Is this the new standard or an abuse of AfCH script access? Nils_Forsberg. This AfC Reviewer likes to tag "Promising Drafts" without doing anything with them. Some of the tags are quite wrong. Now they submit and accept a page with no references. Legacypac (talk) 18:21, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
I have not seen a requirement that a draft have sources to be accepted; this is obviously an encyclopedic subject. If there is such a requirement, please identify it for me. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:28, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
In fact, the stated standard is as follows: " Article submissions that are likely to survive an AfD nomination should be accepted and published to mainspace." There is a 0% chance that this draft will be deleted in an AFD discussion. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
It's an article on several other wikis with sources. I'd say it's fair to tag it as promising, but to move it to mainspace at very least the Swedish sources should be dumped at the bottom. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:31, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
"give me a break; this painter has articles in FOUR OTHER WIKIPEDIAS" is a worrying edit summary - Wikipedia has never been a valid reference, and many other languages allow articles with no references. If as in this case the other language articles have sources then as Espresso Addict said just copy some links over and dump at least, and there would be no drama. The "Reviewing workflow" has the step "Reliably sources?" after "Subject notable?". As like with the "MINREF again" above it looks like some are working of different principles, i.e. just "Would it survive AfD" vs the complete workflow, looks like we really do need to work on clarifications on what is expected so we are all working to the same (drama free) tune. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 18:48, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
The four Wikipedias comment was shorthand for look at the other Wikipedias. These Wikipedias have reliable sources. Next time I will add them as "further reading". Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:03, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Sounds good to me, better for the readers (always a key point for me), and easier for other editors to see why the decision to accept was made. Would hopefully stop unnecessary trips to AfD while someone gets around to adding the sources that did exist. KylieTastic (talk) 19:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Anyone taking an article to AfD with interlanguage links to reliably sourced articles[emphasis added] would soon be buried in a snowdrift. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:36, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Here is one with a single source Tianbao Time Plaza accepted by the same reviewer. I rejected the page because I could not find a single source in English to even confirm the building existed. Legacypac (talk) 18:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
If you do not think this is an appropriate article, please nominate it for deletion. I have no opinion on that matter, because I don't speak Chinese. But Chinese-speaking editors should be the ones determining if the article is appropriate, not you or me. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:32, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
If it is "not for you or me to decide if it is appropriate" then why did YOU decide it was appropriate and move it to mainspace? How about accepting Heuliez GX 117 again with zero sources? Why have you gone from tagging scads of drafts as "promising" but failing to do anything with them to accepting Drafts with no sources? How many more have you accepted like this? Legacypac (talk) 18:35, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Because if you remove the promising draft template, the default is deletion--without review by anyone who even speaks the language! Now that it is in mainspace, it will be discussed as appropriate. I have moved from tagging to moving because you are removing tags. If draftspace is a space of constant peril for promising articles, then promising articles should not be left there. Like I said, nominate these articles for deletion if you wish. The standard for acceptance is that they are likely to survive (not that all will survive). I believe that the articles I have moved are likely to survive AFD discussions. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:42, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
How about the topic ban (overturned) above for Legacypac, how about the numerous editors who have had their AFCH privilages yanked? Hasteur (talk) 18:58, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
I have read the policies, but I haven't read every discussion in the archives of this page (and it is crazy to expect me to have done so). Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:41, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
@Calliopejen1:: I'm going to say this bluntly: Your competence at judging what is "promising", what is suitable for mainspace, and your judgement regarding articles is significantly troubling to me. I would note that editors have been topic banned and dis-invited from contributing to AFC reviews for less. Please take some time out and go re-read the policies, AFD nominations, MFD nominations, and items you have "promoted" to mainspace. I believe you may change your mind. Hasteur (talk) 18:58, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Calling the question: Removal of Calliopejen1's AFCH privileges and banning usage of Promising draft
For the reasons listed in the above section, for failure to understand Wikipedia policies and use this tool within these policies, or risk being blocked from editingWikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Helper_script, For misuse of the promising draft template, for general tendentious attitude I propose the follwing:
Removal of permissions related to AFCH
Topic banning from usage of the Promising draft template
Both of these restrictions indefinite until such time that competence in AFCH usage is demonstrated and understanding what makes a promising draft. Hasteur (talk) 19:12, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Commenting purely in an administrative capacity, I'm not sure this project has the ability to implement or enforce #2, though obviously #1 is well within our purview. Primefac (talk) 19:25, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Primefac asked me for my thoughts here: I'd go a step further than him. Since the AFCH checklist is basically a PERM at this point, I don't think local consensus on a WikiProject talk page could prevent an admin from adding themselves back to the list (just like with AWB or EFM). I think admins can be banned from use of AFCH, but it would need to be at AN, not here. I have no opinion on the actual merits of this. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:34, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing, I was wondering if Hasteur even realised Calliopejen1 was an admin? I would have thought as they were all a consensus here could do would be to politely ask and admin to abstain and not actually ban (IMHO). KylieTastic (talk) 19:48, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
If that is the case then Calliopejen1 needs to hand in her mop as the fundamental competence and judgement is so lacking that I have significant doubt as to if they would be able to pass a re-confirmation RfAdmin. Hasteur (talk) 19:50, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
This is absurd. Calliopejen1 has given a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they accepted the draft, and it's now at AfD where the community will decide what to do with it. They're not going to get topic banned or desysoped because you disagree with them. – Joe (talk) 21:00, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
I've long found their usage of the "promising draft" template to be somewhat indiscriminate. Now that there is an idea that template can not be removed by anyone else, such tagging is even more troubling. Combined with a series of moves that would have caused Primefac to yank AfCH from any one other than an Admin... Legacypac (talk) 21:32, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
The AfD above is rapidly heading towards a snow keep, which would suggest that Calliopejen1, an admin with ten year's editing experience, does have some idea of what makes a draft "promising" after all. There have been complaints that this project has unreasonably high standards for as long as I can remember. Threatening to ban an editor for taking a slightly more inclusionist approach than the current crop of AfC regulars is hardly going to improve that reputation. – Joe (talk) 22:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
The Nils Forsberg article is heading to snow keep, as mentioned above. The comments against Calliopejen1 at that AfD have been irrational and bordering on malicious. This discussion seems like a with hunt arising from an earlier bad blood interaction-- let's find something she did wrong and punish her. What was wrong here was Hasteur's AFD nomination and subsequent inaccurate comments. The artist is highly notable. Hasteur should make nicer comments and also read the WP:BEFORE policy, which is necessary when making AFD nomaintions.104.163.150.200 (talk) 23:35, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
No user hiding behind an IP - she did something more than once that has been highly and widely criticized and punished with tool removals and long topic bans. Legacypac (talk) 02:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
If an Admin is allowed to accept pages with no sources and retain access to AFCH than I propose a couple things:
Primefac issue an unequivocal apology for removing my script access because clearly I have been reviewing well above standard. Who knew sources did not matter?
We codify the standard that no sources are required. This will make reviewing much faster and easier as all you need is a gut feel that something is a notable topic and the info is probably verifiable.
As an example, Draft:Honda Australia is definately a notable company but the core info is completely unsourced, though seems plausable. I doubt this would be deleted at AfD. Under the "no sources" standard this should be accepted without delay. Legacypac (talk) 02:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I would drop the stick, Legacy. You got your access re-instated, there is no requirement for an apology. It's over, let it go. SQLQuery me!02:16, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Legacypac, I can hardly be described as someone who has it out for you, and I think you’re being too hard on Primefac: he was acting in good faith and closed the thread when it was clear his removal didn’t have support. It was the wrong call in my opinion, and I’ve told him as much in private, but he does good work coordinating this WikiProject with little praise. Your removal was a mistake, and I think he’s done his best to fix it, so I don’t see the need to keep harping on it. Yes I’m an admin and so is he, but I’m just trying to be fair to him as a person like I would with anyone.On point two: I think moving something to mainspace with no sourcing was dumb: all that had to be done to save it from G13 was add a reference or a header with “further reading” and a link. If someone thinks a draft is promising and its completely unsourced, just add a source. I don’t think it’s worth desysoping someone over, though: the admin in question does a hell of a job in other areas. She made a mistake in my mind, but we’re not talking a case request here. If you feel strongly enough about it, ask for a review of her actions at AN. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:21, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
Had I moved multiple drafts to mainspace with no refs I would be at ANI right now watching a topic ban be voted, and Primefac would have yanked my tools already. We all know it. Diffs available. Only Admins are allowed to make mistakes. Legacypac (talk) 02:36, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
For an experienced user much less an admin to be placing an unsourced article in main space is simply unconscionable. If a draft is 'promising' then it should be trivial to minimally source it. If not and it is moved into article space I believe MoveToDraft's default message is something like 'Unsourced. Moved to draft to incubate' or some such. So just use it and move on.
I do not see the point of taking any action against Calliopejen1 for this instance. Doing it again would be a problem deserving of sanction, but from feedback here she should know not to. We all screw up sometimes and the world still goes 'round. Jbh Talk04:46, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I was away for a couple days, and came back to this thread. One of the articles in question was Nils Forsberg, which I reviewed originally, due to having zero referencing. Personally, I'd like at least ONE source, simply to prove that the attempt has been made, and that it isn't a complete scam, or something. I wasn't particularly happy about being pinged in the AfD either, but it was kept as SNOW, so the subject clearly WAS notible, and didn't fail the AfD... which is the only real information we have on how to review articles. If there is an issue here, (I don't think there is), then we need to have a look at how the WikiProject words this, and not simply have it be down to individuals thoughts. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)13:43, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
The only sensible solution is to conduct a comprehensive revision of our reviewing instructions, which currently require reviewers to decline unsourced drafts. There are other points in the workflow that also no longer fit our currently accepted practices. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:35, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
I really don't see what the fuss is about. I would have no qualms accepting a draft with zero sources if the content is easily verifiable with a web search. For example, if the draft says that X is a village in Y County, and looking up X on google comes up with a) a link to google maps showing the position of X within Y, and b) passing mentions from the context of which one can infer that X is indeed a village in Y, then that's good enough. Attempting to add these as refs would be silly, no sources is better than rubbish sources. – Uanfala (talk)23:41, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
Paywalled sources - what is your practice?
This came up as I was talking with a paid at editor at Draft_talk:CAN_Capital#Notes about what was wrong with their draft and how they could improve it.
I kind of walked through how I review any page when I come across it.
One of things that arose, is at least two of the potentially strong sources are paywalled (both are commercially oriented websites that libraries don't generally have).
What do you all do when you are reviewing an AfC submission, and can't access a source that may be essential for N or just plain old V? Jytdog (talk) 00:12, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
You can AGF, or do a quick search for other sources that may exist. This should be enough to tell if the topic is notable without referring to the paywalled material. Sometimes a google search will have enough of a snippet for you to see if it is real or not. I don't think you should remove those sources unless you have something to replace them with. The same problem arises with paper books. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:19, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
I don't think the editor has succeeded in establishing notability distinct from Carlson's design site, Remodelista (certainly after removing the sizeable chunk of copy/paste from that article). The editor is also the creator of that article.
While they've assembled a range of sources, they all appear to be either primary, interviews, or promotional. This person often seems to be quoted in lifestyle/design articles, but always in association with Remodelista. This NYT source is a typical example.
At AfD, I'd be inclined to delete or merge with Remodelista.
That option was discussed a week ago with the general consensus being that approving a draft just to send it to AFD (or in this instance, telling them to move it so that we can AFD it) is improper. I haven't looked at the draft (might do later if I get an opportunity) but if it's borderline I suppose it would meet our "50/50 at AFD" criteria. Primefac (talk) 12:47, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
User:Primefac kindly stop twisting my words. I never suggested "we" AfD it. I said the creator is prepared to defend it if it was AfD'd. AfC can and should decline to process some pages. Some creators don't need our help. Legacypac (talk) 23:57, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
unrealistic advice
Our instructions (and advice elsewhere inWP,) says: If you have an idea for the title of an article, but no content for the article itself, please make a request at Wikipedia:Requested articles
This list is unmanageable, and almost nothing from the many pages of it ever gets made. It creates unrealistic hopes. We suggest it because we have nothing better to suggest; does anyone have any ideas.? DGG ( talk ) 16:08, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Well, we could remove it from the guidance entirely, but to be honest I think having a graveyard of bad ideas is better than people making pointless/blank pages because they want a page but don't have any information on it. Primefac (talk) 16:50, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
We briefly discussed not allowing drafts to be submitted when they were <450 characters long, but there was enough opposition I didn't do it (instead creating a tracking category). Of course, it was also in the middle of the WMF "process improvement" thing, so if someone wants to re-start the discussion here in its own thread they're welcome to. Primefac (talk) 17:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
I think that would be hasty. The WikiProject might not be active but I know I've created articles from Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social sciences on occasion and people are still maintaining it. I don't see that it hurts to direct people there, even if takes a while. It's not like we have a better option. – Joe (talk) 15:32, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
User:DGG, User:Primefac - I have a comment that isn't directly related to Requested Articles, but is directly related to AFC. I have decided that I will never decline a draft submission as blank, because the advice is useless. Anyway, most of the blank submissions that I encounter are in sandboxes that have been submitted to AFC without being given a title, although some do have titles. Untitled submissions certainly are not requests for articles, and I don't think that other blank submissions are requests for articles. I have begun declining all such submissions as Test Edits, with a comment saying that the draft has no content. I normally advise that, if they were trying to submit a draft and were having difficulty, they should ask for help at the Teahouse. I think that declining such submissions as test edits with a comment is much better than the canned message. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:07, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
I actually CSD G2 blank submissions when I find them and from the list of declined as blank. I just blank sandboxes submitted as blank to get them out of the list to be reviewed. Clearly these submissions are not intended for review. Legacypac (talk) 23:11, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
A few of the sectiona of Requested Articles are actually in use by various wikiprojects in a practical way as list of articles to be made, such as lists from topics with articles in other WPs. They could obviously movethat to subpages of the project space, but weneed to take this into accountbefore totaly dismaltling the project. On the other pagesthe topics suggested are not necessarily worthless--ity's just placing them there is about the least likely way to get an article created.
As for blank submissions, tyhiswe can fix by removing the option, or changingthe textto read "was blank submission and has been deleted" and sending them to G2. I've been doing that also. I suspect it's that people think they're goign to write something and then don't get back to it--ewhy they click the sybmit button however is something I do not understand.
Blanking blank sandboxes to clear the tagging seems a good idea. I had not thought of doing it, but now I will. DGG ( talk ) 01:40, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Closure of RFC announcement
The RFC at the Village Pump regarding a modification of the language of WP:NMFD has been closed. The result of the discussion was that drafts may be deleted for notability at MfD if it also meets one of the deletion reasons and consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace (emphasis added). Please see the discussion for the full close. Primefac (talk) 01:46, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Older drafts with comments
One more. Where a draft has already received some reviewer attention (e.g. Draft:Natalia_Bardo) but hasn't been accepted or declined, is it normal practice to wait and allow the page to be further improved? Basie (talk) 01:11, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
If you come across a page where a reviewer has recently (like, in the last hour) edited the page, then yes, I would leave it and come back later (they might be making big edits). If all they did was edit the page and "run" (i.e. didn't review, didn't do anything further) then you're welcome to review it. Primefac (talk) 01:27, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
I would like the comments of other reviewers on whether I handled this draft optimally. It was previously declined as a biography whose references did not show notability, which was correct because there were no references. I think that the subject is notable, because the draft says that he received a Pulitzer Prize, but that must be attested. I think that the author of the draft is related to the subject, possibly his daughter (maybe Jane R. Kinney) and should declare the COI. The draft was resubmitted again with no references, and I declined it with a long message. Was this the optimal response? (I know that the "pessimal" response would have been to Accept the draft because of the Pulitzer, but to run the risk that it would be tagged WP:BLPPROD. Reviewers are advised not to accept a draft that won't pass AFD, but this one wouldn't pass WP:BLPPROD.) This is an unusual situation because the subject is almost certainly notable but the submission has two problems anyway, the lack of reference and COI. Thoughts? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:21, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
There are refs now, but I found he did not win the Pulitzer, his paper did. So we need better sourcing showing he was a key player winning the award. For all we know he had nothing to do with the reporting on the winning story - or he was the lead reporter? Legacypac (talk) 23:38, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
He was not one of the two who accepted the award in the photo. He might be a notable author if reviews can be found but not notable only for this prize. Legacypac (talk) 23:51, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Of course, for a member of his family to attribute the Pulitzer to him illustrates why Wikipedia has conflict of interest rules, because family members are likely to be biased, which is not meant to criticize them, but it is meant to question their neutrality. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:37, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Idea re: identifying worthwhile drafts that fail
Is there any way to incorporate into the script some sort of functionality to check off whether a draft you're declining seems to have potential, and relevant wikiproject(s)? Perhaps it could even automatically post notices on those Wikiprojects at the time of the decline, so that interested editors might see a newcomer and mentor them. And then alert the Wikiproject when the draft is nearing the six-month deletion mark, so that the project could evaluate and improve/move the article if desired. Thoughts? Do people think this could be a good idea? Trying to figure out how to get attention on the drafts that could be useful and not have them end up in the trash bin. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:51, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
At the most basic level, the answer to your first question is "yes", as is the answer to most of the rest of your yes/no questions about if it could be done.
From a practical perspective, Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions has more than 4000 pages in it (specifically 3,861), and I'm not really sure that a WikiProject would appreciate even 0.1% of those notifications (though I suppose it could be set up like the Article Alerts as a centralized listing, but I don't think anyone really ever looks at those either). Primefac (talk) 18:58, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
In my review of declined drafts nearing G13 deletion, there is very little that is promising. I'm guessing we're talking a very very small number per WikiProject. If we got complaints, we could turn off the notifications. Or perhaps run a survey seeking input after a one-month trial. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:12, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
Given that over half of the drafts listed at Wikipedia:Database_reports/Stale_drafts don't appear to come via AfC, the major solution we're seeking should not be specific to AfC. I'm thinking of a broader "comb" that will go through AfC submissions (from the time they're submitted) and through any other non-AfC drafts (after a certain period has elapsed since their last edit). Another reason I don't see this tying well with AfC is that reviewers already have a lot to worry about, I don't think we should be adding any additional tasks to their already complicated workflows. – Uanfala (talk)21:24, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
In my experience you will have better fishing for useful stuff in userspace and G13 postponed: See guide at Wikipedia:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts and especially the Scope section.
Yes, those are good places too. But I'd like to surface new articles while their authors are still active, so we can mentor them and not lose people (along with their work). I would also like to find things before they are deleted. And if these drafts are identified at the time of submission, it will also allow editors to more easily find what is worth postponing in the first place. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:22, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
See Category:Declined_AfC_submissions and in particular "Needing Footnotes", the "Custom" and "Needing to be merged" subcategories have the more promising topics. Once their pet topic is rejected most editors tend to wander off though (if not right after the first submission) If you want to mentor look through the active submissions and helpdesk and offer helpful comments. You might reach someone who wants help. Legacypac (talk) 20:41, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
Those categories are not terribly helpful--tons and tons of junk. I'm trying to think of a lightweight way to flag the stuff that might not be junk on the front end. I did just discover Antanas Vaičiulaitis in the custom category, though, which is one of the more depressing declines I've seen lately... Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:30, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
That user has since left the project (and Wikipedia) following a CIR/DE indef block, and their reviews should not be taken as an indicator of the status of all reviewers (i.e. take them with many grains of salt and feel free to ignore the closes if they're grossly inappropriate). Primefac (talk) 12:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Also, for those that have missed it, we do have a draft sorter and a script that allows us to tag drafts with the relevant WikiProject(s). Notifying projects could be as simple as letting them know that there are drafts in their purview. Primefac (talk) 12:15, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
I never said those categories were not filled with junk only that they might have the odd salvageable page. It is possible to find useful stuff anywhere, but is it worth the effort? Most importantly whatever you do do not disrupt the systems that clears out garbage. Individual often marginal pages are just not so important that saving one is worth making 100 pieces of junk a lot more work to get rid of. By design 100% of the pages here should only contain info available somewhere else. So if we don't have a page on X we are not depriving the world of knowledge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Legacypac (talk • contribs) 14:03, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
Okay, but I'm trying to think of a better way than mining junk. Someone looks at the article at the time of reviewing. If we could add a "might be worthwhile" checkbox on the front end, editors looking through declines could focus on pages tagged that way instead of mountains of garbage. Another idea: Who does the WP:YFA page? Could we have article creators answer a couple basic questions at the time of submitting that would help us review? E.g. is this 1) a living person, 2) a dead person, 3) a company or non-profit, 4) a geographic place, or 5) other? And then send you to different submit boxes that add a bit of code to the draft. Declines in categories 1 and 3 are going to be 98%+ garbage. Declines in category 2-- fairly good chance they are not garbage. 4 and 5-- some chance they are not garbage. Maybe there are some other categories we could use to the extent there are other useful patterns. This wouldn't add any work to reviewers' plates. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:50, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
hi Calliopejen1 I think you are hitting on a good point here: most promising drafts are buried and require a lot of rooting around to find them and they are not categorised in any meaningful way. So an editor who wants to save drafts finds it very hard to. I think your idea of posting promising drafts to a wikiproject is great. It would help give Wikiprojects new purpose (a lot of them have slowed down) and even if the draft ends up deleted, it would help give a record of drafts that were started and thus new editors could go to refund to help get them back. Wikiprojects are also more likely to be visited by new editors than places like "promising draft" so it would help get new eyes on the projects. Edit: I notice you are discussing this in wp:drafts (not draft) so I will follow there. Egaoblai (talk) 13:44, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Blocked Creator/Secondary Editor
Hi,
Am currently reviewing Draft:Vascon Engineers. Now it is actually fairly well sourced (more accurately, there are some good sources within the list); its "promo-ness" is mainly due to its existence rather than its content. A secondary user added the significant piece of negative news on the company.
However it was on the username check that I realised that there is a slightly confusing area about the user and them potentially being blocked. The Creating IP isn't blocked. However they create the talk page to declare a paid COI. Another user notifies them they should create an account, and a Second IP responds in line with being the same person. That IP is later blocked and then receives a year ban for block evasion.
Now it seems reasonable that they are the same users (they are clearly in a fairly close IP block) but I can't actually confirm it. The non-blocked IP did some Paid COI notification but didn't do the whole process.
All of this leads me to query - should I just decline the draft. Does the participation of a content addition by a second editor alter a judgement on these grounds?
Nosebagbear I've just taken a superficial look at the draft, unless there are problems with the sources or large scale copyvio, I'd be inclined to Accept it. You have not mentioned any valid reason to decline it in your post above. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:37, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Dodger67 - I had passed it on my excel checklist, sources and copyvio both passed, it was just the username step before clicking accept that was left. Given the early split view I've left it as under review for now Nosebagbear (talk) 18:10, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Galobtter, Nosebagbear One blocked and one unblocked IP wrote the draft. I'm not sure that is sufficient grounds to decline or delete it. If you're not going to make a decision soon rather unmark the draft so that someone else can do a review if they wish. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:26, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
I've dropped the salting admin a request to remove creation protection - I will remove review and leave a comment that an unsalt request has been made. I'll drop it on the board tomorrow if I haven't had a response by then. (Unsigned)
Draft:Priority of mind is a verbatim copy of parts of a deleted Medium article, cached here. What I think has happened is that they've used Medium's interface to write the article before moving it to WP. It certainly looks like it was intended for our format. Are there any copyvio concerns here? Basie (talk) 00:55, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
The content on Medium is owned by the content creators (or to quote them directly You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium.). The user who created the draft has the same username as the one that created the content on Medium, so it's likely it's the same person. If they hadn't deleted it, a simple copyleft would work. However, they have since deleted the Medium page, so I'm not quite sure about the copyright status of the page (I'll ping the usualsuspects for a 2O). Primefac (talk) 12:51, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
Mt opinion: Removing the content from the original location online does not change its copyright status. — Diannaa🍁 (talk) 13:23, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
I have an idea that may need tweaking. There are a class of submissions, often about organizations, where it appears to reviewers that the subject is probably notable but the draft doesn't establish notability, and where repeated resubmissions do not really improve the draft. These sometimes wind up at MFD for repeated resubmission. I think that the problem may be that the submitter is "stuck" and doesn't get it that notability is established by what third parties have written. At some point, maybe the third or fourth resubmit, a reviewer, rather than just declining and saying that independent sources are needed (which is true, but the submitter/author doesn't get it), should advise the submitter/author to ask for advice at the Teahouse or a WikiProject. If the topic is notable, one of the editors there might actually improve the draft. Thoughts?
In my experience, it is common in these cases that the subject is simply not notable. The author may or may not get it but in either case there is not adequate coverage to be found. When I come across these, I add {{Friendly search suggestions}} to the talk page and do my own search. If I find nothing, I decline and explain the situation in a reviewer comment. I don't think there's a reason to send these to the Teahouse or a wikiproject. Reviewers here are supposed to be good at ascertaining notability and dealing with new editors; we should have all the skills we need to deal with this here. ~Kvng (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
(1) Newcomers write and submit inept drafts on unsuitable topics;
(2) The newcomer resubmits with minimal if any improvement
(3) The overly soft decline template actually invites (my reading, in the mind of the author) repeated resubmissions as a method of ongoing "conversation".
I've been going on about (3) for a long time. I think the decline template needs massive shortening, and there needs to be a very short and sweet "reject" template. I note that the recent RfC clarifies that resubmission without improvement is a reason for deletion.
Challenged for ideas on #1 and #2: I think we could try altering the word "submit" on the submit button. "Submit" conveys the wrong subliminal message, of handing control over to someone else, of dumping responsibility. A raw idea, but my idea is that this button should be split to two buttons. One is "request feedback". The other is "I think this draft is ready for mainspace". Also, at the point of submission, the author should be directed to a IsItNotable questionaire/checklist.
As to (3) my idea is the reviwers shall have the luxury of choosing from two broad kind of decline templates.One class for articles that have the potential but suffers from issues, which are quite serious, to hamper the ideas of outright main-spacing.The second class would be without the saccharine-coated advice about resubmitting and will make it clear that it's damn unsuitable for WP (Sort of NSFW).
I think, for what it is worth, that decline reasons (“decline” meaning not ready but could be improved to suitable) should be written in free text on the talk page. I think that real people appreciate not template messages. UPE throwaway sock product does not deserve soft “decline” messages. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:34, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
"Soft" declines are bad, but making them too definitive is also against the ethos of the project: editors aren't supposed to decide the fate of articles by themselves. I would like to see AfC restructured to encourage more definitive decisions on drafts, but through consensus. Mainspace already has good quality control processes (NPP+CSD+AfD). I think the long-term problem with AfC is that we keep trying to duplicate those functions in draftspace – and failing. Much better to just kick things to mainspace as soon as possible and let them handle it there. Or else tell the creator it doesn't have a chance in mainspace and delete it straight away. I started sandboxing some ideas on reforming AfC along those lines at User:Joe Roe/Requests for publication. I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on whether those ideas have potential. – Joe (talk) 09:51, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
On the Ideas for Improvement
Here are a few thoughts. There is no solution, and not even any mitigation, to issue 1. Editors who submit drafts fall into three classes, in my opinion, two of which overlap. The first is those who have some clue as to what is encyclopedic and actually want to contribute. Some of their drafts will be accepted, and some require improvement but will eventually be accepted. The second is editors who are self-serving. The third is editors who are completely clueless. Some are both self-serving and clueless. The job of AFC is to identify the submissions that are in the first class and, if necessary, help them, and get them into article space, but to spend minimal time on the second and third, and not encourage them. The idea of discouraging (or at least not encouraging) them is contrary to the overall Wikipedia culture, in which Do not bite the newbites is a commandment rather than a guideline, and in which assume good faith is a suicide pact. (Because of this hyper-optimistic culture, reviewers get dumped on for not being sufficiently gushing over new editors.)
I don't agree with having two Submit buttons. I don't see the point to that. I, like most of the editors who are familiar with AFC, do agree that there need to be two non-accept messages, a soft decline and a hard decline.
I think there is a point to splitting the submit button. A problem with the submit button is that it is big and singular, and I think newcomers are pressing the "submit" button when they would be better advised to be pressing a "request for feedback button". So, as brainstorming, I suggest adding a "request for feedback" button. Probably, it should open a thread at the TeaHouse with some default text that the newcomer is encouraged to add to. Possibly, it should start up a past on the draft_talk page that is transcluded or otherwise flagged at the TeaHouse.
On the "submit" button, I think maybe it is too much implying that after pressing the button, the work and responsibility will shift to someone else. I suggest change the text of the button from "submit" to "I think this draft is ready for mainspace". I think this might discourage repeated submissions following small improvements, especially if there is a request_feedback button.
Noting the recent RfC that clarified that resubmission without improvement is a reason for deletion, I think maybe there should be some text stating this, near the submit button. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:40, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
I don't believe ignoring submissions and dragging out the rejections hoping the user gos away is good. It leads to long backlogs. I prefer a quick clear no via a template or CSD or MfD Legacypac (talk) 23:15, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
@Legacypac: do you know what percentage of our backlog consists of improper resubmissions? Have you compared resources spent in CSD and MfD vs. declining improper resubmissions? If you don't think allowing authors or submissions to fade on their own is the right outcome, what do you think is the best outcome and how does CSD and MfD help get us there? ~Kvng (talk) 14:48, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Different pages should be treated differently. See User:JJMC89_bot/report/AfC_decline_counts for an idea of the frequently declined pages. Some don't fade but stick around for years because the creator keeps tweaking or bots and AWP users make inconsequential edits. Spam links have significant Wap:SEO value even in draft space. Sometimes a firm NO via CSD or MfD is the answer. There is no more work to CSD a page today than wait till G13 and the CSD now is not elegable for an easy WP:REFUND so more permanent. Hope that helps, I wish I had hard numbers Legacypac (talk) 21:27, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Draft Create-Protected
I reviewed a sandbox and, as usual, tried to move it to draft space. I found that the draft title was create-protected. (I don't know whether the title is also salted in article space.) I declined the draft with comments that it does not satisfy biographical notability or political notability. I also mentioned that the draft title was create-protected, and to check with the deleting administrator. I haven't previously encountered the situation of a draft title that was create-protected. (Article titles that are create-protected, while not common, are not rare.) Does anyone have any advice about this situation? I would appreciate any comments either on the general situation, or the specific, which is User:Nonnahs SMS/sandbox, which should be Draft:Moses Sanchez. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:05, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
This is really unusual. The mainspace article already exists as a redirect to Phoenix mayoral election, 2018, as the subject is a candidate in that election. The subject is possibly notable (although that user-space draft is nowhere near ready), and if it were in draftspace multiple editors could work on it to get it ready for mainspace. Pinging RHaworth to see if this can be unsalted. Bradv23:49, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Ignore the history of that draft for a minute and take a look at these sources. These are all "reliable sources that are independent of the subject", which may make this qualify for WP:GNG.
I think an article can be written here, although I probably wouldn't start with the draft at hand. Bradv23:56, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Brainstorming
User:SmokeyJoe provided a useful three-part statement of what are the problems at AFC, and then offered some ideas. I disagreed with one of them. User:SmokeyJoe then went to my talk page and (take your pick) dumped on me for being negative, or said that all ideas proposed here should be considered brainstorming, and that one of the ground rules of brainstorming is that ideas are not criticized, and that bad ideas may simply be ignored, because ideas in general should be encouraged. So. I would suggest that any ideas that are thrown out as brainstorming should be introduced as brainstorms. Otherwise the ideas may be taken as hard proposals. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:04, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
See below for the two parts, resubmission with minimal improvement, and the overly soft decline template. We are in agreement about the decline template. Do you want to brainstorm about the repeated resubmissions? If so, I won't respond to any ideas that I don't agree with. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:02, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
That's not how brainstorming works. Identifying the problems in ideas leads to improvement of the ideas. The key to successful brainstorming is to not take criticisms of your ideas personally and for the criticisms to be productive and focused on the ideas, not the people generating them. ~Kvng (talk) 14:41, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
By the Way
By the way, the three-part statement of the problem was:
Newcomers write and submit inept drafts on unsuitable topics;
The newcomer resubmits with minimal if any improvement
The overly soft decline template actually invites (my reading, in the mind of the author) repeated resubmissions as a method of ongoing "conversation".
I said that there was nothing that could be done about (1) and that we should focus on (2) and (3). I am willing to offer some bad ideas to deal with (1), but I have thought at length and do not think that there can be any good ideas for dealing with (1) that don't fall into the class of WP:Perennial proposals. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:09, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
(2) The newcomer resubmits with minimal if any improvement
At MfD, this is what we see over and over again. Perhaps that’s an unrepresentative sampling? But it feels like there is an endless flow of this behaviour from newcomers. Subquestion: is it by different newcomers and a recurring that needs fixing; or is it by the same few puppet masters and a symptom not a root problem?
It really is an endless flow of this behavior from newcomers. It really is the downside of the success of Wikipedia, that tens of thousands of clueless people and clueless self-serving people are coming in persistently. It really is different newcomers. There is some sockpuppetry, but it is usually clueless sockpuppetry. As to whether what we see at MFD is an unrepresentative sampling, it is a self-selected sample. It is a sample consisting of the most blatant tendentious submitters. It is the tail to the distribution, but it is the tail to the distribution. (Let me know if you want a Stat 1 explanation of that.) Robert McClenon (talk) 02:02, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
I think this is an really annoying problem to many, and an obvious solution is to de-fluff the decline templates, and to introduce a hard reject template.
Another idea is to put a “request for feedback” button before the submit button.
Another idea, guessing that resubmitters are not taking the submit button seriously enough, thinking they assume it is the mean for seeking comment on improvement, is to reword it as “I think this draft is ready to be an article”.
I agree with Robert McClenon about point 1. For a number of obvious reasons that I can enumerate if requested, we can't expect competent drafts from all newcomers, The wiki way is to improve incompetent material and to learn as you go. We should not be discouraging contributions or biting the hands that deliver them. ~Kvng (talk) 14:41, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Yes. I am aware of that User:Kvng and I have different philosophical views about clueless new editors. I know. I see three classes of editors who come in at AFC, two of which overlap: knowledgeable or semi-knowledgeable; clueless; self-serving; and clueless and self-serving. We agree about the first, but that is not the issue. He sees, in the second, third, and fourth classes, editors who have not yet learned how to write competent drafts and need patience and help. I see editors who either are not here to contribute to the encyclopedia because they are here to contribute to themselves, or who are not here because they are inherently clueless. He may be right about the clueless editors; maybe with enough patience they will acquire a clue. Maybe. However, I cannot bring myself to think that self-serving editors will learn how to be useful neutral contributors to Wikipedia. Maybe User:Kvng has a different mind-set about the self-serving editors, or maybe he hasn't seen as many of them (because he has been elsewhere in Wikipedia) as I have. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:54, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
I respect that we have different assumptions about these contributors. I know that there's an effort to block and delete contributions from bad-faith editors and I believe doing so improves the quality of the encyclopedia. I recognise that I personally am not able to reliably identify these actors and so have to concentrate on the material without much regard for the contributor. I understand that others are more confident about their assessment of other editors and our fine wiki culture accepts bold behaviors so I'm not going to be trout slapping anyone for straying from WP:AGF and WP:BITE. ~Kvng (talk) 19:30, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
I accept far more drafts than I send to MfD, but I also work the ones that others pass over, (perhaps afraid to accept?) and actively seek problematic Drafts to MfD. We will always attract the incompetant, self serving newbies and we need to be clear with them. A clearer message on what Submit means may help - I was involved in improving the text recently around the submit button. Any concrete suggestions should be brought forward. Legacypac (talk) 11:49, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
JavaScript and AFCH Permission Error
Hello,
I am writing as a result of several issues, pertaining to editing an article, in which I spent roughly 5 hours making changes and improvements. The article can be located at the following URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR?action=edit
I went to Publish Changes, and after filling out the requisite information pertaining to the edit, I selected the radio button, and all of the work I had attempted seems to have disappeared. I am sure you can understand just how frustrating this is, however I would like to know if there is a way to locate the changes.
In addition, after the attempt was made to Publish changes, I have been receiving strange and unfamiliar pop-ups, one pertaining to something to do with JavaScript, and the second mentioned something about AFCH Permission Error, at least I believe that was the acronym. I have made plenty of changes throughout WikiMedia and the Sister Projects, and have yet to encounter any errors such as this.
Please help assist with these matters, as I feel aa though I have wasted a good part of my day, without anything to show for it, thanks.
@Markhalsey: I'm sorry you had that error. Web pages can crash sometimes, so if you are making significant time consuming edits, it's recommended to write them offline on your computer in something like Notepad or TextEdit and then copying and pasting it into the Wikipedia edit window.
Hi, i have added certain and true source after rejecting article( Laya Abbasmirzaei) such as news, imdb, festival, image , books, video...,,and resubmitted it again,regretfully I am waiting for manyyyyyy days ago for a volunteer to review it !! Why ?! Fighting12 (talk) 03:02, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Fighting12 hello, you have posted the same message on WP:AFCHD. Please post only one place as all of us are volunteers and provide our service and help to fallow Wikipedians on our own free time, it would waste the helpers time to answer the same question in two places. Your question will be answer on the draft page and in the Article for Creation Help Desk. Thank you. CASSIOPEIA(talk)06:40, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Laya Abbasmirzaei
When volunteers decide to reject an article they do it immediately!!! But when an article has been change and edit and adding with sources they don’t want cheak it Apparently!!!!! Fighting12 (talk) 03:08, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Fighting12 Please read the above message and do note Article for Creation has backlog of more than 1K and it might take 4/5 weeks before the page is reveiwed. Article for creation is not the only place reviewers need to assesses the acceptance of an article in Wikipedia, we have backlog of 4K in New Page as well and at times it would take many months before pages would be reveiwed. Do note again, we are volunteers here. Please be patient. Thank you. CASSIOPEIA(talk)06:51, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Notice When Moved Draft Is Tagged for G13
I just got another two nice notices from Twinkle saying that drafts that I started had been nominated for speedy deletion as G13. I didn't start them. I moved them from sandboxes to draft space. Is there a way that Twinkle could be improved to notify the real originator of the draft? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:26, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
This happened to me also. Additional findings from this experience were that these notices are posted minutes or hours before deletion so there is a very small windows where an author could intervene as suggested. The best recourse is WP:REFUND and these notices should say so. ~Kvng (talk) 19:34, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
I agree, that including instructions for undeleting the draft should be included. Speedy deletion is speedy, and so usually happens minutes to hours after the tagging. In the case of G11, or any of the speedy criteria in article space, the creator may have time to contest the deletion. With G13, they likely haven't logged in for weeks or even months. The notice should explain how to request undeletion, since challenging the G13 isn't feasible. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
This is just another example of things not working the way they should because there's simply no way to fix it. How does the bot/script/etc know that the page creator isn't the person who wrote the article? There isn't. Sometimes we get XFD/decline notices that make no sense - best to just undo and/or move it to the proper user talk page. Primefac (talk) 00:09, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
User:Shadowowl pointed out to me that Twinkle did notify both the mover (me) and the original creator. If the original creator is notified, giving them instructions on how to request undeletion is appropriate. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:41, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
@Kvng: The old notification bot was taken down and it is taking a while for the new bot to get approved. Therefore there is a backlog of articles for which it is not possible to send notificatins before they are eligible for immediate deletion. Currently Bot0612 is doing test notifications on articles that are already eligible but notifications were never sent. Once it is approved and works through the backlog, it should send out notifications a month before the articles are actually eligible for deletion. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 19:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Should we put G13 deletions on hold until we can get this sorted through? Shadowowl is unable to modify the notification message. It would seem like it would be best to just let things rest for a bit until we can get things tested and running smoothly again. ~Kvng (talk) 00:43, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Absolutely no need to put G13 on hold. The old bot only dealt with some AfC drafts anyway, many were tagged by humans, and much of the backlog is non-AFC tagged drafts that must be tagged for G13 by a human. Why not tag a few pages everyday Wikipedia:Database reports/Stale drafts. Every day a page sits untagged is another day some bot or awb or dab fixed comes along and resets the clock on the junk (it can still be tagged G13, but when no longer reported it gets much harder to find) . Legacypac (talk) 09:21, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm guessing you didn't look at the draft's history? The author made only two edits, one of which was to change the username in the AfC submission template, so when you declined it 1.5 hours later, the new "name" was who got notified. Now, as to why the editor did it, well, they were just trying to be correct, it seems, as this is an obvious cut and paste from https://www.aiaawards.com/about. So, thanks? I've G12'd. ~ Amory(u • t • c)10:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Amory's spot-on. The template doesn't know (or care) who actually wrote or submitted the draft; it just goes by what name is in the |u= parameter. GIGO and all that. Primefac (talk) 21:30, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Under review time limit?
Should there be a time limit an article is tagged "under review" without any visible further action? I just noticed in Category:Pending AfC submissions being reviewed now there are several articles that have been in that state for weeks. As the category says "being reviewed now" and that tag says "and the result should be posted shortly" it does not suggest such a long process, and could be yet more discouragement for submitters who have already waited weeks just to get to this state. It does say "If this template has been unchanged for more than twelve hours" but should we not have a backup plan in case these have just been forgotten by the reviewers? i.e. should we just remove as a stale tag after X days/hours? Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 11:56, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
The first step is to query the reviewer - drop 'em a talk page note and ask. If they don't respond in a day or so it's probably safe to un-mark it. Primefac (talk) 21:34, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Copyvio Checks are not Optional
I am concerned that some copyvio submissions are being accepted and moved into mainspace. Running copyvio checks on these submissions, especially if the prose in some places seems choppy and basic, and in other places florid, detailed, and full of adjectives, is essential.
I may have more followup on this later if the patterns I'm seeing here bear more specific notation, but either way, this is an issue we have to stay on top of. Thanks. - CorbieV☊☼20:48, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
If anyone notices a reviewer who is consistently missing copyvios (in more than say 5-10% of reviews) please either post here or email me so that the appropriate action/discussion can be taken/started (respectively). Primefac (talk) 21:39, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Draft Needing Copy-Edit
This may be a two-part question. First, I accepted a draft because I was satisfied of notability and neutrality. I decline far more drafts than I accept, mostly for notability reasons, sometimes for tone or promotionality reasons, and sometimes because I do not have a clue what the submission is. I understand that a reviewer normally accepts a draft based on confidence that it will survive a deletion discussion, and I am reasonably satisfied that anything about the nineteenth century that is properly documented should survive a deletion discussion. It was then moved back to draft space by another reviewer because it needed heavy copy-edit, and had many spelling errors and sentence faults. My first question is: Was that a valid reason to draftify it from article space, or should it have been tagged as needing copy-edit? I admit that I wasn't paying as much attention to grammar and spelling as I sometimes do, but I was glad to see a clue as to what is an encyclopedic topic.
The second question is: Will other editors please take a look at Draft:Arikara scouts? Thank you.
I was just looking at the same issue (due to other concerns)... I'm not aware of any guideline that says the writing style and clean-up issues are reasons to draftify? This just muddies the waters even more than the other recent issues as to what some people think the acceptance criteria for AfC should be. I'm with Robert on this one, I think it was a pass for notability and thus AfC - clean up should have been done or tagged in main-space. In an ideal world if all articles had to reach a good standard in all aspects in Draft before going to main that would be great, but that is not how Wikipeida works. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 21:19, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
I just cleaned it up and sent it back to mainspace. None of the errors I fixed were sufficient to justify a draftification. While I concede that an exceptionally poorly written article could be appropriately draftified, the writing would have to interfere with understanding meaningfully. In this case, the poorness of the writing was insufficient to send it back to draft, and it should have just been tagged in mainspace. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:38, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for the cleanup and ping, Tazerdadog. This is all I was asking for - basic cleanup on the glaring issues before it lands in mainspace.
There are very few of us who are active at any one time in the Indigenous wikiproject who can vet the deeper sourcing and accuracy concerns on these articles, and when inaccurate new articles are created without any of us knowing about it, they tend to sit there, full of mistakes, for a long time unless someone pings us. Right now I'm doing deeper cleanup on another submission by this user. I think they are a student who means well, but there are a lot of problems with both the sources they are using and their lack of familiarity with the Indigenous communities. Every one of these needs a pretty thorough rewrite for accuracy and outdated (and at times offensive) cultural terminology. This can get tiring when a student is determined to create content but has these ongoing issues.
I have encouraged the user to participate more at the wikiproject. Thanks again for your cooperation here. Best, - CorbieV☊☼21:56, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
Minor cleanup is not a valid reason to draftily an article. CorbieVreccan, if you find a draft that need copyediting, either fix it, leave it alone, or change the guidance for AfC reviewers. GMGtalk22:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
Please read what I said above. Not everyone here agrees on what is minor. Anyway, we're all good here. This is resolved. Best, - CorbieV☊☼22:28, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
I...guess...thank you for inviting someone to join WP:NDN, who already is a member, and who has edited almost exclusively in this topic area. I've sure you've proven to be quite welcoming. GMGtalk22:36, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
@Legacypac:, @Robert McClenon:, @Heliosxeros:@Bearcat:: Hey everybody! So, I've been reviewing drafts for several months now and I'm glad that we have been able to tackle the extensive backlog of articles. When it comes to notability, I have found myself thinking about notability and my Western biases. Some cases of WP:NBIO or WP:NCORP are easy to decline (cases of people advertising their youtube channel, failed WP:NPOL candidates, venture capitalists, etc.) but with the multiple articles we have for people from India and Nigeria/Sub-Saharan Africa, I am less sure about my decision making. Both countries (and for SS Africa, regions) have millions, if not billions of people. For example, how do we judge WP:NMUSIC if the country doesn't have a national music chart? Which Bollywood movies meet WP:NFILM and which are just spam? I'd love to start a bit of a conversation on this topic to see what you think. Bkissin (talk) 18:46, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
It really just amounts to following the reliable sources more than anything. For example, having a chart hit on an IFPI certified chart is not the only way a musician can pass WP:NMUSIC — it's certainly a common one for musicians in first world countries, but there are many other criteria that are still available to musicians who don't have charting hits under their belts. So it's not impossible for an African musician to pass NMUSIC just because charting is a difficult notability criterion for them to fulfill, because there are still other criteria that African musicians can still pass: they can still show concert tours, they can still show multiple albums, they can still show music awards and competitions, they can still show radio and video rotation, they can still show visible evidence of having had cultural impact in their own countries, and they can still show that they've received enough reliable source coverage to clear NMUSIC #1 (which is really just a rephrasing of "meets GNG on the sourceability".) And Bollywood films can still pass NFILM without much difficulty as well, because India has all of the same things (film awards, box office tabulations, film critics who write reviews of the films, etc.) that we use to evaluate the notability of American and Canadian and British and Australian films. So the potential for bias isn't in the notability criteria themselves — it can potentially come into play when we're evaluating the sources present to support the notability claim (e.g. "this automatically isn't a reliable source because it isn't written in English", etc.), but there isn't really a major bias problem built into the notability criteria themselves. And, of course, remember that notability criteria are never passed just because the article says the topic meets notability criteria — people can and do lie about notability criteria a topic doesn't really pass (e.g. musicians claiming chart hits they haven't really had, filmmakers falsely conflating the Cannes Film Market with the Cannes Film Festival so they can claim their film premiered at Cannes, etc.), so it's the reliability of the sources present to support the notability claim, not the claim in and of itself, that determines whether the notability criterion is actually passed or failed. So it's more a question of being careful to judge the sources fairly (e.g. running them through Google Translate so that you can at least get the gist of what they're saying if they're not in English, checking to ensure that it's a real newspaper and not an advertorial PR blog, etc.) than anything else. Bearcat (talk) 19:04, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
NotabilityCoin, or stop the CryptoSpam
Can we develop a better list of notability characteristics for Cryptocurrencies? We get plenty of articles spammed here by people hoping to make the next BitConnect or DogeCoin, and while it's easy for me to just do a blanket decline for all of them, I wouldn't want us to overuse the option and miss an actual good article out there. Any thoughts? Bkissin (talk) 18:51, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
As above, it's more a question of following the sourcing than anything else: is the cryptocurrency receiving reliable source coverage in media like Bitcoin very obviously does, or is it "referenced" mainly to blogs and primary sources and user-generated discussion forums and other unreliable referencing? Bearcat (talk) 19:24, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Hand out {{subst:blockchain notification}}s with each decline and log them at Wikipedia:GS/Crypto. Be sure to explicitly state that cryptocurrency enthusiast sites such as CoinTelegraph are not reliable sources on the submitter's talk page, promotion is prohibited and point them to the conflict of interest guideline. If a draft is tendentiously resubmitted or resubmitted without improvement, it can be summarily deleted (outside the CSD, and without needing a MFD) and the creator topic banned. Please ask me on my talk page if you would like deletions, saltings and/or topic bans under general sanctions. MER-C19:58, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
it can be summarily deleted (outside the CSD, and without needing a MFD) ... Er, what? My understanding was that all deletions outside of the CSD criteria, PROD, or an XfD process were often controversial and firmly in IAR territory. Am I missing something? Tazerdadog (talk) 21:01, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
I've had good success tagging anything crypto with G11. I'd be shocked if any new editor came here without promotional intent to write up a crypto currency as their first contribution. Pretty much anyone other then a very established editor with a strong handle on NPOV is going to struggle to write an article properly. They all want their "investment" to gain more legitimacy. A "controversy" section does not make it not promotion. Legacypac (talk) 22:34, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
It's not very well known, but you can use GS/DS to delete pages. Deleting tendentiously resubmitted drafts is a reasonable measure to keep AFC running smoothly. It's only been used once before because GS/DS have been deployed against problems that aren't best solved by deletion. WP:GS/Crypto is an explicit mandate to crack down on promotional editing re: cryptocurrencies. I'm not leaving one of the best tools for the job on the table. MER-C08:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
Instructions on how to apply the sanctions:
{{subst:blockchain notification}} goes on the submitter's and any substantial editor's talk page. I would also recommend writing a sentence/template or two explaining how the user can avoid being topic banned.
Any draft can still be nominated for speedy deletion under the CSD. If it gets deleted, this will be done as a normal admin action (i.e. not under the sanctions, and is appealable via the usual means). Pages deleted or protected under sanctions must explicitly mention that in the respective logs.
Just to verify I'm not crazy, I rechecked the re-viewing instructions, and unless you are talking about different instructions than I am, I don't see how they shed any light on this matter. To address the meat of your arguments, redirects don't solely exist to fix broken links. People also search for them, especially when they are shorter, or when they aren't sure where to look for something, or for any number of other reasons. My experience is that because redirects exist solely to help people get where they are going and can help people searching that particular term for vastly different reasons, it is not easy to yourself decide whether a redirect is actually that useful. Your thoughts and experiences are different than those of other editors, who may legitimately find a redirect to be helpful that you equally legitimately fail to see the point of. That's okay. As reviewers of redirects, it is more helpful for us to say, "Okay, someone has requested that we create this title because it would presumably help them in one way or another. Would it cause any problems to accommodate them?" And in the cases of these redirects, I don't see any convincing arguments that anyone would be hurt or become confused or find navigating the project more difficult if we created them. So why not? It's not like we're pinching server space.—Compassionate727(T·C)07:13, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia used to have a terrible internal search engine. Sometime, ~2007 I think, it was greatly improved, and it continues to improve. Before 2007, because it was so bad, people would create redirects to solve the problem, one search term at a time. Since then, as a search engine aid, these redirects have become counter-productive. The editor creating the redirect is guessing what every searcher wants. When they are right, they are giving what the Wikipedia internal search engine would have given as top result. When they are wrong, when the search is ambiguous, they are causing the searcher to be taken straight to the wrong page and to not even see the multiple possible hits, if the searcher is using on the the usual "GO" buttons. In either case, the redirect is not helping. I think redirects should not be justified as helping with searching. Searching should instead be directed to the internal search engine, which continuously learns and improves simply by being used. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:38, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
Please take a look at WP:AFD#KEEP, particularly items 3 and 5. "I think redirects should not be justified as helping with searching," is totally at odds with current consensus, and seems quite pointy to me. -- BobTheIP editing as 95.148.229.157 (talk) 16:21, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
As I mentioned above and on other occasions previously on this page, I think autowelcoming new en.wikipedia.og registrants is important for giving newcomers a small number of recommended reading links. I think it is important to do this BEFORE they have committed to writing their first draft, which means that existing welcoming services, manual welcoming and Hostbot, do not suffice. It was a perennial proposal, but I think it has been six years since the last serious proposal. Please comment at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Autowelcome_new_registrants. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:10, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
It is not the same article (it's actually less than half the original size and with 9 fewer references). G4 would not apply, but it does not seem to overcome the concerns of the AFD. Primefac (talk) 23:19, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
Had enough, taking a break....
Taking a break, probably not permanently, from AfC, it's bad enough having to deal professional victims, but waking up to find people insulting and threatening to come find me and "solving this woman's problem", and now claiming I have a "problem with people" when I do this to try help people and do something positive in this miserable existence. Sorry as I know this will not help the growing backlog, but hopefully others will just step in and it will make no difference. All the best KylieTastic (talk) 11:35, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
I have yet another question about when sandboxes, or subpages of sandboxes, may be moved to draft space. There was an issue about copyright that has been resolved at Village pump (policy). What happened is that a productive editor had some drafts in sandbox subpages that had been there for between one and four years. So far, so good; they were meant to become Wikipedia articles in the future. A reviewer, User:Shadowowl, moved some of them to draft space. Two of them were marked as submitted for AFC review. I don't know who submitted them, because they have been deleted and the histories are only visible to administrators. The editor objected strongly that the drafts were still works in progress and were not ready to be moved to draft space, and that they contained copyrighted material which would be deleted. I ran them through Earwig's copyvio detector and found that they were indeed copy-pastes of material from the Internet. They may have been sitting in sandboxes for years waiting to be paraphrased (and, hopefully, not close paraphrased), but they were copyvio, and three editors at VPP have agreed with me that copyvio applies anywhere in any Wikipedia namespace.
So the question of whether the copyvio should have been deleted has been answered. My real questions now are when is it reasonable to move drafts from sandbox space to draft space, and why and by whom they were submitted for review? Presumably the author did not submit them for review, knowing that they weren't ready. User:Shadowowl - Did you submit them? Why? I think that that you may have made a small mistake that is smaller than the mistake of keeping copy-pasted copyright materials in a sandbox for a few years. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:18, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
I've looked at the deleted histories: Shadowowl submitted them to AfC before moving them to draftspace (and then back to userspace, for some reason). – Joe (talk) 22:43, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, User:Joe - Shadowowl moved them back because btphelps demanded, very forcefully, that they be moved back. I would still like to ask User:Shadowowl why they submitted them to AFC. Is it because they had been sitting in sandboxes too long? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:47, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
My opinion, which is not necessarily firm but open to change, is that it depends in the user's recent activity and the quality of the drafted topic.
If the user has been active in the last six months, ask them about it, but do not move their userpages without very good reason.
If the drafted topic is hopeless, do not move it to draftspace. Use {{userpage blanked}}.
If the user is inactive, and the draft is plausibly notable, then you may at your own discretion move it to draft. You will necessarily have to have done at least a quick search, both on Wikipedia to see if it is already in mainspace (it is not uncommon to copy-paste from userpsace), as well as outside in chekcing notability. You must post an explanation on the user's talk page. Note that you are moving it to an unwatched place where it will later be auto-deleted, so it is probably an onus on you to advertised somewhere, probably at the most related wikiproject. If you move someone else's userpage to draftspace (or mainspace), you are overtly taking a level of responsibility for it. There is nothing wrong with leaving others' userspace alone.
In this case, the user was and is active, although the sandbox subpages had not been edited for months or years. I think that there were two mistakes, by a reviewer in moving pages without discussion, and by submitting pages that were not ready for review, and by the editor in maintaining copyvio material in sandboxes on the good-faith assumption that copyright didn't apply to it. (Good faith meant that they didn't get blocked or warned, but the pages still had to be deleted.) Robert McClenon (talk) 00:55, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
So we agree, and I'm sensing broad agreement, active user's userpages shouldn't be moved without first attempting discussion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:01, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, there was a lot of me in its writing. A few others, but not many. But I never liked the shortcut, because “stale” isn’t quite right. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:38, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
The wording in WP:STALEDRAFT is that it applies to userspace only when the user is, long inactive or confirmed deceased. Clearly neither applied here. So, there was no reason to be deleting these userspace drafts. Submitting someobody else's draft for review without consulting them is just plain wrong. Like WTF wrong. Don't do that. Copyvio is a different question. We certainly need to be enforcing copyright requirements anywhere on wikimedia servers. Userspace may not be part of the encyclopedia, but it's certainly on wikimedia hardware (and licensed under WP:CC BY-SA) so copyright enforcement is essential. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 13:36, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
User:RoySmith - If you are saying that there were two mistakes, keeping copyrighted material indefinitely on the WMF server, and unnecessarily messing with the sandboxes, then we agree. Is that your drift? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:19, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
I unwittingly created the COPYVIO situation when I created those drafts, thinking I would return to them soon. But I forgot about them and got involved in bringing several articles to GA worthy levels among other things. Mea culpa. But I would like someone to reprimand Shadowowl for his violation of policy, courtesy, and common-sense. — btphelps(talk to me) (what I've done)20:08, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
Personally, I've been sifting through the oldest of the 34,000 userspace drafts, which are nine years old. Most of those accounts haven't edited for a similar period of time. I personally never move them to draftspace, where I expect they will be ignored for six months and then deleted. About half the time they qualify for speedy deletion under U5 and possibly G11 and I tag them as such. The other half of the time I blank them. The only exceptions are if I consider them to be plausible drafts. If they're of articles already in mainspace, I'll either merge the content myself or leave a note on the talk page stating that there's a useful draft and leave the draft as is. If there isn't a mainspace article and I consider the subject notable (or probably notable) and the draft decent, I'll mainspace it.
I don't believe that inactivity (or lack thereof) of the author in question should matter. Everything on Wikipedia belongs to the project, and can it do with it as it sees fit. If the creator is still active, it would be courteous to ask them before nominating a page for deletion (unless it is something serious, like G10 or G12), as the uses of these things are not always obvious to other editors. For example, yesterday I found a collection of quotes at User:Ruskin/Example/Draft of article. I considered tagging it under U5, as blatantly not related to Wikipedia goals, but because the editor is still active and has recently edited the page, I decided to ask them about it first. Ruskin responded that he keeps the quotes because thinks he may find them useful while writing articles in the future, and because they reflect on him and how he thinks as a Wikipedia editor. Both of these are acceptable uses of one's userspace.
But if you're not thinking about deletion, just do whatever is you want to do. If the editor is paying attention and cares, they can speak up. Sometimes they've just forgotten about it and need the page to be edited to remind them. For example, yesterday I also found a draft by Sandstein, a prolific content creator and an admin with more userspace drafts than he has time to keep up with. After doing a quick Google search and finding a couple more sources than are in the article, confirming its notability, I moved User:Sandstein/Drafts/Muri statuette group to mainspace. I honestly wasn't sure how he would react (he was grateful), but the userspace, like all other project spaces, exists to serve the encyclopedia. If the project would be better served by having a draft in the article space, the user in question doesn't have a right to keep it in their userspace indefinitely. There is no deadline, of course, and an editor who is working on a draft should be able to do so in their userspace, without the interference of other editors. But Wikipedia is not a webhost: you may not sit on your drafts indefinitely. If you are not improving it (say, you haven't edited in a year and a half), your draft is being useless, and other editors have a reasonable right to promote it to mainspace, move it to draftspace for further collaboration, adopt it as their own, or whatever other action would make your draft useful to the project again. —Compassionate727(T·C)20:36, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
Reviewing standards
I was concerned when I came across Draft:Napoleon Oak (Lausanne) at G13 and since then I have become even more concerned. The creator submitted the draft and received a pretty favourable comment from reviewer 1 who asked for more references when it was this version. I am sympathetic with this. The creator added more references and reviewer 2 gave an unfavourable comment and rejected this version, again asking for more references. Six months went by to G13 when I made some edits and contacted the creator who made more edits and resubmitted. Reviewer 3 then rejected this version saying it did not meet the requirements of WP:What Wikipedia is not and commenting about notable topics with remarks that clearly are not related to WP:NOTABILITY. I suppose the word "notable" is not being used in the usual sense in Wikipedia but is referring to the supposed failure to meet WP:NOT.
For myself, I now avoid draft space and have never submitted via AFC so I am not familiar with the standards but I do realise that pages in draft space have become treated differently, and more stringently, from other parts of the encyclopedia, However, I'd be interested to know whether the AFC Wikiproject endorses the reviewing standards used for this draft. (BTW to help with WP:BEFORE, there are a couple of audio references from Radio Télévision Suisse used at fr:Chêne de Napoléon which help notability although my French is too poor for me to analyse them properly).Thincat (talk) 05:37, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
I’m thinking that the threshold for declining should be the same as for WP:DRAFTIFYing. If you found it during NPP, and would leave it in mainspace, you should accept. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:58, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
I don't find the WP:NOT review convincing at all. It appears to invent a notability standard for trees, which is bad enough, but it's notability that's deficient, then the decline should be a declined based on WP:N, not WP:NOT. I don't agree with the idea that Drafts should be promoted as if they were in NPP, either, and while (as I have mentioned in a section above) the AfC guidelines literally contradict each other, I don't believe articles should ever be approved through AfC with copyvios (but ones that would be non-fatal at NPP), nor should they be approved through AfC until they have sourcing in the article sufficient to show notability, that too is a stronger standard than AfD or NPP adhere to. --joe deckertalk07:25, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
I think standards should be different for commercial and noncommercial topics. For commercial topics, AfD should harden (it’s happening, following the hardening of WP:CORP). For noncommercial topics, AfC should not be harder than AfD currently is. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:05, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
*nods* I realize there's a range of views on this, and fair enough. :) My hope is that people who are asking for assistance get articles to a point where they'll not only likely survive an AfD, but avoid being nominated for one as well. "Two good sources", in the article, is not a lot to task. --joe deckertalk18:20, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
For historical people or events, like 1000 years ago, it is very easy to have verifiability but not sources meeting the GNG. I think these topics do and should get an easy run. For currently trading commercial topics, no question of verifiability, and a plethora of superficially GNG-meeting covert advert advertising, I think a different much harder line is taken, as it should be. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:00, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
This. You don't even have to go back 1000 years to be in an era where literacy was rare, and record keeping spotty (with some exceptions, such as many religious institutions being fanatical about recording births and deaths). Today, anything and everything is captured by the internetz, which means our standard has to be higher for recent events. -- RoySmith(talk)23:12, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
I might quibble, but really, my question would be, what does this have to do with this article? The draft does have "two good sources" today, why are we quibbling a moot question when the actual reason it is not currently in mainspace is, according to the last reviewer, WP:NOT, and I still can't make sense of that at all. Can anyone? --joe deckertalk06:16, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
TroutShadowowl, the tree in his front yard is definitely not as notable as this tree. As for what should be done with things like this, articles that don't fail the core guidelines (WP:N, noting that notability is an attribute of the subject, not the article, so if you can find the sources on the Internet, they needn't be in the article, WP:V, WP:BLP, WP:POV. etc.), contain copyvios or qualify for speedy deletion (under article or general criteria) should be accepted. There's no reason you cannot accept a draft and encourage the editor to make further improvements to it; most constructive contributors respond well to specific suggestions about things they could improve. —Compassionate727(T·C)19:27, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
A quick google pulling up reliable sources shows this tree to be obviously notable. Mainspace now. I’d do it myself if not on a mobile device. SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:44, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
That would be good but in my opinion the draft/article was and is already fully referenced and clearly demonstrates notability. However the article is still rather slight and to know more would be extremely welcome. Thincat (talk) 08:37, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
We frequently see these sorts of arguments for deletion at AfD. When participation is low, sometimes they even prevail. The reviewer likely mistook what they'd like to see happen at AfD with what would actually happen at AfD. This is why we like to have more than one reviewer look at each submission and why we try to review drafts before they're G13 deleted. ~Kvng (talk) 13:49, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
An article encounter
Hello, as I was doing run through on which articles to review, I noticed one that stood out to me. It surprised me.... It surprised me on how awful it is. The article is Draft:Grand Ayatullah Syed muhaammad yar shah. The spelling is horrible, no references, broken syntax, and it does not even make any sense whatsoever. How should I approach this article? Should it be deleted?. Sorry for posting this but this article really needs attention and it caught my eye very much so. AmericanAir88 (talk) 21:04, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
I see few spelling problems, one reference (probably to a book, but hard to tell because the title is presumably a transliteration of Urdu), only broken syntax is using { instead of ( and starting a line with a space so it gets put in a box, and an article that makes reasonable sense but is poorly written. Constructive commentary instead of insults in your comments would have been a better approach. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:44, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
@Calliopejen1: I apologize, it turns out there already is an article about it. But apparently the user does not listen and he renominated it in seconds. I apologize for being harsh. I have removed the comment. AmericanAir88 (talk) 01:40, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
Correction: I renominated it so that I could decline on the grounds that an article existed (since this was the most appropriate grounds to decline in the first place). Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:27, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
When AmericanAir88 did his/her review and left this message here, s/he apparently did not realize that it duplicated an existing article. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:27, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
I know I'm late to the party, but I have two thoughts - first, AmericanAir88, you should never insult the submitter. There are a dozen reasons why, but the end result is that if you can't say something nice.... Second (in regard to SmokeyJoe's question), declining a draft as a duplicate allows the submitted to know that the actual article exists. Redirecting to the main page is optional, though probably worth doing when there isn't any new information in the draft (i.e. if there's good content, we should redirect so that others can potentially merge it into the article). Primefac (talk) 14:06, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
It's fine, we all have our "oh my GOODNESS this draft sucks!" moments. Best to internalize those thoughts, though. Primefac (talk) 15:47, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
Unexplained Previous Removal Myles Arkell
So I just finished reviewing Draft:Myles Arkell and was left with a slightly confused viewpoint.
Most of the grounds are fine, and after a bit of research I confirmed that Cambridge University does count for WP:NCRIC purposes, so it also has presumed notability. NSPORTS always seems much lighter on SigCov etc, so afaik the lack isn't a problem.
Obviously it's a very short article, to the point that I'd prefer not to pass on that ground, however I am aware there are numerous sportsmen/women articles that are this short and are in the guide.
I had a look in the history to see if there was any additional content and saw that the article was removed per An RfC NSPORTS discussion for its lack of quality.
Overall I didn't come to a conclusion solid enough that I was happy to either remove the article or to accept it - hence my request for help here.
My initial impression is "not notable" - I'm not a huge cricket afficianado but my interpretation of first-class cricket is basically "they followed the rules of cricket", and thus playing for Cambridge (who has first-class status mostly because of their age) is akin to playing a collegiate/university game. Might be worth dropping a note on WT:CRIC to see if any of there members want to comment here. Primefac (talk) 15:58, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
Primefac - they do seem to in effect have been grandfathered in, which is at least clear, but I'll see what their viewpoints are on the relevant aspects Nosebagbear (talk)
Review for May AFC reviewers
The following users have been reviewing for about one month out of their two-month probationary period.
If you have constructive criticism for these users (specifically regarding their draft reviewing), please list it below so that they can improve their reviewing. If there are no issues then I'll be quite chuffed! Primefac (talk) 16:25, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
When I place project banners, I order them in terms of relevance. The AfC banner is the least relevant of all banners and I'm even surprised that it exists: the moment the article enters mainspace the AFC project becomes completely irrelevant and I'm having difficulty seeing how the continuing presence of the banner could be justified. Isn't there a less conspicuous way of tracking these articles, say using a category? – Uanfala (talk)21:52, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
The AfC banner is hardly irrelevent as it shows an experienced vetted reviewer already reviewed the page. There has been discussion that such pages should tagged as passing NPP and once we finish aligning AfC access with the NPR user right that will likely be implemented. I'm not a fan of tagging to inactive wikiprojects that have never touched a page and never will, but some users like to spend time doing that and I can't stop them. Order of boxes is irrelevent. Legacypac (talk) 23:08, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Legacypac is correct that all but the largest WikiProjects are inactive or only semi-active. Simply put, they aren't actually useful for collaboration on articles unless you need to contact someone knowledgeable about the subject and there's a large enough pool of editors that your query will actually be responded to. However, until there's consensus to deprecate WikiProjects as the basis for article assessment, we kind of need to keep applying the banners, and Uanfala has the standard approach. —Compassionate727(T·C)18:19, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
Noooo!!! It will break a lot of templates if you do this! There are bots (such as EarwigBot) that automatically update pages like Template:AFC statistics by invoking this module. The move broke this and many other pages and these bots and automated tools are not updated to use what would be the new name. I moved the page back to Module:AfC - do not touch it! ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs)22:12, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
They have received a COI notice on their talk page, but it in the interest of making sure they are actually who they claim to be they should be asked to contact info-enwikimedia.org with verification of their identity. Primefac (talk) 17:56, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Denied twice
Hi,
I didn’t know where to ask - I have attempted twice now to publish my client James Mirza - International Touring Drummer - and I have been unsuccessful in doing so.
What about the article? I don't get you. But the draft has been rejected and tagged for removal of copyrighted content from it. I had a look and can tell it would not be accepted here (as of now with current sourcing). Dial911 (talk) 06:28, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Questionable acceptances?
Feel free to unhat this if there's more to say (just copy my comments to a new *), but this editor is not an AFC reviewer and there is nothing saying that a user in their individual capacity cannot move drafts to the article space. If they are really bad moves, though, they should be contacted and/or the pages should be returned to the draft space. Primefac (talk) 16:06, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm a bit concerned that some of the drafts accepted by BrandonALF – who doesn't seem to feature anywhere on the list of participants – may not be up to our project standards. Would someone care to take a look? I'm thinking that some at least should be moved back to draft space, and that it might save time if the same treatment were extended to all of them; but I don't want to go ahead with that unless there's some agreement here. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
AfC review stats tool doesn't list anything that is reviewed by this user. Probably you should check his contributions to find out what he's been doing. Dial911 (talk) 04:48, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
The TRI Pointe Group is fine in the mainspace. The Cambridge Consultants has 60% of the sources that are primary (their own website) and not reliable. Other two seems to be on the borderline. Let RoySmith take a look as well. Then we can make a better judgement about what to do with these ones. Dial911 (talk) 15:52, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Here's my take on these. In all cases, I looked at the version immediately after it was moved to mainspace:
Cambridge Consultants. I would have declined this. Looking at the refs, many are to their own website, so I didn't even check those. The Observer is a passing mention. Vault is a directory listing. C&EN is routine coverage of a business transaction and only mentions Cambridge Consultants in passing. On the surface, Business Weekly looks like a good solid source that talks about the subject in depth. But, from the sub-head, "A worldwide window to Cambridge business, innovation & technology", I would downweight them as being a local or niche publication. It seems likely that a VC company associated with a major research university and having almost 60 years of history would be notable, but the sources presented here do not demonstrate that it meets WP:NCORP.
TRI Pointe Group. This one's interesting. I commented on this when it was in draft: it seems on the edge and other reviewers may feel that the current sourcing is sufficient. So, I guess I can't complain about it being accepted.
S-Pop Sing!. I remember looking at this one and decided not to review it. My general feeling about most pop entertainment is that it's not notable. If I had my way, I would delete pretty much every pop music act, current TV show, current movie, etc. I recognize this is a minority opinion, so I tend to just skip reviewing those.
Brynn Arens. Pretty much the same as S-Pop Sing, except that I don't remember seeing this one before.
So, what does that add up to? Two that I would have rejected and can't see how they were accepted (Moya is particularly egregious). Two that I'll abstain on. One that I would have rejected, but can't find fault in somebody else accepting. Overall, I'd like to see this reviewer enforce stricter standards, at least based on that small sample. -- RoySmith(talk)16:33, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
If this editor thinks [2] is acceptable, then they are not fit for reviewing AFCs. There is probably more to this story which I am currently following up on. MER-C15:16, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
AFCH Helper script working?
The tab for the helper script no longer appears on draft pages for me. I see that it was working for some others a few hours back. How can I tell what went wrong? I am still in the list and have it in the gadjets. I did enable globalpreferences, and it was not working after that. But after I disabled it still did not appear. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:20, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Is that an accident? I last used it successfully 10:03, 20 June 2018, but that was on a different PC, with probably an earlier version of Firefox.Now I am using version 60.0.1
I have no clue. I just checked mine after seeing your post here, and found it just vanished from my PC too. Maybe some technical glitch. Pinging Primefac just so he knows. Dial911 (talk) 04:29, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Yesterday I started reviewing drafts that turn up at the new pages listings generated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy and Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics. I immediately ran into into one total and two incomplete copyright violations. These were easy to spot, but that reminded me how frequently editors put together articles by copying and pasting. Since my memory is not so great about tools, I looked at the reviewing instructions here for help. The page does not even mention copyright. It took a while to track down links to Earwig's Copyvio Detector and CopyPatrol. Are these the current recommendations for checking for problems?
I suggest that a section on how to check for copyright violations should go into "Reviewing instructions" between "Finding submissions awaiting review" and "Placing a submission under review". The check should be done before starting to review. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:37, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi StarryGrandma, I'm not sure where you are looking, because in the Reviewing instructions it is substantially discussed under "Quick fail criteria". On the Flowchart it is in fact the first of the quick-fail checks. However, the instruction steps are not in the same sequence as the flowchart, that needs to be fixed. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:35, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
This has been a long-term issue discussed on this page before; although the instructions do mention checking for copyvio (and of course the policy applies to all pages anywhere, drafts included), reviewers sometimes miss this out and cause problems later. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)10:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Indeed. We're getting a little bit better about catching repeat offenders and asking them nicely to step up their cv-checking game, though. Primefac (talk) 11:58, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Reviewing AfC reviewing
User:Primefac, above (now collapsed) you wrote "I would be genuinely happy to discuss this with you further, but we're getting extremely sidetracked from the original point of this discussion ... Primefac (talk) 14:03, 8 July 2018 (UTC)". Thanks. Can we try here?
I am a believer in the value of revewing, not so much "reviewing of submissions", but reviewing of processes. It is a necessary part of continuing education, and of continuous improvement. Here, at AfC, it would including: the draft processing by individual reviewers; the statitics of reviewing; and individual problem cases.
Above, User:Jytdog initiated a review of the reviewing by User:AmericanAir88. I think there should be more of this, initiated from a lower threshold. It can easily turn negative and destructive, so there should be disciplined focus on strategies for improvement. If someone is passing bad drafts, work out what checks are being missed and suggest how they can be better done. A common issue is whether a draft is covert advertising WP:Reference bombed spam, or a borderline WP:CORP-passing topic. This is difficult, covert advertising in increasingly clever, more of it is being pushed into Wikipedia, and Wikipedia's tolerance for it has recently tightened dramatically, and regarding all three mentioned changes, some Wikipedians are lagging. Reviews are one way of of bringing issues into the light.
Statistics of reviewing can be valuable, and can be confusing. I question the statistic of 50% of the reviewers AfD-nominated drafts being deleted at AfD. This is highly dependent on the choices made by AfD nominators. It is dependent on the sorts of draft topics that the reviewer chooses to process. There is a big difference between the head and tail of the queue. School and athlete articles are subject to signficant biases, articles that fail WP:NSchool or WP:NATHLETE are rarely deleted as easily as other topics, for example. So, I suggested above that the measure should be: what proportion of the reviewers accepted drafts stay as articles for 12 months. Do we have that statistic being measured? I suggested 90% as a target, with an 80% minimum. These are not to be read as hard numbers. There may well be reviewers avoiding borderline cases and thus achieving 100%, which will mean that other reviewers must pick up the harder cases, maybe it should be a group, not individual, objective?
Reviewing problematic unusual drafts that defy the standard approaches would also be suitable for centralised review.
The current standard, as I understand it is as follows: Reviewers should accept all pages that, if immediately subjected to a AfD have better than a 50% chance of being kept. This does not mean that 50% of your pages can be deleted at AfD and everything is cool - a large percentage of your accepted articles will be better than this minimum standard. There are two fundamental ways to make a mistake as an AfC reviewer. An incorrect acceptance is shown by the page later getting CSD'd, Prodded, re-draftified, or clear-cut deleted at AfD. An incorrect decline is trickier to show, with the easiest ways I can see to check for these being a random audit of declined drafts, Tazerdadog (talk) 08:02, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, unfortunately I haven't figured out a good way to easily/quickly/automatically catch a dodgy decline, other than potentially people complaining at AFCHD and another reviewer noticing (or by doing a full review of someone's reviews). Primefac (talk) 01:04, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
We can look at the review history of all accepted drafts. If it was previously declined and then accepted without significant improvement, we have identified a potentially bad decline. In my experience there are are not a few of these but not as bad as it used to be when certain high-volume decliners were active here. I am reluctant to start conversations with individual reviewers in these cases because it usually quickly goes to boring inclusionist-exclusionist disagreement. ~Kvng (talk) 14:24, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
That is a shedload of content to parse. Please let me know if I'm misinterpreting you at any point. yeah sorry, I could have formatted subheadings, but didn’t want to overformalise SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I completely agree that we should hold each other accountable and continually make an effort to improve our individual skills.
I find nothing wrong having a review initiated, and having more might be a good thing. I do, however, think that Jytdog came in guns blazing trying to AA88 kicked off the project for what appears to be one questionable review and AFD vote (i.e. I think The judgement was terrible and frankly incompetent. I don't think this person should have NPP or AfC review flags is completely out of line). I think at a minimum there needs to be a habit of performing these actions, not just one incident. However, if there is a habit demonstrated then it should still be handled with a lot more tact. yes, Jytog came in heavy. I think I understand the frustration that drove that. I think systematic(?) reviews would make it easier to be gentle. Not sure. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
And now to the stats: I have no idea what you're looking for here. Are you suggesting that we have a "leader board" of what percentage of accepted drafts per reviewer are still live? There was talk of chilling effects going on in the AA88 review, and that certainly would do it. As I said in defence of AA88, they rarely show up as having an accepted draft sent to AFD, which again makes me wonder why they were dragged here by their hair for one dodgy review.
You are like a dog with a bone with this 50% thing. It's not a hard metric, it's a rule of thumb - the bare minimum for accepting a draft is that it would have a 50/50 chance at AFD if it were nominated. That doesn't mean that 50% of a reviewer's acceptances are going to be AFD'd, it means that roughly 50% of AFD'd drafts should be deleted. At the moment, we're a little higher than that (69% average from Aug '17-Mar '18), but I'd say that's an okay thing, especially with all of the caveats you mentioned like native advertising and hidden promo. Tazerdadog already explained my misreading of the 50:50 thing. Thanks Tazerdadog. Sometime I seem to overreact on a silly misunderstanding. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
On that note, I go through the Article Alerts for every month and check to see if there is anyone from our project that keeps popping up. The most anyone has had nominated in a month is four, and unsurprisingly it was Legacypac because they do so many reviews (i.e. as a percentage it was a tiny amount).
There are a ton of statistics to keep, and a dozen different ways to "track" our progress. I'm doing a handful of what I find the most useful, which anyone is able to peruse, and I'm willing to do more, but I genuinely am not sure what you're looking for from the numbers. If there had been a reviewer that I had consistently seen having pages nominated, I would have said something. I think DeltaQuad is compiling diffs for a review of a reviewer, and that's great; I just don't think we should be randomly pulling names out of a hat to be scrutinized under a microscope. Primefac (talk) 01:03, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Primefac. I inserted some quick responses in small above. How to do reviews best, I’m not sure, but I think doing them is better than not. Statistics, I will look. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
NPR has similar (but not identical ) problems. It has the fail-safe that admins must review and execute all 'declines', i.e. PRODs, CDSs, and AfDs, but there is no mechanism for checking on bad accepts i.e. 'patrolled'. In a recent backlog drive at NPR, the reduction in the backlog was dramatic, but one reviewer made so mnany thousand patrolls it would have represented 200 hours work, which would have been impossible. Users like me and DGG are experienced long-time editors concerned with the patrollling of new pages and patrolling the patrollers and we know that new pages can't be checked at that kind of cadence. We'll never know at NPR about wrongly accepted articles - NPR is the last step of the process. On AfC however, there is the check that articles still have to go through NPR. Both processes are in need of improvement, perhaps we should approach these issues holistically. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:45, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Ideally we should approach the problem holistically; in practice, any significant improvement is desirable. We don;tactually know what would be best--our experience consists of various techniques that some of us have tried. There is a great deal to support some simple measurement and review of everybody--it wouldcontibute to fairness and increase the likelihood that any fall in standards by an experienced reviewer would be noticed -- I -- and I'd suspect many of us-- have such occasional periods of atypical behavior and the sooner we know about it the better. We also need some way of identifying and doing something about the real problem reviewers. Fortunately, I have found that when I mention problems to someone, they usually understand, & if from what I say they should stop reviewing, they usually understand this also. If there are people being defiant, we can deal with it individually without a formal rule. There are two reminders I'd like to say--I think they've also ben at least mentioned above. (1) not to go by a single instance. When I come across a bad review, I normally check to see if there are others before mentioning it. (2) the proportion of reviews that turn out to be against final consensua or inappropriately declined will depend on the area and the nature. In addition to some drafts being difficul tto work with, some topics have particularly erratic results at AfD. (and 2 special points--we do have a partial check for incorrect declines--much of the time, the draft will be re-submitted and someone else will deal with it; related to this, the more experienced reviewers should at least sometimes work at the back end, and nobody should try to be completely systematic, going in chronological order regardless of their particular expertise. ) DGG ( talk ) 02:52, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
We should also be looking at our review processes; is the workflow still effective and efficient, do the decline criteria still match up with current norms and practice, etc? There has for example been some recent criticism of declining for failing Verifiability because that's not a problem that would get an article deleted. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:36, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
If there is a problem with the verifiability of the basic facts, or the facts demonstrating notability, the article will be deleted. But in many cases the templates are used when the situation is not that unambiguous. For exaple, we routinely decline articles on BLPs where there are good references but not inline citations, though I have rarely seen an article actualy deleted for that reason alone. DGG ( talk ) 22:29, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I think we should perhaps review User:AmericanAir88's work as an AfC reviewer. I am very surprised that this user moved Serious Truth to mainspace when it looked like this and contained violations of:
BLP - the criminal conviction info in the infobox is entirely unsourced as is the ridiculous trivia about his height, etc.
V - full of unsourced or badly sourced content including outright fraud, like the use of this NYT ref, which doesn't mention this person. (it is about an event, that the content claims the article subject participated in.)
NPOV and PROMO - most of the content is blatantly promotional trash ("the late, great Sean Price"? What??)
AmericanAir88 even defended their move of the page to mainspace at the trainwreck of an AfD, writing hereKeep' I passed this for a reason. It establishes notability with several good secondary references. This article is not a stub typical non notable BLP. It contains hard information that is referenced.
Please read that a couple of times.
The judgement was terrible and frankly incompetent. I don't think this person should have NPP or AfC review flags.
As I was writing this, AmericanAir88 struck their !vote at the AfD and apologized on the talk page, focusing on the behavior of the creator: I apologize for passing this AFC. I did not know a sock puppet and COI was happening. This should be deleted back to Draft. The nominator of this article has been banned.
Comment--This is terrible stuff from someone claiming to have done so many GARs. And, a quick glance of his accepts (Will be expanding, once I get to a PC.) tell me that we are looking at a removal here.∯WBGconverse03:04, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Defense I joined AFC to help with the backlog and bring my honesty and editing skills from my job onto new wikipedia articles. I apologized for passing that article. I struck out my original claim, have contributed to its deletion, and have apologized on the talk page. It was a mistake on my end and I promise it will not happen again. This does not represent the work I do for wikipedia. Everyone makes mistakes and I have sharpened my knowledge on what to look out for on reviews. AmericanAir88 (talk) 03:43, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
This sort of review is the most important thing AfC needs. Put the knives away, but do treat it seriously. Usually, AfC reviewers are overly hesitant to promote borderline drafts to mainspace, so let’s take care about chilling effects. AmericanAir88 appears to have learned something through this, and that is an excellent result. Please keep working, please keep learning. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:57, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree with SmokeyJoe, let's not go overboard here. We all make mistakes, and AmericanAir88 has readily admitted this one. If reviewers are going to err, it's better to do so on the side of accepting something dubious and letting the community decide on it. Our rule of thumb is accept anything with more than a 50/50 chance of passing AfD so even if half of AmericanAir88's accepts were deleted they would still be within the guidelines. – Joe (talk) 06:59, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I guess, no.Our rules of accepting something with a 50:50 chance never means that someone's 50% of accepted drafts have an entitlement to be deleted at AFDs. That's not an statistical equivalency, at the very minimum:) ...... ∯WBGconverse12:27, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Where did this 50:50 notion come from? I don’t think it is reasonable. I think 80:20 is more reasonable. 80% of what AfC accepts sticks in mainspace, 20% deleted or redirected, is ok. Aim for 90:10. If less that 10% of your promotions are being deleted or redirected within the year, you should loosen up. 50% deleted is way too low. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:27, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
It's not a notion that 50% of accepted drafts should be sent to AFD, it's that if a accepted-draft-ie-article is sent to AFD, it has a 50% chance of being deleted. We have been pretty consistently seeing ~7.5% of all "AFC-related" pages (i.e. things that might have been accepted yesterday or two years ago) nominated for deletion, with ~60% eventually being deleted, so we're pretty damn close to that 50/50 mark. A discussion a while back said that 5-10% of the accept count being nominated was a good range. Primefac (talk) 03:53, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
I may not be up to your speed in these things, but that sounds to me like a measure of expertise of AfD nominators. For AfC promoters, I think the measure to talk about is what proportion of promotions were bad promotions. A bad promotion is proven by deletion, arguably by redirections too, AfD nominations result in “keep” are irrelevant, unless the AfC reviewer wants to claim that they are very good at the borderline cases. I think. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:49, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
I would be genuinely happy to discuss this with you further, but we're getting extremely sidetracked from the original point of this discussion. That being said, I keep track of the pages that are nominated for AFD each month, and I rarely see AA's acceptances show up among the "usual" crew of reviewers. Primefac (talk) 14:03, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Agree with Smokeyjoe. This is just one draft that was accepted that shouldn't have been. And the user admits their mistake and apologizes. I really don't think that warrants a revocation of their NPP and AfC flags.--SkyGazer 512Oh no, what did I do this time?13:00, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree with SmokeyJoe too. As said Primefac: "This is less about 'overhauling AFC' as it is reminding reviewers that imperfect drafts are okay". Its normal for articles accepted at AfC to be deleted at AfD from time to time. L293D (☎ • ✎)13:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
And while sometimes it's obvious that accepted articles should not have been (copyvios should be an AfC never event), they also have to pass NPP. Learn from mistakes, but rest assured that one AfC participant is not the sole determiner of an article's validity. Natureium (talk) 16:40, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
For all those who are saying of the 50:50 clause, anybody who thought that the draft had any meager chance of being kept at an AFD, ought to revisit their understanding of our notability-guidelines.
Expanding on my reply to Joe-Roe, AFC guidelines state that in case it seems that there's a 50:50 chance at an AfD, send it to mainspace.Fine and very rational.
But, that doesn't equate to acceptance of 50 good drafts followed by 50 outright spams.
I can quite understand a borderline delete or a plain delete of an AFC-accepted-stuff (individual notability standards vary and it's highly impossible to predict the fate of certain AFDs, esp. in fields where decisions are highly erratic based on who chooses to show up at the discussion) but I wouldn't expect snow-situation in such AFDs, at the very minimum.
Thank you all for your input. It is great to see the power of wikipedia debates. Once again, I am terribly sorry for the passing of that draft. It was a mistake of mine and I promise it won't happen again. I do not want to start any arguments but WPG... Why are you attacking all my accepts? You are contradicting what other experienced editors have to say. I respect your opinions and we will see how this review plays out. Thank you all for your participation, I hope you understand my mistakes and the lessons I have learned. AmericanAir88 (talk) 14:23, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm afraid but I felt compelled to run a thorough-check on all your reviews.It's obviously directed for the betterment of the encyclopedia and to trash any unsuitable stuff. ∯WBGconverse15:38, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
I do AFC for the betterment of the encyclopedia. I apologize for passing that article. I have learned my lesson. I do not want to start any conflict. I respect your opinions. AmericanAir88 (talk) 19:54, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
A bit of psephology for y'all. On the Christina Lewis AfD, there have been complaints that reviewers don't clean up articles before accepting them, including removal of unsourced content and potential BLP violations. Based on my previous work here, to do a proper job on an a draft (which, barring the odd exception like Draft:Google Pixelbook, will inevitably be on a subject I have never heard of and hence would want to read up about in sources before trying to improve it), including reliably sourcing all content and cleaning up all prose, takes between 30 minutes and hour. (I will remove blatant BLP violations or other problematic content, but these are the easy pickings and tend to be the exception rather than the rule). Based on a backlog of 1,600 drafts, and about 3-4 hours spare time a day maximum to do work here, it would take me a year to clear the backlog. Life is too short, and perfection is not required, so a lot of the time I accept it if I believe somebody can clean it up.
User:Ritchie333 What I wrote was I just cleaned this up. There were some very basic flaws, like calling the subject by her first name, repeating her dad's accomplishments four times, and some promotional dreck. But there is keepable core. Those issues should have been addressed before this was moved to mainspace. I did not say that the reviewer should have cleaned it up. To use an active voice instead of passive, what I was saying was - the reviewer should have rejected the draft and asked the creator to fix these fundamental issues". I will add that if a reviewer decides to move something with issues that blatant to mainspace they should take the time to clean up things like that - fixing those 3 things I mentioned took me about 5 minutes. Jytdog (talk) 15:33, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
I just don't have particular confidence that the authors of said drafts would be able to do these cleanup issues, due to unfamiliarity (if not general lack of interest) with our writing policies. What is typically more likely if you decline it is the author will make a few more changes, get declined again, give up, then the draft would be deleted per G13. As for whether that's a net improvement to the project, I guess your mileage may vary. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)15:47, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Really? If somebody is here in good faith and gets concrete feedback like "Please exchange the first name for last per WP:SURNAME; please 2) reduce the number of mentions of her father's success to 1, only in the "early life" section, and 2) make the discussion of her father and mother shorter, and 3) please remove the list of places she has published and the media mentions. If you do those 3 things, this will be good to go." that should be very do-able.... Jytdog (talk) 23:28, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
If those three things are the only things keeping the draft from being accepted, the draft should be accepted (or rather, it should not be declined). MOS/formatting/minor prose issues should not keep an acceptable draft from being moved to mainspace. Primefac (talk) 12:05, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Agree. A draft does not have to be absolutely perfect before it is moved to mainspace - imo, as long as the draft meets the notability guidelines and has no major issues, there's no problem with moving it and let others fix the minor problems if needed. Also, do note that the reviewing instructions page specifically says to avoid declining an article due to formatting issues. It also says "Article submissions that are likely to survive an AfD nomination should be accepted and published to mainspace," but it never says that an article has to have perfect prose/wording/formatting to be accepted.--SkyGazer 512Oh no, what did I do this time?12:32, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
In thinking about your last point, I think the argument historically has been that a "nice-looking" article is less likely to even be nominated for AFD, much less have to worry about its chances. I know that I've seen some drafts in the past where I immediately went "JEEZ this is AWFUL", but after cleaning it up it actually turned out to be a halfway-decent draft. So... ugly articles attract more scrutiny? Primefac (talk) 12:38, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
User:Primefac content that blatantly violates PROMO is not a minor thing but is rather major, and articles with such content should never be moved to mainspace.Jytdog (talk) 03:59, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I think, Jytdog, that PROMO is getting through because not all appreciate what is blatant. Many do not appreciate that sources based on interviews, whether explicitly an interview with questions and answers, or a story reporting information obtained by interviewing the CEO, founder, communications person, or any other employee, or drawing from press-released information, is not independent, is not “third party”, and so does not count towards meeting the GNG or WP:CORP. I have found this controversial with some people refusing to believe that publishers like Forbes, Newyorktimes and Wall Street journal can publish non-independently, even in the face of an article obviously churning interview/press-release material. It’s not that people mean to pass PROMO material, it’s that they have not been educated to detect this covert advertising. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:21, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I was talking about content, and the page as it was left in mainspace had blatant promotional content. I struggle a bit with your extension of the word "churnalism" which narrowly speaking, is lightly editing and republishing a press release. Sources that are interviews are primary (see footnote c in WP:PRIMARY) and for that reason are not useful for N discussions. AfC reviewers should be cognizant of that for sure. Jytdog (talk) 18:52, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
The failing of interview-based sources are better and easier failed as “non-independent”. Churning of press-release information, I mean often proffered sources are just repeating the facts, promotional as they are. These sources are both primary sources (mere repetition never turns a primary source into a secondary source), and non-independent. So, interview-based sources can be shot down in multiple ways. WP:CORP was recently clarified, but I think it could be improved on this front: interview and press-release based sources do not demonstrate notability. Basically, if a source contains a company quote without being subjected to critical commentary, I immediately discount that source for notability test purposes, and I think everyone should. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:13, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
How to we get more (qualified) reviewers and encourage those already signed but not active to re-activate.....?
We had a good run and got the backlog down to a more sensible level, but it's creeping up fast again partly it looks because a few reviewers have backed off in the last week or so (although some have increased).
As User:Primefac/AFCStats#Summary shows the difference between the backlog reducing or increasing is small swings in the submitted/day and reviewed/day. The stats also show ~250 submits a day this month, but from my stats we have only reached that two days this month.
My thought is it would only take a few percent increase in: the number of participants; the number of active reviewers; the average number of reviews per month per reviewer, to keep the backlog locked down to this level.
Do we currently have any way to recruit or it is just relying on editors randomly finding this, like I did?. Are there suitable places to put say quarterly shout-outs for qualified reviewers?
Should we not do what NPP does and use MediaWiki message delivery or similar to just post blacklog status updated to participants? Maybe some of the ~543 inactive have just not given it a thought, and a poke now and then would get just a few to re-activate?
I'm not talking about organising backlog drives etc, just raising awareness of the project now we have WP:ACPERM to encourage the qualified reviewers to help.
@KylieTastic:, @Lee Vilenski:, @Primefac:. An AfC Newsletter does seem like a good idea. It would also help to notify project members of current and upcoming developments that are relevant to AfC. We have found at NPP that Newsletters should be sent at most once per month, higher frequency seems to lessen their impact. We have found sharp decreases in the backlog are common immediately after newsletters are sent out so they do seem to be a good motivational tool. We have a Newsletter Archive where you can see the sort of information that we have been sending out in the newsletter. We often draft the next newsletter in the archive, so it might be a good idea to check there before sending out an AFC newsletter to make sure we are not doubling up on the same information on developments (there is a significant overlap of users, and most AfC reviewers are on the NPR mailing list). Kudpung might have some additional thoughts regarding this, as he has drafted or helped to draft most of the NPR newsletters.
Consider Draft:Frank_Ippolito. It's been to AfD twice (redirect once, deleted once), with relatively low participation. It's been speedied twice (G11, A7 and G4). The notability is fairly borderline... he may pass muster under parts of WP:CREATIVE or even WP:ENTERTAINER (has a large fan base or significant cult following?) To what extent does the article's many deletions affect the decision to approve the submission? Cheers, Basie (talk) 22:53, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
A previous A7 or G11 deletion shouldn't really factor into a review. A previous AFD or G4 definitely should, because it means the draft has to overcome specific hurdles. A G5 should probably bring up a call to the folks at SPI. Primefac (talk) 23:04, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I declined, mostly based on the quality of the sources. It's funny, because I imagine prop/puppet/creative people don't get all that much coverage (unless you're Frank Oz) so it's perhaps harder for them to demonstrate notability than for an actor. Basie (talk) 23:21, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
To be honest, I found myself trolling the cat last night for a submission I could easily accept. I feel like I'm doing nothing but decline at the moment... maybe because I'm reviewing the oldest subs? Basie (talk) 23:29, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
To be honest, in my experience the AFC queue doesn't actually have a particularly high proportion of genuinely acceptable articles. For obvious reasons, it's used very disproportionately by the kind of people who think they're entitled to have an article about themselves on here for publicity purposes and/or simply don't know how to write and source a Wikipedia article properly — when I look at a batch of AFC drafts, generally I'm having a good day if two per cent of the drafts I look at are approvable. Bearcat (talk) 16:55, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
How to make edits in an article and relate it to the neutral point, my article has been rejected and I need to work on editing?
--Sanaafreenahmed (talk) 14:30, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I declined, because we have Harbin No 3 High School, and there hardly seems enough material for two articles. Was I right? I know we usually say "high schools get kept at AfD", but surely the same doesn't extend to separate campuses of the same school? Cheers, Basie (talk) 08:24, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
This was the subject of a rather ugly deletion discussion back in May, which resulted in delete. One of the participants in that discussion has preserved the article (here) and resubmitted (hence the 99% hit on Earwig). I would lean decline for notability (largely primary sources or passing mentions), but given the fuss last time I'd appreciate another pair of eyes.
I see there's a section on 'Popularity' now counting downloads etc., presumably in an attempt to establish notability. There's certainly been a lot of additions to the reflist. Basie (talk) 21:47, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Draft:Ulsanbawi: editor who can read Korean sources desirable
It feels like this has the makings of a pretty interesting article, with a bit of cleanup. However I can't really decipher the sources. Pinging Korean wikiproject. Cheers, Basie (talk) 22:39, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, you did say "ask questions"! I'll try to slow 'em down over time.
Point one of WP:COMPOSER suggests that if someone wrote lyrics or music for a notable composition they are themselves notable. Does this include films? Ugly (film) has been deemed notable, and Solanki wrote lyrics for it. I'm inclined to think this would survive AfD. Cheers, Basie (talk) 01:20, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I've created a user script that might help with reviewing drafts. It adds a 'draftdiff' portlet that, when clicked, shows the diff between the current revision and the page state at the time of the last review. I use it as a quick check to see if a page has actually been improved since the previous review. To use it, go to your common.js and insert importScript( 'User:Firefly/draftdiff.js' );ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 22:01, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
I freely admit I don't know what AfC was like during the earlier part of ACTRIAL (the last time that I imagine it got so high that I still on a wikibreak) and that I'm still very new to being an AfC reviewer - but the number of pending drafts has doubled in a very short period of time.
While we're gaining more reviewers from a few sources, which is nice, the numbers (or perhaps the total reviewer activity, more accurately) isn't and perhaps can't keep up with the increase.
Does anyone know what the weekly (or monthly) number of reviewed drafts has been recently?
I don't have any amazing suggestions to immediate problem resolution (there seem to have been some good chats with a WMF rep post-ACPERM RfC, but I don't know if anything is coming of that, and AfC/NPP increased coordination), but I was wondering if there was anything in the pipeworks that might help or other thoughts?
Given the rate of decline of unreviewed drafts it looks like it should be reasonably low within 2 months - perhaps some extra assistance might come from that quarter (obviously depending on status both there and here)?
We have a history of backlogs coming and going here with and without the intervention of a backlog drive. In historic perspective, the backlog we have now is not alarming and it is too early to tell whether it will be an ongoing problem. For a while there was not good support for doing backlog drives due to some bad reviews that resulted but indications from discussion in the last year are that we're willing to considering doing them again. ~Kvng (talk) 17:33, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Nosebagbear, we're not in any sort of "danger zone" since it's only at 6-weeks, but this is/was about standard for the ACTRIAL phase of things (i.e. I haven't seen a huge daily increase in submissions). The reason the backlog has increased in the last month is that three of our most prolific reviewers have either resigned from the project or taken an indefinite break from it. Primefac (talk) 22:46, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm super busy launching a new business. Hopefully others will attack the backlog - we had it beat down to 3 weeks. Part of the trick to reducing the backlog is to make tough decisions on the pages no one wants to approve. If no good reason to deny let them loose in mainspace and see what happens. Legacypac (talk) 23:40, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that this draft seems to have zero chance of ever being accepted per WP:N. Not sure if it should be tagged for CSD per WP:G11 or should go to WP:MFD instead, but it almost seems like a case of WP:U5, only in the draft namespace. The creator is a new WP:SPA who probably doesn't know about WP:NOT, so it was probably created in good-faith. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:02, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
This article is the poster child for the new reject templates. G11 doesn't apply, the draft's problem is gross lack of notability, not promotionalism. I'd let it sit for G13, or MfD it if it gets submitted a second time. Tazerdadog (talk) 05:33, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look. As far as I can see, this draft has never been submitted, unless it was submitted under another name. If this were a user page, I wouldn't hesitate in tagging it per U5; similarly, if it was in the mainspace, WP:A7 would probably do the trick. Bringing it to MfD seems like a waste since it will almost certainly result in a "Snow delete", but I guess that might be the only option available. Individual chapters of national fraternmities/sororities are probably very rarely notable enough to support a stand-alone article, so again there seems to be no way for a fantasy football league of one of these individual chapters to ever be considered notable enough for its own article. The reason I suggested G11 was because that seems to be the closest thing to U5 that exists for drafts. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:35, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
If they're not actively editing the page, let it hit G13. If they are actively editing the page, it might be worth an MFD. As mentioned it doesn't meet the U5, G11, or A7 criteria, so G13 or MFD are really the only ways to go if it must go now. Primefac (talk) 15:17, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure whether it "must go now", but it just doesn't seem like it's ever going to be an article. So, maybe it would be better to stop it now instead of continuing to let it be worked on. Maybe, I'll try a user talk page message and explain things to the creator. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:40, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
New Backlog Drive?
Hello,
As we all know, the backlog for AFC which was in a really great situation at the beginning of summer is now creeping back up. What was once a 4 week wait is now 7. There are several dedicated AFC reviewers but some seem to not put as much work into it as others (Totally Understandable).
I propose we bring back the AFC backlog drive to encourage and have a friendly competition on who can reduce the backlog the most. I received this idea when I saw the huge success "Woman In Red" had from their November 2017 backlog drive. I think we can get a downward slope on the graph for AFC articles if we bring back the drive. Encouraging, fun, friendly, and good for the encyclopedia. AmericanAir88 (talk) 16:10, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I like the idea. About a month ago, they did a backlog drive at NPP that cut the backlog from 2000+ to less that 900. L293D (☎ • ✎)20:09, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I know I'm probably being a stick in the mud, but historically backlog drives haven't worked at AFC; it just encourages people to try and crank through as many drafts as possible and often that results in either bad accepts or bad declines. Backlogs come and go; this one is due to some of our heavy hitters leaving the project. We'll make due. Primefac (talk) 22:48, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I'd like to see templates that include an easy way to score a draft on two scales: technical quality, and appropriateness of topic. There should be an easy way to say, "This is fundamentally crap, please don't bother submitting it again". That's different from it being an interesting and likely notable topic, but the article is just a mess for technical reasons. We could also cut down the backlog by just not accepting any WP:BLPs. I'm mostly serious about that. Most BLP's are just spam. -- RoySmith(talk)00:06, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
What is the connection between backlog drive and reject templates?
Past backlog drives had a formal review-the-reviewer component. I doubt much of that is routinely going on now so a backlog drive with this feature might actually help. ~Kvng (talk) 00:08, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
@Primefac:@Kvng:@Enterprisey: New Templates look great (Would love to see what RoySmith is talking about with the "do not submit again" notice. We need to become much stricter but helpful as well. Nice work Enterprisey and PrimeFac on the templates. What do you mean by "review-the-reviewer"? Of course the nominator will get mad at the reviewer so why create a new backlog or reviewer reviews? AmericanAir88 (talk) 02:38, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
The "don't submit again" thing is just that we don't give a convenient button for resubmitting the draft. Of course, the drafts can be manually resubmitted by editing wikicode, but it's hoped that removing the button will cut back on resubmissions of hopeless drafts.
Regarding rereviews, as I recall, that system was pretty helpful with giving reviewers feedback on how they were doing. Another barnstar was handed out if you did 25 rereviews, and you'd lose 2 "points" (a normal review gave you one) per failed rereview. We should look into other ways of encouraging these, but I feel like the barnstar is enough. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:46, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
I haven't been involved in the template discussion and I still don't see what this has to do with a proposed backlog drive. ~Kvng (talk) 13:14, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
L293D, funny, I was just looking at this thread - I'm still sorting out the user interface in the script for them, but I think I have it nailed down and I should have it up in beta form by the end of this editing session. So, a few hours or so. I'll be talking about it on IRC if you want live updates. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:41, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't want to derail the conversation above regarding a firm "not suitable" decline template, and I think the "workshop" for decline reasons was a bit too decentralized, so I'm going to start it in small chunks. The first to tackle (quite rightly) is the "notability" family. All of our decline notices are essentially the same, and follow the following format:
This submission's references do not adequately show the subject's notability. Wikipedia requires significant coverage (not just mere mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject—see the <insert SNG link here>, the golden rule and learn about mistakes to avoid when addressing this issue. Please improve the submission's referencing (see Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners and Help:Introduction to referencing/1), so that the information is verifiable, and there is clear evidence of why the subject is notable and worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. If additional reliable sources cannot be found for the subject, then it may not be suitable for Wikipedia at this time.
Almost everyone agrees this needs to be shortened. The various SNGs should obviously be linked to, but what else is the "vital" information that needs to be included? Primefac (talk) 14:19, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
For starters, delete the entire last two sentences, replace with:
Articles without at least two sources meeting all of the above criteria are not suitable for Wikipedia.
This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article—that is, they do not show significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject (see the <insert SNG link here>). Before any resubmission, additional references meeting these criteria should be added (see technical help). If no additional references exist, the subject is not suitable for Wikipedia.
Thoughts? I'm not sure about the "at least two" suggestion, because one good source is sometimes be sufficient for acceptance, and sometimes two sources aren't enough. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:51, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
If you have constructive criticism for these users (specifically regarding their draft reviewing), please list it below so that they can improve their reviewing. If there are no issues then they will be considered full members in good standing at the end of August. Primefac (talk) 05:58, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
I would like to thank whoever has implemented multiple decline options on a decline. This had been on my wish list for at least a year. Many submissions can be declined for multiple reasons, such as lack of corporate notability and a promotional tone, and it is good to be able to check off everything that either needs improving or is just wrong. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:43, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
And here I'd been cursing my prior self for being so stupid for not working out you could do it earlier :S In any case, thanks so much for putting it in, it's much neater and effective than hoping they also read the comment below to list the other aspects Nosebagbear (talk) 16:44, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
06:13:26, 7 August 2018 review of submission by SportingFlyer
The creator of this page created the same page in mainspace a month later. I'm a new reviewer here and am not sure what the proper protocol is in this instance. Notability is difficult to assess in this case since it's a fairly fringe sport/championship. SportingFlyertalk06:13, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Reject template. A main review option next to Decline
It's been said many times that AfC needs a firm reject option / template in complement the soft decline template. I think this has been broadly agreed to, with no one actively disagreeing. Is it fair to say that that we are all agreed, and it is just a matter of formalizing that, and getting someone to write the detail of the reject option, and to implement it?
In my imagination, how this would then work, is that on reviewing a draft, a reviewer has these options:
CSD it. (things that should be speedy deleted should be speedy deleted promptly and without fanfare.
Accept it. It would probably be kept at AfD.
Recommend (or do) a merge or a straight redirect, the topic is already in mainspace.
Decline it. It may be OK, but the author needs to do some work, or find some better sources.
Reject it. It is not suitable, though not speedy deleteable. Similar to the {{NSFW}} template. The reviewer may have rejected in error, so it shouldn't be immediately deleted, but in time it should be deleted. The reject option should state "rejected" with a very brief explanation, possibly a "sorry", and it should not encourage the author to keep trying on the same topic.
I don't know if I'm a lone dissenter but I have consistently objected to efforts to implement a hard decline through (what I consider to be) WP:BITEY reject language or, especially, deletion of drafts. I maintain that the way to deal with this is to let these submissions sit in the queue for a while when the are resubmitted and eventually and consistently decline them. Having multiple reviewers look at the draft assures that we're making a good reject decision. With consistent rejects the good-faith authors will get the message. With time and emotionally level responses, the trolls will lose interest.
I do not believe that these submissions consume significant reviewer time. I do believe that they are exasperating to some reviewers but I believe the better solution is for those reviewers to stop dealing with these drafts.
I do believe there is work to be done on our decline language and options. Primefac has created a workshop for that. I'm not sure that process is converging though. ~Kvng (talk) 14:43, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
I don't disagree with this, in my darker moments I've wanted a "decline-o-meter" with a 0-10 shot of it being acceptable. That being said, I feel the issue is two-fold: The language in the decline templates is entirely useless to humans, and we should be more aggressive with CSDing spam. Forgive my tangent, but people who aren't associated with a company don't call it "an industry-changing innovative whatever" and don't get me started with articles that say "we have expanded to over 200 locations!". I also feel MfD is somewhat under-utilized by folks, myself included. All that to say I'm not a huge fan of stringing along people who submit spam, and to a lesser extent people who submit NOTHERE articles. I feel the former should be dumped on sight, and the latter given an AGF review message. So, I'm going with neutral on this :D Drewmutt(^ᴥ^)talk15:02, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
I completely agree with the examples provided by User:Drewmutt that they should be shot on sight with G11 with survivors prosecuted. The former is marketing buzzspeak, which says nothing at all, and a single use of the first person plural should indicate Foe on Identify Friend or Foe. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:18, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
I also completely agree. MfD underutilised? You might expect me to argue, but I won’t, the problem with so many past MfDs of draft pages is that the nominations cited tendentious resubmitting when the template encourages a EditImprove-Resubmit-DeclinewithFeedback-EditImprove cycle, and when nominations posed an open notability question as if the MfD reviewers had to do an AfD style analysis and this was contrary to community views articulated at the NMFD RfC. I wish for a hard Reject response where at a simple face reading the author is not invited to resubmit. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:31, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
It would be a big improvement. My comment in passing is that it is verbose. I think the draft page “reject” should be very brief, and your version, with the myriad of potentially useful links, should go,on the author’s talk page. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
RoySmiths comments are always very good, I think I always agree with them. I love the picture.
Rejection sucks. An amelioration is to be very explicit that it is the draft topic that is rejected, not the author, or the effort, or the writing. Too many decline reasons, the ones that are too softly worded rejections, read as implying that the author hasn’t tried enough, when the real problem is that the topic simply isn’t notable. When this is the case, User:Joe Decker/IsThisNotable is an excellent response. It makes it very easy on the author and dumps the failure on the topic.
Of course, it is hard to separate criticism of the author from criticism of notability of the topic when the draft is a promotional autobiography. Difficult, but not very difficult. “Reviewer User:Example has judged the topic as not sufficiently notable for a Wikipedia article. If you disagree, follow the instructions at User:Joe Decker/IsThisNotable.” —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Is there anything stopping this from becoming reality? Do we need to take this to a mini-RFC? MER-C19:42, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
Pinging @Enterprisey:: Is there any large technical hurdle to getting something like this added as an additional decline option? My (very involved) reading is that we have a rough consensus to do that, but I wouldn't object to a quick 7 day RFC if that's contested. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:02, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
Sure, this is definitely doable. We'd need to change the decline template to give it a slightly different color scheme if the "hard decline" option is selected (if we want it to look exactly like the example above). But otherwise it's easy to add a new decline reason. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:33, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
As Enterprisey has indicated, this is trivial to change the template decline (and even the colour), but we still (still, still) do not have a specific set of criteria for when this would be used. In other words, we will either need to clarify which of the existing decline reasons will trigger this response, or create a new set of codes that will do it. Primefac (talk) 21:41, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Leave it to reviewer discretion “would have no hope at AfD, not a suitable topic”. Reviewer signs it. Surely this doesn’t need to be as objective as CSD? If it must, The anything speediable if in mainspace, mainly A7 and A11. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:58, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
No, it doesn't need to be objective as CSD, but I need to know whether I'm just creating a "version 2" (i.e. neo2) for every decline reason, creating "some but not all", or if the consensus is to have a new set of "this isn't acceptable" fail reasons. Primefac (talk) 22:05, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
I’ve always been thinking of it as singular. For things so obviously unsuitable that nothing needs saying. The answer is no. More words make the “no” only more unclear. Don’t give any reasons. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC). Template:NSFW is an example. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:17, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Weighing in here, I think that we should have many fewer reject templates than decline templates. While the reject templates should be somewhat shorter than decline templates, they should still at minimum explain that it was rejected, explain what the standard is, and provide a place to go to seek clarification (I made my template above link to the AFC help desk). I think that we want a reject template for notability, and a general reject template. My template above could serve as the notability reject template, and the NSFW template could easily be modified into a generic rejection template. If we need more templates than that, it will become clear as those two begin to be used, but those two should be enough to get started. I agree with SmokeyJoe's proposed criteria for use (Reviewer discretion, unsuitable topic with no hope at AfD). On a minor sidenote, I think the acronym NSFW is a bug, rather than a feature, and is just going to confuse and unnecessarily bite newbies. I'd change it to "Not suitable for inclusion" and drop the acronym. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:22, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Few reject templates, absolutely. I suggested exactly one. There are too many decline templates, they encourage communication-by-template and discourage real communication. Two reject templates, a template for notability, and a general reject template, OK, but no more. The general notability reject template would link to WP:N, no more. WP:N contains sufficient secondary links. The general reject template maybe link to WP:5P. No more. More words means less read it. "Ask for Advice"? Great, but remove the wikimarkup, remove the box, decrease the font. Big text in a box at the end tells the reader that they can skip all small text and go straight to the big text in the box. The NSFW is a good example for the simplicity desired, not a good example for the name, although I admit that I seem to be able to remember it. After posting a reject or decline template, the reviewer should then be encouraged to post any addition comments, untemplated, onto the draft talk page or the author's usertalk page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:32, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Made from Tazerdadog's. Some cleaning required. Do not add more words or links. Reviewers can add comments to the draft talk page or the author's user talk page. We still need all new Wikipedia registrants to be autowelcomed. The template {{Welcome}} contains information and links that every newcomer should be offered *before* they do anything. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:48, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Looks good. I completely agree that the goal should be a firm "no" with as little wriggle room as possible. I have two comments: the template isn't forceful enough -- maybe some red text or background might help. My second comment is that you're dealing with editors who didn't bother familiarizing themselves with the purpose of this website. I strongly doubt they have the initiative to read about notability. You should be prepared for a flood of "Why was my piece of garbage rejected? Help me, I can't be arsed figuring out what an encyclopedia is before I started editing one!" type queries, which only serve to waste reviewer time. The rejection reason needs to stress that the problem can't be fixed. WP:5P is necessary reading; the general template does not have this problem. I've phrased things in terms of being "contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia", which has been used by {{uw-spamublock}} since I put it there over two years ago.
Oh, and change the templates that get posted to the submitter's talk page to remove the sugar, any encouragement to resubmit and the Teahouse invite. MER-C20:29, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
I think forcefulness comes from simplicity. No. Save eye hurting colours and flashing big text for follow up messages later if you wish, I think that sort of thing reflects the reviewers’ frustration but does not increase effectiveness in communication. KISS. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:44, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
I support the one just above that says "Submission rejected. This topic is not sufficiently notable for inclusion in Wikipedia.". Grey background or red, it doesn't matter much. Someone asked about the criteria for using this template instead of the normal decline templates; that is simple, use this template whenever you have done a full WP:BEFORE notability assessment and the topic has abysmally failed. Don't use this template just because the submission is awful or unsourced, 'rejecting' a topic should also require a search for additional sources to verify that the topic is not notable. In short this would change the way drafts are declined, creating a two tier system: Declining doesn't necessarily require assessment of the topic, only an assessment of the submission, while rejecting a topic with this new template requires that the reviewer fully assess the topic as we would at New Page Patrol, and determine that there is no way that it could qualify for an article at the present time. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)22:56, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Yes! Harmonizing with NPP is a very good idea. This is an important step. "Reject" would correspond to a NPP decision to CSD#A*, or AfD, or PROD. "Decline" should correspond to a NPP decision to WP:Draftify. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:48, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Enterprisey, can we work toward implementing this? A 'Reject' option which displays the above template as a hard decline. The option in the AFCH tools should remind users to do a notability search before using the hard decline 'reject' option. Do we need to have a !vote on this before implementing? — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)22:38, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I can absolutely start working on this. I would think anybody with objections to this idea would've voiced them in this thread, but I'll have this feature in beta for a while, so that'll of course result in a long comment period. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm late to the discussion, but I have some thoughts about the templates:
Someone should fix the massive amount of whitespace between the rationale and the line about the reviewer (I took a look at it but didn't want to screw up the template syntax)
I've reworked the notability template a little bit. The three main changes are a whitespace removal, removing the line about the reviewer, and adding a second bullet point about the unfixability of notability issues. This change is big enough that I'm adding the template separately for comment. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:59, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
NO to the second dot point. More is not better, let alone a mere essay that overlaps and thus detracts from WP:N. The submitter, if they want to try again on that or another topic, needs to read WP:N. If you think that essay is so valuable, get it linked from WP:N. Adding the second line, with a second link, probably reduces by much more than half the chance that they’ll read either link, and the second more invites argument than understanding. The point of the reject is to say “no”. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:23, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean. “This topic cannot be sufficiently notable”? What I think is important is that when an author submits something that is hopelessly non-notable, they receive a simple note pointing them to WP:N. WP:N is carefully crafted, AfC should not try to reproduce it. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:29, 5 July 2018 (UTC). AfC should NOT be duplicating the role or language of WP:N. A critical “not” missed, sorry. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:37, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Can we drop the painful colouring and extraneous features and markup. Save the eye pain and ALL BOLD BLINK TEXT for recalcitrant resubmitter, but for a first submission, no thank you, Rejected, not suitable, KISS please. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:38, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
I changed the color back. The bold text is formatted the same way as every other AfC status template. It may stand out less if we were to add more text to the template, but I think the current one sentence is all we need. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:46, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
For a simple single message (“rejected”), less is more. I suggest the general reject link only to WP:5P, and the notability reject link only to WP:N. The teahouse “ask for advice” is ok. Who rejected, and whys, any further comments, they should go on the talk page, though if there is a discussion to be had, that calls for a decline not a reject. A pale pink is at least much better than a burning red. Less box borders would be better, the markup and decorations are distractions from the route to WP:5P or WP:N. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:04, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I've been coding, and the beta version is nearly ready. I've also created a talk page template, located at {{Afc reject}}. I am not committed to the wording or layout, so please feel free to edit it. In particular, I'm not sure whether we should include a note somewhere along the lines of "do not resubmit the draft", since it feels a bit bitey to me. Feedback & thoughts are appreciated. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:54, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has been rejected. Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer.
If you believe the draft cannot meet Wikipedia's standards or do not wish to progress it further, you may request deletion. Please go to the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window, add "{{db-self}}" at the top of the draft text and click the blue "publish changes" button to save this edit.
As I have commented many times,that is waywaywayway to wordy. They submit. The answer is "rejected". Give them one link, WP:N or WP:5P, and optionally the box for asking a question (at the teahouse). DO NOT use the word "resubmit" anywhere. If resubmission is at all a possibility, do not use "reject" but use "decline". If resubmission is not on the cards, why introduce the concept? KISS principle please.
Asking spammers and jokers to consider {{db-self}} is a complete waste of space. Links for help are all over the place, stop duplicating them. The more written the less likely it is to be read. The link to ask question at the teahouse is enough. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:51, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Way too bulky. The bullet for db-self should go, it's going to be ineffective and bitey. Similarly, we want to dump all of the people following up into one place, not split them up amongst the teahouse, IRC, and the reviewer's talk page. We should pick either the AFC help desk or the teahouse (my choice) and stick to it. Finally, your short paragraph at the top doesn't say a lot, and uses a lot of words to do it. Cut out the part about additional comments from the reviewer, it's rare that there will be advice that's both useful and specific to the draft. The top bit should be one sentence max, and more likely a phrase. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:04, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
I removed a bunch of sentences. I agree with the help thing, although I feel like IRC can be very helpful, so I left that in along with the help desk. The reviewer has the option to add an invitation to the teahouse, of course. (Actually, come to think of it, it sounds like we should just pick one and link it in the body of the message, and then not send an additional teahouse box, but that's a discussion for another day.) Enterprisey (talk!) 03:53, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
A quick note while you wait for reject options to appear in the script -- the templates can be used manually:
{{AFC submission|d|e|reject=e|...}} for unencyclopedic submissions
{{AFC submission|d|n|reject=n|...}} for non-notability
What should happen when an article is rejected using one of the above templates, and then resubmitted anyway? The way I see it, we have several options:
Reviewing the article:
Immediately re-reject it using the same reject template. No thought, no evaluation, 5 second review.
Do a quick skim of the draft to "sanity check" the rejection. If the rejection doesn't appear egregiously wrong, re-reject it.
Check the intervening edits between the first rejection and the current version. If the page hasn't radically shifted re-reject it.
Perform a full re-review, as if the reject template were any other decline template.
Additional actions:
Nominate the page for speedy deletion (G6)
Nominate the page for speedy deletion (some new criterion)
Let’s wait and see. I think that it won’t happen, and this is the main reason for a simple reject. The current declines are far from clear and many submitters don’t get the message. If resubmitted, firstly you know that the submitter has some wiki skill, they are not just pressing a big blue button. They may be right, the reviewer may have been wrong. Otherwise, the “tendentious resubmission” argument is actually sound, unlike presently as the decline template tells them to do it. It should be reviewed again, and sent to MfD if twice deserving flat rejection from two reviewers. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:27, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
Beta testing
I have uploaded a version of the script that has the "reject" option at User:Enterprisey/afch-dev.js. Install it just like any other user script. Remember to disable the gadget in the preferences before using the beta version. I also put in multiple decline reasons for fun, since I had the code there already. Comments and bug reports are welcome, especially concerning the user interface. (I went back and forth a bit about making it a separate button in the main menu vs the current option-based interface; let me know which one you prefer.) Enterprisey (talk!) 06:55, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
AfC drafts in New Pages Feed available for testing
Hi AfC reviewers -- I'm Marshall Miller; I'm a product manager at WMF working on a project to make it easier to prioritize AfC and NPP pages for review by adding AfC drafts to the New Pages Feed along with ORES and copyvio scores. Though I've been posting weekly updates on the project page, I last posted here in May. I'm posting again because this project has reached a milestone: it's now possible to test our progress so far using the Test Wiki. All reviewers are invited to try out the evolving New Pages Feed before any changes come to English Wikipedia, so we can make sure to resolve important issues before they affect the encyclopedia. Thank you, and we'll look for any feedback on the project's talk page or in Phabricator. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
drafttopic added to afc-ores
Just a heads up, I've added drafttopic (Topic guessing via ORES) to User:SQL/AFC-Ores. Might help people match up with topics of interest to work on. If it says "Best guess", it means ORES could not determine what the most likely topic was, so I used the top 2 by confidence%. SQLQuery me!01:01, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
There's a new beta version of the script out at User:Enterprisey/afch-dev.js with reject reasons and multiple reasons. Install it just like any other user script, and remember to disable the gadget in the preferences before use. Bug reports and comments, especially concerning the user interface, are welcomed. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:57, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
User:Enterprisey - How do I enable the script? And is its benefit that it allows me to do a hard decline as well as a soft decline? I see that I can use multiple reasons without enabling the script. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:07, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
The script can be enabled by placing {{subst:iusc|User:Enterprisey/CustomSummaryPresets.js}} on a new line on Special:MyPage/common.js. You also have to disable the AFCH gadget in the preferences, as they interfere. I'm not sure how multiple reasons made it into the main gadget, since I'm pretty sure they weren't there before, but so long as it's not too buggy I'm fine with it. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:16, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Go to your preferences, click the gadgets tab, scroll down to the editing section, and uncheck the fifth box from the bottom (labelled "Yet Another AFC Helper Script: easily review Articles for creation submissions, Files for Upload, redirect and category requests"). —Compassionate727(T·C)02:15, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
User:Enterprisey - Thank you. It works fine. I have verified that Reject works because there were two clueless submissions. I would like to see more options on Reject, such as one for blatant promotion that is tagged G11, but that is a minor issue. It works and is useful. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:13, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Okay. I have declined them rather than rejected them, indicating that they read like advertisements (and whatever else is wrong), but then tag them as G11. It doesn't matter if you can resubmit something that has been speedied. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:56, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
MER-C's general rejection of Draft:Beatrice Sargin I would call incorrect. It is not contrary to 5P. It is a good faith submission for an article on someone who doesn't meet WP:PROF.
20:07, 16 July 2018 Bearcat (talk·contribs) moved page Beatrice Sargin to Draft:Beatrice Sargin over a redirect without leaving a redirect (article must be submitted for review through the AFC process; you do not have the right to simply move it into articlespace yourself without review.)
I ask that this be put back into mainspace and AfD-ed. This draftification - rejection is an unacceptable speedy deletion method functioning as an end run around WP:DEL. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:02, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
MER-C, let’s assume that was a reasonable decision, egregious covert advertising meaning block and reject their drafts. They can appeal the block, and revisit the rejected draft very easily for six months, so that seems fine. The problem is transparency, or clarity in the record. Despite being loath to see many variations arising on the simple concept of “reject”, I suggest this needs a “reject for covert advertising or ToU UPE violation” or something like that? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:26, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Can we roll that into a general reject for promotional content? Many promotional AFC submissions also likely have undisclosed conflicts of interest. How about "Wikipedia does not accept marketing, public relations or promotional material" or "Editing Wikipedia for marketing, public relations, publicity or promotional purposes is prohibited"? The phrasing needs to discourage "I've (trivially) rewritten this, it's not promotional" type resubmissions. If not, just use the UPE template wording or reject using the existing "contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia" reason and add the UPE template. MER-C12:46, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
I think no, don't roll completely separate things together. I now see three frequent types of submission that deserve outright rejection.
(1) Completely unsuitable topic, not even imaginably a serious idea for an encyclopedia article. Intended for what looks like nonsense and tests. WP:5P is the best reference.
(2) Definitely not notable, not even nearly maybe. In the opinion of the review, the topic looks decidedly non-notable, not amount of editiing can fix that, the sources are inadequate. The starting page for the explanation is WP:N. Specific nuances, and detailed explanations for particular topics all step downstream from WP:N. Let the newcomer start at WP:N.
(3) Covert advertising? WP:PAID violation? Are these the same? When the draft is promotional (but not G11-elibible, because G11 consideration should come first) and the author is decided to be a WP:PAID-violating covert advertiser, it is of course appropriate to "reject", and not appropriate to give them a "resubmit" button. A critical factor here, I think, is that the author is blocked. Do you agree, User:MER-C? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:31, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
The new reject template seems to be working pretty well. However, the talk page notice could be improved. Because my comment is placed inline with the rest of the message (after "The comment the reviewer left was:"), it's not very easy to read. The comment should be placed in a gray box like the decline template. Also, it would be nice if there were an option to tag the draft for speedy deletion while rejecting it. When a draft meets speedy deletion criteria, it makes much more sense to reject it than to decline it, since the editor would be wasting their time if they tried to submit it again. Thanks for the excellent work so far! — Newslingertalk19:48, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't see any resubmit buttons; they're all marked |small=yes which hides that. Also, for future reference, if you use AFCH to "Clean submission" it will move all of the comments under the decline notices automatically. Primefac (talk) 13:30, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Suggestion: self-catagorization
It would be useful if the article creation wizard had a screen where people could self-select a broad category. Perhaps offer them the list from Category:Main topic classifications. Then, as a reviewer, I could only review things I was interested in and/or knowledgeable about. I think that would make reviewing more efficient. -- RoySmith(talk)16:20, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@RoySmith: I just wanted to flag that this was an idea that was discussed pretty positively in the lead up to this project. The group discussed both allowing the author to indicate a topic, or using the new ORES topic model. We ultimately pursued other ideas, but there is still some good discussion in there for reference. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Is NPP required or recommended? I'm interested in joining this project, but I don't have that right, and I was wondering if it was worth going to WP:PERM before going here. Thanks! LittlePuppers (talk) 20:42, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
No need to have it. Most AFC reviewers don't actually have the NPP ('patroller') tag. All that tag lets you do is mark new pages (whether entirely new, or just moved to mainspace from a draft or other) as patrolled. As I recall you can't mark pages as patrolled that you moved to mainspace yourself anyway, so if you had the patroller tag, all you'd be doing with it at AFC is patrolling moves done by other reviewers. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:34, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Some of us think it should be, that NPP and AfC should be harmonised. Some counter that a bad AfC accept will be caught by NPP, but I argue that if you cannot get the NPP right, you are not suitable for AfC reviewing. You look probably OK to me. I suggest you go to Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/New page reviewer and see what they say. AfC handles a lot of junk, but junk aside, at AfC you can do a lot of damage to a newcomer. I don't think that AfC should be considered a stepping stone to NPP. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:47, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, as others have said, having NPP is definitely not a requirement for AfC, or vice versa, although I'm pretty sure there have been a few discussions about merging the two somehow. In response to SmokeyJoe, I have noticed that admins seem to be more picky about who they accept at NPP than they are for AfC. I personally am a bit doubtful that if I requested for NPR at PERM it would be accepted, although it is a right that would probably be useful for me.--SkyGazer 512Oh no, what did I do this time?00:06, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
You both are relatively new Wikipedians. For NPR, you initially look OK, but the WP:AfD stats for LittlePuppers and SkyGazer 512 are both very small. I recommend that you both do more participation at AfD before AfC. AfD is a group exercise, and if you have any misconceptions they'll be more apparent than in the relatively sole activities of AfC and NPP. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:37, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Oh, I probably should've mentioned - I'm actually already an AfC reviewer. :P Honestly, I didn't realize I had so little of AfD voting participation according to the stats, I feel like I'm very involved with AfD - I guess that's because I close and relist AfDs quite often.--SkyGazer 512Oh no, what did I do this time?00:48, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Okay, thank you all for the advice. I'll work on getting more involved in AfD in the near future. Is there more of a backlog here or at NPP, or do both have considerable backlogs? LittlePuppers (talk) 01:12, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
I checked again: I just accepted Brain-body interaction and then I patrolled it (proof). And also, SG, I would recommend you apply at WP:PERM/NPP as you meet the standards for granting and the NPP backlog is constantly growing. I know it can be frustrating there with stuff from three months ago dug up, but hopefully you should do it. L293D (☎ • ✎)01:57, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm not surprised the system let you self-patrol but given the split opinion, can it be confirmed either way whether NPP reviewers are supposed to (I suppose it sort of depends whether drafts are supposed to have two sets of eyes or "just" an AfC and a NPP reviewer, who could be the same person)? Nosebagbear (talk) 14:52, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
You can't patrol an article you've created, but you can patrol an article you've moved. That said, you probably shouldn't patrol articles you move to mainspace. I've found several new articles that went through AfC that ended up deleted. If you think this doesn't apply to you, it does. Sorry, but everyone is fallible. Natureium (talk) 14:59, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
It does seem wise to do it that way, I suspect if I pick up NPP rights at some stage I'll probably leave it - unless their backlog (which proportionately seems less bad than ours, atm) becomes massive where any reduction is beneficial, it doesn't seem to have any negative associated. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:41, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
There is no rule that an AFC reviewer cannot patrol the new article after they've approved the draft. However, just like most admins will tag a page for speedy deletion and let a second admin "approve" it before deletion, an AFC reviewer should probably let a different NPR actually do the patrolling. This increases the odds that a new page will be seen by more than one person. Primefac (talk) 15:57, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
My AfC reviews are better than my NPP reviews. I try to remember to NPP patrol drafts before I accept them. An AfC accept by should really NPP the page. Maybe someday we will get there. Legacypac (talk) 22:16, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
I've said elsewhere that we should indeed have such a rule here that a AfC reviewer must not mark patrolled. It's good for someone else to check. It improves accuracy and provides for review and audit. (It's been difficult to do this as a fixed rule for speedy deletion, because some cases ought to be removed immediately as soon as noticed, and in many routine cases (e.g. G7) a second review isn't worth the trouble, while it's proven hard to specify exactly what should be exempted.) But here there is no reason whatsoever that there would be harm done by not having a second person look. NPP doesn't take as long as AfC, because it is not necessary to give detailed reasons and reply to questions. DGG ( talk ) 03:07, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
More than Two Decline Reasons?
It appears that I am limited to two reasons for a decline with the new AFCH script. This is better than it was. Is there a reason why I can't provide three or four decline reasons? Am I supposed to Reject it if there are that many reasons?
I didn't think anyone would want to use that many reasons, although I'd be happy to add that ability. We should definitely get around to writing official guidelines for the use of Reject, now that you mention it. Enterprisey (talk!) 21:05, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
If there are a lot of problems with a submission, in addition to decline, you can slap some cleanup tags on it. ~Kvng (talk) 23:57, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
This person seems to be of importance in Indian diplomatic domain. Should it be accepted in its current state? Developments might happen once it is in the mainspace. What say? Dial911 (talk) 15:37, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
This isn't about the test script, and it is both about AFC and NPP, but I encounter it at AFC. Sometimes a submitter lists iTunes as a source. I have assumed that it is considered an unreliable or user-driven source because it will list anybody who has published any musical work, at least one that is available via iTunes,and is thus like using Amazon as a source for a book. Am I correct that iTunes is an unreliable source, and that drafts can be declined for that reason (and others)? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:55, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
It probably more of a WP:PRIMARY source than an unreliable one. All-inclusive directories like this and IMDB can't be used as evidence of notability but they are sometimes used to verify information in the article so they don't need to be removed. There just needs to be at least a couple other references to establish notability. ~Kvng (talk) 23:56, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
I have always removed itunes.apple links because they are nothing but sales pages similar to Amazon. Remove on sight. Primefac (talk) 05:10, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Link to "significant coverage" in decline message
I've noticed that the decline message in the submission template doesn't provide a link for the "significant coverage" phrase. This phrase should be linked to WP:SIGCOV for all notability categories (except for non-notable corporations and organizations, which should have a link to WP:CORPDEPTH). The link should clarify the sourcing requirements, especially for businesses. — Newslingertalk14:03, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Messages should not link to SIGCOV in the first communications with a newcomer. Links should go to WP:N, i.e. to the top of the page. It is not a good idea to send newcomers to start reading a beginner-intended guideline (WP:N) from anywhere but the top of the document. Years and years and gigabytes of talk have gone into finessing that page, and as bad as it is, its current state is considered the best we can do. Save SIGCOV, which really should be the WP:GNG shortcut to use, for editors displaying selective blindness. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:12, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Reasons for Rejection
First, I think Contrary to the Purposes of Wikipedia is harsh, and I don't want to use it except on stuff like attack pages or libel or polemics. Can there be something a little less harsh that it is still harsh enough for a rejection, such as WP:NOT as a grounds for decline?
Also, although I very much dislike Wiki-spam, I don't see Contrary to the Purpose as the best Reject grounds for G11 stuff. As a result, I decline it with 'adv' (and a notability reason or a sourcing reason) and tag it for G11.
I appreciate having a Reject option, but I won't be using it much until the reasons are expanded to include Advertising (more specific than Contrary). I haven't seen much stuff that is hopeless on notability, but will gladly reject something that is hopeless, like some autobiographies. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:24, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
General contrary to purposes should be used for complete junk, jokes, NOTFACEBOOK style posts from nice people. G11 should be considered first. If G11 tagging, why do anything else. Reject should be considered as similar to a blunt rejection as completely unsuitable and a 6-months PROD deletion. It should be used for contributions from authors who have negligible chance of every contributing usefully. The sort of stuff that has been sent to MfD and SNOW deleted (except for the procedural objections) for the past four years. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:08, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
The reason why I either Reject or more commonly Decline G11 is to get them out of the category of being tagged for review. If I tag something as G11, I would like to get it out of the review category so that other reviewers don't have to see it for the next hour until the admin comes along. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:32, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree that the first consideration should be G11. But it applies only when the article would have to be very substantially rewritten to be acceptable, not where there is a section of promotionalism that can be easily removed. I particularly use it where the subject is also very likely not to be notable enough for a WP article, because otherwise there is more of a possibility for rewriting--for a non notable subject there is usually intrinsically no real possibility of improving the article, for there will nothing much to say except advertising. A virtue of using G11 is that it serves to prevent restoring the article on request--I will sometimes add it as a deletion reason to a G13 for that purpose. DGG ( talk ) 01:50, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree with User:DGG that G11 should only be used if the entire article is promotional, and not a paragraph that can be cut. I mostly use it on short submissions that are essentially stubs when there is no real case for notability. However, I will also either Decline or Reject the draft in addition to tagging it, just so that another reviewer doesn't encounter it before the deleting admin. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:55, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Blank Submissions
Can we please change the wording of the 'blank' decline reason? I see a lot of blank submissions, and I won't use the 'blank' reason for declining them, because it assumes that a blank submission is a Requested Article about the title, and that is not what the blank submissions are. Sometimes they have a title, and sometimes they don't, being empty sandboxes. In any case, they are either tests, or just clueless. Rather than saying to use Requested Articles (which is a black hole anyway), it should say something to the effect that if you were trying to create a draft and having difficulty, you should ask for help at the Teahouse or the Help Desk. (That is what I add in the comments.) The blank submissions are not requested articles. They are mistakes of some sort by users who may need help. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:24, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
I have more than once tried to leave comments in the comments box when Rejecting a draft, but the comments do not get included. I think that the ability for the reviewer to leave comments is important, because the comments may explain why the subject is not notable or why it is inconsistent with Wikipedia. Is this a bug, which can be corrected, or is this a misfeature, that comments are only permitted on Decline (in which case the design should be fixed), or am I doing something wrong? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:28, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
I think you have entirely missed the point of "reject". If there is any point in continuing discussion with the author, you should use decline. You may wish to leave warning/wecomes on the author's talk page, but the point of "reject" for a draft is that it has no serious merit whatsoever, the author is a complete waste of time. If this is not the level, use the decline options. Also, custom comments go on a talk page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:04, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
User:SmokeyJoe - No, no, no. Perhaps you have missed something. I have not missed the point of Reject. I am not sitting on a throne making arbitrary rulings, but am deliberately applying Wikipedia policies and guidelines and common sense, and if I reject a draft, it is common courtesy for me to explain, both to the submitter and to other editors, WHY the draft is a complete waste of time. I have issues with the guideline Do not bite the newbies, because it has become a commandment that overrides common sense, but you seem to be advocating biting the submitter by simply rejecting their submission without further explanation. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:13, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Indeed. You barely contributed anything to the "reject" threads, and now you are on a completely different track. The point, big fat and bold, was that the decline templates were too soft, too wordy, and completely inappropriate for things that did not deserve a response, let along the saccharine encouragement to edit improve and resubmit. When someone throws an egg through your window and runs away, do you put up a sign where they through it from explaining why throwing that egg in your window was not the right thing to do and where to go to ask questions about better neighborliness?
I didn't take part in the discussion of Reject because I agreed with the concept. The comparison to throwing an egg is silly. That is malicious. Rejected drafts are not usually malicious. They are usually clueless. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
"Rejected" Link WP:5P. Is perfect for authors you may want to BITE but shouldn't.
"Rejected" Link WP:N. Is perfect for authors submitting on their high school teacher, etc. It was probably a joke, and linking to WP:N is not really a BITE.
If you feel the submission is a waste of time, but something makes you feel that some of your time and effort might be well spent giving advice to the author, good for you. Do it by all means. However, that is not the design expectation of the blunt "reject", and I see you asking the coders to start bloating up the simple reject option.
I am not advocating biting, but advocating keeping you mouth shut when dealing with time wasters. Every extra word after "reject" serves to weaken the message of the word "reject". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:39, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Asking the coders to make the "reject" option behave as the interface would suggest, whether by changing the feature or changing the interface, is completely reasonable. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:09, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Asking the coders to turn the template oxymoronic is not reasonable. A "reject" notice is not an invitation to stay and chat. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:14, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Your position on wanting to comment to the community is unexpected. I didn’t think a comment on the draft page or draft talk page would be considered a comment to the community. I don’t know in the community who you expect to read these comments and would expect them to mostly be deleted before being read by anyone but the author. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:16, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
User:SmokeyJoe - Also, what do you mean about custom comments? There is a feature in the AFCH script to add comments to a draft article in addition to Decline comments. Perhaps you didn't know that because you don't review drafts, but reserve the right to dump on the reviewers who do review drafts. There has been discussion of moving those comments to the article talk page, but at present they go on the draft page, and are stripped out by the Accept script if the draft is accepted. Please, before commenting on how AFC review should be done, learn a little about how AFC review is done. Comments can be entered via Comment or in a Decline, and they go on the draft page, but are stripped out on acceptance. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:13, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
I thought I installed the AFCH thing, but it didn't seem to be working. I should try again. I've looked at submitted drafts, and not seen things that I wish to spend my time on, and if I can't process them quickly, with the script working, then I probably shouldn't bother trying. I try to do NPP when I am in this mood, I find that with NPP, at least every page is sincerely wanted to be in mainspace by the author. Custom comments are comments that are better considered communication between humans and should not be templated. Wikipedia has talk pages, and these are the natural places for people to talk to each other. Inside coloured boxed templates is a terrible place to pretend to hold a conversation. If it is not a conversation, what is it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:44, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
At least having the option to leave an explanatory comment when leaving a reject review should be considered a core feature. Our templates are not perfect, and cannot anticipate very situation. Reviewers have to be able to leave a comment when there is more that needs to be said on a draft. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:56, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree with User:Tazerdadog that it should be a core feature. If SmokeyJoe wants to put the comment on the DRAFT talk page, okay, but the comment is not primarily for the author, but for the community. Tazerdog is right that there should be the ability to explain things. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Such a comment belongs on the author's user_talk page. A rejected draft should be assumed to be a pathway to G13 deletion. At the usertalk page, the conversation could nicely turn to discussing interesting mainspace articles for the newcomer to edit, or more appropriate topics. These conversations should be kept, not deleted with the rejected draft. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:12, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
The comment should not go on the author's talk page. The comment is for the community, explaining why I have rejected the document. In my opinion, the reviewer should have the ability to explain to the community why the draft is crud. Maybe you think that that is too much and that the community should read the reviewer's mind, or that the reviewer should have to explain again when someone challenges the rejection. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
The way it works for declining, the comment goes on both the draft and the author's user talk page. (It used to be just the former until I changed it by community request.) Are you saying it shouldn't be that way for rejection? Because I was thinking of making rejection behave the same way. Enterprisey (talk!) 17:27, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
I would like it to work that way for rejection also, to go on the draft and on the author's talk page. I think that SmokeyJoe is in a minority, maybe a minority of one, and has an eccentric, and, in my opinion, crabbed, view that Rejection should not be explained to the community. Maybe the community should read the reviewer's mind. I think that Rejection should work similarly to Decline, except that Rejection is final. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:20, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
In other words, User:SmokeyJoe, you want to make it harder for the reviewer, by forcing them to comment separately to the talk page, in order to make it harder for the author of the crud. Useful? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:28, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Nothing is truly final in Wikipedia. Clueless users are likely to ask stupid questions about why their drafts were rejected, and other editors who deal with the clueless user may recommend a competence block. The more information the reviewer provides, the less after-discussion there is likely to be. It is hard because you are arguing that something is truly final in Wikipedia, and nothing else is truly final. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:23, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
My point, my offered opinion, is that the author of a useless submission should be give exactly one route for continuing the discussion, and that the "Ask a question" box link to the Teahouse served that purpose well. More words, more options, obfuscates more than helps. If you offer an explanation that duplicates the information at WP:N or WP:5P, then you are inviting them to engage with you in some random place, and I suggest that you may often give a worse explanation that the well-worked text at WP:N or WP:5P. Less is more. KISS. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:13, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
I have no issue with reject comments going both on the draft_talk page and the author’s user_talk page. The draft and draft_talk page will be auto-deleted, the user_talk page is the only page the comments will be permanently recorded. Putting comments on the draft page proper diminishes the simplicity and clarity of the “Rejected” message, and invites contorted debate about the rejection. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:12, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Where to Put the AFC Comments
There are two separate issues here. The first, on which everyone but SmokeyJoe seems to agree, is that the reviewer who Rejects a draft should be able to enter comments that go where comments go. At present, that is the draft page and the user talk page. I think that we can agree on that. The second, which has to do with the existing functionality of AFC, is whether comments should go on the draft page (to be removed on acceptance) or on the draft talk page, to be permanent (unless archived or deleted). I think that the draft talk page, which will become the article talk page if accepted, is better, but this is long-existing functionality and should not be changed without deliberation. I think that we are in agreement (except maybe SmokeyJoe) that the omission of the comments on a Reject is just a bug and can be fixed. Serious discussion is in order about whether putting the comments on the draft rather than the draft talk page is an existing misfeature. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Comments don't belong at the top of pages. Wikipedia did that early in 2001, but soon developed the talk age concept. Every page has a talk page. Comments about a page go on the talk page. Comments particular to a person go on a usertalk page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:28, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
I would prefer that the AFC comments go to the talk page, but, since this is an established misfeature, it should not be changed without discussion. (Another established misfeature was the Teahouse top-posting. That was changed, but only after adequate discussion.) Robert McClenon (talk) 00:23, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
If comments were to go on the talk page, I think we both would be happier. I think it would better prepare the author to understanding how pages and talk page work everywhere on Wikipedia. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:13, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
If I use the AFC Comment capability to leave comments about an article, it puts the comments on the draft page, and puts a statement on the author's talk page saying that there are comments. It does not put the actual comments on the talk page. This means that the comments are lost if the draft is accepted. Is there a reason why the comments are not put on the user talk page? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:22, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
As noted above, I think that it would be better if comments in general went on the talk page, where they will survive acceptance, but that is a change to functionality that requires thoughtful discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:22, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree that the best place for discussion/templates on any given draft is the draft talk page. Most of the information should be moved there to maintain consistency - We use the talk page in this way everywhere else on Wikipedia. That said, I'd like the top of the draft page itself to contain a few pieces of information without needing to click over to the talk pages.
1) A link to the draft talk page if and only if there's something to read there (a human-written message or a template that's intended for the author to read for example.) This can be along the lines of a talkback template with somewhat altered text.
2) A summary of the status of the draft (submitted, declined, rejected, never submitted). In particular, I'd like to know if I'm looking at a page where I need to be considering a MFD, so repeated rejections and perhaps declines should show up in some form.
We could always write a user script to summarize the information on the draft talk page in icon form, and display it at the top. Or, we could just transclude the draft talk page on the top of the draft page, if we wish to retain the old behavior for everyone (might be a bad solution of course). Enterprisey (talk!) 03:53, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
The reason why the comments are put on the draft is because the practice began when draft pages were by default subpages of WT:AFC. I support comments going on talk pages. I support the option of comments going on the usertalk page, or the drafttalk page, or both. Comments in one place, with a pointer from the other, might be better than duplicated comments in both. I think these things should be seriously considered for functionality upgrade. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:47, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Tazerdog in the desirability of the status of the draft (submitted, declined, rejected, never submitted) going on the top of the draft. Ease of coding allowing, it would be nice if the tag counted the times submitted, declined, and rejected. "Submitted 0 times" could replace "never submitted". Judging from my many reviews of multiply declined drafts submitted to MfD, I think it would be great if a second decline auto-generated a message for the author (on their talk page), stating that they should consider asking questions instead of repeatedly submitting. For asking questions, the author should probably be pointed to the single location of the Wikipedia:Teahouse, and other ways to ask questions should be described at that location. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:47, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
I feel comments at the top of the draft page are more helpful at actually being resolved. Regarding the "survive acceptance of draft", I can see the point. In an ideal world part of the acceptance process would shift the comments to the talk page at that point, but I'm aware that might be a fiddly change for limited gain. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:42, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
The ongoing miscommunication that directly and solely derives from the mistake of putting comments on the top of the draft.
Have a look. Have a good look, and you'll see a history of wasted efforts through failing communication. The author thinks that the top of the draft is the place to have a conversation. In time, this draft will be deleted. The evidence of gross miscommunication will be lost, Please stop putting comments on the top of drafts. The newcomers need the comments to be in a place where editors talk to each other. Put them on the talk page, or the user_talk page. So, the tools need to be changed, or the reviewers have to do manual comments, kind of like we do here. Please stop putting comments on the draft page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:06, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes. In the above case, the author misunderstood that AFC comments are provided by a special mechanism, and put their comments at the top of the draft by plain editing. That misunderstanding sometimes happens, not just this time; it isn't that unusual. At this time, because the author is trying too hard to communicate with the reviewer, they have made the draft worse than it had been (and it hadn't been good), being mostly addressed to the reviewer. User:SmokeyJoe is right that this is partly the result of AFC putting comments on the draft page itself, and it illustrates why it is a mistake. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:36, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Robert. I have just made my first use of the afch tool. (it appeared today, about four weeks after I expected it). I commented at Draft:Abanindra Maitra. I see the attraction of using the big yellow "comment" button. Yellow is such a happy colour. It is very easy for the reviewer to type the comment. After commenting, however, the comment was embedded in a template that camouflaged it. I reckon most non-reviewers who look at the page fail to see it. I moved the comment to the author's talk page, because I think there is much much more chance of the reviewer reading it there. I might have moved it to the draft_talk page if I thought there was much hope of the page being improvable to accept-level. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:45, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
The removal of your placed NSFW template happened with my use of the afch tool to make a comment, here. That removal was unknown to me and unintended, and I guess a bug? I note in passing that the NSFW template was buried enough that it wouldn't be read, defeating the purpose of its simplicity. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:55, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't mean to bury the template. If there is some magic rule about what buries it, please let me know so that I can avoid it. I always mean to leave the template in plain view, and I check after declining that the template is in plain view. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:09, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
September 2018 at Women in Red
September is an exciting new month for Women in Red's worldwide online editathons!
I have encountered an editor who has submitted three pages to AFC. Two of them are blank. So far, so good. That is just a mistake, and the 'blank' template is much better than it was a few months ago when it assumed that the editor was requesting an article. However, the third one appears to be about an international volleyball tournament, but the links are all to articles about the 2018 association football World Cup. If this were article space, I would tag it as G3, a hoax. Should I go ahead and tag it for G3 anyway? Should I report the author at WP:ANI for either a hoax or a competency issue? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:08, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
Done - That one has been deleted. There is another less obvious hoax in the MFD queue which requires that editors use common sense to decide whether it is a hoax. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:10, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
User Pages
Sometimes at AFC I get a brief statement in a sandbox about who the editor is and how they plan to edit Wikipedia. If it is purely about Wikipedia, and isn't a social media profile, it really can be a user page. Should I go ahead and move these pages to be user pages, or just suggest that they be moved to user pages? My inclination (and I admit that it varies) is that if it is clearly a good-faith page that is consistent with the user page guidelines, I should move it with an explanation in the move-edit summary. Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:19, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
For an AfC_tools-created sandbox that descibes editing intentions, for a user with a redlinked userpage, moving it with an explanation in the move-edit summary to become the user's main userpage sounds like a really helpful thing to do. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:14, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
Draft:WittyFeed was approved by me. I am no longer associated with AfC, but the article went through AfC, multiple speedy deletions, and nomination at AfD (which ended in no consensus). I don't really understand why the article was changed back to draft. It seems to be on a notable topic. I understand that it was under concern of COI editing, but it seemed to me that all the issues had been resolved. (Disclaimer:I have no personal affiliation with the topic of the article, and will not particularly care if it is kept as a draft. I'm just following up on my old reviews. Eddie891TalkWork12:45, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
I can't claim for certainty but AFAIR, this article had confirmed major overlaps with multiple UPE-sock-rings and ws mentioned in some OTRS ticket. The article looks spammy to my eyes but that it was vetted by AFC, my editorial actions of draftification was wrong and feel free to re-mainspace at your discretion.I can take a better look, as to the concrete-reality, once I get to some PC:-) ∯WBGconverse14:43, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
Diatribes
Sometimes at AFC I encounter a sandbox page that appears to be some sort either of vague complaint about Wikipedia or a diatribe about someone or something in Wikipedia. (Often it isn't in very good English, but that isn't the issue.) My question is what decline code to use. I don't see a decline code that has to do with statements or complaints that don't appear to be article drafts. If it is very short, I have used 'test', but that doesn't seem right. I don't want to use 'essay' or 'npov', because those really have to do with drafts that are actual submissions but are not in the proper style. I have also used 'custom' and said that I am not sure what the page is, but that it does not appear to be an encyclopedic draft. Should I just continue to use 'custom', or is something else needed?
A diatribe about Wikipedia or something in Wikipedia or otherwise project related should be considered a project related statement an not an article draft. Remove all AfC taggery. It might be a good idea to rename the page so that the title describes the content, and to tag the page with {{essay}}. Possibly, there should be a category for User_Essays that are complaints or diatribes about Wikipedia? I think users are easily confused about AfC for new topic pages, and how to create new pages for other purposes. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:11, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
User:SmokeyJoe - I mostly agree, but with a qualification. I agree that, if the statement is coherent and civil and project-related, it can be moved to Wikipedia space. Most of the pages to which I am referring are not coherent. They may be uncivil, and the English is sometimes so bad as to be semi-comprehensible. (I know that imperfect but intelligible English should be tagged for copy-edit, but some stuff is not fully intelligible.) If the page is not fully intelligible, then if it is moved into Wikipedia space, it is a candidate for MFD. If it's really bad, it may be a candidate either for G1 or for G3. The issue is that the stuff to which I am referring starts out in user sandboxes, and user sandboxes have special very tolerant rules. I have thought that editors give up the special tolerance for crud in sandboxes if they submit it to AFC, but that is only my opinion. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:20, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
I didn't mean to suggest moving to projectspace, {{essay}} auto-detects that it is in userspace. User_essays have pretty wide tolerance. Incoherent, uncivil, incomprehensible, I would encourage blanking, using {{Userpage blanked}}, noting its very subtle implication of disapproval I mis-remembered. I agree that tolerance diminishes when the user presses the "submit" button. If never submitted, they could plausibly argue that they never intended another to read it. If submitted, it can be argued they are disrupting the AfC process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:26, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't know about other editors, but, first, I strongly dislike the idea of blanking something because we dislike it or because it is incomprehensible. Blanking is a back-door delete. Second, I was only asking about sandboxes that had been submitted to AFC, and I agree that tolerance is diminished when they are submitted. I will only say that they are disrupting the AFC process if they have been asked to stop submitting, and they don't, or if what they submit is an attack page or vandalism; in other cases, they are ignorant and don't know better. However, I think that they have waived 'sandbox privilege' by submitting. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:21, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
History of a Bar Mitzvah
I actually do not currently known the history of a Bar Mitzvah and I am requesting for someone to create a page of Wikipedia on that from this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.35.75.12 (talk) 14:37, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
