When I am reviewing sandboxes that have been tagged for AFC review, I first try to move them to draft space with an appropriate title. Sometimes I get the message that the sandbox cannot be moved because the draft already exists. Does anyone have any specific thoughts about what to do? Usually the named draft and the sandbox have been created by the same person, and I ask them not to create multiple copies of drafts. It is rare that either version of the draft is ready for mainspace. Maybe editors who are clueful enough to create a draft that is ready for mainspace are clueful enough not to create duplicate drafts.
On second thought, as I write this, the best answer normally is to convert the sandbox into a redirect to the draft, and comment on the draft (declining it if it is submitted).
Why does the same author create multiple copies of drafts, other than just good-faith cluelessness?
Sometimes I find that the named draft and the sandbox are identical or almost so but created by different accounts. That is either use of multiple accounts (sockpuppetry), or the second account is ripping off the first account (less likely than sockpuppetry). Sometimes the two drafts are by different people and are actually different, but about the same subject. In that case, the best action would seem to be to ask them to coordinate with each other.
Robert McClenon (talk) 00:40, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
If there are two drafts that are nearly identical and created by two different editors, then the second one (assuming there is no attribution) is a copyright violation; it should be redirected to the older version and a revdel should be requested. If there are multiple drafts on the same subject, by different authors, with different content, then I usually leave a note on the "worse" one (and/or the newer one) pointing to the other draft. If they've both been submitted, I decline the worse one and point it to the better one (regardless of age). Primefac (talk) 13:57, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
There is sometimes a special situation in which there are two drafts that are by different authors and have different material but are clearly about the same subject (usually a person). Rather than redirect one to the other, I have thought that in that case I should advise each of the authors to coordinate with the other author to get one reasonably complete draft. (It may still not be sufficient, but that is a separate issue.) Robert McClenon (talk) 22:10, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
Check Contribution History on Really Clueless Submissions
I would suggest to reviewers that, if a submission seems really stupid or clueless, it is a good idea to check the contribution history of the author. Sometimes the author has also engaged in vandalism, and it may be appropriate: (1) to revert any questionable edits that have not yet been reverted; (2) to warn the vandal if they have not already been warned; (3) if appropriate, to report the vandal to the vandalism noticeboard. This has to do with really clueless submissions or with clearly improper submissions (such as attack pages). Robert McClenon (talk) 22:14, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
When I am reviewing sandboxes that have been tagged for AFC review, I first try to move them to draft space with an appropriate title. Sometimes I get the message that the draft title has been protected against creation, that is, salted. My question is what do other reviewers think I should do (and what do other reviewers do). I don't know whether the submitter knows that the title has been create-protected. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don't. My usual approach is to comment that the title has been protected against creation, and to list any applicable deletion discussions, and to advise them that they can discuss with the deleting administrator or protecting administrator. If it were obvious that the draft should be accepted, I would either refer the submitter to deletion review or go to deletion review myself, but that is very rare, and I think I have been in that situation only once. I think that the submission should be declined on notability grounds if the deletion included notability grounds. If the submission is promotional, one can list that also. Does anyone else have any other ideas about salted titles?
Robert McClenon (talk) 00:40, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
The first thing to do is to read the page protection (and/or deletion) log summary. The second is to ask the deleting admin. Sometimes the summary is not very much, and the admin not currently active, and so you have to go to a formal request.
Depending on how generous I was feeling, I would make make the request myself. WP:RFPP, and WP:DRV, and not set up for friendliness to newcomers. I recall doing this once, for a draft needing mainspacing to a SALTed title. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:10, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
Rejection Question
I am now seeing submissions that I would like to Reject. I have a question for any reviewer who is willing to consider why I am asking. I can't say anything to explain a rejection, since any comments that I put in the Comments space are ignored. How should I provide any explanation or justification of why I am rejecting a draft? Am I supposed to go through the first stage of Commenting, which does record my comments? (I am aware of one editor here who, to the best of my knowledge, is not a reviewer, who thinks that Rejected should be final and should not be explained. Nothing is truly final in Wikipedia.) Robert McClenon (talk) 22:27, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Definitely, yes. And necessarily please be explicit about which idea. I think you are objecting to an unintended reading of what I wrote. I put forward many ideas. Which idea is wrong headed. The Reject tag idea was that there should be a simple reject option for submissions that don't deserve further comment. I think you wrongly extrapolated that I think rejection must not be accompanied by a comment. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:59, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
User:SmokeyJoe - What I was objecting to was precisely that you defended the inability to leave a comment on a Reject. I thought it was a bug. The developer thought it was a bug. You kept saying that it had been discussed at length, when I was complaining about the inability to leave a comment. You certainly seemed to be saying that the inability to leave a comment on Reject was a feature rather than a bug. If that is not what you meant, then either you completely misread what I said, or your comments had an unintended connotation. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:29, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
Robert, I probably did make these comments. I'd like to back away from them now. I had thought there would be no reason to make comments when rejecting, because I thought "reject" would be reserved for the obvious. However, that is not a good reason to say that someone should not be able to comment on their decision to reject. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:49, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
The reject template was proposed and discussed at length without attention to this issue.
Was there agreement that, unlike a decline, the reject template would prompt the reviewer for comments but discard them, or was there agreement that the reject template, unlike decline, would not support comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:39, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
The "reject" option should be generally consider the final act for a wholly unsuitable draft, especially when from a WP:NOTHERE author. Of course, nothing is truly, necessarily, final. I can immediately think of a number of possibilities for why a rejected draft might go on to end up accepted in mainspace. Improbably, but possible. They are reasons why "bad draft" is not a CSD criterion.
Justifications can go in a number of places, including: The edit summary; the talk page; the author's talk page. The issue appears similar to CSD taggings, where WP:Twinkle doesn't invite you to add a justification in its GUI. For CSD tags, you can go back and add a reason in the CSD template, or on the talk page, or on the author's talk page. Comments in the template or on the tagged page's talk page will probably be deleted without being read.
Are you wanting a tool-facilitated comment/justification method?
I have no objection to someone wanting to leave a comment or justification with their rejection. Doing so might even be called "exemplary". I think that there are many bad drafts where a comment/justification is not needed, and if provided would never be read. I think that a comment that entices a conversation should not be placed on the draftpage-proper, but on a talk page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:36, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
My basic point is that I would like to use Reject sometimes, but, because of what I think is a bug (since there is a box for a comment, but the comment is ignored), I find Reject almost unusable. It doesn't permit me to act as a responsible reviewer and advise the community as to why I rejected a draft, at least not without workaround on my part. As a result, I normally still use NSFW, which is not as drastic as Reject, although often I would like something with the finality of Reject. If the omission of the comment is a bug, can we prioritize it for implementation? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:43, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Yup, it is - I've been testing a fix for a couple of days now and should probably have it out over the weekend. Sorry for the delay, all. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:53, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
User:Enterprisey - Thank you. I'll try it the next time I review something really stupid, rather than declining it and tagging it with UFW.
Categories for Drafts with Foreign References
Are there categories for drafts with foreign references that are waiting for review by reviewers who can read the languages of the references? If so, where are they documented? If not, we should develop them.
I reviewed a draft which is now in the Very Old list and have commented that it needs a reviewer who can read Korean. Is there a way to publish this request? Robert McClenon (talk) 08:33, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
There are certain comments that I frequently use in reviewing drafts. For instance, one of them is: "This draft is an autobiography, the submission of which is discouraged." I would like to know whether I can simplify the reviewing process by using some sort of abbreviation or macro. Would this be a case for a template? Can I create a template, or do I need to request the Template Editor privilege first? There are other comments that I would like to be able to enter via shorthand in the Comments field, but the above is a good example, and it might be useful for other reviewers as well. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:47, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
I was in the middle of researching and adding sources when the other editors commented on my talk page. My mistake was in accepting the draft after confirming the notability of the subject, but before adding sources to the article to support this. In the future, I will only accept the draft after adding sources to the article that establish the subject's notability, because new page patrollers and other editors watching the page may think that no further revisions are planned.
I can verify that the ability to provide a comment when rejecting a draft does work. The evidence that the bug has been fixed won't last very long (unless you are an admin), because the draft was also tagged as G11, but rejecting it gets it out of the status of waiting for a review. Thank you, User:Enterprisey. Robert McClenon (talk) 09:20, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
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Declined - hi @Virendra.Shakya:. Firstly I suspect you are trying to create a draft rather than amend the actual AfC documentation (which is things like how reviewing works etc). Secondly, the text you've given above would be so blatantly promotional text that it wouldn't belong in wikipedia.
Here is a special case that isn't normally encountered. However, I think that, on reflection, the way forward is clear. I reviewed Draft:Joseph K. Taussig Jr. on 31 August, and declined it because an article Joseph K. Taussig Jr. already existed. That is as much of a no-brainer as a reviewer is likely to do. We don't need two articles on the same person. However, on 3 September, the article in article space was deleted with G5, a blocked or banned user. This was called to my attention. Since the reason for the decline is no longer in effect, I resubmitted the draft back into the review queue. I will let another reviewer decide whether it satisfies general notability as written, and, if not, whether additional sources can establish general notability. He doesn't satisfy military notability because he didn't receive his country's highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, and didn't hold flag rank. He doesn't satisfy political notability; not every position appointed by the President of the United States is notable. Do you-all agree that resubmitting was the right action? Is anyone ready to accept the article? Also, should the deleted article be requested to be restored via Requests for Undeletion to email for possible addition to the draft? (Some criteria for speedy deletion are restored.
Some are not. The fault in this case is not that of the article itself but of the sockpuppet.) Should an administrator be asked to do a history merge?
Okay. But they are different content about the same person. So should they be pulled together? If what the sockpuppet wrote is properly verifiable, shouldn't it be in the article? The block evasion should reflect badly on the author, not on the subject (who fought heroically in WWII and served his country well). Robert McClenon (talk) 20:55, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
If a good-faith editor creates a draft, then that draft should be evaluated, regardless of what other editors might have done. If content is properly verifiable, then it will be added by someone. We don't give recognition to socks. Primefac (talk) 21:25, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
Yes. Do you mean that the page by the sockpuppet should be evaluated by a good-faith editor to see whether it can be added to the draft? If so, I am willing to request undeletion to review the deleted page. When you say (and I agree) that we don't give recognition to socks, I assume that you mean that that doesn't deny recognition to subjects who were written about by socks if a good-faith editor will reuse that content. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:44, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
No. Ignore the G5 and its content (and if you're in for a slightly exaggerated story, check out DF67's allegory about socking).
I would prefer for good-faith editors to be able to reuse sock-generated content, but I understand why we have a zero-tolerance-zero-reuse rule. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:05, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Evaluate the draft. If the subject is notable, then it will be accepted (even if it takes the creator an attempt or two). Primefac (talk) 22:55, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
I accepted. The first two references establish notability. The article looks good. Prior G5? Deleted by User:Bilby. I would ask Billy to review and confirm that banned author is not the author of the newer version. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
This is interesting. Two different banned editors were both hired to create the article, both of whom ran different indef blocked accounts. Both editors clearly behave like paid editors as well - User:MatiasEBlanco made the usual 10 editors to be autoconfirmed, and then created the full article with complete wikimarkup, as is typical for one of the two blocked paid editors. The other, User:CathyUK, was independently flagged as a paid editor, and also behaved as per normal for the other person who was hired. The second paid editor was hired after the first version was moved to draft. - Bilby (talk) 23:46, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Bilby. The subject looked notable to me. Would you mind listing the references, we can re-use them without attributing the banned users. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:22, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Well, well. It would appear that someone is behaving in a way that Capt. Taussig would not have approved of. It is probably his children who do not have the same honor (let alone heroism) as their father, and that they are hiring thieves to commemorate him. They would, in my opinion, be better off to petition the Pentagon to give Capt. Taussig the Medal of Honor posthumously, which would eliminate any remaining questions about notability. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:05, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Yuck. An unpleasant story about unpleasant behavior. Hiring two paid editors separately to create the article is a "rational" response to the fact that Wikipedia now does a relatively good job of detecting and banning paid editors. It is like an arms race. (Capt. Taussig was of course involved in two real arms races, between the US and Japan and between the US and the Soviet Union.) Thank you, User:Bilby for maintaining the integrity of Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:05, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
"Yuck" to the paid editors? Yuck to the paid editors' employment service? Not yuck to the topic? I re-created Draft:Joseph K. Taussig Jr., recording the three easiest to find sources. I would defend this subject from notability concerns at AfD.
Yuck to the clearly rampant circles of WP:UPEs. I can't see the deleted UPE product, of course. This is a problem, excluding non-admins from being able to track, compare, and respond to UPE. I still think Wikipedia:Quarantine promotional Undeclared Paid Editor product is the best answer, amongst the many imperfect answers.
User:SmokeyJoe - "Yuck" is to the paid editors and the paid editors' employment service. It is also "yuck" to the fact that their involvement got an article that should have been properly deserved deleted in a way that forced good-faith editors to do extra work. I assume that you knew that I wasn't saying yuck to the topic, but to the exclusion of the topic. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:20, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
MatiasEBlanco (talk·contribs) has his problem edits hidden, I presume? CathyUK (talk·contribs) created Draft:Michael Belkin (professor). Note the creation edit summary "Article published". Who would that message be intended for? This is pretty obvious UPEditing. I would guess that someone is collecting the list of reputable notable people without Wikipedia articles, and soliciting their children for a small amount of money to create a Wikipedia article. I can see that would be tempting. Joseph K. Taussig Jr., is in my opinion deserving of an article, and who in his family would refuse a small sum to see his missing article filled in?
Oh boy this is way more complicated than I thought when I requested evaluation of the 2nd draft. I'm torn because I'm interested in the person but revolted by the history of article creation. Fresh start is probably for the best. Also IMHO the Navy Cross should be qualifying under WP:MILPERSON, shame that it isn't. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:22, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
I think it a poor idea to write an article on someone mildly notable to replace a undeclared paid article; I generally only do it when the person is really so notable that the encyclopedia would be defective without the article. There are hundreds of thousands of possible articles to write that are not contaminated by such editing--this is giving the article priority over those who behaved properly. It's rewarding the behavior. I think the Quarantine proposal mentioned above a good step, but it should include the statement that if no explanation is furnished, we should ordinarily not rewrite the article. (and it should include nonprofit organizations--they;re just ass bad in writing promotional content, and are often willingto pay for it) DGG ( talk ) 19:28, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Draft:Escape Plan (film series) - sourcing requirements query
Hi,
I was going through the initial stages of reviewing this draft. Clearly it's reasonably well written and also links into three films that have demonstrated notability. The sources in this one wouldn't strictly satisfy the sourcing rules since linking to individual reviews would be pointless - the general data is what is needed.
In my view it's a helpful addition and we don't have any particularly clear-cut rules on film series/franchises, and a look at some others didn't help my consideration.
Thus - your thoughts? Is there any particular sourcing that I should notify the creator is required for it?
Sorry, I read the question wrong but the answer is still mostly the same. It doesn't matter what big names it drops, it needs to be reliably sourced as a standalone article. The-numbers.com, imdb, basic listings are not reliable or coverage. CHRISSYMAD❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯19:39, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Reviewers - conflict of interest
Can an editor review and approved an AfC that they have created themselves. Recently User:Scope creep created an article, Draft:American Academy of Matrimonial Attorneys (AAML), which I declined as it was heavily reliant on a primary source and lacked significant coverage in other independent secondary sources. A second editor John from Idegon also commented that the tone of the article was highly promotional. User:Scope creep subsequently commented that "This is a learned society that means it is notable by default and is covered by WP:NEXIST" and then approved the article themselves. I would like some feedback as to whether editors who create articles via the AfC process should be allowed to then approve them as well. I would have thought that there should be a degree of independence between the article's creator and the article reviewer. Dan arndt (talk) 08:55, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi Dan arndt, I don't think we have met. How are you? I never created the article. I don't have any conflict of interest associated with it. I don't even know how I ended up looking at it, which is odd. I think I was looking at a COI who was up at coin. The American Academy of Matrimonial Attorneys is eminently notable as it as a learned society, similar to the FRS, with elected Fellows, by a peer group. The way it was going, it looked like it was heading for G13, and it needed to be rescued. It is now a wee seed article with a couple of extra references to ensure it is not delete, and it will expand as time moves as it has a 60 year history. I probably what you can call a G13 miner. I search the G13 category on regular basis looking for articles to rescue. There is many many articles in there that need a mainspace article, and it is a shame they go, and some will be need recreating in the future. Hope that helps. scope_creep (talk) 10:14, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
While I'm here, I see the reviewing instructions haven't changed, form when I started as an Afc reviewer, when the process was first introduced. The first sentence states: The purpose of reviewing is to identify which submissions will be deleted and which won't.. Taking a look at this:
Draft:Algirdas Landsbergis. A Lithuanian national poet, celebrated with his own article on the Lithuanian Wikipedia, clearly notable, but somehow it has been stalled by your reviewing instructions including adding clean-up tags. There are 10 Gpages of references, and Gbooks references available. This wouldn't be deleted for lack of inline citations. Please be more careful next time.scope_creep (talk) 10:39, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Self-approving bad drafts is a major concern. The people who do this know WP well enough to avoid the AfC rules, and move the page themselves manually or use some other trick. I assume anyone who does this and knows enough to post the proper templates is a longterm undeclared paid editor. Someone who just moves without placing the templates may just be naive, but is usually also a UPE. DGG ( talk ) 19:32, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
DGG, I am not a long term undeclared paid editor. I did it because a valuable article was heading for the bin, and I was to planning to spend a couple of weeks on it, to get it to spec, like the other article that were heading for G13, that I saved. That was the whole reason, and nothing else. scope_creep (talk) 20:11, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
My apologies. I meant to add a sentence saying that this method is also used by reliable editors who want to work in draft although they are not required to, and also that sometimes the vagaries of AfC end up causing the rescuer from G13 to also be the creator of the article. It has happened to me, exactly the same way as to you and for the same reason. DGG ( talk ) 21:21, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Experienced Wikipedians may follow User:A2soup/Don't use draftspace, and that is fine. Any editor in good stand may put their new article straight into mainspace. Editors confident in doing this are expected to know and understand and comply good practices, including WP:COI. If someone is going to use AfC, one of the biggest reasons is probably the explicit expectation of independent review. That expectation, an expectation from multiple directions, should not be short circuited. Don't pretend you are using a newcomer reviewing new page process and fake the review step. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:16, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Sai Sachin Bellie
Sachin is a former Indian international cricketer and a former captain of the Indian national team, regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time. He is the highest run scorer of all time in International cricket — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sai sachin bellie (talk • contribs) 06:16, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
I reviewed a sandbox page that had been submitted but contained patent nonsense, possibly the result of strumming on the keyboard keys. I wanted to Reject it, but wasn't sure what codes to use. I wound up Declining it as 'test' and 'joke' and tagging it for {{UFW}}, but would like advice on what to do next time this happens. It isn't really a lack of notability, because there isn't a subject at all. Would it be reasonable to say that Wikipedia is not for patent nonsense? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:02, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
By the way, the submitter had also engaged in vandalism, but the vandalism had already been reverted and warned. I will again remind reviewers that if a submission appears to be really clueless or malicious, check the submitter's history for vandalism. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:04, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
I know you don’t like unilateral blanking, and you are fully entitled to hold that position without criticism, but I continue to recommend it in a case like that, sandbox nonsense submitted to AfC. Nonsense in a sandbox should be ignored, until it is submitted, at which point sandbox leeway is lost. If you don’t like blanking, consider stripping all AfC templates to get it out of the AfC system. Depending on the user’s edit history, consider a welcome, a friendly warning, or a stern warning. In my experience looking, nonsense is most often associated with drive by “testing”. I presume that often the testing account if abandoned if the editor continues. And so, exactly what you do doesn’t usually matter, except that getting it out of the AfC system is a good idea. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:16, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
If you ask me, if it has a Userspace Draft tag, it should automatically be subject to speedy deletion criteria as would be applied to drafts. I know, I know, "but it's userspace". No. It's part of the userspace draft category, and it's being presented as a draft. We don't blank bad drafts, we delete them. Blank pages are confusing to some and a nuisance to all, and leave a pointless, empty page. We are not a web host. We are not a dumping ground. We aren't livejournal, blogger, or anything else but an encyclopedia first and foremost. Leaving these pages only undermines our fundamental purpose, and sets the precedent that anything not outright offensive will be tolerated or at least ignored. But to get to the point, if there are no signs of improvement or a likely vandal account, I would absolutely G1. PrussianOwl (talk) 20:31, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
First, User:SmokeyJoe, you mean that bad drafts are not speedy-deleted except by G13. We know that they are also deleted by MFD. However, bad drafts that are Fabricated, libelous, blatantly promotional, or copyright violation are so speedy-deleted as G3, G10, G11, or G12. You knew that. You may have meant that G1 and G2 do not apply to drafts. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:12, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
As a reviewer, I normally move a submitted sandbox to Draft space, but that requires that I have a reasonable idea of what its intended title is. If the sandbox contains patent nonsense, I won't move it to draft space because I don't know what it is. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:41, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
If you can identify it as a draft, it doesn’t meet G1. Moving userspace pages to draftspace to apply G1 or G2 would obviously not be ok. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:08, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Normally, I make a conscious effort push back against jargon, but I think CSD is a generous exception. It's almost fun. How could you, Pf, mix up G3 with G1 let alone G2, unless maybe you are thinking A1 should've it been mainspaced? :-) --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:57, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
I am sure that there are also a lot of pages in mainspace that link to Facebook or YouTube. Do we know from the metrics whether they are linking as external links, which are usually permitted, or as sources, which are usually not permitted? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:32, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Old Draft Question
If I tag a draft with an AFC comment, does that restart the G13 calendar? I encountered a draft on Cy Chermak and tried to move it to Draft:Cy Chermak. Already taken. So I checked to see if it was created by the same person. No. It was created in March 2018, and wasn't as good as what I moved to Draft:Cy Chermak (2), which still isn't good enough because it needs reliable sources, but they can probably be found. If the old draft had been recent, I would have left a comment on it. However, I didn't, because it is almost ready to be blown away to G13. Would a comment start the calendar over? If so, I made a conscious choice in leaving it alone. If not, I may comment on it. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:38, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Yes it would. G13 is meant for fully abandoned drafts, and so a comment on it in general should reset the clock. If you explicitly state in your edit or its summary that you don't want to reset the clock with that edit, I'd expect the deleting admin to respect that, but it will remove the draft from the automatically curated lists that most editors start tagging G13 from. Tazerdadog (talk) 04:48, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Didn't we agree, or at least experience a complete lack of disagreement, that comments should be able to be put on the draft talk page, where they would not reset the G13 clock? Who can we ask to make it happen? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:59, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Putting the Comments on the Talk Page
Yes, we had a complete lack of disagreement with the idea that the comments should go on the draft talk page (just like comments on anything else). The reason why we want to make it happen does not have much to do with the G13 clock, but primarily so that the comments will survive acceptance. Also, having the comments on the front leads some contributors to think, by reasonable good-faith mistake, that they can just edit comments onto the front. Such comments, if not affixed with the AFC script, have to be removed manually if the draft is accepted, which complicates the review job. If the review comments went on the talk page, the submitter would almost certainly reply on the talk page. So, yes, we have a complete lack of disagreement that it would be a good idea to move the comments "to the back", to the talk page. Now that we have improved the AFC script with the option of two decline reasons and Reject, the next improvement should be putting the comments on the talk page. Thank you, User:SmokeyJoe, for restating this. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:02, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm posting this here because it seems like a good place to possibly get an answer. If there's a better place to post, please advise accordingly. Occasionally, I come across drafts/userspace drafts that appear to be written about fictional subject. Not about books and things like that, but about make believe topics which seem to be more fancruft or part of the creator's imagination, than the makings on a possible Wikipedia article. These pages usually don't seem like they're ever going to be submitted for AfC review, but rather are just for goofing around. For example, Draft:YBC1 seems (I could be wrong) to be about a made up TV station/network that never existed. Since the page is not in the mainspace, it's not really subject to WP:A7 or WP:A11. Such pages can be MfD for sure, but I'm also wondering if they can be tagged per WP:G3.
Anyway, I've come accross other drafts/userspace drafts where the creator seems to be creating their own fictional TV program/reality or using their sandbox for other type of fantasy writing (typically they copy-and-paste something from an existing into their sanbox and then use that as a template for whatever fiction they want to write about). This seems to be a pretty close to WP:NOTWEBHOST (even for a sandbox), but I'm never sure whether common practice is just to leave these things alone as long as they stay out of the mainspace and don't contain any serious policy violations. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:34, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
If it's clearly a hoax (Draft:YBC1 certainly seems to be) then it should be G3'd. If it's someone just messing around in their sandbox and using it as a WEBHOST then it should be U5'd. Of course, if it's just about a fictional character of an otherwise-notable franchise/series/etc, then it should be treated as a draft, but pure "editor made this stuff up" nonsense can be speedied. Primefac (talk) 02:20, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification, particularly about the YBC1 draft. The user sandbox stuff tends to be stuff where people copy-paste infoboxes (election infoboxes seem to be popular) from existing articles and then start replacing the info found in the parameters with all kinds of irrelevant stuff (including links to existing Wikipedia articles or images). No one particular example of this comes to mind at the moment, but I usually come across them because somebody has added a non-free image to the sandbox which is flagged for review; so, I'm sure I'll come across one again some time soon. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:58, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
I recently dealt with one, and it was submitted to AFC, that purported to be about a volleyball tournament, but it consisted largely of stuff that had been copied from the 2018 FIFA World Cup. After some consideration, I decided that it was a hoax of its own sort, and tagged it as G3. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:58, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
@Primefac: I knew I'd eventually come across another example of this and I have at User:Rotesman79/sandbox. This was another case where a file used on the page was flagged for a violation of WP:NFCC#9, but I think there are other problems with the free images being used per WP:BLP#Images in addition to the entire page appearing to be pure fan fiction. -- 01:04, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Yellow Comment button in AFCH Script
The big yellow Comment button in the AFCH script isn't working for me, and hasn't been for about half an hour. Is there a known problem with it? I will try using Firefox instead of Chrome and see if that changes anything. If that fails, I will try restarting my desktop machine. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:48, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 September 2018
extended content
jaykumarshah was born in kalaynpur nagarpalika 5 chikna, in the siraha district, Sagarmatha Zone of Nepal. He attended primary school in manakmana public school,janakpur dham-7 and secondary school in srijana secondary English boarding ashanpur 7 golbazar . He went on to study at Tribhuvan University (Nepal),at americian emmabacy got a best award on drawing,graft and desipline.
So, I was trying to decline Draft:Charles E. Chupp, in part because the book title of his that I chose to look at in detail is published by Xlibris and held in 5 libraries. I was prevented from saving my decline and comment by an edit filter (a lot of squiggly gibberish, some wording along the lines of "vanity-published sources are not reliable"). So, I can see the thinking behind a filter to stop people citing vanity press titles (though I'd hope that what they see would be better formatted than what I got); but I really don't see why reviewers should be stopped too. I've re-declined the draft and manually added my AFC comment (which I was able to recover from the submitter's talk-page). To save people going to look, here's what I said:
This person appears not to be notable by our standards. His book Frankly Speaking, for example, was – according to WorldCat – published by Xlibris, a vanity/print-on-demand publisher, and is held in a grand total of five libraries in the world. I don't see any other sourced and credible claim of notability here either.
NB: there is an author named Charles Chupp who published a good deal on plant diseases (e.g., this, held in 433 libraries); but one of his books is dated 1917, so I don't think it can be this chap (or Chupp).
I haven't found where disputed category creations can be discussed. Delete/merge/rename, sure, but where to discuss a category that, to some, seems unlikely or dubious?
attached to songs identified as being sung by those people. It was noted those categories were not actually created and a few editors thought it seemed excessive, and so reverted. I was one of those.
Would cross-referencing songs by who sang them be reasonable? Or who played instrumentals for them? Or particular instruments? Or were recorded in particular studios? I don't know what is reasonable, and I'm asking on behalf of the IP editor.
Ask at WP:CfD. WP:CFD for specific proposals. WT:CfD for general questions.
I believe that ordinary editors should not be able to create categories, that instead it should be a privilege requested and subject to prerequisites. These prerequisites should include something like participation in 100 CfD discussions.
People new to categories creating ill-advised categories create an awful lot of work for the maintainers of the category system. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:21, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
I have created two templates that any reviewer is welcome to use: {{draftautobio}} and {{compsays}}, which expand to "This draft is an autobiography, the submission of which is strongly discouraged. See the conflict of interest policy for more information." and This draft is written from the viewpoint of the company, focusing on what the company says about itself. Corporate notability is based on what independent reliable sources have written about the company.. They can be entered in the Decline comments or in the Reject comments. These are explanations that I found I was frequently typing. You are welcome to use them or to tweak the wording if you don't change the meaning. I may create more of these templates. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:16, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
As a note, anyone using these templates should subst them so that a) the message you leave today will not change in the future, and b) it won't encourage people to find/break the templates. Primefac (talk) 03:18, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
It looks like someone already added it to the autosubst list, so your first question is a bit of a moot point. As for the second - small (usually unwatched) templates are sometimes targets for vandals, and it would be problematic if someone went to look at a decline notice and see something like "Joey P likes butts" instead of "This draft is an autobiography". It's rather unlikely, but it's worth reducing/removing that possibility.
The main reason these sorts of templates get substed is that if the language changes significantly (see all of our discussions re: decline reasons), you would want the original intention of the original message left in the original location, with the new message being left after the change is made. Primefac (talk) 15:44, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
Confused
Re: Draft:Ice Poseidon - it passes GNG but I noticed the name is protected so I changed it to Ice Poseidon (streamer) and got the following message: Error moving Draft:Ice Poseidon to Ice Poseidon (streamer): "protectedpage". Is there something I'm not doing properly? This is the first time I've had this issue so I'm stumped. Atsme📞📧01:50, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
My sentiments exactly, SkyGazer. I included the error message above - and I even tried it twice. Not sure what’s going on. L293D - thanks for fixing my ping. Atsme📞📧13:41, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
@Atsme, SkyGazer 512, and L293D: The draft you're trying to move Draft:Ice Poseidon is move-protected but not the target. Related to that, Draft:Ice Poseidon 2 and the mainspace Ice Poseidon are create-protected, all indefinitely. From December 2016 to May 2018, Ice Poseidonhas tortuous history, which resulted in these protections. Admin will remove the remove the protection now, but it should really be checked thoroughly for full compliance with all policies, since there is desperation for creating it.–Ammarpad (talk)
This thread was brought to my attention through RFPP. Ammarpad is right; the source is move protected (only admins) and the destination is create protected (only admins) because it had been repeatedly recreated after being deleted through AFD. @Atsme: I will remove the move protection for the draft and make the target article such that extended confirmed users (including you) can create it when you're ready. Airplaneman ✈21:56, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
In trying to work off the backlog of drafts with the same names as existing articles, I see certain editing patterns. One of them is an editor whose edits are limited to creating drafts on new people and discussing the drafts on talk pages and project pages. This is someone who doesn't seem to be trying to improve the encyclopedia except by adding articles. My question is: How likely is it that this person is a paid editor, and to what extent should a reviewer allow that concern to affect their reviewing? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:02, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
I think it is very easy for a non-Wikipedian to look at Wikipedia biographies and see a very low minimum standard, and think there are a lot of missing biographies, and become enthused to add some. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:11, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, I think it requires a fairly low grade of AGF for this to be fine. In fact, a decent Paid editor should probably know to edit an article that already exists rather than creating a new draft. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:51, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
I should explain about the drafts that match article names. Usually they aren't the same person, just two people with the same name or a list of people with the same name. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:16, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
And a lot of good-faith editors are turned away from Wikipedia by unfounded suspicions and other non-AGF weirdness that thrives in the online environment. In this light, if you feel like you're overdoing WP:AGF you're probably actually achieving good balance.
About editing patterns, we're WP:VOLUNTEERS and there are an infinity of ways to contribute to improving Wikipedia. You have to be a pretty extreme deletionist to believe that creating new WP:AFD-survivable articles is not an improvement. ~Kvng (talk) 15:49, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
No. I am not talking about AFD-survivable articles. Creating those is an improvement. The drafts that I am asking about are ones that are not subject to CSD, but that look marginal as to biographical notability for people or corporate notability for companies. I agree that creating AFD-survivable articles is an improvement. But creating articles that go through AFD makes work for a second set of volunteers, and may not be an improvement in the long run. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:40, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Another Draft-Article Match Question
Ok. Here is another story about a matching draft and article. The draft had been in AFC and was declined twice, both times for notability. So then a copy of the draft was put in article space by the principal author of the drafts, bypassing AFC. (Bypassing AFC is of course permitted, and most experienced editors do not use AFC anyway, but bypassing AFC after having used it is annoying. In this case, after two shots at AFC, that was the necessary 10 edits to get autoconfirmed.) There has been some improvement of both the draft and the new article, but it isn't to where I would accept it. So I can decline the draft both on notability grounds and as duplicating an existing article. But what to do with the article? In this case the author of the article was the only author of the draft, so that there doesn't seem to be a need for history merge or an attribution problem. But in some cases there have also been edits by other authors to the draft, so that the author, by doing the copy-and-paste, is breaking attribution. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:50, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
I would just decline as Exists and call it done from an AfC perspective. Nominating for deletion is separable. ~Kvng (talk) 23:56, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
About page List of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? top prize winners
Actually back on 2007 the page was created it and title was called List of top prize winners on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? . And Yesterday me my friend decided it to rewritte all top-prize winners and add them. And i also have better title List of top prize winners on international versions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. Cos is much better than List of top prize winners on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
About draft that's my friend did it not me. Also why i decided it to rewrite, because new versions of wwtbam is appearing like Iran, Mautrius, Kazahstan(Kazah Language ) ane etc. And if that page will be removed again. Where i can add them?
Marik-modder (talk) 15:41, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Requesting an article
Im confused i dont no how to suggest a article about someone - when i google for canadian atheists i see lots of wikipedia articles for lots of people come up in a scroller at the top including david silverman who is president from american atheists but not randolf richardson who is preseident of canadian atheists , and i cant find randolf richardson in wikipedia so i try to add article but i get directed to this page so i dont no whut to do.. if u can help thanks u!!!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.64.187.20 (talk) 17:32, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Release date for adding AfC to New Pages Feed: September 17
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 quality and copyvio indicators. I last posted here three weeks ago when reviewers started testing the New Pages Feed in Test Wiki. I'm posting again because the issues that reviewers found over the last weeks have been addressed, and we're getting ready to actually add AfC drafts to the New Pages Feed in English Wikipedia on September 17. ORES scores and copyvio indicators will be added in following weeks. Please click here to read more or to test things out in Test Wiki, and click here to discuss on the project's talk page. Thank you, and I'm hoping we'll hear from many AfC reviewers. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: thanks for checking the feed out, and for prompting me to give an update. Yes, we're also seeing what you're seeing. In answering you, I'll also give a more complete update to this deployment:
We deployed the change to the New Pages Feed this past Monday, September 17. The software itself has deployed cleanly, with only a couple UI idiosyncrasies that we're fixing this week. You can see that the "Articles for Creation" toggle is there right now.
The bigger challenge has been populating the feed with the 40,000+ drafts that already exist in English Wikipedia. That is still in progress, and that's why I haven't yet returned to this page to let all AfC reviewers know that it's time to take the New Pages Feed for a spin. We have been running scripts to populate the feed with existing drafts, but have run into a couple snags.
The biggest snag is around populating the submitted and declined dates. Those dates are meant to essentially show when a certain category has been applied to the page, but the problem is that the Mediawiki database doesn't store the dates that categories were applied. So for drafts that were submitted/declined before this week, we need to approximate the dates by looking at edit summaries -- a frustrating issue I wish we had foreseen. On our first pass, those dates ended up all being populated with the date the script was run, which is why they all looked to have the same, very recent, date (which is what you were seeing, Barkeep49). Over the next couple days, we will repopulate the feed using scripts that approximate the correct dates based on the edit history. Our first attempt, this week, will populate those dates with the date of the most recent revision to the draft, which should be somewhat close to the actual submitted/declined date. We may be able to further refine that date next week with some more intelligent logic.
However, new drafts and new activities on existing drafts will result in correct dates and states going forward.
Given that the drafts in the feed are currently having their states and dates updated, I don't recommend using the New Pages Feed for draft review yet. I'll keep these communities posted as we get closer to completing this deployment. Thank you for your patience. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Draft mirrors. Sigh.
I know this is allowed by our license, and I know I shouldn't even be surprised, but I was indeed surprised to discover that we've got mirrors that mirror our drafts and promote them to mainspace. See Draft:Doyle Country Club and [1]. Chalk one up for the SEO trolls. -- RoySmith(talk)15:17, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
That is a wiki and not just a mirror because there was a view source button and you can create a account as well and there are edits on the recent changes thing Abote2 (talk) 09:43, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Thank you very much Frayae for your help. I removed the article from "Draft:Oshri Elmorish" to Draft:Oshri (his stage name). I do not think there any lack of references in the Article. Also I am an old timer writer and editor in the hebrew Wikipedia. Is anyone here knows how I can speed the process of publishing the article? Thank you מיקרוז (talk) 11:53, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
Currently, when we notify a user with empty talk page about a decline or accept, the {{Talk header}} is automatically placed on top of the user's talk page. Should we remove it? I don't see the need for it, and the user has the final decision on what is put in their talk page (or maybe they don't even know what the talk page header is for). —AE(talk • contributions)12:22, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
I had a person request help on #Wikipedia-en-help about this draft. I think there's some notability in the first couple sources, but there's some spammy text, so I would like to have a third opinion about it before taking any action. Thanks, L293D (☎ • ✎)12:24, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
Reduce it to a short few paragraphs and merge with HT Media. It's a subsidiary brand without independent notability. 90% of the article is unsourced or cited to primary sources. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 12:41, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
After several months of development, the New Pages Feed is ready for use by AfC reviewers! Reviewers can now use the feed to find and prioritize drafts for review, instead of choosing randomly or by category from this page. To use the New Pages Feed:
2. Select the "Articles for Creation" toggle at the top of the feed.
3. Select a "State" to filter the list. These are the available states, all of which exclude redirects:
Unsubmitted: drafts that have never been submitted for review.
Awaiting review: drafts that have been submitted for review and correspond to this category. This is the option to select to find drafts to review.
Under review: drafts that have been marked as under review with the AFCH gadget, and are therefore being reviewed at that moment.
Declined: drafts that have been submitted and declined, but have not yet been resubmitted.
All: all drafts in English Wikipedia. This adds up to the other four categories combined.
4. Sort the list by a date:
Created date (newest): drafts created most recently are first.
Created date (oldest): drafts created least recently are first.
Submitted date (newest): drafts submitted most recently to AfC are first. Only available when "State" filter is "Awaiting review" or "Under review".
Submitted date (oldest): drafts that have been waiting the longest for AfC review are first. Only available when "State" filter is "Awaiting review" or "Under review".
Declined date (newest): drafts that were declined most recently are first. Only available when "State" filter is "Declined".
Declined date (oldest): drafts that were declined least recently are first. Only available when "State" filter is "Declined".
5. Click the title of a draft to open it in a new tab.
6. Review as usual, using the AFCH gadget.
As announced above, this is the first of three enhancements happening over the next month to improve the toolset for AfC and NPP reviewers. The next one will be deployed as soon as Thursday, October 4 (or in the days that follow), and will add ORES scores to the feed so that drafts can be prioritized based on how likely they are to be high or low quality. The final enhancement will add copyvio detection to the feed, and is expected during the week of October 14. You can actually test out both of those upcoming features in Test Wiki!
Please comment here or on the project talk page if you find bugs or have any thoughts or reactions. We're hoping this work makes it easier to be an AfC reviewer, so that high quality drafts can make it into the article space faster!
Thank you to the many AfC reviewers who weighed in to shape this project over the last many months, and who were patient with our team as we learned more about the AfC process. Our team really felt like this has been a partnership with the community.
AFCH removing full stops after a ref rather than moving them
Towards the bottom of this edit, made using the Cleanup function of AFCH, it appears to have removed a full stop that appeared after a ref tag - but this now leaves the sentence with no ending punctuation. Perhaps it should have moved the dot to before the ref rather than just removing it? – numbermaniac08:57, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
I occasionally encounter drafts that have been tagged with one of the notability tags, or one of the style tags, such as 'advert', or a POV tag. My question is: Am I correct that these tags are being applied in good-faith error, and that they are not really appropriate for drafts? Certainly, a concern about notability is a reason, and the most common reason, to decline a draft, but the tags are really for articles, and can serve as a caution to the creator that someone else may choose to AFD the article. I can see that cleanup tags are reasonable on drafts, but am I correct that notability tags should not be used on drafts, because comments and declines are in order instead? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:21, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
My take: Drafts can be declined for notability, sourcing, copyright violation or NPV. Maybe there's a valid reason to tag rather than decline for these reasons but these issues need to be resolved and these tags removed before accept. There are plenty of other less serious cleanup tags that can be appropriately added to drafts and retained through accept. ~Kvng (talk) 21:07, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
So are you guys raising the bar for draft acceptability above and beyond the WP:Criteria for speedy deletion? I've seen drafts declined for subjective reasons like "not enough reliable sources". Now, if that's a valid reason for declining a draft, then we need to rethink {{Unreferenced}}, a template that should only be used on articles that have no citations or references at all. If none of the 195,000 articles with no sources would make it past the AfC reviewers, then maybe there should be a criterion for speedily deleting them all. If not, then your standards are too high. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:12, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
NPV and reliable sourcing are in our reviewer instructions so I mentioned them above. Of course the primary and overriding criteria is how a draft is expected to fare at WP:AFD. Reviewers without a lot of AFD experience probably should stick to the instructions. This means there are (a lot of) times we reject potentially acceptable material. My observation is that this is the will of the AFC community. We're a lot more conservative than the WP:LIKELY to survive criteria. ~Kvng (talk) 13:51, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Straw poll on a new backlog drive
Just checking to see if people are interested in holding a new one as the backlog nears 4K. Consensus here means I'll start serious work on resurrecting the scoring bot, and we can start talking about specific rules for the drive. This time around, extra emphasis will be made on making sure reviews are high-quality; this can be done with the re-review system that is used during drives. I believe with the right set of rewards/penalties, we can ensure that people don't just grind through reviews as fast as possible. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:57, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Support - The backlog is large and slowly growing. We need to focus some energy on the project. I prefer a lightweight structure for the backlog. Lots of rules, in some sense, just invites people to game them. I suggest there's no need to score anyone. Let's keep it like an elementary school soccer league and just give everyone participation barnstars. I do really like the review-the-review component of previous backlogs and hope we can bring that back to life. ~Kvng (talk) 15:55, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Comment - Early in the year NPP was very successful with its backlog drive. The awards I sent out can be found here. The hard part about running it was re-reviewing a couple dozen articles from everyone who participated to make sure that I wasn't awarding sloppy work. From memory I only had to make one chastisement for minor mistakes, so the fears that a backlog drive would lead to sloppy reviewing seem to have been largely unfounded. Someone needs to commit to using the AFC stat tool to check a sub-sample of each reviewer's reviews to make sure that everything is above board. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)03:05, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Support The backlog is growing and perhaps we can attract new volunteers to help, who would stay after the drive is complete. The sooner the better, and we might want to have an IRC channel dedicated to helping new reviewers, as well as a process to fast-track new applicants who are qualified. Acebulf (talk) 15:30, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Support - I just came back from vacation and see the number of entries almost doubled? Maybe I had too much to drink on break. --CNMall41 (talk) 21:26, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Support — let's do this thing. The IRC channel #wikipedia-en-afcconnect already exists and can be used to help and encourage each other. Bradv00:15, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Support and support barnstars also. AT NPP they did a backlog drive in July which dropped the NPP backlog from 3000 to less than 500. That was impressive. L293D (☎ • ✎)12:27, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
Comment: So it's a bit late to start an October one, but I think targeting November is a good idea. I'll get a scoring bot together, and I'll be holding one or two test drives (with no awards) to get all the bugs out before the real drive starts. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:12, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Can someone please tell User:Pipo.bizelli, in Portuguese, not to submit his draft in Portuguese any more? I declined it once, both as inadequately sourced and as in Portuguese, but now it has been resubmitted. My guess is that the submitter doesn't understand the English decline. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:54, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
"Predicted class" and "Potential issues" added to New Pages Feed
We have now completed the second part of the three part project to improve reviewing tools for AfC reviewers.
Here is what has changed in the New Pages Feed. These additions are meant to help reviewers quickly find and prioritize drafts that need review soonest:
All drafts are scored with two sets of predictions (more explanation of how this works is below):
Predicted class: this estimates a class for each page (Stub, Start, C-class, B-class, Good, Featured).
Potential issues: this identifies which pages are most likely to be spam, attack, or vandalism.
The predictions are listed along with each page in the feed for reviewers to reference.
Reviewers can filter the feed to only pages of certain predicted classes or with potential issues.
As pages change, so will their predictions. For instance, if a reviewer removes spam content from a page, that page would likely stop being shown as potentially spam in the feed. Or if an editor keeps working on their draft, it might improve from "Stub" to "Start".
For instance, right now there are 40 drafts awaiting review that are predicted to be "B-class" or better. Those might be good drafts to review first because they are likely to have high quality content that could be delivered to the article namespace quickly (and they might be written by eager newbies who could use the positive reinforcement!)
Below is more background on where these predictions come from. As this community updates any documentation around the New Pages Feed and how to review pages, our team is happy to help with any explanations or screenshots. Let me know!
ORES is a system built by the WMF Scoring Platform team, led by Halfak (WMF), that automatically classifies edits and pages using machine learning. ORES models are in use at the Recent Changes and Watchlist feeds, where they estimate "content quality" and "user intent". We have added two different models to the New Pages Feed, which estimate the "predicted class" and whether an article has "potential issues". The models are built by looking at existing examples of articles that have been given a class, or shown to have issues, and then the algorithm learns what it looks like when future articles have those same characteristics.
It's important to note, as was referenced many times in the community discussion around planning these enhancements, that these predictions are only predictions. Because they are only suggestions from an algorithm, they are often wrong. Reviewers are meant to use them to find pages that are more likely to have those characteristics, in order to help make reviewing work more efficient. They can also be taken into account when doing a review. But at the end of the day, as several experienced reviewers emphasized in the community discussion, human judgment is still what should be deciding whether a page is of high quality or not.
As reviewers work with these models, cases will come up where the models seem to be wrong. It is really helpful to the Scoring Platform team to report those cases! They can use those to recalibrate and improve the models. Here is where and how to do that.
Please let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or bugs with the new ORES classifications. Our next (and final) enhancement to the New Pages Feed will be the addition of copyvio detection, planned for the week of October 15 or October 22. I will be back with more information on that. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 5 October 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.
There is a backlog of about 140 drafts whose names are also in article space. I am trying to work this backlog, but would like to discuss a few of the typical cases.
Draft Is Same as Article with Same Author (article okay)
The draft is the same, or almost the same as, the article, and both are by the same editor, and the article deserves to stay in article space. Decline the draft, saying that the article exists, as a courtesy to the author to put a note on their talk page. Then turn the declined draft into a redirect.
The reject will post to the author's user talk page so separate posting is not necessary. Quickly turning the draft into a redirect may confuse the author. I usually just let these fade. ~Kvng (talk) 19:13, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
Draft Is Same as Article with Same Author (neither any good)
This is relatively rare but can happen.
If the draft is speedyable (probably G11 or G12), speedy them both.
If the article is speedyable (probably A7), speedy it, and decline or reject the draft on notability grounds.
If the article needs a deletion discussion, nominate it for AFD, and decline the draft but leave it standing. Deletion of the article will be a side-door draftification.
If it's a good draft and a lousy article, nominate the article for deletion, or speedy it. Comment on the draft that it is waiting for the AFD on the lousy article. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:17, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
Article name is already used for a different subject
This happens frequently with biographies of people who share a name.
If you choose to also accept the draft, determine whether the subject or a new disambiguation page should replace the current article as the primary topic and, if so, propose reorganization. Otherwise add hatnotes or disambiguation page entries.
Article Name is a Disambiguation Page
Disambiguate the draft.
If it is not ready for acceptance, decline it as appropriate. This will take it out of the category of matches.
If the draft is ready for acceptance, accept it. Update the parent disambiguation page to include the new article.
Article Name is a Redirect for a section on the Draft Topic
If the draft does not merit a stand-alone article, decline it with 'mergeto' and suggest adding any new information to the main article.
If the draft now does merit a stand-alone article, this is a tricky case, because the redirect blocks the move. If you have the Page Mover privilege, do a round-robin move to get the redirect out the way, then accept the draft. (What do I now do with the orphan redirect? G6 it?)
Yes. The orphaned redirects can be deleted as G6. (If you don't have the Page Mover privilege, request a Technical Move. If you are an administrator, delete the orphaned redirect yourself.) Robert McClenon (talk) 02:13, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
Draft and Article are Different (but with same name)
Disambiguate the draft. Then either accept it (with the new name) or decline it. If accepted, add a hatnote to the original.
Making an accept/decline decision is not required. I often just do the disambiguation and let the review happen by me or someone else in due course. ~Kvng (talk) 19:21, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
Draft Is Same Topic as Article but Different Text and Different Authors
Decline draft with 'exists'. If draft has information not in article, comment that author of draft can edit and improve article.
The author is already notified by the decline. In addition, I will leave a comment on the article's talk page:
Please consider incorporating any useful material from the above submission into this article. The submission is eligible for deletion in 6 months. ~Kvng (talk) 19:32, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
This all looks very reasonable. I would have mentioned the corresponding draftspace article if I know about it in my AFD nomination. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:13, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Yes. Mention that in declining the article. That isn't a situation I have seen much, but the law of extremely large numbers may apply, which means that anything that is not impossible, no matter how unlikely, will eventually happen. (A few years ago, there was a baseball game with a score of 30-3. An American, looking at that score, will ask whether that is American football, but it was baseball. The odds against such a high score in baseball, based on experience, appear to be approximately one million to 1 against, but there have been approximately a million games played in the so-called modern era of baseball, so there.) Robert McClenon (talk) 01:45, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Draft Is Same Topic as Article but Different Text and Different Authors
Alternative:
Merge the draft into the existing article, redirect the draft, add appropriate attribution. Even to the extent of a straight copy paste over the top of the existing article if the draft is that much better (keeps history intact and improves the article). Consider if history merge may be appropriate.
Do not move the existing article out of mainspace. If existing page is truly inappropriate (pure promotion or copyvio) then nominate for speedy deletion and then if deleted accept draft in its place. duffbeerforme (talk) 13:11, 17 September 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.
I don't see many of the sources being good. One of them is a citation to Wikipedia itself. Several are company 'about' pages. These should be removed regardless. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 15:44, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't see anything much good in the sources and the article looks promotional, with things like "CloudVolumes was named one of the five strategic acquisitions that reshaped VMware" and "several premier events" with the whole thing looking like native advertising Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:47, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
I agree with the above opinions User:L293D. Perhaps if he had won something as a race car driver, he might have squeezed-in under sports, but as the draft reads now, he appears to have a really good job and made some good investments. Atsme✍🏻📧16:23, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
One more for not notable. I don't see any of the sources as being indepth reliable independent articles about him as such, they're either short mentions of him in articles about other things, boilerplate forms, or blogs. I am also amused that source #2 (Bloomberg boilerplate) has the title "Terms of Service Violation". --GRuban (talk) 17:17, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
At first glance it looks like the article has plenty of good sources, but after looking closer, you'll see that most of them are either unreliable, non-independent, or don't actually cover the topic at all. There are one or two OK sources, but overall, I don't think it passes yet. I'd probably lean towards declining as well.--SkyGazer 512Oh no, what did I do this time?18:36, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
I declined this before seeing this discussion, not that it would have changed my mind but there isn't a single useful source in that draft. Praxidicae (talk) 18:51, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
and there is WP:COPYLINK violation with the newspaper article posted to somebody's linkedin profile. Please don't move policy violations into mainspace. Jytdog (talk) 21:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
I happened to run across Draft talk:EOS Group#Promotional terms, in which a highly experienced editor gives this sentence as an example of inappropriate promotionalism: "The EOS Group has more than 55 operating companies with locations in 26 countries"
(The editor who left this comment says on that talk page that s/he doesn't want to invest more time in this, which is perfectly acceptable, so I'm not pinging him. Also, this is not an unusual comment, so it'd be unfair to single out one person.)
It seems to me that this sentence is very similar to sentences that are found in the lead of several Wikipedia:Featured articles, including:
BAE Systems: "Its headquarters are in London in the United Kingdom and it has operations worldwide."
Cracker Barrel: "As of September 1, 2018, the chain operates 645 stores in 44 states."
My question for you: Do we have any decent pages that explain what "promotionalism" is, and (importantly) how promotionalism differs from reporting positive facts? When the subject actually is the biggest, fastest, first, etc., then it's not promotionalism to say that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
It's completely up to you, the wording "more than" is not encyclopedic and the entire sentence lacks definition. Consider "As of 2018 the company operates 55 subsidiary companies in 26 countries". This basic problem pervades the entire article. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 18:29, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
Really? I don't find "more than" in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch, and I do find that phrase several thousand times in real encyclopedias. I see, for example, that Spain is "rather more than twice the size of Great Britain", that there are "more than 1600 [hours] per annum" of bright sunshine in England, and that a Greek writer, "in more than one place", expressed his views on slavery. This notion that the phrase "more than" is unencyclopedic tone appears to be a personal opinion rather than an actual rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
Used in this context it is common as dirt promotional language, streaked like a skid mark through Wikipedia. "X is more than twice Y in size" is a bad faith thing to respond with -- like claiming that instances of "eat shit and die" (used as an invective) are the same as "My dog was mentally ill and ate shit and died and we are all so sad". Articles about academics consistently contain the promotional language "Dr. Impressive has more than 900 peer-reviewed publications" (often copied from promotional faculty web pages) which I regularly change to "around 900 publications". This thing: "FantastiCo sells more than 800 kinds of gadgets" or "has more than 55 subsidiaries" is exactly the same promotional crap. Jytdog (talk)
And I will add that of course there are no "rules" here. Finding a bunch of "more than"s used this way is a sign of advocacy or PR editing or an editor who has read way too many press releases. It is not definitive but rather one thing to be considered among others.Jytdog (talk) 19:09, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)And none of those are describing companies. You also have to consider that we are neither the Britannica or in 1911. Addressing the three you bring up, the first is a comparison and approximation (more than 2x rather than 2.41718322755x - we also have MOS:UNCERTAINTY, but you were giving a specific figure already), the second is also an approximation, and the third is a short phrase meaning multiple (also potentially indicating they didn't bother finding the exact number, which may also be approximation). This is in addition to what Frayae said about definition, and "more than" is frequently used in promotional statements - words to watch is not inclusive of every phrase that may be promotional. LittlePuppers (talk) 19:16, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
The draft definitely has a promotional tone. However, in isolation, I personally don't find a promotional or non-encyclopedic problem with "more than". Specifying an approximate number seems even slipperier. "More than" seems like a reasonable and more robust construct than an exact number if a/ it is a mathematically true statement and b/ the quantity is expected to change and is more likely to go up than down. {{As of}} is a valid suggestion but may introduce an unnecessary maintenance burden. ~Kvng (talk) 21:17, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
I haven't read the draft, but I assume, in my "guilty until proven innocent" way, that it is meant to be promotional from start to finish, and that any non-promotional sentence in it was an error. I just don't think that saying "It has more than 55 companies" is actually promotional. I completely agree with Kvng: This exact sentence is not promotional wording, and trying to pin it down to exactly one number creates a pointless maintenance burden on us.
(Tangent: There are other potential complications, if you think about this example. What counts as "one operating company"? Alphabet Inc. is a holding company; it holds the operating company Google LLC. Google LLC, in turn holds YouTube, Inc.. Is that "one operating company" (Google only) or "two" (Google + YouTube)? Saying that there is "more than" the smallest accurate number neatly sidesteps all of those complications about how you define boundaries between heavily inter-related companies.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Was wondering when that'll hit the press. I've complained about AfCers not accepting people who pass WP:NPROF before. My advice to reviewers is, for people in the sciences at-least to just google the person's name in google scholar; if they have more than 500 cites on a paper they'd usually pass the "likely" survive Afd bar IMO. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:24, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
personally, I don't really understand how it's a big deal. All we really have done as a project is ask for more sourcing for an individual. I understand that the subject is clearly notable, but we can't really claim to be infalible. I find it a little unlikely that, with 4000 articles in the queue, that we should be doing a WP:BEFORE search on every article that comes through AfC. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)13:52, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
You don't need to do a before search, just a quick google on google scholar on any academic to see if they've done anything important Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:18, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
I recently accepted an article on a notable professor and it was deleted almost immediately as G11. These drafts are often highly promotional, copy from faculty sources, have no independent references and are otherwise not suitable for approval. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 14:37, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Shouldn't that article's headline be "Journalist Forced to write own article, unable to copy biography from Wikipedia." ? Cabayi (talk) 16:25, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
V and BLP do not require independence, they require reliability, which a professional bio published on the site of a professional organization is. It is independent enough to verify that she wasn’t making up the claims, which is the purpose of independence in these cases (i.e. they’re not going to publish her biography claiming she was a fellow if she wasn’t. It wasn’t a personal website.) PROF does not require as strict independence as other guidelines in that it is a merit based standard for people where intellectually independent coverage is difficult. This met the basic requirements for promotion to mainspace. It wasn’t the best article, but that’s not the purpose of AfC: the purpose of AfC is to determine if an article has a more likely than not chance of surviving AfD, which this clearly did as there was proof of notability under PROF in the references.
Since he's made the point more eloquently than me and this should be read by AfC reviewers. I don't think we can bury our head in the sand regarding WP:PROF (lack of) acceptances which has been raised as an issue before. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:07, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
I then clarified a bit more: PROF wants independence in that it wants to avoid personal websites making claims that can’t be verified, but a biography on an academic society’s website claiming she was a fellow of that society is independent enough to verify that she indeed wasn’t making up the claim to pass PROF3. We need enough independence that we can be confident that someone isn’t just making crap up, but we don’t need WP:ORGIND or GNG level sourcing here. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:11, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Let me add that, even if you really dislike WP:PROF or whatever, the fact is that it is a guideline and the standard used at WP:AFD and so what WP:AFC needs to use, and is in general interpreted pretty broadly at WP:AFD in my experience, hence my comment regarding "any paper with more than 500 cites" being enough to accept an article. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:14, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
On that point, one of my personal biggest issues with AfC (and why I stay away from it) is that the standards applied by long-term reviewers tend to be significantly higher than the standards applied at AfD. WP:NOTPERFECT is often forgotten: if we have reasonable grounds to believe someone is notable, we have enough sourcing to satisfy V and there are no BLP violations or PROMO issues, we should be promoting to main space, where NPP can deal with it and if need be take it to AfD for the community to decide. Declining a notable individual because the proof of her notability was a biography on the organization that made her notable (where she happened to be a board member) isn’t great: once moved to main space more people will see it and hopefully it will be improved, but stuff like this makes the Wikispeak definitions of AfC ring true. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:40, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Yeah. There's a reason in mainspace that unless an article is utterly non-notable it generally requires at-least a few people to look over an article rather than one person vetoing the existence an article. AfC has artificially high standards belying the stated goal of Articles that will probably survive a listing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion should be accepted. Articles that will probably not survive should be declined. Issues that do not affect the likelihood of success at AFD (e.g., halo effects like formatting) should not be considered when making this fundamental calculation.
I also find here that there's a tendency where bad accepts get complained about while bad declines get ignored or dismissed. But complaining doesn't do anything to help so.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:58, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
It's not our fault that academics suck at PR or that the generaĺ media cares more about the Kardashians than Nobel laureates. Quartz has one hell of a cheek to be bitching about our lack of an article on a subject they have never even mentioned before. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:23, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
One thing I don't understand is why Bradv and others say that the draft didn't have adequate reliable sources. Wouldn't the OSA page be sufficient? (And for the record, I don't mean to demonize Bradv. I think he does great work and everyone makes mistakes.) Also, I agree with the sentiment that standards for Draft promotion should not be higher than AfD. In fact, I think they should be lower, personally, as the article will be re-reviewed by new page reviewers anyway. AfC should just be a sanity check to screen out obvious spam, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 18:08, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Kaldari, WP:NRV, which requires independent sources, applies to all articles regardless of which notability criteria is used. The difference between AfC and AfD is in the WP:BEFORE check, which would have established whether such independent sources are available. At AfC, the expected practice is only to determine whether they are already in the article, and if not, to leave a message for the reviewer on how to improve (i.e. decline). Bradv18:25, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
I just wrote this on Bradv's page on the topic: I'm honestly confused by the notion that an organization's own statement of its membership is not a reliable source, regardless of external verification. Indeed, what would that "independent" verifier rely on other than the organization's claim? IOW, an organization is and must be the only authoritative source of its own membership. This might need explicit recognition. --Eponymous-Archon (talk) 04:09, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
@Eponymous-Archon: Independent reliable sources generally gather information from a variety of sources, including the subject, their acquaintances, and their organizations. Are you arguing that membership in The Optical Society should be an inherently notable thing? FallingGravity08:50, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
@FallingGravity: I think my question was clearly put. It had nothing to do with what defined notability, here or in other cases. In fact it doesn't include the word "notable" at all. Let me try again: how is an organization's claim regarding its membership not reliable on its face? Where else would anyone reliably get membership information except from the organization, including the members themselves? So if one finds from organization ABC (e.eg, via its website) that X is a member of that organization, that alone should make that information reliable --Eponymous-Archon (talk) 15:44, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
All of this is covered by WP:PRIMARY: A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. If you're proposing a change to that policy then you should take your concerns to that page's talk page. FallingGravity06:33, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
@FallingGravity: Sorry, still confused here. You think what, that WP:PRIMARY covers this kind of case, and if so, in which way? Again, my thought is that organization membership is basic, factual info for which only the organization can be a reliable source (excluding the unusual cases like ISIS that you mentioned above). The idea that I was responding to is that such a claim by the org (not by the member) is not reliable.--Eponymous-Archon (talk) 00:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
To repeat a point I've already made elsewhere: We probably wouldn't be having to have this conversation, if AfC applied something equivalent to AfD's WP:BEFORE.
I guess the argument is that the authors should be doing the draft development, not the reviewers. Less work for reviewers is good because of WP:VOLUNTEER and because of the backlog. I'm not sure these are good arguments. I admit, I don't always do WP:BEFORE declining. But when I do, I list the sources I found on the draft's talk page before accepting. This gets information gets carried to mainspace and can be used to improve the article there and potentially ward off unproductive deletion proposals and nominations. ~Kvng (talk) 15:52, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
The essential difference is this. Supposing we have an article that has detailed coverage in 15 sources across 5 years, but the article cites none of them. A mainspace version goes to AfD, a draft version goes to review. The former would presumably get closed as "keep" even if no sources were added (while I greatly prefer people to add citations before !voting "keep" at AfD, it's not mandatory), while the draft would get repeatedly declined because "no sources added". That's basically where the disconnect is between the two.
This is already covered in the WP:LIKELY to survive WP:AFD directive that presumably trumps process. We're going to get some incorrect declines by reviewers who do not think bigger than the process or who don't have a lot of AfD experience. My read is that this is working as intended because the community is more sensitive to crap coming out of AfC than we are to myopic declines (excepting cases like this where we receive outside criticism). ~Kvng (talk) 18:42, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
@Kvng: I'm not sure I'd call it "working as intended". I've seen and heard a fair bit of negative feedback over the years from new editors about having good drafts rejected for overly-pedantic reasons. And at least one of those new editors gave up on editing because of it. (You won't see the draft in their User Contributions because it was eventually abandoned and deleted, and I know for a fact that the draft was about a historical figure not connected to the editor.) Personally, I would support adding WP:BEFORE to the AfC review process. I don't do much AfC reviewing myself, but I've always practiced WP:BEFORE when I have. Kaldari (talk) 17:00, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm just giving you my read on the current sentiments here at AfC. I don't agree with it but it makes sense. Authors should be stakeholders here at AfC but they're not really because they're generally inexperienced and more likely to go away than argue against a bad review. Because of their inexperience, some will argue against good reviews. On the other hand, if, as a reviewer, you're going to accept a diamond-in-the-rough kind of draft you need a thick skin because you'll get criticism at AfD and often here at AfC too. ~Kvng (talk) 15:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
What evidence is there that "one of those new editors" gave up on editing because of "rejection of their draft"? The editor concerned began editing on 5 November 2014, and continued visible edits to 19:41, 4 January 2016, so not exactly a new editor. On 12 January 2016 they created a sandbox for Joseph Ishill, though they could simply have created a new article. On the same day a template was put on their talk page saying the "recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time." The template goes on to encourage improved references to show notability. The author didn't return to make improvements, on 6 September 2016 the draft was nominated for deletion with an invitation on their talk page to resume editing, and ask for undeletion if they wanted to go back to their draft. The topic looks reasonably notable, so it's a shame they didn't just add it to main space, but the draft was hardly "rejected". The template looks a bit more helpful than "submission declined", but people can stop editing for many reasons. I'd like to see thought to making templates more encouraging, but that wording looks ok. Maybe "your draft still needs some improvement"? . . . dave souza, talk10:59, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
declined revision: Warmer language about resubmission
Proposed change:
"your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted" ---> "your draft will be declined again".
The former discourages any resubmission, especially for newbies who might think it's better to have a draft up than to resubmit and have it disappear. (This language also matches that next to the resubmission button.) – SJ +18:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree. I don't think that we need warmer language on a decline. The fact that there are more than 3700 drafts in the queue for review seems to imply that we are not discouraging resubmissions. Do we really think that it is important to have more resubmissions? (Well, I guess some editors think that we need to pressure the reviewers to accept the drafts, including the clueless ones, as evidenced by the suggestion that a BEFORE search should be required prior to a decline. I don't think that we need to pressure the reviewers into accepting many more drafts, and I don't think that we need to be warmer in our decline language, but evidently some editors think that most drafts should be accepted unless we can demonstrate that they shouldn't.) Robert McClenon (talk) 02:29, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
I do think promising drafts should end up in the main namespace when AFC is backlogged. In particular, being stuck in draft space means other people (who don't browse AFC) will never see your work. Wikipedia works when people who don't know eachother asynchronously find and improve one another's work. When there's a backlog, the process should be simplified to quickly send on reasonable drafts. If it looks like something that a thoughtful autoconf editor might create, don't let it stay hidden in a less-visible namespace behind less-understood policies. – SJ +18:52, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
declined comments revision: lead with positive request for improvement
All of the declined comments read as though they are a final rejection. Only after you make it through a few sentences describing the failings of the article is there a positive suggestion of ways to make it better. For a new contributor, this looks like a form rejection slip, and discourages further work.
Proposed change: move the last sentence of each comment (detailing how to improve the article) to the top of the comment. Condense the criticism (which is redundant to the positive suggestion) so that the focus is on what to improve.
Something like
"Please add better references. These should be (independent, notable, secondary...).
As the article stands, its references do not demonstrate notability."
I am happy to draft specific revised text, but this is a lot of edits to a widely-used template, so I'd rather the changes be made by people who are actively handling AFC and using them in practice.
– SJ +18:06, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
I would really prefer not to see the language made warmer and more saccharine to encourage more resubmissions. The fact that we have more than 3700 drafts awaiting review seems to mean that we aren't being that bitey after all. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:29, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
It is up to the recipient to read the whole rejection. Most submissions should be summarily deleted not reworked and resubmitted. Changing wording to encourage the hopeless is not desirableIn fact, I believe no one should be able to create a draft without 4 days and 10 edits (auto confirmed) which shows a little bit of dedication to the improvement of Wikipedia before they promote themselves or their pet organization. Legacypac (talk) 18:57, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
This argument seems somewhat incidental. Too many drafts means the process could be working better; it doesn't determine what's wrong. Any draft that isn't speediable couldbe converted to a main namespace article with cleanup tags, instead of a draft with rejected-tags. Deciding where those drafts should sit while potentially being improved is a mid-sized open question for the community; AFC just one of many options. The number of open drafts speaks mainly to the scope of the problem. – SJ +18:58, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Actually we lack some important CSD tags for Drafts like A7 and A11 (no credible claom of significance). Drafts are exempt from the Notability requirements. There are thousands of rejected Drafts every month that do not qualify for a CSD tag but have no business in mainspace. We use G13 (mainly) to sweep them up. Legacypac (talk) 02:57, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment
Previously the decline language was seen as saccharine, encouraging the submitter to improve and resubmit. I will take another look after I do my next round of reviews, but I think it is still saccharine, encouraging crud to be reworked, which is why we now have Reject also. This is yet another case where the rule not to bite the newcomers is treated as a commandment, even overriding policies, because many editors tie themselves in knots to avoid being bitey, but some newcomers do need to be bitten. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:33, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, for a significant proportion of submissions "Fuck off" would be an entirely apropriate response, but WP:CIVIL prevents. So we devised the "Rejected" language in place of "Declined" when we really do not want to see the draft again. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:59, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
RfC: requiring a BEFORE search when declining drafts
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Going from the general flow of the discussion, it seems that the consensus is to oppose this proposal, mainly on the grounds that:
1. Notability alone does not determine an article's suitability for the encyclopedia
2. The sources cited in the article should be sufficient to establish notability -- otherwise the draft is not ready for the encyclopedia
3. Requiring such a search would further increase the backlog and add unneeded bureaucratic procedure
I expect this would be prohibitively time consuming. A real BEFORE can take something on the order of 20 or 30 minutes. GMGtalk14:37, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Support brief search - So long as the draft does not A) immediately qualify for one of the CSD criteria, or B) is so unfinished that it would need to be fundamentally rewritten; a brief search is advisable. Spending 20-30 minutes digging isn't practical, but a quick perusal of Google news/books is often enough to give a quick "yep its notable". If you don't even bother doing a brief search, you won't know this. For more borderline topics that require in depth searching in old newspapers, etc. to find anything resembling a good source, these can be declined as normal as it isn't reasonable to expect this level of searching from reviewers. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)14:54, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - I’d rather see higher standards for acceptance of reviewers, and higher standards of acceptance for article creators rather than an on-the-job training approach.. Atsme✍🏻📧15:02, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Brief search - If you are declining a draft on notability alone, you should be required to do a single google search on the topic to establish it's lack of obvious notability. If you are declining on other reasons instead of or in addition to pure notability, this should not be required. Further searches after the first google will not save enough additional drafts to be worth the requirement. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:11, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Strongly Oppose - Many drafts are not even worth declining. The reviewer should not be required to waste time doing a search, which will simply consume time verifying the obvious. Even on reasonable-quality drafts, the burden should be on the submitter to include the appropriate references in the draft before submitting. Requiring a BEFORE search before drafts are declined will work in the favor of spammers, who will know that their drafts cannot be declined quickly. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:29, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment - Many drafts do not qualify for any of the CSD criteria, because of exceptions to G1 and G2, or because they are simply crud, and can hardly be said to be "unfinished" because the submitter doesn't have a clue. There is no way that the reviewer should be burdened with a search, e.g., to verify that a high school student is only a non-notable teenager. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:29, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment - Every editor is entitled to an occasional genuinely terrible idea. If User:Bradv is actually trying to add this to the flow, they have used their quota. If they were just asking, the question has been answered. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:29, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh, crap. If each editor is limited to one genuinely terrible idea, I'm way over quota. I hope I don't get voted off the island. -- RoySmith(talk)03:43, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
This proposal would bring the workflow used here more in line with how things are done at NPP. There are respected editors who would like to see AfC abolished and this is not considered a genuinely terrible idea. It is, however, an idea that that has not been well received here at AfC. ~Kvng (talk) 03:21, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
If AfC were abolished, all new articles would go through NPP. It's true new users can't create new articles until they're WP:AUTOCONFIRMED, but, with our ongoing 2+ month backlog, that's a process that potentially takes less time than getting an article reviewed here. ~Kvng (talk) 16:38, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose: the onus is on the article's creator to demonstrate notability. Declines are not AfD noms, where BEFORE is suggested (not required). --K.e.coffman (talk) 18:29, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose but I occasionally do a before search. If the notability is borderline I prefer but the page is otherwise good I prefer to pass it to mainspace and see how it fairs. If there is clearly no notability from what I see in the draft a BEFORE search is very unlikely to turn up a reason to keep the draft. If the creator can't be bothered to include the main reason anyone ahould care about the subject than it is not my job to find a reason. As for abolishing AFC - that has merit. Anyone unwilling to make 10 edits across 4 days has no business creating a new page. Invariably these newbies are only seeking to promote themselves or some topic they are attached to, or they are not newbies but are not willing to use a previous account for good reason. Legacypac (talk) 18:52, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. I think WP:BEFORE searches should only be required before rejecting a draft on notability grounds (without an option to resubmit), but checking the sources cited within the draft should be enough to decline it. — Newslingertalk12:08, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - Accepting a bad article simply because it meets WP:GNG shouldn't be accepted either. I have always expected AfC to be a training wheels style operation, where experienced Wikipedians (once you take out the paid advertising, spam, and completely incompetent drafts) can gleem information to new writers about how to create a suitible article. A declined draft is not a deletion... A notice saying that your article doesn't show it's notability should be a good way to tell the author that they have to demonstrate notability on their work, not just expect others to do so. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)13:21, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. There are currently 4000 drafts, and this would markedly increase the time it takes to review a draft. Let's not encourage the backlog to balloon. Natureium (talk) 14:05, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Strongly oppose largely per Natureium but also because we seem to be forgetting that AFC reviewers, like others, are volunteers and in addition to a massive AFC backlog, we have over 100,000 under or unreferenced BLPs already in main space which shows that the philosophy of "throw it into main space and someone else will fix it" is horribly misguided and isn't working. No one is asking for GA or FA drafts but notability is not the only criteria by which we are judging drafts, particularly BLPs. And like what several others said, WP:ONUS. Forcing reviewers to be the sole decider of notability is stupid and defeats the purpose of ACPERM. Praxidicae (talk) 17:52, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
And I'll note since it's repeatedly been brought up: I almost never decline on the sole basis of notability unless it's something absurdly and unequivocally not notable. I think the issue that many people are running into is the belief that V or ILC decline is a notability decline. It's not. It's stating that it's not appropriately sourced or has not appropriately demonstrated the subjects notability based on the current content of the draft. Praxidicae (talk) 17:56, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Strong oppose (not currently an AfC reviewer if that matters Well that changed quickly.) The onus is on the person writing the article to show that the subject is notable. If the reviewer wants to tag it with a CSD tag for notability reasons, then a WP:BEFORE is reasonable, but not for just declining a draft that doesn't show notability. {{u|zchrykng}} {T|C}18:03, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Indeed and I think it's important to make the distinction here that not demonstrating notability is not the same as not being notable. Praxidicae (talk) 18:20, 12 October 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.
Communication with editors
I recently had a look at Peace Uzoamaka Nnaji and moved it into article space as an adequately sourced article on an elected member of a country's government (and thus clearly notable). It had been rejected twice at AfC, and five different editors had edited it, but no-one had welcomed the editor to Wikipedia or made any comment on their talk page about the progress of this, their first article. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they have not edited the encyclopedia since that first article creation (and a simple message on their own talk page). I see that the Project Goals don't include anything about providing a friendly welcome to good-faith new editors so that they will be encouraged to continue their editing. Perhaps the project should consider adding something like that to its goals? (Yes, I know the instant response will be "You aren't an AfC editor so don't tell us how to do things" or words to that effect: I WikiGnome away in various other areas like stub-sorting, each to our own. But the work of AfC can be the first interaction a potential new editor has with Wikipedia, so you can make a huge difference by how you respond to them). PamD08:25, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
As this is the place were a lot of editors make their first contribution, I support adding welcoming as a project goal. I propose we should do some some brainstorming here on ways we can improve communication with authors. AFCH make a lot of it happen automatically but I'm not sure canned automatic communications have a positive effect on editor retention. ~Kvng (talk) 19:42, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
At present the AfC process does not involve any proactive communication with the draft authors. All the messages left on their talk pages are fully automatic and don't involve even visiting their talk page. Any communication that does happen is normally initiated by a draft author asking questions about a decline on the help desk or reviewers talk page. Other reasons for contact are questions about why they have been waiting so long, and the occasional thank you for reviewing. I suggest that the draft authors are welcomed automatically when they submit the draft, possibly with information about what else they can do while waiting. Welcoming several weeks later when the draft is reviewed is not going to be very helpful. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 22:50, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
There have been efforts to welcome new editors generally. Seems to be a perenial debate. I don't know why we should focus especially on welcoming AfC submitters - a disproportionate number of which are here for SPAM and self promotion. New Editors that start by making corrections and improvements to existing pages are much more likely to become good contributors me thinks. Legacypac (talk) 04:15, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
User:Legacypac Obviously there is something that you and I do not understand. It is the accepted position of the larger Wikipedia community that new editors must be welcomed exuberantly (not merely welcomed), and that various smaller communities within Wikipedia are remiss in not meeting and greeting new editors with the proper enthusiasm, and that we are losing a vital resource because the new editors are not being sufficiently welcomed. That is known to be the truth. You and I see clueless and self-serving editors in AFC and elsewhere, but that obviously means that there is something wrong with our perception, because it is known to be the truth that the new editors only need to be properly greeted, and they will be up and running. Obviously there is something that we do not understand. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:26, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
If we could just make the new editors happy by approving their non-notable autobios or garage bands they would go on to write featured articles on other topics. Legacypac (talk) 01:19, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Seriously though, I wish we were saying: If you go and spend a while improving exiting content, we will spend time considering your suggested topic. I don't think newcomers should be writing new pages on new topics. Newcomers should learn to walk first. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:14, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
If this is representative of how reviewers feel about new editors, we should not be welcoming them; If you can't say something nice... ~Kvng (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
User:Kvng - Whether something nice should be said to new editors depends on what they have written. Some should be welcomed and some shouldn't. Of the ones I see, more should not be welcomed than should, but Your Mileage May Vary. We should welcome ones who write about a plausible topic. We should not welcome ones who write about themselves, or who have some thought on the meaning of life. In any case, there is always a class of wiki-critics who say that some particular class of volunteers should be fulfilling the meeting and greeting function. Maybe there does need to be a meeting and greeting role. It shouldn't be dumped onto editors who are already trying to do a useful job such as AFC or NPP. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:18, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
With this approach, I think you fail to appreciate the potential benefits of WP:AGF. I personally find is easier for everyone if I don't make judgements about contributors intentions, just deal with behaviors and the content of contributions. What's the worst that will happen if we cheerfully welcome editors who make crappy early contributions? ~Kvng (talk) 14:12, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
I assume good faith. My comments above are about their behaviors, not their intentions. Sometimes their behaviors are useful, and sometimes they are not useful. The downside to welcoming clueless self-serving new editors is that they are likely to continue to clog the review pipeline longer with their crud before they go away. Some new editors really should just go away. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:17, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: You may, in fact, have accurate judgement about which new editors have the potential to become positive contributors to Wikipedians. Even if so, I would still be uncomfortable with individual editors making these assessments for the community. ~Kvng (talk) 16:08, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Individual editors and Admins constantly make judgement calls. No one is required or not required to "welcome" anyone. If a Spammer's welcome is a Decline, CSD notice and block for a promotional username, well that is what they earned. Anyone else is welcome to give them a plate pf cookies and an encouraging word, but I'm on to the next page in the backlog that hopefully will be an interesting one like Mark. Legacypac (talk) 16:46, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Meeting and Greeting of New Editors - A New Role, or the Usual Dump?
There is, above, yet another suggestion that the AFC volunteers are collectively at fault for not being sufficiently enthusiastic in their implied function of meeting and greeting new editors. I have been saying from time to time for maybe two years that we should consider whether there should be a separate volunteer function of meeting and greeting new editors. That way, it wouldn't be necessary to dump on the AFC or NPP volunteers, who are already doing a job that the overall Wikipedia community thinks is important, for not also acting as the meeting and greeting committee. We need to decide whether meeting and greeting is a sufficiently important role that we need to ask for volunteers for the purpose. If it isn't important enough to call for its own volunteers, then maybe we don't need to dump on the AFC volunteers. (Oh, never mind. It is very much the Wikipedia way to dump on some other group of volunteers than one belongs to and say that they aren't doing enough. Dumping on another group of volunteers makes the dumper feel better, that they have accomplished something. Whether it annoys the dumpees is not important.)
Seriously, if meeting and greeting is so important that it is worth dumping on other volunteers, then maybe it is important enough to have volunteers for the purpose.
No change appears to be necessary. Not all new editors start immediately writing new articles and submitting them to AfC, so members of this project would not even be aware of these editors. If the draft is declined, the AfC script invites the authors to the Teahouse. So that's a "meet-n-greet" right there. Overall, it does not seem to be the role of AfC volunteers to welcome new editors. K.e.coffman (talk) 17:44, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
No change the value of posting welcomes on talkpages is debatable. Twinkle has a bunch of options for that. Anyone who thinks it is important can devote there volunteer time to posting welcomes, but trying to badger others into doing that instead of working on the next Draft is not appropriate. Getting an answer on a submission in a reasonable amount of time is better than waiting 3 months but getting a canned welcome message. A real welcome is a thanks or a positive comment recognizing an useful contribution not a canned welcome. Legacypac (talk) 18:22, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Comment - Maybe I was misunderstood. I was not implying that the AFC reviewers should be tasked to do the meeting and greeting. I was saying that wiki-critics (other Wikipedia editors) should stop dumping on AFC reviewers for not doing the meeting and greeting. We, the AFC reviewers, already are doing a volunteer job. I was saying that if meeting and greeting is thought to be important, then there needs to be a separate volunteer function to do it. I agree that we already have scripts that post to talk pages, but I have seen critics who say that the scripts are too cold and mechanical and that someone needs to provide real human greetings. If so, you, whoever you are, can do it, rather than dumping that the AFC reviewers should do it. I was not proposing to expand the scope of the AFC reviewers, but to create a new scope in order to reduce the dumping. I don't know about other volunteer editors, but I get tired of wiki-critics who constantly dump that some other group of volunteers are not doing enough. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:41, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
No change - I agree that this should not be added to the AfC review process. But I will reach out to the Welcoming Committee and see if there is anyone over there interested in monitoring the head of the AfC queue and being warm and fuzzy. ~Kvng (talk) 01:10, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Get ready for November with Women in Red!
Three new topics forWiR'sonline editathons in November, two of them supporting other initiatives
RfC: Put AfC templates and comments on the talk page?
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This is a proposal to put all AfC status templates, maintenance templates, comments, and such on the draft talk page instead of the draft page, where they currently are. This would enable reviewers and draft authors to hold normal conversations on the talk page, and would (as a side effect) retain all conversation if the draft is moved to mainspace. A general disclaimer-style AfC banner will remain on the draft page, informing readers that the draft is not an article yet. A script (or Lua template) can also be written to summarize the status of the draft so far, for use by reviewers and others interested in AfC reviewing operations. Robert McClenon was the most recent person to suggest this, and this issue has also come up in the past before then. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:09, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Clarification: The previous status of the draft will be summarized in the banner by default. Every decline reason and comment will appear on the draft page, except (of course) taking up less room. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:41, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Support; I've heard this come up a few times, and I have not heard good reasons why it should not be done, except perhaps technical ones ("it would be difficult"). Given that this is being proposed by the maintainer of the AFCH tool, that doesn't seem to apply. This would train draft users that the talk page is the correct place to discuss page issues, and create more of a two way conversation. Seems positive all around. I think perhaps the most recent decline reason should be transcluded onto the article page; e.g. ("this page was declined because..."). Overall I see this as a positive change. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)06:21, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, we can always have whatever banner ends up on the draft page have a small summary of the templates on the talk page, {{Article history}} style, so that editors won't even need to use a script. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:26, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
It's doable from a technical perspective; we could LST the talk page onto the main draft page, and modify the decline notices so that when they're transcluded from the draft talk to the draft it would basically just display a small {{ombox}} for each previous decline. Primefac (talk) 16:32, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
Support - Copying my comment from the last time this came up:
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.
I would like to see point 1 addressed, but it's not a dealbreaker. Point 2 can be adequately addressed by a script for reviewers. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:51, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Comment It would be inconvenient for users to check if the draft is currently submitted. They also cannot see how many times the draft has been declined. Maybe we can design a small notice in the draft page that shows whether or not the draft is submitted and displays the number of declines and comments? (new template?) —AE(talk • contributions)14:10, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Yup, we could change the color of the banner or something. This would also help with the problem where a "pending" banner is inserted all the way at the bottom. Enterprisey (talk!) 01:03, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Support. Talk goes on talk pages. Comments that could lead to a conversation should be on a talk page. I have seen many times newcomers confused by the comments and submit combination being on top of the draft.
I'm not sure whether we were leaning towards the review having the option to comment on (a) the draft, (b) the draft_talk, and (c) the author's user_talk page. On one hand I am wary of suggesting feature creep, but I can imagine good reasons to want to choose any one of the three. For example: (a) A draft page proper comment pointing to multiple articles where the topic is already covered; (b) suggestions for improvement; (c) suggestions for different topics the author might more productively contribute to.
If (c) were to be an option, it might need to assist the reviewer in choosing which author is the main author.
Support. This is the established pattern for every other namespace. It would be better for new editors to get in the habit of having discussions in talk pages right away, instead of having to unlearn commenting practices specific to AfC later. — Newslingertalk11:33, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
Support - I don't see a downside except that feedback is one click away. It is probably a good idea to get new editors used to using talk pages. ~Kvng (talk) 15:00, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
Support - Makes sense to me. Only problem could be finding the feedback, though perhaps that could be explained in the AfC banner that would still be there. SemiHypercube✎16:14, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
Oppose We already put several barriers in the way of new editors - barriers that I largely support. However "hiding" things on talk pages until their article has been rejected (if it's ever reviewed at all when they can't find where to submit it) doesn't strike me as serving the needs of those editors. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:21, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: The plan is to just have comments go to the talk page. Editors will still get plenty of notice that there are messages for them (both on their talk page, as well as on the main page of their draft). The AfC template will still also be on the draft page (not just on the talk page). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)05:49, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Having discussed this with Enterprisey I think his intention is to transclude the talk template onto the draft page. In this scenario I could get behind the proposal once that change is incorporated into the RfC. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't like an uncollapsed straight transclusion, as that's just the current state of affairs. A summarized form with just the decline reasons is what I'm currently thinking of. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:39, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
Support I have long advocated this change, and sometimes I copy AfC comments to talk for future reference when accepting new articles. Legacypac (talk) 20:00, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Discussion
Apologies that I am not up to speed on previous discussion of this proposal. I have a couple questions.
We need to think about what we want the talk page to look like after a draft has been accepted. Retaining the reviewer comments in a clearly-marked talk section is potentially valuable but a wall of pink AfC reject templates, probably not. What is the thinking here?
Who is going to do this work? There's not much point of approving a change unless there is a person or team that is actually going to implement the change. ~Kvng (talk) 16:10, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
We can probably remove the templates; people can find them in the history anyway. I will implement at least the helper script changes. Enterprisey (talk!) 17:11, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
How will some of our newest editors know to check the talk page to submit their article for review? I can tell you that even in the current system how to submit their article for review is something new editors sometimes need support with doing. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:24, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
The templates on the draft page and the decline/rejection messages should explicitly tell editors to check the talk page. If editors don't notice the message, we can bold it or increase its font size. — Newslingertalk14:38, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
Important We really should talk to the growth team at WMF before making this change. The new AfC tools that will be at Special:NewPagesFeed rely on categories present on the draft page itself (which are put there by the templates). I'm pretty sure they could rework it to go off of the talk page, but let's keep them informed. Pinging MMiller (WMF)— MusikAnimaltalk02:42, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
I'd say the optimal solution would be making the "banner template" add the proper categories to the draft page, so that the categories include only drafts; as a bonus, the rest of the AfC ecosystem (NewPagesFeed, SQL's tool, pending-subs) wouldn't have to change anything. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:54, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for pinging me, MusikAnimal. That's right, Enterprisey, the New Pages Feed will be keyed off categories on the draft page (not the talk page). If anything changes in terms of what or where the categories are, we should discuss. It's possible for our code to accommodate those type of changes, but we would just need to know in advance. Also pinging our team's engineering lead, Roan_Kattouw_(WMF) to make sure this all looks okay from his perspective.
I'd also like to add one other note based on the conversation above. The Growth team's research on new editors suggests that new editors frequently don't understand that talk pages exist, how to find them, and what they're for. This might be something to consider when moving templates from the draft page to the talk page. If the initial submission template, for instance, is on the talk page instead of the draft page, I think that many new editors wouldn't find it, and would be confused about how to submit. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
We would retain a banner on the draft page that has all of the information about draft status. The resubmit button and draft tools would also stay on the banner. The only reason the author would need to navigate directly to the draft talk page would be to respond to a discussion there, and the "I left a comment" template should indicate that. Enterprisey (talk!) 19:21, 13 September 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.
Pending List not removing reviewed?
Hi,
Can I check whether it is just me for which the "Pending AfC Submissions List" isn't removing reviewed articles - it seems to have vast hoards (thus not recent changes) of articles with a reviewed status still sitting there, which seems contrary to its purpose as a pending list.
Not sure if just me, some error from the large number or something else.
Just happened to check this page; I maintain that tool so ping me for further problems. Not sure why it wasn't updating, but I restarted it manually. Enterprisey (talk!) 21:47, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Rejection in main script
This is a proposal to add the rejection feature to the main script, allowing all reviewers to use it. To provide guidance on when to use this feature, the final wording in #Guidelines for rejecting above will be added to the reviewing guidelines. I won't add the feature until we've agreed on a set of guidelines, of course, so you can support here while suggesting changes to the guidelines. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:43, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Anytime I created the Not Suitable for Wikipedia template because this was a hole in our system. There are enough very different reasons to use the rejection I don't think we need much instruction. If we mention CSD we need to be careful how we word it. CSD G11 or G12 are preferable to tagging as Not Suitable. Legacypac (talk) 04:32, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
No, seriously, we do need written guidelines, approved by consensus, on how to use this before deploying it more widely. ~Kvng (talk) 15:49, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, in principle. The guidelines have to somehow prevent abuse of this new reviewer power and you know what they say about power. ~Kvng (talk) 14:04, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
The Reject feature reduced the workload at MFD by one draft last night. I reviewed a draft that was being tendentiously resubmitted without significant change after being told twice to clean up promotional language. Previously I would have sent the draft to MFD. I simply Rejected it on grounds of Wikipedia is not for promotion as not consistent with the purposes of Wikipedia. So thank you for including this feature. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:49, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Looks ok to me for notability and not copyvio, but the title was create protected back in 2012. Can an Admin look at it and remove the old create protect? Legacypac (talk) 19:56, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Maybe I have already asked this and not gotten a conclusive answer. Is there a template that I can tag a draft with that indicates that it is waiting for a reviewer who can read Arabic, because the reliable sources are in Arabic?
I have in the past had the same question about Korean sources, so this is a more general question about tagging drafts that need a reviewer who can read Language Y.
I am not certain that there is a reviewer who can read Arabic, but if there is then you could just ask them directly to have a look. Maybe we could have a list of reviewers by languages spoken to make it easier. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 17:13, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
How can I ask a reviewer to check Arabic sources unless I know who is an Arabic-literate reviewer? As you said, a list of reviewers who are literate in various languages would be useful. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:41, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
This isn't a particularly urgent or critical question, but I will ask it anyway. The question is whether submissions that are purely advertising or are spam should be declined with 'adv' and tagged for G11, or should be rejected as contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia and tagged for G11. I am in the habit of declining them, usually with 'adv' and 'corp', and tagging them for G11. I have been doing that for a long time, since before there were multiple reasons, so that I would use either 'adv' or 'corp' and would decline them, and would also tag G11. Now that rejection has been implemented, that is an alternative disposition. My first thought is that "Contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia" is too harsh a judgment, and that a decline and a G11 is good enough. However, on second thought, advertising does violate Wikipedia is not for advertising, and that is fair after all. It doesn't really matter which type of disapproval I provide if the G11 is agreed to by the reviewing administrator, because the offending article is only there for a matter of hours. So is there a definite reason why I should reject it and G11 it, or a definite reason why I should continue to decline it and G11 it? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:10, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
WP:G11 is for articles or drafts that are unambiguously and exclusively for promotion. Most of the drafts I've seen declined for 'adv' could be fixed with WP:STUBIFY quickly which G11 says is preferrable and which I would do if there were good evidence of notability which there rarely is. Anyway, it sounds like you use G11 regularly. How many of those go through for you? ~Kvng (talk) 16:50, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
User:Kvng - It has been a very long time since I had a G11 declined. I don't use it as much as some other reviewers do. I do use it on submissions that are not written in the third person. If the submission is written in the first person plural, it seems to me, and to the deleting administrators, that that is promotional. If the submission is addressed to the second person customer, likewise, that seems to me to be G11. I also see a number of stubs about companies that don't contain the basic information about the company except for a link; that is just a spam link, and is G11. I decline a lot of a corporate ads with 'adv' and/or 'corp' because the draft tells what the company says about itself and not what third parties say about it. That isn't G11; it just doesn't satisfy notability and neutrality. I have very seldom had a G11 denied. Either I see a moderate amount of hopeless stuff, or other editors get a chance to review the Start-Class drafts on companies. I very seldom see Start-Class drafts on companies. The Start-Class drafts that I do see are on other topics than companies, and I think that is because companies don't want to have neutral articles. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:27, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
This relates to my question above at #Promotionalism. I think that we need some additional educational pages that explain what an "advertisement" is. It always surprises me when someone declines an article about a business as "spam" or "advertisement" when it says what a company does, when they were founded, where the headquarters are, who works there, and nothing else. It's like some editors think that there are only three options: big companies I've personally heard of, spam (=all positive articles), and attack pages (=all negative articles).
Or: An advertisement is that thing from the grocery store that tells you what's on sale this week. It's not a short, factual description of the who/what/when/where of a business.
So: If I am tagging the submission for G11, should I decline it with 'corp' and/or 'adv', or should I Reject it as contrary to Wikipedia (and probably not notable besides)? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't come around to this talk page often (maybe this is the second time) but happened to be here and saw this discussion. I had independently started a discussion at CSD on this topic a few hours ago. I am pretty strongly opposed to G11 being used on drafts and certainly on drafts that have yet to be submitted or have only been rejected once. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:35, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm guessing Barkeep49 has little to no AfC/Draft experience because they want to remove an important spam fighting tool. There is no value to th le project in leaving SPAM to sit around in Draftspace regardless of its AfC submission status. Why the heck would Barkeep49 want to turn part of Wikipedia into a free webhost for spam or send tons of obvious cases to MfD? Legacypac (talk) 04:22, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Legacypac, Barkeep49 is one of our most prolific NPP reviewers, so I doubt that their intention is to increase the amount of spam on Wikipedia. But I've pinged them now, so they can respond to your question. Bradv04:34, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Bradv for the ping as I was not watching this discussion. @Legacypac: As Brad pointed out I spend a couple hours a day 3-5 times a week doing new page patrol and am also frequently acting as a helper on IRC while doing that patrolling. Between these two tasks even if I am not regularly reviewing as part of AfC I am interacting in a substantial way with a half dozen or more drafts a night (some of which I've put there as part of NPP). I actively work to fight spam, as you do, and to keep the standards of the encyclopedia high, as do you. I do this because I think Wikipedia's reputation matters. I also see the human cost of what it means to keep those standards with those whose drafts are rejected - even among people whose intentions don't align with with what I see as the volunteer ethos of the encyclopedia. However, I believe those people will leave their interaction with Wikipedia with some take away and perhaps share that experience with others. I'd like that takeaway not to be a rant against their unfair treatment but instead some knowledge that Wikipedians are fighting hard to have a quality source of knowledge. I view the opportunity for someone to submit their draft, and receive feedback upon it, and to try submitting again, as helping, not harming our reputation and thus our project. I fundamentally believe there should be a space for new editors and even editors with COI to learn and grow as Wikipedians. I think that space is draft space. At some point, and I don't know where for me that line is, if people keep resubmitting SPAM it does just become a time sink for volunteers and the article should be G11'ed. But I think that line is beyond 0 or 1 submissions. So I will continue to take what I consider to be a pretty hard line in ensuring the quality of what ends up in mainspace. And I will continue to appreciate the efforts of people like Bradv and you Legacypac who review drafts, help to nurture editors where appropriate, and maintain our standards. Wikipedia is not a webhost but it is a place where anyone can edit and where we treat each other with respect and civility. It's all three of these pillars of our encyclopedia I am trying to promote when I suggest that we need to be a little gentler with G11s in draft space. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:12, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
As a practical matter I occasionally go through AfC submissions declined as an advertisement and G11 most of the ones I look at. I very very rarely have any CSD declined and when it happens it is usually the declining Admin's failure. I figure there is no point waiting 6 months to G13 when it takes exactly the same effort to G11 the page now. Also when processing G13 CSDs I try to tag G11 or G2 etc whenever I can because it closes off te easy REFUND of G13 and leaves a record on the creator's talkpage that helps others identify problematic patterns. Legacypac (talk) 02:46, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Nearly everything in that 2500 is less than 6 months old (at least edited in the last 6 months) and those are just the ones no one has G11'd yet. G13 has applied for years to AfC submissions.
I did an experiment a few months ago and G11'd all the pages in that Advert decline starting with a couple letters of the alphabet to see how closely AfC reviewers were matching Adv declines to G11 criteria. About 90% were accepted as G11 and a handful were rejected for G11. Some of those few declined CSDs were not really bad Adverts and I recall I was able to promote a couple after some clean up. By G11ing SPAM we close off the REFUND option that comes with G13. We also eliminate the spam links and remove them from being resubmitted over wnd over. So there is some real benefits to G11 sooner than waiting for G13, and it is nonextra work to tag a page G11 today as G13 in several months.
@Legacypac: thank you for the explanation; this was helpful. I'm working the back of the AfC queue, and I frequently come across drafts that have been declined as adv, nn, or both, and are still spam. Would you say it's a reasonable approach to apply a G11 tag in this case, vs declining again? K.e.coffman (talk) 19:20, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@K.e.coffman: I often just decline a spammy page to give the creator a chance to address the issue but on resubmission if it is still spam, absolutely G11 it. That prevents resubmission and helps us get on to the good pages at AfC. Legacypac (talk) 21:18, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
"WP:G14"
@Legacypac: clearing out the "adv" entries manually seems like a chore. Has it ever been suggested to create a new criterion, say WP:G14, that would delete the drafts declined as "adv" automatically, AND a. do it sooner than six months (perhaps three? one?); b. make them ineligible for restoration? --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:15, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Copyvio detection ready for testing in New Pages Feed
Hi AfC reviewers -- the third part of this project to improve prioritization tools for AfC is now ready for testing by reviewers. In the vein of how "potential issues" were added to the New Pages Feed in a previous update, we are now adding the potential issue of "Copyvio". Drafts will be flagged in the New Pages Feed if a revision in the draft has been flagged by CopyPatrol (via the Turnitin service) as potentially copied from another source. This feature should make it faster and easier for AfC reviewers to find and deal with drafts that have potential copyright violations. Here is how to test:
Go to this URL, instead of the usual New Pages Feed URL.
Choose the "Articles for Creation" option at the top of the feed.
Open the "Set filters" menu and select "Copyvio" under "Potential issues".
This will filter to the drafts that have been flagged by CopyPatrol (via the Turnitin service) as having revisions with potential violations.
You can click the "Copyvio" link in each entry to inspect the potential violating text in the CopyPatrol interface.
Sometimes, the reviewers working in CopyPatrol will already have deleted the violating text, deleted the page, or marked the page as "No action needed".
This testing period will continue into next week, at which point we'll decide whether we're ready to make the feature available at the usual URL. If you have feedback, reactions, or questions, please post here or on the project's talk page. And to read more about the specifics of this implementation and the rules behind how it works, check out this project update. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
@Legacypac: thanks for trying it out! Yes, that sounds about right. We are not running the bot retroactively over the 40,000+ existing drafts, so it will increasingly populate over time as new drafts are created and edited (starting from a couple days ago). The way it works is that if any revision in a draft is flagged by CopyPatrol, that draft gets flagged in the feed. I'm now seeing two drafts that are "Awaiting review" that are flagged as potential violations, with 18 total across all drafts. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 06:08, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
I've read this essay with interest: User:Bradv/Strickland incident. There was one idea there that I thought would be helpful to the project:
AfC sorting: A system of sorting and tagging AfC drafts based on topic area or potential notability would help draw experts into AfC, which could help improve drafts such as this. WP:DELSORT, a similar project at WP:AFD, could be used as a starting point.
It AfC-sorting may seem like busywork, but quite a few people do it at AfD, so I assume there may be people willing to sort drafts. It would improve the efficiency of the process, as people would be able to focus on the areas that interest them and / or where they have experience establishing notability. Any feedback? --K.e.coffman (talk) 06:49, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
One piece that played into the incident that BradV just touches on is the AfC backlog. In the 2 months it took us to get to this review, the author probably forgot about it. The only way they receive notification of a completed review is if they actively return to Wikipedia and sign in and notice the flags at the top of each page. This problem could be addressed by reducing the AfC backlog or through a more active (email) notification system. ~Kvng (talk) 15:52, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Sorting AfC drafts is regularly brought up but is a huge waste of time. By time you classify a Draft that needs a decline you can assess it and decline it. Classification work requires a generalist volunteer that knows how to do it, the perfect volunteer to accept or decline whatever they come across. Further classifications can not be categories (Draft NOCAT) and would therefore go away on approval.
I suggest using the NPP browser which has recently been expanded for AfC. It gives a short part of the page intro which, along with title, usually gives you a pretty good idea what the topic is and if it is something you feel ok reviewing. Legacypac (talk) 17:48, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't see this functionality in the Special:NewPagesFeed. It does include AfC but seems to lack the functionality / view of tools.wmflabs.org/nppbrowser. Is there perhaps a way to have the same keyword search for AfC drafts? The current options are
Information I found with Google suggests that Rentier is the person responsible for the NPP Browser software. I don't know how to submit a feature request, a message to Rentier may suffice. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 20:49, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Requesting Improvements to the NewPagesFeed, Page Curation, and the NPR Community Wishlist Proposal
I'm just letting you guys know that there is a page to suggest improvements to the NewPagesFeed/PageCuration software. See Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements where you can file requests.
Many feature requests there have been neglected by the WMF for some time, and we have been told that we must get support at the Community Wishlist if we want improvements/upgrades. Some of the tasks are relevant to AfC as they involve feature requests to the NewPagesFeed that would undoubtedly be useful to this project as well.
I have a more general question. When I accept an article, I am asked to assign it to WikiProjects. Sometimes it is clear what the appropriate project or projects are. Sometimes it isn't. Is there a reasonably comprehensive list, either alphabetic or hierarchical? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:58, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I have a contrary opinion to reviewers assigning articles to WikiProjects. WikiProjects should claim articles as being in their scope. I think WikiProjects are a declining phenomenon, not dying, but many WikiProjects have gone dormant. WikiProject outsiders applying banners from dormant WikiProjects create a false illusion of WikiProject interest. A dormant WikiProject has no interests. If this opinion is agreed with, we should announce it to the WikiProjects.
A better idea might be to ensure that the new article, has multiple incoming links. i.e. de-orphan it. This will cause the new article to hit the watchlists of editors interested in related articles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I strongly agree with the above. I would like to make it so that when you accept the article you are no longer asked to assign it to a WikiProject. Where, exactly would this change be made? Does anyone disagree? No point in posting an RfC if I can't find a single person who disagrees... --Guy Macon (talk) 05:24, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I have previously argued that only wikiProject members should apply WikiProject banners, anywhere. One or two habitual WikiProject banner pasters disagreed, largely on the point that there was no such rule. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:43, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Let's start with making it so that when you accept the article you are no longer asked to assign it to a WikiProject (where would this change be made?), and afterwards I would be glad to post an RfC on whether only wikiProject members should apply WikiProject banners. Of course a dedicated banner paster could simply become a member of every wikiproject, so i would have to add some language about this obvious way to game the system. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I never assign Wikiprojects for several reasons. Most are inactive. I don't find them very useful for navigation. I have no idea where to find a complete list. Other editors seem to find the pages and tag them in due course, so better to go on to the next Draft that has been waiting two months for review. There are limited AfC reviewers and time spend figuring out a low priority Wikiproject tag is wasted while good pages by good new editors wait and wait frustrating those editors. Similarly spam sits unreviewed and not deleted at AfC. Legacypac (talk) 05:25, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
As you're accepting a draft using the AfC helper script, the "New title" field can be edited to what you think the new title should be. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:00, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I ignore them. Not something the new users should worry about - I'm just happy they included some sources! I don't have the right tools or skills to change them and other users seem to specialise in improving them. Legacypac (talk) 01:35, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
First off, you can leave it. Per WP:CITESTYLE, there's no right or wrong way to cite information in articles, as long as the citations given are valid.
If you don't want to change them yourself, but are still concerned about them, you can tag the article with {{Cleanup-bare URLs}} at the very bottom of the page.
Finally, if you want to take a stab at fixing them yourself, the reFill tool allows you to quickly fill in bare references semi-automatically, although you may need to fix some fields in the output that the tool isn't able to pull in automatically.
Obviously, per WP:CITESTYLE and the reviewing instructions, the lack of formatted citations is usually not an excuse to decline an otherwise good draft. The only important case to watch out for is BLPs, which Wikipedia requires have inline citations of some kind for potentially challengeable material. Otherwise even just a list of sources at the end is generally acceptable as long as the article matches up with them. Nathan2055talk - contribs03:20, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
For me, and I appreciate everyone is different, running reFill is one of the first things I do when reviewing a draft. I find it really helpful to have a full set of metadata for each reference. It allows me to hone in on the references most likely to cover the subject independently and in depth, which may help me quickly form an opinion that the draft should be accepted. On the other hand, I may be able to see quickly that the publishers of all the sources are the same, perhaps from a company's own website, or the titles indicate a press release, then I may be able to decline more quickly, needing to open less of the links for closer inspection. reFill also deals with duplicate references and is useful for highlighting if any of the links are dead. There's a script which adds a link to the left-hand 'Tools' menu, for ease of access. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 18:53, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Checking the naming conventions guidelines before accepting an article
It would be helpful if before an article is accepted, it could be checked with the relevant naming convention. Peston (TV show) was accepted 2 days ago and it's already at a RM discussion since the name is clearly violating WP:NCTV. In this case at least it was caught, as others just slip through. This just creates extra work for us all and can easily be corrected by checking the naming conventions before accepting the article. --Gonnym (talk) 09:31, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to close this here. I see from the OP's reply that the intention was not to force us to follow the relevant naming convention(s) when we accept drafts, but to remind us that they exist. You're welcome to carry on a conversation about naming conventions below the {{abot}}, but this isn't a vote-counting exercise (hence the hatting). Primefac (talk) 00:01, 29 October 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.
Oppose I accepted that page. I was not aware there was a naming convention to follow for TV shows (after 100,000 edits and hundreds of pages moved) and it turns out the naming convention for TV shows is stupid, using a almost non-English word "programme". Even dumber the "naming convention" title was already a redirect to another program headlined by the same host. A RM is not required in these non-controversial cases, just move the page to a better title, and in this case, that meant CSDing the existing redirect. Legacypac (talk) 06:07, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Ah... the ignorance always amazes me. While this was not a policy change proposal, but a friendly request to save the editoral community time, it's nice to know what kind of editors take part here. I find it amazing that an issue which clearly causes problems - articles not confirming to a naming convention - and which a guideline was created for (see WP:NC for a complete list) and which time is spent by editors either in RM (like the current example, though I'm sure there are more) or just finding them and moving them (Category:Television articles with incorrect naming style), can be argued that it's "not a problem". /sigh. To Legacypac, your comment sadly says a lot about you, being proud in your ignorance. Also, just so you know, "programme", the "non-English word", is a British spelling. Also, I don't really understand your second comment - how is the fact that a name that could be used (mistakenly) for one show and set as a redirect to it, but also fits a new show, be dumb? Sounds exactly how redirects should work. But, anyways, keep up the good work. --Gonnym (talk) 08:16, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
oppose - seems like something that can easily be sorted after it's moved. Anyone can move an article. Sure, if you know the title is wrong, change it... But we shouldn't check every guideline before accepting an article. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)09:04, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. I have corrected thousands of titles, both new and old, and occasionally slip up even so. The naming guidelines are extremely complex, and to expect all AfC reviewers to know every guideline is likely to be unworkable. Obviously reviewers should try and make sure the title is correct and deal with common problems like unnecessary disambiguation, weird capitalisations, spelling errors in the name, spacing, etc. Reviewers should concentrate on the content of the draft and make the title good as they can, without being expected to ensure perfection every time. I will note that an RM was not needed in the example given which should have been listed at WP:RM/TR. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 15:57, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - I've been at this for a while and just learned about subject-specific naming conventions. It is not something I'm excited to study. I appreciate those like Frayae who help take care of this. Perfect is the enemy of good. Articles can only improve so much in draft space. Our job is to promptly get unstinky drafts on notable topics into mainspace where the real work can begin. ~Kvng (talk) 23:53, 28 October 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.
Proposed removal of "Add any Wikiproject banners"
Currently, this page says
"Add any Wikiproject banners that would apply to the article by inserting the template code into the relevant box."
In my opinion, articles should only be added to wikiprojects by the members of those projects, and we certainly should not be adding all new articles.
This post is to test the waters. If everyone agrees with me, I will remove the above language and get the template changed to no longer have the option (editors could, of course still add wikiprojects manually).
If there are objections, that's fine. In that case I will post an RfC and see what the consensus of the community is. Be aware that the consensus of the community may be that we don't do this, which would be a change from my "remove it from the instructions and template but allow it" proposal above. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:45, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose NPR has rating Wikiprojects as part of the tutorial page, and as part of the flowchart. Not everyone does it, but every little bit helps. Adding Wikiprojects helps get more eyes on new articles. The idea that "articles should only be added to wikiprojects by the members of those projects" is just not a good idea, and is impractical. Removing this functionality would be a net-negative to the project. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here)15:16, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I also disagree, mostly per Insertcleverphrasehere. I work primarily on microbiology articles (in particular, those tagged with some maintenance tag which CleanupWorklistBot collects here). Having others tag new articles as microbiology-related helps pull them out of the massive article soup-pit that is Wikipedia. I've presumed those who work on other topics feel similarly (though I'm happy to change my mind if informed otherwise). So I see the wikiproject tagging function of AfC as a net-positive for the encyclopedia and for those articles that get tagged. I'm not sure I understand the proposed benefit here. Do you find the WikiProject tagging unduly burdensome (not a rhetorical question. There are a lot of WikiProjects, some of which are pretty unlikely to bring added eyes to the article...)? Cheers! Ajpolino (talk) 17:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - members join their projects to support them, but they can't do that without knowing where they are. 50 project members could help improve relevant articles but wouldn't be enough to look over all incoming articles to determine whether they relevant. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:39, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Someone will have to do this work, so it makes sense to do this while eyes are already on the draft rather than letting it potentially slip through the cracks. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 17:43, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Support I don't see the need to remove the functionality to add Wikiprojectss in the tool, but I think we should reword the instructions to make it optional. We are all volunteers and adding dead wikiprojects is not something every AfC reviewer needs to be burdened with. See comments in the section above. Legacypac (talk) 17:51, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
But that's the status quo. The field is not mandatory, you can decide not fill it and the process will still work. So not sure what you're supporting –Ammarpad (talk) 05:56, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
He is supporting removing the "add any Wikiproject banners that would apply to the article by inserting the template code into the relevant box" language and getting the associated template changed to no longer have the option (editors could, of course still add wikiprojects manually). --Guy Macon (talk) 06:01, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Not quite. I don't mind the functionality in the AfCH script. If people want to use it, fine. I was not aware until I looked it up that the AfC instructions say we must add wikiprojects. I don't usually and I'm not going to follow the instructions as wrotten because I find most Wikiprojects pointless and dead so there is no point adding the pages to them. YMMV Legacypac (talk) 06:25, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Indeed you're testing the waters, GMacon. Nobody gives any Wikiproject sole authority to add or remove Wikiproject banner. Anyone can do it as well as decide not to. So this is a pure solution looking for a problem.–Ammarpad (talk)
Oppose Mostly due to the existing backlog that would expand exponentially. I have articles written two or three years ago, that still don't have banners. I don't see the point of removing any capability. scope_creep (talk) 09:38, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose the wiki is built on collaboration, and WikiProjects the best way we have to encourage that collaboration. Any mis-tagging will be corrected when a member of the relevant Project reviews/rates the article - no harm done. A lack of project involvement will more likely lead to the article withering through neglect. I fail to see a problem that this proposal is aimed at fixing. Cabayi (talk) 10:09, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - Assigning to wikiprojects is potentially helpful. If you do it wrong, it can be corrected. If you don't do it, it may be a long time before it gets done. If, as a reviewer, you don't think it is useful or lack confidence in doing it then don't do it - it's an optional step. Same with categories. ~Kvng (talk) 23:44, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
As primarily a WikiProject Video games editor, oppose. I have multiple times used the drafts listed as being in WikiProject Video games to triage and either leave articles to die on the G13 vine or to promote them to mainspace. --Izno (talk) 00:20, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Dealing with autobiographies
The discussion around Strickland and WP:PROF in general in the latest Signpost has been an interesting one. What may not be clear to the general reader is that many WP:PROF drafts are obvious autobiographies. E.g., the account only ever edited one page; they have uploaded a photo; the draft looks like a promotional CV, complete with an exhaustive list of journal articles the subject has published, etc.
Issues of neutrality and COI aside, I often think to myself: these people don't know what they are getting into. Here's a cautionary tale: I once participated in an AfD on a university professor. The article had been apparently created by the subject himself some years ago, but when he was accused of sexual harassment, he nominated the article for deletion. IIRC, he was "sanctioned" by the university, but did not lose his job; however, the whole affair was covered in the press. It was therefore included on his wiki page. The AfD participants said: nope, he's notable under PROF; no reason to delete. If he had not created the article in the first place, he would have been in this predicament.
Another point it that BLPs too often can become battlegrounds. A minor, but nonetheless illustrative example from an article I created: an anon user changed "historian and author" into "social commentator", while figuratively appending a Star of David to the page [3]. I have more examples I could cite.
A wiki page on a BLP is a double-edged sword; there has to be a solid reason for an article to exist. With all of that in mind, how do you deal with autobiographies? --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:55, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Occasionally I respond to these at MfD. My view is that for problem biographies that are promoting a young upcoming person, including a young academic, should first look to whether WP:CSD#G11 is applicable. Is it promoting someone who is probably not notable? For an academic, I look for a google scholar H-index of 40 for them to get a quick pass. If not, I look to the sources. Is there at least one independent (interview material means it fails independence), reliably/reputably published (nb. the institutions website is never independent), secondary source (ie commenting not a report) that comments in at least two running sentences (a very low bar)? If not, then G11 applies. Because of the lack of a single acceptable source to base the article, nothing can be re-used. Even if notable (for reasons not mentioned in the article), WP:TNT applies. For anything bordering promotion, the onus should be on the author to supply two independent reliable secondary sources that cover the subject directly. If there isn't even one, G11 it. I don't respect the old standard of "do sources exist" for promotional drafts or articles.
If someone, the author, objects to the G11, then great, it is so nice to have a person to talk to. Usually we are talking about drive-by dumped advertsing, that same material also posted to LinkedIn. If someone wants to talk, then I help them choose suitable starting sources. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:28, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
In this post, I want to give some info on how the new copyvio flag can be used for AfC review. As this community updates any documentation around how to do reviews, our team is happy to help with any explanations or screenshots. Let me know!
Here is how to use the feature:
Select "Articles for Creation" at the top of the New Pages Feed. This filters the feed only to drafts.
Open the "Set filters" menu at the New Pages Feed.
Select "Awaiting review" to filter to just those drafts that have been submitted to AfC.
Check the "Copyvio" box under the list of "Potential issues". This filters the feed to drafts that have potential violations.
Those drafts have a link in their entry in the feed that says "Potential issues: Copyvio". Clicking that opens up an entry in CopyPatrol where it is possible to investigate the violating text side by side with the source where it may have come from.
For instance, as I write this, there are 6 drafts awaiting review flagged as potential copyright violations.
It is important to note, as many reviewers discussed during feature development, that these flags are meant only to draw reviewer attention to potential issues -- they are not meant to be taken as absolute truth. Since they are predictions from an algorithm, it is very common for CopyPatrol to flag an edit that is not a violation at all. In other words, this flag is for drawing reviewer attention to those drafts that need their judgment. Similarly, when a draft does not have the copyvio flag, it does not necessarily mean that it is not a copyvio.
Here is what is happening in the background:
To detect potential copyright violations, the feed uses the same system that backs CopyPatrol. CopyPatrol is backed by the external service Turnitin, which is primarily used by academic institutions to detect plagiarism. Turnitin scans books, articles, and websites for text matches. CopyPatrol runs all diffs over 500 bytes through Turnitin and flags diffs where there is over a 50% match with some other document.
Pages in the New Pages Feed get flagged as potential copyright violations if any of their diffs (including the initial creation of the page) are flagged by CopyPatrol. The flag will remain with the page in the New Pages Feed as long as the page is in the feed -- even if the violation is resolved in CopyPatrol. For a full explanation of the rules we're using and for the way Turnitin works, see the in-depth discussion from our planning process.
Please let me know if you see any bugs or problems. Since this is the final component of the Growth team's work with the New Pages Feed, we'll keep an eye on performance for the next week, and then post a final update before concluding the project. Thank you all for your input and time spent on these improvements! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
The "comment longer than 30 characters" warning is kinda useless...
The "comment longer than 30 characters" warning is kinda useless because messages about adding refs are placed in drafts by default; therefore there is an extremely high chance of false positives. Is there a way to turn it off? — pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:02, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Yeah. it's mostly for cleanup efforts if you're going to accept the draft. Would a button to delete the comment be useful? I'm not keen on adding a preference for everybody as everyone's probably going to have the same preference on this. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:00, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
A user's been posting on my talk page about a draft I rejected here. While I think I'm in the right, I've been known to have some erroneous judgement in the past. Would someone else mind taking a look at it? Thanks a lot. ProgrammingGeek talktome15:18, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
It Is So Tempting To Reply In The Manner Of The User. But I Won't. Because That Would Be Wrong. Anyway, it seems that Legacypac (talk·contribs) accepted it after Fraye rejected. That seems … weird. Besides the grammar issues, there isn't a single source other than from the fire department itself, so rejection seems called for. @Legacypac: Was this a misclick or is there some kind of Wikipedia:Notability (fire departments) that I am missing? --GRuban (talk) 16:32, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Ah. I guess it took me longer than 6 minutes to look at the user talk page and the article and write that! All right then, carry on. --GRuban (talk) 16:38, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 2 November 2018
It looks like the rejection feature is going well so far, so we should start thinking about guidelines to put in the reviewing guide so the option to reject drafts can be pushed to the main version of the script. Any thoughts? I would favor wording mentioning AfD, like "would be a SNOW delete at AfD or a PROD, and is unsuitable for CSD", but a translation of that into plain English to improve accessibility would likely be better. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:47, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
"Would be snow-deleted at AfD" is a good line. It is obviously subjective, but it carries a good implied expectation that the rejecting reviewer is confident with AfD. I think this is the same standard for PROD "PROD must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected". No opposition means an AfD would result in a SNOW delete if people participated. Actually, it means an AfD would result in a unanimous "delete".
"Do not use Reject if a CSD criterion applies" may belong in the fine text.
A quick review of some pages in Category:AfC submissions rejected as non-notable finds no pages that I think could be improved by additional sources that I can find. Some, such as Draft:Chris Fussell (US Navy SEAL), would be hard work for me to be confident to slap with "rejected", but on close look and doing an AfD-style source search, I conclude that User:DGG was right to reject.
Running Rejected_Drafts like an indefinite PROD for drafts is probably a good way to run this. If there is no objection after 6 months, it will be deleted per G13.
As mentioned above, before placing a reject, it is important to consider whether speedy is applicable. The most likely are G11 or G12 . If it's copyvio, G12 must be used. Using G11 for promotionalism is a matter of judgment, and is much more likely to apply to articles on companies, and similar enterprises than to those on undefinable subjects. DGG ( talk ) 06:23, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
We need to be precise about the wording that it is unsuitable for CSD. That means that, as a draft, it is not subject to CSD. A draft that would be subject to A7, which does not apply to drafts, is a candidate for Rejection. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Ah yes. CSD#A*, in particular A7 and A11, do not apply to drafts but are good reasons to reject a draft submission. There may be some caveats, like looking out for where there is significance but the author clumsily failed to to articulate it, but these are exactly the same caveats for applying CSD in mainspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:20, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
I'd say that the basic test is something along the lines of No reasonable editor would advocate keeping this if it was an article after doing their due diligence on the topic. Additionally, if it meets a speedy criterion as a draft, they should so tag it in addition to rejecting it. Whether an draft would be speedied, PRODded, or SNOW deleted at AFD as an article is pretty irrelevant in my mind. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:45, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Blank and Nearly Blank Drafts - Rejecting?
Which rejection reason should I use for a blank or nearly blank draft? They aren't exactly contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia, because I don't know what they are, and they aren't exactly not notable, because I don't know what they are. I can decline them and tag them as UFW, but is there a proper rejection message, or should they in fact be declined because the editor should get a second chance, or should there be a third rejection reason, or what? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:54, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Declined, I'd imagine, since the user may wish to later add text and resubmit. Just because a draft is blank doesn't mean that title must no longer be used for a draft. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:57, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
I reject them and I have taggged hundreds of blank or basically blank Draft pages CSD G2 Test. Never had an Admin decline a G2. It's just cleanup. If they submit a blank page they clearly don't intend for it to be accepted and if it is still blank by time AfC gets to it it is unlikely to get additional content added. Legacypac (talk) 20:04, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Sample text for the reviewing guide
If we add rejection to the script, should the following text be added to the reviewing guide, under the heading "Rejecting submissions"?
Drafts on topics entirely unsuitable for Wikipedia should be rejected. Rejection is a good choice for a draft that would likely be the subject of an uncontroversial PROD, or if an AfD on the draft would be an unanimous "delete". However, if the draft meets one of the non-articlecriteria for speedy deletion, an appropriate CSD tag should be added instead of rejecting. (Drafts that would fall under one of the article criteria, like A7 or A9, should be rejected.)
Thank you, User:Enterprisey. I agree with the text for the reviewing guide that you have proposed, but would propose the following change: "Rejection is a good choice for a draft that would likely be the subject of an uncontroversial PROD, or if an AFD on the draft would be a unanimous "delete", or that would be subject to an article-oriented speedy deletion, such as A1, A3, A7, or A9. If the draft meets one of the not-articlecriteria for speedy deletion, an appropriate CSD tag should be added." Robert McClenon (talk) 06:46, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I may be in a minority of one, but I will continue also to either reject or decline any draft that is also tagged for speedy deletion. That is just so that another reviewer will not look at it in the remaining hours before it is deleted. I also think that the decline or rejection comments may provide further reason for the nomination to the deleting admin. For instance, if the draft uses the first person plural "we", I point out that that is promotional and not encyclopedic, just to make clear to the admin what I have seen. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:46, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I will still occasionally use {{UFW}} when I have a little difficulty justifying a rejection, but that is just my choice as long as I have UFW, and I don't want it to go away. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:46, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
I'd suggest something like:
Drafts on topics entirely unsuitable for Wikipedia should be rejected. Rejection is a good choice if the page would be uncontroversially deleted if it was an article. This can be through a CSD criterion, PROD, or an overwhelming consensus at AfD. If the draft meets one of the criteria for speedy deletionas a draft, an appropriate CSD tag should be added in addition to rejecting.
This has one change that I would consider substantive, and a few I consider basically wordsmithing. The substantive change is instructing reviewers to reject a page in addition to tagging it for CSD if a criterion applies right now. I also made some wordsmithing changes: Unanimous AfD --> overwhelming consensus at AfD (the draft author would likely support no matter what for example), non-article --> as a draft (to clarify how the G series, and the nonarticle, nondraft criteria should be applied), moving some sentences around to combine CSD criteria with PROD and AfD as potential article deletion reasons into one sentence.
including a referenced to other deletion standards confuses the issue. In practice, VSD in this context usually means WP:CSDA7. We do not expect a draft to immediately indicate significance at the first writing. And whether it would be deleted on Prod means nothing except that the author didn't show up to defend it. Using AFD as a standard will cause confusion with the standard for accepting a draft. DGG ( talk ) 15:42, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Agreed with the point on PROD, and we could probably emphasize CSD a bit less. I don't know how to phrase the AfD requirement in other words, though. We could try enumerating the various reject reasons, but that would be a pain to update when we add more reject reasons.
Drafts on topics entirely unsuitable for Wikipedia should be rejected. Rejection is a good choice when the page would be uncontroversially deleted if it were an article, for example if the page would be an overwhelming "delete" at AfD. If a draft meets a non-article CSD criterion, an appropriate CSD tag should be added in addition to rejecting.
Thought it worth getting a sanity check before being too bold.
User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel, another script created by our own @Enterprisey:, was created reasonably recently and has just been added onto the COPYVIO main page as a useful tool. Since sorting out the revdel bit of fixing copyvio issues is one of the most fiddly bits I thought I should add it to the relevant bit of the reviewing instructions as a potential aid. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:09, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
@JoeHebda: Based on a cursory look through a few randomly selected links, there appear to be two distinct causes of this issue. The first, and most common, appears to occur with drafts that were processed through the circa-2015 transfer from the old "Wikipedia:Articles for creation/*" namespace to the modern "Draft:*" namespace. At some point, now-blocked user Ricky81682 apparently went through with AWB and mass tagged pages in Draft space with WikiProject AfC banners, and then, when they were later promoted, a second banner was added by AFCH.
The second case appears to be more recent pages that were promoted by one editor, moved back to draft space by another editor, and then promoted again without checking the talk page, resulting in AFCH adding two separate banners filled out with info related to two different promotions.
The clear solution to this would be to add logic to AFCH that verifies that there isn't already an AfC WikiProject tag on the talk page, and if there is the script should simply update it rather than adding a second tag (paging Enterprisey). For current problem articles, a bot could probably be easily whipped up that deletes the older WikiProject tag based on the included "diff of promotion" parameter. Nathan2055talk - contribs06:30, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I have been doing WP article assessments since I retired in 2014 so I'm familiar with the Assessment Wikitables for each wikiproject, and the quality logs which show daily activity. Because of the urgency to have the duplicates issue fixed, I can go through the AFC articles listed on the quality log & see if that helps the bot.
After AFC duplicates are removed, wondering if that AFCH script could be "cloned" to read all wikiproject talk pages & locate those duplicate WPs? JoeHebda (talk) 13:40, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I have a question about history merge, in particular where I think (but am not sure) that another reviewer has been overly conscientious (which is basically good). An editor has created two copies of a draft about the same person, one in draft space and one in a sandbox subpage. User:Legacypac has tagged one of the copies for history merge. It is my understanding that history merge is unnecessary when only one editor is involved, since both copies are the work of a single editor. So: Is history merge required, or can I accept one of the two copies and convert the other one to a redirect? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:04, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
I tagged for history merge because it deletes the older page. A redirect would be ok too. That article is likely acceptable BTW Legacypac (talk) 16:08, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
If the content was copied from a page with only one editor by that editor then attribution is not broken and you don't absolutely need a history merge. Tht isn't to say it is a bad idea, just not an absolute requirement. — Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 17:33, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Histmerge does not appear to be necessary in this case; neither is a redirect, since the author is the same. I would not worry about it. --K.e.coffman (talk) 18:16, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Dealing with Repeated Resubmissions
This may appear to be two questions rolled into one, about how to deal with drafts that are repeatedly resubmitted and repeatedly need to be declined. I am only asking the harder part of the question at this time. The easy part of the question has to do with topics that seem to be clearly non-notable or otherwise clearly will never be articles. These can be either Rejected, or nominated for deletion at MFD, or both. I am not asking about them at this time.
What I am asking about is subjects that seem possibly notable, but are repeatedly being declined as not demonstrating notability or otherwise just aren't being made ready for article space. The question is what I should do when I am reviewing one of them. One possible answer is to do nothing, neither accept nor decline, and wait for another reviewer, or see if the submitter will just copy/move it into article space. However, that sort of seems to avoid responsibility. I guess my question is what reasonable options I have as to advising the submitter to ask for advice. Sometimes there is a WikiProject (and maybe I know about it, or maybe I don't know about it). Where else can I ask for another review, or ask the submitter to ask for another review? The Teahouse? The AFC Help Desk? What suggestions does anyone have for reviewers to deal with submitters who just seem to be almost there and not getting any closer? (Of course, maybe they won't ever get there.)
I helieve a topic is either notable or not notable. We just need to figure out which one. If notable, and I can prove it, I'll move poor looking pages into mainspace because that is the only place they will improve when the creator lacks the skills. This is assuming it is not G11 or G12 material. Legacypac (talk) 03:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I believe notable or not, newcomers need encouragement to engage with the product (mainspace) and the community (specifically, mainspace editors). This is where AfC/Draftspace fails newcomers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
What I have done a number times is post to the author's page and advise them to edit and improve existing mainspace articles that are related to the topic they want to add. I tell them to see if they can add mentions of of their topic in related articles. I tell them that if their topic is not worth a mention in any existing article, it is probably not sufficiently notable for Wikipedia.
I think this is good advice, because if they edit related articles, they with both gain experience, and expose themselves to other editors likely interested in their topic. I also think that it is true, that a new topic is very unlikely to be viable if it is not worth a mention in any other article, and if they add inappropriate mentions, others will engage to remove the mentions. I think new editors need editing experience before starting a dubious new topic, and I think WP:ORPHANs usually have big inherent problems.
I think in principle, this is a very good idea. I helps break the cycle of repeated hopeless resubmissions, at the very least. Often, nothing happens after, and I put this down to the high probability that the submitted has a COI and no genuine interest in improving any other article. One case that was somewhat productive is here. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:22, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Another Reason for Repeated Resubmission
I have realized that there is another reason for repeated resubmission of drafts that calls for a different view by the reviewers (us). Sometimes a topic is inherently of marginal notability. It isn't obviously notable, but it isn't crud, isn't obviously conflict of interest or advertising, and it isn't an obvious accept or an obvious decline. Sometimes one of these gets declined, and the author tries to improve it, and it is still marginal, and they resubmit it, and it gets declined again. The draft has reached the point of diminishing returns. It won't get better. Just declining it again may result in yet another tweak and resubmit. (It might, on the other hand, result in a request for help to the Teahouse, or in an embittered editor, but it might result in another resubmit.) One possible action that will break the cycle of repeated resubmission would be to decide that the draft will never be a good article, but it isn't bad, and can be accepted. It's a judgment call by the reviewer whether the repeated resubmissions indicate a hopeless topic or a marginal topic. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:50, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
If it is a hopeless topic, then it is still a good idea to break the cycle of repeated resubmission, and MFD is a way to do that. (So is Reject, but MFD establishes a precedent that can be used for G4, and Reject does not.) But sometimes, the repeated resubmissions are because the topic is marginal. We have lots of marginal articles, and it is only the ones with COI that are a problem (in my opinion, and I am a deletionist). Robert McClenon (talk) 00:50, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm with Legacypac on moving to mainspace. I'm against using MfD because I'm not convinced things get a good review there and we've said we're dealing with marginal cases. The best place to deal with marginal cases is AfC. It is much harder to get a draft approved by most reviewers here than it is to get one kept at AfD. After a certain number of rejections here at AfC, drafts just don't improve. ~Kvng (talk) 19:06, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Last In First Out
One practical solution could be making a point to review from the back of the queue, rather than First In First Out. This draft, Draft:On_This_Holiday, was created on 15 October. Here its review history:
declined on 15 October 2018
declined on 15 October 2018
declined on 16 October 2018
rejected on 17 October 2018
declined on 30 October 2018
declined on 31 October 2018
Each time a reviewing editor has left a helpful comment on the draft. I became aware of this draft because I occasionally check the postings at the Helpdesk, where the author posted about this draft and received another response. So it's six interactions with this page -- the time and effort that could have been spent on reviewing six other drafts.
Some editors get disproportionate attention, while others wait two or three months for a first review. (I've started at the back of the queue and I accepted a couple of articles that had been submitted in July. I'm still in mid-August.). Do you guys have any thoughts on this approach: Last In First Out? K.e.coffman (talk) 00:05, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I mention this frequently. Some reviewers get annoyed by prompt resubmissions. IMO the best way to deal with that is to avoid doing prompt re-reviews. But we're all volunteers and get to decide what we work on. More difficult and time-consuming reviews tend to be at the back of the queue and not everyone wants to deal with that. ~Kvng (talk) 19:57, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Reality, as best I can tell, is the easier declines and accepts get done in the first 48 hours. The tougher cases get strung out. The positive side of that is we give feedback to most of the people most of the time very quickly. If we strictly enforced FIFO reviewers would lose the ability to skip what they are not comfortable with. I'd love to beat the backlog back to a few days of course. The total backlog is about 6-10 days worth of submissions but it takes over 2 months to deal with the tough cases. No, I don't have a solution for that. I mostly work the oldest pages. Legacypac (talk) 04:43, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Deferral of G13 eligible articles
Hello all.
I'm curious about the status of the articles that are deferred from a G13 deletion. Is deferral a good option? To me, it seems like these drafts are just languishing in purgatory.
I'd like to propose the removal of deferring a G13-eligible draft from deletion. My rationale is twofold:
1. Deferral isn't likely to catch the eye of whatever newly-registered editor made an article on six months ago
2. If these users want to work on their article, they can retrieve it at WP:REFUND
The obvious exception to this would be if one intended to work on the draft themself.
The deferred list is mostly pages too good to trash but not quite good enough to promote. Deferred pages rarely get worked on, but the suggestions of alternatives are worse. If someone starts a mainspace or draftspace page under the title they will be advised of the draft. Then they can build on it. A few users do search the deferred G13 list and fix pages from it. The system is better than just blowing out good works in process. Legacypac (talk) 03:58, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
"someone starts a mainspace or draftspace page under the title they will be advised of the draft" is a very good point. I wonder, could someone who starts a mainspace page under the title be advised of a G13-ed draft? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:30, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
There is an RFC right now proposing that we see deletion history for drafts when starting a title in mainspace. With so much absolute crap in Draft that needs immediate deletion, why are we worrying about deleting plausibly good topics Legacypac (talk) 05:32, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
I agree with you. Leave the deferred list alone. When starting a mainspace page, would it be possible for G13 deletions to show up, but not G11 deletions? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:37, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't see the benefit of this suggestion, experienced editors will know that G11s are not worth restoring and that G13s probably are worth restoring. Iffy★Chat -- 09:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
The point behind the question is that someone starting a mainspace page may not know that there was a previous G13-ed draft. It may be worth auto-informing someone starting the mainspace page. It is probably not helpful to tell them about a G11-ed draft page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:25, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Most often the page is on a nonnotabke topic. If it is a notable topic it is so poorly sourced it can't be used. Generally someone is better starting over and getting the page creation credit. Legacypac (talk) 02:20, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
For the purpose of this conversation, the assumption is that it *is* a notable topic. Someone is writing a new topic into a new page in mainspace. If it is not notable, it will not last, and the author will not gain anything from knowing of past attempts.
Hello, my name is Scott and I work for CommonBond. An editor recently advised me to submit my draft content to Articles for Creation, even though the CommonBond page already exists. They said if AfC approved my draft, a UDP template would still be added, even though I have disclosed my conflict of interest (unfortunately my company previously hired someone that broke Wikipedia’s rules without our knowledge). I am confused; are we permanently branded with this tag as punishment or is it possible to address it? Does it expire? Should I be submitting something to AfC? Scott at CommonBond (talk) 19:39, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes because we can't move the Draft to a title already occupied. I understand the correct procedure for a COI editor is to propose changes on the article talkpage. As far as I am concerned the Undisclosed Paid template can be removed once an unconflicted editor reviews the page. It's ugly. Legacypac (talk) 21:30, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, the process for duplicated articles is to decline them as duplicated. There is a misconception that AFC can be used to review a proposed replacement or upgrade for existing articles. That isn't what AFC is for. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:36, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Personally, I do not know or care how long a company is stuck with a badge of shame if they ever used an undisclosed paid editor. Undisclosed paid editing is the greatest threat to the integrity of Wikipedia in 2018, and if not checked, may result in the Wikipedia of 2021 being nothing but a medium for puffery. Someone else can answer the question. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:36, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Yip I know, that why I'm over there, instead of here. I was wanting to submit it to Afc for review, as it is potentially better than the current article, but it is paid article, but I guess that is out, as there is no process for it. The only process that is available for this is Edit Requests, I think. Thanks for your time Legacypac, Robert McClenon scope_creep (talk) 21:48, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
