Hi @Vistadan! Why do you want to delete the previous history? I am asking as I want to make sure I am aware all the guidelines concerning the undeletion, I might not. In my vision the whole history may be useful for other users. Can you explain, please? Best, Less Unless (talk) 18:48, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @Less Unless, my reasoning is that the revisions where not part of the draft when it was recently G13'd, and don't believe they needed to be restored with the current version of the draft. vistadan21:13, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Less, I believe this is the third time I am seeing this, so I have to ask. Why do you give editor names to CSD criteria, such as criterion for speedy deletion Deb as you did here. Jay(talk)11:49, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Jay! I am sure I haven't done anything like that on purpose. I've reviewed the situation now and it seems that there's a bug of the RFUD helper. When I choose decline and pick the "Article deleted per CSD citeria", the script automatically shows the deleting admin. But when I submit the query the deleting admin turns into a CSD criterion. Can you please check if it's the same when you are doing it. I haven't noticed it before, it's good that you have. Best, Less Unless (talk) 13:16, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.
Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]
In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).
While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).
Backlog drive
A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.
TIP – New school articles
Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.
Misc
There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:
Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 10693 articles, as of 22:00, 31 January 2025 (UTC), according to DatBot
There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.
@Jax 0677 Hi! As there's no consensus on whether the person/event is notable to have a standalone article, relisting is a chance for a broader discussion and a more thoughtful outcome. I understand that as a creator of the article you are interested in having it kept, but for now the community has no clear vision regarding this issue. Best, Less Unless (talk) 19:38, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
July 2022
Hello. It appears your talk page is becoming quite lengthy and is in need of archiving. According to Wikipedia's user talk page guidelines: "Large talk pages are difficult to read and load slowly over slow connections. As a rule of thumb, archive closed discussions when a talk page exceeds 75 KB or has multiple resolved or stale discussions." – this talk page is 92.5 KB. See Help:Archiving a talk page for instructions on how to manually archive your talk page, or to arrange for automatic archiving using a bot. If you have any questions, place a {{help me}} notice on your talk page, or go to the help desk. Thank you. --Jax 0677 (talk) 22:56, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Women in Red August 2022
Women in Red August 2022, Vol 8, Issue 8, Nos 214, 217, 236, 237, 238, 239
This award is given to Less Unless for 64 reviews in the July NPP backlog reduction drive. Your contributions played a part in the 9895 reviews that took place during the drive. Thank you for your contributions. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 08:52, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.
Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)
Arbitration
The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.
After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.
Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.
Coordination
MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.
Open letter to the WMF
The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.
TIP - Reviewing by subject
Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.
New reviewers
The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
BloxyColaSweet has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. You can spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.
To spread the goodness of cookies, you can add {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!
NPP message
Hi Less Unless,
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.
I create articles everyday, for politicians of different states. Please check them and edit them if needed. Thank You
—— Poli Hunt 18:42, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
@Less Unless, Yes, I am interested in Politics related articles. Need your assistance on pages, after creation. —— Poli Hunt 18:46, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
Women in Red in September 2022
Women in Red September 2022, Vol 8, Issue 9, Nos 214, 217, 240, 241
A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.
Technical news
The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please emailMadalina Ana.
Arbitration
An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
Thank you for supporting the NPP initiative to improve WMF support of the Page Curation tools. Another way you can help is by voting in the Board of Trustees election. The next Board composition might be giving attention to software development. The election closes on 6 September at 23:59 UTC. View candidate statement videos and Vote Here. MB03:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you are doing well this weekend. Just a reminder at REFUND, when you restore a contested PROD, the PROD tag needs to be removed from the page after restoration. This happened twice this day and I don't know why User:SD0001/RFUD-helper didn't take care of that for you. But the articles popped up on the the PROD list. In one case, the article was deleted again but the admin quickly restored it. Maybe we need to ask SD0001 about this as the RFUD-helper instructions state that the script will remove all deletion tags from pages where the script is used.
Liz, thank you for this notice! I thought the RFUD helper should remove the tags just like it does the dummy edits, but I have to be more attentive and recheck myself too. I will ask SD0001 to check if there's such a option too. Thank you for pointing that out! Best, Less Unless (talk) 10:15, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please help me to review articles
Hello Less Unless,
I hope you are doing well. I am glad to have a chance to contact to you. Firstly I wanted to thank you for improving and reviewing my article "Honored artist of Uzbekistan".
These days I am more active on Wikipedia. I am editing and creating new articles here in English Wikipedia. But I see now it takes long for articles to get reviewed. I think that's because of the large number of articles are being created than before.
I would like to ask your help to advise me some to improve the quality of the articles I have created so they can get reviewed further. I am listing three articles under this message (you have reviewed one of them) for your review and feedback so you can check them out when you have time for them.
I look forward to receiving your suggestions Thank you so much
Hi, Lostinniagarafalls! It's great that you have time to contribute! I see your articles have already been reviewed and there are some important things you can learn from that - both of them have issues with notability. To put it simple something is considered notable if there's multiple independent reliable coverage on this subject. Independent means the source should have no connection to the subject, reliable means it should be a reputable source with factcheckers and so on. Please read more on this here - WP:Notability. There are also specific notability guidelines for almost every sphere, you can find them from the same link. This is crucial to understand if you want to write new articles. Lets start with this guideline first. Please read it and g you have any questions - please ask. Best, Less Unless (talk) 17:58, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Women in Red October 2022
Women in Red October 2022, Vol 8, Issue 10, Nos 214, 217, 242, 243, 244
Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.
Arbitration
Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.
Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.
Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.
NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022
Suggestions:
There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.
Backlog:
Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!
Reminders
Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Women in Red November 2022
Women in Red November 2022, Vol 8, Issue 11, Nos 214, 217, 245, 246, 247
An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.
Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.
Hey! Thank you! I didn't know that, as I am mostly active at AfD, where the third relist is ok. I'll take that into consideration and will observe first before doing any closures or relists. Best, Less Unless (talk) 18:55, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Remember to search slight spelling variations of your subject's name, like Katherine/Katharine or Elizabeth/Elisabeth, especially for historical subjects.
Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.
Technical news
A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)
Arbitration
Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.
Miscellaneous
Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.
Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, whether it's Christmas or some other festival, I hope you and those close to you have a happy, restful time! Have fun,Donner60 (talk) 00:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
