Some editors said, partway up this page, that we want to avoid having a three-month or four-month backlog again. I agree. Rather than relying on occasional backlog drives, we should review what features of the backlog drive can be adapted to use on a regular basis. Can we provide that there will be a monthly prize for the editor making the most reviews? We can continue to assign extra points for reviews that have become more than N months old, and hope that maybe that extra credit reduces the likelihood that the old categories will re-populate. We should consider what techniques we can use when this drive is over that will reduce the likelihood of another deep backlog that requires a drive.
This sounds like a solid idea to me. Everyone wants more barnstars to add to their collection, and thankfully they are free to hand out! We already have the processes to make it happen, we just need to keep them going into December at a lower level. I'm assuming that unless we mean to formalize re-reviews into AfC's main process that they will remain a backlog drive-only thing. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:49, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
If we want to get serious about monthly awards, we should probably appoint an awards coordinator to create a page, create a process, be the one that hands them out every month, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:05, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm wondering if it could also be helpful to have something that shows the daily / weekly / monthly change in the backlog, maybe similar to what the Guild of Copy Editors have on their sidebar? That way, even if the backlog starts to creep up we can at least focus on keeping the change as close to 0 as possible and it can make progress on the backlog feel more achievable. Turnagra (talk) 07:05, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
There must have been so many good ideas floated in the past that weren't acted on or even captured, so we keep returning to this question again and again, a point also made in a thread on the current drive's talk page.
I'll repeat what I said there:
Yes, monthly bling seems a good idea, ideally with a leaderboard so you can easily see how far you're from leveling up. (Is that a major hassle to administer on an ongoing basis, though?)
To encourage regular reviewing, let's award milestone badges ie. 'daily reviews for X days in a row', with X being 10, 25, 50, 100, etc. so you always have the next milestone to aim for. (Whether one daily review is enough or we need to set the bar higher, I don't know.)
Special badges for dealing with difficult (eg. old, refbombed, etc.) drafts.
I don't really know, but I'd love to hear from Robertsky and Ingenuity about what kind of work it took to set up the drive and whether that would be feasible for a long-term process.
I know the NPP drive last month had some sort of steak system, we could check in over there to see how it was done.
Aside from old drafts, how would we flag "difficult" drafts from an award-giving standpoint? Number of previous declines or number of maintenance tags? Both can be misleading figures a lot of the time.
More work is required if we have to do up a leaderboard that runs by itself as well as for the scoring and awarding of barnstars. I have yet to work on the barnstars stuff, but it will definitely take sometime to work the scores out. I would hate to be that person working on it month in month out with the current setup.
The codes will have to be worked on further to deal with deleted reviews. I am of half a mind to flesh out a separate analytics/counting setup/database to track such stuff.
Also stuff like keeping track refbombed drafts and stuff for special awards, it might be difficult to account for that except if the draft was declined accordingly. But some drafts may have more than 2 issues... so... If we are to go down this path, let's start with one or two awards, and then expand further down the road. – robertsky (talk) 16:50, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
If we are to rely on API calls as what the script is doing now, the bot has to be elevated to be an admin bot to look at the deleted revisions, but I believe it will be through another API therefore additional work. If we are to use database calls, the script will have to be rewritten. A third option is to use wikitech:Event Platform/EventStreams but will require rewrite and as well as a separate database storage. – robertsky (talk) 05:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
DoubleGrazing's ideas or any kind of monthly awards looks good to me. We've identified a good and uncontroversial idea. I think the next step is we need a volunteer to coordinate the area of monthly awards, milestone badges, etc. Any volunteers? @DoubleGrazing? @TechnoSquirrel69? –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd love to contribute to this! I don't think I'd be able to run it alone, though — especially at the moment, when I've only been reviewing here for a few months, and have no experience whatsoever running bots. Anyone else interested? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:20, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm also going to refloat an earlier proposal, because I can't remember what if anything the consensus was. We could cap the waiting time, so that if a draft has been in the pool for, say, 30 days (without a review, or since its most recent review), it gets published automatically, and NPP deals with it instead. This could increase the community's confidence in AfC and motivate editors to go through the process. Automatic publication of problematic drafts could be prevented by tagging: eg. if the draft seems to duplicate an existing article, or the submitter is blocked, that would force the draft to wait for a review.
-- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:05, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
I've always liked the idea of turning AfC into a x days holding area rather than the endless pit of doom it can be. Probably need to hold some: some named submitters, any with COI tags, maybe a new tag just to say hold for a human etc. However as it's such a fundamental change it would probably need an RfC, but we could start with a AfC poll to see if the current project members agree/disagree. It would help to have stats on what the accept rate was of drafts that had been waiting > 30d etc KylieTastic (talk) 10:29, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps the simplest way to do this is "any article that has no previous declines will be published to mainspace if not reviewed in x days"? -- asilvering (talk) 16:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't know about this one. If this time limit is something that'll motivate reviewers to make sure no draft lies waiting for more than a month, I'd be down for it. However, to be a bit cynical for the sake of argument, "NPP deals with it instead" is likely how a lot of reviewers will see it. It might demotivate people from tackling some complicated drafts if they know it won't be their problem anymore in a couple of weeks. Let's also not forget that NPP has a severe and seemingly perpetual backlog of their own, and it seems rather unfair for AfC to start stacking on even more work just because one of us couldn't get to it within an arbitrary time period. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:17, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
@TechnoSquirrel69 but it is also unfair to submitters to have to wait sometimes for 5 months when the draft is fine. There are many who submit good drafts and have to wait so long while others can add very poor articles to main-space. If we make it so that it's only non-declined with no COI etc tags then the number should hopefully be low. If it worked then it would be easier to mandate more low-quality submitters to use AfC which is a last resort at the moment. However we cannot know and rather than second guess I think a 3-6 month trial would be the way to go. It would also have to start when the queue is very low to not insta-dump on NPP. KylieTastic (talk) 16:36, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
It's a complicated situation, for sure. Consider this, though: if AfC adopts the one month auto-accept procedure, then the wider community's perception of the project is likely to worsen even further if AfC ever becomes backlogged again. Hopefully it doesn't — knock on wood — but we have to be prepared if it does. AfC would at that point just become a purgatory where thousands of drafts sit around with no improvement for thirty days and then get passed to the already overworked NPP. I'll be honest with you; in a hypothetical world where that was the current situation with AfC, I might've personally started an RfC to shut down the project, and I know a lot of other editors would feel the same way. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:16, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
My concern is that your concern appears to not be about readers or submitters that I would considerer primary, but about protecting NPP at the detriment to readers and submitters. Then your suggested solution to extreme failure, which could happen more easily with the current system, is to shut AfC down making it all on NPP? At the moment thousands of drafts sit in your purgatory, if we had auto-move to main-space then this can only ever be a smaller subset of the existing problem and only worse if all AfC reviewers gave up. I've worked on AfC for 8+ years and hate the fact we block good editors and many just stop due to the ridiculous waits while at the same time so much junk is still created direct in main-space. Having a time-limit of whatever length is to stop AfC being the purgatory and anti new-editor backwater that it is at the moment. Personally if I could just make the call I would make AfC a one or three month check period, but also make direct creation require "extended confirmed" rather than just "autoconfirmed", so that AfC is the primary check for newer accounts and NPP for the rest and things that do not get declined by AfC. That would hopefully balance things out, but has zero chance of happening KylieTastic (talk) 20:55, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I thought of this extra burden on NPP, in fact that was my initial reason for not suggesting a time cap. But it also works the other way: so as not to create a flood downstream at NPP, we're voluntarily creating a dam upstream at AfC – who ultimately benefits from that? (No one, IMO.)
And having a time cap at AfC is no different to what NPP has: there, if a new article isn't reviewed within 90 days, it gets accepted by default and becomes indexable etc.; we would just be mirroring that policy.
In any case, a lot of articles get published directly past the AfC by editors who don't want to go through us, and NPP is there as a QC mechanism. By imposing a time cap we would be adding to the volume of work there, but we wouldn't be fundamentally changing the way the system operates. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 19:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
if a new article isn't reviewed within 90 days, it gets accepted by default. A small correction. Articles (non-redirects) that go over 90 days are not auto accepted, they stay in the queue. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Not a fundamental change, but still a meaningful one. There is a large overlap between the communities of AfC reviewers and NPPs, but consider the number of non-NPP editors like myself who participated in the backlog drive this month who couldn't have made those contributions if the page was already in mainspace. Also, even though new articles aren't indexed by search engines, they are still way more visible to readers than if they were in draftspace. (You can't link to drafts in mainspace, after all.) The more work we keep from spilling over to NPP, the better, in my opinion. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:04, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
NPP's backlog is worse than AFC's (much higher quantity of unreviewed articles). That'd be one thing to think about before shifting a bunch of work to NPP. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Why do drafts get "ignored"
I am going to add this as a subsection of the above, because I do not think we should put any time frame on this proposal until we know why we are getting articles at the back of the queue (in whatever timeframe that might be). And honestly, my personal opinion (based on my own stats-taking back in the late 2010s and observing recent trends) is that we simply do not stay on top of the queue. If X drafts are submitted every day, and Y drafts are reviewed, the queue with always increase if X > Y. During a drive, and usually following a spike in submissions (see for example Feb/Mar 2018), Y will briefly exceed X and we will get back down to a "good" or "normal" level of backlog. Then one of our "Top 10" goes on holiday and the backlog increases again.
I'm all for incentives if they work (i.e. let's try barnstars and leaderboards, etc), and I honestly don't think we should have a queue that is always at zero (puts too much pressure on reviewers), but we need to find a better way to more closely make it so X ≈ Y so that a small increase in submissions can be easily met with a small increase in reviews, without needing drives or burnout. I'm not really sure how to do that, though. Which, I guess, is why I'm starting this thread. Primefac (talk) 18:55, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Something I've seen quite often in drafts at the tail end of the queue (and which I've been guilty of leaving myself) is articles where most or all of the references are in another language. My general approach to these has been to add the relevant WikiProject if it's a country-specific article in the hope of attracting speakers familiar with the language, but this doesn't always work and can end up with some of the drafts sitting there for ages. Turnagra (talk) 19:30, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
I suspect reviewers have many different reasons but you would think that would mean that someone would pick up a submission even if lots avoided. Personally I tend to avoid many/most BLPs and active companies, products etc. as although many may be just about WP notable often I find them personally not encyclopedic and just promotion. I understand this is my opinion so just leave and would not decline. If this was a job, I'd review all randomly from both ends of the !queue but as we volunteer I ignore such topics and put effort into improving others I see as more worthy. KylieTastic (talk) 19:42, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree that zero queue length is difficult to work with. The current short queue creates multiple resubmissions and it "feels" as if one has little time to think. In reality ones all the time one needs.
Many of the drafts at the tail end of the queue had not been reviewed even once. That was disdappointing, the more so since the majority had easily accessible references English.
I admit that even using Google Translate, I couldn't face the Taiwanese rather large set of drafts. I have no real idea why. The machine translation is perfectly good enough.
@Primefac I wonder if even just having a daily-updating count of how many drafts were submitted and how many were accepted would help. Basically, something that makes that X/Y disconnect immediately obvious, while also showing how much work has been done. Right now it's not all that easy to see if there's been a temporary upswing in draft submissions unless you're really into the habit of checking the by-date categories. And when the pile gets very deep, it doesn't feel all that satisfying to deal with several drafts in a row. You review ten drafts and the pile still looks just about as big. Looking at the X/Y difference could give people something to shoot for. Something like "okay, I can't make meaningful inroads into the backlog, but I can at least do the 7 reviews we'd need to break even for the day." -- asilvering (talk) 00:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
I used to take those metrics. I could be convinced to start up again if people would find that useful. Might not be daily but I could probably do weekly tallies. Primefac (talk) 10:46, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
I am new to AfC as of this backlog drive, and I am enjoying the work while also finding a little demoralizing to see the backlog remain exactly the same size even while I am actively reviewing. I'd love to see these kinds of stats (X submissions and Y reviews), if they could be posted automatically. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:47, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
There probably is, I just usually checked category counts; I know Kylie's done a bunch of automation to keep the (now-broken) graphs going. Primefac (talk) 19:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
I didn't realize it until you wrote this, but I did like monitoring the submissions by topic category (Books, History, and Literature) rather more than the four-month-old category, for this reason. Of the three, I significantly preferred Books and History to Literature, since they were much shorter lists, and usually on topic. (Literature, somehow, gets a lot of unrelated articles.) The history articles usually take much longer to review than Books/Lit do, but once one is done, you know you've taken down 1/6 of that whole queue, or what-have-you. -- asilvering (talk) 20:54, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Probably not what you're looking for, but I will speak on my personal experience. Somewhat shameful, but it is what it is, I like to grab low hanging fruit. As such, I will grab newer submissions and pass the ones that clearly pass and decline those that clearly fail. This leaves anything that falls out of the "1 day old" category to continue down the road. Others are WP:REFBOMBING and I don't want to take 30 minutes to review one draft only to find out it doesn't meet notability guidelines. Sometimes, a draft is resubmitted multiple times and the submitter just don't seem to get it despite the comments and reviewers pointing to guidelines (those I just let go down the road because if they aren't willing to put in the time then neither am I). Others I am on the fence about and leave for another reviewer. I am going to assume that some of these situations apply to others (maybe??). To feel better about myself (yes, I feel guilty at times), I sometimes take a day and go to the old queue and take as much times as necessary to try to clean out old submissions. --CNMall41 (talk) 21:03, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
I used to stick mostly to topic categories and every so often look at the very old drafts, and frequently would come away from the exercise having looked at many drafts and only reviewed a few. I'd open them up, go "ah, no wonder this is still here", and unless I felt inspired to start editing it myself, I'd probably move on to the next one. So yes, I'm sure what you mention is a factor generally. But something remarkable about the four-month-old backlog recently was how many of the articles in it were still pretty low-hanging fruit. I think this has been the case since about August or so - meaning that around April, something changed. What, I'm not sure. -- asilvering (talk) 21:09, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Maybe me? For about a year I almost exclusively reviewed drafts in the 3 month category but stopped few months ago because it seemed futile as it just grew. So many were non-English sources thus very time consuming or WP:NPROF which I lack competency unless it is obvious. S0091 (talk) 21:30, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Same here. When I do go and try to do some of the backlog, I normally find a few that a quick Google Search could verify as being notable. I simply move them to mainspace and tag for cleanup at that point so some low hanging fruit is being missed. --CNMall41 (talk) 05:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I do see a lot of drafts with non-English references or topics from countries where I am not well versed. I try to ping the WikiProjects related to those languages/countries and have gotten favorable responses from most. They tend to want to help out when asked. --CNMall41 (talk) 05:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Recently those Taiwan 1000 ones have been a real pain. Many of them are on topics that are probably notable, but with absolutely nonsense titles that they could not possibly ever be known as in English. I just... don't want to accept articles that look like they've been translated by someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Honestly, I wish it was required that every article have at least one English-language source. And I say that as a translator myself. -- asilvering (talk) 06:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
There's no shame in focusing on "easy reviews". Every little bit helps. And it's better to let someone experienced handle a hard one than to get it wrong. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:04, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Ancient Backlog Cleared
At this time, we do not have any drafts that are 3 months or more old. Does this mean that the backlog drive has been a success so far? (I think so, but that is only my opinion.)
Robert McClenon (talk) 14:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
Good start, but no one should really have to wait more than a month for a review (preferably a week), so more to go for a real success on !queue reduction. Success will also be judged by quality which we will probably not tell for a while. At least accept rates are up. KylieTastic (talk) 14:44, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
I think that means the drive has been a runaway success! Extrapolating from the rate the backlog has been reducing, we're due to hit zero before November 8. (Not saying that will happen, only that it might be expected given the current pace.) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 14:45, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
I know we're getting close to being "done" a scant week into the drive, but I would ask that folks start focusing on re-reviews, in particular those with maybe 50+ reviews (and or the top 10 reviewers). It's one thing to get rid of the backlog, but if folks are getting sloppy to do so then we've probably done more harm than good. Thanks! Primefac (talk) 13:29, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I've done some spot-checks of reviewers with abnormally high decline rates and the results haven't been terribly encouraging, but it's easy enough to fix if we work quickly. (ie, so far I've been resubmitting failed declines before the original author has done so) -- asilvering (talk) 15:15, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
@Joe Roe I've been spotchecking people whose decline rates approach 100%. I'm not sure exactly where the bottom end of "abnormally high" would be - maybe about 80% declines? The project average is something like 60%, but it really depends on how you approach the queue. My decline rate was dead average or a bit low for a long time, but when I switched to prioritizing the four-month-old backlog, it went up quite a bit. The easy declines are all at the front of the queue. My ratio early in the drive (before I started doing re-reviews and going back to clearing out the Books and Literature categories) was something like 30% declines. So I would expect that someone who exclusively makes quick calls at the front of the queue, leaving anything that requires further investigation, to approach something like 80% declines without making inappropriate declines. But that's pretty much all based on feel. -- asilvering (talk) 15:24, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I sometimes look at AfC decline rate when evaluating WP:PERM/NPP requests and generally find >80% to be a red flag too. It's nice to have a broader basis for comparison. I've never thought to check my own... 11%, I guess that puts me on the other abnormal end! – Joe (talk) 15:35, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
@Joe Roe there is a huge variance and frankly I don't think it's a good indication of review quality. yes we certainly have had those doing bad declines, but also those doing bad accepts, and worst of all bad rejects. I just run the last 7 days stats this and we have 24 reviewers at 100% accepts 49 at 0% accepts. My accept rate is always low because I spend the most time playing Whac-A-Mole with spam, copy vio, promo etc in 0 day. Some focus on good articles or old end of queue where you then expect a higher accept rate. KylieTastic (talk) 15:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
For sure there are good reasons why some reviewers might fall on the extreme ends of the distribution. But if you're just reviewing drafts at random and decide that less than 1 in 5 would pass AfD, I think it's at least worth a closer look. – Joe (talk) 16:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I've been thinking on this and looking at the data wondering if there is a way to spot possible problematic review areas.... but failed to come up with anything :/ I think we are going to have to rely on good old random checks unless anyone has some bright ideas. KylieTastic (talk) 17:55, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I think the re-review system will probably work well enough, but it does leave me wondering about what the project's standards for reviewers are. For instance, right now Vanderwaalforces has 6 failed reviews. Is that a lot? Well, no one has failed more. But that's also only six fails (so far) out of over 600 reviews. A fail rate of 1% seems pretty good to me. GraziePrego has also six failed re-reviews, this time out of about 120 reviews. That's 5%, which is a lot higher. But is it "too high"? It's still not very high (for the ttrpg players, it's how often you expect to critfail, so it's a number I'm used to treating as negligible). To be perfectly clear, I don't think enough re-reviews have been done in any case to make any statements about any particular reviewer's overall review accuracy. But I don't really have a sense of what "enough reviews to determine whether someone is reviewing acceptably" would be, either. -- asilvering (talk) 18:28, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think it's so much "failed reviews out of the total", but "failed reviews out of the re-reviews". If someone has six failed reviews out of 6 re-reviews, that's bad. If they have six failed reviews out of 10, 20, 30, that gets increasingly better. Someone who is failing a majority of their re-reviews should get more re-reviews, while someone who is failing almost none likely does not need many more re-reviews. It's a rolling-snowball metric more than anything. Primefac (talk) 18:36, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree, it's a "rolling-snowball metric". As re-reviews are done the pass/fail rate should determine if more are needed or not. I would aim for 5% re-reviewed at first, if all pass then probably good if not aim for 10% re-reviewed and re-evaluate... it's not just pass/fail but are they opinion/nuanced fails or WTF fails. KylieTastic (talk) 18:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac yes, that's a good point. Though I think it's important to point out that re-reviews aren't neutral (as in, they are not selected completely at random). I've been paying particular attention to rejections, for example. I like KylieTastic's suggestion of 5% re-reviewed before we try to make any further conclusions. Worth noting also that someone who declines articles 100% of the time, without even reading them, would have a re-review pass rate of about 60%, so it seems to me that whatever our hoped-for pass rate is, it should be rather higher than that. -- asilvering (talk) 19:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree that re-reviews are far from neutral or random. We all probably pick, consciously or unconsciously, first the reviewer we want to check, and then the draft. And depending on whether we like (consciously or un-) to pass or fail reviews, we might skate over 'problematic' ones, or make a point of picking up on them. For a better idea of review quality, the re-reviews should be allocated truly randomly, and ideally be anonymised. Which is probably far more hassle to organise than it's worth, but still. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 19:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I assumed the idea was that every draft in the backlog drive was going to be re-reviewed. I read the discussion in the previous few comments as "when to raise the alarm early", not "when to stop re-reviewing". I don't think re-reviews should be anonymized. If we block someone for gross incompetence, for example, we'd want to check their re-reviews. And I think we should be open to the basic standards of being available for comment on our re-reviews, just as we are on our reviews. -- asilvering (talk) 19:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Per WP:CANCER, I'm not accepting any drafts. I only decline/fail those that merit and just pass by the ones which ought to be accepted. Please don't think that the overall acceptance rate should be represented by each individual reviewer. Also, while I admit to being a deletionist, we should avoid bringing inclusionist opinions to judging the work of other editors. Chris Troutman (talk)15:51, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Even if it is purely decline/fail, as long as they are valid, that's still some work load taken off everyone else's back. Thanks! – robertsky (talk) 16:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think that it should be represented by each individual reviewer, and I think it's quite clear from my posts (and Joe's) that this isn't what we're intending. -- asilvering (talk) 16:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Probably along the lines of 'why help enrich the content pool with accepted submissions when we don't get to see the effects of the donated money'. – robertsky (talk) 17:16, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
I have included re-reviews as part of the points awarding mechanism. The re-reviews will be counted at the end of drive at the very least if the bot isn't updated. – robertsky (talk) 16:04, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Per guidance I requested before (and the standard discussed here), I'm using the same standard as I do at NPP which is basically the "likely to pass AFD" standard. A lot of the re-reviews that I look at would previously have passed that standard but were failed on other quality issues. IMO under normal careful AFC review standards, "fail for other quality issues" just sets the AFC standard a bit higher. However, since every AFC article has some quality issues, if I wanted to rack up a big total, by that standard, I could use the "no quality issues" standard and legitimately quickly fail nearly every AFC article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:43, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Do you mean of a article good faith rejected on quality grounds which would have passed AFD? Or my mention in the last sentence which I won't go further on. On the former, maybe an extreme hypothetical example would make it simple. Article with these major problems: Lack of sources, very badly written in many respects, substantial lack of citing and was previously rejected citing one or more of those problems. Article complies with wp:Not, a separate article on the topic does not already exist, and the topic clearly qualifies under wp:notability. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:17, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
@Asilvering: Maybe I'm using the wrong word. I'd be happy to find some examples that I did except that I don't know how to see the article's review history (particularly past rejections and the reasons given for the rejections). If there is a way to do that and you could tell me how, I'd be happy to look at those that I passed and find some examples. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:43, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
@North8000 The previous review history should be clearly listed at the top of the article. It only won't be there if an editor has removed them manually (and if they do this, please add it back). -- asilvering (talk) 16:12, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
@Asilvering: Thanks. I believe you are referring to an article which is still awaiting another AFC review. I was referring to looking at articles that I already passed which are now in article space. North8000 (talk) 14:15, 14 November 2023 (UTC)are now in
Well one example of both trying to see the decline history and where I passed a previous rejected one is George Atwater (composer) Going back in article history, decline is noted in the edit summary and some notes to author there but not the "decline record" that is displayed on declined articles. IMO all of the decliner's comments at the original decline were valid, but IMHO even at the time of the original decline it would have had a 95% chance of surviving at AFD. The editor added more references making my later decision even easier. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:51, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I think that "inappropriate" is a strong word (even if technically accurate) because they were following what seems to often be the norm at AFC. A higher bar than NPP/AFD "to be safe". North8000 (talk) 20:42, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
This page is for users involved in this project's administration. Please ask about your submission at the Articles for Creation help desk. This is where other editors will try to answer any questions about the Articles for creation process and your submission.
You will see I declined it and suggested repurposing to this title. Assuming I am correct, I have a feeling that this topic, or the underlying more general topic of kidnap of "servants" is significant, let alone notable. I wonder of the creating editor has the distance from the original subject to be able to develop it a s the broader topic seems to require.
It's a known bug. Unfortunately it is intermittent so we have not been able to fix it. Any clues about what might be causing it? What's your OS and browser, is your connection fast or slow, have any connection problems today? Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:30, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
@Vanderwaalforces and I briefly discussed the wording of the current default decline rationales on the discord the other day and I wanted to bring the conversation here. The current rationales, IMO, are likely to be confusing for new editors. Most of them, particularly the notability ones, have one or two sentences and then a bulleted list dumping links to various P&Gs. That can be overwhelming for a new editor or someone who is not already familiar with the P&Gs. Most of the time, I end up using some default responses I've created as a comment when I decline. Whether the project wants to adopt the ones I've drafted, or workshop other ones, I'm of the opinion that they need significant reworking. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:11, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac Well, things are bound to change, and I honestly believe the current decline reasons and their text are not very helpful, especially for new Wikipedia users, who might end up being potential editors in the future. Giving a one or two-line sentence as per the actual decline reason would make sense. The current decline reasons are just too generalised and would leave a lot of new users (who are supposed to become potential editors) confused. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 22:46, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Because of banner blindness and an attitude unwilling to question their priors no change in those templates is going to reach them. Instead, how about every editor who has entirely made edits to a declined draft get automatically blocked from editing so they are forced to dialogue on their user talk? Almost every time I confront this sort of editor with a plain language explanation like "your band is not notable" or "we don't advertise here" the user immediately argues with me about it. You have a selfish group of people who won't take no for an answer, so don't misunderstand that there's some lack of clarity in our boilerplate. Would that WMF spent their ill-gotten gains on full page ads in major newspapers telling people to stop trying to write new articles. Wikipedia has new editors every day who read our policies and guidelines, edit appropriately, and never need boilerplate. Chris Troutman (talk)16:37, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
@Chris troutman You're not wrong though. But, if we keep the attitude of "errm, Wikipedia will get new editors everyday that can edit appropriately, and those that can not should go and never return", then we will keep loosing editors more than we can imagine, that is exactly what I am concerned about. While I will agree that some new editors can be so annoying and desperate, some, all they need is just proper guidance and they'll become the editors that will edit appropriately. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Repeated resubmission of draft when article exists
I am encountering a situation that I know will occur from time to time. That is that I am reviewing a draft which was submitted earlier today (18 November) and declined as exists because there is already an article, and has been resubmitted after some editing. The article is Draft:Javier Milei, and there already is an article at Javier Milei, and they are about the same person, a candidate for President of Argentina. I would like to Reject the draft, to discourage another resubmission, and to encourage the submitter to review and compare the draft and the article. I don't want to blank and redirect the draft, because I haven't read it in detail and it may contain information that should be moved to the article. Neither of the existing reasons for Rejection is applicable. We all agree that he is biographically notable; there has been plenty of coverage of him by both Argentine publications and world publications. His submission is not contrary to the purposes of Wikipedia. It is just a tendentious submission. What should be done? I will decline it with exists again. This is bound to recur from time to time.
Robert McClenon (talk) 18:26, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Maybe this is a possible need for the introduction of a custom rejection rationale? I don't think every draft that has to be rejected falls cleanly into the two existing template messages. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 23:27, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree with User:TechnoSquirrel69 that a custom option would be useful. In this specific case, it turns out that the submitter wanted to add material that would be a separate child article, about the public image of Javier Milei. I advised them that the draft should be renamed/moved. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:41, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
A couple of times I've thought it might be helpful to have a third reject option, something along the lines of "publication not possible for technical reasons"; that might apply here. To be used judiciously and sparingly, of course, not as a free-for-all when you just don't like the draft. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:22, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
I sometimes blank and redirect these. It's inefficient to have articles in two places. A BLAR encourages folks to focus their efforts in one place (on the mainspace article). If you're declining with "exists" and they keep resubmitting, hmm... not sure how to handle. If it gets disruptive, MFD maybe? –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:48, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Honestly I don't think "contrary to the purposes" is such a bad reject in this case, provided you comment first to give an indication that the article already exists. Continually resubmitting an AfC draft for a topic that already has a mainspace article sure isn't "the purpose of Wikipedia"... asilvering (talk) 04:58, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't know if this is technically feasible or easy, since I have no programming knowledge, but it seems useful for spotting potential bad-faith contributors or locating comments by other reviewers. In either case, I want to say thank you to people who maintain AFCH. Catalk to me!09:26, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
A broadly 24-25% accept rate is fairly good. Of the declines, a number will be multiple declines of the same submission, and most of the rejects are likely to be after multiple declines. Or so I believe.
I think that answer will have to come from the re-reviews. @Timtrent, want to roll up your sleeves and get into those? The two front-runners are pretty under re-reviewed and I think someone other than the two of them ought to be re-reviewing theirs. For one, they've done enough already! -- asilvering (talk) 21:12, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
The chart on the current drive page suggests that for the past week or so we seem to be in a more or less steady state, hovering around the 70-100 mark. This is with a hundred reviewers participating in an ongoing drive. When the drive ends and the bling has been handed out, we can probably expect the effort to wane and the numbers to go up again. Already dreading the cold light of that morning after... -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:04, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
The submission stats show we are still running at a high rate of daily submissions. 260/day for the second week of November compared to 170/day for the second week of October. * Not counting deletions The main issue is going to be if the top new reviewers stop doing any reviews and any burnout. So basically the same old issue of the project relying heavily on the heavy-lifting work of a few rather than 260 reviewers doing a review per day. KylieTastic (talk) 10:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah. I remember seeing on someone's user page a userbox that said they had pledged to review two new articles (NPP) every day. It doesn't sound much, but if everyone did that we probably wouldn't have a backlog problem. Maybe we should make that a condition for joining the AfC chain gang. :) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:28, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Okay thanks, that explains the flood of Taiwanese music-related drafts! Wonder how close this Taiwan 1000 project is to meeting whatever they've set as their objective? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:50, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
I can't tell, but you would really think that that Wikipedia:WikiProject Taiwan could be involved and help rather than them just dumped on AfC. Not all will be the Taiwan 1000 project but 78 (~42%) of the current submissions have the word "Taiwan" in them KylieTastic (talk) 10:17, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Objective: 1,000 new/expanded Taiwanese-related articles on enwiki. All translated from zhwiki.
Current progress: 178 accepted submissions (this number should be more now given that I have seen least 10-20 acceptances in the last couple of days).
Oh dear... we're never going to get to 0 at this rate. Unless we get someone who knows Taiwanese. I've been skipping these. I know I can use Translate or something but that's a chore. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 02:37, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Appropriate for users to review their own AfC nominations?
Is there a specific policy or consensus on users reviewing their own AfC creations? Doing so seems completely contradictory to the entire purpose of this process. Seems like a very strange thing to see, time and time again. Homeostasis07 (talk/contributions) 00:45, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Seems strange. If they're going to bother doing that, they should just move their drafts to mainspace and forego AfC entirely, which they're free to do. Unless it's someone with a restriction to only being allowed to use AfC and, in that case, self-reviewing would clearly be inappropriate. SilverserenC00:47, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Diff would be helpful. Are you talking about 1) someone creating an AFC draft, the accepting their own AFC draft? Or 2) an NPP both accepting the draft and marking it as reviewed? For #1, I agree with Silverseren that moving it instead of accepting it would be less weird. For #2, it's allowed, see the talk page archives. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:55, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
I do this all the time, primarily because 1) I work on articles on state supreme court justices, who are an automatic WP:NPOL pass, so there's no controversy, and 2) it saves clicks, because accepting the draft automatically does a bunch of the formatting (for categories and the like). Provide another shortcut to do that formatting, and I'll do it that way instead. BD2412T03:59, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
There is no prohibition, AFC is not mandatory, and there is nothing "wrong" with someone using their tools to make moving a draft easier, but I will happily remove someone if they are using their status as an AFC reviewer to attempt to "insulate" their sub-standard articles from scrutiny since it "passed" AFC. Primefac (talk) 10:04, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
I sometime sort of do this if I expand a draft (most have been FAs legislatures and BD2412s justices). I do it for two reasons: firstly to do the extra bits the tool does; secondly to let the creator know it's finished. I do now tend to remove the AfC template from the talk page (when I remember) if I ended up writing most of it as its not really appropriate. It would be good if there was a tickbox to make it more of a non-AfC acceptance (no AfC accepted template on talk page and maybe different template on creators talk page). Maybe if someone was actually the page creator and submitter then the tool would auto drop anything but the cleanup. However, unless someone can point to or articulate why this is a problem more than just being "strange" or "weird" it does not seem worth the effort. As always, difficult to judge without diffs to see if there is a problem. KylieTastic (talk) 14:39, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Agree with the above responses. But when AFC is made mandatory for someone by a decision elsewhere, I think that self-review would go against what is a presumed part of that decision. North8000 (talk) 14:56, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
As far as I am aware, no, but I do not necessarily keep track of everyone after they are approved, so someone could receive a topic ban without my knowledge. I would hope that someone would let the project (or myself) know if that sort of situation happened. A quick check of WP:RESTRICT does not seem to show anyone other than FloridaArmy with a creation ban with an AFC requirement. Primefac (talk) 14:10, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I suspect, though I am not certain, that you did not add in a shortdesc (or blanked the existing one), as AFCH should add a shortdesc if one is provided (and pre-fill the box if it's already on the draft). That, or it could be one of those mysterious DGG issues that popped up every once in a while that was not reproducible. Primefac (talk) 18:38, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Testing this on testwiki with this wikitext as the "before" text reveals that AFCH reads the existing short description and places its value into the Accept form's short description text box. Accepting this with the pre-filled short descrption keeps the short description. Is it possible that you deleted this text from the short description text box by mistake? If that box ended up blank, that would delete the short description. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:50, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Recently I've seen a lot of comments as a response to decline notices and other talk page messages, which sound like they've been generated by some sort of AI bot, or possibly are based on some templated advice being circulated on them interwebs. This one on my talk page even starts with
"When responding to a Wikipedia curator who has declined your submission, it's crucial to address their concerns clearly and respectfully, while also highlighting the improvements made. Here's a suggested response:"
They also often cite policy and make grandiose statements about respecting Wikipedia values, yada yada, like this one.
Not come across such things (yet), but it does look like a response from a LLM if asked what to do when rejected. It scary that people are using these and are not even engaging their brains enough to remove the lead sentence. KylieTastic (talk) 17:50, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, it does kind of give the game away a little. :)
Also, there was one of these convos recently on one user's talk page where they kept contradicting their earlier statements, like "I am paid to edit", followed by "as stated, I am not paid to edit". The mind boggles trying to imagine how that came about. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 17:53, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Sadly, GPTZero and other LLM detectors are not reliable. WMF engineers took a look at this when we were trying to decide whether to incorporate LLM detectors into our software, and came to this conclusion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:59, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
"Review waiting, please be patient.
This may take up to a week, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 1 pending submissions waiting for review." ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 01:08, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Congrats!! It took me three refreshes of my "random AfC article" bookmark coming back with the same article I'd just declined before I clued in to what happened, haha. -- asilvering (talk) 03:01, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Well the drive is technically a month, so for the points is continues and I'll do a final stats after the months ends... but seeing what has been achieved in 20days to hit zero also needed recording. Note that normal monthly reviews are in the 6-7K range and we hit nearly (probably) 10K in two thirds of a month. KylieTastic (talk) 20:40, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
However for AfC ratings, these are done for a particular revision therefore should not be changed post review. Putting onto the banner shell can create the impression that particular revision that the rating was given for may be of a higher grade in the future than it was initially rated for.
In the edit request, the QUALITY_CRITERIA parameter is set to "custom", while a separate Template:WikiProject Articles for creation/class subpage will be created as well as an idiosyncrasy of the abovementioned setting. The class subpage will disable ratings for FA, A, GA, FL classes as a 'by the way' since we aren't in the business of giving such ratings here. – robertsky (talk) 02:15, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
This sounds sensible, though if possible I would still love for some way to track what the current rating of articles to go through the AfC process are. It would be nice to see that articles we've approved have gone on to be good or featured, for example, while the AfC banner can still show where they began. Turnagra (talk) 05:29, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Hang on a second, I've never been aware that the |class= parameter for the AfC banner was supposed to remain forever at the class it was accepted at. Nothing in the documentation of {{WikiProject Articles for creation}} suggests that it should be used this way. It's actually a habit of mine to consolidate all of the ratings into a {{WikiProject banner shell}} when I accept drafts. I don't think it's a great idea to lock the AfC ratings in, as it would prevent AfC from using the tracking categories to see what the current ratings of accepted drafts are, which is also important information along with the rating at the original state. I think it might be better for AfC to opt in to generalized ratings, and instead use a new parameter that's unlinked from the class rating. I can see it functioning similar to how the timestamp and reviewer parameters currently work: they can simply change the message in the banner without passing any data to Module:WikiProject banner. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:45, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
So, to elaborate, instead of the banner message reading "This article was accepted from this draft on date by reviewer reviewer.", it could go something like "This article was accepted with a class rating from this draft on date by reviewer reviewer.". —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:49, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't suggest doing this. I know of no other WikiProject banners that take a snapshot of the rating and keep displaying it indefinitely. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I was kind of thrown off by that myself. AfC is obviously quite a bit different from other WikiProjects, though, and I don't think one parameter in the talk page banner would be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I proposed the new parameter as a way to kind of compromise with Robertsky's proposal without unnecessarily complicating the application of the |class= parameter, but I'm also fine with retaining the status quo of not documenting the original rating at all. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 09:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree that we're in a bit of a different situation with what our ratings signify - I'd be happy with the option you've proposed. Turnagra (talk) 09:21, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I would be happy to have an initial class but there are two issues I see. Firstly how some set the initial assessment: Some do not set at all, some set always to Stub, I have seen some say they only ever set to Stub or Start and others that they would never go higher than C; Secondly you will find it hard to stop others from coming along and updating the AfC class rating. So if you wanted to keep the original I think the parameter would have to be changed from |class= to say |initial_afc_class=, then we would have to update all current usages, update anything that uses the existing parameter and encourage better more consistent initial rating. Sounds like a lot of work for little gain but I don;t rally mind either way. KylieTastic (talk) 10:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
this may be a better idea. We don't need to update all current usage, rather it can be an additional custom parameter just for the current line in the template that says when the draft was accepted. we don't need to look back at the already approved submissions for now if the templating is done correctly. Additional code changed may be necessary on ACFH side to push the rating to the custom parameter. – robertsky (talk) 03:17, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
The idea has been floated in the past, but never really reached any firm consensus, to simply remove the class option from the banner entirely, for many of the reasons mentioned above. Primefac (talk) 10:16, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
We do (I'm pretty sure) have a link to the revision of the article when it was accepted, so that provides a bit of something for seeing the initial state, with a whole lot less work than re-assessing everything (which I don't really see happening). LittlePuppers (talk) 15:55, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Oppose. I see little benefit to keeping snapshots of the article rating, and added complexity since we would deviate from how hundreds of other wikiprojects do it. It'd also be unintuitive, so gnomes might change/ignore it accidentally. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:18, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
It certainly confused me a while before I figured out they are a duplicate. I think the duplicate submissions page should be deleted. Catalk to me!02:33, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Unless I'm mistaken, the Submissions page looks like it has some statistics which aren't present on the main page? They do look very similar though. Turnagra (talk) 04:07, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
I am going to be WP:bold and move the submission-tracking sections on this talk page to the /Submissions tab, which will replace the duplicate information.
Quite possible it was never added... The code was placed in August 2018 but if the change was never mentioned elsewhere then it wouldn't have been matched on the Git. Primefac (talk) 19:10, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Do we want it added to WP:AFCH? If so I can make a ticket. If not we can remove from the template.
I am mildly against. I'm not sure it's the AFC reviewer's job to go digging into the person's history to figure out if they've been sanctioned for UPE. I think a reviewer should usually judge a draft on its merits. Also the line between COI and UPE is blurry and a bit of a guessing game. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:51, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
+1. The problem we've got is that most UPE isn't spotted by the average reviewer, and I see many drafts that are tagged as containing paid contributions without the mandatory talk page explanation. Drafts should be judged based on their quality. Best regards, --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 07:59, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
Can't say I've ever felt the need to reject on that particular basis; I just decline as adv and request G11 speedy. If it gets deleted, what does it matter whether it was declined or rejected? Likewise, what does it then matter whether the author has been sanctioned for UPE or not? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:22, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
Seems like the consensus here is leaning against having UPE as a reject reason. I went ahead and removed it from the template. Am happy to add it back if consensus swings the other way. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:32, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
Redirects and categories taking longer than articles
Hi @Deb and @Liz. Any reason you have declined this AFC reviewer's {{Db-afc-move}}? It is my understanding that these should always be accepted as long as the person is an AFC reviewer, which they are in this case (all folks with the NPP permission also have AFC permissions implicitly). draft appears to have been declined. The existing decline appears to be an old decline, and the draft has undergone a fresh round of back and forth, and the current reviewer appears ready to accept. Please let me know if I am missing something. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:42, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
It seems obvious to me that there is a COI here. In my opinion, the draft is worded like an advertisement. Deb (talk) 12:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed a line of promo just now. Anything else needed here to prevent a G11 and survive AFD? The latest AFC reviewer says lots of sources on this person exist. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Sounds good. I'll execute the G6. In the future I think admins should consider not evaluating the draft though, and if a "bad accept" is made, should just let the AFD process deal with it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:39, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Hey there, can I ask whether the above qualifies for WP:G11 CSD? I just declined this a few minutes ago on WP:NCORP and the way it was written (a lot of grammar errors) but I'm not exactly sure on whether this is exactly an obviously promotional article to tag it. S5A-0043Talk03:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd say probably not. CSD G11 is for pages that are only promotion or advertising, which I don't see here. No comment on the content, but the language, at the very least, seems mostly neutral. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 03:24, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Hi there! When declining a draft, the helper script is changing the [[Category:WikiProject Taiwan 1000 Draft]] to the category link [[:Category:WikiProject Taiwan 1000 Draft]] (e.g. this edit). While this could be appropriate for misplaced article categories, it doesn't seem appropriate for Category:WikiProject Taiwan 1000 Draft. Could someone please tweak the helper script to fix this? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:49, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure we discussed this recently; I just cannot find the discussion.
I was just prevented form a (borderline) AFC acceptance by a redirect, so I headed the draft with {{Db-afc-move}} expecting deletion as usual. I was surprised to have it reverted with a statement that the draft was not ready.
I'm not naming names, and I'd appreciate folk not digging into the event. It's not about names, it's about process and judgement. I am absolutely not complaining.
My judgement may have been flawed. I view that as a matter for AfD post acceptance.
Looks like they said "draft not yet approved" when removing your CSD tag. That happened to me above at Draft:John Creuzot as well with two different admins removing the tags (that's the only time it's happened though; all of my other tags have been deleted). I think some editors don't realize that the draft cannot be "approved" while the redirect is still in place. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 13:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
I've heard of several recent instances where admins are declining CSD G6 nominations instead of processing them, and it doesn't seem fair to this WikiProject and the AfC reviewers. I don't believe admins should judge AfC reviewers because, ultimately, once the submissions are accepted, they enter the NPP queue, where NPPs can decide if they're suitable for article space or not. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:01, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
That's strange. I typically delete the redirect and allow the AfC reviewer to move / accept the page themselves (so that they can have it in their logs and so that it's noted they're the one who accepted it). The only cases where I'd decline it are when it's extremely obvious to me that the draft should not be moved to main space. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:42, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
While most admins appear to understand what {{Db-afc-move}} is for and means that a reviewer believes the draft is notable and is just asking for a minor bit of mopping, there are a couple that keep declining for various forms of it's not ready. This is so annoying as one has been told multiple times the AFCH tool will do all the clean up they appear to have issues with, another has used the tool so I have no idea what they have issues with or expect. If marked as 'under review' your probably more likely to get it accepted. This has been going on so long we may have to take to ANI as unless the redirect has history they need to preserve or they wish to discuss actual notability this is just mop overreach. KylieTastic (talk) 15:01, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree with everything KylieTastic says. This has been going on for years, has been explained several times and is the reason Primefac created the Db-afc-move template back in 2022, yet for what ever reason is being ignored. S0091 (talk) 15:08, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
I am awaiting a response from someone. I may then take it to AN as a general issue, certainly without naming names. I see this as a process matter, not a matter for individual mention. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 15:12, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
I've made the following change tp Db-afc-move to remind admins not to be strict with these. It is my view that admins should not be serving as a second AFC reviewer when processing Db-afc-moves. Rather they should simply delete the redirect and allow the AFC reviewer to take full responsibility for the draft. If the AFC reviewer made a mistake, then normal community processes such as AFD will kick in and fix things. Declining this kind of move also seems like it violates WP:DRAFTOBJECT. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
The fact that the article is at RFD complicates things. Else I would action your G6 right away. I think I'll wait a bit and see if there's any additional comments. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:33, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Any chance of an exception being made and allowing the script to do this automatically, just for the case of redirects? Requiring all these manual steps just wastes both admin's and reviewer's time. I quite often abandon reviews when I see there is an existing redirect, as the process is so tedious and I'd rather use my limited time on another review. Greenman (talk) 16:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
For one, if AFCH attempted to do the move instead of halting when it sees that there's a redirect in place, and the reviewer is an admin, then that would at least allow admin reviewers the ability to do it all at once. For non-admins, AFCH could do a page swap, moving the inplace redirect to some other location, leaving no redirect behind, and then the draft can be put in place. - UtherSRG(talk)16:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Side note: thinking about it a bit more, there is the edge case where reviewers with the page mover right would be able to move a draft over a one-revision redirect without needing an administrator. Maybe AFCH can detect that and allow the reviewer to accept without tagging the destination page? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
That's only true if that redirect points to the page being moved (this is to allow anyone to reverse a page move which leaves a redirect). Galobtter (talk) 01:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not really suggesting this, just thinking of possible answers to how would AFCH be made able to handle situations like these: could a bot (I think there are a couple admin bots?) look for db-afc-move tags, check if the page was tagged by someone on the reviewer list (and maybe that the page is a redirect), and then do the deletion? Obviously not instant, but much faster than what it can be in some cases currently. That's probably not worth implementing (and there would be a couple caveats to it). Again, mostly just my brain wandering. LittlePuppers (talk) 19:33, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
I was thinking about that as well, but this seems like the kind of thing that the wider community would have massive issues with — we're basically giving non-administrators the ability to delete pages, which unfortunately opens up a lot of potential for abuse. If this kind of administrator-bot-driven solution is going to work, it would need strict blinders to prevent non-administrators from (even accidentally) deleting pages out of process. I can see the community being sold on giving that access in situations where the page mover right already applies; in other words, one-revision redirects. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:43, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that's one caveat I was thinking about and should've mentioned. Limiting it to redirects would presumably make it a bit less prone to abuse. LittlePuppers (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
It seems we are wrapping up ourselves up like a pretzel to accommodate one or two admins who should simply delete redirects as requested unless there is an otherwise compelling reason not to do so. In my experience I have only had one such decline which was because the redirect had history that needed to be merged. Outside of that I can't think of a legitimate reason why an admin should ever decline a request from an AfC reviewer to delete a redirect so they can accept a draft. I am not a page mover nor do I want to be nor should I need to be in order to carry out accepting a draft. S0091 (talk) 21:24, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
When AfC messages are posted to user talk pages that I'm watching, the notifications appear on my watchlist. The 'Articles for Creation' phrase in the message (eg. Notification: Your Articles for Creation submission has been declined (AFCH 0.9.1)) has a link. In the case of declines or rejections, the link points to the draft in question, but in acceptances it just points to Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Is there a reason for this (eg. can the template not track what title the draft was published at), or is it just an oversight. Not a major issue, obvs, just wondering. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:31, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Bummer. Are re-reviews catching this? Are we leaving polite notes on reviewer user talk pages so that folks can calibrate? Sometimes if I see a bad decline, I'll hit the undo button so it pings the old reviewer, which is a relatively quiet way to help them calibrate without doing a big call-out. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
In hindsight, I realise I should have remarked on them in re-reviews. I didn't, and didn't even make any note of them. My whoopsie. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:45, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
Oh, just realised that NPP may not pick up some of these, because many of the participants in the current drive probably have autopatrol. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:01, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
Clarifying note for those unaware: When autopatrolled users move a page from draft space to main space the page is automatically marked as reviewed, even if the mover is not the original creator. This means that AFC participants with autopatrol are automatically reviewing pages they accept. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:39, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae Funny you should ask. I have just left a pleasant note on the talk page of a reviewer where I disagree with their review. We. will see what happens
I have been known to accept drafts where the topic in inherently notable despite terrible sourcing. Tagging the article post acceptance is important.
@DoubleGrazing I try to remember to untick the review when I am accepting a draft unless it's a cast iron acceptance, and (almost) always when I tag post acceptance. I believe we all should do that, or at least thave think about it.
I used to think I was doing NPP a favour by having my acceptances being autopatrolled. Then I realised (I tend to realise things with considerable delay, as you may have noticed...) that assumes I'm right in my acceptances, which is an arrogance if nothing else, even if I do have quite a high bar for accepting. Now, like you, I try to remember to unmark them, other than in entirely obvious cases. I've no idea what others do. This whole area could benefit from some clarification. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:00, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
@DoubleGrazing We depend on the goodwill of others, especially when we think we may be correct! We have to trust each of us to do our best. We cant do better than our best.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that marking AfC accepts as patrolled is "arrogance" — consider the fact that articles created directly into mainspace usually only get the benefit of one reviewer. If an editor is already an NPP, I don't have a problem with them taking responsibility for their review and marking the mainspace page as patrolled. Getting a second opinion is great, but not strictly necessary. I feel like a similar argument applies for reviewers who have the autopatrolled right. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 17:41, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that is true. Anyone doing AfC reviews, especially but only those with autopatrol, should by definition be more likely to get things right than wrong.
But linking this back to the oft-mentioned need for reviewers to be bolder in accepting borderline cases (ie. 45-55% chance of surviving AfD, rather than dead certs), that seems not to mesh well with autopatrol. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:24, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
That's fair. When I draft articles myself, I tend to hold them to a much higher standard than I do with drafts I accept at AfC, and I think that many reviewers would feel similarly. I imagine it's possible from a technical standpoint for changes to be made to MediaWiki to allow autopatrolled editors to opt out of bypassing NPP, but that would require a much wider consensus and a better reason than just "a few AfC reviewers want it". —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 22:12, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
Would have to modify mw:Extension:PageTriage. Use case would be having autopatrol but not NPP (NPPs can already unpatrol their own articles, I think). It's not a bad idea. Could add an "Add to the New Pages Feed" link to the left menu for those folks. Want me to make a ticket? –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:12, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't know, I was just throwing the idea out there; it seems like a relatively uncommon situation for an editor to have autopatrolled, be an AfC reviewer, but also not be a patroller. Do you think there's any other situation than an AfC review where an editor with the user right would want to intentionally disable the autopatrol? Also, wouldn't a change to how a user right works require an RfC or something to establish community consensus? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:24, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think giving an autopatrolled person an optional button to occasionally unpatrol their own articles would need an rfc. Seems uncontroversial. The use case seems to extend outside afc. Maybe an autopatroller not involved in afc makes an article but is unsure about its notability. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:55, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
Sure — if you think it might be a useful feature to add, I obviously have no problems with it. I'd make the ticket myself if I knew how, but I think it might be better left to you? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:35, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
One note: The defacto standard at NPP is that edge cases regarding GNG pass because (long story short) they are going to survive AFD. A few weeks ago when I asked here (as a newbie AFC) it was indicated that "reasonable chance to survive AFD" is the goal for a standard here. So solid confirmation of GNG compliance using in article sources is a higher standard than that. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:48, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow. By "in article sources", do you mean that we shouldn't expect the sources to be cited in a draft for it to be accepted, but should know/assume that sources are likely to be available somewhere else? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:35, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
IMO the AFC/AFD/NPP standard should be confirming compliance with in article sources and that such should be expected. However, that is not the official standard and it is not the defacto standard at NPP/AFD. And so (for better or for worse) applying that standard here is a higher standard the NPP/AFD. North8000 (talk) 17:07, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
If you want a more extreme example, here's one Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abdulaziz Al-Elewai that failed even that lower bar with zero sources other than database entries and I even did a Google search before AFD'ing it. Note that I got criticized for not first searching for Arabic language sources (and identifying them as GNG sources). North8000 (talk) 17:15, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
I've been reviewing since January 2021, but this is the first backlog drive I've taken part in. One of the unexpected benefits has been seeing more of other reviewer's reviews. I have a similar observation as DoubleGrazing, in that there have been a number of reviews accepted that I probably would have declined. I tend to err more towards strictness, perhaps for a number of reasons:
An early accepted review of mine was harshly criticised by an experienced editor for being too lenient.
I have leaned more over time towards requiring in-article sources to be sufficient. This is probably because, with the (at least until now) huge backlog, I found it a better use of time to put more of the burden on establishing notability back on the submitter. As the original point mentions, resubmissions are easy, and this also "trains" users to get the sourcing right at the start, rather than getting the article through the door and making it either a NPP's or a later editor's problem.
I have also noticed during my time of reviewing quite a large a number of articles being moved from mainspace to draft that appeared to meet the less strict criteria of being notable, but had insufficient in-article sources to establish this, and this has guided me in not wanting to send anything through that could just be bounced straight back again.
As for this backlog drive, I've (so far) had one review marked as invalid. The submission was quite well-sourced in general, but had an unsourced date-of-birth, which I've noticed is quite often a red flag for COI edits. In this case the re-reviewer removed the DOB themselves, and then approved it. I'm fine with this, and can concede the point. I still wouldn't have approved it in the original state, but probably could have just commented rather than declined. But having the original submitter do this themselves is a form of training that seems to work quite well. Greenman (talk) 21:47, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
A single piece of unsourced content, especially if it's something as minor/trivial to remove as a DOB, should not be causing a draft to be declined. Primefac (talk) 13:17, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
@@Greenman, I mentioned earlier when North8000 asked about the AfC standard that I have also noticed during my time of reviewing quite a large a number of articles being moved from mainspace to draft that appeared to meet the less strict criteria of being notable, but had insufficient in-article sources to establish this, and this has guided me in not wanting to send anything through that could just be bounced straight back again. has also made me cagey about accepting articles that obviously clear the official AfC bar but are otherwise not great. I found it very strange to have the AfC standard described as higher than the NPP one. My advice on this is to totally disregard your "what if NPP sends this back" impulse because I think it was calibrated, as mine was, at a time when NPP reviewers were redraftifying far more often than they do now. I have not recently observed this "NPP sent back something I would have thought was fine" problem at all. It seems to have been fixed on their end. -- asilvering (talk) 18:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, though to clarify what I meant, I have been seeing fewer articles that I would have thought were fine sent to AfC by NPP at all, whether they were previously AfC accepts or had been initially created in mainspace. -- asilvering (talk) 21:39, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm strongly in favor of the responsibility falling on the article creators/proponents to include GNG sources where notability is dependent on GNG. My point is that this is not the current requirement and that by sometimes making it the AFC standard it conflicts (and is tougher than) not only with the actual standard but also conflicts with AFC's official standard of "likely to pass AFD". North8000 (talk) 15:12, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
What is stopping approval?
This is in reference to Draft:Marc Pepin I am requiring to see what, specifically is holding up approval. The reply says that references are not from reputable sources. Other than a copy of a letter hosted on his personal website all the references are from news organizations (CBC), governmental entities (legislative library of New Brunswick Canada and NB Sports Hall of Fame and NB Tennis) and the International Tennis Federation website. Can someone provide specific direction? Todio64 (talk) 00:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Can I ask whether this and this are within process? I reviewed this yesterday, and denied it on copyright grounds, then @BuySomeApples and @MicrobiologyMarcus denied it twice more, and then the author decided to remove the AFC template and move it to mainspace directly. Also the author removed the WP:REVDEL tag I added several times (see [1] and [2]) and the revisions are still not deleted yet. S5A-0043Talk03:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Bypassing AfC, while frustrating at times, is within the rights of an autoconfirmed editor to do. Removing revision deletion tags, however, definitely isn't. I've left a warning on their talk page and restored the tag again. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 03:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Sort of a happy question.
What is the appropriate response to a "This topic definitely needs to have an article in Wikipedia, and while this draft isn't ready yet (Mispellings, organizational structure, etc.), it certainly *can* get there. Is it appropriate to ask them to withdraw the submission until it gets better? Ask the user in the comments if I can help, etc? (The Draft in question is Draft:Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes)Naraht (talk) 14:34, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
You can do as much editing to improve before accepting as well. I have sent many hours improving FA's articles before accepting. As @WikiOriginal-9 says we accept on notability based on the sources, but do tag any issues so any articles needing work are locatable by the gnomes. KylieTastic (talk) 15:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
FA specialises in creating stubs and start-class articles... by the boatload... so there often is plenty of scope for further development. And I mean that in the nicest sense possible. :) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Thai food articles
There seems to be some sort of editathon or whatever going on, to create articles on Thai dishes. They all (that I've seen, at least) have the same issues – poorly sourced, POV language, and inclusion of recipes and other such content which is at best 'borderline' within Wikipedia's remit. Anyone know what's behind this? (Also: I now have a hankering for some Thai food!) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
The biggest take-away I have from this is that 2501 drafts were accepted, of which a good number remain. This means that 2501 new articles were exposed to community scrutiny, and to potential improvement.
There is a long screed by the creating editor on the draft page, and also on User talk:Timtrent#Carmody Notability. In addition there are significant portions of copyright material quoted directly on Draft talk:Bill Carmody#Paywalled References, something very much concerning me and for which I have asked for cv-revdel, though I have mot suppressed the text.
I left a substantial review on the draft, which the creating editor has challenged, there and on my talk page. I may be incorrect, and will not review the draft again. I almost never re-review in any case.
I am still concerned that it is about Carmody's cases, not about Carmody. The references show the same thing. The creating editor insists that is the correct approach. I feel it is not at all correct. It is a COI piece, which should be immaterial, but the COI person appears immune to advice.
I concur that it has that problem, amongst others. I'd probably call it "missing content". North8000 (talk) 15:31, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
These caught my attention, as they were sitting next to each other in the queue (which is not a queue, I know, but still). Both created last week, left to sit there for several days, and then submitted within a few minutes of each other. Someone named Kyle Trattner is the founder of one business and the CEO of the other, but both drafts were created by (apparently) different users/IPs. Quite a coincidence, huh? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:36, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Drafts in user space are still G13 eligible if using the AfC template, so it doesn't really make any difference if it's been submitted from user space with the template. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Josh just beat me to it. I'm not sure if the original submitter is aware of this, but you don't seem to be in the wrong in this situation. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 21:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
I do have issues with editors moving drafts from sandboxes to Draft space and placing an AFC tag on them so they are then eligible for CSD G13 status. Patrollers seem to be eager to do this when editors might have valid reasons for retaining drafts in their own User space. And the draft creators might be new editors and not know that they are free to move them back. Recently, I've encountered longtime editors moving user space drafts that are 10 years old to Draft space even though the editors are long gone from the project and I can't help but think that this is just a way to get them deleted. Otherwise, why bother with these old User pages of absent editors? LizRead!Talk!03:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
That definitely sounds like unacceptable behavior, but also isn't the situation here (the draft was submitted by the creator to AfC before the page was moved to draftspace). I'm a bit disappointed that there are experienced patrollers out there who don't know not to mess with other editors' userspaces. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 03:20, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi there! In this edit when I added a comment to a draft using the helper script, it incorrectly removed the {{AfC submission/draft}} template, which has confused the draft creator. Could someone please tweak the script so it doesn't do that anymore? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I was looking at upcoming stale drafts and came across this one where the AFC review was apparently done by an IP editor. They even posed not-very-helpful notices on the draft creator's talk page. I thought the tools used for reviewing drafts were restricted but I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Any idea how this review was possible? Thanks for any insight you can offer. LizRead!Talk!02:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
I have procedurally reverted and re-reviewed. Yes, it should be declined with the lang template, and this review is quite old, but having an IP reviewing out-of-process and then being unnoticed isn't really great. Thanks. VickKiang(talk)06:00, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Fair point, I was only noting that as a rationale for reverting this, as despite the decline rationale (possibly coincidentally) being correct, it is still out-of-process and leaving it unaltered would set a bad precedent. I clearly used vague phrasing, and have striked part of my comment. VickKiang(talk)07:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
It will take some time but we will hopefully reach a level of "normal" in the pending queue. Having a week's worth of drafts pending, or even multiple hundreds, is not necessarily a "bad" thing. It's more about reaching a stable and sustainable level of reviews to match submissions. Primefac (talk) 07:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
We still have a higher rate of daily submissions than before the drive, but the number of reviews is dropping back to pre-drive levels. I hadn't thought of this before but I guess a large backlog discourages submissions and/or a short one encourages them. If so we can always expect the backlog to grow unless we get a lot more reviewers. KylieTastic (talk) 11:16, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
"List of x state political scandals" drafts
@Johnsagent has submitted a bunch of drafts detailing political scandals of various states. Most have been accepted by @~WikiOriginal-9~. I think there's an argument for passing WP:NLIST but I am concerned the large identical leads in these articles are inappropriate? Certainly doesn't appear to meet npov or original research, and it's using the Wikipedia voice in an odd way. I'd probably have declined based on the lead and asked for a re-write.
@Qcne. Yes, the lead sections of those articles are not encyclopedic at all. After seeing those articles on the AFC pending list, I was thinking the same as you. Maliner (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I'd go with something as basic as This article provides a list of political scandals which occurred in the U.S. State of Oregon. It is organized in reverse chronological order from most recent to oldest.
I do want to point out though that most of (all?) the articles - the user seems to be doing an article for every single state - seems to be recent scandals only? May break WP:RECENTISM.
I think we need a couple more inputs from other reviewers. I'd personally prefer we draftify all the existing mainspace articles especially as it may be a sensitive topic. Qcne(talk)21:00, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
These all need to be moved back to draft as they are WP:BLP violations unless reliable sources have described these as "scandals" which is the defining characteristic of these lists. The creator cannot used there own personal definition and come off as hit pieces even if that is not the intention. S0091 (talk) 21:01, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Has anyone raised this issue with the author? I don't see a conversation on the talk page and it seems easier to address this at the source. Rusalkii (talk) 06:46, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
This list is based on List of federal political scandals in the United States which has a long history of complaints and harassment by a multitude of sox. One complaint was that the terms were not defined adequately. Another was that it to was too long. For that reason I made the lists shorter and more recent on purpose. If this opening is awkward you could use that one instead. Johnsagent (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:16, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I brought it up on the Colorado article and elsewhere, but I have BLP concerns regarding the contents of these lists. They are almost exclusively original research and their heavily RECENTISM bent results in undue weight placed upon scandals (which sometimes may not even be described as such in RSs) involving living persons. Incubation is the right approach, as notability and utility requirements are plainly satisfied. No reason to fault those who approved the drafts, as policy dictates they could validly approve them, but there are enough editors raising similar concerns for me to feel confident saying the consensus is to move them from the mainspace. ~ Pbritti (talk) 22:44, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I just came across that one because Johnsagent asked me about it on my talk page. It looked like there were some sources online for that as a list possibly. I'm okay with draftifying though. Thanks. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 09:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Articles like this are in the "twilight zone" of Wikipedia. There is no established wP:notability of the topic of the article as such. But it is acknowledged that list articles sometimes don't need to meet this criteria in that respect and then the result gets influenced by other policies and guidelines. IMO these have multiple big flaws. First is that the actual list of each of those is too gigantic to ever be in an article and so it will inevitably be just items cherry-picked by the Wikipedia editor(s), Second, it's highly subjective accusation/characterization in an area defined as a contentious topic by Wikipedia. Third, it invariably includes assertions in the voice of Wikipedia (about living persons) that something that they did is a scandal which would require not just sourcing but strong sourcing. So each is a list of a tiny fraction of alleged scandals, asserted/ judged by the Wikipedia editor to be a "scandal" cherry picked for display as such, often an implicit accusation against a BLP without the required strong sourcing. IMO these should all get deleted. Including any that are already in Wikipedia. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:22, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I think often times when there's no established notability, the lists that come together are often lists of things that have Wikipedia articles, they almost act as a category with a lead and some background, and the notability of each of the things on the lists stems from the fact that they all have an article about them that they can link to. I don't see that as the case here, where these lists just seem to be collections of new articles of allegations, and because we are close to crossing (in my opinion, over) the line of BLP violations we cannot collect these under the title of "political scandal" in the article name without other R&S sources stating that for us. Further, each of these does not adhere to NPOV and don't provide any refutation, if existing, from the subject. microbiologyMarcus(petri dish·growths)19:45, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion
@Johnsagent: I suggest starting a discussion at WP:BLPN to get broader input about setting inclusion and sourcing criteria. For example, misconduct by Eric Greitens is well documented, is described by high-quality national media as a scandal(s) and he faced impeachment so I could see him being included in the Missouri list but I am only one editor. S0091 (talk) 19:44, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
If somebody could accept the draft once the redirect is deleted, that would be great. I have to sleep, and I don't have enough time to wait around for it. DrowssapSMM01:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Are these headings still useful? If so, should probably split December into inactive and new. But I also think removing them and having everyone apply under the same heading would probably also work. Thoughts? –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:03, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't personally see a reason why everyone can't be under one header — the page isn't so big that additional navigational aides are really necessary. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 15:22, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
That's true, the Borgu one did only offer comment and submit, now that you mention it. In the other draft the script worked okay, though. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!
Hello, Please note that Carbon source (biology), which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBottalk00:05, 25 December 2023 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team
Create the articles of Lieutenant General Georgios Dritsakos
Is there anybody else who can create the articles and biography of Lieutenant General of the Hellenic Air Force Georgios Dritsakos? 108.21.67.83 (talk) 07:56, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
As long as I don't misunderstand and we're not considering adding WP:REFBOMB as a decline reason, I support making it easier for reviewers to give authors this feedback. My owned canned AFC comment for this situation is,
Thank you for including references in your submission. Please help our volunteer reviewers by identifying, on the [[Draft talk:{{PAGENAME}}|draft's talk page]], the [[WP:THREE]] best sources that establish [[WP:N|notability]] of the subject.
I accidentally just approved Nate Sharp after an error in my WP:COPYVIO check that I only noticed after clearing it. I've self-nominated the article for CSD, if someone wouldn't mind deleting it. (FYI, I've blocked the creating account, User:MaysMarcomm1 for violation of the shared account policy.) Thanks, in advance, to whomever corrects my error. Chetsford (talk) 21:11, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Those were big matches because of big titles (e.g. the 2021 Distinguished Contributions to the Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association); there really isn't anything to trim, and a <50% rating on the CV check is rarely enough to merit full-on deletion. Primefac (talk) 08:34, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Categories
When someone accepts a draft, part of it involves adding article categories to it. This step should have been done earlier by the creator, or proposed when submitted for review, but it isn't required. I know the reason: drafts can not be added to categories, because they are not articles yet. But I have noticed that if manually add [[:Category:Foo]] to the draft (which shows a link but without adding it) and it gets accepted, it turns into [[Category:Foo]] once accepted. So why not add such a step when submitting? The writer should have an idea of the categories he wants the future article to be a part of. Cambalachero (talk) 03:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree with this because some of the article draft that reviewed are declined automatically even if there's references and the article draft just need a little polish and help by experts, one thing is that some articles are made not into creating article pages directly to be submitted and waiting for review to be accepted u just need a highlight on it and make it red the create new page and provide a lot of references, resources, information etc to maintain its stability and notability. Rc ramz (talk) 04:15, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
This is a solid idea, but I feel like this preliminary categorization step could fit better in the Article wizard rather than at the point of submission. Also, having it use {{Draft categories}} would probably be more user-friendly than plain category links. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:44, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Categories can be hard to get right too. Back when I tried to categorize things, I often found myself looking at comparison articles for hints on what categories to put things into. It is easy to pick a parent category or something by accident, which would then need correcting by category gnomes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:52, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with Novem - when accepting a draft, AFCH gives a dropdown menu to match possible categories - invalid categories are not listed. New users often try to over-categorise, and I see a ton of drafts where there is a sea of redlinked cats at the bottom prior to acceptance. Picking a WikiProject or two from the Wizard is one thing, but having them pre-categorise a page is something that we (and the category gnomes) are much more capable of dealing with. Primefac (talk) 08:59, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
What about including it in both forms? First so that the writer can categorize, and in the review so that the reviewer may remove or edit excessive or wrong categories. Cambalachero (talk) 16:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Right, I don't think anyone was suggesting removing the categorization function from AFCH; the question is how we present that issue to the draft creator(s), or if we do at all. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:48, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Would a passing admin please consider deleting this: Draft:Frits en Jo Trou? My Afrikaans is a bit rusty, but Google Translate tells me it's a love story of some sort, involving what appear to be real, living individuals, and as such may be a privacy violation; in any case, completely inappropriate for the 'pedia. It doesn't fit any of the speedy categories (U5 would have been perfik, but alas it was created in Draft space), it's not worth dragging to ANI, and I can't be bothered with MfD. Ta, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:04, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm not really seeing any private info here other than the names (though I will admit I'm using Google Translate) so it's not quite eligible for any sort of OS-related deletion, nor do I really see a case for G10. Weird bit in the middle about the Springboks though... sounds like someone's wedding announcement but it doesn't look to have been directly copied from anywhere (ruling G12 out). I don't know if I can justify an entirely IAR deletion; if no one can see harm in it I suppose we just let it hit G13, but if there is a case that can be made I will delete it. Primefac (talk) 14:17, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Hi, out of utter curiosity is there a 'top 10' 2023 list (or recognition) for those editors[3] who may be among those who did the most AfC draft/articles, just wondering, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:27, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Ozzie10aaaa there are no full historical logs unless you have access to deleted records. Even recent stats always have a caveat on deleted articles but as most abandoned articles are deleted after 6 months any data older than that is mostly gone for declines and rejects. Also I've found the users AfC logs are hit and miss and realized I was closing tabs too soon for it at times. Also they start to fail if the log gets to big so I started archiving mine. The best I can offer is accepts in 2023 this. KylieTastic (talk) 12:03, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Yep, I've run across a few sources where just by looking at the website I'm like "there's no way this is reputable, right? ...right?" and then either it's completely made up, an award-winning industry publication that's been around for 100 years, or a newspaper from a developing country. LittlePuppers (talk) 19:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Another editor at DRN wrote that they do not think that DRN is the right forum to discuss the decline of a draft, and advised in particular to ask at the Teahouse. I agree with both parts of that advice (no to DRN for declined draft, yes to Teahouse for declined draft), but would like to verify what other reviewers here think is the proper advice to give to an editor who wants to discuss the decline of a draft. DRN is for article content disputes, and isn't for disputes for which there is another forum. Is there any other advice in this situation?
Robert McClenon (talk) 02:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
The proper venue for seeking help and advice regarding declined drafts is WP:AFCHELP. The editor should pose any questions at the AFCHELP venue. I suggest advising the editor to carefully review the decline reason and improve the draft accordingly. If they believe they have made improvements, they should submit it for another review. If they struggle to understand the actual and simple reason for the decline, they can seek assistance at WP:AFCHELP, where we can help them accordingly. – DreamRimmer (talk) 02:48, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Locked Redirect
I have a question, which is not primarily about whether I took the right action, but more generally about what should be done in this situation.
I declined Draft:Slim Jxmmi. The title is a locked redirect. A previous article with this title about this person was redirected to their band after an AFD. There were then multiple attempts to recreate the article, so that the title was locked. I am now being asked by two editors to review the draft again. I am not primarily asking for opinions on the specific draft, but on how reviewers should deal with drafts where the title is a locked redirect, or where the title is create-protected. How much weight should the reviewer give to the AFD? Also, the reviewer can't accept the draft even if they want to, so what should the reviewer do if they think that the draft should be accepted:
If you believe the subject is notable enough for a standalone article, you should accept it. To proceed, request RFPP. Deletion review is not necessary, considering AfD was five years ago; in the meantime, the subject may have become notable enough for inclusion. – DreamRimmer (talk) 02:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
If I am reviewing a draft where the article was deleted following an AFD, I generally look to see if the issues brought up at the AFD have been "fixed" (e.g. "not notable due to lack of sources" is fixed by good sourcing).
As far as the lock goes (whether it's create-protected or just fully-protected), either make a request at RFPP, here, or contact an AFC admin to drop protection. Primefac (talk) 08:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
PSA: Old interface is going away
This week, on Thursday (18th Jan 2024), the old NewPagesFeed UI which was available by appending ?pagetriage_ui=old to the URL will be going away. If there any specific bugs on the newer interface that need to be resolved, let us/me know on the thread at WT:NPR. :) Sohom (talk) 15:13, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
Reject for repeated resubmissions with no changes?
(This has probably been discussed somewhere before, but I can't find it right off hand.)
What do you guys do when you come across a draft that has been resubmitted with no changes made? Usually I just decline with a comment saying not to do that, but today I came across Draft:Ground (art project) which had been submitted 4(!) times with no changes. I rejected it for notability, and left another comment - is this the right way to deal with this, or is it worth having a "repeatedly resubmitted" reject reason? Is that too much of an edge case to bother? LittlePuppers (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
That's what I do... I start reviews with full AGF on the first submit, then it slowly degrades. Repeated re-submits with no change says they don't care so nor should we. If in the rare case they then come back with more sources I'm happy to undo the reject but it's rare. They are wasting reviewers time that would be better spent on other submissions from those that are trying. Also swapping from account to anon is a clear sign of time to slam the door. KylieTastic (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree. If a draft is resubmitted with no improvement, or no improvement worth mentioning, I usually decline it with either {{noimprove}} or {{rapidresub}}, which say that further resubmissions may result in a rejection or even in sanctions. I will Reject the draft if it is resubmitted after a warning. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:44, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree that it was correct to reject it. I don't think that we need a "repeatedly resubmitted" reject reason, because, if the declines were for non-notability, then the rejection is for non-notability. I think that rejection for notability should be reserved for repeated resubmissions declined for notability, or for a few other special cases, such as unsourced BLPs. I think the case in point is exactly how rejection for non-notability is intended to be used. Also, as Kylie says, shifting to resubmitting from IP addresses was a sign of some sort of not here to improve the encyclopedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
I tend to leave a comment on the draft like "no change from previous version. if resubmitted without further changes, recommend next reviewer reject." -- asilvering (talk) 04:16, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Hello, for some reason the talk page for this project page redirects here. But I was just hoping that whoever monitors this page could archive requests faster. Right now, there are over 400 requests on the page and I think you could bring this number down to requests from the past 7 days. LizRead!Talk!03:41, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
@Liz: I was thinking the same thing when processing requests, it seems that it's User:Rcsprinter123 via User:RscprinterBot. Archivals only happen whenever Rcs remembers / has time to click the 'go' button, per User talk:RscprinterBot#Task 8 frequency. The last archival was January 18th (where only one was archived), but another portion is just approving and declining the requests. (I will admit it would be convenient to have more reliable runs based on a timer or otherwise, and not only tied to a case-by-case go button, but I'm not sure how feasible that is.) Utopes(talk / cont)04:08, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Rescuing drafts that are about to expire is a great activity. DGG used to do this a lot. I wouldn't spend too much time on CSDing abandoned drafts, since they will eventually be G13d. But anyways, keep up the good work! –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:43, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone! Sorry for bothering you all in the weekend, but I've got a big question.
So, a few weeks ago I ran into an AfC draft about former footballer Christos Mestkas: it was created and submitted by this user as a direct translation from the ro.wiki article, which in turn had been created as a draft before being accepted to the mainspace (see its history for reference).
I decided to decline the submission, and while I was sending my suggestions to the aforementioned user, I noticed that his nickname looked pretty similar to the footballer's name... Indeed, he sent me an e-mail where he came out as the son of Metskas, and confirmed it in this discussion I've started this morning. Now, this is a clear case of WP:COI, but I assume the user wasn't even aware of having to declare it in the first place, especially given that he's active since just a couple of months, both on Romanian and English Wikipedia. To his credit, he has actually been very kind and collaborative in our interactions, and provided several independent and (I think) reliable sources from online newspapers and books. Plus, he's now publicly disclosed his COI as per my advice.
Obviously, the draft needs more copyediting, formatting corrections and citations, anyway; still, the article should already meet the minimum WP:GNG, and the user has been very honest and respectful throughout the whole process, so I'm leaning towards accepting the submission once it's further improved. What do you think about it? Oltrepier (talk) 15:25, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
@Oltrepier if the subject is notable and there are no major policy violating issues (WP:NPOV, WP:BLP, etc) then you should accept it. Someone having a COI is not a reason one its own to not accept a draft. S0091 (talk) 21:43, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
@Oltrepier: What S0091 said. (They beat me to the reply by seconds, drat!) I'll also note that for editors with a COI, AfC is actually the smoothest path to article creation they can take, so I personally usually don't take COI into account very much when deciding whether or not to accept a draft. Side note again, you can use DiscussionTools or Convenient Discussions to subscribe to threads, which will notify you when people post messages without the need for them to ping you. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 21:53, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
According to WP:COI, COI editors are supposed to use draftspace to make articles. So we should be quite forgiving of COI at AFC and just judge drafts on their merits. The most I would do is drop a {{Uw-coi}} on their user talk, I think, to educate them about COI. By the way, nice job adding the mandatory translation tag. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae I didn't know about it, but I still made sure the user was aware of the risks related to COI, and he was really collaborative, to be honest!
There is a substantial backlog of unsourced articles on Wikipedia, and we need your help! Think of this as an extension to Article for creation, but instead of citing newly created articles, we are citing old articles that don't have any citations in the first place.
Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles cited.
Remember to tag your edit summary with [[WP:FEB24]], both to advertise the event and tally the points later using Edit Summary Search.
Today I ran across Draft:Ziad Sakr, which was copy-paste moved by the author to Ziad Sakr; the draft was then moved to Draft:Old move, and then blanked. I'm not particularly familiar with the intricacies of this area: is this a case where a history merge would be needed? Or should the draft just be tagged as CSD G7 (the author blanked with the comment "remove this draft")? And then, would the redirect need to be tagged as well? Thanks. LittlePuppers (talk) 05:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
there are other editors (an IP) who had worked on the draft, not counting the declines by the reviewers, of which I also count as major contributions since they had apparently acted on the declines. histmerge is more appropriate. I will undo the move first as it is not appropriate to be moved to that title. – robertsky (talk) 06:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
Just noting that unless the draft reviewer comments are copied along with everything else, I do not necessarily think they count as a contribution to the text. Primefac (talk) 15:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
I say bug? as this may be my user error but filing in case
I declined a draft but noticed it wasn't on their User Talk. It went to their old name after they had been renamed. That does not seem to be the ideal behavior. Any thoughts? StarMississippi19:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
The reply just goes to the name in the submission tag... I think the number of times someone submits then changes name before the review must be less that one a year so not worth worrying about. KylieTastic (talk) 23:38, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
It's a good practice to document all bugs in the bug tracker, even "minor" ones. This one is already in the bug tracker and looks like a frequent bug. This issue has been in the bug tracker since 2018 and mentioned by multiple people over a long period of time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:39, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm not a reviewer, but I assess a lot of articles, and ever since there were changes to the way projects handled assessments it seems like this script has had difficulty keeping up. For example, after an article is accepted and moved to mainspace, if there are already projects in a banner shell instead of alone (which is how it is recommended it be done) it just duplicates them and adds the AfC banner on top of the duplication, which has to be manually fixed. Also, when adding the banners as part of the process, it doesn't add the shell. example. Sorry if this was already asked somewhere else. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:15, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I believe this has been an issue for a long time with AFCH. I'd highly recommend getting the Rater script if you haven't already; it really speeds up the process of cleaning up WikiProject banners in situations like these. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 07:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Not really much point in creating a task "fixing" WPBS until the original WPBS task is completed in the first place... Primefac (talk) 12:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
The idea behind creating tickets is to make it easy for a volunteer dev to come along and do a bunch in a burst. All the thinking has already been done and they can focus on coding. Tickets also serve as a collection point for comments on an idea. Tickets are always the first step to getting a desired software change. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:40, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
I know, and it wasn't a criticism, I was thinking more that the two tasks could be considered in one task - if we're programming in support for WPBS through #73, it can/should also contain the support now listed in #319. I suppose one counter-argument would be that one can be completed before the other is sorted out, but then we've got a weird halfway house that still doesn't work as fully intended. Primefac (talk) 21:04, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
@TechnoSquirrel69: my reading of this was that the OP is saying AfC-accepted articles are appearing with banner shell issues, which isn't resolved by the OP using the rater tool; rather, AfC reviewers should use it (which I do, but even then the project templates often to awry, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me). -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:04, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Isn't the example is in the original post enough? Without checking the code I assume the previous fix may not work as the existing wikiproject templates are hidden from the parsing as they are contained within the 'WikiProject banner shell' template. KylieTastic (talk) 14:58, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
<insert banner blindness joke here> Whoops, missed that. But yes, I think because AFCH is not currently set up to deal with WPBS (at all) it doesn't "see" it as a banner template. The Submit Wizard does not put banners into the shell either, so pages like this are likely to be an exception. Primefac (talk) 15:08, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Yeah I know Rater isn't the solution, I just recommended it for now as it makes the cleanup a bit easier. The solution, of course, would be resolving the ticket linked above. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 15:22, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Now that Rater works with PIQA it's very useful, I just think it would be easier if there wasn't always a mess to clean up in the first place. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:20, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
It looks like new editors are posting queries to this talk page but they are not receiving many replies. Could experienced editors or reviewers check it periodically in case a newbie is having difficulty submitting a draft? I realize that at the top of the page there is a note that says to come here but it is not prominent and I doubt that new editors will even notice the instruction. And the content doesn't seem automatic, there are actual questions being asked. Thanks for any help you can offer. LizRead!Talk!23:53, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Then AFCHD will get flooded with these. 90% of the reports I looked at are not helpful in the slightest. "Would not let me submit a draft" (or variations on that theme) are most of the replies, with nothing else other than a signature. Primefac (talk) 13:51, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I agree that most of these aren't helpful, but there were only 2 last month - I still think it would still be beneficial to redirect these to a page with more watchers rather than rot there. NotAGenious (talk) 13:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
The chance of someone writing something like that here are close to zero.... If I see a wall of fan-cruff text like that it's often a copy vio. They didn't even copy the final Chapters in... so just half a crap fan story KylieTastic (talk) 18:28, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Self-trout-I accidently accepted this draft, then moved the page to remove the term historical, only to find the resultant page was already existing. I then reverted back and declined the draft per mergeto and tried my best to cleanup the mess. I also put csd r3 for the old redirect, which again I reverted. I also have reverted the AfC recents log. So if anything else is left to cleanup, please let me know. Thanks. — The Herald (Benison) (talk) 16:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
@NotAGenious: Well, it's obvious this person has copied and pasted the page from somewhere else on Wikipedia. Do you know of any previous context for this page? CSD G4 would (maybe) apply if this was an article previously deleted at AfD, and CSD G5 if the page creator is found to be a sock. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:59, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
scsbot, the bot which archives this page, is going solo for the next two weeks while I'm traveling. If it should make a mistake, someone here will have to notice and fix it, as I won't be watching over its shoulder as I normally do. Further information over on the Ref Desk talk page. —scs (talk) 22:39, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Articles with conflicting quality ratings
Hi there. There are 2500+ articles within your project that have conflicting quality ratings. You can find them here (warning:the query takes a minute to run) in case anyone is able to help out with these — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:06, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
Well, that's an interesting set of pages. Half of them don't have anything to do with AFC (e.g. Talk:Jonathan Lear) and probably half of what's left have the wrong rating because the most recent addition was the AFC banner when it was accepted from draft; this seems to generally be caused by draftification, e.g. Talk:American Embassy School, New Delhi was rated as Start, draftified, approved as C, and now dropped back down to Start because of the "unification". I am sure there's a git task in there to make sure all of the ratings are equal when a draft is accepted, but at the moment I'm not sure anything other than manually updating these will fix the problem (and I'm not sure where to add my air quotes in those last three words). Primefac (talk) 09:16, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
American Embassy School has worked exactly as it should. At the end of the day, some human review is needed to assess whether C or Start is the more appropriate rating. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:37, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
I would disagree. There were old ratings (start) on the talk page when it was reviewed, and rated as a C. I know the bot task isn't perfect and I'm not seeking to get it changed or disabled, just saying that your statement of "it's working like it should" is wrong. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
It is correct in the sense that when different projects have rated articles differently, then it ends up in the tracking category for manual review. Are you saying that we should assume that the most recent rating will always be the more accurate? That might be a good approach, but it would be very difficult to deduce from the page history — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:18, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
I suppose that is my point, yes, in that the newer rating should ideally be the most recent and therefore most accurate rating. As I said, I don't think the bot is set up to handle these edge cases (nor do I think it's worth it at this point in time to do so), so manually checking the history and the page itself probably is best. Primefac (talk) 12:36, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
I've found a lot of cases where the AFC rating is the one it was given when accepted, and the other project's ratings have been updated as the article has developed. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:41, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Not surprised, given that there is a non-zero number of editors who think (for various reasons) that our tags shouldn't be changed. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm no expert, obvs, but I always assumed that the AfC project rating was an assessment of the article as it stood at the time of being accepted by us. In other words, even if the other project ratings evolve with the article, the AfC one would and should remain frozen in time. Have I got that wrong? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:28, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
New script for managing redirect and category creation requests
Hello AfC reviewers,
I've recently created a new user script, afcrc-helper, to handle requests at WP:AFC/R and WP:AFC/C. I've made many improvements from the older scripts intended to handle those pages, and if anyone has any feedback I'd love to hear it here or on my talk page! Thanks :) ~ Eejit43 (talk) 04:10, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
Can an experienced page mover take a look at Robert McClenon's note? Oh Eun-young exists as a redirect but it is a different person and the redirect has history. I don't think I encountered this before. I just got page mover rights but not comfortable handling this one. S0091 (talk) 17:47, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
I would like to ask for feedback on this page I have accepted for mainspace, as Hey man im josh pointed out on my talk page that said acceptance is in his view "problematic". The full discussion can be found on my talk page.
I think I have correctly followed the reviewer's instructions, having verified that the topic is: encyclopedic, notable, reliably sourced, and written with a neutral point of view. However, it was pointed out that the page does not "show" WP:SIGCOV.
Before approving the article, I looked for sources myself and added them as {{refideas}} in the talk page. Having found that the topic has indeed received significant coverage, and given notability is a characteristic of the subject and not of the page's content, I considered the notability requirement to be fulfilled.
@Broc I would not have accepted it because it only has one source and no page numbers in the citation so not easy for someone who has access to verify it or determine if it is SIGCOV. If you find sources, the best thing to do is to cite at least one or two that show SIGCOV or add a Further reading section. Otherwise, you are leaving an NPP reviewer with having to do the same work as you did and any others guessing as to why you accepted it. Editors generally are not going to look at the talk page, much less readers. S0091 (talk) 18:28, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for your work on this draft! I don't believe this is explicitly mentioned in the reviewing instructions, but AfC accepts are generally held to a "higher" standard than mainspace articles in the realm of notability: even if the subject is notable, it's the responsibility of the submitter to demonstrate that in order to have the draft be accepted. While I appreciate you taking the time to do an additional search for sources, as S0091 mentioned, this is a burden we want to avoid placing on reviewers and new page patrollers. This is one of the ways where the typical rule of "Would it be kept at AfD? If so, accept." doesn't apply as cleanly, in my opinion. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:19, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
@TechnoSquirrel69 thanks for the answer, it's honestly quite enlightening. I was assuming that at AfC we were just checking for red flags that would otherwise get the page deleted at AfD, hence my search for sources. Now I see that we want to only accept pages that in principle wouldn't require further discussion on notability at a later point.
@Broc I cited one the sources you found which verifies the current content along with providing sigcov and added another with sigcov to a Further reading section so I think it's fine now but an NPP reviewer will take look. And I echo what TS69 says including that you do deserve kudos for searching for sources which is above and beyond the expectations of an AfC reviewer. S0091 (talk) 21:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
No problem, I'm happy to help! And no, I think re-draftifying it would be over-correcting at this point — stubs are not a problem in and of themselves, and since S0091 has added some citations, the article now demonstrates the subject's notability. I've marked it reviewed for good measure. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 23:10, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Hi, I think I made a mistake (AfC is a much more complex and nuanced world than I initially thought!) and moved this page to mainspace although a good portion of text is a copyvio from multiple sources (see Earwig's report). What's the best way to deal with this? I don't think it fits the criteria for speedy deletion, but I think I can't leave a copyright violation in mainspace, either. I would be glad if someone could help :) Broc (talk) 20:45, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
@Primefac I'm quite used to revdel requests, I was just not sure how to deal with it in case the foundational edit already includes the copyvio. I see that in such cases the whole page history gets deleted, is that correct? Broc (talk) 17:30, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm contemplating sending some kind of encouraging note for new reviewer's Xth review - does anyone know of a way to check for this sort of thing more effectively than manually going through each person on the list and looking at their log? I could probably hack together a script but figured I'd ask about prior art first. Rusalkii (talk) 19:26, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
@Rusalkii: Have you ever used quarry before? I have a forked version of a query created by @MPGuy2824 that you can check out here. I just re-ran it and it's set to list only reviews that were done in February. You can register on the site, fork the query, and re-run it yourself whenever you feel like it. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
So, in that quarry query, you can actually adjust the time range. Additionally, I have an "all-time" request here, which could be modified to remove the "AND year(log_timestamp ) <2024" line and with the "limit" extended to whatever number. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:53, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, you'd want to use WP:QUARRY for this. You can request people to write quarry queries for you at WP:QUERY. Can you be a bit more specific about what you want to look up? For example, do you want to find all users with between 9,990 and 10,010 edits today so that you can congratulate them on their 10,000th edit? That'd be easy to do: quarry:query/80635. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
My ideal query would be something like "All users with their first AfC review under 6 months ago and their 25th review within the last week", specific numbers made up on the spot. Don't have a good sense of how feasible this is/what data quarry has access to. Rusalkii (talk) 21:56, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
I'd probably take a look at a few of their reviews, both for issues and for anything I could comment on to personalize the message. I wasn't imagining a formal process, though.
The outpouring of admiration for User:Vami_IV's work after his recent death has made me think of how little we tend to express appreciation for other editors when they're actually around to see it, and this was one of the ideas I had. I'm not sure if I'll actually end up doing it, but I did want to check if it was at least feasible without a lot of work just identifying the right people. Rusalkii (talk) 22:16, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Sounds great and I agree with no formal review. It appears to be no different than one editor giving a barnstar to another. S0091 (talk) 22:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Splitting off AFC/R into a place for requesting redirects, and one for requesting categories
I feel like this topic could have possibly been brought up before, but still feels appropriate. WP:AFC/R, a page which handles both redirect requests and category requests, should be split off into two.
On most days when I visit AFC/R, I've never thought there was a huge need for a split, because for the most part the requests are easy to deal with in terms of time and energy. The backlog always feels manageable, and at the end of the day there's often a lot fewer category requests, so no problem. A bit situational, but this is what I thought until I looked at the current state of AFC/R (with 450 items on one page!!). This is obviously an exception (I think), and maybe it's a bit situational to bring this up, but I started thinking that it might be more intuitive to open up an "AFC/C" that primarily tackles categories. Right now, AFC/R mainly receives redirect requests, but over the last week or so that items have been building up, there are currently 60 category requests in contrast to the 390 redirect/blank requests (which is a 1 to 6.5 ratio). Most people might not even know that we have a place to request categories at AfC, as the "& categories" is currently just tacked onto the AFC/R title. In any case, I do think there's probably a need for this; sure it's an extra page that'll have to be tracked, but in my opinion putting them on the same page is already cutting a bit of a corner. RfD and CfD are their own individual venues, and while those areas might be of higher traffic, even if there's nothing to discuss (there's always something to discuss), but keeping these separate does keep things more organized, with discussions taking place at an expectable location. I don't see why AFC/R would be different, to have a dedicated location for redirect requests, and a dedicated location for category requests. From a reviewer perspective, I'd rather not have to jump between "redirect mode" and "category mode" if I don't need to, which is what I think this split might benefit with. It'll put requests in a more understandable / intuitive location, and all-in-all I feel this could be a helpful change to make requesting redirects and categories go more soundly. Thoughts? Unsure if an RfC is needed if this is a project-specific thing. Utopes(talk / cont)03:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
No rfc needed, in my opinion. The benefit of keeping them merged on the same page would be more watchers for the low traffic area. But I don't feel strongly about it. I'd say leave this open for a week, and if there's no objections, go ahead and execute a split. One tricky part of splitting would be to make sure the new page is sufficiently advertised, and that all relevant documentation and templates are updated. Another tricky part is it might break the bot mentioned in the section above. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:36, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Fair enough; for what it's worth this has been a perennial proposal that has been met with support in the past; existing links to WP:Articles for creation/Categories come to mind. The idea was seemingly thrown out there with no contest and later agreed upon here, although I guess the implementation didn't come to fruition at the time. It just comes down to the follow through and appropriate links. Utopes(talk / cont)00:53, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
C Setup archives, can we use the old bot or need new BRFA? ( Partly done, template has been set up but presumably missing bot functionality to subpages of archive. Utopes(talk / cont)) Done Two templates operational Utopes(talk / cont)23:20, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and set up some pages beginning with "/Category" and updated WP:AFC/C, which'll currently be a soft redirect but might make things more convenient. Utopes(talk / cont)07:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: as you were involved with this earlier, I've aligned the Category-creation wizard to officially target the /Categories subpage, with a test for functionality. The next steps I believe would be to move the /Redirects and categories page to /Redirects, and turn the resulting redirect left behind into a set index that links to both, and then updating the shortcuts accordingly. Currently, the page in question is move protected, but with this now being up for two weeks, it seems that the move can take place now that the two areas are "/Redirects and categories", and "/Categories". Utopes(talk / cont)05:46, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Does anyone want to have an RM to discuss this more? If not I'll drop the admin move protection to extendedconfirmed in a couple days. Please ping me to remind me. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:54, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
If we're operating with AfC/R and AfC/C on different pages, I don't think it'd be controversial to update the title of this (as "/Redirects and categories" is no longer accurate). I don't think an RM is needed if the WikiProject-centered decision here is to split; the title change to drop "categories" is a natural extension of this I feel. Been a couple days, pinging @Novem Linguae: (ping me as well so I can make sure all wordings/templates are accurate). Utopes(talk / cont)07:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Was just double checking since this is admin move protected and I saw an RM in the history. Since there are no objections, I have downgraded the move protection just now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:52, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
To follow up with the split: It looks like everything is operational in the two different locations; thank you anyone who helped! Even if there's still 10 redirects requests per 1 category request, I've already felt reviewing become a lot more streamlined now that similar requests are grouped. I've noticed these few weeks that AFC/C (predictably) needs less attention than AFC/R due to request volume, but the pageviews have been steadily rising throughout the month as awareness spreads. Utopes(talk / cont)23:28, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
Sometimes, when I am reviewing drafts that have the same titles as existing titles in article space, I review a draft that has a comment from a reviewer that it is good, but there is a redirect at the title. This implies that the reviewer would like to accept the draft but needs technical assistance. This in turn implies that the existence of {{db-afc-move}} is not well known. When I encounter such a comment, I give the draft a quick review to see if I agree that it should be accepted. If so, I move the blocking redirect to limbo, tag it as {{db-moved}}, and accept the draft. So my question is whether there should be some way that the availability of {{db-afc-move}} should be better known. Db-afc-move can be either applied via Twinkle or inserted by editing, but only if the reviewer knows about it. Does it need to be better known as part of the standard toolkit for AFC reviewers?
Robert McClenon (talk) 17:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
When (on the relatively few occasions) I request Db-afc-move speedy on a redir that's in the way, I usually add a comment to the draft saying this is ready to be accepted, pending the speedy. Which sounds like what you're describing. Is that not the right way to go about it, then? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 17:14, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
I think it might depend on the exact wording of the AFC comment; I can very easily see someone adding "oh but there's a redirect there" in much the same way you (Robert) add "this will need adding to the dab" comments; i.e. it's not a statement of problem but just a statement of fact. I do also see comments like DoubleGrazing's when I am evaluating {{db-afc-move}} requests. There is a feature request to add the db- template into the AFCH workflow, but who knows when that will get actioned.
I would also question why, if a reviewer is saying "I can't accept this because of a redirect", they don't know about {{db-move}} itself. So this might be a general-knowledge issue for new(er) reviewers. Primefac (talk) 17:20, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
I've not had (that I know of) any issues with this process, usually the speedy is carried out within a few hours anyway. What I could do, and will try to remember, is to also put the draft in question under review, so nobody else wastes time reviewing something that I've already accepted in all but name. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 17:27, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
That's what I do. I mark it under review then also add a comment that I am waiting for the redirect to be deleted. I think there are reviewers who do not know about the template though it is covered in the review instructions (bottom of Step 4: Accepting a submission). S0091 (talk) 17:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
My whole point, maybe not clear, is that some reviewers are not aware of {{db-afc-move}} or even of {{db-move}}. In the case that I had seen, the reviewer had commented on the existence of the redirect, and said that the draft was good. If they had known about tagging the redirect, I am sure that they would have tagged the redirect. What I am saying is that we have a knowledge problem. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
Will someone please review this draft with particular focus on whether the discussion of Mitch McConnell is consistent with the policy on biographies of living persons? I don't like Mr. McConnell, which doesn't mean I can't review it, because I just have to remember neutral point of view, but if I think that the discussion of his health is questionable, I think that it is worth asking for another opinion, maybe from an editor who isn't an American. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:08, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Regarding the draft, I agree with you that it should be declined because it is too soon. Regarding the health issues, mentioned in more detail in Mitch McConnell, since he is a public figure and the sources are reliable and the matter is treated in a neutral tone, I think it is appropriate to mention them. Ruud Buitelaar (talk) 03:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
From an editorial perspective, I think there is too much detail about his health; "health scares" is editorialised, as is "frozen up". State that he has health issues, he refuses to resign, and that he's not running for office again. Three sentences without the detail.
Also agree that it's too soon to publish, especially since there don't seem to actually be any candidates. Primefac (talk) 07:18, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
What level of ownership does AFC assert over submissions?
Hi, I recently came across an AFC submission that was (in my humble but thoroughly considered opinion) incorrectly declined. Rather than leaving it to continue moldering away in draftspace, I would like to add some additional referenced content to remove all possibility of doubt as to notability, remove the AFC tags, and boldly move it to mainspace. As an uninvolved editor, am I at liberty to do so? Or since it has already been submitted to AFC, am I required to resubmit it? (This seems like it would be a very common question but for some reason all the documentation I'm seeing on AFC or WPAFC is addressed either to the original article creator or to would-be reviewers, not to intermeddling randos such as I. Apologies if I am overlooking something obvious.) Thanks! -- Visviva (talk) 00:22, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Unless an editor is under a community-enforced restriction to only be able to make drafts and not mainspace articles, AfC is entirely optional. Any editor can take any draft and move them to mainspace (and anyone can move mainspace articles into drafts, which is a lot more controversial). If someone doesn't think an article meets notability standards, then they'll take it to Articles for Deletion for the community to decide. Otherwise, you're free to do whatever you want. Though if you're moving someone else's draft to mainspace, it's considered polite to ask them first, unless they're no longer an active editor. SilverserenC00:36, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Silverseren. Draftspace is optional, which is codified in WP:DRAFTOBJECT. Any editor in good standing and acting in good faith can just move the page from draftspace to mainspace, even if the draft has been declined. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:00, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
This is hard. Of the many sources listed, most of them are not actually useful for notability purposes, but there are several album reviews that, while not directly showing notability for the person, make it seem more likely that otehr sources exist. I'm tempted to throw the dog a bone and accept, but what gives me pause is that:
B: If the draft author has been pushing to get this article created for years, they've likely scraped the bottom of the barrel for sources at this point.
You have the option to accept and then immediately send it to WP:AFD to get a definitive read from the community on these questions. If we continue to decline this marginal draft, it will continue to bounce around in AfC purgatory which is not good for AfC or anyone else. ~Kvng (talk) 21:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
for possibly / marginally notable articles, i usually accept, but not press "patrolled". this is to leave it open for someone at new pages feed to AFD if needed. She wasafairy08:08, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
AFC/C and AFC/R headers
Hello,
2A02:560:5829:B000:74F7:8956:BE7C:7E36 recently left a comment on my talk page in regards to the section heading prefixes on WP:AFC/R and AFC/C, remarking that ""Category request" at the start of every section heading on the category requests page and "Redirect request" on the redirect requests page doesn't make much sense. It did make sense when there was a joint page for both, obviously, but now it's just clutter."
I agree, and would propose either dropping the prefix entirely, or at least shortening it to "Request:". If it is dropped entirely, it would probably be a good idea to add filler text for empty requests (which there seem to be a lot of for some reason) so it isn't just an empty header. Thoughts? ~ Eejit43 (talk) 21:54, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
I think they should remain. It provides a visual reminder to people who might post drafts to those pages, that they are for redirects or categories, through the mass of section header names. Though it doesn't prevent everyone from doing so, it may prevent some. -- 65.92.247.66 (talk) 03:29, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree with the ip's statement. I have seen people placing misplaced (auto)bios while not realising that the pages are for redirects/categories. I also makes sense to people on which type (redirect or category) to place on the respective page. I may also support "Request:" headers since the pages were split for simplicity. Toadette(Let's discuss together!)09:11, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
That is a good point, and something I hadn't considered. I guess it would make sense for the headers to stay, unless we can find a better way to discourage those improper requests... ~ Eejit43 (talk) 12:03, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
Templates can go through AFC, they just... don't really need to. Unless a template is useless, "bad" (coding-wise), or otherwise unsuitable for actual use in the article space, I would probably just accept it. Primefac (talk) 08:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't RT just the ewuivalent of WP:Requested articles, in that you do not write the template, you just request one. Wherease if you write a draft template, it'd be in draft/sandbox space instead, which would need to go through the AFC submit process -- 65.92.247.66 (talk) 17:56, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
There was a similar discussion recently, and the AFCH maintainers are more or less aware of the issue. There's a ticket for it and we hope to have it implemented... someday. In the meantime, I'd recommend using the Rater tool to clean up the banners whenever you accept a draft. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:14, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
This is another discussion about how much control reviewers have over an article, and I am bringing it here, because I think that another experienced editor and I have a good-faith disagreement. An editor wrote a biography of a Taiwanese general, Tang Chia-kun. in article space, but it had no sources. A reviewer moved it to draft space. So far, there is no disagreement that the draftification was correct. Another editor made some changes and added two sources, and submitted the draft for review. The originator then copy-pasted the revised draft into article space. The question is what to do at this point. It looked to me like a case of objecting to draftification. I redirected the draft to the article. One question is whether there is any way to enforce draft review. My view is that there is not a way to enforce draft review, in the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Bypassing draft review is undesirable but permitted. The article can be nominated for deletion, but the subject does appear to be notable. So is there a way for enforce draft review, or is this a case where about all we can do is tag the article?
Robert McClenon (talk) 16:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Why do you want to "enforce draft review"? You say that the subject is notable and is sourced so no longer an unsourced BLP so tag for any other issues and job done - as far as AfC reviews are concerned. In this case I see that Cdjp1 improved the draft and the original author has taken this and recreated with no attribution so that is a separate issue. This could/should be fixed with a WP:HISTMERGE or if caught before the live version was further changed a round-robin move would have had the same effect. KylieTastic (talk) 19:08, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
The "disagreement" is more just my ignorance of a process I don't interact with, so apologies for any difficulties this has caused. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 23:15, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
User:KylieTastic - Maybe I didn't clarify things. I don't want to enforce draft review. It was User:Cdjp1 who wanted to ensureasked about ensuring that the draft was reviewed properly rather than just pushed into article space. I wanted to clarify that we don't enforce draft review, because the use of draft space is optional, except in a few cases, and Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that (almost) anyone can edit. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:46, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
@Cdjp1 you were right to be concerned and raising your concern got eyes on the subject which is a good thing. We want to discourage people doing this sort of thing but the policies do allow it (ish... as a DRAFTOBJECT would say move not copy and loose attribution/history). The authors talk page clearly shows they have issues understanding the policies and guidelines. Luckily we have NPP to fall back on so thus it's no issue anyway. Thanks for doing the actual work to add some sourcing. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 10:17, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
Here is my view: Using draft space to draft an article does not obligate an editor to use the AFC process, any more than use of their sandbox space does. The AFC process is entirely optional except for COI editors, IP editors and new editors who are not autoconfirmed. I object to any editor trying to portray AFC as anything more than optional. Any editor who is not in those restricted groups can move their work in progress to the main space anytime they want, especially so if a more experienced editor has improved the draft. We have WP:NPP and the three deletion processes to deal with poor quality articles, as well as the normal editing process, which is all important. Cullen328 (talk) 08:16, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
Draftification is either a new stage of the article creation gauntlet or a sneaky path to deletion. Why do we do this to ourselves? ~Kvng (talk) 19:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Coming in late, for which I apologize! @Kvng, when I have seen draftification occur, it's been as an alternative to deletion - that is, the editor draftifying thinks it could become an accepted article, but not as it currently is, and wants it to have another chance. Of course there's always the possibility I'm missing a majority of draftifications, but my experience suggests that it's more an effort to quickly rescue an article (before it goes to AfD, for example) than to push it into oblivion. StartGrammarTime (talk) 10:02, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
Draftification is potentially useful if the author is involved and agrees, but in that case, why not just give them a month to work on it in place in mainspace. In mainspace they're more likely to experience a collaborative opportunity. Leaving something in mainspace that's not totally up to snuff for a few weeks or months is not exactly unprecedented or significantly deleterious to the encyclopedia. ~Kvng (talk) 13:31, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
Getting rid of ilc
I have not been a fan of the ilc decline rationale for a while now. It is only valid in extremely specific circumstances, and yet I it gets widely and inappropriately used. My issue is that this decline code should really only be used in addition to something else. Not enough references? Use v. Notability issues? Use one of the half-dozen notability options. ilc in and of itself should not be a reason to decline, just like formatting or layout issues should not be a decline.
I will use Draft:Jacques Daudin as an example. In Special:Permalink/1129578762 by Curbon7, this is a solid decline but v should have probably been used as well to indicate that more references were needed. Special:Permalink/1149411051 by Majash2020 has three unsourced sentences in the whole draft - not the most egregious of issues but again I think a v decline would have been better. Special:Permalink/1215354794 by Johannes Maximilian is just flat-out wrong, because every single sentence has a reference - you cannot add more inline citations other than adding more references, which again v should have been used if that were the case (or a notability decline if GNG is the issue). I was actually in the process of undoing that decline but the creator resubmitted before I could do so. As a site note, Special:Permalink/1215170278 by UtherSRG should have used a custom decline of "no change" or similar rather than using an invalid decline reason with a comment contradicting it.
So I guess my example above is my long-winded way of saying that we should just remove this reason entirely. On its own it is not a valid decline reason, and it is misused more than it is used as a supplement, and really if we want it as a supplement we should just tack on an extra sentence to v saying to make sure there are inline citations. However, I am not a monarch, so I would like to get feedback from you fine folks as how best we should proceed. Primefac (talk) 21:02, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. It is hard to remember my reasoning for declining that submission as ilc since it was over a year ago, but whatever it was it could have been accomplished better with a comment. Curbon7 (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
KylieTastic, you're referring to Draft:Jacques Daudin? Well, I agree, and I'll remove it, to mainspace. The man got a three-page obituary in an academic journal in his field: that's notability right there, and as Primefac indicated, every sentence has a source. It is not a high-quality article, but that's not where we're at anyway. Drmies (talk) 18:00, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Hey Drmies, I was actually referring to the multiple times this subject has come up about ilc as a misused decline reason. I must admit I did not even look at the linked article - but now I have I agree with you: they are notable and it should have been accepted. All sources were inline so I just don;t understand the ilc declines. Yes some claims are unsourced (or may be in the other sources) but that requires either some trimming and/or tagging not a sentence to death by draft. KylieTastic (talk) 18:17, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Can some one please provide the ILC decline language here? I can't remember where all the AfC decline messages are located or how to do one those fancy blue boxes. :) S0091 (talk) 22:44, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
As I said last year: "The best time to provide inline citations to content is when that content is first added. I have had to rewrite entire articles before because the original author had not provided inline citations, and it was effectively impossible to go back and figure out what referred to what. Especially when the vast majority of AfC submissions are about barely notables/paid content, I think it is more than reasonable to expect that drafters put a reasonable number of inline citations to help reviewers gauge the draft's acceptability. I think having a distinct category from the [v] decline is important, especially if the true issue in a draft is that it has controversial statements that demand sourcing under policy. Making a more nuanced [v] decline is not going to help anyone because our drafters hardly read the declines they're given, let alone if they were made longer." CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓00:38, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
It's a common complaint that AFC is stricter than NPP/creating an article in mainspace. Requiring inline citations would probably move the needle even more in that direction, which might create friction with the folks that dislike AFC. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:07, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
My primary counter-argument is along similar lines to Novem Linguae - if GNG is met by the provided references, the draft should be accepted. I agree with you that it can be problematic and indeed frustrating if the content on the page is not wholly supported by the references, but drafts are far from the only pages that experience this issue. While it would be nice to have every acceptable draft be properly formatted and perfectly cited, that is not our primary criteria or goal; determining GNG and weeding out spam are our main goals. Primefac (talk) 08:00, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Primefac, I guess I never saw that memo, haha. I've been exerting that kind of quality control--well, no, maybe not, certainly not very strictly. I wasn't even aware of all these parameters. Having read up a bit I see the point of them, but I also see your point. I have to say, though, after just moving Draft:Jacques Daudin to mainspace, the majority of what I see in draft space does not look like that--by which I mean reasonably OK and certainly notable. The reference that IMO proves notability, an obit in an academic journal in his field, was added in December 2022 already. I would hope that the editors working on drafts will also help writer in developing these articles. Had this been cleaned up a bit by one of the editors who turned it down (unjustly), it would have been up for a year or more by now. Drmies (talk) 18:10, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Can we not just clarify this in the AFCH script? A bracketed "(use only in conjunction with another decline reason)" or something? -- asilvering (talk) 04:44, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Creating a category of decline reasons that could only be used with other decline reasons would add complexity. Not sure that's ideal. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:05, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
I don't mean do it technically somehow, I mean simply relabel ilc in the drop-down so that it's clear that it should only be used in conjunction with another decline. -- asilvering (talk) 06:00, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
I like this idea. Even if we look at this from a pure BLP perspective, it impacts almost all the notability guidelines: NMUSIC (bios), PROF, ATHLETE, NEVENT (could involve living people), NCORP (often includes content about living people, like founder, CEO, etc.), and so on. Another idea is to add a note about in-line citations being required for in certain situations and/or encouraging them in general under the "Improving your odds of a speedy review" sections in Template:AfC submission/draft and Template:AfC submission/pending to decrease the need to use ILC from the get-go. S0091 (talk) 15:47, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
I think one way to read WP:BURDEN is that non-BLPs do not require inline citations, but WP:BLPs do. I always figured that was the idea behind ilc, and I personally just used it in BLPs only. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:13, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
FWIW, I agree that ilc often gets misused (and I'm sure I'm as guilty of that as anyone) and should be applied more judiciously; however, I don't agree we should get rid of it. Where it applies, it communicates a very specific reason, in a much more specific way than v does. (Using v tends to just bring the author to the help desk to ask "why are my sources not considered reliable?") I can't point to actual examples, but I've seen more than one BLP draft where all the cites support the person's discography or whatever, and the entire body text and infobox, with DOB, family details, etc. is entirely unreferenced. The subject may be notable, the sources in the discography section may be proper RS, but the cites fall way short of what is required of a BLP. (In practice, I would probably decline that with v + ilc, not just ilc alone, but would like to also have the ilc option as well.) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:06, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Basically agree. Also, since the actual decline text doesn't mention BLPs specifically, it is useful for when information that is "likely to be challenged" and core to the article (as opposed to a discography or whatever) lacks citations. Mach6113:37, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
BLPs are a special case. For other articles, you're welcome to do your own improvements: add {{cn}}, WP:STUBIFY and such before or after accepting. We shouldn't be declining drafts for lax citations. We just need enough sources to demonstrate notability. They don't need to be inline citations. ~Kvng (talk) 15:31, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
@Kvng But sometimes removing the unsourced statements would give the article no context at all. Certainly I don't mind accepting drafts that need to have a refimprove tag placed per se. Mach6115:43, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
My standard practice when an AFC submission is made without making any adjustments to the draft after it was previously declined is to use the same decline reason along with a comment along the lines of "no change since last decline", hence my use of ilc in the aforementioned case. Can we get a new template for "no changes"? I would support having a note on ilc in the tool that indicates it should be used only in addition to another reason. - UtherSRG(talk)15:26, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
The thing is that – let's be honest – most drafts fail any review within a few seconds' time because of improper referencing. Citing sources is taught in secondary school so it's reasonable to assume that anyone aged 16 or older knows the basics of citing sources. I'm not talking about the nitpicking of sticking to a specific citation style like Harvard, APA, MLA, Chicago etc.; I'm talking about the citation basics, i.e., who claims what in which publication and when does he do so (4Ws). Now, a "citation style" that is far off of the citaiton basics does not indicate what I call "citation competence". I argue that "citation competence" is a necessity for a good article: If someone doesn't understand whom or what he cites, then the content that's "supported" by the reference is likely not going to make sense. In the Daudin case, the citation reads: "News". www.eccea.com. Retrieved 2022-12-26. How vacuous do you want your footnote to be? YES. I mean, I get why ilc is not the correct decline reason, however, it renders a text that makes perfect sense: "Please cite your sources using footnotes. For instructions on how to do this, please see Referencing for beginners." This is why I felt it was reasonable. See, "News" is exactly as useful as "www.thisisatotallyunrealibalesource.com" without any formatting whatsoever. I'd say that we still get draft submissions that include the latter, unfortunately. Thus, I would not advise removing the ilc decline reason. --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 16:36, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Citing sources is taught in secondary school Please cite your sources on this. XD Only half joking, as I bet not all English-language authors (which include many authors whose primary language isn't English) went to a secondary school that teaches this. - UtherSRG(talk)16:42, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Citing sources is taught in secondary school so it's reasonable to assume that anyone aged 16 or older knows the basics of citing sources. is certainly not true, even in First World countries much less others. S0091 (talk) 16:42, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Honestly, I didn't know this. It's been a while now, but I had to compose a "pre-scientific paper" to be elegible for graduation from secondary school, and at university it was expected from me that I knew how to cite. However, I have never lived in an English-speaking country. Best, --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 15:57, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
I too had the good fortune to learn about citation practices in high school. But in my experience teaching post-secondary students, we were either the lucky ones, or the only ones paying any attention. -- asilvering (talk) 18:45, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
I argue that "citation competence" is a necessity for a good article We're not looking for good articles at AfC, we're looking for a neutral start that covers a notable subject. If someone has to rewrite the whole thing later to improve it, so be it and presumably they get some satisfaction out of doing so. Yes, please remove ILC and other decline reasons that distract from our triage mission here at AfC. ~Kvng (talk) 20:57, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
@Johannes Maximilian: Wikipedia would have never developed in its early years if it did not accept poorly (or, in some cases, entirely unreferenced) articles as a starting point. We should not hold new users making starting points to unreasonably high standards. Mach6113:41, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Regardless of what one thinks about articles with that issue going into mainspace, having it as / used as a rejection template is in conflict with the AFC passage criteria. So that conflict should be reconciled. Unless we want to decide that AFC is to to be a higher bar than AFD, the way to resolve it is to eliminate it / its use as a rejection template. North8000 (talk) 15:55, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
@North8000 it is not a rejection reason but is currently available as a decline reason which allows for resubmission. You may have meant decline but wanted to clarify. S0091 (talk) 16:09, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
@S0091: Thanks and sorry....still learning to use the correct AFC terminology. I did mean decline. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:24, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
@North8000 no worries! What you think about it still being available as long as it only used in conjunction with another decline reason? S0091 (talk) 17:40, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I think that AFC is a good place for improvement advice as long as it makes it very clear that it was not even a part of the reason for the decline. If not clear, not, because it would just cause confusion for newer editors. North8000 (talk) 17:52, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Support removal: while I like having ILC as an option, based on most of the comments here, it is not largely not supported as a stand-alone reason for declining a draft and often abused. As volunteers, we are not obligated to review any draft so a reviewer can choose to not review drafts that do not use in-line citations. As suggested by Mach61, we can tag them which can be done while still in draft and/or leave a comment to the creator recommending using inline citations without doing a review (i.e. tag/comment, roll on) or if they pass notability accept and tag. On drafts we are declining for other reasons, we can add an additional comment stating in-line citations are required if it meets the criteria such as BLP or recommending them. I still think it is good to idea to recommend in-line citations to the "Improving your odds of a speedy review" as I did above. I think most of us probably agree drafts with in-line citations are generally easier to review and articles with in-line citations are more beneficial to our readers in general. S0091 (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I'm running into drafts that reviewers say are "blank" but if you look at the page history, there is clearly an article there, the new editor mistakenly put the content between code that hides it. I don't think that this should be a test to see how adept editors are at understanding Wikicode, just remove the <-- --> code and, voila, an article appears. Just take a second to remove the Wikicode and evaluate the article that they wrote, don't reject the article for being blank. Thank you very much for all of the work you do. LizRead!Talk!02:10, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
I noticed a number of Australian/Tasmanian flora articles recently, however I just noticed that they add all single article accounts, and all make the same weird format error of periods after the references, or missing. They are also all quite reasonable submissions. So now I'm wondering is this a sock, or some organised project with the similarities maybe coming from some example? Anyone remember any blocked user being involved with this type of subject before or aware of any project running this? Examples: Poa clivicola, Diplaspis cordifolia, Schoenus tesquorum and Euchiton traversii. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 13:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
I would suspect a class assignment to create flora articles; it would be a bit odd for one person to create four accounts just to create four articles. As you say, any formatting error similarities are likely because they were going off a standard template or similar.
That being said, I could be completely wrong, so if folk do remember anything about a sockmaster that fits this bill, I'm happy to run checks. Primefac (talk) 19:16, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
I agree that a class assignment, editathon, or some kind of benign explanation is more likely than sockpuppetry here. Luckily, species is not a topic area that usually attracts sockpuppets. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:21, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
Caught the draft creator moving their own AfC draft to mainspace after it was declined (see diff). Can somebody from AfC decide the best course of action on this? Does this break any guideline or policy? Pilaz (talk) 06:08, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
Draftspace is optional so that's allowed. WP:NPP will check it and determine the next course of action. It could end up at WP:AFD, or it might be fine. That's the risk folks take when they decide to skip draftspace.
In regards to them being a probationary AFC reviewer, I think it's good that they moved it rather than using the AFC helper script to do an official AFC accept. If they had done the latter and put an official AFC stamp of approval on it, that would look WP:INVOLVED. But using move makes it an action unrelated to AFC, in my opinion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:19, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
