A user had submitted a draft in their sandbox, so I moved it into the draft space Draft:Deepak Hegde as per usual. What I didn't realise at the time was that the user had cut & paste moved the draft from another user space page into the sandbox, where they had previously developed other content. So when I moved the sandbox, all that old edit history of the sandbox got moved with it, and now the pending Draft:Deepak Hegde has a history going back ten years! The user is quite reasonably asking questions, but I don't know how to answer them. Any advice? Thanks, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 05:52, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for reporting. This is the regex catastrophic backtracking bug again. I have a patch written for this if someone wants to review it. As for how to decline this article, I'd recommend turning off the AFCH gadget temporarily, manually setting the template to declined, then turning AFCH back on. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:34, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Opening that page freezes the tab instantly, without me needing to click decline (perhaps because I have AFCH helper set to automatically open). — Qwerfjkltalk10:40, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
No new articles have been added to Wikipedia:AfC sorting since 25 May. Usually it comes back in a short while, but it's been 5 days now, and I can't see any discussion about it. Anyone know what's up, or point me to a discussion? Greenman (talk) 14:54, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
Where is AFC sorting documented? This is the first time I have seen the AFC sorting pages, and I have been reviewing for a decade. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:00, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
When declining a draft, you can decline per "nn", which says "topic not yet shown to meet notability guidelines". Now to me this either means:
The subject is simply not notable. Except, rejecting per "n" states this exact thing.
The draft is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Except, declining per "v" states this exact thing.
Now maybe "nn" just means that the sources do not meet the standard, and therefore "v" just means there are zero sources at all though the subject is notable. ...but is it not also true that drafts cannot be declined for simply having no citations?
Speaking of rejecting... Why does rejecting a draft because it's not notable, just put a notice there? Shouldn't it be tagged for deletion? Except there are no CSD for notability...
In general, rejection is a "no way no how" response; a subject can maybe be notable and be decline, or never notable and be rejected. This is why decline for nn and reject for n give the same rationale, just with different levels of finality.
You are correct in your assertion after point 2; you can have a draft with poor sources that do not show the notability of the subject, but you can also have a notable subject without sufficient sources to verify the content. The latter is more of an issue for BLPs, and it would be improper to accept a draft that is (for example) 80% unsourced with huge chunks of text failing WP:V. A draft like this can be stubified and accepted if the provided sources demonstrate notability, but most often there is a combination of "bad sources plus a lack of them" that kind of makes it a toss-up whether to decline as v or nn. Now that I think about it further, though, you can have a well-sourced draft that does not demonstrate notability, for example for a sportsperson where the references are all (reliable) stats pages and brief mentions from match reports.
To answer your last question, we do not delete drafts simply because the subject is not notable. The reason for this is long and involves a dozen different discussions in a dozen different places over the last dozen years. Basically, we (the community) decided that the draft place is a place for drafting, full stop, and that barring exceptional issues (mainly G10, G11, and G12) there is no harm in leaving such drafts since they are not indexed. There is every possibility that a rejected garage band does end up getting notable with their latest dark horse viral song, or a businessman who owns a small hardware store ends up doing something that gains widespread attention. Primefac (talk) 07:29, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Removing unreliable sources and other helpful suggestions
Two reviewers have requested removal of unreliable sources from Draft:Max Thrasher. This is a valid critique but their presence cluttering things is not a reason to decline a draft IMO. You may consider it generous for reviewers to point out all the ways that an author can improve a draft but the extra advice often it leads them to beleive that if they make these improvements (perhaps ignoring other suggestions or the main decline reason), the draft will be accepted. It would be best to focus on the deficiencies that are an actual obstacle to acceptance. Let's not make AfC feel like any more of gauntlet than it needs to be. Once the draft is accepted let the suggestions flow freely. ~Kvng (talk) 13:19, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I have reverted the decline as being inappropriate. The comment is perfectly acceptable, though; there is nothing wrong with asking for unreliable sources to be removed. Primefac (talk) 13:24, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Above, I outlined the potential problem with giving general improvement advice as part of the AfC review process. It is well intended but it often leads to disappointment when fulfilling these requests does not result in the article being accepted. ~Kvng (talk) 13:31, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Giving general improvement advice for drafts is what we should be doing. I really don't see the issue here; Theroadislong did not say the draft would be accepted if the FB sources were removed, just that they "should" be removed. Primefac (talk) 13:39, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I hope you agree we should foremost be focusing on valid decline reasons. I appreciate that my comment may be read as a request for reviewers to be less helpful. Reviewers are seen by authors as authorities. Authors are generally newcomers. Given this dynamic, authors may be easily distracted by offhand helpful comments from reviewers. My suggestion is that reviewers stay focused. Tangential suggestions during AfC review are not as helpful or harmless as you expect.
Theroadislong said are not reliable and cannot be used (emphasis mine). I hope you appreciate this is strong wording and would likely lead the author to believe that this needs to be addressed before acceptance. The other reviewer seems to have interpreted it that way.
We should be focusing on advice that leads to an acceptance or an understanding of why the subject is not acceptable. I think we would improve the AfC experience for authors by withholding other suggestions until after a draft has been accepted. ~Kvng (talk) 13:59, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
we should foremost be focusing on valid decline reasons - on this point I am absolutely in agreement, and I will gladly revert any invalid decline (even my own) if necessary. Primefac (talk) 14:02, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
The trouble is while some think as you appear to and want anything passing notability accepted regardless of other issues, there is also many that are also very critical of anything wrong with articles accepted by AfC. This can result in a quick draftification regardless of notability or heavy tagging/redaction which is also a shock for new editors. Recently I had a message from someone confused how an accepted article could be tagged with multiple problems (see User_talk:KylieTastic#Multiple_Issues). I would guess there is a complete spectrum of submitters from those that expect an AfC accepted to mean it meets all requirements to those that just want it accepted and would not like other feedback. I do think it would be beneficial to be more clear in the language: I think it maybe would be better to change "...not reliable and cannot be used" to a toned down "...not generally reliable and should be avoided". I would also tend to only make such a comments if it affected a much higher percentage of the sources. If over half of the sources are junk, as often happens I think a comment is helpful. KylieTastic (talk) 14:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I do sometimes surprise experienced editors with my brave AfC accepts. Authors may see those interactions and get distressed but I keep accepted articles on my watchlist and will come help or take the responsibility for an error (and try to learn from it). Not all reviewers want to deal with all this. The solution in that case is to skip it and review something else. You may think it helpful to leave some sort of improvement suggestion in this case, I'm suggesting its probably not. ~Kvng (talk) 15:07, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I do think that your maybe assuming most submitters would interpret a comment as you think you would. I have been thanked for the comments I've added. I have also seen comments about unreliable sources cause the submitter to update and make an unclear notability judgement and easy one. One thing I have learnt over the years here is people have very different reactions to the same situations and it rare that you can make such definitive statements about how they will take it. Personally I don't believe I would have taken comments like you suggest - depending on the exact wording. I believe I would also would have much preferred feedback in draft on possible issues rather than as a green editor have what has happened to either Review of Finance or Nicholas Lowe, but that's personal preference. KylieTastic (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I don't think we can know how these comments will be taken. In what I've been describing, they can be, at best, defocusing. In other cases they may be generally helpful. In any case, unless we're requiring a certain minimum article quality threshold be met as part of acceptance, I don't think they help move an author towards an accept-worthy draft. ~Kvng (talk) 16:49, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
With 100 (!) refs and even more cites, the author is doing themselves a disservice by including anything and everything, as this directly a) makes it that much more difficult to find the sources that do establish notability, and b) discourages reviewers from even touching the draft. Therefore I don't see anything wrong with advising the author to weed out the rubbish refs. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:59, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, it's a mess and I requested help from the author identifying the key sources. The rubbish does not need to be removed to earn acceptance from me, I just have to identify some good sources and no serious WP:NPOV issues caused by the rubbish. ~Kvng (talk) 14:04, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Paragraph that reads like it was copied
In reviewing Draft:Zeal (album), I read the Background paragraph, and it reads like it was copied from a blurb. (I had disambiguated the title, but that isn't the subject of this question.) I used the Earwig copyvio detector, and it says that there is a 10% chance of copyvio, and doesn't flag the paragraph in question. I looked briefly at the sources, and I didn't see that paragraph in any of them (and the copyvio detector checked them). However, it reads like it was copied from a blurb. I have declined the draft as not satisfying musical notability, which was easy, and have commented that the paragraph is non-neutral, but I still have a question. What do I do if a paragraph reads like it was copied, but I can't find where it was copied from?
Robert McClenon (talk) 18:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I've done a few Google searches for particularly copyvio-sounding sentences and I'm not getting any hits; my guess is the editor who added that content is in PR or some other form of marketing and knows the lingo. Primefac (talk) 19:07, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
The phrase "knows the lingo" is ironic in this context, because it is the lingo for a particular type of non-encyclopedic writing. If one writes in the style of a blurb, some of us will think that it is a blurb. When I have seen this sort of writing, it has more often been about films. They know the lingo that we don't want in our encyclopedia (the encyclopedia that we, a community of volunteers, develop and maintain). Robert McClenon (talk) 16:36, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Informal source guidelines
I'm trying to put together a list of common sourcing mistakes, so instead of telling people "no, add good sources" I can point them to something a little more substantive without overwhelming them with our entire notability guidelines. Thoughts on User:Rusalkii/AfC source guidance? Rusalkii (talk) 04:06, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
I wrote up User:Primefac/RefTypes a few years ago, and it's done me pretty well to explain stuff. Tried to keep it short and (if necessary) subst-able. Your essay looks like a good expansion/longer version of it. Primefac (talk) 08:04, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Done. (note: was in the "Pending by age" sub section). Odd section that one "P20230610000000: Pending submissions from 2 days ago, not yet reviewed." just looks confusing and does not appear to work! KylieTastic (talk) 13:53, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
Improving the AfC process
As I write this, the number of AfC submissions has reached over 4,200; over half have been waiting for more than a month, and more than 500 have been waiting over three months. AfC has gotten lots of criticism, in large part due to its long wait times. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I've come up with a few ideas. I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on them, and any other ideas you have.
How we can make AfC better for reviewers
Encourage cooperation between reviewers. Right now each submission is reviewed by one reviewer. If a reviewer is unsure about a draft, they often skip over it, leaving it for someone else. One solution to this that I've seen proposed (at User:Enterprisey/AfC brainstorming) is a checklist; this could include a copyvio check, notability, MoS, inline citations, etc. If a reviewer is unsure about a draft, they could check off the boxes they're sure about, and leave the rest for someone else. This would require a significant rewrite of the AfC helper script, but if there's consensus to do this, I'd be happy to help with it.
More reviewers are always better. We could potentially let all users with the new page reviewer right review AfC submissions. Since the bar to become a new page reviewer is higher than that to become an AfC reviewer, this shouldn't decrease the quality of reviews.
First and foremost, significantly decreasing the amount of time it takes to review a submission. AfC is the first thing many users go through when they start editing Wikipedia; often, when a review takes a long time, they get frustrated and leave, when they may otherwise have turned into a productive contributor.
Make creating drafts a more user-friendly experience. For example, the AfC helpdesk wizard (see here) was recently implemented, making it less confusing to request assistance.
We need to make it clearer that AfC is an entirely optional procedure for autoconfirmed accounts, unless there is a clear conflict of interest. Any such autoconfirmed editor is entirely free to move their creations directly to main space, and the tender mercies of the New Pages Patrollers. Cullen328 (talk) 03:47, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
How the AfC submit wizard can be improved
When submitting, provide additional guidance on notability, what constitutes a reliable source, how to add inline citations, etc.
(this falls under the above two categories as well) get submitters to point out the best WP:THREE sources when submitting.
What I'm thinking is making the submission wizard into a three-step process: first, show the guidance above, and the user should click an "I understand" button before continuing. Second, show the forms for title, WikiProject, etc. Third, optionally get the user to point out the best three sources. They can then be shown a screen saying "Your draft was successfully submitted", and providing a link to the help desk. Again, if there's consensus for this, I can help implement it.
Discussion for How we can make AfC better for reviewers
I think giving AFC rights to NPPs automatically sounds really promising. Let's say we have an AFC backlog drive. By making it easier for NPPs to jump in without having to apply and get approved, it could help attract more reviewers. And it'd be super easy to code into AFCH.
Drafts that are obvious declines or obvious accepts get through quickly. It's the borderline ones that linger, waiting for a reviewer to click through the 20 mediocre, foreign language, or offline sources provided, evaluating each for GNG. I'm not sure what the fix is, but that seems like the part of the process we should think about optimizing somehow. If we graphed it out, I'll bet reading sources is what takes the most reviewer time and brainpower. Solutions that focus around this somehow could be helpful.
I feel the GNG guideline itself is kept intentionally vague, which makes it hard to teach to newer editors. It is possible to write it with more detail, but people don't, and a difficult process of reverse engineering is used by experienced editors to master its nuances. Worth a try teaching what we can about notability via the wizard though. Even just putting an emphasis on "3 newspapers or books with 3 paragraphs of detail about the subject" could perhaps be the difference between a draft writer ref bombing a bunch of unusable sources, and a draft writer adding 3 top quality sources that make the article an easy pass. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:33, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
I disagree for multiple reasons: Our entry conditions are lower because pages are then patrolled; Many prefer to get a second opinion so would not want this; As has come up multiple times including in the "AFCH updates" section above many choose not to do the basic tidy up and tagging etc that is part of the NPP flow. Anyone who wants to can request to get the "new page reviewer" perm and this should be encouraged of seasoned reviewers to reduce NPP load. Also backlog drives are criticised by some for a drop in quality so removing NPP checks for a drive would be bad IMHO. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 08:25, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
DOH! I miss read that as giving NPP to AFCers not the other way around - so yes I agree I see no big issue with auto adding NPPers to AfC. I assume this would be done just on having the perm so could not exclude trials per S0091, otherwise it would need to bot to update the participants list both add and remove. Using having the perm like we do for admins would be easier. KylieTastic (talk) 14:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Just as a minor nitpick, if their access restrictions are higher then there should be no problem with them joining here. One of my "quick-pass" criteria when evaluating an AFCP request is whether they are an NPR. Primefac (talk)
"If a reviewer is unsure about a draft, they often skip over it, leaving it for someone else" - This is a huge time waster. I am guilty of this and I know most reviewers are as well. That is how some drafts make it way down in the queue. I am not sure if writing new code would solve the problem, but if there is ANY solution to help notify reviewers what has/hasn't been done, it would save a lot of time.--CNMall41 (talk) 02:26, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
We're not really at a space premium, so it would probably make more sense to rename b1/b2/b3 to more accurately reflect what they stand for (e.g. |cv_check= or something). Primefac (talk) 15:50, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Comment: I think the checklist would be a good idea, that way everyone can contribute the bits they're comfortable with, and even if one reviewer doesn't reach a conclusive answer, they may make it easier for the next one to finish the job, and that way their 'partial' effort won't be wasted.
As for giving NPP'ers AfC rights by default, in principle this seems fine, and while it would make the combined NPP/AfC reviewer resource more flexible, it wouldn't necessarily increase the total bandwidth as there is limited capacity in both teams, with a resultant large backlog. In other words, if we get NPP to chip in at AfC, then the NPP backlog gets that much bigger (and v.v). --DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:50, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
In instances where we have reviewed a draft but are unsure or only gave a it partial review, what I about using comments so the next reviewer knows? At least for trial period to see if it is helpful before pursuing a redesign of the script. As for NPP automatically getting AfC rights, I like the idea but I would limit it to those that have permanent NPP rights and are active reviewers. It is not uncommon for folks to be granted the right only for a trial period but not get the right permanently due to issues or have right but are not active. I also think we should run it by the NPP folks to get their thoughts. S0091 (talk) 14:45, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Re: adding NPPers, I'd be unambiguously in favor if there was some waiting period, maybe a month. I'm worried about a situation where someone is accepted to both and then this makes it easier for bad articles to slip through, since there wouldn't be that second check on the AfC articles. But if that's infeasible or unpopular I'd still support it, it seems like an easy change with little downside and potential upside. I know I sometimes swap between the two when I'm bored and would if I didn't have NPP perms go do something else, so it's not just sloshing capacity from one backlogged system to another backlogged system. Rusalkii (talk) 23:54, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
I know I lost my AFCH script rights and because I haven't been particularly interested in helping around at AFC, I haven't gone through the effort of re-requesting them, especially if they'll just get removed again if I don't get around to helping again. It's at the very least an inconvenience on the reviewers' end, especially if they haven't done anything wrong. I feel like 6 months of inactivity before removal of script rights might be a bit short – it also makes me feel like if I'm not going to be actively reviewing AFC submissions, I shouldn't put a request in that someone has to take time to look at and approve so I don't waste their time, even if I might occasionally come across a submission here or there where if I had the rights, they'd be useful and I could approve or decline an article.
Automatic addition of AFCH rights for new page reviewers would solve this problem for me, because I am a new page reviewer, but not every minorly-active AFC reviewer is also a new page reviewer. I can't think of any downsides to giving new page reviewers AFCH rights, however, given the higher standard for the former. Skarmory(talk •contribs)02:18, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
We could potentially let all users with the new page reviewer right review AfC submissions. Seems like there's no objections. Primefac, are you OK if I patch this into AFCH? You do all the AFC perm stuff, so wanted to check with you first. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:22, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
That's fine. It will also allow me to significantly trim the AFCP list similar to when we added admins. Primefac (talk) 10:08, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
I actually think this should go to all NPR, regardless of whether they are on the AFCP access list. An MMS to everyone will do two things: first, let non-AFC-reviewers know that it's an option, and let current AFC reviewers know why their name is off the list (and/or let us know if there are issues, like there was for DGG). Plus, it might spur some of the NPR who have stopped reviewing to re-start! Primefac (talk) 12:26, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
I think DGGs issue was because he was using 'User:APerson/afch-dev.js' in there common.js rather than the updated version, but sensibel to alert people just in case others have similar. And yes we should use the MMS to also highlight to the dire state AfC is in at the moment and relentless climb in the backlog.. Most days recently we have not him 200 reviews let alone the 250+ needed - I'm back but I'm not going back to doing 1000+ a month. KylieTastic (talk) 14:28, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
Novem Linguae, was this patch deployed? Been a few days now but be good to get this done given the general consensus for it. I could write the MMS, if that's helpful, for you/Ingenuity/Primefac to send?
I would like to see the user have to tick of that they believe the submission passes the basics before they can hit submit: i.e. "I believe this subject is notable per WP:NN ✅", "I have included references for the content ✅", "This article is in English ✅", "It is written in a neutral tone and is not promotional ✅", "It does not include copyright violations ✅" etc. KylieTastic (talk) 15:12, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
"I have read the terms and conditions" ✅ "I am over 18" ✅ "I am ticking this box because it says to" ✅ Primefac (talk) 18:10, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
I agree some will just tick, tick, tick.... but maybe/hopefully it will stop some of the junk submission. Also it's difo from ticking "I am over 18" when a site cannot check... in our case we can say that if any of these are untrue your submission will almost always be declined. KylieTastic (talk) 18:15, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Novem Linguae/SD0001, a week after this conversation has gone stale, would you be happy to add these checkboxes into the AFCSW? We could trial it for a week, potentially?
Perhaps there could be a feature that, if you don't tick them, you can't submit the draft (the button is greyed out or something)? Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 09:19, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I looked into coding this feature just now, but couldn't get AFC-submission-wizard working on my localhost wiki. I created a ticket if anyone wants to help me with setting up an AFC-submit-wizard test environment. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:30, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Is there potential for warning editors for repeatedly ignoring these checkboxes, if implemented? Someone constantly submitting unsourced AFC drafts is probably not someone we want on the project. I don't think we should warn people on their first (or maybe even second) time blatantly ignoring the checkboxes, but at some point, it probably becomes worth it. It also gives the checkboxes an actual purpose, as opposed to just being another thing you have to tick off before you submit your article.
I do realize this could be quite harsh, so I'm quite hesitant, but... if you have to click the checkboxes, and it takes multiple times ignoring them before you get a warning, it's really only your fault. You could also add at the bottom something along the lines of Repeatedly submitting drafts that clearly do not follow these guidelines could put you at risk of getting blocked.
Would the idea above surrounding making submitters point out three reliable sources by Ingenuity partially address this?
If the main concern is that submitters would tick boxes without considering them, requiring submitters to point out three sources instead of checking a notability box would potentially force them to consider if the subject is actually notable, with the added benefit of speeding up reviewing time a bit. Justiyaya10:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Is there potential for warning editors for repeatedly ignoring these checkboxes, if implemented? Draftspace is optional. And it'd be hard to prove that they are purposely ignoring the check boxes. For example, what if they simply do not understand notability well enough to make a determination? I think it would be best to WP:AGF. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:04, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
If you have to tick the checkboxes to proceed I can't see how they could say they did not just ignore them. As always I presume to use extreme WP:AGF on the first submit, but resubmission with no sources or no changes after ticking these I think could merit a warning. The amounts of complete junk being submitted and re-submitted appear to be getting worse. Doing so wastes everyone's time and has a negative impact on the more considered submissions. KylieTastic (talk) 16:36, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Just a minor point, we can AGF and have them honestly not understand, and still get nowhere. Hang around in the #wikipedia-en-helpconnect channel for a day and you'll see just how far AGF can stretch when faced with crippling CIR. Primefac (talk) 17:13, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Hah! In fairness, for every thick-skulled editor we do get a good handful of editors who actually listen to what we say. Primefac (talk) 19:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Discussion for: anything else
Another idea: Generally, the most time consuming drafts for me are those with sources in a non-English language and also most often those I end being unsure about. Can we create categories for these maybe or some other tagging mechanism to call attention to them so a willing reviewer who is competent with the language can easily find them? S0091 (talk) 14:54, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
This could probably be expanded to cats for "AfC submissions that could use a reviewer with...." be that a language, or for some of the more technical or specialised topics. A new AFHC function to add/remove from a list would be good. KylieTastic (talk) 15:20, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
From having a look through some of the submissions which have been waiting for the longest time, I suspect this is an issue for others too - quite a lot of the ones which have been waiting a while have almost entirely non-English sources. Turnagra (talk) 01:13, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
I like this idea, as long as reviewers competent with the languages (or other topics) would actually use the categories to find articles to review. Probably worth trialing. Skarmory(talk •contribs)02:30, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
I think one cause of the large AfC backlog is that people keep spamming resubmit without making any real changes to the article. It makes it more likely for reviewers to just "give up" than deal with a persistent creator of a non-notable page or put in the research to confidently say it is unfit for Wikipedia. Maybe if an article is rejected more than once in a certain amount of time, there is a cooldown on resubmission. For example, "Please ensure the resubmitted article follows Wikipedia guidelines. If it is determined not to, submission will be blocked for one week", etc. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 10:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
A category for drafts that have been resubmitted in less than X time would be great for clearing those out, too! - UtherSRG(talk)18:21, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
I feel like we would end up debating what X is. If a draft is declined, and five months later they resubmit with no changes, that will likely be longer than X. On the other hand, someone could get a decline notice, bash out a genuine improvement to the page, and resubmit later that day, and it would get flagged. Yes, I realise those are the extremes of what could happen, but these sorts of edge cases will just clutter the cat. For what it's worth, it's not a terrible idea, just difficult to implement. Primefac (talk) 07:56, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Well, it's a start. :) And we may need some underlying software change for implementation. How about "No edits since last submission and less than X time has passed." Yeah, we'd have to hash out what X is for sure, but I'm looking for the drafts that could not point to updated off-wiki events to increase the notability of the subject and have not been edited to demonstrate an increase in notability. Certainly, a minute could go by and notability could change, but that's much less likely than 3 or 6 months passing.... but you know... while I'm writing this, the amount of time really doesn't matter. Time is irrelevant. The "No edits" part is really all that matters. If there's a change in notability status, the draft should get an edit to indicate it. There is an exception to this, and that's drafts such as upcoming films which can have no edits and just needed the film to move into actual production before the draft can go live. But even having those articles in this same category will be fine: all the drafts in this category should either be quick declines or quick accepts. - UtherSRG(talk)10:57, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Yet another idea: Add an additional review for style/formatting/etc issues... the things the gnomes would work on if the draft were in the article space. It keeps irking me whenever I see a draft get accepted that I can easily tag with a handful of cleanup issues or that have poorly structured English grammar, etc. Have an optional pre-review to get those issues straightened out by folks who are not interested in or do not have the capability to perform the "real" review. Output of this process would be a cleaner draft that is ready for the review and, possibly, automatically submitted for it. This could even involve the language/technical issues listed above by S0091. I envision the "click to submit" button split into two separate buttons: one for a technical/cleanup "pre"review ("I want to present the best case to the reviewers"), and one for the current "I think it's article ready". Neither is required, as the current review is generally optional, but a strongly but kindly worded recommendation to have the pre-review done even for articles that are not going to go through the more formal review would be really helpful. - UtherSRG(talk)18:19, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Wonder if it would be possible to have parallel maintenance/cleanup tagged templates in draftspace (so like, drafts in need of copyediting instead of articles in need of, etc). That way people who actually fix those specific issues, though not sure if many people would choose to work on those, even if they work on the same issues in mainspace. Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:24, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I would be for something along these lines. I'm plenty happy to help copy edit an otherwise good draft that wouldn't be accepted because of MOS/etc., and I'm sure plenty of editors would be willing to help out with similar stuff. I think it would need to be made extremely clear that templates like {{refimprove}} and {{unreferenced}} should not be used in draftspace, however, unless the community decides they're okay, and we'd probably need to clarify which ones can or which ones cannot be used in draftspace. (I can already see the amount of articles tagged with those blowing up...) Skarmory(talk •contribs)04:20, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Yeah I was thinking basically allowing specific templates, though I'm not sure they currently actually do the sorting in to categories at the moment in draftspace. Alpha3031 (t • c) 06:55, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Hey there! I recently became an AfC reviewer and am looking for some support to come to a decision on this draft. After a couple of comments outlining issues, the draft creator has put in some work and gotten the draft to a decent spot. However, by the previous comments on the submission, it seems both of the major contributors to the draft have declared a conflict of interest with the article's subject, and I was wondering how I would manage that situation. This also seems like a borderline case in terms of whether the subject is actually notable. I'd appreciate any help! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:49, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
@TechnoSquirrel69: don't let the COI issue alone stop you from accepting it (other things being okay, of course). The AfC system isn't here to stop COI/paid editors getting articles published; it exists (among other reasons) to allow them to contribute otherwise valid content. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 19:57, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
@DoubleGrazing: Sounds good, that's about what I thought anyway. Everything in the draft is sufficiently sourced, and I believe both editors are writing the draft in good faith. The only question I have left now is about its notability. Here, the draft creator left three of the sources which they feel are indicative of the subject's notability. Even some of these three are not direct coverage of the subject, and all of the other sources mention the subject but have a different focal point. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:07, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
BLP Question
If I am reviewing a draft of a biography of a living person, and it has no references, and refers to criminal charges against the subject, I know that I should decline it. Is there anything else that I should do? BLPs in draft or user space with no references are sometimes deleted at MFD, but those are usually drafts that have existed for a while and do not appear to be about to be sourced. Sending a draft to MFD because it has been submitted without references just seems like the wrong thing to do.
Sorry, too lazy to search myself, so asking instead... Is there a tool that will open with one click all the sources cited as references (each in a separate tab, obvs)? Specifically, open all the external links found in the 'References' section, but nowhere else. Especially with refbombed drafts, it would be great to click on that magic button, go and get a cup of coffee, and come back to all the 73 sources being open and ready for inspection. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 05:46, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi, forgive my ignorance, how does one keep track of articles one has accepted/declined, is there a link? (I'm new to this, and have done a couple), thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
You can see a list of drafts you've reviewed here. You can also enable the AfC log option in your preferences, which will create a userspace log similar to Twinkle's CSD log. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 13:13, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
It would be nice if we could have a category for unsourced AFC submissions to provide quick assistance to the page creators to inform them about WP:RS. Is this possible? - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆(𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 20:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
How can an automated process determine a draft is unsourced? We already have a the "No citations" flag but that just means there are no in-line citations properly formatted, not that it is truly unsourced. Sources are formatted many ways. S0091 (talk) 20:45, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
No not really as there are many submissions with bare urls out of ref tags (that could be possibly caught) but also many with just pure text descriptions of sources. To properly determine no sources would need more than basic parsing. KylieTastic (talk) 20:45, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
What do you mean by no citations flag? Where can you see this? Also, it’s kind of just more convenient to have it all in one place as a category. - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆(𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 21:03, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
@Illusion Flame in the New pages feed (linked in the reviewing instructions). Almost all drafts that are truly unsourced are declined very quickly so generally those remaining are not technically unsourced. It's one of the 'low hanging fruit' reviewers grab so the ones that are left generally have some kind of sourcing even if not in-line citations or otherwise properly formatted. S0091 (talk) 21:20, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
How about this for an objection to G11
Thought you'd be amused by this...
This page is not unambiguously promotional, because... (Dear Wikipedia Moderators,
I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed removal of the page dedicated to introducing the renowned Iranian director. This page serves as an invaluable resource for individuals seeking information about the director's significant contributions to the film industry, cultural heritage, and artistic achievements. Removing this page would not only be a disservice to the director but also to the users of your platform who rely on accurate and comprehensive content.
First and foremost, the director in question has made remarkable contributions to the Iranian film industry, which is globally recognized for its artistic and storytelling prowess. Their body of work has garnered critical acclaim, not only within Iran but also on the international stage, and has helped shape the cultural landscape of Iranian cinema. By removing this page, you would be erasing an essential piece of Iranian film history and depriving users of an opportunity to learn about and appreciate this director's remarkable achievements.
Furthermore, maintaining a diverse range of content on your platform is essential for fostering inclusivity, promoting cultural understanding, and celebrating the achievements of individuals from different backgrounds. By allowing the page to remain, you are sending a message that you value and support the diverse voices and perspectives that contribute to the enrichment of your platform. Removing this page would not only be a loss for the Iranian community but for the broader global audience who are interested in exploring and understanding different cinematic traditions.
I understand that content moderation is necessary to ensure the quality and reliability of information on your platform. However, it is crucial to exercise discretion and consider the importance of cultural and artistic representation when making decisions about content removal. In this case, the page dedicated to the famous Iranian director fulfills those criteria and should be retained to provide an educational and informative resource for users.
I urge you to reconsider the removal of the page introducing the famous Iranian director. By doing so, you would demonstrate a commitment to diversity, cultural preservation, and the promotion of global cinematic heritage. I believe it is essential to support platforms that value inclusivity and foster a deeper appreciation for the arts and cultural achievements.
Thank you for taking the time to review this appeal. I trust that you will make a decision that upholds the values of your platform and respects the importance of diverse cultural representation.
Sincerely,
The draft that the talk page belongs to is a beaut, and to top it all isn't about a renowned Indian film director - the lede says "Introducing Mehdi Salmanzade: A Talented Graphic Designer, Video Creator, and Director" so the objection must come from a previous deletion. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 09:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Where did they post that, on the draft talk page? As they have clearly identified Kayeragency as "Kayer Advertising Agency" they should be reported to WP:UAA and blocked as promo user name. KylieTastic (talk) 10:04, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Agreed, when I G11 and the user has a promo name I tend not to also report to UAA as the deleting admin usually takes care of it at the same time as deleting the draft, but I am not sure why Ritchie333 didn't do so. I have reported at UAA now. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 10:20, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.
Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.
WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.
Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.
You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.
Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).
Reminders
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A quick glance suggests they're probably not notable, at least some of them aren't, possibly all. I could just decline the ones that have been submitted, but ideally (IMO) these would be merged into a single draft, which might then also have enough notability to pass review. Any thoughts on the best way of dealing with these (individually or collectively)? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:03, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
It would be easier for reviewers - at least in my mind - to have all of the awards in one draft. Assuming they are all authored by the same user, I would personally see that as the optimum solution. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 10:10, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Well done to the reviewer(s) who have been clearing out the "4 months" cat and to all active reviewers for finally stopping the ever increasing backlog size. KylieTastic (talk) 10:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Efforts are being made, but it will take time to thoroughly examine all aspects, as many subjects appear useful from the outside but are not noteworthy. 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚁𝚒𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚞𝚜𝚜17:16, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, thank you everyone tackling the back of the queue so I don't see it and feel guilty for avoiding it :p (but in all seriousness, good work all! and congrats to Kylie for being at the top of the leaderboard with over 700 reviews last month) Rusalkii (talk) 04:23, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Not sure if you wanted responses here or there? Shall we try to achieve consensus here first?
I'll start... WP:AFCR doesn't say we must do a WP:BEFORE. Nor does it say we shouldn't. If we think a draft is in all likelihood not notable then we decline. If it is certainly notable (and the other criteria are met) then we accept. If it is somewhere in the middle we let it languish in the queue for several months might need to do a bit more work and that might include a Google search. An example might be if the draft is under-sourced and we think there are probably more sources that can easily be found. It might mean looking at Google Scholar or similar to see if that academic has a high h-ref. It might mean searching Google News. Arguably, AfC is a coarser filter than NPP so I'm not going to dig too much - if the article doesn't speak for itself I'm more inclined to require the author to do the work to improve the article so that it demonstrates clear notability.
I'd say if AfC reviewers are unwilling to do a little work beyond what is immediately in front of them then that is what grows the queue.
An afterthought: If we try a bit of reductio ad absurdum, if AfC reviewers had to do a WP:BEFORE on every draft we decline, even though it would clearly get deleted at AfD, that would be a complete waste of time. If we did a BEFORE on every draft that we were already certain we'd accept, ditto. That leaves WP:BEFORE as being one tool in dealing with the uncertain middle ground. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 09:31, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Whether we need to, I can't comment, but I usually don't. The way I see it, when a draft author submits a draft for review, that's them saying "this is IMO ready to be published, please check". I see my job as just checking the draft, not starting to edit/improve it; that I leave to the author. (Okay, a few times I've eg. found a source for DOB just so I didn't have to decline for that being unreferenced, but such cases are exceptions.) I think it's also a workload question: if we spend a lot of time improving drafts, the accept % may well go up, but so will the backlog (overall effort level being equal). Happy to be proven wrong on this, of course. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:24, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I think there are two slightly different questions here. Do AfC reviewers need to do a BEFORE for every draft? No obviously not; notability might not be an issue at all. But should they do it before declining a draft because it isn't notable? I would say obviously yes, because it is impossible to determine whether a topic is notable or not without doing a source analysis. Anyway, I wasn't asking for a big policy discussion here. I just don't think it's appropriate to categorically state something about AfC procedure in the NPP newspaper if it isn't actually part of the written AfC procedure. – Joe (talk) 09:36, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I decline drafts for notability all the time. Picking one at random, Draft:Adasokağı SK, I am reminded that the decline reason says "This draft's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article. In summary, the draft needs multiple published sources that are: ..." As my emphasis highlights, at AfC the burden is on the author to include references that demonstrate notability. The decline message doesn't say "this subject is not notable" unless the reviewer selects 'reject', which is only for open-and-shut cases. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 10:08, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's different from declining because it's definitively not notable (which I believe is also an option; at least it was a few years ago). – Joe (talk) 10:16, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
If I think a subject is notable and want to accept I'll go look for more sources to prove it if missing. If I think a subject is notable but not enough sources to show and can't be arsed to do the work for the submitter, I'd just leave a comment at most but not decline. Otherwise I base it off what is presented. If AfC had to WP:BEFORE all the endless crap submissions before we could decline I can't see how it could function. Certainly I spend way too much time just declining the crap without it. If we had to do a BEFORE I would only work on the articles I wanted to accept and maybe flag any the needed to be speedied. KylieTastic (talk) 10:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Not a need. However, I will do so if it seems to be borderline notable in the content to see if it just need just that little bit of work to tip the draft into the mainspace. – robertsky (talk) 11:09, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I think AfC reviewers should do this if they get a very well-written draft that doesn't quite show notability, on the grounds that AfC is in a very powerful position when it comes to editor retention, and we shouldn't be discouraging editors who are the kind of person who puts a lot of work into writing a prospective Wikipedia article. I always do this for professor articles, since these are improperly declined very often and it's typically pretty easy to tell if someone passes WP:NPROF or not if you are yourself an academic (I appreciate that the guidelines may look like nonsense to someone who isn't). But for every article? No. The queue is long enough already. -- asilvering (talk) 18:22, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Yep. Personally I only search for additional sources for a well-done non-promotional seeming draft, or one that is very clearly notable. This is a bar that very few drafts we see clear, including some that are probably notable. I do also make a point of looking for sources on under-represented figures where sourcing might be difficult (most recently I believe this was for a woman scientist from the 1950s, though I don't remember her name).
The way AFC was always explained to me, though, was that by default we let a draft live and die by the contents of the draft only. Is this the best procedure in an ideal world? No. But I think getting to drafts quicker is the best thing we can do for submitter at this level of backlog, by 4(!) months your average first-time editor is long gone and only the paid ones are still looking. Rusalkii (talk) 04:30, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Query
I have a general question about AFC reviewing and, to be honest, I might have asked it here before. But fate has brought me back to this page to read over another discussion so I'll pose the question here again.
The context is that I spend quite a lot of the day dealing with expiring CSD G13 drafts. So, I see sometimes a hundred drafts a day that have been declined. I like to post a notification to the draft creator's talk page if a draft is deleted for inactivity and so I see a lot of user talk pages of new and inexperienced editors. I think in 90% of the cases, I see a talk page post when a draft is declined and, sometimes, very helpful comments on what the problems with the draft were and what might be done about them. Sometimes the comments are vague, cliche and not very useful but that's not my question. It's that the other 10% of the time, there is no communication on the draft creator's user talk page about the fact that the submitted draft is declined. No notice, no decline rationale, no communication at all. I thought this cross-posting would be automatic with the AFC software program you all use but is this a matter of choice for the reviewer? There is one reviewer in particular who doesn't inform editors about draft declines but I don't think they are the only one. I would think that a draft creator should be notified whether or not a draft is accepted or declined just for the reassurance that, yes, drafts do get reviewed!
The reason I bring this up is because I delete these G13 drafts and after the drafts are deleted, these talk page messages are the only information the editor has about their old draft and why it was declined. Unless they have a copy in a sandbox, these messags could be the only reference they have to their work. It could make a difference between whether or not the editor asks for the draft to be restored at WP:REFUND so is there a way to make these notifications automatic? I can't see that this notification process has any downside and unless it takes some time to do this cross-posting, I don't know why any AFC reviewer would fail to post these notices. Since I'm not an AFC reviewer, I'd appreciate any insight you can provide into the process and what I might be missing. Thank you. LizRead!Talk!05:26, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
@Liz: Yeah, the tool we use should automatically notify users when their draft is declined (or accepted); I don't see any way to turn that off. I can't tell you for sure why some of the ones you're seeing don't have that without an example, but the two possibilities I can think of off the top of my head are that either someone who isn't actually a member of the AfC WikiProject reviewing drafts without the tool (which I know happens occasionally, although I think we generally discourage it; you can check if the edit summary declining the draft has (AFCH) at the end), or some situation where the wrong username got put into the submission template (which you could probably also check; it's the person who submits the draft for review, which is often but not always the page creator - and of course can be manually edited). LittlePuppers (talk) 06:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
The software we use to do reviews is called WP:AFCH. Whether a comment notifies the reviewer can be selected in the software. But accept, decline, and reject look automatic. Can you please post some diffs if you'd like us to review further? We should be able to tell if they are using AFCH or doing it some other way via the edit summaries and edit summary tags. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:54, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Looks like accept/decline/reject do have a "notify submitter" check box after all. I guess one option would be to remove the check box and then try to notify everyone by default? But that might also take out useful functionality. What if someone needs to mass decline a batch of drafts to implement an ANI consensus without spamming a talk page too much? Will think about it further. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:31, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
I honestly can't think of a time when I didn't send the decline notice when declining a draft, but I do feel like there are exceptions where it would not make sense to do so. I'm fine eithe rway but I think we should have a discussion on the matter if we are to do so. Primefac (talk) 09:04, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
There are three reasons I can think of that means feedback is not left for the creator:
Someone else submitted it under their name not the creators
There is also Option #4, which is "the person removed the notice". I suspect #1 is also a common scenario; I see a lot of times when there is a different page creator to the person submitting the draft (since the G13 will go to the former and the decline notice will go to the latter). Primefac (talk) 09:01, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Yup #1 is a big issue, but we did use to have a couple of big reviewers using #3 a lot, but I'm not sure that is true any more. The data I had was from the July 2021 backlog and it may have just been to avoid question overload during the drive. KylieTastic (talk) 09:12, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps we could get an option for the AFC review script to send a notice to the creator of the draft as well, to fix the #1 problem? -- asilvering (talk) 14:34, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Ca, I've renamed you on the AFCP list, so you should be good to go. Matt, the page was written as a split per the split discussion. Primefac (talk) 09:53, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Where did that happen? I can't find a shred of evidence of any splitting proposal anywhere...? (Not that it's an article I'm concerned about - I'm just pointing that out.) Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 11:46, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
From their log (thanks Novem), I kicked these back into the queue for more eyes. 100% IAR, but there are enough questions about their understanding of the various policies that they need another set of eyes. They may eventually be declined, but their reasons didn't gel:
For context, a probationary AFC reviewer made some questionable declines so the permission was removed today. We've put about 15 drafts back into the queue so far. We may want to check their log a little more methodically. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:00, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Totally. I didn't revert these as "accept worthy" but rather these need experienced eyes. I see @Courcelles took care of one as G5. I accepted two that I thought were clear from the other list, but as we all know there's lots of gray.
@Joe Roe I agree on accept and AfD. Sometimes it's borderline, and needs more eyes. To my personal standards, AfC accept is "this is defensible at AfD. It might not survive, b ut would be a good discussion". StarMississippi16:18, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I've checked a few more at random and at least half are blatantly bad calls. There are ~250 declines in his log, really a lot to go through... – Joe (talk) 08:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
There are two declines in particular where the logic is really racking my brain. Here, T1990 declines as copyright and despite the big text, does not make an effort to purge the "copyrighted" text; besides the fact that there was no copyrighted text at all, it was clearly a false-positive caused by a mirror site. Here, T1990 themselves states that the subject is notable, and yet still declines as non-notable (???). Curbon7 (talk) 08:35, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Draft:HBO controversies is a shocking indictment of AfC as a whole, to be honest. It has 6500 words of prose, dozens of images, an inline citation for every single word for 237 references in total... basically GA standard, at least. Yet it's been declined 6 times by 5 different reviewers, with a series of brief and increasingly uninformative reasons (This submission is not suitable for Wikipedia is my favourite). Yes, I can see that there's a reasonable concern that the article could be a WP:POVFORK, but that's the kind of thing that needs to be decided by consensus at AfD, not used as an excuse for individual editors to block creation in mainspace; clearly going far beyond the basic standard AfC is supposed to apply. – Joe (talk) 09:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
It's not something I would have reviewed so I wont comment on the notability, but I can agree some articles like this are probably best decided at AfD... however there is no easy direct root to do that. If a reviewer accepts then immediately sends to AfD they will be criticised as this has come up before and I believe the consensus was it should not be done. Otherwise a reviewer accepts and tags and will probably also be criticised for accepting something many will see as not notable. We have had several reviewers in the past that would be more bold, but they were often criticised and I think most are now blocked. I've always thought we need a way to say that some articles are best for mainspace/AfD to process. On a side note I think it's rather unfair to indict "AfC as a whole" based on the opinions of just 5 people one who does not appear to be an actual AfC reviewer, on one submission over a timescale the project will have done around 30,000+ reviews by a couple of hundred reviewers! KylieTastic (talk) 11:27, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I think accept-and-AfD is a perfectly valid pattern—one to be encouraged even—and I'd be interested to see where that was challenged. If we go back to basics, the purpose of AfC is to ask "will this pass AfD"? Accepting and then sending it to AfD is saying "I'm not sure, let's find out". Accepting and tagging should be even more uncontroversial (I do it quite often and have done for years), because accepted AfC articles are explicitly not supposed to be perfect, and tags are how we deal with imperfect articles.
But you're right, I was being hyperbolic there, sorry. It reflects poorly on all the reviewers that decline at it, rather than just Twinkle1990, is what I should have said. – Joe (talk) 11:44, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't know... I think "accept and send to AfD" is a pretty cruel thing to do to novice editors. I suppose I wouldn't object to an accept-to-AfD if the drafting editor was a longtime editor forced to go through AfC as the result of an ANI decision or something, and I have AfD'd articles that have been moved (not accepted) from AfC to mainspace. I might tag an article for notability after accepting it if it's been stagnating at the back of the queue, simultaneously as a "please help" flag for any rescuers monitoring notability tags and as a bit of a "permission to AfD" flag for anyone who's nervous to try it because it's got an AfC acceptance. I guess those are the kinds of articles you have in mind? But I wouldn't want to AfD them myself. I value the second set of eyes, who decides to AfD it or finds a source that makes them confident enough to remove the notability tag. -- asilvering (talk) 18:52, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I think there are definitely things that could be learned from accept and send to AfD (i.e. calibrating the will-this-be-deleted sense, although I guess regular participation at AfD would probably also help there), but I would say that it shouldn't be nominated for AfD by the acceptor - it seems a bit hypocritical (and confusing/bitey). LittlePuppers (talk) 19:12, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
It's not ideal, but still less demoralising than the alternative, which for borderline notability articles is usually repeated declines and requests for "more sources" until the submitter gives up. AfD is at least a discussion and hence, I think, inherently less bitey than templated messages. – Joe (talk) 12:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Completely agree with asilvering and LittlePuppers - accepting someone's hard work (celebrate!) and then sending it straight for deletion (like, wtf?) is confusing and absolutely shattering - all that hard work would go to waste, letting us lose our new but willing-to-get-involved editors. I can certainly see how a well-meaning editor, who's just created their first article, perhaps had it declined once or twice, would be put off by the whole fiasco of accept-and-AfD.
Particularly for it to be sent to AfD by the person who accepted it, that is ludicrous. If you think it will survive, get it into mainspace. If not, give them a way to improve it. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 13:09, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
If I find a draft to be on that borderline, I will usually accept and then leave a talk page note along the lines of "I know this is borderline and have no issue with it being sent to AFD", because there are some folks who seem to think that passing AFC is an automatic AFD pass, which it isn't. Primefac (talk) 17:37, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
I think you guys are slightly missing the point. The scenario here isn't "accept-and-AfD instead of just accepting", that would indeed be ludicrous. We're talking about it as an alternative to declining, when the reason for declining is something complex, not fixable by the creator, and/or something others might disagree with (the original example was "decline because I think it's a content fork", which is all three). – Joe (talk) 17:56, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Concur for my reasons above. If it is a content fork, tell them they can contribute to the other article. Don't just get their hopes up, and then shatter them; that's not what AfC is (supposed to be) for - even if it sometimes turns into that occasionally. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 19:27, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
While I agree with others here that AfD is more demoralizing than declining (and perhaps even rejecting) ultimately we are all guessing because it is individualistic. This is true even among seasoned editors, with some taking offense to an article they created being nominated regardless of the outcome, while others are fine with it. A thought is offering the option in these type situations where the draft is borderline-ish, pov fork, etc. (not COI/PE/UPE) and letting them decide which route they would rather take. Of course this would require workflow changes to include the messaging along with a solution of how to handle for non-autoconfirmed editors (i.e autocomfirmed can move the draft themselves but someone would need to move it on behalf of non-auto). S0091 (talk) 20:55, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
That is utterly nonsensical. How can giving an article a chance be more demoralising than saying "no, you can't publish this, because I say so"? – Joe (talk) 04:51, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
@Joe Roe the best evidence I have are the number of submissions we get from more experienced editors (50 or more edits). See Draft:Holly Van Remmen and Draft:Brigida Saga for examples but I also recommend you scrolling through a few days of pending submissions because we also get them from editors who have thousands of edits (please review some too because AfC needs the help). These editors choose to go through AfC rather than taking the chance in main space. I have left messages here and there letting a few know they do not need to go through AfC in case they didn't but so far either do not get a response and they continue to use AfC or they state they prefer going through AfC (see history at User talk:Socccc for my most recent attempt). There is reason for them doing so and I think it would behoove us to at least ask rather than us going back and forth about what we think is best. S0091 (talk) 17:23, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
@S0091: I've been reviewing AfC submissions for about twelve years, so yes always happy to help. I think the vast majority of editors that use AfC do so because they either have to or don't know they don't have to. – Joe (talk) 02:07, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I really don't think most writers think of AfD as "giving my article a chance". Instead, it's "trying to get rid of my article". -- asilvering (talk) 00:37, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Not in the majority of mine. The comments I leave to the submitter tell them exactly what needs doing (and they're usually happier with it if I say it's really so very close!), and they're just happy to do it so I can accept it. When I decline, it's not me saying "this is complete and utter rubbish", it's me saying "Here's a way you can improve it to get it into mainspace". Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 05:02, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Right and what the talk page message explicitly states for declines, Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved. A reject really does mean end of the road but only a very small percentage are rejected (3.9% in the past month). S0091 (talk) 15:24, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Some interesting feedback on the AfC process from an author
Thanks for sharing. I forget the feedback page exists and that is some interesting comments. I agree Wikipedia is "cold" and a video would be helpful (not that I am going make one though lol). Also pinging @Trizek (WMF) from the Growth Team since they have expressed interest in improving the article creation process for new editors and I am not sure anyone told them about the AfC feedback page. S0091 (talk) 18:34, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I mean, I could imagine what a video would include (and I'd probably have time - but maybe not the tools/hardware - to do it) - if it would be really helpful I could probably do something potentially. I wonder whether something like that could be helpful, a sort of step-by-step, here's how AfC works on both sides (reviewers and submitters)? Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 18:46, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Is it possible to make the AFCH script automatically subscribe reviewers to the Talk page section that it writes on a user's page when we review an article? I don't want to put the user's talk page on my watchlist, but I want to be sure that messages written by the submitting editor don't go ignored. I missed one of these just recently here [1]. I'm sure that new editors are more likely to reply on their own talk pages than come to the reviewer's, so there must be many people out there wondering why they never hear back from us. -- asilvering (talk) 22:31, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Can someone who understands how the Template:AfC statistics bot works figure out how to remove the deleted article "Free Stefan Philip" from the list? It looks like we're actually under 4 months right now, but this one is stuck there for some reason. -- asilvering (talk) 03:08, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
@The Earwig: looks like this is your bot? I'm kind of curious if just removing that row from Template:AfC statistics/pending would fix it, but I don't want to try and end up breaking something, and it very well may not...
@Asilvering: The number of months in the backlog displayed pretty much everywhere is based on categories, not that page, so that shouldn't affect what e.g. how long the AfC submission template says a review may take. LittlePuppers (talk) 05:26, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
What should I do when a user asks me on my talk page (see here) for me to review their draft? Is this acceptable, or is asking on a user's talk page discouraged? Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]20:00, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I guess it will depend. Normally I'll decline as I've recently slowed down my own AfC reviewing, but that won't apply for other users. Of course, it wouldn't count as canvassing, so it's technically okay, but if you want to, you can take a look (there's nothing stopping you AFAIK) - unless of course, you want to leave it in the pool for another user who has knowledge of that particular topic... Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 20:22, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Completely up to you. Since we're volunteers we can review in any order we want. Many decline personal requests like this, but there is no rule about it. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:25, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Edward-Woodrow it happens a lot, but it means nothing. If your interested in a article/subject maybe you want to engage, or you can choose to decline. Personally I have a cut-and-paste answer I use: "sorry but to be fair to all submitters I don't review/re-review on request, I just pick new and old submissions at random or work on certain topics, so it may or may not be myself who reviews it next". As for the article a google for "United States of Khorasan" has only 15 hits and does not look like a notable subject. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 20:28, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Same as the above; I personally do not do reviews-on-request (or re-reviews if I was the most recent reviewer), but I know there are some reviewers who do both. Doing so just encourages people to try and jump the queue. Primefac (talk) 08:12, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I might do it if I felt that I might take significantly less time than another reviewer or if it's a topic I'm interested in, which probably would only be for re-reviews. I feel that strikes a balance between fairness and efficiency, but it's definitely up to each individual reviewer. There's no rule against it but if you start to get a lot of requests that you're not comfortable with, possibly a talk page notice saying that you won't do it would help. Alpha3031 (t • c) 12:13, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I get requests for reviews based on my NPP work now and then, I just got a request to review some drafts this morning. I usually politely decline and let them know that I don't take requests to review individual articles but that a member of the team will be by at their earliest convenience. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:36, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
This draft is about to hit four months next week - can anyone with Chinese ability review this? It's a real doozy; wandering English and clearly incorporates a lot of material from an interview with the subject. I've pulled out a bunch of superfluous or unhelpful citations, but there's lots left. It would be easy to decline this for use of unreliable sources (facebook, etc), but I don't want to get an editor's hopes up and make them waste a bunch of their time trying to fix the thing if there's no real case for notability here. -- asilvering (talk) 01:50, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
The article seems like a collaborative effort as part of a project, with a number of different editors contributing to it. I think much of the life section could be removed, as much of it is not particularly notable. Gorden 2211 (talk) 10:14, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't know how this happens but it does happen with some frequency. You can ignore it. It gets cleaned by the script up when a reviewer accepts or declines. ~Kvng (talk) 13:19, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
This article is classic example of an attempt to subvert Wikipedia article review controls. It not just a simple case of looking at an article and seeing if it confirms to the WP:MOS and the subject is notable, formatting is good,and so on and then pass the review. The article subject here is notable but the article had three references to a diagram created by a private company that works in that area for that product. They are selling a product. If they're is an article on a scientific subject, then academic sources should be used, not linking to a private company selling a product. Its been known by the anti-spam and UPE/coi groups for years that often UPE and spammer will put a link into and you follow and one or two clicks over, there is a shop. Its plain as day. But this is still a private company, selling, which means its turned this from a academic subject into a advertising article. References should be looked for these types of articles. It is an advertisement on Wikipedia which breaks the Terms of Use. It shouldn't have been passed out of review. The contribution history tells you that as well. Its been written by a UPE to sell his companies products. The first contribution tells its a UPE selling a product. The reviewing here is really poor. scope_creepTalk14:49, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
You're welcome to propose revisions to the guidelines but current guidelines don't have any of these requirements. IMO the solution to these complaints is for editors at large to improve the article after it has been accepted. Improvements don't happen in draft space and asking authors or AfC reviewers to make them before accepting will further gum up AfC. ~Kvng (talk) 15:27, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Depending on how blatant the promotion is, I think it would be fine to decline with "please replace these links with something better", but this seems well within the scope of reviewer discretion. If the text of the article itself is basically non-promotional, which this is, and the subject is notable, which this looks to be, I personally would accept, maybe cleaning up the problematic links if there were easy substitutes to be found (though if there weren't, that is in fact suggestive that using this source is a more-or-less reasonable decision). Deleteing the offending paragraph and then accepting also seems like a strictly better solution - in general, if there are simple improvements I can do that takes something from a decline to accept, I try to make them, especially for articles like this one about a scientific subject rather than Generic Businessperson #238478.
Also, I don't see what about this contribution history suggests to you they're a UPE? I see one trivial edit to Plant density and then work on this article, which seems basically unobjectionable, with the only evidence of potential COI being the problematic links which I can imagine an editor adding in good faith. Rusalkii (talk) 18:52, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
If anyone wants to know what a neural network does when asked to invent a major novel series and ensuing IP about feral squirrels, you're in luck! Here it is. Enjoy? -- asilvering (talk) 21:46, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Italian poets by 95.74.83.154 & 82.48.251.214 - copy vios?
I had accepted several of these after checking for copyright violations against the other language versions and open access references. However now I suspect they are copy vios from "The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature" but I dont have access. I noticed the source does show the first sentence that is a match on some. The first I accepted and check more on was Girolamo Frachetta and does not have the issue, but for ones such as Girolamo Brusoni the lead is a direct if short copy. Carpimaps, asilvering and gobonobo have also accepted some. Does anyone have access to "The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature"? Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 08:36, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I've also just found it is available via the "The Wikipedia Library" in the "Oxford Reference" collection access. Pity Earwig's Copyvio Detector does not do a compare with copy-pasted text option. KylieTastic (talk) 14:16, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Did you get any positives? I'd be surprised to find they were direct copies because those Oxford companion articles tend to be quite brief. -- asilvering (talk) 14:30, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Okay, in the Brusoni article, every sentence directly attributed to the oxford companion article is a copy. The other sentences are all fine (but the ones attributed to the Italian-language source might be copies-by-translation). -- asilvering (talk) 15:11, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Ok, fixed that one and left a template notice and a request for the editor to fix the other ones themselves. It doesn't look like we need to CSD, because another source is in the public domain. Someone should take a look at the Italian-language one to see if it's also a copy. I don't think I have the time to check right now. -- asilvering (talk) 15:27, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Yup looks like they are changing from what looked like a good article writer, easy accepts, to a problem editor. Unfortunately I have a couple of real life issues that mean I may not have time to dig into this till the weekend. I guess if they continue we'll need to report somewhere and/or give them more warnings? KylieTastic (talk) 09:00, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
Out of a perhaps unwarranted amount of good faith I templated the second IP and tagged the draft, no action from IPs on it so far. There are several more IP addresses working on these:
There have been a lot of "Battle of" articles recently and it turns out there are a lot of socks - so just a heads up to treat "Battle of" articles with suspicion (also some possible copy vios)
There are probably always "Battle of" drafts, because a battle was usually documented well enough so that it is historically notable in the peculiar Wikipedia sense, as well as in the usual sense. But as User:KylieTastic says, right now many of them are being written by sockpuppets who appear to be of one sockmaster. So it is more prudent to leave any battle drafts alone in draft space rather than accepting them, unless one has checked the sources, and checked that the submitter is a good-faith editor. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:54, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
Women in Red July 2023
Women in Red June 2023, Vol 9, Iss 7, Nos 251, 252, 274, 275, 276
I mistakenly draftified an article that had already been draftified once before. It is Draft:Shaka Ilembe. Since it had already been moved from article space to draft space and back to article space, I should have nominated it for deletion and specified draftification as the preferred action. I am assuming that I should leave it in draft space, and it will probably be moved back into article space yet again? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:48, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
I believe there are no issues in leaving it there. And as you mentioned, I don't quite think that nominating an article for deletion and then suggesting draftification is a good idea. If an article has been draftified once, it shouldn't stop anyone from draftifying it again if it's appropriate. This is different from PROD, where second time it must go to AFD. ❯❯❯ Raydann(Talk)04:24, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Replacing a redirect
Slay Anything, in article namespace, is a TV series episode, currently a redirect to the series' season. Draft:Slay Anything is a draft about the episode, and it seems fine. But I can't approve it because the name is taken by the redirect. I tagged the redirect with {{Db-afc-move|Draft:Slay Anything}} to make way for the article, but it was declined because "Removing CSD tag, this draft hasn't been reviewed yet, much less approved". So how do I deal with it? Cambalachero (talk) 13:35, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't know what the right answer is, but I would mark the pending draft as under review (as it suggests in the speedy tag), and maybe also post a comment in it saying 'ready to accept, awaiting title clearance' (or words to that effect) so the admin knows you're on the case. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:41, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, ideally the draft should have been marked as under review, but otherwise there was nothing done "wrong" here on the part of Cambalachero. Primefac (talk) 17:51, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
No, and I wasn't suggesting there was (anything wrong). Just saying that's what one might do, to help avoid such misunderstandings. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:53, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Unfortunately every other admin does appear to understand this process - if a reviewer puts this tag on they have clearly reviewed it - so saying "this draft hasn't been reviewed yet, much less approved" is just assuming bad faith. In fact I had not had an issue with just using a standard G6 with any other admin. {{Db-afc-move}} was created just to get around this issue, yet still the issue persists. Oh and pinging Liz probably won't help as I believe she turned notifications off. KylieTastic (talk) 14:54, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I just check to make the draft is actually ready for main space before doing a redirect deletion and page move. There have been times when an editor who isn't an AFC reviewer asks for a main space page deletion so their draft can be moved and it often has not only not been reviewed by an AFC reviewer, it hasn't been approved! I actually check to see that the editor who posts the CSD tag is an AFC reviewer because it's not always the case that they are.
I guess I'm unusual among admins in that I want the draft to be main space ready before I move it into the main space of the project. Otherwise, I have no idea when the AFC reviewer will be back on the project to remove AFC tags and comments from AFC reviewers and clean up the page. This is usually not a problem as most AFC reviewers have drafts prepared for main space and our readers. But maybe in the future, I'll just skip these tagged redirects and leave them for someone else to deal with. My guess is that they will sit around for hours until someone gets to them but maybe that would cause less confusion. LizRead!Talk!01:06, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
and it often has not only not been reviewed by an AFC reviewer, it hasn't been approved! - as has been noted before, a reviewer cannot accept a draft in any way until the mainspace redirect has been deleted by an admin. If the user is not an AfC reviewer, that is a different matter, and I'm personally happy with said CSDs being declined in that instance. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 05:53, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for offering to skip these entirely. I would rather have a "speedy" deletion notice sit around for a few hours over having to do <waves hand at thread> this whole thing every time a valid deletion request is declined. Primefac (talk) 07:47, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
I actually check to see that the editor who posts the CSD tag is an AFC reviewer a reviewer is - so what happened this time? Cambalachero is listed at WP:AFC/P and also they are Autopatrolled have Pending changes reviewers, they also have 21 GAs and 2 FAs so it's difficult to see how the request could not have been taken as being from a trusted reviewer.
The real issue is I want the draft to be main space ready before I move it into the main space of the project - {{Db-afc-move}} is asking for the admin to Please delete this page and allow the draft reviewer to move the draft. As has been explained before this is so the AFCH tool we use can do everything else in one go: remove the junk AfC tags etc, check the short description, add/check projects and categories, add AfC project template to the articles talk page, leave an approved message for the submitter, log at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/recent (which other I know use as a place to check on new approvals), log to the reviewers "AfC log" is set. By wanting to move yourself you are skipping all these processes. Maybe if you did a few reviews (at least one accept and one decline) to see how AFCH works for yourself?
As the AFHC tool does all these things I really find it hard to believe most AFC reviewers have drafts prepared for main space, if you are seeing that I would assume it was non AfC reviewers. Also if someone does this and removed the AfC tags etc and the admin just deletes the redirect as the request says then we have a big issue if the requester forgets as it has been removed for the pending submission and may not be picked up for 6 months.
The deletion tag was written specifically because of Liz, and the fact that she still ignores it says something... I don't think extra notes in other places are going to do anything. Primefac (talk) 17:50, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Cambalachero, I have deleted the redirect, so please feel free to accept the draft as you have indicated it is appropriate to do so. I will save my words to Liz for if/when she turns up to the conversation. Primefac (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
I am a little surprised that we have no mention of {{db-afc-move}} on the reviewing instructions; not sure if it needs to go in that section specifically but it should probably be somewhere. Primefac (talk) 19:27, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
I think there should be an "If the title already exists" sub-section there to cover disambiguation and handling redirects. Thoughts? S0091 (talk) 19:33, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes. I hesitate to suggest a "step 0" to the box, but I think putting it under § Step 4: Accepting a submission is probably the best place; renumbering would obviously be automatic so "Click the Accept button" would be Step 2... but yes, a quick "what to do if you can't accept straight away" is a good idea. Primefac (talk) 19:52, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
I would be bold and do it, but I think I [should probably] 'draft' it here first for a check first:
"If the page title already exists as a redirect, you should add {{db-afc-move}} to the mainspace redirect (if it already exists as an article, see Step 1 and what to do if it already exists). After it has been deleted by an administrator, you can then accept the submission. In the event that it is not deleted, please notify reviewers on the Articles for Creation talk page."
I keep bouncing about on this, but if there is a redirect in the way AFCH will let the reviewer know, so I feel like maybe a subsection under "Select an appropriate name"? In other words, choose the right name, then "if the name you have selected already exists, check it is a redirect. If it is..." followed by (maybe a shorter version of) your text. This would be a bullet point or two under that first bullet point. Primefac (talk) 20:25, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Been bold and edited the wording per your recommendations. I've changed the section heading to be a bit more generic ("Known issues" sounds like bugs, rather than potential problems for the reviewer(s), in my opinion). If there is a better way of showing it, then I don't mind anyone moving it around. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 07:28, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. As you'll see in my edit summary, I don't believe all users do mark it as under review (I don't myself, for instance), so I've added a clause that reflects the ability (but not the mandate) to do so. Hope that's okay.
Hi Matt, I added that because @Primefac requested we do so (see WT:WikiProject Articles for creation/Archive 52#Speaking of db-afc-move). However, there was no actual discussion. Personally it is not something I normally do either but will in these cases. I also add a comment stating I am waiting for a redirect to be deleted but that's just me. :) So is marking it under review be something folks should do or be optional? S0091 (talk) 16:59, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. I would suggest that it be left optional because admins are effectively duty-bound to just delete it (as per much emphasis on the template, and now on the Cat page), although some reviewers may wish to mark it as such regardless (for those few "super-picky" admins).
However, I'm not overly bothered about it (and, tbh, I doubt many are so long as the redirect is just deleted), so am not going to shout about it. Hope that helps, and thanks again Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 17:12, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
I'm not bothered by it either but will SHOUT anyway lol. :) Just joking. I agree with you. Also, technically an editor is not required to be a reviewer to move a pending draft to main space/request Db-6. S0091 (talk) 17:50, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
If the instructions are clear enough, the "In the event that it is not deleted..." would not be needed. But if we change the wording of a speedy deletion template, shouldn't we notify this somewhere? Cambalachero (talk) 02:24, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Cambalachero - I've today added some more emphasis to the template which should clear this up, although we probably won't need to post a mass message about it, as the problems are only with a small number of admins (where they will hopefully see the new emphasis!). Hope that's okay. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 15:03, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Probationary member for one year
Hi, I have been a probationary member for AfC reviewing for over a year now. I was wondering if I could get reviewed and put as a regular active reviewer, rather than probationary. I'm putting this on the main talk page rather than the participant requests page because I am not requesting access to the actual AFCH script. Thanks, UrbanVersis32KB ⚡ (talk / contribs)16:38, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
I watch this page and don't necessarily need pings, but not the end of the world
You have made less than 1 review per month pretty much since you got the perm, and still only have 42 reviews even with the stuff you've done in June, so there hasn't really been enough to go on to merit a full review and a "bump" to non-probationary status. That being said, it's not a "status" thing and more of a "we can remove you from the list for any reason" thing, because historically it was notoriously difficult to remove sub-standard reviewers. Primefac (talk) 17:20, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.
Posting this here because this proposal involves draftifying 1000 articles to start (and probably more later), and changing G13 from 6 months to 5 years for these drafts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:33, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I was in the process of accepting this but there was a redirect in the way and I requested and I assume an admin deleted it but by then I was distracted. Before I could accept, it looks like jmcgnh came through and cleared my review in progress (without contacting me), declined the draft and suggested the content could be merged into List of battery sizes#Cylindrical lithium-ion rechargeable battery or Lithium-ion battery (the former is where 18650 battery previously and currently redirects).
This type of battery is widely used in applications ranging from laptops to electric cars. The subject meets WP:GNG and there's not a WP:NOT issue so I don't see policy reason why it should not have its own article. I appreciate that editors who work on List of battery sizes#Cylindrical lithium-ion rechargeable battery and Lithium-ion battery may not think that a separate article is the best way to cover a topic. I don't think that's a question we need to get in to at AfC. Let's not make our accept criteria any more complicated than it needs to be. If it turns out separate article is unwanted by consensus, a WP:MERGE can always be done after the draft is accepted.
While yes, there is an article AAA Battery, it's backed up by a much clearer notability story than the draft here in question. Ref 2 and ref 3 are not independent. Ref 1 is probably okay, but is mainly there to support the statement that the size of the cell sometimes varies by a couple of millimeters in length because of a protection circuit, which the draft dilutes to a generic These dimensions can vary by a millimeter or more.
I think Kvng does admirable work. But if I had come across this article after acceptance, I'd have sent it back to draft. Finding it in the state of 'under review' and, when I first looked, still waiting for the removal of the redirect, I elected to override the outdated 'under review' status (more than 24 hours) and decline the draft. I expected to decline the speedy on the redirect, but in that short interval, the redirect speedy deletion request was granted, so I recreated the redirect.
Was I too hasty? I only came to look at this draft because a user had come to the IRC channel #wikipedia-en-help to ask about the status of the review. They left the channel before anyone could respond, but I thought I'd look into it. — jmcgnh(talk)(contribs)21:07, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Request for Review of Rejection
I reviewed a draft on a title that had previously had an article, but the article was then merged into a parent article as closed in an AFD. The draft appears to be the same as the merged-deleted version of the article. I Rejected the draft as Not Notable. Was this a correct or reasonable action? I don't normally Reject a draft on the first submission, but it would have been subject to G4 if it were moved into mainspace. By the way, it is Draft:Gideon (Legends of Tomorrow). Was Rejection a reasonable way to deal with what appears to be a submission that will not survive AFD (because it didn't survive AFD)? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:17, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Without seeing the original it's hard to judge, but as it was created in mostly one large edit then no new sources added, I would likely the same. Personally I would have still just declined on first submit but the important thing is you left a full comment to explain. As they appear to have made no attempt to improve there would be a high chance they would have just resubmitted again and got a reject, so the end is probably the same. If they have any new sources they can bring up in another forum WP:DRV, WP:TEA, etc. KylieTastic (talk) 08:46, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Ah yes! In that case Robert I think submitting a no improvement copy and so soon after the AfD means a reject is a proportionate response. As the creator of the original AfDed version they were aware so should not be surprised. So good call. KylieTastic (talk) 16:40, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Can a draft be blocked from being resubmitted?
Just curious to know what sanctions are available for drafts that are rapidly resubmitted without improvement. Draft:Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2023 was returned to draft space following an AfD, there still aren't any independent reliable sources about the event being added, but as soon as the draft is declined it is immediately resubmitted. Judging by previous similar articles, this event only attracted any wider notice in the couple of weeks before the event (which is in December 2023). Sionk (talk) 22:34, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
It could be deleted and salted, but it would just get recreated with a slightly different title(likely one letter difference). It could be page protected, but the same problem would arise. 331dot (talk) 22:44, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Usually if you don't want to just leave it in the queue, I'd say rejecting it and telling the submitters to stop is the first thing to try after repeated declines. Obviously none of the gradually escalating measures can stop someone truly determined but we don't really have to, a few more filtered out after each step is enough. Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:58, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
As it is likely to be pass notability later in the year the best would just be to leave it in the !queue. Leave it till it reaches the end in four months and it may be notable. KylieTastic (talk) 09:02, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
If we're going to take the long approach, I'd say mark it as under review and then wait until it gets closer to time. Primefac (talk) 10:03, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
I have a similar problem with Draft:Stellina (TV series), but this one is not a future event that will happen and get more attention and editors in the future. It's an animated series, the only info is the trivial one (plot, characters, episodes, credits, etc), and the only spurces are IMDB-like databases, pages with user-made content, and youtube clips from the series. There have been 6 rejections for lack of notability, 2 of them today, and each time the user simply resubmits with minimal and inconsequential changes (such as the plot description) or even with no changes at all. Cambalachero (talk) 13:05, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Cambalachero: There's a difference between declining a draft and rejecting one. The latter does not provide a button to resubmit; the former does. Looks like things have slowed down there, but if they try resubmitting without changing anything significant again, I'd reject it. Skarmory(talk •contribs)05:40, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Women in Red 8th Anniversary
Women in Red 8th Anniversary
In July 2015 around 15.5% of the English Wikipedia's biographies were about women. As of July 2023, 19.61% of the English Wikipedia's biographies are about women. That's a lot of biographies created in the effort to close the gender gap. Happy 8th Anniversary! Join us for some virtual cake and add comments or memories and please keep on editing to close the gap!
I brought up an unrelated concern about this page at Wikipedia talk:Drafts#Draft:Example and G13, and that discussion led to me taking a closer look at the page as a whole, and... well, I don't think it's a good example of what a draft should look like.
The things I immediately pointed out over there was the lack of sections (the only heading it currently has is for References), despite being rather long, and the lack of references (just a single reference after the first sentence). I feel like this gives a bad precedent for any new editor who stumbles upon the page – in general, drafts should have sections, and every paragraph should ideally have a source.
There's also no image, which strikes me as weird, because there's an image on the similar User:Example; having a (free) image is also useful for your draft.
I also note there's no AFC banner, which feels like it should be included, given the leading text of "This is an example draft created via the Articles for creation process.". We should display how to submit your article to AFC here if this is an example draft for the AFC process (though to prevent accidental submissions, maybe just make it so clicking the "submit your draft for review" button does nothing?).
I can't see what purpose it serves now. It was created by Steven (WMF) (no longer active) in 2013 "to link to this from a blog post". Looking at the history I can't see the value. Should we just delete? KylieTastic (talk) 08:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
It appears in a number of locations, such as in Wikipedia:Drafts where it's shown as an example in the template, or Draft:Template:Draft to post as some sample test, so it seems to do what its intended to do. I can't see where its actual content is intended to be used an example of a good draft, so don't see the need to either improve it, or delete it. Greenman (talk) 14:18, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
If the intended purpose is just to be a valid target in the draft space then that fine but it should what it actually is and clearly state that it is not an indication of a good article. I would also query why its 20 paras of Lorem ipsum, maybe 2 and example header and another 2? Lastly the "This is an example draft created via the Articles for creation process." is a lie and more importantly misleading so should go. KylieTastic (talk) 14:42, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Noting that Steven is still active as User:Steven Walling, though not as a WMF member.
I think this is a good page to have, but its current form does more harm than good. The "example draft" line can only really imply that this is meant to look like a draft, and new editors who may stumble across the page might use it as a template to work off of. Improvement in some form is needed, whether that's making it much clearer that it does not represent what an acceptable draft looks like, or whether it's by making it look more like an acceptable draft. Skarmory(talk •contribs)20:36, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Yep! I'm still around just not at WMF. Please feel free to edit, delete, redirect or do whatever folks think is best with the page. To be clear, I didn't write it as a guideline for how to write a successful draft, just as a placeholder. That page was created before WP:ACTRIAL completed and therefore years before non-autoconfirmed editors were required to start with a draft. At the time draft space was announced, it was completely optional. Steven Walling • talk22:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Nepalese politicians - block avoidance?
I noticed a lot of Nepalese politicians with IPs in the 182.50.66.* range creating many with several accepts. However many of these were previously deleted as created by a sock Anup Rajbanshi and there puppets. They appear to be notable as real politicians that pass WP:NPOL but look highly likely to have created by a sock. If they were created by an account I would report as another sock, but not sure what to do and I see we have a few more already in the !queue. KylieTastic (talk) 15:01, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree it's not helpful to file an SPI about an IP. I also noted the sock is globally locked. I suggest contacting a CU directly, maybe one of the more recent CUs that handled the SPI. Also note Liz mentioned in the last SPI there was an IP involved but since the pages were deleted, those like us without the goggles can't see the history to determine if the IP was in the same range as this one. S0091 (talk) 17:11, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Clerk here. Filing an SPI about an IP is fine. It's definitely a better idea than contacting a CU, as CUs can't publicly connect IPs to accounts. Spicy (talk) 17:15, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the expert advice Spicy! I swore I read somewhere from a CU that it was not worth a formal SPI because either way they can't publicly connect IPs but clearly I misremembered or it was a unique situation. S0091 (talk) 17:31, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Hello KylieTastic, Hope you're doing well. I don't want to bother you, Apart from this I just want to know that how to overcome from this issues? Does this issue affects the drafted articles of Nepalese politician which was accepted by me and by other reviewers? Cheers! Fade258 (talk) 16:42, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Hey Fade258, if the administrators decide that this is a block evasion they would then probably delete all the accepted drafts and awaiting drafts. Unless you happened to come across multiple of these or happened to dig into the old deletion reasons these all looked like easy accepts under WP:NPOL so not surprising many were accepted. I just happened to notice and decided to do a bit of digging. As you can see from Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Anup Rajbanshi/Archive they are a prolific sock and I had a vague memory of running into them before. I would just avoid any more of these submissions until the SPI case has been closed. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 16:52, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't like deleting these, even when they fall under WP:G5. If they're on notable subjects and they're properly sourced, why should we delete a perfectly acceptable Wikipedia article? It's just a net negative to the project as a whole, in my opinion. Skarmory(talk •contribs)04:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree it feels wrong to delete notable articles, however on the flip side if we don't then we are saying people can get away with socking and block avoidance. It would have been best if some other editors had created some of these between the socking. KylieTastic (talk) 08:50, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Fade258, you could obviously create new ones directly, but if you mean direct copies I would thunk that was problematic as that would technically count as Copying within Wikipedia so would need attribution which would give credit to the sock again. In the end it will be down to the admins, so probably wait to see what any of the mob cabal think. KylieTastic (talk) 10:49, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
The SPI case has been closed with Girth Summit blocking the full 182.50.66.0/24 range for a year and it looks like they have also deleted all of the accepted articles and drafts. KylieTastic (talk) 15:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
KylieTastic, It is quite bad for us that notable Nepalese politician drafted articles was deleted. I also noticed that all the drafted articles and accepted articles has been deleted by Girth Summit and blocked that IP for one year. In my opinion, these all drafted articles and accepted articles which has been deleted to prevent block evasion should be created in these one year period to prevent from delete, If they create again after this period. Fade258 (talk) 16:23, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
@Fade258 Girth may be willing to restore them to draft or somewhere if you are willing to take responsibility for them. It doesn't hurt to ask. Also, good catch @KylieTastic! S0091 (talk) 16:32, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
First things first - I want to be clear that I did not edit the SPI filing at all, and any blocks and deletions I have made should not be interpreted as having been in response to that filing. Sorry to be elusive, but CU policy prohibits me from publicly confirmed any connection between IPs and accounts. So, I'm not going to be specific about who was editing out of that range. In general terms however, I'd say that the idea of directly reinstating an article or draft written by a banned abuser very much goes against the grain - if we just block their new accounts but allow their creations to stand, it is an invitation for them to continue socking. There is no reason however why other editors in good standing could not write new articles on those subjects themselves - I am not saying that those subjects are non-notable, or off-limits in any way to any editor in good standing. GirthSummit (blether)17:07, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Sorry Girth Summit, knowing the CU restrictions I should have been clearer and stated that the SPI case has been closed by Bbb23 and then a completely separate statement that you had blocked and deleted. Apologies for my sloppy wording. KylieTastic (talk) 17:13, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
No worries - nothing you wrote was incorrect exactly, just that my actions were independent of the report, on which I make no comment. I just didn't want anyone reading this to draw the wrong conclusions. GirthSummit (blether)17:16, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
I am making another request for a feature for the AFCH script that I have requested before. When a draft is accepted, the AFC comments should be moved to the article talk page rather than erased. Sometimes the comments contain information that may be of subsequent interest. Sometimes the AFC comments indicate an action that should be taken by the accepting reviewer, such as the {{adddisamb}} template, which says that an entry needs to be made in the disambiguation page. I have requested this feature in the past, and was told to be patient, and I think I have been patient. I was reminded when I checked on the status of a draft that I had tagged with {{adddisamb}}, and saw that it had been accepted, but was not listed in the disambiguation page. Of course, I added an entry to the disambiguation page, but this could happen again. Can this feature be implemented? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm going to add in my perennial reply to this request that if/when this is implemented (which for the record, I generally support) it should be opt-in (i.e. check-boxed), as I rarely find reason to keep the comments left by reviewers. Primefac (talk) 06:46, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
What if a pre-cleanup PermaLink is simply added to the AfC banner created with an acceptance. Click the PermaLink and the comments are right there. If you don’t care to see the comments, you continue ignoring the banner like most people. Might not help if hoping for a random talk page viewer to take care of a dab addition, though… For some reason I thought this was already there, but I must be thinking of a similar feature on a different project… maybe the RMCloser script. e.g. Special:PermaLink/963067476—took some time to find one randomly. -2pou (talk) 06:59, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! That must have been it… it’s viewable in the Talk page source, but hidden in normal view. -2pou (talk) 07:22, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
A Follow-Up Question
As Primefac says, many AFC comments are not really worth copying to the talk page. But some AFC comments give information as to what should be done when the article is accepted. Is there some way that these comments can be tagged or displayed in such a way that the accepting reviewer will be reminded of them? I am in particular thinking of my notation that the article should be added to a disambiguation page, {{adddisamb}}. Some submitters, especially FloridaArmy, put comments in the article itself telling the accepting reviewer what redirects should be created. That at least ensures that the comments do not get swallowed, but instructions about an article should not really be in the article. Should the reviewer use tags for those instructions, since tags can be removed with two clicks? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:42, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Discrepancy Between Article Text and Sources
I have just reviewed an article that has been created both in draft space and in article space at the same time. Well, that is common enough, and is annoying, and is sometimes done in bad faith to prevent the article from being moved back to draft space, but here is the issue. The article (both copies) say only what the company says about itself. I would normally decline a draft like this with {{compsays}}. Since it is also in article space, I thought that I would send it to AFD. But on reading the references, the first two are independent significant secondary coverage. I think that the company probably passes corporate notability, but the text of the article doesn't explain to the reader why the company is notable. The ordinary reader is not expected to read the references. They are required, but the article should speak for itself. I will not be nominating the article for deletion. But should I tag the article as needing improvement? If so, with what tag? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:35, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
If it's an easy fix, since you already checked the sources and probably have an idea, consider adding a sentence that fixes the issue you're talking about. If you prefer a tag, maybe {{Lead too short}}? I agree that WP:DRAFTOBJECT means this article should probably stay in mainspace. If this was a copy paste move with no overlapping diffs, {{Histmerge}} is probably the way to go. Consider linking the specific article now or in the future if you'd like better advice. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:51, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Regarding histmerge - if it's the same editor with no other edits, a histmerge is not appropriate. I know I probably sound like a broken record, but it's probably the most common decline I make when evaluating them.
If the subject clearly passes WP:GNG, even if the article is poorly-written (i.e. you have checked the references yourself and they are solid) then put some maintenance tags on it and do what you want/can to improve it if you have time. Sending it to AFD will likely just result in a keep and cries of "AFD isn't cleanup". Primefac (talk) 08:23, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Ozzie10aaaa, GFBI does not indicate it is the accepted name it says it is a "homotypic synonym" of Syneilesis hayatae, which it does list as accepted here. In general if found at PoWo use the accepted name they use. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
I have just reviewed a draft that was obviously written by a sports journalist, but the copyvio detector does not find the source. I have declined the draft with a custom decline. I think it was copied from a publication. If I were certain that it was written for Wikipedia in this style, I might accept it and tag it for cleanup-rewrite, but I think it was copied. Are there any other ideas, either about this draft or about this situation? By the way, it is Draft:2022 Seoul ePrix.
Robert McClenon (talk) 01:08, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Possibly from this page (created earlier than the WP article), but I believe much of Fandom has a compatible license, so if it was copied from there, it may e okay, as long as proper attribution is provided. I see nothing like that in the history, but if it was from there, WP:RIA would apply and then it would be okay. That somewhat begs the question, though, because if it looks like professional writing to you, then where did Fandom get it from? Mathglot (talk) 07:49, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Draft template fails to identify same-named article in mainspace
I'm almost certain I recall the top-of-page {{Draft}} template including a notification something like, "A page with the name Foo Bar already exists as an article in main space" or some such. But I'm not seeing it now, at Draft:Banja Luka (article present at Banja Luka). Anyone have an idea why not? Good-faith editor User:Боки just wasted his time creating this draft, which could have been avoided had the alert message been displayed in the header. Mathglot (talk) 23:00, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Fully agree with @Mathglot because this would have helped not to start working on references and translation when there is already great article existing.
If that's the case, that seems backwards to me, more or less hiding from an editor the fact that the article already exists, while the editor is busy working on a draft, and only when they finally feel it's ready and hit 'submit', then it's like, "Ha-ha, everything you've done so far has been a waste." That can't be right. Mathglot (talk) 07:39, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Surely the onus should be on the editor to check for existing content before they even start drafting? Existing articles are hardly 'hidden'. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:48, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
For experienced editors, sure. And yes, they should check (and YFA tells them to), but I bet a lot of them don't. It would cost us very little to provide that extra bit of helpful information, and I can't think of a good reason not to. Mathglot (talk) 07:52, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
How do you propose this is done, when the user creates the draft eg. in their sandbox, or somehow gets the draft title wrong? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:45, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
@DoubleGrazing Not even, it can be done as in when the draft is created to post a warning saying something like "Hey, you are creating a draft for article that already exists"
Aha! That explains my confusion—it wasn't in this template at all where I recollected the mainspace check. But I do think it would be an improvement here. Mathglot (talk) 19:40, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
{{Draft}} is capable of displaying this text, but it's not automatic; someone has to pipe in the potential main space title as a new parameter. See Draft:Abandonment (2023 film), for example. And then if the Draft is moved to a new title, there can be a mismatch between the Draft title and the link displayed in the until someone updates the parameter. If the draft I linked had once been at Draft:Abandonment (upcoming film), then the text would display the old title until it is manually updated. It's not super obvious, but the current implementation (optimal or not) is explained at Template:Draft article#Intended target page. Oh, I guess this only applies to displaying the red link when there is no pre-existing article. If the name parameter is omitted, the pre-existing article check happens to notify people first thing... which was already stated. =P -2pou (talk) 16:06, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Hello, I have bring this draft here because I didnot know how to deal this type of content. In my opinion this a possible autobiography as it is created by User:Princechhetri321. Where, I have declined this draft as notability and self-promotion. Fade258 (talk) 08:39, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Why would we do that? There is no prohibition against having a username that is your own name, nor is there an absolute prohibition against writing autobiographies. Both are strongly discouraged, but it's not anything we would block over. Primefac (talk) 09:00, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
I have asked this because recently I noticed that this user had created an article about himself which was deleted as a promotional autobiography but it is different in case of Prince Chhetri. Fade258 (talk) 09:16, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
This is a notable book, so the draft should be accepted, but there's a redirect with history at the target location. What are (non-admin) reviewers supposed to do in this situation? I looked at histmerge but that looks like it's for merging history after someone has already done a copy-paste move. Are we supposed to make the copy-paste move ourselves and then tag it for histmerge? Or are we supposed to do something else...? asilvering (talk) 04:59, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
My understanding is, unless the article text was copied to another article and the history needed to be saved for attribution reasons, that it'd still be OK to delete. I didn't see any {{Copied to}} templates on the talk page. If anyone knows a better way, let me know. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:28, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
User:Asilvering, User:Novem Linguae - I see that I tagged the draft on 1 May with {{cutdown}}, saying that there had previously been an article that had been cut down to a redirect, and asking not to tag the redirect for G6. I see that the redirect has now been deleted as {{db-afc-move}}, which is a G6. Since I can't see the history of the deleted page, I don't know what had been there. Two possibilities are that I was being too cautious when I tagged the redirect, or that I was being reasonable when I tagged the redirect, in which case it should not have been deleted. One answer to: Or are we supposed to do something else? is a round-robin move, which puts the old redirect with history in the draft position. The answer to If anyone knows a better way, let me know. sometimes is a round-robin move, which requires the Page Mover right. User:Novem Linguae - Was the history in mainspace substantial? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:39, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I don't think the page history on the old redirect was used to create the new draft - ie, I don't think there's any issue with attribution history at stake here. Though I might be wrong. -- asilvering (talk) 19:01, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I'll take a look in the morning if I remember. If there is no attribution to conserve then there isn't as big a "deal" as if it was the seed of the new page. Primefac (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
If the page hadn't yet been deleted, I might advocate for doing a page swap (or moving the redirect to draft to allow for approval of the draft with the script) since there is an {{r with history}}, but what content was there is rather trivial (little more than a few sentences of prose) and it's probably not worth restoring just to do that step. My personal opinion, though, has always been that unless there is a reason to keep the history of a redirect, it might as well just be deleted. In other words, Novum Linguae, I don't think you did anything wrong but someone might bitch about it. Primefac (talk) 07:42, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac is a non-pagemover able to do that kind of swap? I know that if I move an article it will leave behind a redirect, but I don't have any idea what happens if I try to move a redirect itself. -- asilvering (talk) 17:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Only admins and PGM can do an "easy" page swap (i.e. suppress the creation of a redirect to make things easier). If one tries to move a redirect (which is doable) without PGM or being an admin, it just leaves behind a redirect which would need deletion anyway. As I said above, I don't really see the point of keeping old pages like the one that used to be there, so in the future I would still prefer reviewers use {{db-afc-move}}. Primefac (talk) 20:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
I am reviewing a draft, Draft:Kirchhoff graph, and have requested a review at WikiProject Mathematics. I have a question about what is conflict of interest. The author of the draft cites six academic papers and publications of which he is an author. I know that this isn't original research because the papers and publications were peer-reviewed. The upside is that the author appears to be a subject matter expert. So is this considered conflict of interest? If so, is there any special caution, other than that he is already using AFC? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:40, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
It maaay be considered advertising depending on the tone. And if no one else has written on the topic, then it is not notable. Probably the writer will know if there are other authors and writings in the subject. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:14, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
If the author of the papers is the only one who has written about this subject, then chances are good (even if there are co-authors) that this a specialist subject area in which the author of said papers is an expert, but that also means that it is unlikely to be a notable subject. Given that the editor has the same username as the author of those papers, I would consider this to be a pretty clear COI, but I wouldn't do anything more than decline it as being non-notable for the reasons I've given. Primefac (talk) 07:13, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, the history merge tag is much misunderstood. I just reviewed a draft which was the same as an article on the same subject, and the draft was tagged to be hist-merged into the article. In looking at the history, I see that the draft and the article were created by the same author, and that the author tagged the draft for history merge after also creating the article. I assume that this is good-faith confusion as to what history merge is for, and have reverted the application of the history-merge tag. Should I do anything else, such as explaining to the author why they were mistaken? Is there an explanatory essay to link to about mistaken history merge? By the way, it is Draft:Scrimmage (band). I don't think that the article should be in article space, but that is a different issue.
Robert McClenon (talk) 17:48, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
You're welcome to explain, but I don't think it will make much of a difference. For what it's worth, I try to give my rationale in the edit summary when I decline a histmerge so that it is clear why I am doing so. Only if someone asks me for further explanation do I bother leaving any sort of actual note (unless I'm having to decline a lot from the same person). Primefac (talk) 18:21, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I'll put my hand up and admit that I don't quite 'get' histmerge, judging by the fact that more of my requests get declined than actioned. FWIW. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:23, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
One of these days I'm going to write an essay and/or rewrite WP:HISTMERGE because you are by far the only one who doesn't really get it. Basically it boils down to attribution - if you copy something I wrote, unless you specifically credit me it looks like you wrote it, not me. In other words, if I write Draft:Example and you copy that to Example without giving me credit, it's technically a copyright violation. Histmerge fixes that by recombining the history into one location (in this case, Example's history). On the other hand, if I write both the draft and the article, I am the only author, so there isn't any "violation" since it's all my own copy.
If I were going to rewrite it, I'd zoom in first to the atomic level, pointing to our (non-IAR-able, wmf-based) ToU which require attribution of copied content from sister and other compatibly-licensed sites, stressing the attribution part (and pointing out how attrib is not required for content entirely authored by yourself). Then, I'd zoom back out, and say that HISTMERGE is just the molecular or complex compound level amalgamation of many atomic attributions that you could've performed individually one-by-one in the history, if you wanted to spend your while life adding a zillion WP:RIAs to the page, but which serves the same purpose (fulfilling the ToU) but which is far simpler to execute, because of the tool. Not in those words, of course, but to that effect. To some extent, that presupposes and builds upon an understanding of the ToU copied-content attribution policy, which I find is already a stumbling block at that level which isn't always understood even after explanation, which I think is partially responsible for why HISTMERGE is understood even less than that. In a real sense, HISTMERGE is just a mass, copied-content attrib tool, spanning many individual contributions. Mathglot (talk) 20:44, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I got a talk page comment by an editor whose draft I declined. They're new and have only written this one draft, but the message feels very "off" (link: [4]). Example sentence: Thank you once again for your thoughtful feedback and reviewing the draft and for highlighting Wikipedia's notability guidelines in detail. It's clear that your primary concern is ensuring that the content meets the platform's stringent standards for inclusion, a goal I share entirely. Does this quack for anybody? I can't help but suspect a UPE sockfarm. @Hoary, you also interacted with this editor recently, thoughts? -- asilvering (talk) 23:54, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
asilvering, congratulations on having your thoughtful feedback acknowledged as thoughtful feedback. My own ... thoughtful? thoughtless? I'll settle for thoughty feedback got a very different response, though admittedly that feedback of mine could have been expressed better. Your suspicion: Yes. UPE is, I'm sure, endemic in drafts on what might loosely be called artists. However, it's rarely possible to prove, unless perhaps by somebody who, unlike me, has a good memory for distinctive writing styles and the like. -- Hoary (talk) 00:45, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's why I posted here, in the hopes that someone recognizes this particular style of bullshit... It strikes me as somewhat distinctive in its blandness. I don't spend enough time hunting sockpuppets to have a mental set of ground truth myself either. As for your thoughty feedback, well, I'm not sure anyone could have expressed it much more concisely, which is a virtue of its own. -- asilvering (talk) 00:54, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
I've had the same sort of message on my talk page from someone whose page I reviewed, see here. There was also further discussion in the Teahouse here, where the user admitted to working with a group of other people and David notMD suggested a sockpuppet investigation was necessary. I'm not 100% sure that it's the same person, but the style feels very similar. Turnagra (talk) 08:31, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Hm, personally I don't think the two are particularly similar, though I could be wrong. They do both have a kind of stiltedly formal politeness about them, that's for sure. The things I find distinctive about the editor I brought up are the emphasis on Wikipedia's "high standards", the circumlocutions ("it is crucial to remember..." etc), and their use of certain academic-ese words and phrases ("cultural landscape", "broader and more inclusive understanding", etc). It's like talking to an LLM trained on grant applications. -- asilvering (talk) 04:14, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh gosh I must have only looked at your talkpage link and not the Teahouse one earlier. I take back my comment about them not seeming similar! The Teahouse thread has all the hallmarks I described in my previous reply. Thanks for the tip. -- asilvering (talk) 06:05, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Same user decided to go on a rant on my talk page and is now indeffed. If there is enough evidence that others have (I only dealt with them for one draft), I would strongly suggest a SPI with CU. --CNMall41 (talk) 05:48, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh, these comments by that user do really sound similar to me. Thanks for bringing up this other example. I'll look into SPI, thanks. -- asilvering (talk) 05:54, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Here is a template warning they left as well. I removed it so you will have to go to my talk page history if don't follow the link. --CNMall41 (talk) 06:49, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
That is where it lead. They originally asked for me to re-review the draft (per my talk page). I left my opinion on the draft which resulted in an edit war and eventually leading to them being blocked. --CNMall41 (talk) 21:37, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
CU came back negative, so that's not my guy, apparently. Or at least, not my guy according to IP addresses, anyway. -- asilvering (talk) 22:11, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
In the discussion at the Teahouse for my one (I keep thinking it's the treehouse, which would be way cooler) they did say there were other accounts involved, including other users: Under different usernames, I work on developing Wikipedia pages for UK reality TV stars and their related ventures. and a follow up of Also, to provide more context, my comment about "different usernames" doesn't mean I control these accounts. Instead, I assist in creating content within a community of fellow celebrity enthusiasts who then create the pages. This approach ensures that we don't violate the rules against sockpuppetry. So they're clearly aware of the rules and seem to be trying to skirt them. I'm not sure whether your one is part of this group, but they could very well be and still show as negative on an IP check. Turnagra (talk) 22:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but at this point I think that's impossible to prove for my editor in specific. My evidence was the writing style, and the implication of that evidence is that it's the same person writing on two different accounts, which CU could not confirm. If anyone else deals with another editor that has this same style, maybe someday we'll be able to triangulate a more solid case. For now, I guess we just keep declining their non-notable drafts. -- asilvering (talk) 22:56, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
Looks like we were added several years ago by someone who is no longer active, so we can't ask them; at a glance, I don't see it being brought up in the archives of WT:AfC at the time. There is a vague relation between the two projects, but I don't see a lot of benefit (or harm, admittedly) from having their newsletters here. LittlePuppers (talk) 05:09, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
I personally have never found them useful and feel that it's a bit of wasted space, but it's easy enough to skim past them so if folks find it useful I won't complain (too much). Primefac (talk) 07:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree on removal, not really a fit for approving submissions. Those that are writing articles and are interested I would assume would sub for themselves. Frankly it would be more help the other way and if the WoR members worked on and reviewed the Womens bios. However this did not appear to have any positive outcome and Wikipedia:AfC sorting/Culture/Biography/Women is still always full of candidates. KylieTastic (talk) 08:27, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
This seems like enough feedback to get the read of the room. Just now I went ahead and unsubscribed AFC from these. Thanks all. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:36, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
This gives an overview of various citation tools out there, many related to source assessment, copyright, and deadlinks. I figured many of you would get something out of this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}06:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
What do you make of this?
An odd one: User:Ashgreer92/sandbox. Looks AI-generated to me, also has a copyvio, and the referencing is a mess, to put it mildly. Also, it's the second one this morning I've seen with the AfC tags on the bottom like that, with a header that says "Request review at WP:AFC". What do you suppose is behind all this? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:05, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Oh, that's interesting... it appears the submission template didn't get subst'ed until a Citation Bot edit yesterday. (It appears the draft was also submitted, declined, and G13'ed elsewhere... 10 years ago.) That's an interesting bit of history. I also have no idea why it happened. LittlePuppers (talk) 06:40, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
I would like another opinion on my handling of this draft. She is known for one event, which is that she is charged with the Killing of Jorge Torres. I declined the draft with the instruction to resubmit it after the trial if she is convicted. Also, if an article becomes in order (if she is convicted), it will be necessary to disambiguate her article from that of Sarah Boone, inventor of an improved ironing board. Is the correct approach to wait until the trial? If she is not convicted, then any information about her can be included in the article about Torres, but only very carefully. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:11, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Apologies if this is a known issue, but I've been annoyed for a while that AFCH (seemingly) only adds the quality assessment (Stub, Start, C etc.) to the AFC WikiProject banner when it should apply across all WikiProjects. With refactoring taking place, it seems possible for the tool to instead create a {{WikiProject banner shell}} around all WikiProjects and use the class parameter there. — Bilorv (talk) 12:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Probably not the same thing, but reminded me: I once got told off for applying the quality and importance ratings (as provided by the rater tool); apparently it wasn't my place to rate the articles, that was the prerogative of the Wikiproject(s) in question. So I stopped doing that, only creating the blank banners... and sure enough, was then told off for not adding the grades, and "expecting others to do" the rating. :) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:44, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Weird, I thought we had removed the assessment value from {{WPAFC}} specifically because we don't have any metric for follow-up...
Either way, the whole banner shell thing is relatively new (like what, two months?) and thus I am not at all surprised that AFCH isn't yet set up to deal with the change. Primefac (talk) 13:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
As far as I know, it's fine for anyone to add WikiProject banners, set any low rating such as C/start/stub, and set the importance to low. On the other hand, the WikiProjects or other authorities like to control the higher ratings (such as B/GA/A/FA, which often have criteria) and non-low importances, and so those should be avoided. I just set everything to low importance and let the WikiProjects adjust up as needed. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:47, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Apologies if this is a known issue, but I've been annoyed for a while that AFCH (seemingly) only adds the quality assessment (Stub, Start, C etc.) to the AFC WikiProject banner when it should apply across all WikiProjects. After some testing, it looks like AFCH adds the rating to any banners that the user picks on the accept screen, but not to any banners that were already on the talk page. I created a bug for that here.
With refactoring taking place, it seems possible for the tool to instead create a {{WikiProject banner shell}} around all WikiProjects I found a ticket for this here. It's been open since 2016. Any JavaScript developers up for writing some patches? I'll review and deploy them.
...modelled after the other existing notability tags. Thanks to my constant perusal of pages covering the fields in question discussed, I hereby propose to whoever's maintaining it as we speak...
Summary
Message
book - Submission is about a book or novel not yet shown to meet notability guidelines
This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article—that is, they do not show significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject (see the guidelines on the notability of books). Before any resubmission, additional references meeting these criteria should be added (see technical help and learn about mistakes to avoid when addressing this issue). If no additional references exist, the subject is not suitable for Wikipedia.
tv - Submission is about a television program or episode not yet shown to meet notability guidelines
This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article—that is, they do not show significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject (see the guidelines on the notability of television content). Before any resubmission, additional references meeting these criteria should be added (see technical help and learn about mistakes to avoid when addressing this issue). If no additional references exist, the subject is not suitable for Wikipedia.
I also object to TV for the same reason. I have no opinion about including NBOOK. In my experience they are usually about the author rather than one of their books but Slgrandson is seeing it enough to cause concern. S0091 (talk) 14:04, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
I support books as I have also felt that was missing for a long time and yes I come across enough of them that if available I would use it more than other options like prof, neo, ilc. However I would prefer less of a block of text because I don't believe many read it. Since we changed corp and nn to be less text and a bullet list I think I get less questions asking why it was declined. Note See Template:AfC submission/comments for templates. KylieTastic (talk) 08:53, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
Thirding, but can we workshop the language for books a bit? I like that it links to NBOOK but I think we should also add something about how user-generated sources like Goodreads and indie blogs aren't useful for notability purposes. Maybe also that we don't care about Amazon bestseller lists. I think the "Before any resubmission..." sentence could be scrapped and something like "Please be aware that user-generated reviews (such as Goodreads) and sales rankings are not useful for demonstrating notability" added instead. (I worry about the decline paragraph being too long.) -- asilvering (talk) 04:44, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Since we are on this topic, do we need a specific decline message for NEVENT? I seem to come across drafts about events often enough and decline using nn but add a comment referring them to WP:NEVENT. S0091 (talk) 14:15, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
I think that makes sense. I focused only the WP:BLP1E aspect of the message. If we expand it to include NEVENT, think it should also be moved to Notability section in the pick list. (Side note, I just noticed we have Athlete for NSPORT lol. I always looked for something called "sport" although I usually don't review sports topics.) S0091 (talk) 17:39, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
Coding this
I've created a ticket with the exact steps needed to code this up. If anyone wants to create the patch and edit the template, I'll be happy to review the patch. Make sure to test your patch on testwiki using the instructions here. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:25, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
As for the TV proposal on the backburner...
I would've loved to suggest a catch-all alternative based on WP:NMEDIA, but even that's a notability essay leading us to a foregone conclusion. Sadly, until/unless they're official guidelines (or someone else can offer me already valid ones), TV programs and other media are respectively fated to fall under the film and NN categories. Anyway, thanks for the feedback! --Slgrandson (How's myegg-throwing coleslaw?) 08:07, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm ready to deploy this
Alright, tonight I made all the technical changes necessary to add "book" and "event" decline reasons to AFCH. I chose the standard text used for other specific decline reasons such as "film". The exact decline wording can be viewed at Template:AfC submission/comments/doc.
Are there any objections to this before I start merging and deploying stuff? Is everybody OK with adding both book and film? Is everybody OK with copying and tweaking film's wording? If we want to change the wording, I suggest we do it in a step 2 so as not to hold up things and in case the wording changes don't achieve consensus. I imagine there is implicit consensus for existing wording such as the one for film. I will deploy this in a day or two if there are no objections. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:01, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
One small tweak for NEVENT to add the word "lasting", "they do not show significant lasting coverage", because I think that is one of the key criteria that makes it unique. If this request will delay anything or if anyone disagrees, I have no issue with moving forward as-is with tweaks, if any, being made in a later deployment. S0091 (talk) 16:50, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Draft:Lizzy Rose
I've been involved in guiding the creator of Draft:Lizzy Rose in the creation of the proto-article. It seems to me that the draft is now in a fit condition to move to mainspace. Do I just move it, or is there a process to go through? Mjroots (talk) 15:28, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
If you feel it is suitable for moving to the article space, you are welcome to do so (the AFC process is not mandatory). If you have been heavily involved I would suggest simply moving it as normal and do the cleanup manually, but you are also welcome to use AFCH (if you have it installed) to "formally" accept the draft through AFC. Up to your judgement. Primefac (talk) 15:45, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
This is an issue that I sometimes encounter. This draft reads very much as if it was copied from a book, but the copyvio detector finds an unlikely match, and what it matches is really just the identifying information about the subject. One of the sources is a book (referenced four times), and I am guessing that the draft is largely from the book. The text reads like it could have been copied from a book written in the twenty-first century. (I have sometimes seen drafts that read like they were copied from books written in the nineteenth century.) On the one hand, if the subject is mentioned in a book written in the eighteenth century, and in another book written in the twenty-first century, he is biographically notable. However, Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. At this point, I have only disambiguated the draft, and have not accepted or declined it. What should I do, or what should we as the subcommunity of reviewers do? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:44, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
Well, rather than guess, one could go check the books it's citing and see for sure. I already declined it as a poorly-attributed work of probable OR. I wouldn't cross out the possibility of direct copying until I'd checked the books, but I expect the "like a book" quality isn't because it's copied from anywhere, but because it is by someone who has actually been trained how to write. Writing for Wikipedia isn't much like anything else. -- asilvering (talk) 19:56, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
Create a new article
Hi, I have drafted an article and want it to become a Wikipedia article.
@Baloch Durzada: Assuming you're editing on your phone, there are two ways to do this. In its simplest form, a reference is <ref>, and then information about your source (such as the URL if it's a website), and then </ref>, like this: <ref>https://example.com/referencing.html</ref>. A fancier way which will provide more information about your source is to click the pencil icon (in the top right when you're editing your draft), click "visual editor", and then click the icon that looks like a pair of quotation marks. That will guide you into making a more complete reference, putting in things like the title of the website and the date.
It's best to put references in your article, right after the information they support, but you can also put references (especially ones you use many times) at the end, after the article. If you have any other questions, ask here or check out this page. (Note that some of that information is specifically about the desktop website.) LittlePuppers (talk) 04:30, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
AFCH deploys
Hey Enterprisey. I'm an interface admin now so could theoretically do AFCH deploys. Just wanted to check with you and see what you think about that. Would be useful for hotfixes, urgent patches, or maybe myself or another wikimedia-gadgets Member gets a burst of energy and does a bunch of code reviews. I notice Primefac monitors the repo closely and is basically the decision maker about which tickets are allowed to proceed, so I will continue following their lead there. Thanks a lot. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:34, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
@Enterprisey. My pleasure. I have some questions for you about deploys, I've dropped them in this ticket. Also, can I self merge patches if they haven't been reviewed in over a week and if there's zero objections of any kind in the pull request/in the issue/onwiki? Would speed things up a bit. If not no worries. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
The assessment discussion above reminded me that I started a discussion about our need to even have ratings for pages. There was no opposition but it also wasn't anything what I would consider a quorum (one in favour, one proposing an alternate option). So, I figured we should revisit it. Article assessments are generally an ongoing measure of a page's quality, but after the initial acceptance this project doesn't really have anything to do with an article (in other words, whether a page ever makes GA or FA isn't as a result of this project's involvement). I've transcluded the original discussion below.
I'm going to split this off from the above, because it's related but still a new subject - do we actually need to have AFC-specific article ratings? Our grading scheme is pretty bog-standard, and no one is going to go to an article's talk page and ask us how to improve an already-accepted article. Additionally, I highly doubt that anyone in this project (and I am more than happy to be proven wrong) is going through (for example) Category:Start-Class AfC articles and working on improving them - there's just no connection between most of those pages; you would seriously have to be a jack of trades to attempt it. Primefac (talk) 15:12, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
It depends, I suppose, on if we plan on creating a unique project-specific group of ratings, if we are fine with just the bog standard, or if we decide that we are not going to have assessments for this project. If we reject option 3, then I would say option 2 is a good idea. Primefac (talk) 14:26, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
I don't think so; I've sometimes wondered why that's even there.
If we are to rate AfC acceptances somehow, I'd rather do it on the degree of confidence the reviewer has in the article, to distinguish the borderline ("barely better than 50:50 chance of surviving an AfD") cases from the rock-solid ones. This might encourage more of the borderline ones to be accepted (per some of the comments in the 'Backlog' thread below), as it would give the reviewer the chance to make the point that they've accepted it knowing it is borderline. This could also be useful feedback for the creator, especially if accompanied by additional comments and/or data points on why it was considered borderline. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:49, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
That's actually a good idea; it's not like we'd be the only ones with non-standard grades; if we could come up with some sort of "confidence scale" it would still work within the coding framework (i.e. I wouldn't have to entirely re-write the template) while giving actually-useful information for anyone looking at the banner. Primefac (talk) 16:05, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
I don't have a strong opinion either way, but the two considerations off the top of my head are (1) it can be interesting from a statistical standpoint, to see e.g. what is the average quality of an article accepted through AfC, are they all stubs that stay that way forever, etc.; and (2) someone who looks at an article thoroughly enough to accept it might as well rate it (which at that point should be fairly trivial in most cases), and that rating should be transferable to any other Wikiprojects that get added (so those which do want assessment don't have to duplicate effort, if the article hasn't substantially changed).
I guess I don't really see any harm from having it or benefit from removing it (but also little benefit from having it or harm from removing it). LittlePuppers (talk) 09:47, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Regarding your second point - AFCH would still give a rating for the other projects as normal, it just wouldn't show up on our template. In other words, I'm not saying that reviewers should stop rating, I am saying that we should not be populating categories like Category:Start-Class AfC articles because it doesn't mean anything. Primefac (talk) 09:49, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
I suppose I was (semi-consciously) conflating two topics there; regarding the categories, I agree that there isn't really much of a point. I don't have any huge problem with their existence, and the statistical part of my brain finds /Assessment mildly interesting... but I wouldn't miss them if they were gone. LittlePuppers (talk) 10:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
And that's why I asked :-) While I personally do not find them useful, if people do then it does me no harm to keep things as they are. Primefac (talk) 10:07, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
According to WP:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot this process what put in place to identify articles "suitable for release in print, CD, DVD, or some combination" and appears to have began back in 2004 according to WP:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. I am going to go out on a limb and say this is no longer being used, at least for that purpose. Personally I didn't know the categories existed so have never used them. S0091 (talk) 14:18, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
MILHIST is the only Project I know of that makes a concerted effort to move all of their pages up the ranking ladder; everyone else just uses it as a snapshot metric. Primefac (talk) 14:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
To address your point on it not being updated as we don't review articles again after accepting, I wonder if it could be reworded in our template somehow to represent what quality the article was when it was accepted? That way it could be seen more as a baseline for progress as well (eg. showing the improvement of an article being accepted as a start class when it gets promoted to GA status) Turnagra (talk) 00:07, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure there was a reason for AfC originally having ratings, but whatever it was, it is not relevant now. The only current reason I can think of for keeping this is that, as LittlePuppers says, Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Assessment is interesting to look at, though today is also the first time I opened that page in years. I don't feel particularly strongly either way. Curbon7 (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
I presumed the reason to give feedback is for the submitters: it introduces the idea of assessment to new users and in general gives feedback on how good there submission was - on the rare time you get to accept as C or B I hope it is a good feeling for them. Or it it's marked stub, it like saying: "notable, but minimal effort... try harder" ;) I was surprised just checking Wikipedia:Articles for creation/recent and at the moment out of the last 10, 4 are C-class and 3 unrated. — KylieTastic (talk) 15:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
I mean we of course would still assess for WikiProjects, which would get the same point across I would think. Curbon7 (talk) 04:43, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
If we are discussing getting rid of the article assessment when a draft is accepted as an article, then I disagree. It has its limitations, but I think it is useful. If we aren't discussing getting rid of the article assessment, then this comment should be disregarded. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:28, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
Mainspace article independently created while AfC draft exists
Last month I declined Draft:Resistance Committee (Ukraine) for not having enough independent sources. (It looked like this at the time.) The editor has been improving it since, but in the meantime someone else translated the article from Catalan wikipedia, straight into mainspace, here: Resistance Committee (Ukraine). (They did not attribute the translation.) The draft currently at AfC is much better. What now? -- asilvering (talk) 22:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
If anyone's looking for what might be a quick draft to review, this is one.
In terms of structure, veracity, notability, etc. this article should be ready.
The only reason that I have submitted it first for review is that I have not really written new articles on people whose primary notability are criminal activity. Therefore, I want a second opinion as to whether the article meets WP:NPV, since I am unsure what the balance is for individuals who are primarily-known for unsavory activities. My caution is also due to the fact that one of them is the father of a high-profile incumbent politician, and I want to be sure that I don't create a problematic article on a relative to such a figure.
Maybe I should ask this question somewhere else. If so, where is the best place to ask this question? I am reviewing a draft, Draft:Tao Jiang, and there is currently a redirect from Tao Jiang to Jiang Tao, which is a disambiguation page. I am inferring that Jiang is the family name, so that Jiang Tao is the Eastern name order, and that the subject of the draft is in North America and so uses Western name order. So my first question is whether there is a hatnote template to put on the draft page that says that this is a Westernized Chinese name. Also, if the draft is accepted, should his name be listed in the disambiguation list in Western order, along with the other names in Eastern order? Is there a standard explanation to put in the disambiguation page itself? Maybe this is all spelled out in the MOS or in guidelines about disambiguation. If so, where?
Robert McClenon (talk) 06:44, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
Looking at some other articles of Chinese figures, it seems they use a note after the name in the lede using Template:Family name explanation. But looking at the documentation for that template, it seems there's also Template:Family name hatnote. The only real guidance is that either of these are perfectly fine to use, so long as the article doesn't use both. Turnagra (talk) 10:18, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
I could have sworn the standard in the MOS was Eastern style in general, but I've gone around and around through various links and can't find any guidance either way. I would expect a Chinese-Canadian's name to be given as "First Last" in English, and "Family Given" in Chinese, which is the case in this particular article, so I'm not sure there's anything to change in the article itself. -- asilvering (talk) 20:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
AfC queue statistics
I'm sure it must be possible to generate a dataset on AfC submissions, the amount of time they spend in the queue, and maybe some other metadata (like what ORES topic they were sorted into or whether they were added to wikiprojects). I'd like to be able to run some analyses on the data. I'm curious, for example, to know what the "drop off" rates are for reviews - we know a lot of drafts are reviewed on the same day they're submitted, but if your draft hasn't been reviewed before the 2-day or 2-week mark, how long are you likely to wait? Beyond simple curiosity, I think it would be useful information to provide to draft writers alongside the overall queue length figure. Many people look at it and think "it takes four months", but we could probably add a helpful statement like "80% of drafts are reviewed within the first two weeks" to that. I'm not sure how to generate this data though. In general I'm not very familiar with the "backend" of Wikipedia. Can anyone give me some pointers? -- asilvering (talk) 02:05, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
I used to keep stats like that. I still keep an eye on those stats but I don't write them down (mainly because I asked if folks found it useful and no one replied). That being said, the numbers at {{AfC category navbar}} have been consistent (relative to the total number) pretty much since 2017 when I started keeping track of such things; we get about 250-300 submissions per day, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80% of those are reviewed within 48 hours. Whatever is left after then generally will sit around until it hits the back of the queue, barring a relatively small % that are viewed via someone doing a "random" review or folks specifically looking for certain types/categories of page to review. Primefac (talk) 18:45, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
Mainly counting. I used /recent for the daily accepts, the categories for daily submissions, article alerts for deletions, etc. I know Kylie has done some stuff with Quarry for reviews (and we have a bot or two for reviewers as well) but I was a bit more lazy (in a technical sense, given that this was probably more actual "work"). Primefac (talk) 19:50, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
I have always wondered the same but to do properly would take a bot (and really properly would need admin perks for deleted ones). It's a bit much for Quarry. KylieTastic (talk) 08:30, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
Can Quarry at least give us the number of articles that are submitted to AfC in general or in a given day? I'm not familiar with Quarry, but I'm not sure how I'd target a query on this in any case, since the only thing I can think of is looking at the 0-days category, which of course only ever includes the articles that are still in the queue. -- asilvering (talk) 20:30, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
I can't think of any easy way to do that with Quarry and the deleted ones are very difficult to count. However I'm currently sick and on the third week of a headache so not up to much such thinking. Are you aware we do have the daily stats at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Submissions#Statistical data but with the caveat of approximate only as does not include deletions or multiple re-submissions on the same day - but it gives an idea. Then I have this for the dailyish (no deletions) per day for comparison. And I've just added this for an estimate of the daily deleted ones. KylieTastic (talk) 21:13, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
You can't just pick one day and say that is the per day rate, it varies too much. Also your double hitting with creation and submitting - an example being Draft:Chelsea Basler that 6th and 7th on your results for create then submit. Just the submissions would be closer, but there are a surprising number that are not submitted via the wizard (at least some days) and a significant number of deletions (estimate maybe 20% extra). KylieTastic (talk) 21:47, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
We were discussing a draft on the NPP discord server when someone who is not an AFC reviewer noticed some issues in that draft and asked us whether a non-AFC reviewer can comment on a draft or not. Then someone told us about a policy that says that non-AFCs are strongly cautioned from reviewing AfC submissions. So, my question is whether a non-AFC reviewer can suggest issues in drafts. Pinging @Hey man im josh, @Illusion Flame, @User:Sohom Datta𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚁𝚒𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚞𝚜𝚜15:22, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
Yes DreamRimmer, anyone can advise on a draft submission, or improve it... The only thing that is frowned upon is pretending to be a reviewer when not. Note that all "New page reviewers" are AfC reviewers now anyway by default, as well as all admins. The only other thing I think we would discourage is advise from very new editors who have sometimes left, well meaning, but bad advise. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 15:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
The draft in question is Draft:Meesho. I've left a analysis of the sources in the draft despite not explicitly being in AFC or NPP and have tagged my comment as a non-afc comment. Sohom (talk) 17:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
Non-AFC reviewers leaving comments seems fine. Moving the page to get it out of draftspace seems fine. The main restriction for non-AFC reviewers, imo, should be touching the {{AfC submission}} template to manually hack it to say accepted/declined/rejected. I feel that action should be left to AFC reviewers, and is what is meant by PLEASE NOTE: Editors whose usernames are not on the list are strongly cautioned not to review AfC submissions. on the WP:AFCP page. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
Indeed, I would say if AfC was to prohibit anyone from offering opinions on a draft, that would be completely against the spirit of Wikipedia. All the above states is that we prohibit users who do not have the AfC perm from offering a full review of an article (whether that be to promote an article in the AfC manner, or to put an AfC tag stating it isn't ready. We'd also have issues if someone was acting as though they had the perm, when they didn't. Simply making observations about an article is more akin to the peer review system, which is heavily incentivised. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)09:15, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
Your welcome - as for how it was with with this edit. I have seen others do this lets just make up "AFC submission" template parameters game. As for why.... I have no idea.... people are odd! KylieTastic (talk) 22:16, 8 August 2023 (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.
Hi IP, as the submission notice states it could take up to four months for review so be patient. This draft is no more important than others waiting and we are all volunteers so do what can when we can. S0091 (talk) 18:50, 10 August 2023 (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.
Draft:Bernie Ashman (astrologer) is a rather peculiar draft in that it is being paid for, but the editor (User:Metalegtrix) is not the author of the content. It contains ridiculous trumpery like "Ashman's professional life has been committed to empowering people to find their own spiritual, psychological, and creative insights through better understanding the energy under which they were born." and “ Ashman’s work is defined by helping people find greater love, harmony, and happiness by shifting these past life energies" Who ever is writing this garbage has zero understanding of neutral tone, but there is also the problem of it being written by a “third party editor”. Any thoughts anyone? Theroadislong (talk) 07:05, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Interesting. Probably just how my twisted mind works, but my first thought was... who is responsible for the content, when the editor attempting to publish it says they didn't write it, and the actual writer is unknown? My next thought was, what about copyright? What about COI? What about WP:ISU? Okay, I better stop there... -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:26, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
The uploading editor is indeffed. The image sup for deletion on Commons, now Speedy Deletion, as a copyvio.
Very often filled with fluff and clutter, we need to pay a little more attention to this cat. We should look for disputed draftificatons before choosing the action to take. Draftifying is not always correct- WP:DRAFTIFY, and AfD is not always correct. Sometimes submission tag removal is all that is needed. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 15:15, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree that some of us should check on this category from time to time. Articles get into this category if they are moved from draft space to article space with an AFC template in place. The reason for this may be:
The article was accepted by an AFC reviewer but the AFC script did not complete the process of removing the AFC template for some reason.
The article was accepted by an AFC reviewer, but the reviewer closed the window in which they were running the AFC review before the script completed.
The article was moved from draft space to article space by its author or another editor who was not an AFC reviewer.
The article was previously in article space, but was draftified, and then the author or another editor contested the draftification by moving the article back to article space.
If the article was accepted by an AFC reviewer but the script did not finish the cleanup, the only further action is to remove the AFC template. In any other situation, a new review is in order as to whether the article should be in article space. If it does not belong in article space, and has not been draftified previously, it should be draftified. But an article should only be draftified unilaterally once. As User:Timtrent says, sometimes AFD is the right action, but sometimes removing the AFC template is the right action. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:55, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
RfC on whether journals indexed in Scopus/WoS/other selective databases are inherently notable
I'm inclined to delete and salt the lot. My second preference would be to identify the oldest among them, to convert the others to redirects to this, and to protect the redirects. And either way, to search for more thereafter. Comments? -- Hoary (talk) 02:42, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
Hi Hoary, thank you for the ping. Please do WP:SALT the lot. The thing is these socks keep creating new drafts with different variations of the artist's name, and even has changed the vocation to actor for one of them. It's like playing whack-a-mole! I will keep my eyes open on the drafts for new variants. Netherzone (talk) 02:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
Pretty determined spammer, unfortunately, based on the sock collection on the SPI report. And it's not even a month yet. I think whack-a-mole is the only option and will tag any new variations I see. Ravensfire (talk) 02:59, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for deleting the various drafts and also salted it from being created again. Will continue to keep a look out for any evasion. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)13:13, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
This has again had the redir removed, placing the draft back in the pool. What's the process for dealing with this? Is it just waiting for another standard review, or should some sort of discussion be opened up? It seems that unless this issue is dealt with conclusively, some IP or another will rock up and start the loop again. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:32, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
The draft shouldn't have been redirected in the first place, not really sure why L&D did that. Regardless, I don't see any reason why it cannot be reviewed like a normal draft. Primefac (talk) 09:47, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. BLARing drafts is good when there are multiple of the same draft and a reviewer wants to consolidate. It's not so good for "declining" a draft, as was done here. Better to just decline instead. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:51, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
Declining a draft has the feature that it puts a message on the author's talk page. That is generally a good idea unless the author is a sockpuppet. I have a template that provides an AFC comment saying that the draft is being redirected to an article: {{draftintoredir}}. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:05, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
Redirecting a Draft
I wrote this before I saw this post which is on the same topic, and so am putting my thoughts and questions under the earlier post.
When should a reviewer redirect a draft to an article? I am asking this partly in response to a particular case where I think that the redirecting of a draft to a related article was a good-faith error.
We know that when a draft is accepted as an article, a redirect is left behind in draft space, and should be left there. That isn't the question. Sometimes when there are both a draft and an article on the same topic, an editor, in good faith, nominates the draft for deletion at MFD. The draft is then speedily redirected to the article. Some the originator creates both a draft and an article. If so, I think that the draft should first be declined, which puts a message on the originator's talk page, and then the reviewer should redirect the draft to the article. I think that it is a good idea to put a message on the talk page of the author of the draft.
I agree that redirecting is usually in order when a submitter has created multiple copies with slightly different titles.
The specific case that I have in mind has to do with an existing article on a company, and a draft on an affiliated company. While I was reviewing the draft, another reviewer redirected the draft to the article on the related company. I think that was a good-faith error by the reviewer, because that doesn't make it easy for the submitter to ask for another review to consider that maybe a separate article is warranted.
So my general question is when is it appropriate to redirect a draft to an existing article? We know that one case is when the draft and the article are almost the same.
I'm in favour of it. In terms of the scoring question that you raised, I wonder if we stick with the additional 0.5 for over 30 days but add another tier for drafts that are even older? Looking at the current categories, there are 832 submissions at 2 months old, 781 at 3 months old and 158 at 4 months, for a total of nearly 1800 submissions over 2 months old. Turnagra (talk) 10:13, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae and/or @Ingenuity, is changing the scoring an easy thing to do (using the 2021 drive as the basis)? If changed does that impact future drives or is it isolated to each individual drive, meaning if you change it for this one and next time we want to use the 2021 scoring someone has to change it back (or the January 2023 one for that matter but I think it was the same)? Also are the deductions for re-reviews that fail handled manually? I have never participated in a drive so clueless with how this all works. S0091 (talk) 18:38, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
It's easy to change how the reviews are scored; adding another tier for 60+ days, for example, would just be another line of code (the current code is at User:IngenuityBot/backlogdrive.py). Deductions for failed re-reviews are done automatically (though right now a failed re-review just makes the review worth 0 points, not an actual deduction, though that can be changed easily). — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 18:51, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm somewhat opposed being that there is a October NPP drive, and this could end up leading to burnout in the NPP drive, making the NPP backlog drive less effective. I would propose making this drive either on a different date, or making it a double length blitz. Zippybonzo | Talk (he|him) 11:50, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Appreciate the overlap with the October drive, but I feel like we need to do something - the article count is now over 4,300 in the backlog, and we're about to start getting articles back in the 5 month category. Turnagra (talk) 19:42, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
NPP could also do it's own double length blitz, with October focusing solely on reviewing accepted AfC submissions in mainspace and November non-AfC submissions. Perhaps also assign a marginally greater point value to NPPers marking their own AfC accepts as reviewed. Would give the new rights holders for NPP some easier reviews for points at the start and encourage inactive ones to start up again, since AfC submissions tend to be more kosher. —Sirdog(talk) 20:00, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
NPP has had their October backlog drive scheduled for a bit now, so asking the group to switch their focus to AfC doesn't really make a lot of sense. Then you factor in that plenty of NPP users are not familiar with AfC, despite their ability to participate, and I think it gets even more confusing. The two should be treated as their own separate backlog drives. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:14, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
I think I may have miscommunicated - I meant in the hypothetical that NPPers would review accepted AfC submissions in mainspace primarily in October than regular new pages in November. Not that NPPers would review AfC submissions. I've edited my reply to reflect this. But I can understand the sentiment the 2 should remain wholly separate. —Sirdog(talk) 20:50, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I definitely misunderstood what you meant. I don't see the benefit in asking the group to focus on articles that AfC has accepted instead of patrolling in their normal manner. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:09, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
While there is a bit of overlap, I don't think the NPP backlog drive is a good reason to not have an AfC backlog drive. I'm still in favour of someone whipping up an AfC drive for September, but they're running out of time to do so. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:13, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Hello all! Does anyone know what the status is on this potential drive? The NPP is thinking of possibly moving their drive to September and wanted to make sure that there wouldn’t be any overlap. Could someone provide clarification here? (Courtesy ping @Primefac and @Novem Linguae) - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆(𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 03:28, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Doesn't the fact that we're a week away from the end of the month, and this appears to not have been decided yet, let alone been listed at WP:WPAFC/BD or any promotion done (that I've seen at least), make it almost inevitable now that we're not doing it in September? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 05:48, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
I think so - if NPP wants to do September then perhaps we could take October instead? I note we're nearly up to 4,500 submissions now. Turnagra (talk) 07:30, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Except that, RE Zippybonzo's earlier comment about 'drive burnout', whether it's AFC in Sept and NPP in Oct, or v.v., either way it would be two drives back-to-back. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:47, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Didn't the data from above show that there's not as much overlap as we thought? I don't really think there's any way around that unless we put it off til the end of the year, at which point we could easily have nearly 6,000 pages in the backlog. Turnagra (talk) 09:35, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
I think we should take the number of editors potentially active at both AfC and NPP from the removal of names of editors at the whitelist when AfCHelper was made available to NPR rights holders, Special:Diff/1156927064, and some of us may have been busy with other matters to be really active at reviewing drafts and articles in the past few months. – robertsky (talk) 09:50, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
That's fair, and a good thing to consider. But if NPP are doing their drive in October and we want to avoid overlap or too close a proximity, that rules out the next three months at a time when we have a massive backlog. What's the alternative to that? Turnagra (talk) 01:37, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
Personally I would be more inclined to review AfC nominations if it didn't seem that most of what I was reviewing had already been rejected before and the issues weren't resolved. Is there some feed option where you are only shown first-time nominations or some automated screening for those most likely to pass a review? Then I would feel I was actually doing something to improve the encyclopedia rather than helping out COI/paid editors. (t · c) buidhe17:12, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
@Buidhe if you go to any of the topic-specific categories, it will clearly list in the table whether an article has been declined before (and how many times). I think that's the easiest way to get something reasonably close to what you're looking for. -- asilvering (talk) 23:51, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
If you use Page Curation you can sort by predicted class, which is over-optimistic but does mostly show stuff that doesn't have as many issues. Vaticidalprophet00:32, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
Could this be expanded into a wider point about more 'meta' sorting options? The subcategories provide some (article space, user space, very short, no H2), and there is of course the subject area sorting, but could more options be added? I'm thinking of something like 'awaiting first review', 'declined N+ times', 'resubmitted without changes', 'submitted by blocked user', 'unreferenced', etc. Saying that, I realise these may be prohibitively difficult to implement, easy as they are to imagine. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
Some that I've been thinking could be useful are categories for drafts that need someone who knows another language to look at them, such as when all of the sources are in French. These seem to come up quite a bit among the articles which are left for months, and could be a good way to ensure people with the right skills are able to get to them sooner. Turnagra (talk) 09:19, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
@Turnagra a workaround for this is to go to the article alerts page for the related wikiproject (eg WP:FRANCE). No good if the submitter hasn't added it to that wp, but big wikiprojects like fr/de/etc always have a bunch of AfC drafts in the article alerts. tbh... I've gone through WP:GERMANY's list a few times and it's often pretty grim, lots of PR-puffery and poorly referenced unattributed translations from de-wiki. I burn out on it pretty fast. -- asilvering (talk) 06:07, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
That's a good shout, thanks - so in those cases it'd just be adding it to the respective wikiproject on the talk page and that should pick it up? Turnagra (talk) 06:22, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, so long as the draft's talk page has the wikiproject banner on it, it will end up in that wp's article alerts. Whether anyone is actively monitoring those is another thing... but it can't hurt. Of course, you do want to make sure it's actually relevant - WP:NED probably doesn't want articles about Belgians, WP:GERMANY won't want articles about Austria or Switzerland, French and Spanish are spoken very widely outside the borders of those countries, etc. -- asilvering (talk) 06:33, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
New eyes appreciated on old draft
Hi all, if anyone has interest in reviewing Draft:Scottish Castles Restoration Projects, please do have a look. I'm flagging it here because it's a not-uncomplicated draft that's been through a particularly drawn-out AfC experience already and don't think it should sit for another four months. Original submission was in February, declined as essay-like in June. The article is on a broadly notable topic, and has now seen considerable editing by two previously uninvolved editors. I was the previous decline so I don't think I should be reviewing this. If anyone's got an article in similar straights, I'll happily be the fresh eyes on that one, just let me know! -- asilvering (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
the two accepts look good, I've added the connected user template on the talk page of the first one and a categories needed for the second one. Theroadislong (talk) 09:40, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
After a quick glance at a sample of a half dozen declines, I'm not seeing anything particularly egregious - although there was one page that should have been declined for copyvio (taken care of by someone else later) that was declined for another reason; just something to look out for. LittlePuppers (talk) 17:49, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
Hi @VickKiang, I was agreeing with the other reviewer: the article seemed to be about the rocket itself, but half of it was about the scientific payload. I gave some context in my decline notice. Qcne(talk)08:45, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify that my read of the decline rationale is that it asks to slim down the Science Objective section to only a paragraph to summarise it, which IMO does not relate to WP:AFCPURPOSE. However, I agree that the Earth's Ambipolar Electric Field subsection is not that relevant and concede that if Qcne's decline rationale is intending to say something similar to your proposal, that is definitely reasonable. But IMO the decline reasoning was unclear, though other editors may have a different view; and I am certainly not saying this is a major problem. VickKiang(talk)09:41, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
If you know that they are easy to accept or decline, why have you not done so? :) In seriousness, the only way to really work on the backlog is to recruit more reviewers. 331dot (talk) 09:29, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
I strongly suspect that Draft:Roland Jacquard was created by a sockpuppet, as it was G5 speedied just 12 days ago and was created by an IP with their first edit seven days after that. Normally I would just decline, but like a fool I made substantial edits to the draft in order to get it ready for mainspace before checking to see if it had been deleted previously, and now I'm not sure if it qualifies for speedy deletion anymore. Devonian Wombat (talk) 22:18, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
I feel it not to be ready for mainspace, alleged sock puppetry notwithstanding. Several references are but passing mentions. I haven't checked them all, but I believe you are safe to decline it. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 22:30, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
Don't. It is meant to be a short and concise guide for beginners. If users have become so proficient at referencing that they're resorting to refbombing, they are no longer beginners. – SD0001 (talk) 05:47, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm a new page reviewer (albeit on a time limited probation and still learning); regarding the page at Draft:Daniel Seavey, please do not submit it for deletion as of yet, as I've requested a history merge back into Daniel Seavey due to the draft page's edit history dating back to 2015 and its former status as an article. Please leave this situation for an admin to handle. More details and the centralised discussion can be found at Talk:Daniel Seavey#Feedback from New Page Review process. Thank you, Fork99 (talk) 01:25, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
Well that was a rabbit hole. I think I fixed everything though. Ended up just deleting the new redirect since it had trivial history, then moving the old page back to where it goes. Not sure why the editor draftified a redirect. Left a note on their user talk page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:15, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
It would have been preferable to handle this here, on this page. That there are deficiencies in some reviews is inevitable for a new reviewer. That they have worked at speed is likely for a new reviewer. These these are all "tuning issues" and thus really not worth setting a hare running at ANI. We do not berate folk for inexperience, we seek to guide them, only using big hammers when guidance is not well received.
Since we are there, then we are there. I view it as a thread that berates a new reviewer. There is purpose, certainly, but I feel certain that this is the incorrect venue, and one that will intimidate the reviewer concerned, because it is ANI. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 12:43, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
Somewhat similar point, I couldn't help wondering what does the ANI case actually seek to achieve – strip the user of their reviewer rights? If so, isn't that also something that would be handled within the project? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:57, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
While I do apologise for taking the discussion farther than what was probably necessary, I did not realise that this could have been discussed here. I also personally thought it might have been egregious enough to warrant admin intervention, which was a proactive approach from my part due to the vast numbers of speedy reviews and other issues raised regarding her seemingly incorrect interpretations of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. As a quick side note, she did review more one article after the time in which I placed the ANI notice on her talk page.
I also apologise if any of my posts or the tone as a result of it being at ANI came across as berating to the editor in question. I have assumed good faith on her behalf at all times, as she does display willingness to learn from her mistakes. I do plan on making a personal apology on her talk page as well. @OlifanofmrTennant: for your information. Fork99 (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
I also note that there was suggestion in there that we should be even stricter with AfC perms - given the size of the backlog I feel like this would be very counterproductive. Turnagra (talk) 18:13, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
I think that's a separate discussion to the context around this one (which could be worth having, but I don't know enough about who's applying to say) - my point was more that I wouldn't want this to result in a further reduction of who we take in. Turnagra (talk) 18:35, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
If anyone does feel that OlifanofmrTennant should be removed from the project, please feel free to start a new subsection (level 3) in this thread. Otherwise I think we can treat this as a learning experience for OlifanofmrTennant. Primefac (talk) 13:25, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
I will voluntarily abstain from all further input from myself regarding OlifanofmrTennant as I think I've possibly placed undue stress or hard feelings on her. I have left a personal apology for my actions at her user talk page. Please do ping me or leave me a message though if I am required. Thank you, Fork99 (talk) 13:53, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
I would like to hear from @OlifanofmrTennant given they have continued to review articles throughout these discussions. Do they understand the issues and what actions are they taking to remedy them? S0091 (talk) 19:09, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
I have taken steps. I've reread several guidelines. I have reassesed a few articles that I previously went over. Also I have been given a go-ahead to continue reviewing. :ᗡ OLI (she/her)19:24, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
@OlifanofmrTennant can you please provide some specifics? What were you doing wrong based on the feedback and your understanding now that you have reread some guidelines (would be helpful to know which ones)? S0091 (talk) 19:34, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks @OlifanofmrTennant. What I suggest is for now sticking to only topics relevant to NF and NM and participating in (or at least reading) related AfD discussions then as you gain experience expand out from there (see WP:AfC sorting drafts are sorted by topic). You need to also read WP:AFCPURPOSE and don't be shy about posting here to get advice if you are unsure or asking another experienced reviewer.
@Fork99 I don't think anything you have done is wrong. You noticed a potential issue, addressed it directly with OLI and when still concerned tried to address it at the venue you were most familiar to get additional eyes. OLI seems receptive to feedback and putting forth some effort so we shall see. S0091 (talk) 20:32, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
I'd like to express my support for Olifano in this situation. Bringing down the hammer like this on a new reviewer because they made some mistakes when reviewing is counterproductive and fixes nothing. If we want to ask why backlogs here and at NPP are so large, this treatment of new reviewers who make a few mistakes is a prime culprit in my mind. Devonian Wombat (talk) 05:41, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
I agree, and have from the beginning. This is a tuning issue, not a name and shame issue. I have been trying to help them from the get go. This is the reason I have started the task of reviewing reviews. See below. I will pick this task up again later today. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 07:02, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
In view off the work I have carried out in the section below to re-review the majority of the reviews and the conclusion I have placed there, might it now be the time to close this discussion? I appreciate that other reviewers performing the same re-review will disagree on some matters with me and with each other, but I think we have probably now done everything we need to do. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 08:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
The one final thing I'm wondering out of this - do we have a dedicated spot where new reviewers are able to get a second opinion from more experienced ones? That might be a useful resource to help out new reviewers working out where the line is and whether something is a valid decline reason. I know I would've found such a thing incredibly useful (and probably still would, from time to time). Turnagra (talk) 10:00, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
Absolutely, especially after such an ordeal! Was more meaning that such a thing could be a useful outcome out of this rather than wanting to prolong the discussion further. Turnagra (talk) 10:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
Using https://apersonbot.toolforge.org/afchistory/ I have just been through the oldest 45 or so reviews, all of those logged on 25 August 2023. I agree with some, have reverted some, have accepted some that were declined or rejected, and have not found any acceptances that I would quarrel with.
Review deficiencies found in the earliest have not been repeated as experience has grown.
Overall, I have found the later of "first day" reviews to be within the margin of error we anticipate with a new reviewer, and the earliest to be those with the nit picking (etc) referred to above in their self criticism, and to be outside the margin of error.
Having sampled the oldest I am starting today at the newest. I will be able to form a judgement about alterations to reviewing that way. I appreciate this is subjective. I expect to compels 3rd September within an hour or two, and will report back. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 07:08, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
3rd September is complete.
The deficiencies from 25 August have not been found on 3rd September.
I found one I had already overturned into an acceptance, a couple of others where I would have chosen a different decline rationale, and one I resubmitted to accept.
None of the acceptances were a problem.
When I review a draft with a picture in it I go the extra mile and follow that picture to Commons. I do not expect others to do this (it is not in our brief) but I commend it to all, since we can clear out a load of trash that way
I will carry on, this time working forwards, so 26 August will come next. I will report when I get to a suitable point. If someone would like to join in, please make sure I know which date(s) you are doing. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 07:53, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
Only 2 September remains.
I have found nothing special. There is progress from the earlier reviews. I draftified one, would use different rationales in some cases, but am in broad agreement with the reviewer.
I feel it is now just busywork to re-review 2 September. I do not propose to do it. I know will find a review or two that I disagree with, but I see that as an acceptable error rate.
My conclusion from this work is that we have a new, enthusiastic reviewer, learning her trade, and making fewer mistakes as time passes. As with all of us, guidance is required from time to time. She should remain in the probationary list for the present, and strive for better and better reviews, and come here to request guidance, ideally before making an error, but after is also good! 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 08:28, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
