (talk) 18:49, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

My eyes glazed over as to whether the review was fair and accurate or not, so I'm going to give the reviewer the benefit of the doubt.

When I see too many citations for the size of the article, I generally look at the following:

• The reputation of the source. Have I even heard of it? Is it easily recognized as a WP:RS or, conversely, a clearly-not-reliable source?
• The number of references for a given point of information.
• For non-BLP drafts, over-citation in general. For BLPs, making sure every fact about the person has a citation is better than leaving it uncited (but if it's unencyclopedic/trivia, it should be deleted whether it's cited or not).
• If I can't find a clear claim to notability backed by a reliable source within a minute and I don't know or suspect that the subject is notable, I will usually decline it with grounds similar to what this reviewer did, but in less detail. I will usually specifically request that a clear claim to notability be made. If I have the "dozens of references" problem and might have missed the one reference that supports notability, I may word my rejection like so: "Please provide a clear claim to notability in the opening paragraph, and cite it with a reliable source," along with other general comments about things that need fixing, like "Please consider removing the minor details of this person's life or career, sometimes a smaller article really is better than a long one."

I hope this helps. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:00, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

what is cheaper artificial grass or lilydale toppings

I am thinking of finding a suitable option for my backyard. What is the cheaper option, Lilydale topping or artificial grass.Does any one have any experience of getting quotes — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.107.176.130 (talk) 08:05, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

This is not the place to ask questions. Please see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous‎.--Auric talk 14:19, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

"What do you prefer, grass or AstroTurf?" "I don't know; I never smoked astro-turf..." lol Basket _Feudalist 15:07, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Copyright issue

Dear editors:

I've been reviewing the page Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Iminosugars, and I found that several key phrases are copied from this book: Functional Molecules from Natural Sources - Page 129.

However, only the first page of the article in the book is available for preview at Google Books, and the copied text is interspersed with other text which may be original. Only a small percentage of the article is a copyright violation (that I found), but there may be more further into the book. Do I blank it, or just decline and ask for a rewrite, or should I remove the phrases I found first and then decline it? (It won't make sense without them, they are leading sentences in paragraphs). —Anne Delong (talk) 15:02, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd say that since there's no clean version to revert to, this one should be deleted as a copyright violation. We know the author copied and pasted from the first source; they may well have done the same with the other sources. Conversely, the sixth source doesn't say at all what it's cited for, so the draft could be declined for verifiability reasons as well. The mention of "novel foods" and the rather promotional tone make me suspect an advertisement. Huon (talk) 15:28, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again Huon. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:15, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Class rating

Hi, This is just a reminder that you should give every article you accept a class rating - Category:Unassessed AFC articles is up to 1777 items - I am trying to clear this, but I don't anticipate being able to do this on my own, considering 2 of the last 10 articles created were unassessed. Please remember to fill in that one box on the AFCH. Mdann52 (talk) 13:39, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Would like to lend a hand (have been trying to remember to rate everything I accepted). So just took a look at that Cat and this will sound stoopid, but is there a script or a Plain & Simple page or is there a Template to do ratings with? I'm never sure where to find things around WP... Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The only way I've found to do it is changee the |class parimiter on the Wikiproject tempates on the talk page - if anyone else knows a faster way, then let me know! Mdann52 (talk) 11:03, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Using WP:AWB? There is somewhere a plugin for it. WP:INDIA is using it a lot if i remember correctly. mabdul 15:26, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

If you use the AfC helper script,Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Helper script (all you need to do is to activate it in the gadgets pane of user preferences) the rating box appears at the very top after you've checked that you accept the article. I very highly recommend that anyone doing AfC patrolling make use of this script. The main think to watch out for with the script is that in declining, the pre-built reasons are imo not sufficiently specific for many cases, and I almost always write a custom reason. DGG ( talk ) 04:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The script currently says that assessment is "optional"—should the wording be changed? When accepting articles, I often haven't been assessing them except as likely to survive AfD. Instead I've been adding WikiProject tags to bring the new article to the attention of editors who are more knowledgeable about the topic and could see more readily when important aspects of it are not covered, or when there's a lot of irrelevant material. I noticed at least one other AfC reviewer accepting articles without adding Wikiproject tags. —rybec 00:08, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I could add a link to a reviewer-help manual regarding assessment in the AFCH interface which would help for new reviewers and who don't know that these kind of assessments means... What do you think? mabdul 04:48, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Low Culture

Dear Editors: Editor Huon suggested I ask questions here instead of at the Afc help desk. Please let me know if this is the right place to ask. Your banner is rather daunting.

I was reviewing a page Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Low culture (2). I noticed that there was already a similar article Low culture. It seems that a user has copied a Wikipedia article into his sandbox, continued to improve it, and then submitted it for review. I moved it to Afc before realizing what was going on. How can we get the two articles back together? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:41, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, all the nice multicoloured tabs along the top can be bewildering at first glance ;) I've come across the scenario you describe before. Obviously this isn't the correct way of developing existing articles. Decline it as "already exists" and advise the author to edit the existing article. In fact I think they already have, they pasted the new, referenced article into the existing (poor) article and submitted a copy to AfC. Covering both bases! Sionk (talk) 03:34, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll do that. I wasn't talking about the coloured tabs, however, but the giant red "This page is for users working on the project's administration." box which makes it seem as though it's not for reviewers. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:55, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Just curious: there is nothing different to the mainspace article. So it is technical an "exists" decline! mabdul 05:33, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Simple decline it as "exists" because the author simply selfapproved the article as you can see at Special:Contributions/Alexprose. mabdul 05:35, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Template modification request.

As a new WP:TH host, I would like to request some more information on your {{AFC submission}} template. I see that there is a |ts= and am assuming that is a timestamp; however, I do not see any reference to that timestamp display on the template itself. Is that specifically be design, or was that an oversight? I would think that there would be some note such as:

• draft
  • "This page was started on {{#time: r|{{{ts}}}}}"
• pending
  • "Someone requested this page be reviewed {{#time: r|{{{ts}}}}}"
• reviewing
  • "This page is under review as of {{#time: r|{{{ts}}}}}"
• declined
  • "This page was declined at {{#time: r|{{{ts}}}}}"
• created
  • "This page was created at {{#time: r|{{{ts}}}}}"

Possibly even adding the ability to poke certain people:

• pending -- 7 days?
  • "This article has been sitting in the backlog for a week and may have been overlooked, [[some kind of link|let us know]]."
• reviewing -- 5 days?
  • "This article may have gotten lost by the reviewer, [[some kind of link|remind them]]."
• created -- 24 hours?
  • "[[some kind of link|Let us know]] that the bot hasn't cleaned this message up yet."

I'm just asking/suggesting this because those timestamps aren't the most intuitive things to read and it would make it easier when people come and ask the hosts of WP:Teahouse/Questions. — User:Technical 13   ( C • M • Click to learn how to view this signature as intended ) 12:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

That timestamp is used to sort the drafts chronologically in Category:Pending AfC submissions, and to add the draft to other timed categories. I'd expect the hosts at the Teahouse to be able to read page histories. In particular the "This article has been sitting in the backlog for a week and may have been overlooked" tag would be a joke; the backlogs are so bad that one week would be exceptionally fast. Huon (talk) 01:09, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Template for a musician

While reviewing pages, I came across this one: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Template:DJ Krush. The editor has made a template for an individual musician. Since the only place for it is on the musician's own page, is this an appropriate thing to do? Maybe an infobox would be better? Please advise. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:31, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

It looks good to me. It's what we call a Navbox, and would go on the foot of all the articles it mentions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:44, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Updates to Category:AfC pending submissions by age

I fixed up the date-tracking mechanism so Category:AfC pending submissions by age now puts things in daily categories for only the first 3 weeks, then into weekly categories for the 4th and 5th week, then a "Very old" category for submissions we've ignored for too long. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:17, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

A Forest with No Name

Dear editors: I noticed that there was one article, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mike Yokohama: A Forest with No Name which has been in the queue for 28 days; it seems that no one could decide whether to accept or decline it. I have added a two more reviews, one bad and one good, a mention of a festival screening and another general reference. Could someone take a look at it, please? I shouldn't review it myself now that I've changed it. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:02, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a toughie. Declining it turned out to be my biggest (and I hope only) "oops" during this drive (although technically it was in February so it doesn't count as an in-drive oops :) ). I don't have enough knowledge of the sources or the subject matter to accept it though. We may need to recruit help from the relevant WikiProjects. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:12, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Uhm, come' on, if unsure (not clear cases) then simply assume good faith and accept it. We have that many stub articles and articles with questionable notability this one more won't hurt Wikipedia. I accepted the submission and will clean it up in a few minutes. In this case, there might be more (helpful) references which could help determine the notability, written in Japanese... mabdul 06:10, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

My general rule of thumb is that it's better and less off-putting to new editors to decline an article at AfC and either suggest improvements or show the editor why the article cannot be fixed (e.g. not notable) than see it deleted at AfD. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen stuff that's actually notable (albeit marginally so) get nuked at AfD because the only comments resembled "if I can't find any sources, nobody can" which results in a delete consensus. MacWise (AfD here) is a recent example I came across. Sometimes I'll throw in a source or two myself (eg: Lawo) before passing, just to be on the safe side. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't appear

Using Google Chrome, I have enabled the script in my preferences and even bypassed my cache. However, when I want to review articles, I need to do so manually as the script did not appear. Even if I try using IE9, which is said to have no bug, I also don't see anything about the script. Any idea why? Arctic Kangaroo 04:09, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Is the article you are trying to review at "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Somethingorother"? It won't work on sandboxes, but you can move the page out of the sandbox to the right place and then it shows up. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:21, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, may I know what you mean by "right place"? Thanks. Arctic Kangaroo 04:28, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

To be reviewed, articles should be at "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Article title". So if you have an article about Slinkies that is at "User:Freddy/sandbox", the review tools don't work. In the big yellow review box there's a teeny tiny line that says "This page should really be at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox (move)". Go ahead and click on the word "move", and it will tell you that it can't really move the page to the sandbox. However, if you replace the word "sandbox" with the real title of the article, "Slinkies", and then click on the Move Page box, it will move the page to "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Slinkies". Convoluted, eh? I hope this is clear enough. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:43, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I was reviewing articles at "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/XXX", not in any sandbox, but the script didn't appear. Arctic Kangaroo 04:59, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, that was my best guess; maybe someone else will have another idea. I presume that you have looked in the drop-down menu represented by the teeny tiny triangle beside the star at the top of the article page. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:07, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't see anything like that. Arctic Kangaroo 08:26, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Are you using the Vector skin? (Wikipedia's default skin) Did you click the small arrow where the "move" button is hidden? mabdul 07:02, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Have a look at the screenshot below. Notice the menu next to the "star" at the top. Click on that and you'll get a dropdown menu with "Review" as one of the options. Click on that button, and you should get a box of options as seen in the picture. I do recall one instance some time back, where the button didn't come up, but I think that was a problem with the "Monobook" skin, and came immediately after a breaking change to it, that was subsequently reverted. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:21, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

AFC Backlog drive - Quick note.

Since i have not exactly been the shining example of active editing the past month just a quick note to mention i haven't forgotten that the AFC backlog drive has finished now. I'll try to have the final statistics for the drive up somewhere today or tomorrow. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 06:28, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

And they are up, good job to everyone who helped out! Additionally, i figured i might mention that i am going to see if i can change AFCBuddy to be open source, so that everyone can use it to generate the needed statistics. One drawback i cannot work around is the requirement that one needs administrative privileges to fetch deleted contributions, so any non admin running it will have a count that is slightly off. Even so, i suppose that is still vastly preferable over having a single point of failure called Excirial. Especially if that point of failure is prone to extended away times.

However, before i do that i need to adres several issues.

• I need to go over the code and clean it up / document it. Also some minor bugs such as the wonderful "Lets place chinese characters all over the place" encoding issue, and the "if someone forgot to create their drive page i just crash" issue would be nice to fix beforehand. AFCBuddy was written with "Faster is better, and if it works, it works" in mind, so it needs some polish to say the least.
• Support for an "Manual review" section that AFCBuddy simply copies over, without modifying. (Suggested)
• Automatic uploading of the edit list for every user. (Suggested)

Note that this may take some time to get done. This will not be as bad as Duke Nukem (takes) Forever, but it may take a couple of months before i find the time and interest to go trough with this. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 18:57, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the effort, mate! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:14, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all the great help your contributions have made to this project, Excirial. We can wait, don't worry! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. At least you don't have the "Lets spill Chinese food all over the place while coding" issue like some of us do. Or do you? Hmm, better not answer that. :P davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Wax Fang

There is a newly created article WAX FANG that has been copied from User:Bandink/sandbox instead of moved. The sandbox is in the Afc queue. I guess the two edit histories should be moved, so will someone who knows how to do this please take care of it? —Anne Delong (talk) 20:00, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

 Done Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 07:42, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! —Anne Delong (talk) 18:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Gulebakavali

I want an article on the Indian film Gulebakavali created (The listed link is a redirect, pls change it to a complete article). It is a Tamil language film, and these sources are enough to make it complete: [10] and [11] Additionally, the film is spelled in various ways like Gulebagavali, Gul-e-bakavali, Gul-e-bagavali, Kulebakavali, Kul-e-bagavali, Kulebagavali, all which I have listed to make it detectable on Google search. ---- Kailash29792 (talk) 06:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

This page is for users involved in this project's administration. If you would like to start writing a new article, please use the Article wizard. If you have an idea for a new article, but would like to request that someone else write it, please see: Wikipedia:Requested articles. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 07:33, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Rushton2010

I am concerned about the editing patterns of Rushton2010 (talk · contribs). I spotted a note on the help desk yesterday, where he had declined Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The pUKEs with the rationale "Please see [Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting]". I invited him to leave an explanation on the help desk, which was reverted without comment here. I explained that he wouldn't win friends doing that, and my note was reverted without comment again here. I'm not going to comment on his talk page again, as he clearly doesn't want to know, but in my opinion, while editors can delete stuff on their own talk page, they can't just wish away awkward questions like this in the hope they'll just blow over. What does everyone else think? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:25, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll happily clear things up for you as you are reading into things completely the wrong way. I did not revert anything. I delete comments and questions from my talkpage when I have dealt with them to prevent the whole thing becoming clogged up and unorganized. I was not ignoring anything; I had dealt with the issue. I contacted the individual who questioned why I rejected his article directly as I believe in a personal and civil approach to wikipedia. I have subsequently asked the individual if he was happy with my response, help and advice, and he was. My error appears to be that I replied to the individual who asked the question instead of going through Richie who is now making accusations of me ignoring issues and appears to have started a personal vendetta against me because of it. (Not just limited to this incident, but the amount of personal attacks, abuse and vandalism that abounds on wikipedia has lead me to question why I take part over the years; I will yet again use this opportunity to remind people to familiarise themselves with The Five Pillars.) With regards to reasons I reject articles; I usually try to give as in depth explanations as I can; sometimes if the problems are fixable, I do it for people. In somecases it almost feels live I've become a personal wikipedia mentor and helpdesk for certain users. Overall my replies have been a lot more indepth than many who just leave it to the automated replies and give no additional help. As we have been pushed to clear the backlog, during the backlog drive there were times the emphasis changed to clearing pure numbers of articles than giving advice. So my process has been to review the articles, and then go back and give advice via the talkpage later. Thankfully the drive is over now and we're back to normal service. I'm prepared to accept the comment wasn't the most helpful: In all honestly I think I got it confused with an article I had previously been reviewing, as I wanted to reject the article based on the fact I could not substantiate the facts from the references and that it failed notability. However, I explained all this to the author of the article, who was happy with that fact and had no further problems; other people however have made a thing out of it. Long relpy, so to summarize: I have not deleted awkward questions and waited for them to blow over- I dealt with them through the most direct route, by going straight to the Author of the article who had asked the question. If all future correspondence is to go through Ritchie I am more than happy to do that. Just please advise either-way. Rushton2010 (talk) 12:03, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

All you had to say was "I have responded on the user's talk page and the matter has been resolved" and that would have been the end of it. Chill. I personally prefer to advise the use of the help desk as you're likely to get a quicker response (such as the Easter weekend just gone when I was off-wiki, for example). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:06, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice. I will remember it for future use. "I have responded on the user's talk page and the matter has been resolved". Many Thanks. Rushton2010 (talk) 12:14, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Moving a sandbox

Dear reviewers:

I have been reviewing a lot of articles that are in sandboxes. In order to use the review script, I have been moving the article to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Whatever. Each time I then have to go in and manually remove the sandbox template. Is there a better way? —Anne Delong (talk) 18:12, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

If i recall correctly, the clean option in the AFCH script will automatically clean sandbox headers from a page. Besides from using the clean button itself the script runs the same procedure if you decline / accept an article. So moving a page and afterwards reviewing it should take care of the sandbox header automatically. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 18:35, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't always review the pages after I move them; sometimes I am doing it just to save more experienced reviewers a step. At least this will save me time on the ones that I do review. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Moving the sandboxes is very helpful. IMO there's no harm in leaving the sandbox templates in place until the draft is reviewed. —rybec 02:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

User contributions showing the "N" in the middle of the sequence

I just accepted a submission (first time I've done this) using the script, and was surprised by the way the results look in the user's contributions. I see the bold "N" indicating the creation of a page in the middle of the list of contributions, at 16:22 on April 1. Is this what you'd expect to see? It doesn't look that way in popups (though the "Creation" edit summary is there), only if you go to that page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:03, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

This is a bug, sort of. At the time it was created, it was indeed new. However, the article was the subject of a history merge so it is no longer the first edit in the article. When you look in the article's history, you don't see the N. The fact that it still shows up as an N in the user's history is either a bug or a feature, depending on how you look at it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:48, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation; I thought it must be something like that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:35, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Sandbox

Dear reviewers:

I think I have accidentally caused a problem. While trying to move a submission from the user's sandbox to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation, I have somehow managed to instead redirect Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Frederator Books. It seems to be in use in some arcane way. Can someone fix this up? Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:37, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I've moved Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox back over the redirect and tagged Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Frederator Books for speedy deletion. Once it's gone you can move the user sandbox to that title. Huon (talk) 16:37, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Done. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Title blacklist

Resolved

While going through AfC submissions I found a band that appears to be notable called "SEKAI NO OWARI". However I was unable to move it to the proper title and got the error "Error info:hookaborted : The modification you tried to make was aborted by an extension hook" so I moved it Sekai no Owari instead. From there I tried to move it to the proper name but an error message came up saying it was on the title blacklist, can I get some insight on this and can an admin take the proper course of action i.e. either move it to the correct title or delete it if there's some reason it shouldn't exist? Thanks. --BigPimpinBrah (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I have moved the page. Regarrds, mabdul 20:17, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Duplicate article

Dear reviewers:

I declined a submission Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Criminal speech because the topic already exists. However, it's actually a copy of the other article, but not by the same editor. Should I do more and mark it for deletion? I understand that text in Wikipedia can be copied. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:08, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

What you did seems fine. This draft is a slight improvement on the existing article: it has a reference and section headers; had it been deleted, I wouldn't have seen that. But even if it were identical, there would be no benefit to deleting it: no space is freed on the servers; it would just make it easier for someone to erroneously make a draft with the same name. Any of the reasons at WP:GCSD are valid for AfC. For biographical articles I sometimes nominate them for deletion if they contain personal information and if the subject clearly doesn't meet the notability guidelines. —rybec 04:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

{{histmerge}} is an option, but only if the main article hasn't been updated in the meantime. See WP:HISTMERGE for more complicated situations. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Family Law Act

Dear reviewers:

I was looking at an article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Family Law Act (Bill 45 and I realized that there is already an article Family Law Act (Alberta, Canada) about the same topic. The old article is just a stub, and the new one is quite extensive. It would seem better to move the small amount of material from the old article instead of the other way around. What is usually done in a case like this? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

If you're using the AFCH script, there's a declination reason "exists - submission already exists in main space" (press "e" to bring it up). When you choose that reason, the script asks for the name of the existing article, and generates a message suggesting that the existing article be edited. I went ahead and did it for this one. —rybec 04:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was trying to avoid that, because if the editor just copies the large article into the little stub, all of the edit history will be lost. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Manually mark the article as accepted (don't use the script) so nobody else will edit it, then go to WP:HISTMERGE and request a complex history merge. In the request, say you want a history merge but to clean up the AFC gorp after doing the merge. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Do I have to?

I know I should decline this article, but maybe I'll wait a while... Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Saint Ampersand — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anne Delong (talk • contribs)

Well that was a weird submission... anyways, I declined it as a joke/hoax. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 03:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

It may be related to this poem. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

OTRS permission obtained for The Organization Workshop

I have re-submitted "The Organization Workshop" AfC with the OTRS ticket number 2013031110006434 permission attached (Rafaelcarmen 11:49, 5 April 2013 (UTC)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rafaelcarmen (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Draper University (2)

Dear reviewers:

Here are two more submissions where the editor submitted one article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Draper University, then created another copy Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Draper University (2) and continued to change and improve it. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:10, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

If the authors were the same OR both authors were clearly different editors, I would use {{histmerge}} to merge the histories and provide proper history for copyright- and change-tracking purposes. However, when it comes to cases where merging the histories would imply a connection between two usernames, two IP addresses, or a username and an ip address, it's least WP:HARMful to leave the articles separate, especially since one of them was never submitted and likely never will be. Procedurally, the "by the book" thing to do is merge the histories then hide the edit or at least the editor, but that's creating work for administrators that would serve no useful purpose. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:15, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

3 Week Old backlog

I have attacked the 3 week old section of the backlog with the hopes of completely eliminating it by the end of the week. If anyone wants to pull an all-nighter reviewing submissions, contact me on my talk page and we'll work something out. Thanks! TheOneSean | Talk to me 17:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I have read over the documentation for reviewing articles, and I'm still feeling a little hesitant to actually approve or deny articles. I left a comment on one of the articles, but would like a little mentoring/monitoring before I accept or decline any. Thank you. Technical 13 (talk) 17:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Technical 13, that draft could have been declined due to a lack of significant coverage in reliable third-party sources. The best it had was a passing mention in OnEarth Magazine. That's not enough to satisfy WP:N. Huon (talk) 17:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

So, I should have just changed {{AFC submission|ts=20130314145808|u=Hamarriet|ns=5}} to {{AFC submission|d|nn|ts=20130314145808|u=Hamarriet|ns=5}}?? Technical 13 (talk) 18:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

You may want to use the AFC Helper script which automatizes the technical side of reviewing. Done manually, those would indeed have been the necessary changes. I have now declined the draft. Huon (talk) 18:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Mauro Baranzini 2nd copy

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mauro Baranzini 2nd copy was declined as a BLP violation and blanked by another reviewer. Earlier, I had declined it for the same reason, saying "This biography of a living person does not cite any sources. At least one is required." but since then the author had added three references in a section called Sources. I didn't notice anything defamatory in the draft. It seems to me that the blanking may not have been necessary. —rybec 01:20, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Material does not have to be defamatory in order to be in violation of WP:BLP. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:26, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it doesn't. I was referring to the AFCH default declination message that was used, which said that the draft was unsourced or defamatory. The draft was speedy-deleted with criterion G10, which is for unsourced and "entirely negative" material. It was neither. I've asked for undeletion. —rybec 07:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Md Saquib Alam

md saquib alam is a businessman he is from india — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.242.207.98 (talk) 09:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

This page is for users involved in this project's administration. If you would like to start writing a new article, please use the Article wizard. If you have an idea for a new article, but would like to request that someone else write it, please see: Wikipedia:Requested articles. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 14:58, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject AfC template

Do we leave this Project's template on articles after reviewing and accepting them or do we remove it once the articles are in mainspace? Roger (talk) 10:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

The submission template is removed once the article is accepted, and is replaced by the wikiproject's banner which is placed on the article talk page. If you use the AFCH script for reviewing, both the removal of the submission templates and the addition of the project banner are done automatically when accepting an article (Or rather - that should be the case. If it doesn't work please report is as a bug ). Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 15:03, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

/review template

The /review template now shows the number of articles pending over 3 weeks in addition to the total backlog count. Hopefully, this will cut down on the number of copy-and-paste moves made by impatient editors. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:04, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

large external links section

Dear reviewers:

I was reviewing a page Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Purdy Hicks Gallery that has a large section of external links. I was about to decline it as unsourced, but besides that, what else is wrong with it? Should the links be removed? They are in a separate section. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

That does look like a link farm, but talk page drafts shouldn't be indexed by search engines anyway. I certainly wouldn't object to a link removal (they clearly don't belong in that article), but I don't think they do any harm. For now I've declined it as non-notable. Huon (talk) 06:11, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Feedback wanted on changes to Template:AFC submission/created

I've drafted a change to Template:AFC submission/created so that if Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/{{PAGENAME}} exists, a warning appears that this may be a copy-and-paste move and to check for history that may need merging. It also adds the article to the proposed new category Category:Possible AfC copy-and-paste moves.

Whether the draft article exists or not, it adds the mainspace article to Category:Pending AfC submissions in article space.

I ran across numerous copy-and-paste moves during the recent backlog drive. If editors doing the pasting had seen this, it might have gotten their attention.

See this now-reverted edit to see how it looks.

I wanted to get a little feedback before moving the draft into the actual template. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:04, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

There are probably a lot of cut and paste moves when the backlog is bad because new editors think something is wrong with their original submission after so many days of silence. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:39, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I made the change but it's "broken" if the AFC submission a redirect: It looks at the size of the redirected-to article, which is just plain useless. Feel free to fix it if you know how. It's still useful in that it distinguishes between a proper AFC draft that got moved and didn't get the AFC submission template removed and everything else (e.g. a user-space move that didn't get cleaned up after being moved or an article-space page in which an editor added an AFC submission template). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:14, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Doncram's articles

Hello everyone! Just a quick one to point out something. Some users have noted suspicion at my accepting several of Doncram's AfC submissions. I reviewed several of them and found that they complied with Guidelines to the best of my judgement (a proof of this is that I wasn't biased by the ArbCom's veredict, having only just read it a few days ago). Please advise if I was wrong. I do not believe a user should be chastised for doing the right thing. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Where have they noted this suspicion? Sionk (talk) 14:01, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

My user page and on several others. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:15, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, several people have suggested you should vary your diet here. Does that pose a problem? There's many, many articles waiting at AfC apart from Doncram's! Sionk (talk) 15:09, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. They weren't an exclusive part of the diet, I just review as I go along, from oldest to youngest, and it just happened I reviewed several of his. Did I incorrectly accept his articles? If so, I need to be told, instead of being warned not to review them (which I also think is quite arrogant and unfair to that user). There are several other user's submissions which I have subsequently declined (as I'm sure most editors have), however unsurprisingly nobody has commented on them! I think prejudice needs to be set aside when reviewing, and we should keep that in mind as we strive to improve the encyclopaedia, that's all. Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:22, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I suppose the real question here is how thorough one should be when reviewing article's - or rather: If AFC is more similar to vandalism patrol (Either good or bad), or FA review (every letter should be scrutinized). As far as i am concerned AFC review is a safety barrier between a submitter and the main space and its deletion rules, and little more. Thus, if an article meets the main inclusion criteria along with neutrality, verifiability and so on it should be accepted without performing a detailed background check for issues not directly related to the submitted article itself.

Having said that, i think that most comments on your talk page take issue with the copy editing of the article after it was accepted, rather then taking issue with the actual AFC reviews itself. Since copy editing is not exactly my cup of tea so i cannot really say anything about the validity of these comments. However, unless i am missing parts of the conversation on other pages - which is quite possible - i think that only user:Sitush mentioned AFC in this context ("I, too, have concerns about the sheer number of Doncram's articles that you are reviewing at AfC"). Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 17:51, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

That was another issue entirely, indeed about copy editing other (non-AfC) aticles. Ok then, regards. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:04, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any reason for "suspicion" about your reviewing and approving a lot of Doncram's submissions. Because he is a prolific creator of pages, it's likely that you see a lot of his work here. Also, his work is presumably better than average for AFC (he is, after all, a highly experienced contributor), which may explain why his work gets approved. It would, however, be useful for you and other AFC reviewers to realize that he is contributing at AFC because of an Arbcom restriction that prevents him from creating new pages in article space, and that there was much discussion in that Arbcom case regarding the issues that caused this restriction to be put in place. If AFC reviewers apply only minimal standards in reviewing his work (for example, approving anything that looks good enough to avoid speedy deletion -- note that I don't believe this sort of thing has happened, but I think it could), you won't be doing Doncram or Wikipedia any favors. --Orlady (talk) 00:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I full-heartedly agree. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:30, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• I also noticed that a lot of articles by Doncram were getting accepted. I looked a few and didn't see any problem: they were about buildings that are listed on the U.S.A.'s National Register of Historic Places. WP:GEOFEAT says that "artificial geographical features that are officially assigned the status of cultural or national heritage or of any other protected status are inherently notable." The Arbcom ruling specifically says that Doncram may use AfC; to discourage AfC reviewers from accepting his drafts seems like an attempt to informally prevent him from doing so. Is it the "sheer number" of this editor's AfC submissions that is a problem, is it that the articles don't meet Wikipedia standards, or is it something else? —rybec 02:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I understand that there are 500,000-ish listed buildings in the UK alone - therefore I'm not sure that critereon is as helpful as it seems. --_nonsense ferret 15:06, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

That might be true, but then this isn't the place to tackle that. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:13, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I would certainly find it helpful if AFC reviewers had some discussion here as to how we should approach these type of articles - it isn't obvious to me that accepting all listed buildings is the correct answer - it is not a case that I think we need to reform policy, just better understand how policy should be applied to these sort of difficult cases. If it is not appropriate for AFC reviewers to have this discussion here, then where? It isn't intended to be a criticism of individual reviewers. --_nonsense ferret 15:39, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, I thought you were talking about policy. Let's see if a concensus can be reached. We might even have to invite Doncram's comments as well. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• Hey everybody, I wanted to note what the concerns I had with Doncram's articles that were being reviewed here were. Doncram creates articles about notable topics, so the articles that have been accepted were alright per notability; however, the reason Doncram was given a restriction that requires him to submit through AfC is that his articles are often of poor quality. He had a habit of writing many articles using placeholder text which I haven't seen in his recent submissions. His article submissions seem to be improved by virtue of submitting them through AfC; however, he has a tendency to allow the sources to write the article for him by quoting information from sources that should have been rewritten. Sandy Co-Op Block is an example of this. Joseph Adams House (Layton, Utah) is another. The quotations aren't enough to be considered copyvio, but they are instances of direct quotes being used when the information could be rewritten and convey the same effect. I'll also make a note that I don't feel any article should be accepted if he gives only the year of its listing in the body rather than the date. Ryan Vesey 03:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with most of what Ryan says, but I beg to quibble on a couple of points. First, I consider the quotations in Sandy Co-Op Block and Joseph Adams House (Layton, Utah) to be excessive, and I could name several other active Wikipedians who would deem those quotations to be copyvio. Second, I don't think that omission of the month and date of a National Register listing should affect the inclusion of an article. There's not a lot of significance to that date -- it's just the day that the list made it into the Federal Register. This is an encyclopedia, so I contend that the inclusion of information should be based to some extent on the potential value of that information to posterity. The specific date of a National Register listing is not irrelevant, so I don't object in any way to its inclusion, but it's not the sort of detail that posterity needs for us to record, so we shouldn't object to its omission. --Orlady (talk) 04:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The quote in the Joseph Adams House article was a 23-word sentence fragment taken from a 6-page public record. In the other article, the quoted text amounts to a sentence and a half from an 8-page document. Both were correctly attributed to their authors. While I agree there was a little bit of room for improvement by rewriting ("one of the best of few remaining"), no one's copyright was infringed. An article in the main space which has minor defects in the way it was written is better than no article at all, or a draft that no one will see. —rybec 06:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I brought the question of those quotations to Moonriddengirl who said they were excessive, but not copyvio. Ryan Vesey 12:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Getting back to the original subject, I wonder if anyone has noticed that FoCuSandLeArN is a prodigious reviewer, who reviewed 1310 (!!!) articles during the March backup drive, and so it was almost inevitable that some of Doncram's articles would have come to FoCuSandLeArN's attention. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:05, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

science and technology (projects)

is there any science laboratory??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.24.111.253 (talk) 13:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• This page is for discussion on the Articles for Creation process. I do not understand what your question is. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• I don't understand either. I think he's looking for pages that have "virtual science labs." These don't exist at Wikipedia, but they are out on the web. If the editor who posted the question sees this, I recommend using a web search engine or, if you are in school, asking your classmates or instructors if they know of any. Wikipedia does have a Science Portal, which is a "one stop shopping" page that can lead you to many of the major science-related articles. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)