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Help?

I am guessing I'm in the wrong place but am hoping the good graces of Misplaced Pages will take mercy and tell me where I need to be to ask my question. I recently posted my second article of creation. I was told that I did not need to have it approved through the draft process and could just move it to article status myself. So I did. Very quickly someone came along and gave it B status. Then I went to google it and couldn't find it only to learn that new pages have to be reviewed or wait 90 days. I didn't know that! Now I can't find it anywhere on the new pages to be reviewed list either! My creation Christianization of the Roman Empire as caused by attractive appeal is lost in an alternate universe somewhere! Is there anything I can do to bring it home? I would like to volunteer to help with this whole review process thingy, but it looks a little overwhelming for a relative newby. There's so much I don't know. Misplaced Pages is a morass. :-) Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi there @Jenhawk777. Your article is not lost. For an article to appear in Google, it needs to be checked by a member of New Page Patrol, have been more than 90 days since it was created, or created by a veteran editor who has a special right called "autopatroll". So for now your article is in this holding pattern. Right now the New Page feed has about 8700 articles in it. Articles are reviewed in no specific order by the volunteers. So it could get indexed as I'm typing this response or it might have to wait the 90 days to be indexed. The length of the article is about commendable - it looks comprehensive - but is also likely a deterrent to a fast review. One quick suggestion in passing: it looks like there is a paragraph that is closely paraphrased from Frontline. I would recommend rewriting that, any other place that may be similarly written. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:00, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49 Bless you! Thank you for responding so quickly and kindly. I will wait to see what happens. "Frontline" is actually directly quoted in a couple of places, yet on the detector it always shows up as a violation. I don't know why some quotes show up as copies while others don't, but it is appropriately quoted and referenced in the article itself - no violations - promise!!! So I guess I just wait, and that's okay, I just didn't know what was going on. I have learned something new again! Thank you! I am looking at volunteering to help out here - I'm just not sure I would know what to do. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:56, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49 Thank you for your help. I continue to impose on your patience. If you look here at Earwig, you can easily see that the Frontline excerpts are quotes that are appropriately set off, referenced and fully sourced. It says copyvio but it isn't. Earwig sometimes does that with quotes.
I went and put in my username to see the article's status and noted that someone marked the possibility of copyvio violations on it. On my draft, before finishing the article, Dianna deleted some material because I am too inexperienced in too many ways and didn't know that the copyvio rules didn't just apply to published articles - or rather, that everything on WP is in the public domain and is therefore considered published and is subject to those same rules. Those were fixed as soon as I was told. I note that Dianna did not say they had been fixed, should I go ask her to do so? Now I know better and write offsite, and import it in, only after carefully checking everything. There are no copyright violations in this article, I swear. Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jenhawk777 as I said I only did a quick check here and so it is entirely possible that you've followed all our guidelines over COPYVIO. Thanks for your attention to the matter. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:11, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

NPP message

Hi New pages patrol/Reviewers,

Invitation

For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

well done--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:56, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

This week's PageTriage patches

Deployed earlier today:

  • Special:NewPagesFeed can now filter "Were created by autopatrolled users". Also, the green check mark now denotes manual reviews, and the purple check mark (new) denotes autopatrolled reviews.
  • The AFD bug may finally be fixed. Attempt #2 is live. If you tag an article as AFD and the AFD does not get created, please let me know right away. I am not 100% sure my patch worked.

–Novem Linguae (talk) 06:57, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: I hate to break bad news... but... I had yet another malformed AfD: . Had to clean up the mess and use Twinkle. /Rational 19:26, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
@ComplexRational. Thanks for reporting. Does it happen consistently for you or intermittently? Any idea how to consistently reproduce the bug? –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:40, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: It happened both times I tried to AfD using page curation recently; I haven't yet had a perfectly formed AfD. I can't say how to consistently reproduce it, because most likely I'll be moderately active at NPP at best and can't produce a large enough sample size, but there are no other influencing factors I'm aware of. /Rational 15:07, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Visual distinction for unreviewing a page

I'm still very new to actually reviewing pages even though I've been going through NPP school for awhile and so far I've mostly been focusing on redirects. But I've noticed that the process for unreviewing a page is not ideal. Maybe it's just because I'm new or because the green just doesn't stand out as much as it should on my screen, but I've happened to accidentally unreview a page (both redirects) twice. Obviously my mistakes are my mistakes, but I was wondering if maybe someone has pointed out that a more distinct visual difference might be useful? Like an x instead of a checkmark either way for unreviewing. Or a way to set a preference to get a prompt saying "are you certain you want to unreview this page?" Also my understanding (which may be flawed) is that things really shouldn't rely on colour for accessibility reasons. By the way, if anyone sees any issues with the limited reviews I've done so far, please let me know. I'd rather be set on the right path now than find out I've been messing things up for who knows how long later on. Clovermoss (talk) 03:46, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

You do have a point that using color only is an accessibility concern. The button is a plain checkmark if the article is unreviewed, and switches to a green checkmark when reviewed. On the other hand, we are not relying only on color here - when you click on the button, you get the dialog pop-up box that clearly says continuing will mark article as reviewed/unreviewed. I don't follow your suggestion for an "are you certain" prompt - it already is a two-step process. MB 16:23, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
I don't recall getting the dialog pop-up box you described? If there's that, I agree that's good enough. There doesn't need to be a two-step process for it. Clovermoss (talk) 18:02, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
Well, you click the (filled green) checkmark first, which brings up a sub-dialog box, which you can click as "Mark as unreviewed". I don't think you can unreview an article in a single click—needs at least two. Unless you have some weird config? Ovinus (talk) 18:15, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
If you aren't paying close attention to the color of the checkmark, the next dialog box doesn't differ that much between the review and unreview versions. The "action button" says "Mark as reviewed" or "Mark as unreviewed". We could change the latter to "Unreview this page", and possibly move it to the right side to further differentiate. Novem Linguae, what do you think? MB 01:00, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
If we all agree that this is a problem that needs solving, I think a good solution might be changing the check box colors from gray and green, to red and green. And changing the unreview/review button color from green and green, to red and green. However I am neutral on this being a big problem (the gray and green system doesn't confuse me). I'll keep an eye on this to see if a consensus develops. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:12, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: Red and green might not be ideal given that some people have red-green colour blindness and thus can't really distinguish between the two. Maybe red and blue? Clovermoss (talk) 00:45, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
Total color blindness also exists, so having an "x" for an unreviewed article and a check for a reviewed article would seem to build in additional accessibility. I am not familiar with the process and how it appears, but multiple layers of features to help prevent error seems helpful generally, if it is not particularly difficult to implement. Beccaynr (talk) 01:02, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Get ready, it's coming

WP is becoming Botipedia. See Misplaced Pages:Bots/Noticeboard#Dams article. Atsme 💬 📧 11:11, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale

 You are invited to join the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:18, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

There are several proposals in this workshop that would affect notability and the NPP workflow. For example, "Proposed solution 1.1 (to issue 1: Mass creations)" is "Require new articles to be supported by at least one citation to a reliable source that is not a database." The relationship between GNG and SNG is also discussed. This talk page/workshop may also be a good opportunity to inject some of your own proposals. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:18, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

"Set filters" button off or nearly off the screen

Discussion moved to Misplaced Pages:Page_Curation/Suggested_improvements#Club_all_"were_created_by"_options_into_one_drop_down

Help please

Hi all. Brand new reviewer here, freshly trained by the wonderful @Atsme. Here’s hoping she or anyone else can answer this. When I am in the new page feed, I can see in red a page was previously deleted. Where do I see the new page? I am kinda feeling a little stuck. This page is not suitable for Misplaced Pages at present. Can I really draftify it without a discussion? I also want to know how I can compare it against the previous article, and also want to know how it was deleted? I know I can only CSD an article that was deleted after consensus to delete was reached, AND it needs to be substantially similar. Can’t figure out how to actually check those two criteria though?

One page I just CSDd did actually have the AFD discussion in the talk page. I checked that and there was consensus to delete. Given the new article was a one sentence stub I CSD tagged it. Also, beginners opinion here, but I’m unsurprised at the backlog. Looking at it, very few articles stand out as ones I can quickly review. Is there a reason we allow editors with so few contributions to be autoconfirmed and create articles? I feel like articles for creation works better? I feel sort of stuck at NPP - I either have to mark the article as OK, or it gets tagged or deleted. Whereas AFC I feel like the junk can quickly be declined, then the writer has a chance to resubmit? Any tips for a newbie? I also can’t figure a way to sort out the new pages feed into categories like one can at AFC? Thanks so much everyone and happy to be part of the team! MaxnaCarta (talk) 10:21, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi, MaxnaCarta - happy to see you found your way over here, and I realize your first day out as a full-fledged reviewer can be a little intimidating. For these first few weeks, you can contact me directly on my UTP or via email. You can also go back to your tutorial and review prior discussions. I can understand why that BLP is confusing as it was included with the following Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Jim McMahon (politician) and then restored later. This is one of the situations we deal with fairly often, and decide which is the best option. First - I removed the copyvio. If you did WP:BEFORE and found no sources to establish N, you can try A7 noting that it was previously deleted & provide the url so the acting admin will know. Atsme 💬 📧 10:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
@MaxnaCarta: Sometimes, more likely if it's an article that existed a long time before being deleted, you can find both the AfD and (if you're lucky) an old version of the deleted article using the Wayback Machine. In that case, you can easily check whether CSD G4 applies, and apply the tag if it does. /Rational 15:24, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
One script you might find useful is User:Bradv/Scripts/Superlinks. It gives you a bunch of helpful links on pages, including a "log" button that brings up the page's deletion log, which tells you when/why the page was deleted. Clicking "log" on Barbara Dawson, for instance, shows you the 2008 AfD that Atsme mentioned above. It's not perfect, but it usually does a pretty good job. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:41, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Dab page at NPP

I am doing what I can to help. I appreciate all of you and the work you do. i know the last thing you want is to read a long story. But I thought if anything, this may be something more editors can learn from.

During NPP I found Ohana (surname) dab page - it was just a list, and I checked to see if there was a page. I found Ohana (disambiguation) page - and there was ample room in the d page to move the surnames and redirect. The page creator began reverting the redirect, and the merge. The page creator erased every message I put on their talk page. I decided to send the redirected page to AfD so they would stop reverting the redirect.

The page creator started an RFC on the dab/surname topic. At the RFC an admin (BD2412) told them they should if possible include references providing information about surname origins and usage.. The dab creator then added a reference. Next BD2412 came to the AfD to tell me I should be trouted and blocked because there can't be references in a dab page. So I then erased the reference from the dab pages and came back to announce it in the AfD. I then went to BD2412's talk page, to ask about the comments in AfD. They did not answer, but instead came to the AfD to threaten taking me to ANI for erasing references. Me I am following what they said, there can't be references in a dab page... I commented that they should have discussed with me on their talk page. Next they went to their talk page and said I was trolling and they mentioned blocking me.

What started all of this? I saw two short list/landing pages named Ohana and thought they should be combined. I really thought I was improving the project. I plan to take a break after this experience but I bring this here. Have a great weekend everyone! Bruxton (talk) 00:35, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I have no opinion on whether there should be two pages or one, but the threats of ban etc. seem way over the top. (t · c) buidhe 01:35, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Buidhe: I was pretty stunned. I have about 500 pages reviewed so I am not the Wizard yet. I know you are an experienced editor and I appreciate you! I have reviewed some DYKs of yours. Glad to know you. Bruxton (talk) 02:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I think everyone was acting in good faith here, but breaking out the surname from the dabpage makes sense. Articles on surnames are valid set index articles and can include info on the surname (and sources for that info) that aren't allowed in dabpages. Elli (talk | contribs) 07:31, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't want to interfere in this but as a general comment do be aware that dab pages and surname pages are quite different and have different requirements in respect of references, formatting etc: it's common practice for a surname page to be broken out of a dab page. Ingratis (talk) 07:14, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Sorry that you had to go though all this. It shouldn't have escalated as quickly as it did. We all have bad days and can overreact to things and this time it seems you just got caught up in it. I hope you stick around and don't let a one off like this discourage your important work. Dr vulpes 23:11, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Sure @Andrew Davidson: FWIW: I apologize for the ANI I started about you a while ago. I know you are still smarting over that ANI so I am sorry about that. It will not happen again. That ANI question about your perm would have been better asked here at NPP. Regarding Yossi Rimon They are not a newcomer based on knowledge and the fact that they started an RFC after just a few days on the project, and understand the term CLEANSTART. Also I did not bite I approved many of their first creations, here is my first post to them: Happy editing! I approved your dab page. Second post to them do not revert the redirect - it duplicates a disambig which exists and is not too long. Please read WP:DABNAME Specifically, A list of name-holders can be included in a People section of the page. The page exists for that purpose. If you have further questions you can ask at WP:NPP. Thanks and keep up the good work! They erased the posts, including one from another user. In any event I have given myself a timeout from editing. It is good to take a step back - and in doing so one can reflect and move forward with a better approach. Bruxton (talk) 16:32, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
If BITE and NPPNICE prevent us from having a discussion then fuck this shit I'm out of here. ~Styyx 11:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Article Merges

One of the reasons reviewers get frustrated is when they encounter push-back after an action. There are examples of this above. Some of this can be avoided if we rely more on consensus-based discussions rather than unilateral actions. One scenario that comes to mind is Merge/Redirect.

The tutorial says If you come upon an article on a duplicate topic… has content that warrants merging, perform a merge. The flowchart says the essentially the same. They both link to WP:MERGE, which says If the need for a merge is obvious, editors can be bold and simply do it It goes on to say otherwise, start a merge discussion. The NPP tutorial does not directly mention starting merge discussions.

Occasionally, there will be a new article on “Joe actor” that should be merged into the existing article “Joseph actor”. But it is much more common that we will have a new article on a topic may not be notable but could be covered in another article. Obviously, the creator of the article would disagree. If you follow VP discussions on stubs/short articles/combining into broader articles/etc., you are aware that this is a contentious subject. Most potential merges we find at NPP probably should be discussed.

I think the tutorial should be updated to reflect this and give further guidance, such as:

  1. Do not merge and redirect except in clearly obvious cases that are unlikely to be disputed, start a merge discussion instead.
  2. Unlike with AFD, the merge process is less structured. The merge templates can be removed by anyone. So a proposed merge should not be marked as reviewed, it should be treated like a PROD or CSD.
  3. If a reviewer finds an article in the queue already involved in a merge discussion, they should probably not mark the article reviewed either, but should consider participating in the discussion. This may not apply in all cases; a merge discussion could have been started unnecessarily in an obvious case like the “Joe actor” example.
  4. Since there is no time limit for an merge discussion to be closed, the reviewer should probably watch the discussion and move for WP:MERGECLOSE after a few weeks by either closing it if there is a rough consensus or using WP:Requests for Closure.

MB 20:14, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

I entirely disagree. Our current guidance is too incusionist in nature, with poorly-thought merges being preferred over straight deletion. The community does not support deletion of content and the chasing-off of new editors, hence the mess you describe. Redirects are costly and I think deletion is the best cleanser. Looking for hundreds of small political consensuses is less efficient than a single large consensus to send junk to the bin. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:20, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
In my mind, bold merging seems similar to draftifying and also WP:BLAR. I think the advice in all these situations is something like: try it once, and if there's objection/reverting, then start a formal (AFD) or informal discussion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:18, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Doing a merge can be a lot of work, which would be all wasted if just undone. Did you see the fallout from the dab/surname merge above. That could have all been avoided with a discussion. I think it is wise to be conservative at times. Our documentation does not even list Merge discussions as an option. MB 23:45, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Doing a merge can be a lot of work, indeed it can and hence why it is not within the expected tasks of new page reviewers and anything in the tutorial that suggest it is should be removed, even if aeons ago I wrote it myself. There's nothing to stop an editor doing anything that improves the encyclopedia, but IMO the general best approach here would be AfD with 'Delete or Merge' as the rationale, and let someone else do the merging if that is the outcome. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:19, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
I agree when you say Merging is not within the expected tasks of new page reviewers, but I don't agree you should AFD an article unless you really think it should be deleted. The first section of WP:BEFORE links to WP:ATD which says If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page and then discusses Merging. I think proposing merges would be best practice; it accomplishes the same thing and still lets someone else do the merging if that is the outcome. There are just some NPP housekeeping details to address, which are what I was proposing. MB 00:51, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
I have previously tagged with merge to and given a brief explanation why. Let the community sort out from there. Slywriter (talk) 01:12, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

New article banner

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T321179

Back in July, it seemed like extending NOINDEX on unreviewed articles was imminent. I proposed a maint message on unreviewed pages that would explain why the article was not visible in search engines and what could be done to improve the article and increase its chances of being reviewed and indexed. NOINDEX has been delayed, so this has been on the back-burner. We do expect NOINDEX to still happen, hopefully soon.

The original proposal was this:

NPPThis article has not yet been reviewed. While it has been added to Misplaced Pages, it will not be visible to external search engines until it is reviewed to ensure it complies with core policies. Articles must be about a notable subject, be verifiable and not have copyright violations or be promotional. To minimize delays in reviewing this article, it should comply with these policies and have multiple reliable sources to establish notability of the subject (inline citations are preferred). (Learn more about the use and removal of this template)

Doing something like this had wide conceptual support, but there was concern that such a message was just too obtrusive to be put on every new article until it was reviewed. The message used at the German Misplaced Pages was suggested as an alternative. That is just a small box in the upper right corner of an article that says (which means Not Seen (reviewed)). That is from the Flagged revisions feature of Mediawiki which they use. If you want to see that on an actual article, go here. I don't think pursuing anything requiring software changes is likely to happen quickly given that we don't even get bugs fixed. As an alternative, something that we can probably implement without the WMF would be a more simple and unobtrusive message like:

Option 3

This article is unreviewed. (Learn more)

The "Learn more" would be a link to a help page with all the info from the first banner. You can see how this would look on a actual article here. Should we pursue the last example? MB 02:05, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, either #2 or #3. I think #1 is too intrusive. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 04:05, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
I meant should we try to implement #3. MB 04:13, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
If this gets consensus, could implement it via a PageTriage patch, via a "view article" hook. Only concern is this would greatly increase # of sql queries (+1 query per page view for the entire mainspace) unless we figure out some kind of caching. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:32, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
On second thought, we already run the needed SQL query on every page to figure out whether to NOINDEX or not. We can cache the query and reuse its results. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:49, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose Such banner tags are too large and wordy. They get ignored due to banner blindness and the mobile interfaces tend to suppress or minimise them as they take up too much space. And the proposed text is dubious as some of the links are not core policies; they are just lesser guidelines. Other important links such as page protection and the disclaimers are displayed in a less intrusive way and that's the style we should use for all such. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:47, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
  • It is the yellow one, which is information and not as intrusive as the 1st tag. From what I've gleaned, it simply serves to inform those who are not aware that the article is not indexed (not crawled by search engines so it will not be seen outside certain areas of WP); therefore, if the article creator wants it indexed, the issues need to be fixed. How many editors/article creators are aware that unreviewed articles are not indexed? Atsme 💬 📧 13:02, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support, but maybe a template like this?

Option 4

This article has not been reviewed and may not be visible to external search engines. (Learn more)

— Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 14:33, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Like this more than #3, TBH... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 15:42, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
I didn't want to make it so long, and at least initially, we have unreviewed articles that are visible to search engines because they are over 90 days old - so better to have the details on the help page. Switching to a white backgound is reasonable. I think the icon should be reduced like it is in the yellow box, and the height of the box reduced as well in the final version. MB 16:30, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
I've changed the template slightly, now it has a smaller image, uses {{Ambox}} instead of {{Ombox}}, and changed the text from "This article is unreviewed and will not be visible to external search engines" to "This article has not been reviewed and may not be visible to external search engines." — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 16:51, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Here is a smaller version:

Option 5

This article is unreviewed. (Learn more)

- MB 16:49, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Minor redirect question

How bold can we be with retargeting redirects when reviewing and can we review the redirect if we've retargeted it? This is my biggest issue I run into when the redirects aren't an easy approve.

Example: Annal Gandhi - I was going to bring this to RfD and then realized I might just be stuck in my own head. It's not related to target article (Mahatma Ghandhi) according to Google main/news/scholar searches in English, though I'm not sure if there's a Tamil relevancy I'm missing. However, it is the name of a government hospital in Tiruchirappalli. Would it be fine to retarget to Tiruchirappalli, add the info about the hospital, and mark it as reviewed, or is there a better course of action?

Thanks! originalmess 09:09, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

  • RfD – not everything needs a redirect. Redirects get hijacked, they force potential articles that could use that name to have a different name, etc. These kinds of redirects can turn into major time sinks. Atsme 💬 📧 15:27, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Any editor can boldly change the target of a redirect if they think there is a clearly better one. If you think the redirect should be deleted per WP:RFD#DELETE, then it needs to go to RFD. If you are not sure whether it should be deleted or re-targeted, it needs to go to RFD. But if you are confident a new target is better, you can change it. Redirects are rarely deleted at RFD if there is a reasonable target since they are considered WP:CHEAP. If there is subsequent disagreement, it might get reverted and then it should be discussed at RFD. MB 16:00, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Drafting

I have a question regarding sending an article to draft. What should a reviewer do when they send an article to draft but the article's creator ignores the draft and recreates the article in main space a week later? It has happened a few times so far. In the latest instance I have sent the recreated article to AfD. But is that the right course? Thanks. Bruxton (talk) 15:32, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, if the article has not been improved, AFD is the next step. However, I would note that articles are kept at AFD if the consensus is that the topic is notable even if that is not demonstrated by sources in the article. Be sure to tag it with (e.g. {{more refs}}) in case it survives AFD. MB 15:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks MB, I noticed that you have reviewed the article in question. My original concerns were verification and the notability of a concubine. All of the references in the article are offline and in a foreign language. And I had trouble seeing the notability of a concubine. For instance the biblical figure Solomon had 300 concubines. The article's creator has a slew of creations with similar issues, and I notice most are not reviewed and some are tagged. Bruxton (talk) 16:28, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
I did not "review it" in the normal sense. I marked it reviewed to removed it from the queue, relying on the AFD to decide its fate. It looks like several comments are based on notability and others are just procedural because they disagree with your reason for sending to AFD. I think it would have been better to frame the AFD just on concerns of notabilty and not on draftification to keep the discussion more focused on the real issue. MB 16:38, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Sending the article to AfD is the correct call but the nomination statements seems off. I'd say that you shouldn't ask for it to be deleted, but rather argue that it should be draftified again (and maybe HISTMERGE) if it isn't ready for the mainspace, like here. WP:DRAFTOBJECT means that it can't be draftified again by hand, but community consensus can still overturn what is written on an explanatory essay. If we have to keep everything that has its draftification objected by the author, then draftifying itself is useless as a whole. ~Styyx 17:00, 8 September 2022 (UTC) Note that we didn't stick with WP:DRAFTOBJECT in the example I provided and that the article was draftified many times by others, but I couldn't care less tbh. ~Styyx 17:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks in the normal course of looking through unreviewed pages I see it. I think to be honest, in the future I will ignore the recreation and let another reviewer deal with it. but perhaps there is a template we can place on the talk page notifying editors that a draft already exists? Similar to the prod notice:
Proposed deletionThis page was proposed for deletion by Bruxton (talk · contribs) on 6 September 2022.
Bruxton (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
As others have mentioned, draftspace is optional. Per WP:DRAFTOBJECT anyone, including the article creator, can move it back. At which point if the article is not notable, an AFD is appropriate. The AFD nomination statement should focus on notability though, if it focuses on "editor shouldn't have un-draftified this" everyone will !vote keep because of WP:DRAFTOBJECT. Going back to notability, royal consorts are tricky because they de facto seem to have a lower standard than many other categories of notability, for example, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Lady Daemyeong. Anyway, live and learn :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:09, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Apologies for being late to the party, Bruxton but the problem with AfD and often RfC is simply the limits of volunteerism and repeated occurrences of the hegemony of the asshole consensus (and I hope my colleagues will forgive my oft repeating of that quote, but I have not yet found a better example). Maybe I should just say "the hegemony". B) Can we fix it? Yes...BUT...that would entail adding qualifications to AfD, which would probably be seen as restrictive and not conducive to WP being the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Atsme 💬 📧 12:13, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
I think one of the problems with moving articles created in mainspace to draft is that no redirect is left behind. I think some newer editors don't have the first clue what happened to their page and so they try again rather than working on the one that got moved to improve it. Yeah, we typically leave a talk page notification, but for some of them, there are WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU issues with that. I honestly think sometimes when a subpar article is created in mainspace and then draftified and then recreated (sometimes multiple times) it's because the person doesn't know where it went and where to find it. ~ ONUnicornproblem solving 14:27, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Isn't there a note saying "There is a draft for this article at Draft:XXXX" when visiting a mainspace article that has been moved to draft? -Kj cheetham (talk) 14:30, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Banner blindness is a thing. Yes, there is a note saying there is a draft, but I'm not sure how many people actually read the (to them) gobbledygook in the pink and white box you see when you arrive at a page like Jeffrey Ruby. ~ ONUnicornproblem solving 16:57, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Potential idea for changing the process of getting the autopatrolled user right

I've been thinking about how the autopatrolled user right seems to be a persistent source of controversy. Perhaps it would be better if the autopatrolled user right could not be applied for by users at all, and instead would be granted based on the suggestion of new page patrollers? Since the right doesn't actually allow a user to do anything they couldn't previously, and instead serves to remove noncontroversial articles from the NPP queue, it would make sense that the right is only granted if NPPers suggest it. Not ready to start an RfC yet or anything, but curious if anyone has thoughts about this. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:42, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Makes sense. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:53, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
It's not a silly idea. Needs some more thinking though perhaps. I guess a compromise could be make it harder for people to self-apply for it, but easier for NPPers/admins...? Don't want to overcomplicate things though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:56, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
My reasoning is that I don't see a huge reason for someone to self-apply for it. The main benefit of having the right that isn't less scrutiny (which isn't really a good thing) is getting your pages indexed by search engines faster, but is that really a large enough benefit to allow people to apply for it? Also, in most of those clear cases NPPs would probably put forward appropriate people pretty quickly, especially once that becomes the accepted way of people getting the right (there's been people I've wanted to suggest the right for before, but haven't done so, as that's something that isn't often done and I wasn't sure how admins would take it). Elli (talk | contribs) 20:58, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
(EC)Good idea, but IMHO not likely to fly. Better to totally eliminate it. I think that it does little good and more harm than good. North8000 (talk) 21:00, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
I admit it's something I applied for (and obtained) very recently, but my reasoning for it was more in terms of helping with the NPP backlog. I'm likely not the typical sort of editor who applies for it though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 21:04, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
The right is useful to have around and eliminating it would do harm by massively increasing the backlog and making NPPers on average a bit sloppier (since far more of the articles we'd come across would be fine, people would take less care to check for issues that may not be immediately obvious). Elli (talk | contribs) 21:07, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
I certainly agree it's useful to have for the sake of the backlog, until such a time there are more active NPPers to keep on top of things at least. -Kj cheetham (talk) 21:16, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
This is largely how WP:RAL already works (self-applications are allowed, but form a minority of additions by far), and that seems to work fine. As to Kj's concern, we could have the banner at WP:PERM/AP say something like, As this permission confers no direct benefit, nominations can only be made by administrators and new page reviewers. If you do think you should have this permission, you can ask any administrator or new page reviewer to nominate you; be aware, however, that such nominations may be scrutinized more heavily. -- Tamzin (she|they|xe) 21:06, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Is there any need for a request page to exist at all? Why not just give new page reviewers the technical ability to grant autopatrolled and shut down the requests for permission page entirely? * Pppery * it has begun... 21:09, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
I think the trust level required to grant AP is significantly higher than the trust level required to review pages. Maybe if you required discussion among NPRs first, perhaps in a section of this page? But at that point why not leave the final call with admins? -- Tamzin (she|they|xe) 21:14, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Maybe write the policy in such a way to strongly encourage admins to grant the right if a NPPer requests it to be granted? (only deny in unusual/rare circumstances) Elli (talk | contribs) 21:16, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
I wouldn't feel comfortable letting someone who immediately got the NPP right to grant others the autopatroller right. I like Elli's suggestion though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 21:17, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
This is a good idea and would have my support: I know it's been suggested before (I found this and I seem to remember it being discussed elsewhere too), but I haven't seen any solid arguments against it. The biggest concern, of course, is that qualified editors would get skipped over, but since we'd have a strong incentive to make frequent nominations (reducing the backlog), I don't think that would be a serious problem. Ultimately the benefits—making it somewhat harder for UPEs and other bad actors to get access to a pretty dangerous permission—would outweigh any harms, in my view. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:49, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Support for all the reasons listed above. (t · c) buidhe 22:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose all ideas mentioned here (limiting nomination of AP to NPPs, limiting granting of AP to NPPs, eliminating AP). All of these ideas would increase the NPP queue at a time when our backlog is huge, and in my opinion no evidence such as diffs or statistics has been given that this is a problem that needs solving. To support, I would want to see statistics such as the total # of autopatrolled article creations per month, vs # of autopatrolled article creations per month that get deleted via AFD/CSD/PROD, and then use that to calculate a ratio of bad autopatrols. If the bad autopatrols is above like 1-2%, then it may be worth spending some bandwidth on this issue, but until then I think we'd just be shooting ourselves in the foot and making our backlog bigger in order to solve a non-problem. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:12, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
    • Well, I imagine autopatrolled users' articles aren't deleted very often since (by definition) there's no one to review them. That said, I do think this is a non-hypothetical problem: I scanned the user rights log and found that at least seven autopatrollers have either been blocked or have had the right revoked just since July, with reasons ranging from conflicts of interest to referencing issues to sockpuppetry to copyright violations. And, of course, for each one we're aware of, there may be many more who create problematic articles but just haven't been noticed yet. Not all of those were self-nominated, of course, and some issues are unavoidable, but there does seem to be a real problem here to solve. At least in the original proposal, moreover, a backlog increase isn't inevitable: as long as we're conscientious about making frequent nominations (using tools like this report), the number of new autopatrollers may well remain stable. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 23:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose – I'm more of the mind to increase qualifications. We should not take NPP lightly. This is the last line of defense for keeping garbage out of the pedia, and for offering some protection from UPEs and PEs who do not need to be autopatrolled. Let's not forget, we recently had a NPP reviewer and an admin who were UPEs. We need to know who and what our reviewers are doing. Good reviewers get more done, and create less havoc and confusion, so don't worry about the queue, just keep a steady pace. Think of it as bussing tables in a busy restaurant – hopefully someone will leave a tip on the table some day. yes Atsme 💬 📧 23:18, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
    • Hi Atsme, hope you're doing well. I think you might have misunderstood the proposal, though—this is a suggestion to increase qualifications for autopatrolled. The idea is that instead of letting people ask for autopatrolled themselves, we should have trusted new page patrollers independently recommending people for the right. This would mean that hat collectors, UPEs, and the like would be less likely to get autopatrolled since they couldn't simply go to WP:PERM/AP and ask for it (as they often do at present)—it would only be given to people who stood out to NPPs or admins as creators of solid articles. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 23:58, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
      Hi, Extraordinary Writ, I did speed read it, but I caught the gist. I'm of the mind that we need to raise the bar and require editors to have at least 2500 main space article edits, or equivalent in article creation, and not just chalking-up edits by adding brackets for WikiLinks. They also need enough experience at AfD to generate some stats. I actually like the idea of a potential reviewer applying here at NPP first, and at that time we can recommend NPPSCHOOL, or decide that the editor has enough experience that we are comfortable endorsing their request. NPP reviewing is far more important than what we are given credit for, especially considering reviewers are making important decisions that will affect another person's hard work relative to keeping, draftifying, or deleting. A reviewer also needs to be experienced enough to know RS, and what constitutes Notability, OR, V, etc. If they cannot create an article, what makes them qualified to judge article creations by others? It is possible that a new editor or two will come along with 500 edits who fully understand the nuances of NPP but I doubt it. We have some long term admins who don't fully understand it. Those are just my thoughts. I do appreciate the input and suggestions above by Elli, and it does my heart good to see us working together as a team, making suggestions, and trying to find ways to make our jobs more efficient, and a bit easier while still being able to maintain the safeguards. Anyway...that's my $5 worth (compensation for inflation). Atsme 💬 📧 02:04, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
      Atsme, maybe I'm the one misunderstanding here (if so, apologies!), but it sounds like you're talking about raising the qualifications for new page reviewers, which is a pretty different issue from what this proposal is about: raising the qualifications for autopatrollers. All Elli's proposal would do is make it harder for UPEs to get autopatrolled and create spammy articles that can fly under our NPP radar. Obviously you're free to oppose if you like, but I just want to make sure we're all on the same page regarding what's being suggested. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:29, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
    Thanks for your comment Atsme. Do you recall who the UPE admin was? I'm surprised I didn't hear about it, would definitely like to see for myself. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
    Novem, I cannot recall the name, but if my memory serves, it was about the same time it was decided to remove autopatrolled rights from admin accounts. Maybe Joe Roe or Kudz will remember. I've scanned the archives, and it could be I was thinking about Esotrix who Usedtobecool said "had recently started getting more involved with NPP, was blocked as a sockpuppet mid-RFA. Ironic, as I noticed them first from their involvement in the thread about abusive NPPers, up above." In that same discussion, Kudz said, "Most cases of extreme misuse or abuse of privileges, such as for example Pastor Theo, Archtransit, admins who edit for pay, and former admin Sherlock under one of his many guises, don't get discovered until later (and woe betide the admin who dares to expose them). This brings the community with a knee-jerk to the reality that Misplaced Pages, along with holders of advanced positions, is increasingly being used for promoting personal, political, or corporate agendas. The recent discussions on this very page have somewhat heightened awareness to the rot within the ranks of reviewers." So there you have it, and I guess it holds true as evidenced with Hitchens or Hutchens, and other socking: Misplaced Pages talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Archive 42#Reviewer blocked. Atsme 💬 📧 01:34, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
    Hey Atsme. Thanks for the explanation. I spent half an hour researching the 3 admins you mentioned. I read arbcom discussions, ANI discussions, SPIs, etc. and wasn't able to find mentions of paid editing. If anyone is able to dig that info up feel free to link it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:39, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
NL, every word is true and probably even worse than you could possibly imagine. I'll tell you about it one of the days, but offline. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:24, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Atsme and Novem Linguae: Maybe you were thinking of Salvidrim! and the Mister Wiki case? Although that was quite some time ago. The desysop in the aether when autopatrolled was unbundled was Carlossuarez46, which wasn't for paid editing but for egregiously bad mass creations and lack of accountability. – Joe (talk) 07:30, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
THANK YOU, Joe!! Having an unresolved question stuck in one's head is like having a tune stuck there ... Twinkle, twinkle little star...^_^ Atsme 💬 📧 11:21, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment – Extraordinary Writ has a point. The access threshold to autopatrolled has been successively reduced over the years to what I can't see as having had an increased benefit to NPP. Plenty of abuse of it has been revealed though, and as one of the admins who for a long time was a regular reviewer of PERM requests, rather a lot of those self-noms appeared to be made on a misunderstanding of the right by the candidates. Nowadays I don't do enough patrolling to notice editors who regularly submit clean content. I do however frequently check out the autopatrolled creations from the filter in the feed and I often find issues that give me pause - even creations by admins - but there's little I can do about it so I just note it mentally and move on. Users are for some possible reason extraordinarily piqued about losing user rights, even if it's only for lack of activity. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:09, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Comments
  1. I agree that having AP helps NPP because it keeps articles out of the queue that don't need to be there; I would not support elimination.
  2. I don't see that it matters much if an editor self-nominates or is referred by NPP. Determination is made at WP:PERM.
  3. I think there should be some kind of system in place to monitor AP articles in some form. I recently sent one to AFD and it was deleted as a non-notable subject, so it does happen. Like Kudpung, I have seen my fair share of other AP articles that I probably wouldn't have passed if I were reviewing them. But an editor can write 25 good articles and years later get sloppy or lazy and it just flies under the radar unless it becomes so flagrant that it gets noticed and brought to someplace like ANI. We have WP:ORES. It is used by WP:RATER to assess articles. If we had a tool that ran ORES on all the articles created by AP editors (over the past year) and reported stats by editor, I bet it would uncover some problems. I would recommend that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB (talk • contribs) 21:22, September 13, 2022 (UTC)‎
We have the ORES tools already, MB. It just needs to be rolled out. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:08, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung, I mean a report listing with a ORES summary of each AP editors cummulative work over a period of time, not what you linked to which is at the individual article level. MB 03:12, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
I know what you meant MB, but I think doing that would just be busywork, although I admit the stats would be very interesting. Forget searching for past misdemeanours, it will only cause friction - remember the dire consequences of listing such individuals - in the worst case scenario, if you were an admin it could lose you your bit. Better is the solution I just requested. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:21, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Number 3 is a good point, and it raises a related issue: since effectively the only way to get autopatrolled revoked is a long and unpleasant ANI thread, plenty of editors retain autopatrolled when they probably shouldn't. This probably has no chance of going anywhere, but if I were king for a day I might propose something along the lines of "if three (or five, or whatever) of your articles are deleted in a given year, autopatrolled is automatically removed"—not as a punishment, of course, but simply as a recognition that the person's articles might benefit from being checked by a reviewer. Just a thought. There's also the old idea of having some small fraction of autopatrolled articles put back into the NPP queue—perhaps that would be worth considering. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:39, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Extraordinary Writ, a punishment for what? Taking away a user right that actually accords no privileges whatsoever? Apart from hat collecting... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:30, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
That's exactly what I'm trying to say: since autopatrolled exists solely for the benefit of NPPers, removing it should be seen as just a housekeeping matter rather than as some kind of punishment. Whether or not one has autopatrolled should be (to use a hackneyed phrase) no big deal. Apologies if I framed my point inarticulately. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:49, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it "searching for past misdemeanours", but evaluating if someone with AP is continuing to make high-quality articles. If they aren't, there should be some "friction". We all face "friction" for not following other policies (e.g. edit warring, etc). Why should not living up to the expectations of AP be exempt? MB 04:22, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Let's put it this way, MB: it would be a bit like doing a blanket CU sweep on a group of editors to see if they have any socks in their drawers. Highly illegal even if suspicion exists. If you catch someone red-handed, that's a different matter, but it can still get you into serious trouble for daring to mention it. Misplaced Pages has become a prickly place, as you know yourself, one can't even mention the increase in the number of new articles from certain parts of the world without being called 'xenophobic and racist'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:35, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:ANI

Please note there is a discussion at WP:ANI that relates to NPP: WP:Administrators noticeboard/Incidents#Complaint about New Page reviewer draftifying work while I'm still working on it. Polyamorph (talk) 18:04, 18 September 2022 (UTC)