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Proposed category + bot: Non-submissions in AFC submission space

I propose a new category, WPAFC possible submissions without a template that will be populated by a bot. The exact parameters can be hashed out later, but in general it would be all sub-pages in Wikipedia: or Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation or their obvious mis-spellings that are not 1) tagged with {{AFC submission}} or some equivalent tag and 2) are not a known exception.

Once these are categorized, we can decide what to do with them. My preference would be to notify the users that they can tag the article with {{subst:submit}}, but if the page is not edited within 90 days, it would be submitted to WP:Miscellany for deletion as part of a batch "soft deletion" request. If their article was deleted, a followup message would indicate that it would be un-deleted upon request. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:20, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Rationale: NyGuha (talk · contribs)'s AFC contributions, most of which are not templated (I've asked him to add the template to his submission). How many others are out there lying around in limbo? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:23, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

The idea to add the category sounds like a great idea. However please do not automatically put them at MFD. That should be a manual process so that there is a bit of though before the deletion process starts. Perhaps the category could have a shorter name, but since these pages will likely have no readers, the length or strangeness does not matter much. Perhaps the bot could make a list on a subpage too, that could be transculded on a project page, so that it will motivate people to clean it up. Also the bot should learn from mitakes, if it marks a page wrongly, we don't want it to keep retagging if some one detags it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:47, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

A category is a good idea, I have no idea how many pages are currently in limbo, but I suspect there are more than we think... Perhaps this system could link in with the new G13 csd criteria? Once in the category, pages can be manually assessed and either submitted for review (or better still cleaned up and moved straight to main space) or have a suitable decline template added, which effectively archives the page and if it remains unedited for X amount of time it gets deleted under G13? Pol430 talk to me 08:52, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

AFC bot already does this, see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ArticlesForCreationBot 4. SImply ping Petrb (talk · contribs) for a rerun and that he should do this continously. mabdul 21:51, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Weird

Resolved

Why's this article on the list if the template's gone? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:35, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

You haven't linked a page here. But perhaps the category page needs to be purged (&action=purge) to update it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:53, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Bugger, I fogot to link it. It was a user page without an AfC template stuck in the category. Oh well... FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:38, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm assuming it was a caching delay issue that has resolved itself, is this correct? Technical 13 (talk) 18:22, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

We'll never know because of silly me. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:01, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Alert about duplication

One of the first things to check in reviewing if the subject appears at all plausible is if the article already exists. I find the easiest way is just to search for the title in Wikipedia. If it does, check the dates--sometimes it was already there when the AfC wa started, it which case it can be rejected accordingly (and in my opinion listed for speedy deletion as a technical G6 deletion); If it was earlier, and the article is based on it, I am not sure whether to also simply call it a duplicate, or to make a redirect out of it, as would ordinarily be done when an article is accepted. DGG ( talk ) 04:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

If the article was based on a draft, and anyone other than the 1st editor of the article made a contribution to the draft that got pasted into the article, a WP:HISTMERGE is recommended for copyright tracking purposes. If JoeNewEditor just copied his own work into article space then it's not essential but it may still be useful on a case-by-case basis. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:50, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I have found that duplicates can be caused by Citation bot (talk · contribs). The bot is processing articles in mainspace, and then for some reason, it is writing the page back to WT:AfC, overwriting the redirect which had been created by moving the page to mainspace. See User talk:Citation bot/Archive1#Bot overwrites a redirect, essentially duplicating a moved article at its pre-move name. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:04, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/POUR

Dear reviewers:

I have just declined an article, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/POUR, which I felt was unintelligible, promotional and mostly opinion. Would someone check my work on this one? I'm not sure that I chose the correct declining option, and also I wonder if the sections about the artists are appropriate, or if each artist should be in his or her own article, (which I didn't say). —Anne Delong (talk) 12:12, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

It's full of paraphrasing and some more blatant copyvio. I don't have time to investigate fully now but I've blanked the submission. Sources of copyvio are: [1] [2] and especially [3] and [4]. Pol430 talk to me 18:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. It looked like text from somewhere else, but I couldn't find it. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:53, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Submission of the day

What a treat!. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:46, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Cute but I had to put on my "Wikipedia is serious business" hat and spoil the fun for everyone. I didn't mark it for speedy deletion but I think I will send it to MFD if nobody here objects within a day or so. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:25, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

RFC re routine use of G11 Speedy Delete while reviewing

Following comments by DGG to a couple of reviewers, I felt it would be worth opening some discussion here to agree an approach which could be written into the reviewing instructions. The question is whether as a matter of routine practice, as well as declining a draft article for being too much like an advert (ie promotional), reviewers should also nominate the draft article for deletion per criteria G11 of speedy deletion. Clearly there is broad agreement that such articles have no place in main article space, but it is not clear whether immediate deletion is consistent with the goal to give editors a gentler introduction to editing with proper coaching as to what is promotional and not. In my experience in many cases new editors often appear in other help channels after their article has been deleted without any idea of what they needed to do differently or to rewrite, and having the article no longer there to discuss with them makes it much harder for non-admins to offer them help. DGG has opened a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G11_and_AFCs regarding this matter but I feel that this venue is a more appropriate place for further discussion about changes to the reviewing instructions. Please contribute your thoughts. --_nonsense ferret 15:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

On the one hand there's no room for copyright material anywhere on the site (not just article-space?), but on the other hand we have 'not biting the newbiews', as ironically I've just had pointed out to me here (cheers Scott!) for doing almost exactly wot Ferret has raised. A tricky balance. Basket _Feudalist 16:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is a correct representation of DGG's query. The examples DGG provided were blatantly and unsalvageably promotional, so his question is not one of simple "routine" usage, but how G11 is used on the worst of 'em. I think his examples really argue for allowing G11 in those cases, as two of the three were undetected copyright violations. I'm pretty hardline about the G12 critiera, for those of you who've ever been involved in the process of unwinding a subtle copyvio from a longer article, it's a process that can take hours or even days to clean up--and allowing editors to "rewrite" from copyrighted text more often than not results in text that still has subtle copyright issues. For G12, and even for blatantly promotional (G11s), I think there's a strong case to be made for a quicker deletion, because, at least in the examples presented, most blatent G11s are also G12s.

As I said at the thread at CSD, I'd want to move slower if I was absolutely certain there was no copyright issue, and if there was truly salvageable material -- but that's not the case that' DGG described. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:11, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Joe, where a submission is not a copyvio and its only problem is that it is highly promotion (to the point that it meets G11) then I think only the worst cases should be CSD'd. Stuff that contains addresses and telephone numbers/email address/contact details are always good candidates. However, if the subject is salvageable then its rather bitey to blow it up without giving the author a chance to improve upon it. It comes down to good editorial judgement ultimately. I echo the sentiment that any G12 stuff should be burned with fire; if the potential for litigation were not argument enough then the backlog at WP:CP should convince the doubters. Pol430 talk to me 16:17, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I too agree with Joe. I think I am known for salvaging everything practical -- I've heard people say that I sometimes stretch the limits of practical to include everything conceivably practical. If there is anything to rescue, I would certainly not use speedy. If I could salvage it, I would, and I have a list of about 60 afcs that the users have apparently abandoned but I am trying to rescue, one per day. Last night I was looking thru the AfCs declined as an advertisement, and rescued 2 or 3 immediately, and marked another half dozen for later rescue. The old ones that were outrageous i simply deleted as G11, and if anyone wants to check they're on my log. The newer ones I though outrageous I listed at CSD, and I see other admins have deleted all of them. (I left these particular ones for discussion) Ones less than outrageous or where I didn't understand the subject I left for later action. If I thought on balance an article that I did not want to rescue ought to be deleted, I would use MfD and see what the consensus was. (I used just G11, not G11/G12 to save the time in checking--there are tens of thousands to go through. I agree it is better to check G12 also.)

In terms of what is salvageable, the possibility that will be notable needs to be considered. There's no point in helping a person write a nonpromotional article if it is inevitably not going to be accepted. Of course in all possible cases of doubt we should do the most we can to assist. DGG ( talk ) 16:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

The policy discussion should be at WT:CSD, which is the page for discussion of the part of WP:deletion policy applicable at speedy. The job here will be to modify the instructions so they match our actual policy, however it is modified.. DGG ( talk ) 16:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia's deletion policies should be considered by everyone, and not just by Afc reviewers, so I will be adding my comments at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G11_and_AFCs. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)(edit conflict)(edit conflict)(edit conflict)(edit conflict) I think this kind of thing (when to and when not to tag AfCs for CSD/PROD/AfD) would make an excellent unit in an AfC/A curriculum... Are any of the AfC vets working on creating that academy yet, I would love to go through an alpha test for it. I'm still wet behind the ears when it comes to reviewing, or I would create the academy myself. ;) Technical 13 (talk) 16:33, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • No, but I did restructure and update the reviewing instructions to make them a little more 'workflow-ish'. Pol430 talk to me 17:23, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Re: the Afc script - I notice that the script does not give the reviewer the option of deleting the article for being promotional, only of declining it. In light of Wikipedia policy as it stands now, would it be good to have two items on the list, one to choose when the article could be re-written to be acceptable, and one with G11 for hopeless cases? Or maybe not? —Anne Delong (talk) 20:39, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

If we want this feature, I'm sure the code for BLP that gives a check-box to blank the submission and to (separately) tag it for speedy deletion could be cloned to apply to promotional declines. The question is, do we want to handle promotional submissions this way? That's what this discussion is trying to answer. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I would at least like a blanking option. AfC submissions are cloned to sites like http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/ (e.g., http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/enwiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Marketable_Collateral, +78,399 other AfC submissions) faster than we review articles, having a blanking option would have some value. --j⚛e decker^talk 04:35, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• Use the principle of least harm. We nuke copyvio and BLP items on sight for legal reasons and BLP violations on sight for harm-to-real-people reasons. The harm done by allowing a non-indexed promotional page to remain publicly viewable is >0 but it is usually not huge. This should be offset by the harm of "biting the newbies" and the harm of a "lost article" if the topic really is notable and the contributor really is interested in "doing it right." My general rule of thumb is to decline but not G11. I would be willing to use G11 along with a polite note on the editor's talk page if the topic was obviously non-notable (e.g.: "Dan's Garage - Dan's Garage is the best repair shop in Springfield. Source: Dan's Garage web site. Submitted by: Dan." + Google search turns up no RS significant coverage). I would have no objection to a bot deleting AFC submissions declined as promotional over 30 days ago if they had not been edited by anyone but the decliner since the decline, and I would have no objection to a human putting a G11 tag on a "declined - promotional" article if it hadn't been edited in a month and it was still clearly promotional. I would prefer that the decline script be modified to add dated "AFC decline categories" so the decliner could provide multiple decline reasons, like "promotional" + "notability not shown" + "I researched it and could not find evidence of notability" and have future G11-taggers and/or the deletion-bot use these categories as guidance. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:12, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

interesting points, which i do agree with, and it brings to mind the question of what harm exactly is caused by promotional draft articles hanging around? Some have suggested that perhaps these types of articles are more likely than others to be undetected copy vios, but i am not sure why that should be so. --_nonsense ferret 02:38, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Advertisements in the Afc wouldn't be a problem if they always stayed there, but as someone has pointed out, there are sometimes leaks to mirror sites. The promotional articles sometimes have misleading information, and for the sake of its reputation an encyclopedia should be careful not to let that spread. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:50, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

davidwr--there reason I believe what I do about there being lots of G12s in the G11 pile was that I went and looked through Category:AfC_submissions_declined_as_an_advertisement. I can't say I've done firm statistics on the matter, but just for the purposes of this conversation I went and checked ten, and G12'd three, giving each article no more than a single Google search on a single hand-picked phrase from each article. That's a bit lower than the last time I took a poke, but even at 3-in-10, there's about 2,000 G12s sitting unmarked there. --j⚛e decker^talk 07:22, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

PS: I completely agree with davidwr about the desirability of noting multiple issues in the script. That won't guarantee they'll be used (other editors have expressed the opinion that it's kinder to only mark a G11/G12 as G11), but at least it'd be an option. --j⚛e decker^talk 07:31, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

By the way, "wpedia.goo.ne.jp" is the most common, googlable mirror of AfC that I come across, e.g., http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/enwiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Marketable_Collateral They are currently exposing around 78,000 AfC submissions to anyone searching: [5] --j⚛e decker^talk 18:21, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Caitlin Chang

Resolved

Dear reviewers:

This article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Caitlin Chang has a lot of tags on it, some of which don't seem appropriate, and have old dates on them. Are any of them needed?—Anne Delong (talk) 21:45, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Cleaned up and declined for WP:MINREF. Likely a notable person. Also, please check my edits to see the wee bit about another person that I removed on sight due to lack of WP:INCITE and, frankly, lack of apparent encyclopedic value. (If it had had a citation, I would not have removed it but I would have recommended the contributor remove it.) davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gideon Nieuwoudt

Resolved

Dear reviewers:

I'd like to have this article deleted: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gideon Nieuwoudt because the author has created another one with much more information, so this one isn't needed. It has very little edit history. Under what criteria should I request deletion? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Review it and mark it as a duplicate and check the "afc cleared" check box and the "trigger the csd parameter" check box. If the review script won't let you review a draft, then edit the submission and remove the "T" from the "afc submission" template first. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:42, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, that's done. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:09, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/FAM149A

Resolved

Dear editors:

This article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/FAM149A has been abandoned and the author started another and submitted it: User:Swaybe/FAM149A. Should the histories be combined? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:48, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Not that my opinion is worth much, but it's a clear one-editor-history case, and I don't think it's necessary. On the other hand, it's s trivial history merge, so I'll do it.  :) --j⚛e decker^talk 03:53, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done ;-) --j⚛e decker^talk 03:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Idea for "hopeless" topics

If we could mark "likely hopeless" submissions with a special template that said

A reviewer believes that this topic is not suitable for Wikipedia at this time for the following reasons _________. He is requesting a second opinion. We realize that this may be discouraging. Please consider visiting Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles and writing an article on one of the "missing" topics listed there. [[Category:AFC submissions of possibly unsuitable topics]]

and, once a second reviewer has concurred, the submission would be blanked and replaced with something like

Two reviewers agree that this topic is not suitable for Wikipedia at this time for the following reasons _________ and as a result this submission has been blanked and will be deleted in a few days. We realize that this may be discouraging. Please consider visiting Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles and writing an article on one of the "missing" topics listed there. [[Category:AFC submissions of unsuitable topics ready for deletion after 7 days from the time of the concurring review]]

Anyhow, it would be a less bitey but more firm way of dealing with things like obviously non-notable topics and WP:What Wikipedia is not-type stuff. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we need something like this, but I am not sure of the procedure. For reviewing, the blanking make two extra steps in seeing the article. for deleting, all articles for deletion need to be listed in an ordinary place, not a special procedure. What you are proposing is essentially permitting prod to be used in this case. I've suggested something of the sort, but I think we should finish the A13 discussion before we start this. In the meantime, there is another course, MfD. DGG ( talk ) 04:28, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The deletion is the least important of the steps. The most important is gently convincing the user that his submission is no good but that it's okay, there's plenty of other work to do and his efforts in those areas are more than welcome. The blanking is to make it clear that "no means no" and serve to discourage repeat attempts. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:37, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you that the deletion is the least important of the steps. I agree also that the most important is giving gentle but very firm advice to the contributor that they would do well to abandon the article. To do this effectively, it is necessary to explain why, which is hard to do with a straight template. It needs some sort of personally constructed message on the talk p., even if it as general as the messages most people use at Prod. As for the blanking, possibly when the second reviewer agrees, but it still makes it harder for the admin who reviews the article before deleting it--and I'm not sure how gentle that really is. Further, the new user won't know enough to easily find the text again and see the problem. Let's design a template; while we are waiting for AfC reform, we could add it to Twinkle, which permits custom modification, for use on the editors talk p, as a sort of a welcome message. DGG ( talk ) 05:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Reviewer approving seemingly unsatisfactory articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I have been active in #wikipedia-en-help for a little while now. At least 90% of the "editing help" questions are about the AFC process, and 90% of that is a familiar routine; the wait time, the COI issues (the vast majority of it is corporates or PR types, alas), WP:ADVERT, what's a good reference, why those aren't good references, why those references "do not adequately evidence the subject's notability".

So far, so good. A couple of days ago someone came in asking about what is now Eric_Sanicola; in the course of discussion, they (entirely predictably) proved to be Mr Sanicola, who had written the entire thing himself. (Not grounds for rejection itself, but not a good start). We gave him the usual spiel - references not reliable or mention him only in passing, notability is not infectious, etc. - but at the end of the discussion, User:Coolboygcp pops in for some other purpose and says "sure, I'll approve it"... and did.

This seems to me to be quite contrary to the reviewing instructions - and frankly, it seems a little futile to hang around in the help channel explaining the need for good references if someone else will come in and approve articles with junk references.

I attempted to discuss this with User:Coolboygcp on the same IRC channel the following day, to get completely stonewalled; a flat denial that there was anything wrong with the article. On checking further, their contribs consist of a series of AFC approvals many of which seem dubious, and from https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User_talk:Coolboygcp#Reverting_your_acceptance_of_Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation.2FBritish_Basketball_Association I am not the only editor to have an issue with them.

I'm seeking advice on what should be done next. Pinkbeast (talk) 10:28, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

There are certainly some highly questionable accepts among User:Coolboygcp's contribs. Apart from this, has the user been asked (on-Wiki) on be more careful and pointed in the direction of the reviewing guidelines? Pol430 talk to me 11:46, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

No. I got a flat denial on IRC that there was any kind of problem. IRC does tend to make people terse, but if you agree that there is an issue, I would be grateful if you (or someone else) would bring it up on-Wiki; I appreciate a sanity check that I'm not overreacting. I observe the Eric Sanicola article has been CSDed. Pinkbeast (talk) 11:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you're overreacting, but I don't think the Eric Sanicola article is the worst of them (CSD has been declined). I'd rather someone else took them in hand, a third opinion won't hurt and I've already raised one editor's AfC work at AN/I today – I don't want to earn a reputation :P Pol430 talk to me 12:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Wow, just wow.

I had no idea that there were this many editors interested in my contributions.

Additionally, when I read the quote: "I attempted to discuss this with Coolboygcp on the same IRC channel the following day, to get completely stonewalled:", I proceeded to laugh hysterically. I did no "stonewall" Pinkbeast, in any way whatsoever.

When I corresponded with him/her, I provided several reasons as to why I approved the Eric Sanicola article. I truly cannot comprehend why he/she would fabricate such an accusation and story about me. However, Pinkbeast has repeatedly threatened me on the mentioned IRC channel several time. Threats such as, "if you upload that image, I will delete it", and I will report you if you upload that image, as well as "I will report you for even thinking about creating that article". Additionally, he/she has repeatedly misinformed dozens of editors and users who come to the IRC channel in order to seek useful, and proper advice and help, who instead receive misinformation and incorrect instructions among other worrisome advice.

In fact, I would advise that Pinkbeast has exhibited very much more worrisome, and detrimental behavior and conduct. Coolboygcp (talk) 12:29, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

CB: Please feel free to show equivilant examples of Pinkbeast's disruptive behavior/content. Your behavior on the other hand causes problems, both for volunteers and the project as a whole. Your article approvals could cause editors and admins to have to edit the newly minted article and potentially have to go through the process of deleting it, having to sort out a policy morass, or potentially opens the foundation to liability. I'm saying this as nicely as possible, be extra careful with your approvals due to the fact that previous approvals have been questioned. Hasteur (talk) 12:40, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

These accusations are false. If there is any doubt about that, I would suggest contacting other users of that channel to see if their clients keep sufficient scrollback; I believe any of User:gwickwire, User:TheOriginalSoni, User:Huon, or User:Yngvadottir might do so. For the avoidance of doubt, I am completely happy to have any comment I addressed on-channel to User:Coolboygcp, or any comment to anyone similar to those above, made public.

The only discussion I have had with User:Coolboygcp about images is that I declined to upload a non-free image for them, responding that "I can't really see that there is much justification for using a nonfree image there" (direct quote) after quoting the Wikimedia Commons guidance on non-free images verbatim.Pinkbeast (talk) 13:28, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Topic ban?

Looking through his declines, and his assurances that nothing is wrong, when many of his reviews clearly are, anyone willing to support an attempt to get a topic ban? Mdann52 (talk) 13:51, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I've looked through some of his approvals and am the one that nominated the article that brought this up for CSD, which was declined, and subsequently nominated for AfD by myself, which at my last check had only one other person with a Delete nomination and no Keeps. Technical 13 (talk) 14:17, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that would be best, but I'm not exactly unbiased here. Pinkbeast (talk) 14:21, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

They're still at it. http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Talent_Neuron&action=history is an approval of an AFC which took a whole five hours to get G11ed! Pinkbeast (talk) 22:28, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

• I'm not sure IRC is the best way to communicate to people about what they might be doing wrong. Suggesting improvements or problems to people on their user talk pages leaves a record, which can be very helpful for anyone coming with subsequent problems. (It also eliminates pointless disputes like the above about what has been said.) DGG ( talk ) 17:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree; I just happened to see him pop up there while I was thinking about it anyway. Pinkbeast (talk) 15:18, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support a topic ban from reviewing AfC submissions for a period of three months. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

• There comes a time perhaps where some reviewers should be asked to cease reviewing, at least for a while, such as in the past we have had to ask patrollers to stop patrolling new pages. A polite request rather than a formal topic ban may be sufficient. Like many meta areas, AfC is one that attracts many relatively new and/or inexperienced editors. This has always been a thorn in the side of the AfC process which often requires an admin level of knowledge of inclusion policies. I am absolutely not advocating that only admins should review the pages - there is backlog enough - but some campaign to attract truly experienced editors to the task would probably not go unrewarded. Nothing will change much however until the Foundation comes up with a decent landing page for new users / new, new-page creators. Concurring with DGG, transparecy is required for discussions and IRC is not followed by any means by everyone. Some of us do not use it at all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose We have one example here, an AFC approval which has now survived AFD. Before topic banning anyone we should be looking at enough diffs to form a pattern, and that pattern would need to indicate a problem. But if an editor's judgement has been born out by the article surviving AFD then it is the rest of the AFC community who have got this one wrong. Note I'm not proposing that Pinkbeast be topic banned from AFC simply for this one case where he declined an AFC submission that went on to pass AFD, I'm hoping that that is an isolated mistake and a learning experience. But there is something deeply wrong with the AFC process when it is regarded as controversial that someone approves an AFC that goes on to survive AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 11:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
• Comment I think some of his approvals are questionable, however we need a more thorough investigation before doing anything rash. I have started a thread at the WP:ANI, and have copied our discussion here as well as adding my own comments. TheOneSean | Talk to me 12:49, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose with all due respect, simply not liking or not agreeing with another editor's decisions is insufficient grounds for a ban. Lx 121 (talk) 12:30, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

TheWikipreditor

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I spotted some blatant advertising by TheWikipreditor (talk · contribs) and went back through his submissions. They had all been declined but I blanked most of them as near- or actual-blatant advertising and clear violations of the NPOV policy. Just wanted to give you all a heads up in case anyone asks about it. I've also raised issues about his username ("Wiki PR Editor"?) on his talk page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:42, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Good call on the blanking, I've just found at least two containing copyright violations. His username has already been reported to UAA but a block was declined by the patrolling admin. Pol430 talk to me 09:30, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jamaican cosmetic industry early pioneers

Resolved

Dear reviewers:

Will someone who is familiar with image copyright issues please check the images on this page: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jamaican cosmetic industry early pioneers ? Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:15, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I have put colons in front of the images, added comments to the submission, put copyright-related deletion tags on the images on the Commons that needed them, and added notes to the author's talk page. I think we can mark this as "being resolved." Unfortunately, doing this has made me unable to objectively review the submission so I've left it for someone else. It may be best to give it a few days to see if the author is able to improve the submission based on the feedback I gave him. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done Declined for davidwr's reasons in addition to being too PR-speak and without any inline citations. Hasteur (talk) 12:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Strange Article - need advice

So a weird thing happened to me. I looked at the "AfC submissions without an age" category, to hopefully clear it out (there is only one page in it) and this came up. What is it and can I decline it? Thanks, TheOneSean | Talk to me 11:31, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'd leave it, it's a set of test cases that are left near the template so that, when people make adjustments to the AfC submissions template, they can easily check that the template is, at least in some ways, functioning properly. I'm not quite sure why it'd register as "without an age", though. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:12, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

New script

Resolved

Is it possible that since the new script was released, it can't be used on other devices? I'm trying to review on my tablet but it doesn't work. Nothing majorly important, just wondering what's going on. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:02, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Which browser? Which device? Does it have any 'error console' or 'developer tools'? Since when? (we are talking about the "gadget" version, not the beta, or) mabdul 12:05, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Chrome, Nexus 7. I click on Review and nothing happens. I used to review a while back. I just use the new script that changed a few weeks ago. I didn't change any settings. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

 Confirmed I just tested some other stuff while trying to fix another bug. It is the WP:AutoEd integration. If I don't find any solution in the next minutes, I will comment these changes out as long I don't have any solution for that problem. :( mabdul 20:50, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Bug fixed. mabdul 20:58, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Questions (May 20)

I have some questions about finding and sorting material.

1. For Category:Accepted AfC submissions, is there any way of sorting chronologically?

   Each article talk page is also in a category AfC submissions by date/__DATE__ based on the date of acceptance. It would take a bot to roll through Category:Accepted AfC submissions and generate a list. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 06:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

2. For Category:Pending AfC submissions, what is the difference between the main list in one sequence, which I think is in chronological order, and the list by age?

   The "Pending by age" show/hide are just index points into the main list. The sub-category "AfC pending submissions by age‎" is a true n-days-old category tree. I created both back when Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions was fubar. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 06:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

3. For Category:Declined AfC submissions, is there any way of sorting chronologically? For those people looking for candidates for G13, old declined submissions, how can we go oldest first?

   Again, it would take a bot to sweep through and make a list. Each declined submission will be in one or more "AfC submissions by date/__DATE___" categories. But in reality, the age that counts is the edit history - when was the last edit that might have been for the purpose of improving the article. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 06:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

   1. For the subcategories of this page, is there any way of sorting chronologically?

      See above. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 06:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

4. For Category:Draft AfC submissions, which are sorted chronologically, is there any way of distinguishing those that have never been submitted, from those that have been commented on, but not yet formally reviewed?

   You can see if there are any "afc comment" or any other "afc submission" templates on the page. To be absolutely sure you would need to check ever revision, in case it was submitted or even declined and some joker decided revert the submission and nobody noticed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 06:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

   1. Is there any way of skipping to a particular date?

      Not unless you pre-build your own by-date list. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 06:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

   2. Is there any way of sorting alphabetically?

      Not through normal means, but a bot could create an alphabetical list to work off of.

5. What exactly in included in Category:AfC submissions by date? DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

   Prior to the new system coming into play in 2009(?), mainly lists of articles. These lists are NOT submissions and should be excluded from any G13-deleting. Even after 2009 there are some project-pages that need to be excluded. Look at the category tree structure starting at Category:AfC submissions by date/2012 to get an idea of what things look like in recent years. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 06:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers--I asked to confirm my guess that there was no way of doing directly the things I wanted to do. I see that I was basically right in all of them. But I need to follow up some points about the Category:AfC submissions by date:

(a)I understand about the pre-2009; perhaps they should be separated. But what is the exact cutoff date--is it Sept 1, 2008?

answer - I don't recall, I was away from AFC during that transition. This would have to be researched. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(b) And I understand that some of the later pages are other things than articles.

answer - possibly. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(c) What I do not understand is what is in the later ones: Are they all of them declined submissions? Some of the recent ones seem to never have been submitted, and have tags saying so (eg Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Hi buggy). -

answer - A way to tell is to go through everything in Category:AfC submissions by date and find out what additional categories the page is in. If it's in a dated decline category or a dated draft category AND it is not in a category indicating it is under active review or pending a review, and the most recent non-bot edit is more than, say, a year ago and there are no edits before the cut-off date in (a). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(d) Is the distinction in this category between accepted and unaccepted submission that for accepted submissions the link will be to the article talk page, rather than the WT:AfC/ prefix ?

answer - yes. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(e) Am I right that the best way of identifying the oldest declined submissions is to use this category, start on Sept 1, 2009 and going forward in time? DGG ( talk ) 19:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

answer - It will be a rough approximation and it will depend entirely on what "date" you use to determine age. For the purposes of "being quick about it and don't accidently G13 anything" on the "first pass," I would just use the most recent non-bot edit, knowing I would mislabel many submissions as "newer than a year old" even if they had, for all intents and purposes, been abandoned a lot longer. I imagine a 10-second look (mainly to make sure it really is a draft article) only at every supposedly-declined or -never-submitted submission created after, say, 9/1/2009 whose most recent edit (or most recent non-bot edit) was before a year ago would quickly clear out 90+ % of the submissions that meet the G13 criteria with almost no risk of deleting something erroneously. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Continuing, between my own checking and your help,some of this is resolved, or needs further inquiry:

(a) the key date was Sept 1, 2008, as far as the "submissions by date" categories were determined, though I do not know if this represented the date of submission, date or review, or date of last edit

(c) what is the difference between something being in a dated draft category and something not being submitted at all but being in AfC submissions by date? If something was never submitted how can it be in this category in the first place? Can these possibly be the ones moved by the bot from user talk space?

(e) I do not think that small differences in the dates matter -- there are about the same proportion of problems at 3, 6, and 12 months , by my earlier analysis. What does matter in making mistakes is if the items are rescuable: I find about 3/4, not 9/10, of the items can be clearly rejected as non-rescuable in 5 or 10 seconds, but the remainder take some thinking. I don't know if this means I think more slowly, or think more carefully, but in any case somewhere between 10 and 20% are rescuable--though at least half are not worth the effort.

But the most directly applicable thing I am asking is, in your opinion as perhaps the person who understands this system best, what is the sequence you would recommend for working on the G13s? My own view is to rely on these dated categories, and go systematically from the oldest, which is what we did with unsourced BLPs. I think it important to go in sequence so those few of us who want to rescue can keep up with the checking. DGG ( talk ) 00:00, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

To keep things simple, I would just have a "list-making" script or bot run through the entire AFC submissions category, weed out anything it could detect as an obvious non-submission or accepted submission, filter out a separate list of "things for a human to look at" (e.g. submissions in odd places like WT:name instead of WT:AFC/Name), and create a list of what's left sorted by the date of the last non-bot edit. For ease of keeping track of what has and hasn't been done and avoiding edit conflicts when striking entries, it may be best to have 1 page per day (we get hundreds of submissions per day, probably 60-80% are declined) broken into arbitrary sections of 10-20 each. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:23, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

• I have an unrelated question, but didn't want to open a new topic, so my apologies. Why is it that the userbox doesn't change colours anymore? Is it because the backlog is too high? Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:07, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bruce Poon Tip (2)

Here's another pair of pages needing merging.

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bruce Poon Tip (2) (newer and better)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bruce Poon Tip (older and declined)

—Anne Delong (talk) 12:08, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

On it, hold on...  Done --j⚛e decker^talk 16:12, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Anne and anyone else - If the two pages have completely-non-overlapping page history and the content of the newer is clearly based on the content of the older (vs. two independent submissions) you can just slap a {{histmerge}} template on it. Technically, if the part of the older version that made it to the newer version had only a single editor and that single editor is the one who added the content to the newer version (or, in a typical case, both versions are by the same editor and the only other edits to the old version were AFC-templates and bot edits), there is no legal requirement to do a histmerge but it may still be a good idea. See WP:HISTMERGE for details and how to handle cases where there are overlapping histories. Since I didn't see the pre-merge histories I have no idea if this general advice would have applied to the Bruce Poon Tip submission.

By the way, a very common use for histmerge is when a submission has substantial edits by more than 1 person during AFC, it is declined, then it is "copied and pasted" into the main encyclopedia with our without being cleaned up before the "copy and paste" editor clicks "save." If he just clicks save without cleaning up, these will show up in Category:Possible AfC copy-and-paste moves and be noticed by people who monitor Category:Candidates for history merging. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:58, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks; this was a straightforward case. I'll do that myself next time. —Anne Delong (talk) 07:50, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Scripts and user talk messages for decline/CV

It would be super-helpful if, when an article is declined for copyvio, the offending URL was included somehow in the user's talk page message. Is that possible/easy? The article itself is often soon deleted, and often the deleting admin doesn't note the URL in the speedy deletion log, so often remembering what the claimed copyright source was is a matter of digging up the deleted content. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Strongly endorse as a no-brainer - but I think the AFCH script maintainer is aware of the need for something like this. In the meantime, we can - and with the possible exception of strongly-suspected bad-faith editors (read: spammers copying from a promotional web site) - probably should include the link it is copied from. In the case of spammers, one way to do it is to put the URL of the copyvio on their talk page, then revert it and provide a link to the old revision of their talk page. This will be similar in principle to WP:DENY while still providing the link to the copied URL to both the editor and to any future non-admin editors who are reviewing this editor's edit history. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. I need to remember to go and place the darn thing myself, and your revert idea for the obvious bad-faith folks is sensible too. I've handled three "why are you saying that's a CV" requests this morning alone. While I can do that myself, it's still a hassle for me, and I'm sure it's far more of one for non-admins. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:09, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Note that I said "strongly-suspected bad-faith editors" - unless bad faith is proven, there's always the small hope that the person is just ignorant of what Wikipedia is all about. There is a reason why this award exists - the person who either is ignorant or is actually editing in bad faith today may become a valued contributor later. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:19, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep. My wording is imprecise, but I knew what you meant--I've been almost entirely able to AGF with these folks, copyright requirements are mysterious to most people. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:59, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Followup to self: Known spammers, such as editors blocked and/or banned for spamming after the article was created, don't need any such recognition or encouragement. WP:DENY, WP:DENY, WP:DENY. If creating a record is required and there is no place to do so in "project space" (Wikipedia: or Wikipedia talk:), do what I suggested above re: posting a note on the user's talk page and reverting the edit and replacing it with a pointer, but word it as a message to the Wikipedia community, not as a message tot he editor. Those submitting articles in evasion of a ban can have their submission, copyvio or not, deleted under {{db-g5}} as soon as the evasion/sockpuppetry is confirmed. Again, sometimes creating a non-admin-only history is helpful, and notes to the Wikipedia community on the user's talk page may be a good place for that if the isn't a better place in project space. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:14, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I recently changed {{Afc decline}} so that when a submission is declined as CV it no longer tells them were to find it, and it now informs them it may be deleted. Although, I was thinking that the existing CV param in that template could be changed into a general delete param. This would mean that any submission declined for a reason which makes it delete-able would inform the author of this fact, rather than the previously misleading 'please improve the submission and resubmit it when you feel the concerns have been addressed' spiel. Pol430 talk to me 18:50, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a winner. Also, some "reasons" may warrant deletion only in egregious cases, so making it an actual parameter rather than relying on the deletion-type would be better. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:51, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Just a quick clarification please: Are you folks discussing "copyright violations" or "curriculum vitae" drafts? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:31, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Copyright violations :) Pol430 talk to me 18:07, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello again

Well, with my other current projects crashing and dying around me, I have returned to the beautiful land of wiki. It looks like mabdul has returned, so I'll most likely return to being a developer on the script. I'm going to be going through my talk archives and trying to teach myself the "new and improved" MediaWiki, but if there's anything that occurred during my abscence that I should know about, telling me would be appreciated. Thanks, Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:52, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, it looks like there's mostly new faces around here. For those of you who don't know me, I was a developer on AFCH and am one of the many people responsible for it's reboot a while back. For those who do, hello again! Thanks, Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 03:58, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

• As a relatively new reviewer in the Afc, I say welcome back - we need all the help we can get with the big backlog of submissions! —Anne Delong (talk) 08:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
• Hello there. Nice to meet you! I've seen your name around :) FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:59, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Attribution violation and article history

Looking at declined article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/PSR J0348+0432 was declined because PSR J0348+0432 existed, but doing a diff, it is clear it was a copy-and-paste without proper attribution. So, this shouldn't be a rejection, it should be a history splice.

I think AFC processors should keep this in mind when processing requests which appear to exist in mainspace. Someone may have copied it out of AFC into articlespace, so would require a request to WP:SPLICE to fix it. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:33, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Can someone fix the edit history of this thing? -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

C Submitted a histmerge request. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 03:55, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The article as pasted into mainspace, this version, did not contain any non-trivial edits by anyone other than the unregistered editor who pasted it there. Therefore there was no lack of attribution, missing attribution or incorrect attribution, and I did not see any necessity for a history merge at that time. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 09:59, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done Histmerge peformed by Anthony Appleyard at 08:05 21 May 2013‎ -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 12:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

View Reader Feedback

Is this something new? What's its purpose? I hope it's not an attempt to make Wikipedia more like a social media site.... —Anne Delong (talk) 08:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that too, it's all linked into the WMF. Only they know what possible use can come our of reader feedback on a project talk page... Pol430 talk to me 11:54, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea. I think there is an opt-out category somewhere that you guys can use if you really don't want it. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:26, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I hope someone steps up about this

Over the last couple months I have seen a deluge of new articles from Doncram rolling through the AFC boards. I don't think I have seen a single one be declined which indicates to me that the user knows how to build an article. It seems to me that the Arbcom sanction against the user is complete nonsense at this point and someone should go to Arbcom and tell them enough is enough. To continue to make the user go through AFC is a waste of the users time as well as AFC's. Not to mention that it is leaving a whole lot of unneeded redirects behind when the article is moved to mainspace. I would tell them myself but Arbcom wouldn't believe me if I told them water was wet. It needs to come from someone here. You have better things to do IMO than to continue to create articles for a user who clearly knows how. Kumioko (talk) 20:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, I am not an AfC person and do not follow the stuff going on here. But, taking a quick look at Doncram's submissions, I would certainly agree with you. I do hope someone here takes this to Arbcom, I would support them. Silverseren^C 21:09, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah, so that explains things. I have an alternative suggestion: Someone, preferably someone familiar with the sanctions and the reasons for the sanctions, should ask Doncram to draft articles in his userspace then have that someone review them in batches and tell Doncram "okay, these ones are ready, these are not". I think Arbcom would "speedy-approve" modification to his sanctions to allow Doncram to move already-reviewed articles into mainspace on his own and db-user-tagging the leftover redirect by himself. This would serve two purposes: 1) it would free up WP:AFC, 2) it would serve as a stepping-stone to the sanction eventually being lifted completely. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:58, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

He can't. It was specifically stipulated in his sanction that he had to go through AFC. As one of the people that thought the sanction was stupid in the first place and given my critique of Arbcom I am not the right person to do that. It would really mean more coming from someone that is active at AFC. Kumioko (talk) 03:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

That's not correct, as Davidwr indicates next. There was one editor arguing in the arbcom case that I should have to submit through AFC, and I happened to think that would not work, but the experience here I thought was proving otherwise (i.e. that the AFC process was not terribly burdensome for anyone, because there are supporting tools, etc.)--doncram 09:57, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Information: See User_talk:Doncram/Archive 22#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Doncram closed for details. Specifically, he is not required to go through WP:AFC. To quote from the ruling:

He may create new content pages in his user space, at Articles for Creation, in a sandbox area within a WikiProject's area, or in similar areas outside of article space. Such pages may only be moved to article space by other users after review. This restriction may be appealed to the Committee after one year.

What this means is we will be stuck with some other editor doing the WP:MOVE but we don't have to do all the other AFC stuff and he can do the "db-user" maintenance himself. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Recommendation: Ask Doncram to recruit a couple of "personal reviewers" and have him create new material as subpages of User:Doncram and a custom "administrative" category like Category:Submissions by Doncram ready for review or whatever and leave it between him and his "personal reviewers" how to manage those submissions, independent of the AFC process. If his reviewers have to go on vacation or get burned out or whatever, Doncram can ask here at WT:WPAFC or elsewhere on Wikipedia for other editors to take up the slack. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:22, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, i didn't ask for this. Kumioko means well, I fully understand, but I have been happy to benefit from the AFC pool of reviewers' willingness to consider the articles that I've been drafting. I was hoping/believing that it is not too much burden on the AFC process, to have a small supply of valid articles coming through.

One possible indirect benefit from this for the AFC process is some info about false negatives. There are AFC reviewers occasionally rejecting valid topics, and this could possibly be used in feedback. I don't want to push that, though; overall I have found the AFC process to be quite good and probably quite useful for the target population of new editors.

I am just wanting to continue developing content, without drama. I have been enjoying not having the drama caused, IMO, by persons I experienced as really nasty violators of wikipedia policies on wp:harassment and otherwise. The arbcom did not fully agree with my view of these people, but they have not been much present since, and the AFC process has been helpful in holding them off, i believe. I am grateful to the AFC reviewers. --doncram 09:57, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

While your points are all valid, we have to balance this against the backlog and the impacts a "full AFC review" of your articles is having on other submitters in terms of delays, etc., and in terms if reviewers in terms of having only so many minutes - or if we are lucky - hours - a day to devote to Wikipedia. A shorter "speedy approve" process for your contributes needs to be put in place. Whether that is within AFC or outside of AFC, it needs to be just slow enough to decline the occasional contribution that is not obviously ready for prime time (I'm assuming that, being human, some small percentage of your contributions should be looked at for more than 30 seconds). Technican13's "adopter" recommendation is a good one. Perhaps someone who has already been approving many of your articles here will be willing to take on that role. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• Can someone link me to the arbcom discussion and agreement for doncram? I would like to review it and have some background before I offer any thoughts or opinions or make any attempts to discuss this with Tony and/or another arbcom member. Thank you. Technical 13 (talk) 11:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Nevermind, I found it myself at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Doncram. Technical 13 (talk) 11:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
• Recommendation: Okay, so I have read through "most" of that arbcom case and the associated talk pages and the warning after the fact. I noticed some names in the list of administrators involved that I consider to be fair and I noticed a couple that I consider to be bullies of sorts. I've read the restriction from creating articles directly in and my recommendation is this. Don, you obviously seem to know how to make a decent article and most of the purpose of the arbcom case had to do more with your abilities to communicate with other Wikipedians in a constructive manner. So, my recommendation on this matter is for you to get yourself an adopter to review all of your drafts that you can create in your userspace using {{Userspace draft}}. This way you can create articles at your own pace and not have to wait for us to review them with our currently lengthy backlog and it will be a couple less articles that we will have in our backlog to review. Happy editing! Technical 13 (talk) 13:13, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
• I present my decline of a Doncram NHRP submission. Just because it was approved shortly thereafter (because the decline was on the grounds of needing to meet the multiple-independent standard) doesn't mean that the restriction and AfC review process is working. I think these articles should be reviewed more carefully than the garden variety AfC for the reasons enumerated in the Arbitration. Hasteur (talk) 19:02, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a tangent: I don't want to argue, Hasteur, but I happen to believe the Inyo County Courthouse article met wikipedia standards at the time of your decline. As an NRHP article it was of a basic, well-established-as-wikipedia-notable type. Nonetheless I did appreciate the good faith of your comment and took steps to address your comment. These edits by me improved that article. And likewise I appreciated consideration of various others who have commented upon or declined a few other AFC submissions, and I tried to respond to them too. I was/am willing to try to meet any reasonable standard an AFC reviewer wants to suggest, although I do note that those individual standards seem to vary. Thanks. --doncram 19:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

The main thing I wanted to see was some referencing outside the NRHP reference set as from what I could tell there has been concern that the articles that were created based on NRHP data extracts were being questioned at their quality. The article may have met the bare minimum level of necessity, but because you have been taken to task regarding the quality of your creations, it was not unreasonable to try and hold you to a higher standard in terms of creation and adherance to wikipedia's Guidelines and principles. Hasteur (talk) 01:46, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I certainly accept that there were probably a few decline/resubmits in the group but I do not agree that the process should be harder because he had an Arbcom sanction. The process is the process so if the article is correct according to that process then we shouldn't be looking for extra reasons to fail the article. I do agree that its better with extra references but it has been previously determined that the vast majority of items on the NHRP lists are notable so it shouldn't matter much if that is the only reference given. Its a stub to get the article started and there is no requirement for it to be a start, B, C or FA class article upon submission. Anyway, I really don't have a dog in the fight to use a Michael Vick term. I don't actively work on AFC and I don't personally care if all his submissions go through AFC because its not my time being wasted. If I were an active AFC reviewer though and someonen thrust a large increase of workload on me I would be annoyed and would speak up. If it doesn't bother you all then that's fine by me. I just wanted to mention it and I leave it up to you folks to decide. Kumioko (talk) 19:17, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• Response Given a couple suggestions here that my contributions are seeming perhaps to be a burden to AFC process (not sure this is a consensus, but perhaps this is implied from davidwr and Technical 13's comments), i'll stop submitting via AFC for a while at least, and try to work something else out. If there are no objections, I may submit a few more to AFC in the future, to gauge the AFC review process's views, on some different kinds of articles. Also, I would myself volunteer to do some AFC reviewing, but find that I am not allowed to do so. You folks are doing a great job. Thanks for your help. --doncram 19:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Doncram please don't take my comments as you needing to stop submitting. By all means keep going. My point is that Arbcom levied an unnecessary burden no AFC and then ran off. They do not participate here so they weren't taking responsibility for their actions. They were just making work for other people. If AFC was declining a % of your submissions I would say they were right. Since AFC seems to be approving 100% of your submissions, even though there is an occassional adjustment requested, it gives me and I think others the impression that for you to continue to submit through AFC is a waste of this projects time and yours. If the AFC folks don't care and want to continue playing middle man that's fine by me. I just think its a waste of time and I wanted to leave them a note that they should address the issue with Arbcom because the AFC folks comments woudl mean more than you or I. It was a bad decision from the beginning and time and a whole lot of submissions by you has proven that. I do not think you need to stop creating content though. We need content creators to create content, not make it so hard for them they give up in frustration. Kumioko (talk) 20:28, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

  For what it's worth, I'd say 100% of this editor's articles are of quality. There is, perhaps, a certain irony to the fact that his articles may end up being reviewed by a far less experienced editor... Basket _Feudalist 20:03, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

@Doncram, I'd be happy to act as a pseudo-personal reviewer for your submissions. If you'd like to carry on submitting drafts into the AfC namespace, but leave the AFC template off (I.e. don't actually submit it). Instead add Category:Submissions by Doncram ready for review to the bottom of the page when you are ready for them to be reviewed. I'll keep checking the category and review them, moving the page and tagging any redundant redirects for deletion. As far as I'm aware, this method is in-keeping with your Arbcom sanctions. Pol430 talk to me 18:39, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Don, I wan to make one thing very clear. I do not consider your submissions to be invaluable or a burden, I'm just thinking that you would be better served having your own personal adopter/reviewer than having to wait weeks for us to get around to reviewing your stuff. Technical 13 (talk) 19:26, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Also, why should Wikipedia readers have to wait 2 weeks for something that has a nearly-100% chance of being approved with no or minimal change? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:32, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Well it sounds like Pol430 has stepped up to act as an intermediary for Doncram although I still think its silly and an unnecessary waste of time. Kumioko (talk) 02:44, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, all, for your concern and suggestions. I did start up with the category as suggested, and there are currently 10 articles drafted by me, there (and a continuously updating current number is: 0 articles in Category:Submissions by Doncram ready for review). Thanks Davidwr for processing a batch already. I don't fully understand how much burden there is in using the AFC process, as it depends on the use of tools that I am not fully familiar with, but I do hope this alternative process saves some steps. The timeliness of review is not all that important to me, although it is nice to get quicker response, if only so that my contributions show up in a weekly "progress" map of NRHP articles that seems to be coming out each Friday now. It would be great if anyone cared to address these 10, today, but again it doesn't really matter. Thanks again, all. --doncram 09:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done Pol430 talk to me 16:06, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm also glad that people stepped up to create a workaround to get around Arbcom's bad decision. I still think that someone from AFC should discuss the issue with Arbcom but on the flip side after seeing how Arbcom works they would probably ban Doncram from editing at all of AFC didn't want to review the edits. Kumioko (talk) 10:00, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes they're good at that aren't they Basket _Feudalist 10:13, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately yes, they are. Kumioko (talk) 10:18, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Again, if anyone would like to review items in Category:Submissions by Doncram ready for review, with 17 items currently, i'd be grateful. It's silly, but there's a Friday deadline for articles to be covered in an NRHP "progress" map update, although again really that doesn't matter and there really is no urgency. Anyhow, I was gonna ping Pol430 but see mention by P of going on vacation for a week. There's actually a fair amount of administrative overhead in running a different, "fast-track" custom process, like this activity of posting to seek attention of reviewers, I am noticing.... --doncram 18:18, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Incubation and userfication conversion to AfC

Since a lot of people do begin creating articles that end up getting deleted, a lot of hard work gets lost. Can we get an ongoing monitoring of deleted things to see if they can be userfied, or even incubated into an AfC process? Ranze (talk) 19:28, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

What's impediments stand in the way of you doing that monitoring? --j⚛e decker^talk 19:42, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think an article can be rescued by AfC if it was deleted -and not even merged to another article, userfied or incubated, all of which are amongst the possible outcomes of AfD- as a result of an AfD discussion. Nimuaq (talk) 21:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The only way of monitoring deleted articles in general is to become an admin and patrol the deletion log. In fact, I originally asked for the buttons primarily in order to do that: See my answer to Question 1 at my RfA. In practice, this is so difficult that I only check if I see someone deleting inappropriately. But what anyone can do is check old AfDs. If the search function is used, and the search specified to include WP space, the AfDs will appear, & it is usually possible to figure out from the discussion the likelihood of an article. Many admins, including myself, will undelete a AfD'd article for someone to work on further, if we think they're in good faith and there is no insuperable problem like copyvio. Even in such cases, I'll look at it and tell you my opinion of whether a new article is likely. DGG ( talk ) 17:35, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

IE 10 won't let the review script run

This computer's browser has just upgraded from IE9 to IE10 - now the review script doesn't run. I don't have the option of using a different browser as it's not my own PC. Is there a setting I need to change? I don't remember what advanced setting were changed from the defaults when it ran IE9. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:19, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried it in compatibility mode? Disclaimer: I use a different browser. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:03, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Please WP:BYPASS your browser's cache if you use the beta script. That was actually a bug.

If you don't use the beta script, would you send me our error log/the output of the error console? (either by mail or paste it here). If you need any help how to do this, I will add tomorrow an explanation (just having no windows computer around here atm). mabdul 21:08, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

How do I know if I'm using the beta script or the "not beta" script? In compatibility mode it sort of works but there are other page elements overlapping the script buttons (such as the review submission template) until I click one of the buttons then the review template shifts down. When not in compatibility mode clicking on "Review" in the pull-down menu results in absolutely nothing happening - no error message, no "console", nothing. I've re-installed Java from scratch - the latest version of course and rebooted. The only custom security setting I've changed is to allow cross site scripting as I remembered that prevented toolserver stuff from working. It's bedtime for me, thanks for giving this attention. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I checked your JavaScript files and don't see any beta script by me, so you are using the "gadget version".

BTW: JavaScript is not the same as Java!

Press F12 on any submission, reload the page and then check the comments in red on the right side. There is a warning about colors, for the case you use https://en.wiki.... there are two warnings about something be not "secure"... and finally a broken script "SCRIPT16388". Click on review. hopefully no more problems are listed.

At the moment I don't know what cases your problems as my IE10 installation just works fine at work... mabdul 05:21, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Problem solved! This morning our IT support geeks have declared IE10 "prohibited malware" (together with it's evil big brother Win8) - so we've all got IE9 back. Apparently they were flooded with support requests after the "upgrade" went through the whole network like the black death. The planet has been returned to its proper orbit... all is calm and bright. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:25, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, if the script is indeed blowing up on IE10, we need to do a bit more testing with it. I personally am running Firefox 20 right now (Don't. Mention. Chrome.), but I'll add it to the dev sheet. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:55, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Chrome. But what's wrong with it? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:16, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I have IE10 on Win7 64bit at work and everything works fine. I can't reproduce the problem. What does the error console mention? mabdul 21:38, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Multiple decline reasons at once

If we could provide multiple decline reasons in reviews, instead of only one, we might be able to shorten the AfC process. Certain decline reasons often occur together such as essay-like tone, poor sourcing, notability, etc. If it were possible to provide up to three different reasons for declining a draft at a single review the writer might be able to deal with all of them instead of being "sent back" multiple times for problems that could have been fixed simultaneously. There are of course certain decline reasons that are not suitable for combining - if a draft has copyvios then tone is unimportant. "Killing two (or three) birds with one stone", while taking care not to overwhelm the draft writer with a long list of issues, might help to considerably reduce frustration, shorten the time a draft spends here, and thus help reduce the backlog too! I'm thinking of something similar to the way maintenance tags are combined into a single "multiple issues" template. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:45, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I think this is what the "AFC Comment" template is for - to allow ou to bring up further issues. I do think this may help, however. Mdann52 (talk) 12:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I've not spent much time actually reviewing yet (still waiting on that academy or until a time when I've developed enough understanding of the guidelines myself whereas I feel comfortable); however, why not just tag the article with multiple issues using {{Multiple issues}} in a comment? Technical 13 (talk) 12:27, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Because we then get a bollocking from other users for using categories in AFC space :D Mdann52 (talk) 12:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I was under the impression that all of those templates had some kind of |nocat=true option, is this not the case? ShCould one not be added fairly easily? Technical 13 (talk) 13:24, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Anyone can write a custom decline rationale using the custom option and I think this looks neater than adding comments-- it's also more economical as it requires less mouse clicks. The templated reasons only exist because they are quicker to employ than writing a custom reason. I think what Roger is asking is: is it technically possible to use the AfC submission template to allow the use of multiple templated decline reasons? Yes or no? And why? Pol430 talk to me 13:54, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is technically possible to expand the template to use multiple reasons. I just question is it really worth the amount of time it would take to re-invent the wheel. You can just as easily use {{Multiple issues}} inside of a custom decline rationale, and if those templates do not currently employ a {{{nocat}}} option, I would be more inclined to spend my time adding that functionality to those templates (which would be a fairly simple add) compared to almost entirely re-writing the {{AFC submission}} template. Technical 13 (talk) 14:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

This gets asked every few months. There is a custom decline message option hidden in the code of the script. To use it, choose "Select a decline message" and type your decline message in the comment. It will appear in the main template. This was hidden because new users were declining without linking to relevant policies, so be careful when using this. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 17:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

the reason this gets asked for every few months is because it is very badly needed. Most new AfC reviewers use only the prebuilt reasons. The lack of it is so limiting, that i never use the preset decline reasons except for the sort of patently bad articles where nothing further is needed. My experience both at AfC and at NPP is that most of the time multiple decline reasons do apply. At WT:CSD we very strongly encourage people to use as many reason as applicable--it provides clearer guidance and decreases arguments-- promotionalism and lack of notability very often go together -- and copyvio and promotionalism often as well. Explaining that all of these are problems will tend to prevent the sort of repeated submissions that do not fully fix the problems.

I think we want to encourage people to use multiple reasons. i think we want to encourage people to add custom comments. I think we want to discourage people from just picking a generic reason from a list and letting it go at that. (In fact, i would urge them very strongly to say specificallywhat is wrong, but that's for a later discussion here.) That someone can do something manually is not a reason to avoid programming it. It's a common fallacy among the experienced to think everyone else is also. As for the difficulty of rewriting, Huggle seems to deal with this very well indeed. DGG ( talk ) 17:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I routinely use the fill-in-the-blank to add an AFC comment when declining with a canned decline reason. It would be nice if I had a way to add comments directly to one of the canned decline reasons though. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:46, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

AFC version of Multiple Issues

I would propose an "AFC" version of {{Multiple issues}}, call it {{AFC multiple issues}}, and making sure that all of the cleanup templates we might use have a "nocat" or "cat=no" parameter. If some cleanup templates already have a common way of disabling parameters, it would best to use it for all of them for consistency.

The reason to have an "afc" rather than just a "nocat" version is we would want to add a red-flag warning if it was still on the article after it was moved to article space. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:31, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused why it would still be on the article after a move to * space... I'm also confused as to why it would matter. Technical 13 (talk) 18:37, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Let's say we added {{AFC multiple issues}}|1={{notability|bio|date=May 2013}}}}. When in AFC space, this should have the effect of transcluding {{notability|bio|nocat|date=May 2013}} (or it would, if {{notability}} had a "nocat" parameter, which it doesn't, yet). After being moved, this should have the effect of putting up a big red banner and transcluding {{notability|bio|date=May 2013}}. If the article were moved by hand or by a non-"AFC multiple-issues-aware" version of the script, the big red warning would be noticed by the first person to see the article an they would fix it up manually. If it were moved by an "AFC multiple-issues-aware" version of the script, the script would make them choose between stripping the template or converting it to a normal "multiple issues" template. The stripping option is for issues which need to be fixed but which should not prevent acceptance - thinks like copyedit, reference style (where notability wasn't also an issue), dead-end, underlinked, etc. etc. etc. We might even have two versions of this, {{AFC blocking issues}} and {{AFC non-blocking-issues}}. The post-move big-red-banner on {{AFC blocking issues}} would state in no uncertain terms that this was moved from AFC before it was ready to become an article and that it should be moved back for further review. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:42, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I like some parts of that idea david, but I think that you are overthinking this somewhat. I'll wait to hear what someother people think before I say to much more as to not muddy the waters too much. :) Technical 13 (talk) 19:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I also think this is perhaps a little too complicated--and too pre-emptory, See my comment below in the next section. In mainspace, the notability tag is used not just for things we think non-notable, but for things we others to look at and consider the possibility. DGG ( talk ) 17:12, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Newsletter

What happened to the AFC newsletter? I know the person working on it stepped down, but is the idea gone? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 01:40, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I didn't know it existed, actually. I'd be happy to help you in that regard, although I only know how to write plain old English. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:06, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Plain old English? I hope that's easier to read than plain Old English. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:23, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I would be very interested in receiving an AFC newsletter. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 09:14, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Libertad Green

Dear reviewers:

This article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Libertad Green was started in November, submitted in December and declined because there was an existing article Libertad Green. The mainspace article was then deleted in January.

The text from the draft was then cut and pasted piece by piece to a sandbox, edited in January, deleted and recreate in April and submitted again. I moved it to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Libertad Green (2) , where is was declined by Huon.

Now the text has been copied again into the sandbox and resubmitted at User:Vaughanster/sandbox.

Is there any way to get the history all back together again? There's so much duplication. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:48, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

If the original draft text was all written by Vaughanster and has now been resubmitted by that same user, then the attribution is correct so nothing further is required. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 09:12, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Go ahead and move it to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Libertad Green (3) or some such and add an AFC comment pointing to the previous versions and state that since they were all by the same person no WP:HISTMERGE is needed. Also educate the user that all he has to to in order to resubmit and article is click on the "click here" in the pink box, but either the submission must be radically improved or some other change, such as a completely-different existing article in mainspace was deleted, must happen or the submission will be summarily rejected. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:38, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Bug in the Afc warnings

Dear reviewers:

I was reviewing this page: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Penelope Whetton and I was warned that there was no reflist. Actually, though, there was one, although the syntax was Reflist|30em. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:05, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I will fix that message and similar ones hopefully on that longer weekend. mabdul 09:57, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Ahh... Found the related discussion... That should be an easy fix... Change the search to /\{\{Reflist(.*?)\}\}/i I'll plug it into my copy of the script on test and see if that works as I suspect. Technical 13 (talk) 11:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done Added the (.*?) to your copy after testing it with mine mabdul. Technical 13 (talk) 11:44, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Bad idea, I will show later (today) some falsepositives etc. and a better solution. Regards, mabdul 12:09, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I look forward to seeing that. I'm unclear as to what would be in between {{reflist and the closing }} that would be a false positive. Technical 13 (talk) 12:19, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know regex, but it seems like we need entries for {{reflist}}, {{Reflist}}, {{reflist*, {{Reflist*, and <references>. Looks like this might be a good first hacking project since my return. I'll mess with it. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 23:08, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(?:\{\{[^\{\}]*\}\}|[^\}\{])* is better than (.?) because (.?) is also detecting {{reflist}} bla la li lo (stuff) {{navtemplate}}"endofpage".

Bug should be fixed in the beta script as can be seen at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox :-) mabdul 20:24, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

That's not my understanding mabdul (talk · contribs)... /\{\{Reflist(.*?)\}\}/i says look for only the stuff in between {{Reflist and the first set of }}. See: ReGex#Lazy quantification and this related article from ITworld.
What I actually use on AWB is /(<|\{\{)/?ref(erences?|list)?\|? ?(.*?)( ?/?>|\}\})(</?references? ?(.*?) ?/?>)?/i and replace with {{Reflist{{SUBST:#ifeq:$10|||{{SUBST:!}}}}$10}} which actually finds all of the cases (and then some) that Nathan2055 mentions above in one shot. Technical 13 (talk) 12:24, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Imagine: {{Reflist|refs=<ref name="test">{{Cite web ... bla bla}}</ref>}}... mabdul 13:33, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll admit I've never seen refs inside of a reflist like that... I might need to adjust my regex a bit for that edge case (I had not make my last adjustment for a <references></references>, which I've still only seen on that one page out of thousands). Technical 13 (talk) 13:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader is an example for a rather seldom but recent submission which uses that kind of neat feature. mabdul 14:18, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The forms {{reflist|refs=<ref>...</ref>}} and <references><ref>...</ref></references> are list-defined references. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:04, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Leftover redirects

Sorry if this has been brought up before but I think we might want to consider addressing the leftovers from the Article creation process. There are a lot of redirects being left behind when an article is created and rather than delete them through the MFD process I think it would be beneficial to either CSD them or perhaps even have a bot setup that would auto delete the leftover redirect once the article has been moved. Any thoughts? Kumioko (talk) 01:14, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Any deletion would require making sure all incoming links were fixed up first so they don't turn red. How harmful is it to the project to leave all these redirects around? Is there any good to leaving them around? I can think of some obvious good: 1) User-talk-page links that aren't fixed up will still work, and 2) The presence of the redirect, or at least the fact that a redirect once existed, is useful statistical information. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:48, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok I think that since the AFC banner is on the talk pages of the articles themselves that offers a good statistical metric of how many are done. In the case of the first if the article is accepted it doesn't leave a link to the redirect as far as I can tell. It may have in the past I'm not sure. Kumioko (talk) 02:56, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Fixups are required (or not, if a redlink is desirable) where there were re-submissions, or where there was back-and-forth chat about the submission on various talk pages and the submission was wikilinked. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:17, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

That's fair and I think that would be fine. I think even if we only delete the ones that do not have any links at all that would be a great start. I looked through a bunch of the ones for User:Doncram and I don't see any links on those. I also looked through a bunch of others at random and I only found one with a link and that was to a discussion here on this talk page (now archived). Of course there are certainly others. Kumioko (talk) 13:23, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I can't see any real reason to delete them tbh. Redirects are cheap, deleting them doesn't free up any space in the database, and their presence helps to prevent the creation of duplicate topics (assuming the submission was created with a sensible subject-related title). Pol430 talk to me 16:10, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Bad idea. I suggested this in the past and I was told that this is used for statistical measurements. I vote to keep. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 23:06, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any benefit to keeping hundreds of thousands of redirects around and think this would be a perfect job for a bot to go through and update all of the pages linking to the redirect and then tag the redirect that redirects no-where for deletion or maybe even just deletes it after a trial run of just tagging and ensure that all of the other stuff is working correctly. Technical 13 (talk) 12:29, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Any news?

On the "user does not exist" message? Thank you mabdul for fixing the nexus issue (and the userbox one, I think). And today I've reviewed several submissions that got stuck in the "editing" bit. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

"user does not exist"? Never heard of (o.O) Or do you mean the problem of renamed users? I still hadn't the time to check how to access the JQuery answer determine if there isn't a rename (so that there isn't any JQuery object). mabdul 21:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

"got stuck in the "editing" bit. " Uhm, interesting, I wasn't aware that this is a problem as I have commented out the "redirect check" (the renamed user check).

Next time you get stuck, please try to analyze the problem why this happens. I fear it is "again" a problem with the AutoEd integration. mabdul 21:46, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I know nothing about the software intricacies that riddle Wikipedia, so I'm unsure about how to be more detailed. I mentioned a while back that when I decline reviews, when it notifies the author, the script shows red text stating "user does not exist", and then continues with the following steps. However, I did notice that the user is indeed notified. Today, I had about 3 reviews when the script got stuck at the "editing" step, but after refreshing the page and declining again, everything was fine. I'm not too worried, and I'm sorry I can't be more specific, just thought I'd mention these things. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 22:01, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Aahhh. Oh sorry for the confusion. See my edit in the beta script here: Actually only the page doesn't exists (and thus getting created). This is more as a general information for the reviewer. I hope by this new wording the confusion is resolved. mabdul 22:16, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

The part about not existing may be this: The script wants to send a notification to the user's talk page about the declination, but first it checks to see if the page exists. If it doesn't, it rightly reports "User talk XXX does not exist", then creates it and leaves the notification. However, I too tried to decline an article recently and the script never got as far as the "reload the page" link which usually appears. When I tried again, it worked fine. This hasn't happened before. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:46, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

• Today I had the script crash when I clicked on review in several instances. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:22, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
  • What means crash? A browser crash? Nothing happens?
  • Related to the "stuck and lost in edit" bug: I change a bit and requesting every time a token. Hopefully this fixes that particular problem, although this adds more API calls (means more requests to the server). mabdul 21:49, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks for that. When I click "Review" the particular tab used freezes. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 22:33, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
      •  Fixed I believe Nathan found the bug: it happened at least at pages which didn't contain any {{reflist}} nor any <references /> tag. mabdul 01:18, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Peer review requested for how I handled a disruptive editor

Peer review requested for how I handled a disruptive editor Part 1

I would like a review of my conduct by my AFC reviewing peers in regards to blanking submissions by NyGuha (talk · contribs) (Vandalism noticeboard) which I reviewed. I admit, when I went through these after the editor confirmed his lack of good faith, I was actively looking for an excuse to get his submitted content out of public view. I was actually surprised I was able to do so for each non-speedily-deleted submission that I reviewed, I expected to have to leave one or two visible.

See also #TheWikipreditor above, where I blanked some contributions for being near- or possibly meeting-CSD-criteria. Unlike with this editor, those blankings were clear policy violations.

If there is no general agreement that the blanking was justified, I will not revert anyone restoring the content. I do ask that you leave any comments I added in place though (i.e. don't simply "undo" my blanking-edit without checking to see if that's all the edit did). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:12, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I just looked over your actions and it seems like nothing you did was out for the ordinary for a BLP, which Wikipedia is legally liable for. Shii (tock) 04:30, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I have not reviewed every single article, but I've seen enough. I support your actions. --j⚛e decker^talk 05:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Shii, I would contest the assertion that Wikipedia are legally liable for BLP articles, and I imagine they might too. See, inter alia, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Peer review requested for how I handled a disruptive editor Part 2

Is it something we should regularly and retroactively do for submissions by submitters who have demonstrated they were acting in bad faith and where the submission has problems that would allow for blanking if we were specifically "looking for an excuse" to blank it? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:12, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Bad faith submissions just shouldn't be visible, IMO. There's no telling what errors might be in the article. Shii (tock) 04:30, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

For examples this egregious, I'd say yes. --j⚛e decker^talk 05:05, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

If it's a attack submission it must be blanked. Non-negotiable. If it's a negative-BLP with no sourcing (or very shaky sourcing) take a look at the author's other contributions to see if there's a SPA style attack going on. If it's a unsourced-BLP, look at the editor's other contributions to see if they need assistance with bringing the submission up to code.

TL:DR: Attacks: Blank NOW. Negative BLP: Look at other contributions of the author but lean to blanking. Unsourced BLP: Look, but lean to assist authorHasteur (talk) 15:35, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Attack pages and wholly negative unsourced BLPs are better off deleted -- we have CSD criteria that apply to such pages in any namespace (g10). These types of pages come with legal considerations and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they would be unblanked and the offending content restored -- personally I don't watchlist pages I review, but I do watchlist pages I tag for speedy deletion. Of course, even a deleted page can be recreated but this tends to show up more readily than unblanking a page. Pol430 talk to me 18:05, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Pol430, Such pages should not be left in AfC or anywhere else. On encountering them, whether in new or old submissions, nominate for CSD. In principle , one could blank, but the response time for deleting them is very short, often just one or two minutes. DGG ( talk ) 18:03, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Peer review requested for how I handled a disruptive editor Part 3

Joe Decker:

You reviewed two submissions by this editor, this and this. If the community endorses my actions above, you may want to consider doing the same, assuming the contributor left you a good reason to do so. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:12, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Both blanked for the moment, I won't object if anyone wishes to CSD either or both. --j⚛e decker^talk 05:02, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

on the face of them, I do not see that they meet any csd criterion. If they were in mainspace I would AfD. Perhaps the best course is MfD. DGG ( talk ) 18:05, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

FYI, NyGuha is a reincarnation of User:Nickaang. Please see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nickaang. --B (talk) 01:20, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Hobbsgal's submissions of Canadian Visual Artists

I have asked the good folks over at WikiProject Canada to help judge the notability of the visual-artist biographies submitted by Hobbsgal (talk · contribs). Please see Wikipedia talk:Canadian_Wikipedians' notice board#Need a reviewer who knows Canadian artists if you are interested. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:16, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup on aisle 3

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Nickaang just revealed some new socks that were active in WP:AFC, including:

• TheWikipreditor (talk · contribs)
• Voidz (talk · contribs)

Expect to see submissions after May 6, 2013 go *poof* and editors get blocked in the next few days.

In addition to one that I tagged for speedy deletion as blatant advertising, the following non-AFC-submission-tagged pages were created in WT:AFC or WP:AFC. It's getting late and I'm letting them sit there but it might be worth submitting-declining-blanking or submitting-declining just so they will be G13-eligible when they get to be a year old (or is it 6 months now, I forget).

• Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Inartmedia (Voidz, Feb. 5 2013)
• Wikipedia:Articles for creation/The Wrong Guys for the Job (Voidz, Feb. 7 2013)
• Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Matthew Tibbenham (Voidz, Feb. 7, 2013)
• Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Bachelors Abroad (Voidz, Feb. 9, 2013)

Remember, just because a sockpuppet or puppet-master wrote it doesn't mean the subject itself isn't notable. Heck, some of these may actually be salvageable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:52, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

• I'm actually under the impression that it doesn't matter if the articles are salvageable, they are to be tagged as G5 as created by a banned editor/spa and deleted. Technical 13 (talk) 11:41, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
  • The individual was not banned until earlier this month, G5 wouldn't apply to things written in February. For unpublished AFC creations, though, unless there is something that passes notability with flying colors, though, I'd be perfectly fine with deleting it. His behavior should not be rewarded. --B (talk) 16:13, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Actually, if I may revise my remarks for a moment, I'd just introduced evidence at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nickaang that Nickaang = Meanie. Meanie was blocked on January 3, 2013, meaning that, if my conclusion is correct, all of their contributions since that date should be deleted or rolled back. --B (talk) 16:59, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

A helpful custom decline template

Every now and then I run across a submission where the person either 1) may be notable but I can't tell, or 2) isn't notable but I am looking for a "kind" way to get the submitter to read the notability requirements and realize this himself.

I use this as a starting point, feel free to use it or make your own copy: User:Davidwr/AFCDecline. I've found that subst'd it ({{subst:User:Davidwr/AFCDecline}}) as the "decline reason" then going back and editing the decline reason is the most common way I use it.

Enjoy. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:26, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Anyone have any Russian?

It appears to me that Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Flat irons museum is a pretty direct translation of ru:Музей_утюга, which raises a couple questions, first, do we have any obligation to note that in the history/talk page for attribution--second, the references are ... umm, probably valid, but I lacking Russian or much to go on there, it's a little beyond me to do any validity checking. Thoughts on this one? --j⚛e decker^talk 17:38, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

• There are templates available for use on talk pages to show that __X__ version of the English article was a translation of __Y__ version of the __LANGUAGE__ article. I don't have time now to check but they are there. As for checking non-English references, Google Translate is your friend. Remember, in Soviet Russia, website translates YOU! davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:21, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Translate's crap. this page was meant to solve these issues, but there was no quorum. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:18, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, I've had varying luck with it on different languages (try it on Thai sometime, it's hilarious), but in this case, the references themselves don't give enough information to likely be verifiable without additional effort.

  ↑ 1 2 Gold Ring, 2002, June 25.
  ↑ 1 2 Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 2004, April 12.
  ↑ 1 2 3 Yuri Muscovites. Private value / / Kommersant-Money. March 15, 2004.
  ↑ 1 2 Trading newspaper. June 30, 2006.
  ↑ 1 2 3 4 The secret of the firm. June 23, 2008.
  ↑ worker. August 30, 2007.
  ↑ 1 2 Vremya MN, February 6, 2003.
  ↑ Russian newspaper. July 26, 2002.
  ↑ Peasant, in May 2006. 
  ↑ Forum "Autotravel on Russia"
  ↑ Moskovsky Komsomolets. July 24, 2004.
  ↑ New news. July 27, 2011.
  ↑ Russian Century, December 2008.

No links, no page numbers, article titles, etc. Now, some of those could probably be put back together someone who could navigate Google and Russian sources, but that's not me. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:32, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I found the apporpriate template should this get promoted. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

It's been my experience that Google Translate is not "your friend," unless you like poorly done translations. — Wyliepedia 11:03, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Mermaids

Do you know if mermaids and mermen are real — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.59.76.26 (talk) 05:16, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

It would be better to ask your question at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science. Our article mermaid says they are legendary. That means they are told about in stories but they are not real. Unfortunately "legendary" can also be used to mean "really famous" but that is not the way the word is being used here. Wiktionary tells you more about the word "legendary", wiktionary:legendary. Thincat (talk) 09:13, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Mermaids can be found on the planet Golos Prime in the Clevari system. --B (talk) 15:21, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Template glitch

"This may take up to a week. The articles for creation process is highly backlogged. Please be patient. There are Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character ",". submissions waiting for review." is currently showing on every submission template. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:48, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. — Earwig ^talk 19:25, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Life of a Craphead

This article Life of a Craphead which was just accepted has been nominated for deletion. Please weigh in. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:33, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Tool request

I would love to have a tool that identified likely-first-party and likely-non-reliable sources and added an AFC comment to the submission and posted a note on the user's talk page alerting him to the results.

Note that "first party" sources like an official web page may be reliable as references for specific facts, but some sources like blogs and Wikipedia itself are not even reliable in that sense.

Bonus points if the tool separately flags any source which has any word in the submission's title in it in the author, title, or URL. These are frequently first-party sources. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:18, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Invalid page name problem

I had a go at moving Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The to the correct title "The #1s".but the #-character is not allowed in page names. Is there a workaround? Unfortunately the draft doesn't spell out wether the subject is known as "the number ones" or "the hash ones" so that makes deciding on an alternative way of writing the name difficult. (The # character has too many different names!) Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:44, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I moved the page to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The No.1s. If it gets accepted, the reviewer can add an displaytitle. mabdul 15:16, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually according to WP:Technical restrictions#Forbidden characters, they can't use DISPLAYTITLE but they should use {{Correct title|The #1s|reason=#}} as a hatnote. Technical 13 (talk) 15:36, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

What does Major mean in Music terms? I've tried Googling it and nothing comes up, I look it up in the dictionary and it talks about the Military, as well as Wikipedia. Can someone tell me what it means please?

What does Major mean in Music terms? I've tried Googling it and nothing comes up, I look it up in the dictionary and it talks about the Military, as well as Wikipedia. Can someone tell me what it means please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.231.197.174 (talk) 21:03, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Have a look here: Major and minor, but be aware this isn't the place to ask such things. Go to Wikipedia:Reference desk next time. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 21:09, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

That, or if you are in a marching band, drum major, or if you are a college student, major, or possibly other things listed at Major (disambiguation). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:39, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

AFCH reflist false positive

On the page Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/FGFR1OP2, the script says "Be careful, there is a <ref> tag used, but no references list (Reflist)! You might not see all references." But there is a reflist. It's at the bottom, where it normally is. Perhaps a bug? TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 02:41, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

 Already done Yeah, that is already fixed in the beta and should be available to everybody at the end of this week. mabdul 06:01, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Reviews by Mutualawe

I had a help request at IRC about Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Promescent which had been declined by Mutualawe (talk · contribs). The justification for the decline was "This submission is not suitable for Wikipedia. Please read 'What Wikipedia is not' for more information.", which appears to be a stock answer based on the template (I haven't reviewed many AfC articles so I am not fluent in the process, so pardon my ignorance). I didn't think that this was a particularly useful response to a new editor (especially since I couldn't figure out what part of WP:NOT was being referred to). Looking through the user's contributions I see he has (as of this post) 198 edits, the majority to AfC submissions (or subsequent talk page edits). Many of the rationale for declining articles are the same. In my opinion 198 is pretty light for someone reviewing new articles (notwithstanding he may have edited as an IP in the past, I have no way of knowing), and his first decline was his 13th edit. My questions are:

• Is there a minimum requirement for an AfC reviewer (I don't think there is)?
• Should we be leaving messages such as the one above as the sole reason for declining, or should there have been additional text to accompany it?

I know AfC is a busy/backlogged place, and canned answers are of great help to speed up process, but in this case there is no reason within WP:NOT that this product could not have an article (any referencing and any notability issues aside), "simply saying go read WP:NOT" is far too vague to be used as a criteria. I have left a note on Mutualawe's talk page, but he/she isn't editing right now, and left a comment on the submission asking for more explanation, and told the original creator that I would advise him if there was no response (either today or tomorrow). --kelapstick^(bainuu) 15:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Rainbow Stories, declined for notability, whilst the book has multiple reviews (including a NYT), I have requested he refrain from reviewing articles until he understands policy better. Note: If this should go somewhere else, let me know and I will copy it over --kelapstick^(bainuu) 16:08, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

How does a review from NYT indicate notability? I asked this question of Kelapstick in a seperate talk page : is wiki supposed to have a page for every book the NYT does a review of? Dreams are real. TV is not. (talk) 08:43, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I have moved this from the AfC help desk. Mutualawe wasn't even autoconfirmed before today, although his account is months old. Rafaelcarmen also complained about an insufficiently helpful review of his at his talk page and on the AfC help desk. We may have to re-check them all. Huon (talk) 18:39, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Note: He had 6 edits prior to today, then a boatload of edits today. Encourage him to pick a task that has less downside if he makes a bad decision. 18:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I have made a list of all of his reviews, they are listed at User:Kelapstick/AfC Issues, I will start going through them to check, if anyone else does the same feel free to strike it off the list (but don't remove it from the list). --kelapstick^(bainuu) 19:31, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

This list was helpful for seeing where I had made what you consider to be errors. Some of your reverts have since been declined by other users. I wonder if all this isn't just so someone can make an excuse for lists of the black and white kind? After all, about 50 of the 69 you have listed that have been re-reviewed were done correctly. Maybe you all could just thank a person when they come on and do this and offer advice on where improvements can be made? Dreams are real. TV is not. (talk) 09:08, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

If a review by him/her is found to be simply wrong should it be reverted or is there another way to handle it? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:02, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

That is what I have been doing (I am about 10% through his reviews, which sounds more impressive than "I have done 7"). But I really don't care about process for the sake of process. The only issue may be if an article was moved to the main space and shouldn't have been. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 20:09, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I just moved Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Kerawa back from the mainspace - it had at most a lone reliable source, not enough to establish that the company is notable. Huon (talk) 20:59, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

We really do need an AfC helper-script blacklist... Pol430 talk to me 09:39, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I am back at it and should finish the rest of the nominations today. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 10:13, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

List is complete, save for one. I am just awaiting a comment from Huon on the matter, have commented on talk page. Thanks all for the help with this. I will be keeping that list for future reference should anyone need it. -- kelapstick^(bainuu) 13:18, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I fixed that last one based on kelapstick's advice. Huon (talk) 18:45, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Blacklist? Twinkle a much more powerful script doesn't have a blacklist: they say: simply block the user instead of using a blacklist. Why should we handle the system differently? Every edit can be done by hand, too. mabdul 10:30, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• I do think some requirements need to be set, and some oversight applied. Kelapstick's work is sufficient indication that AfC is not for everyone. Drmies (talk) 15:41, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

@Mabdul: As Twinkle is a tool for general editing, those who abuse it are probably better off blocked. Whereas new editors who go banzai with AfC helper script were quite probably trying to be helpful, which should not result in them being blocked. However, the script does turn the process of reviewing into Wiki-RPG in the hands of overzealous newbies. The same is true of single purpose editors who are trying to push spam through the AfC system and decide to go on a drive-by-reviewing spree while they wait, only to get bored and accept their own articles. Indeed, anybody can carry out a manual review, if they understand enough about wikipedia to be able to do it, but they cause less damage than when they do it with the script. An alternative idea would be an approval page, like AWB has. We seem to be spending ever more of our time tidying up the mess left by totally inexperienced reviewers. It seems to have got worse since enabling AfC helper script was integrated into user preferences, before it required a little more effort than simply ticking a check box. Pol430 talk to me 18:35, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Back about six months ago when I was active, an AFCH blacklist WAS part of my "master plan". Due to us getting so many new users AfCing, we eventually instigated the first AfC topic bans. I think a standard system for topic bans and AFCH bans should be put in place since it looks like during my wikibreak we have had a noob attack. Any suggestions? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 23:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Welcome back Nathan! I think it's important to keep in mind that this project is open to all (competence required), that's what Wikipedia is all about, and we need the help... But there is a clear concern, that has developed recently, with new editors getting involved with the reviewing process and using the script the carry out many reviews that are inappropriate. My suggestion carries the intention of having some measure of physical control over the use of the script, rather than the act of reviewing, in order that we can limit the damage caused by editors who get carried away with the script. My question to you, technical 13 and mabdul is: which option would be more technically feasible—assuming there was a consensus to implement it—a blacklist, or an approval page (like AWB has)?

Concerning topic bans: I think the current method of reporting egregious cases to AN/I is the best option for the present time. Often, editors who conduct problematic reviews can be educated or simply asked to stop. If we can combine this with an ability to withdraw use of the script, then the project is better off for having a mechanism of damage limitation. When such editors suffer an WP:IDHT attack, AN/I or AIV is the best place to deal with them, for tougher sanctions, I think. Pol430 talk to me 11:50, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Hold the phone. You want to implement WHITELISTING for AFCH? AFCH is not on the same level as AWB. While it is possible for new users to wreck havoc with it, I think the better way to do this would be to blacklist troublesome users. If they show sufficient knowledge of the manual system, they can have AFCH back. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:41, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, from a technical viewpoint would an AFCH blacklist work? Or would it run into the same problems the Twinkle blacklist did? Pol430 talk to me 18:11, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

What about linking it with Autopatrolled? It's the same thing, as you are creating an article. You need to know the same things to approve an AfC as you do be trusted to create an article without it being checked, and the user right already exists. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 18:15, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what the problems with the Twinkle backlist were, but I think it's the best decision right now. Using Autopatrolled would require an RFC to modify the requirements to allow users who had reviewed articles to be able to gain that right. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 19:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

While the autopatrolled idea is a very sensible one, it would outrage the anti-user rights brigade who would argue that it represents some kind of elitest move towards becoming the new Citizendium. @Nathan, take a look at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive221#New Twinkle blacklist proposal. Pol430 talk to me 20:41, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The only reason I turned down requiring autopatrolled is that it's only given to users with 50 pages to their credit (and if they really want us to not be elitist, implement rep like on Stack Exchange). I've looked at the Twinkle proposal and it seems like a whole different ballgame. With this script, any user could send copyvios, libel, or who knows what into mainspace with three clicks. Now, we need the script for expert reviewers. So, we have three proposals:

• Blacklist topic banned users
• Blacklist users before topic banning
• Whitelist users

RFC? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 17:29, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

RFC, for sure. I would support a whitelist or a blacklist, right now, but I'd guess we should start with a blacklist (the least intrusive means), if it has a chance of working, and have a discussion here or in a designated place before adding editors to it. We'd also want to make sure we clearly limit the scope of what people could be blacklisted for. Autopatrolled is going to be a bad match for this, the way it's currently implemented. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:34, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Alright, new information request: what are the exact requirements for a user to receive an AFCH blacklisting and, going further, an AFC topic ban? This is the last bit of information I need before I can start an RFC. Thanks, Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 01:39, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, isn't this a most unwelcome and unpleasant feeling!!! I jump in and try hard by reading the relevant materials and using my best judgement to contribute - since I am such a frequent user - I thought "why not? what better way to learn than from some constructive feedback?" THEN circle in the vultures...(that's you guys) 'let's blacklist people, let's not whitelist people'. If you didn't want help from the public then you shouldn't have asked for it. Much less given the impression that this was a friendly environment to work in - should i mention the tools created to make reviewing articles more simple? Just wanted to speak for myself and say that I am not incompetent - a good number of the decisions I made that were reversed have since been confirmed by other users. Not all for the same reasons. Maybe the screening being done should be with the more senior editors for their patience and tone when it comes to dealing with 'noobs'. I am sure there are other 'noobs' who would agree with me - if they still bother to come back - or haven't been blacklisted. Dreams are real. TV is not. (talk) 08:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

We do need new reviewers! Look at the backlog. But it's important that each one be done right because the users are depending on us to be fair and consistent. With some patience on the part of both new and experienced reviewers, we can have both. When I started reviewing, I picked a few really obvious cases, and then I posted messages here in this forum asking someone to my work. Huon gave me a lot of advice. Then I looked for ones that were similar to the ones I'd had advice about. If I tried something new, I asked another question. I probably made a pest of myself. I guess the point I am trying to make is that there is a difference between incompetent and inexperienced; everyone is inexperienced at first. The work of new reviewers should be checked, but this shouldn't be considered an insult, just a precaution and a learning experience. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:35, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

The point is that almost every single new user who wants to make an article ends up here. If a reviewer does a bad job, it's our job to make sure they don't wreck havoc. We try to make this a friendly environment, in fact mabdul helped me so much with my first draft that I ended up starting on reviewing and now I develop the script with plans for a bot. Honestly, I don't want us to bite the new reviewers, but if there is a problem, it needs to get addressed, or we are losing potential editors. This is pretty serious. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:57, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Backlog just increased

I was here yesterday and we had over 900 articles pending review, none of which were 14 days old, and suddenly we jumped to over 1000 with some as old as 19 days. What happened? Rankersbo (talk) 09:26, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The oldest of them are all user sandboxes and many of them are complete crap, I've tagged a bunch to be speedied. People write random stuff on their sandbox pages then they submit them for review even though there is clearly no real attempt to write an actual article. Take a look at the current 17-19 day old categories. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:01, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know why all of them are showing up now, and why someone would mess with the timestamp. I declined all the ones that Roger hasn't speedied already in the 18 day category. Will be working on 17 day next. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 11:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

If these submissions weren't on the list yesterday, but were submitted weeks ago, where have they been? Is someone mucking with the dates? Has something (or someone) in the system submitted a group of sandboxes that weren't ready to be submitted? —Anne Delong (talk) 11:18, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

That's the logical conclusion. Also, I haven't seen a single well-written article. And they don't appear to be related at all either. Perhaps some sort of rogue bot is submitting them. Or maybe it's one person submitting random sandboxes and changing the dates. Either way, unless there's been some sort of universe fracture, there's no way this adds up to not maliciousness. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 11:22, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

If this is the case, we may be deleting people's half written articles unfairly when they didn't intend to submit them yet. —Anne Delong (talk) 11:25, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

It's not necessarily malicious. It could be a software glitch. —Anne Delong (talk) 11:28, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

That's possible. If it turns out, however, to be a single perpetrator, they should be blocked and sysoped. That kind of devotion is impressive. (Kidding.) But seriously, let's investigate. Perhaps contact the users, see if they submitted it or meant for it to be submitted. Thanks, TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 11:41, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I've just looked at the histories of some of the 17 day category ans all were submitted by the sandbox owners - so the submission as such seems legitimate. I think it's the bot or whatever is responsible for sorting and categorising them by date, that has messed up. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:47, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

It's weird, though, that the bot has picked out so many that have little useful content. If they are sandboxes, do they need to be deleted? Can't we just decline them manually without moving them into the Afc space? —Anne Delong (talk) 12:01, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

It is weird. I've just been declining them. I think we can ignore the speedy deletion criteria for the sandboxes. However, if it has a copyvio or any slander (haven't found any yet), it should be declined, blanked, and submitted for deletion. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 12:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm almost certain this is a software glitch and am assuming this is something that Joe's Null Bot (task 4) by Joe Decker is responsible for. Technical 13 (talk) 12:36, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... Too bad there's no backlog drive.... —Anne Delong (talk) 12:46, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll attempt to investigate, but in a way, that sounds like Null Bot not working (on sandboxes?) rather than working. That is very strange. --j⚛e decker^talk 14:10, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Here's a longer quick take. I was only able to see two of the suckers before y'all handled them, which leaves the amount of data I have thin on the ground, but like Dodger67, what I saw in the edit history was articles that had been legitimately submitted a couple weeks back by their owners. The bot in question has never made an edit (See: Special:Contributions/Joe's_Null_Bot), and you can't submit without an edit.

So the real question is, why didn't they show up before? That is a fascinating question. I know that, last weekend, Null Bot was actually dying mid-run because the server started hoarking up occasional intermittent errors (see WP:Vpt#bad_gateway), and Null Bot stops completely if it gets any unexpected error, I've put in a workaround for that server problem, though, so I don't think that explains what you're seeing.

I agree there's a software problem somewhere, but none of the obvious candidates makes any sense to me. I am seeing Null Bot move things properly in the cases I've checked by hand. I suppose it's possible we had a slammed Help:Job queue, but .... I'm not buying that, I think there'd have been other indications. This is worth understanding, investigating, correcting. So, if someone could leave another example in place when and if one shows up, I'd like to sniff it more carefully. Thanks. --j⚛e decker^talk 14:46, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

A theory: did the pages in question have the actual template, or a redirected form of that template? If it was a redirect, when was the redirect created? I ask because I've seen something similar before, on two different occasions. I forget the first, but the second was quite recent: just after this redirect was created, a number of pages which had borne {{Edit Protected}} for several weeks started to appear in Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:06, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, I think User:Jawjawgal/sandbox is one of the cases we're looking at... --j⚛e decker^talk 15:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, now this is interesting. I went back through my logs, and Null Bot never saw that article, last night or on previous days. The run last night (I'm on California time) saw 885 articles, so it appears to have been before the big burst of new ones, there were only 4 or 5 sandboxes in the entire run last night. So.... as far as my code was concerned, that wasn't in "Pending AfC submissons" last night, or the last two weeks. Which means either the AfC submission template changed (unlikely), or there was a job queue fail (less unlikely), or the MediaWiki category traversal code is broken (very unlikely), or "something I don't understand". I lean towards (2) and (4) as the most likely explanations.  :) --j⚛e decker^talk 15:30, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

User:Jawjawgal/sandbox used the non-redirected {{AFC submission}} so it wasn't a redirect problem. But I now know what it was, see below. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:33, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Also, I went and moved every sandbox I could find in Pending AfC, and have manually kicked off a run. Please let me know if you see any sandboxes show up that aren't very recent, and if possible, avoid touching them. Thanks. --j⚛e decker^talk 15:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

OK, here's what happened. This edit took a lot of sandboxes out of the cat, and this edit put them back in. The job queue doesn't process such changes immediately, although it should do in a few minutes, it can take hours or days - I've known it take six weeks (that was more than a year ago). A true null edit for each affected page will fix things for that one specific page, but will not show in the page history nor in the contributions of the person carrying out that null edit. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:33, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I can't do this right away, but I'll get all userspace pages the ability to be reviewed by AFCH. I had this in place before, but there were so some bugs with it. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:45, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

(To Redrose64):  PLAUSIBLE  (MythBusters reference aside, that fits all the evidence I have, very well. I think you've nailed it on the head, thanks!) --j⚛e decker^talk 15:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

• • When a page is userified at AfD, it is intended to be ' put into user space for the editor to improve and resubmit.. Putting it into AfC when it will get another fairly prompt but not very helpful review rather than allowing the user to take the time needed to fix it according to the detailed suggestions made at AfD, which normally are much more specific than the customary level of AfC reviewing . These pages should not be moved. Can you tell them apart? Have you been moving them? Can you Will you be moving them? DGG ( talk ) 19:15, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
    • But a userified article shouldn't be submitted to AfC until it's been worked on. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:34, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Illinois Woman's Press Association

This article was created by the same author of the AfC submission by the same name. The article is not fully copyvio, but it does copy parts of the association's website (e.g. this). Unsure if it's worth the extensive copy edit, or just merits a move back to AfC and tell the author all that needs to be done (not just cv, have a look). What do you think? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:30, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I backed up the text in the AfC and marked the existing article for deletion. I can't run a Duplication Detector on the submission due to the Toolserver being down. I'll let someone else finish it up. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 00:13, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

@Nathan: the tool was moved to wmflabs. You are using very likely an old link/favorite. mabdul 01:16, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Please restore Illinois Woman's Press Association as it was deleted for a page move, but the AfC submission is not suitable for mainspace... mabdul 13:06, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

https://toolserver.org/~earwig/copyvios?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Wikipedia+talk%3AArticles+for+creation%2FIllinois+Woman%27s+Press+Association&url= says Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Illinois Woman's Press Association is clean... Technical 13 (talk) 13:22, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because the tool doesn't get any URL as no direct URL is posted to the page.

Check the duplication detector placed in the CSD box: this speaks a totally different story. mabdul 13:42, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

• Cheers for the help! Given I'm not very adept at CR issues, could someone that is leave a little note here? Thanks! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:06, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

It now has OTRS permission, so the copyright problem is no longer present. DGG ( talk ) 19:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Optimum strategy for dealing with the backlog

My "natural instinct" is to review the oldest drafts and so try to get to them all. I've just had a thought about a diffent strategy. Pick an arbitrary "line in the sand" age, for example 7-days and concentrate most of your effort on reviewing all the drafts that appear in that category, as far as possible don't let any ever make it into the 8-days category. Whenever the 7-days category becomes empty move up to the 6-days and so on. Would this "head them off at the pass" strategy be more, less or equally as (in)effective as the simpler "oldest first" strategy? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:19, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

For my part I mostly pick one of the newest, but only for the reason that I wanted to test out some new features of the helper script (mostly when declining) for getting a submission which is a clear and easy decline part. But this is only a special case. When I'm not testing the helper script, I do always try to decrease the backlog from the oldest to the newest submissions. mabdul 16:27, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the newest end is of course how one quickly gets the easy decisions out of the way - usually the number of pending reviews decreases by half between the zero and three days categories. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:42, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Optimum strategy varies by my state of mind. If I'm tired and I'm questioning my judgment, if I don't have time to do an in-depth review, or I'm trying to make the backlog number shrink fast, I go for the front of the line and deal only with the "quick fails" and the rare "quick accepts." Otherwise I pick them off from the end or if I think others are reviewing from the end at the same time, from very near the end. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:46, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if these strategies could be analysed/modelled mathematically to empirically show which (if any) would be the most efficient? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:13, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes I just start at the oldest and look for any that are still in sandboxes or user pages. These are usually the new editors that don't know how to move pages, or impatient ones that have submitted more than one copy of an article. I think these should be dealt with as soon as possible because the sandboxes and user pages are picked up by Google and are sometimes pretty bad. Also, the new editors don't understand what's taking so long and start cutting and pasting more copies. If the extra copies are caught right away they can be deleted before others start editing them.

Then I like to work my way back to the recently submitted ones and decline those with no references. I think users are more likely to put some more work into an article if they get feedback right away instead of a week or two later when they've gone on to other projects. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:01, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm here because of User:Dodger67's request at WT:WPM for help from a mathematician. Here are some things that I think are true; sadly I don't think any of them really help you.

• How long it takes to review a page depends on the page and on the process here at AfC. It doesn't matter how long it takes you before you look at it; once you've started it's the same amount of time as if you had started earlier or put it off longer. As long as AfC maintains the same process, and if you assume that your efforts don't change the articles being submitted, then clearing the backlog requires time, not strategy.
• The AfC process looks rooted in policy, so I doubt that there are many changes you could effectively make to it. The most you could do is reorder the steps. My advice would be to maximize the number of articles you can fail per unit of time. You've already put "quick fail" criteria up front, and that's basically the same idea. If you're getting lots of non-quickfailing notable but unsuitable submissions, then you could reorder the suitability and notability steps.
• As others have noted, the speed with which you respond to a request does change submitters' behavior: While their articles are pending, they may or may not submit additional pages (or duplicates) for review, they may or may not make additional edits to the articles they have submitted, and so on. Therefore, any strategy you develop will depend heavily on the behavior of the people who submit articles. This is something that you, as regulars here, would have more insight into than me.
• The right question to ask is, "How do I maximize value to the encyclopedia?" It's easy to minimize the amount of work to be done: Declare AfC dead and ignore the backlog! Problem solved! It's also easy to maximize the amount of work to be done: Deeply engage every article and work with the submitters to bring it up to FA quality. Problem solved, or rather created! But both of these miss the point of AfC. AfC is one way in which you all make Wikipedia a better place. If you, using your accumulated experience, can figure out what about AfC works and what doesn't, you may be able to improve the process or improve your strategies. Without that kind of insight into the process, I don't think I can offer you anything more.

Ozob (talk) 04:02, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

There are two things that slow down work at Afc where something may be done. One is that articles are submitted but left in sandboxes because new users can't get past the "page exists" message and don't know enough to substitute their own page name. This leads to reviewers spending their time in page moves instead of reviewing. An addition to the page move process which would detect the word "sandbox" and give an alternate message, perhaps "Substitute your own title for the word sandbox", might save some time.

The second thing that takes up our time is dealing with submissions where no attempt has been made to add references. I made a proposal for a way to encourage users to add references at User:Anne Delong/AfcBox, and made changes to it based on the discussion at User talk:Anne Delong/AfcBox, and garnered some support, but nothing much has happened since I don't know how to implement it. —Anne Delong (talk) 10:58, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Hopefully I can get fixing that kind of problem (automatically moving pages) in a few weeks. mabdul 12:22, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

It would help if the process that creates a user sandbox page could, instead of simply creating a subpage named "sandbox", pause and ask the user "What is the title of your new page?_________" and then create it with that name. It would also eliminate the confusion we often see at the help desk when people ask how to "change the name of my page". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:15, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Then please try to find out how to change the stuff at the very top. It is the "autogenerated" page linked in the menu bar near the preferences in most cases. mabdul 11:41, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that is the cause mabdul... That link is generated by an off-by-default gadget (MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js) that I don't expect many new users turn on... Actually... On an attempt to confirm my beliefs... I found that it is on by default... That being the case, the way that we might "fix" the problem is to create a sandbox setup to improve the preload template that it uses. We could add a section to that template that upon first save or preview would allow definition of the name of the page and options to move it to WT:AfC... Let me experiment and create a few sandboxes see what might work the best. We could also make a modification to the {{Userspace draft}} and {{subst:Submit}} templates that forces a page rename from sandbox to article title and moves the article to WT:AfC for review (I really like this idea)... Technical 13 (talk) 11:57, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I think changing the mySandbox gadget itself to ask the user for a page name would be the best solution. It would have the sidebenefit of allowing more experienced/confident users to have multiple simultaneous sandboxes each with a unique name. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:50, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

+1 to updating the mySandbox gadget! If we could get some basic ideas, I think it might be best to move this to VPT. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:59, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

• Strategy vs tactics (reply to Ozub)

"The optimum strategy for dealing with the process is better reviewing, but that's a more basic problem. With respect to AfC, the question is whether the AfC process as it exists is conducive to good reviewing. I think there is agreement from everyone not previously connected with developing the existing process, and some of those who have been, that it is not. The main strategic question is whether to improve it, or start over. Both are practical, and possible. The problem to be solved by AfC is an integral part of WP policy--the pages and the method themselves are not.

It would appear best to work on both lines independently. We may or may not think of a better process, but in the meantime, we can certainly improve this one. The question will be whether we can improve it enough.

If we can't , and don't have process ready to replace it, the question then is whether it would be more expedient to our goals to remove it nonetheless, and let NPP deal with the new articles. This would obviously throw a burden on NPP, but at least it is, after the development of article curation, a satisfactory process. We could remove the spam very quickly, but I'm not sure about whether we would lose too many articles that do get improved at AfC. I wouldn't want to really debate that until we've made further efforts to improve here. DGG ( talk ) 22:15, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, particularly with regard to better reviewing. (not that I'm an expert, I'm still new in these parts.)--j⚛e decker^talk 22:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Ozob is correct that the right question is "how do we maximize value to the encyclopedia?" It may very well be that what seems like the most sensible tactic (getting rid of copyvios and such fast) is wrong--perhaps we should be alertly looking through the newest submissions for an editor who is trying hard to do the right thing and has a reasonable topic for an article, putting all our efforts on them, and letting everything else sit for two weeks. Not only would we get some decent articles, but we might net some engaged new editors that way. And if the corporate PR teams need to be more patient, that might be a decent tradeoff. (Conversely, it's hard to find the gems in the slush pile given all the slush.) I dunno, it's complicated. What would really make a lot of difference here is more people working on the project. --j⚛e decker^talk 22:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Spacing

Just a heads-up that the script is creating (as far as I've seen) an extra space between every heading and the start of its corresponding paragraph. Not too important, but it's quite curious. I also noticed this site is copying some submissions. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:29, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

 Working - Filed bug report at WP:AFCH/DEV. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:04, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Critical redirect bug

I was trying to review redirects as you can see in my contribs, but apparently the beta script crashes when it attempts to edit the AfC/R page, resulting in a big mess that I don't have time to fix. Could someone sort it out for me? Thanks, Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:30, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I've cleaned up WP:AFC/R and replied to all requests. The redirect creation itself seems to work as advertised. Huon (talk) 21:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Nathan: you use the beta, or? Or do you use the gadget now? The gadget won't work until the next push this week. Your version of the script has likely the same problems as I went back to a very old version to solve the problems with AFC/R. Dunno when I introduced them, but I need to reinvent my changes... mabdul 05:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

This was beta. The creation itself worked fine, but it seems to hang when it starts writing to AfC/R itself. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:19, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

A draft with content on both WP and WT pages

There is draft content on both Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Clyde Vickers and Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Clyde Vickers. It should only be on the WT page, but I don't know how to fix it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:28, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I put a histmerge template on the newer WP version. When the merge is done, the result should be moved to WT. I could have just requested the page be removed but just in case the author wanted content from its only edit, I went the histmerge route. Either way requires an admin. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:32, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Yet another inexperienced editor trying to review things

QM400032 (talk · contribs) moved 2 submissions into the main encyclopedia. I moved them back and declined one. I left him a gentle (I hope) note on his talk page asking him to leave reviewing to more experienced editors for now, but to come back in a few months, read our then-current procedures, and start reviewing. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and that, like at NPP, is the fundamental problem. Experience is needed for such work and ironically where Rollback and Reviewer need a user right, these interventions don't. Perhaps there should be some initial vetting of project members, but as far as introducing new hats, to repeat a famous phrase: we don't need a whole priesthood of gatekeepers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:35, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

The section further up titled Reviews by Mutualawe is discussing the possibility of a script blacklist, I have floated the idea of a whitelist also. All comments invited. Pol430 talk to me 08:56, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I think this is the problem: 'WikiProject Articles for creation needs you! Any autoconfirmed user (a status which is required to move pages, create redirects and upload files; it is usually automatically conferred on accounts which are four days old and have made ten edits or more) can be a reviewer for the project.' Asking raw newbs to get involved in the thick of things is possibly asking for problems. Even though AfC reviewers are desperately needed, some criteria for knowledge of article quality should be preferred and recommended. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:49, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we should create a "stewardship" or "mentoring" program for newbies who want to get into reviewing. Like some of the admins have done with general newbies. I'll start setting it up on my sandbox here (link won't be red for long...). If anybody wants to help me out, that would be awesome. Thanks, TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 15:36, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

• LMAO!!! Has no-one ever suggested this before (sarcastic face)? As a relatively new reviewer who has been asking for this for a couple months now, I would be happy to alpha-test whatever you come up with in stages. That is the best I can offer. ;) Technical 13 (talk) 15:52, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I will be done with it soon - by the end of June at the latest. School will be out soon, allowing me to devote hours upon hours of my time with WikiWork. Really, what I'm going to do is create a "course" that the mentor would guide the student through (need to come up with cooler names for those), with example articles based on real articles, and general facts that one should know (what AFCBot does, a summary of notability guidelines, etc.) I will use the basic structure outlines in the flowchart for reviewing articles. I will post updates here and will ask all of you to alpha test it (perhaps pretending to be a newbie) and comment on it as well. For now, my only problem is a tabled one. The header on the big blue box at the top of the page makes the text overlap when it wraps onto another line. Could anybody fix this? Thanks, TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 18:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done Technical 13 (talk) 18:36, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 11:32, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Interim step: template:AFC blocking issues

Before I code up a template called {{AFC blocking issues|discussion=commentary here}} I want to see if anyone objects and if there is at least some support for it. This would be a "version 0.1" of the "AFC blocking issues" template above. In this version, it would have 3 modes:

1. In Wikipedia talk:Articles for submission/ and other "likely misspellings", it would put up a colored box saying something like

   "This submission has the following serious issues which must be resolved before the article is accepted:
   {{{discussion}}}
   This submission must not be moved into the encyclopedia until these issues are resolved. This template should not be removed until the issue is resolved. When removing resolved items from this template or removing the template altogether, please use the edit summary or a {{afc comment}} to note that the issue is resolved.

2. In article spaces, the text above will be prefaced with big red "error style" lettering saying

   Warning - this page may have been inadvertently added to the encyclopedia.

   followed by a separate colored box saying something like

   This article was likely copied or moved from an Articles for creation submission, probably [[Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/{{PAGENAME}}]], by mistake and that the article should be immediately reviewed and if any of the issues are still present, that the article should be returned to AFC rather than being deleted. If none of the issues remain, this and any other AFC-related templates can be removed.
   This template should only be removed by an experienced Wikipedia editor well-versed in Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines and should not be removed by anyone who is closely connected to the subject of this article or who was heavily involved in its creation.

   followed by the text above. It would also add the article to a Wikipedia maintenance category so such articles could be spotted quickly.
3. In user or user talk space, the colored box normally seen in an AFC submission would be prefaced by a different colored box that said something like

   This template is designed for use in articles under review at Articles for creation. If you are seeing this in a "user" sub-page it is likely that the submission as been userfied without this template being removed, or that a reviewer has placed this here without first moving the submission to a sub-page of [[Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/]]. Please take these comments as strong suggestions. You may move your userspace draft to the main encyclopedia, but if you do so without addressing these issues you face a very high risk that it will be deleted, either through speedy deletion, proposed deletion, or a deletion discussion. Please be sure to remove this template before moving your userspace draft to the main encyclopedia.

This template would exist independently of {{AFC submission}} and {{afc comment}} and could, from a software perpsective, be used anywhere, but would by practice only be placed on articles in AFC or in special cases, in user space. They would not be limited to articles that were "awaiting review" but it is unlikely they would be used on draft articles unless there was a special "one-off" reason.

Comments? Bad idea? Good idea? The plan is to use this is only for "real" (not-test/non-blank) submissions that would NOT result in a CSD while at AFC (i.e. NOT for blatant copyvio, attack, etc.), but which likely WOULD result in a CSD (typically as an A7) or a quick trip to AFD (typically as overly promotional, no/insufficent verification of notability) and, if not addressed during AFD, would result in deletion. The goal here is to 1) discourage people who are tired of waiting from moving not-ready articles before they are AFD-resistant, and, implicitly, 2) to make it easier to warn editors who do so anyways not to be disruptive. The latter purpose will either help editors learn not to be disruptive early before they get themselves blocked, or will make it easier to block the bad-faith editors as they will have just used up one of their warnings.

An note to the AFC Helper script authors: Until you have code in place to give the reviewer the option of stripping this template, consider adding code that would disable the "accept" button if this template is present (and of course put up some text explaining why accept isn't working). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:18, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, I approve! This is a great idea and will help with the reviewing. Once the template is coded, I will hook up with mabdul and implement it into the script. The only thing barring the implementation of the accept button disabler is that it will lag slightly when opening the review panel since it would have to search the article's wikitext for anything matching the regex we code into it, but that code could have uses beyond just the template. Let's see what mabdul thinks! --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 01:23, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I like this in principle. though I would word it in a less preemptory tone. (especially the red warning.) It is not being disruptive to add a bad article, except in extreme cases. but just a mistake or a misunderstanding,and the templates we use for warning people are therefore quite gentle at the first levels. Rather, what is disruptive is to adopt a pattern of adding bad articles after a warning. Even if someone adds a copyvio, that's usually because they do not know better. Remember that this is going to be applied by not just experienced but also by inexperienced editors, who are rather likely going to apply it incorrectly. Judging by their often over-harsh comments in rejecting articles. The wording has to allow for that possibility. We want to very strongly discourage people from adding bad articles, but the entire point of AfC is to not discourage them from trying. The accept button should therefore not be disabled, until there is code to allow the option of skipping the template and proceeding anyway. Having a warning appear would be better. DGG ( talk ) 17:06, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

The big red warning is usually for things that are "broken in code," like un-subst'd templates that require subst, math {{#magic stuff}} with missing or bad parameters, etc. I want some equivalent saying "hey, if this template is used in article space, the first editor who sees it needs to do something about it". Perhaps the red-letter stuff can be changed to

Warning - Project-page template used on article page

or some such. Perhaps the "in the box" text can be changed from "... by mistake" to "... while it still had a notice listing outstanding issues. The article should immediately be reviewed by an experienced editor ..." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:43, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

What's the status here? It's too late to get this implemented in the next version of the script, however the alpha script is ready to be filled with new features. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:19, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Requesting a reviewer that is...

... experienced with BLP articles (preferably also somewhat aware of Armenia related content) that might be willing to step up and mentor an editor that has had issues with identifying reliable sources for use on the biographies of living persons that have some verifiability that has resulted in a current topic ban from creating or editing such articles. It has been suggested in my request for a partial lifting of this topic ban on AN that if someone could be found that is willing to do this, than the ban could be relaxed a little. If you are interested and or willing to do this, please state so on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive249#Request for re-visitation of the topic ban of User:TheShadowCrow. Thank you. Technical 13 (talk) 13:36, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

It would be great if everyone signed here once and for all... FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:42, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

That page needs a bit of work to make it really useful, but getting the basics down would really help. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:47, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I've avoided it since I, most embarrassingly, can't even approach xx-1 in anything but English. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:53, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Buck up kid! I just put me on there and am not ashamed to say en-us-N; fr-0 (for the six words of Canadian French I know)... Technical 13 (talk) 16:59, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

• Just a bit of humour, seriously. "Poor cone construction can cause leakage once the ice cream begins to melt". FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:16, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Potential new feature: Sections for decline reasons

Resolved

 – Ready for implementation. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Would you guys like it if I placed decline reasons in sections like how Twinkle has tags and stuff, or would you prefer the current method? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:19, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Put them in sections grouped according to the flowchart at WT:WikiProject Articles for creation/2013 2#Defining Workflow V2.0 - it might not be perfect but it would be a good start for possible further refinement. Would we be able to select multiple decline reasons, as discussed at WT:WikiProject Articles for creation#Multiple decline reasons at once, like Twinkle allows one to select multiple Speedy criteria? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:57, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Take a look at this code. A while back, I sorted the decline reasons and placed comments to remind me how I had done it. When I returned, I began writing sectioning code, but mabdul stopped me and said to RFC it here. So, here we are. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:19, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Put it in sectiona. With more experience, and the widespread use of Twinkle as a gadget, consensus has changed. And BTW, if you do not want to creat code for multiple reasons, youcould use some ccommon dual reasons, such as "inadequate sources, and not potentially notable" , "inadequate sources, and overly promotional" DGG ( talk ) 19:01, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Alright, I will implement the category stuff. About the dual-reasons, we can't technically push those due to current template capabilities. If there is consensus to do so, we can write new reasons into the template directly. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:18, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

False positive

In Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Raytheon Infotech the script shows: "Be careful, there is a <ref> tag after the references list! You might not see all references", however this is hidden text included automatically from the article's submission. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:40, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, somebody mess around wit the preloaded text and didn't inform me. Will also be fixed in a few days when I ping Legoktm to push the script. I haven't integrated it in any script. mabdul 17:38, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

automated edits

Good new anybody, TParis (talk · contribs) added the AFC helper script to the automated edits tool at the toolserver. See my edits here. mabdul 17:39, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Articles without templates

Lately I've been seeing articles being submitted without templates. Should I remove articles with no template? Citrusbowler (talk) 20:19, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

• When I see this (which isn't often because I'm not looking in the new-page logs), I'll slap a template on it and put it in "draft" ("T") state and put a note on the editor's talk page explaining what I did and how to use subst:submit on any other pages he made the same mistake on, and provide him with a list of those pages. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:52, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
• Unfortunately, at least one editor who did a lot of pages this way was a sock of a spammer, so now I've taken to checking the edit history of anyone who does this. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:52, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Use of {{talkpageheader}}

Appearently, I've been wrong about the use of {{talk header}} (aka {{talkpageheader}}. I was under the mistaken impression that it was fine to just slap it on all new article talk pages, even if there is no discussion on those pages.

Another editor pointed me to Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Creating talk pages.

This guideline can be read two ways: 1) don't put the talk page header up unless readers need a reminder that this is a talk page and need a reminder of the talk page guidelines embedded in the header, or 2) don't create a talk page for the sake of creating a talk page and don't use "I'm putting a talk page header here" as an excuse to create a talk page.

Now, as this is a guideline and consensus can change, what do we want to do about it with respect to the AFC Helper Script? My recommendation is to continue adding it to the top of new pages, but in a collapsed or auto-collapse mode (I think this is how we are already doing it), even though there is almost never going to be a discussion on the talk page at the time the talk page is created. Since the talk page will be created anyways to get the AFC talk header, I see no harm to adding this header.

A disclaimer/COI: I disagree with the community's view as it was at the time the guideline was developed - I think all articles should have talk pages, and they all should have talkpageheader on top of them. The reason is that this gives a consistent look and feel throughout the main encyclopedia. However, I'm not going to go around adding talk pages just to add a talk page.

Your thoughts? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been listed at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines

I think all articles should have talk pages, and they all should have talkpageheader on top of them.--so you're suggesting some sort of "one-namespace-only sitenotice"? Theopolisme (talk) 18:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

We already have such a feature, see Wikipedia:Editnotice. For example, go to any page in the Category talk namespace, and click "edit". You'll see this message. The same happens for non-existent pages, like Category talk:Works set in the 1840s. Thus, if we wanted to put a notice like {{talk header}} on all article talk pages, it could be done by creating Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Talk as a one-off action, rather than adding it one-by-one to millions of article talk pages. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:19, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Wait a minute, don't we put our WikiProject banner on the talk pages of all articles pushed through the AfC process anyways? Technical 13 (talk) 18:20, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but that is not the issue. It is only even relevant because it short-circuits the argument of "don't put talkpageheader on a completely-blank talk page." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:27, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

The talkpage is not completely blank. It (should) contains banners of WikiProjects. But I understand the problem: this banner is useless on pages without any discussion and I never undertand why this was automatically added (that was already part of the script before I overtook the script)... mabdul 22:01, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

My point was that it is not needed because we already have the WikiProject banner. So, it is extra fluff that may be confusing to new users. Technical 13 (talk) 11:37, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Putting the TPH on pages that don't contain any actual talk, and more to the point no off-topic talk, is basically a violation of AGF. The TPH is a "reminder" to editors to behave according to the rules - if nobody is actually misbehaving then such a reminder is simply rude. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:28, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I will remove the banner (for the case this consensus doesn't change to remove it) in the release after the next. (The actual beta is in beta and feature freeze, an alpha version is working on, see more information at WP:AFCH/DEV) mabdul 10:50, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I think all talk pages should have this banner, because it provides valuable information to the new users on how talk pages work. It's not a rule list. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:02, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

To add to my previous comment, I looked up the template and discovered the reasoning is so that talk pages would actually be redlinks. Since we add a WikiProject box anyway, this point is null. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:58, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Notable or non-notable, that is the question

Can someone see if Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Solid Concepts Inc. is notable? I looked at it, but it seems good if we can hammer out whether it's actually notable or not. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:28, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Much of that is sourced to press releases and warmed-over press releases. If those were removed, it'd be easier to assess whether there's anything there that met WP:CORP, with so much sourced to the company's reporting of itself, I worry a fair bit about neutrality and weight. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:44, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Good call. I went ahead and declined it and left a comment explaining why, and I also marked the duplicate draft for histmerging with this one. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:04, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the company is probably notable, although weakly so. In a fairly cursory search I found a profile in Bloomberg Business Week, a discussion of one of their products in a book, and an article about their work. This Solid Concepts press release indicates that several major companies have recognized them as a top supplier; if the major companies have published similar content about this topic, it would help support notability. --Orlady (talk) 18:47, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

AfC Mentoring Program

Hello, my friends. Per a discussion at the section WT:AFC#Yet another inexperienced editor trying to review things, I have begun drafting an AfC mentoring program/course for newbies, which you can find here, keeping in mind it's very, very under development. Just a suggestion, once this course is completed, perhaps any new editors who want to review documents must take the course to be whitelisted onto the script, and we push the course on the project page etc. I will post here when I need alpha testers/general comment. A few of you (Technical 13, I'm looking at you) have already begun to peruse it, many thanks for your comments. I am also in the planning phase for a bot to match mentors and students and various other tasks. However, given that I will be devoting ~80% of my time on Wikipedia to developing this course in the hopes of having a functional alpha by the end of June, I will be reviewing a lot less articles. If the backlog is too much for you to handle, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do. But, effective soon, I will only be reviewing a few articles a day. Feel free to stop by and see how I'm doing, but adios for now. Thanks for being awesome, TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 03:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Gaelic Games Portal components

I have approved all the pages relating to the portal, just to get rid of them as they should never have been brought to AfC at all. Portal components are either bits of code that create the structure of a Portal page, thus of no interest to AfC, or they are extracts of existing articles, such as "featured biographies", and as such are also of no interest to AfC. Portals as a rule never contain any newly written content. The structure and content of Portals are solely the responsibility of the WikiProject that "owns" the Portal. I have posted a request to the editor concerned as well as WikiProject Gaelic Games that they do not in future submit portal components to AfC. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:50, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

COI submission

The editor of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/N. Anthony (Tony) Coles has come out and stated he has a COI with the subject. What should I do here? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 20:58, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Give him the more polite of the templated talk page notices about COI, and then proceed as normal, but perhaps with a slightly more cynical eye on the submission. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:08, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

DPL bot

I have had several notices from something called DPL bot saying that I have linked to disambiguation pages, when in fact I have made no such edit. Is this a bug? Is the bot notifying the wrong person?

Anne — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anne Delong (talk • contribs) 02:25, 3 June 2013‎

Hey Anne, my guess would be that you are receiving notifications because you moved and/or renamed the page at some point, and consequently you are viewed by the bot as a creator of the page, so you receive the disambiguation link notifications. Just a guess. Go Phightins! 02:32, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

"Me too" - Phightins is probably right - the bot sees you as the last person who "touched" the section where the dab is. My guess is that a "move" counts as touching the whole article, i.e. every section. I'm also getting alerts from bracket-bot. In any case, it's probably a good idea to check the warnings out, they are usually correct and someone has to fix the problem or it will remain unfixed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:53, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The final word on redirects

UPDATE: This policy has been nulled and a discussion is going on at WT:CSD. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 20:11, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I'd like to ask that we bring this up one last time and decide definitively whether we want to delete redirects of created submissions or whether to keep them for tracking purposes. I've set up a poll below. If we choose to delete them, I will create a new redirect CSD criteria. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:12, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Keep redirects

• Support - It takes no database space and prevents dead links, along with allowing us to track creation statistics. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:12, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
• Keep - Leaving the links will allow better track statistics, as well as making the process more streamlined. As long as it doesn't become too much of an issue, I vote keep. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 03:58, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Delete redirects

• Support - It opens the door to fragmentation and double redirects and they should be cleaned up and deleted after a reasonable amount of time. There are other better ways to track creation statistics. Technical 13 (talk) 18:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
• Weak support I tend to believe there are better ways of tracking the statistics, and I seem to recall, very occasionally, finding old redirects in the way. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:50, 31 May 2013 (UTC) (After a reasonable period of time, as described below.) --j⚛e decker^talk 01:28, 1 June 2013 (UTC) Also note that creation statistics are already not possible via this mechanism. Because we're already deleting stale drafts. --j⚛e decker^talk 04:10, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
• Delete after a reasonable period of time - it's fine to leave the redirect there for a month so that the user who submitted the article doesn't think we deleted it, but leaving redirects around forever makes the space just that much more unmaintainable. --B (talk) 23:23, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
• Delete after a reasonable period of time, per B--a bot could be created to handle deletions after, say, 1 month of no edits to the redirect page. Theopolisme (talk) 23:26, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
• Keep at least as long as we keep abandoned or declined submissions (see WP:G13). After that delete ONLY if we also fix up incoming redirects, especially those on user talk pages. If a user submits "Joe Smith Arkansas State Representative" and we accept it as "Joe Smith (politician)" and a year later the AFC links on his talk page go red, anyone trying to follow the link will be lost (It's not so bad if it's just "WT:AFC/Joe Smith" being moved to "Joe Smith" because people can use their heads.). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:49, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Then this is a delete after six months, which is what I was trying to say below in my support of delete. Keep means forever, which is why I put it in delete which means delete eventually... Technical 13 (talk) 13:31, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
• Keep for a while. This is to help the contributor find their article. They may not know how to use their own contributions or have a watchlist at all, but they may have a browser history to find their contribution. Also the bot should check if there are links inbound to the redirect, and not nominate for deletion if they exist, or else change them to point to the right name. Perhaps after 1 year the redirect can be clipped off, but there is no strong reason to do so. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:16, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Then this is a delete after six months, which is what I was trying to say below in my support of delete. Keep means forever, which is why I put it in delete which means delete eventually... Technical 13 (talk) 13:31, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
• Keep per davidwr. mabdul 11:45, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Then this is a delete after six months, which is what I was trying to say below in my support of delete. Keep means forever, which is why I put it in delete which means delete eventually... Technical 13 (talk) 13:31, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - It seems like what you guys want is an extension onto the G13 criteria. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:04, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Script failures

The AfC helper script isn't letting me review this article, as happened with another draft after I moved it from a sandbox earlier. For what it's worth, this is a copyvio of http://www.nilebasinclub.org/home/about-us.html, but I'd also like to see what's going on that's causing AfCH to not work on this page. I've tried it in Safari and Chrome, and I get the menu item, but no action when I select "Review". --j⚛e decker^talk 14:13, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Also the script is failing on http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Kavitaram_Shrestha, which is a copyvio of http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dr-kavitaram-shrestha-ma-phd/51/b64/ab2 --j⚛e decker^talk 14:23, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

• Also here and here. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:46, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Mabdul broke part of the page scanner, so you may run into bugs relating to that. There is no way to not have these bugs, since he utterly messed up and pushed his broken beta to stable. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:52, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Preformed a revert, so stable should now be downgraded to the non-borked version. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:28, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that's worked for my two cases. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:33, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

• I don't know if it's the same problem, but it's still happening with some articles. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:35, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Check for copyright violations

Don't let this happen to you.

If a submission seems like it was written professionally or for a different audience, such as a book or a non-encyclopedia web site, it might be a WP:COPYVIO. If I'm suspecting copyright issues, I'll grab a few several-word phrases and run them through some search engines. This duplication detector may also be helpful.

Thanks to my oversight accepting Charles Fanshawe, 4th Viscount Fanshawe, I spent the last few hours verifying the violation and re-writing it so it doesn't get deleted outright. Those are hours I could have spent elsewhere on the project.

We can't be perfect in our quest to keep policy-violating material out, but we can try. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:10, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Note: An administrator revision-deleted the original submission and moved the rewrite into the main article. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:26, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. A handy tip, if you're declining it for promotionally and not copyright, there's somewhere between a 30% and a 50% chance it's also a copyvio. This excludes the copyvios that get caught by hand or Madman bot, so the numbers are certainly higher than that, and it's based on the work I've done sorting through old stale declined-as-advert submissions. I find it handy to select a ten-fifteen word phrase that "has that feel", that lacks special characters, and to stick that phrase with quotes around it in Google. You'll see the wikimirrors and come to know them well--yes, even AfCs are republished widely by mirrors and indexed by Google--but you'll also, very often, find the original source of the material. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:46, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Categories

Just a reminder for everyone: please remember to add specific categories to all accepted articles. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 17:13, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The final final word on redirects

The CSD policy maintainers objected to having the discussion on redirects here, among a number of things. So, we have reverted the policy change and a new discussion is on here. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 20:08, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

WikiProjects

I think it might be prudent to make an effort to contact relevant WikiProjects, if there are any that are active, at some point in the AFC process. Interstate 35 in Kansas was recently submitted through the AFC process and approved, but it has several factual errors that could have been caught if WikiProject U.S. Roads had known about it, and appears to have been created by a banned user that we have dealt with before. In addition to situations like this, I can also think of cases where the WikiProject might be able to advise on relevant parts of the MOS, might help gauge whether an article is even needed, or simply might want to assist with polishing before the article is published. I understand that this extra step may be somewhat of a burden to the reviewers, but I think it can only result in a much more effective AFC process that produces higher-quality articles. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:45, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and often do so. However, I find the relevant Projects only respond to less than 10% of cases, and when they do the article has already been reviewed. I think a blacklist created with the participation of all active WikiProjects, together with the incorporation of this list into the script would be helpful (so that we as reviewers are warned when the submission involves a blacklisted editor). It's impossible to remember all of the banned or troublesome users. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:57, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I think such a blacklist would be pretty much unmaintainable, since multiple users get banned every day at various forums and for various reasons (and that's not counting the problems of banned users circumventing bans by submitting to AFC as an IP address). It also would not do anything to solve the issues that exist(ed) with the I-35 in Kansas article. Instead, perhaps we could create an opt-in list of active WikiProjects that would like AFC notifications. Many WikiProjects have gone stale lately, but there are still some big ones active like USRD and Military History. Maybe the procedure could go that if one is starting a review of an article that may fall in the scope of one of the projects on the list, the reviewer leaves a note on the project talk page pointing it out, and gives the project a reasonable time period (maybe as low as 48 hours) to respond. I-35 in Kansas is far from a unique case; we have gotten several low-quality articles from AFC that it would have been nice to have the opportunity to fix up before they hit the mainspace. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:03, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The Directory of Wikiprojects has a column which tells if a particular Wikiproject is active. Also, if you go to look on the talk page and the last message is months old, you'll know not to bother. However, even if only 10% of the articles are improved by this process, that leaves only 90% to go... —Anne Delong (talk) 18:09, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

It's true that contacting a Wikiproject is best when the article is first submitted, rather than when it hits the top of the queue and is ready for assessment. The problem is, that would require an organized plan, and what we have are volunteers, and not enough of them, who review articles at random times dependent on how otherwise busy they are and choose articles based on their own expertise. There are some of us, though, who like to patrol the tail end of the list, and maybe those reviewers are the ones who should leave messages for the Wikiprojects. Here's an idea: If there are certain Wikiprojects with members such as Scott5114 above, and the editor from the chemistry group who posted here last month, who particularly want to see articles in their field ahead of time, can we add a drop down box to the AFC process (under "other options"), marked "Notify Wikiproject", to which they could add their project? Reviewers could click on it to post an automated note on the project talk page. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, yes, but how do you stop articles from being reviewed 5 mins after the relevant Project was notified by an editor that was unaware about said event? Perhaps we could add a separate WikiProject-relevant AfC category to those submissions, where editors from different Projects could come e.g. once a week to review the relevant ones. Furthermore, specific topic sub-categories could be implemented, so they can be reviewed by pertinent editors. This could be added to the AfC submission process, whereby the submitter subjectively selects a category for their future article. I believe it's been proposed before. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:15, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

It's true that they might be reviewed right away; maybe a banner could be put on these saying "Reviewers: Please wait for Wikiproject experts until June 5 before reviewing".—Anne Delong (talk) 22:06, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Fragrance (album)

I was reviewing this page: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Fragrance (album), and I was about to decline it as promotional, but I decided to check it for copyright violation. Google says that the same text is posted on this web site: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/14683594-kiran-and-ambarish-with-their-first-musical-venture-fragrance

However, I can't see this text on the web page. Also, even if it were there, it appears that it was posted on the same day by the same user. With time zones, I can't tell which was posted first. Is this a copyright violation, or just unsourced promotional stuff? —Anne Delong (talk) 19:56, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Decline it as promo, but contact the user, without use of templates, explaining about copyvio and sources etc. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 03:01, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay, done —Anne Delong (talk) 09:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush (2)

Before declining Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush (2), I thought that I'd have a look at the previously declined Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush. It was much better, but light on sources. I have added some, and I think it would pass notability now, but it hasn't been submitted. How should I deal with these two articles? —Anne Delong (talk) 09:14, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I have declined Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush (2) as a duplicate. If you feel Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush is good enough, go ahead and move it into the mainspace. Huon (talk) 12:42, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I did some copyediting and moved Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush to William Rush (actor). Huon (talk) 13:03, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but that was actually rather annoying because you said I should do it, and it kept failing, since you had already moved it. Interestingly, though, the message that I received said that it failed to move to William Rush, rather than William Rush (actor), so I thought that I had made a mistake and went through the process again. Receiving the same message, I then tried moving it to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush (actor), thinking maybe I could accept it from there, only to find that there is another draft about this person already at that location. it has some different information, too. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:12, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for that. I've simply tagged Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/William Rush (actor) for speedy deletion since it cites not a single reliable independent source; I don't think it has anything worth merging. I expect the error message was because we already have an article on an unrelated person at William Rush. Huon (talk) 13:20, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but I had made a point of changing the article name in the accept script to "William Rush (actor)", so it shouldn't have even looked at "William Rush". I may have misunderstood the failure message; I can't try it now to see exactly what it said, so I'll just have to keep it in mind in case another similar situation comes up. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:44, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of old declined submissions

Dear reviewers:

I have been reading in this forum that some of the old declined submissions are being deleted. What is being done about ones that are not bad, just need a little improvement in sourcing or other such tweaking, but the submitter has not done it? Is there a way to draw other editors' attention to these so that they can be finished up and the work not wasted? —Anne Delong (talk) 09:41, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Maybe the WP:Article Rescue Squadron would be interested in such drafts. Otherwise I'd just leave them alone unless you want to improve them yourself. Huon (talk) 12:37, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Joe Decker has contacted them and has started a list of abandoned articles on worthy topics here: User:Joe Decker/SecondLook —Anne Delong (talk) 14:11, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm certainly trying to keep such a list, and User:DGG is trying to save articles where he can as well. That having been said, I doubt that I'm including every one that could be saved from some effort, nearly any article with a notable topic could be said to be salvageable even if the (let's say, promotional) text wasn't. If it's borderline, I think it's probably better to try and save an equivalently borderline issue from the decline pile of recent AfCs ,because that editor might still be around, and might actually feel less bitten for the help. What I do try and pick out for SecondLook, or save myself, are cases where the combination of greater notability (say, the first President of Guatamala, and yes, he was in our "declined as Promotional" pile), closer-to-complete-text, and so forth make the benefit-to-effort ratio compelling. This is a grossly subjective process, of course.

If you'd like to look at the main list I'm working through, top to bottom, it's at User:Joe Decker/Promotional. I've also got another list of blank entries, but that's straightforward, I resubmit/rereview articles that aren't blank in that pile. --j⚛e decker^talk 14:50, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I've found a fair number of "declined as blank" submissions that were in error, largely due to comment errors. They'll be showing up in the "very old" by age category as I revert and correct the comment errors within them. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:37, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean by comment errors? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:13, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Many editors, at least several dozen, accidentally removed the close-comment (two dashes followed by a greater than sign) from the standard template. This left articles appearing to have no content, which actually did have content. For example, [6], note the article size as 25K, but previous revisions showed no text. I've sorted the "declined as blank" submissions and am working back from the largest to the smallest. Mostly it's still declinable, but nothing I'm putting back looks like it was necessarily evaluated with an understanding of what the original author wrote. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

There appear to be some signficant pieces of work in that pile. Because the editors are long gone, a bit more thought into whether leaving them to be deleted or being salvaged with real work now is probably appropriate. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:06, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Is there an easy way of getting to these articles? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 22:38, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Category:AfC pending submissions by age/Very old -- since I tried to restore them as was, they've got the old time stamps. (I was more concerned with preserving attribution than the timestamp, but I got both.) --j⚛e decker^talk 22:50, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank

Dear reviewers:

I clicked on a page history and next to some of the entries instead of (undo) it says (undo|thank). I am unable to find out exactly what the purpose of this option is, or what exactly would happen if I chose it. I tried WP:Thank (doesn't exist), WP:Thank you (no mention) and WP:THANKS (no mention). What am I missing? —Anne Delong (talk) 11:40, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

It adds to the editor's Notifications, a small piece of text saying that you have thanked them for the edit. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 11:45, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Information about it can be found at Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 11:55, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow! I assumed that it would leave a message on the person's talk page. Including a message of thanks in the notification pop-down is not a notification - it's a private communication. Isn't this a big change in Wikipedia's openness policy? Is there consensus on this? Can I know where the discussion took place (I was only away for three days...)? I left a message explaining my position on this at Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:52, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there exists any specific openness policy, as such. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 13:45, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Ditto, especially when you consider emails. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 14:42, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Seems you're right, although e-mails are not part of Wikipedia. I have enjoyed, though the straightforward communication on Wikipedia. When people disagree, everyone weighs in publicly. Now, if I post something, and another user posts a counterargument, fifty editors could send these private thank yous to the other person because it's quicker than adding to the talk page and I wouldn't know. Sorry, I guess I shouldn't have brought this up here; I asked the original question because I thought that the (thank) was a way of giving feedback to the Afc submitters. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:52, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

For anyone interested, there is a lively discussion about this over at Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Thanks —Anne Delong (talk) 18:12, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: Add a intended pagename argument to templates

I came across a {{Help me}} request asking how to get an article reviewed yesterday and checked the usage of {{subst:Submit}} because I wanted to see how to note that the draft (User:Ameliasenter/sandbox) should be moved to Land of Opportunity if accepted and was disappointed to find that {{subst:Submit}} which redirects to {{AFC submission/submit}} doesn't have any kind of |page= like {{Userspace draft}} does. I really didn't want to confuse the user by telling him to add both {{Userspace draft}} and {{subst:Submit}} and now here I am... I would like to see this parameter added to our templates. Discussion, agree, disagree? Technical 13 (talk) 15:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The best advice I can give is for users who want a userspace draft to be reviewed is to remove any "userspace draft" template then add the submit template then move the submission. But we should also be clear that the 3rd step is recommended and if they don't feel comfortable using the "move" tool not to worry, a reviewer or "bot" will move it for them within a few days. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:12, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

People seem to confuse AfC with Requested Articles

The enormous number of G13 deletions which are blank or simply repeat the words of the title suggest that many people think that AfC is like WP:Requested articles - a place to suggest a subject for someone else to write about. Could the instructions make clearer that AfC is only for submitting an actual article that you have already written, and that if you just have an idea for an article WP:RA is that way? JohnCD (talk) 16:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

That'd a great idea. You're seeing a lot more G13/blanks the last few days because I'm working through a long list of them, and they're relatively easy to work through, mostly a matter of checking that they really are blank--a lot of them aren't, but appear to be, editors have a nasty habit of clipping the close-comment on our standard boilerplate and making their submissions invisible as a result. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:23, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I get these a lot. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not just the blanks. I had to deal with a really irate submitter who was highly indignant that I asked him to add some sources. He said that obviously he had written all he knew and what was the point of Wikipedia if we wouldn't find the sources for him? He thought it was some kind of rude joke. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:17, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Looks like we need a article wizard update. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 19:54, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• I don't suppose the AfC bot could go through all of the submissions and categorize all submissions with a size less than 200-500 bytes (less than stub threshold) as being such... Submissions in such a category could very quickly be run through and either a note sent telling the creator to put their RA on the billboard and declining for being blank or not a page. This would take a pretty fair size out of the backlog chunk I would think Technical 13 (talk) 22:22, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  Sadly, it's not that sharp a boundary. It might be if people got the same-length boilerplate, or didn't sometimes remove all or part of it, but as I work through the backlog of declined-as-blanks, which I've ordered by size, there were a couple entries that attempted real content in under 300 bytes. Fortunately, decline-as-blank is a very easy thing for a competent reviewer to assess. What would be better is if the script refused to decline-as-blank for anything over 1000 or maybe 2000 bytes. The probability of one of those actually having unintentionally commented-out text approaches unity. --j⚛e decker^talk 22:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  I think you misunderstood me Joe, I'm not suggesting the bot do anything other than add a maintenance category to the smaller submissions so that a user can flip through and quickly review those and get them out of the way (perhaps someone like me that isn't very comfortable with doing a lot of approving right now) since the majority of them should be simple declines with a message. Technical 13 (talk) 00:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

  You're right, I did misunderstand you. My bad.  :) --j⚛e decker^talk 00:23, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I have added a link to RA on the first page of the article wizard and I also forced users to create their submission as drafts first by changing WP:WIZGO. This should the number of blank and low-quality submissions, respectively. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 22:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

User:Articles for creation/Aerodynamics and Heat transfer computation in Turbo-machinery

A user has moved this article to a strange location: User:Articles for creation/Aerodynamics and Heat transfer computation in Turbo-machinery

Can I just move it back? —Anne Delong (talk) 19:25, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I would leave it there with a comment and then change the name when you move it to mainspace. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 19:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

(ec):I moved it back, G6ed the User-space redirect, and decined for lack of references. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, thanks, that's done. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Strange tag

Will someone please look at this article: User:Food2013/sandbox and tell me if it should be moved to Afc or not? —Anne Delong (talk) 20:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Looks like it should. Perhaps ask the editor if it's ready for review or he made a mistake by submitting it, in which case the tag has no place, as it's intended for articles in their inception. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Unreviewable article once more

Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation/The Spitfires. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 02:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Moving the article fixed it, note the capital C in Creation? I bet that confused the script. I had to move it to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Spitfires (2), because there was already a Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/The Spitfires --j⚛e decker^talk 02:56, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

2 articles accepted today

Stale

Just wanted to hear other opinions with regards to DataMotion, Inc. and Zeppelin (iPod speaker system). In my view they fail notability guidelines. On another note, I'm seeing articles with serious flaws being accepted and left without even performing a minor copy edit. Articles have no categories, contain serious MOS faults and various other disturbing shortcomings. It is my view that the least one can do when reviewing (especially when accepting) submissions is correct its most visible problems; It only takes about a minute on average. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I checked out all of the references for DataMotion and marked three dead links. However, mixed in with the others there are at least two independently written articles, a report in which a major company-rating organization classifies them as "visionary", and a government report indicating the focus of their research and development. It needs a lot of cleanup, but I don't think it should be deleted. Just to be sure, I added another review from a computer magazine. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:19, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

With regard to Zeppelin: First, I made some of those basic improvements you discuss, and in general I agree, I attempt to at least add cats (or at least an uncat tag!), and WikiProjects to articles I promote, these can really help articles get seen by people who would improve them. A good reminder thank you.

For that particular article, I'd cut DGG some slack, DGG rescued that article from the deletion pile--I'd tagged it G13--and I assume he felt that the article was notable enough to pull it from the G13 I'd applied to it. We're sending a lot of stale drafts through CSD right now, and if DGG, a long-time well-respected editor thinks it's notable, I'm delighted for him to pull it from the fire. Given the volume of material that he's trying to scan to pull articles for recovery on, I also understand that sometimes some corners will be missed--triage is never pretty. You may be right about notability, I certainly thought so when I G13'd it. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:33, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I read a lot of tech reviews, and I can attest that the two reviews are legitimate and fairly detailed reviews. Two is a little skimpy, though. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:46, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I added another one. It was easy to find, so there are probably more out there. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! --j⚛e decker^talk 17:16, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Ok, I'll continue cleaning up as many new articles as I can. I'll also have a look at the blank articles page. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Don't forget that the Afc is just the first line of defense. There's another whole group of editors doing Page Curation over at the WP:New pages patrol, and they have a set of tools that let them quickly tag articles and send messages to the pages creators asking for improvements. Those who are good at categorization can sort the WP:New Pages Feed to pick out uncategorized articles and fix them up. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you! Note that folks like DGG and myself are exempt from Page Curation (autopatrolled comes, like it or not, with admin), and I suspect, if we're the ones who move things into mainspace, that those submissions don't get reviewed. I've argued in the past that admins should be able to turn off autopatrolled on themselves, that would be useful here. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm also a curator, so I guess that's why I'm pickier. I'm autopatrolled too. Articles we accept are exempt from curation for that reason? That is interesting, and should definitely be addressed. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I am confused. What does Joe mean about being exempt from Page Curation? —Anne Delong (talk) 12:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

When users are granted autopatrolled status, whatever they create skips curation. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:20, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Whoa! I guess that means these guys will have to be careful to do their own curation. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:51, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I was unaware autopatrolled included AfC approvals. I always copy edit articles when I accept them though, but can someone confirm this is true? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Anne, sorry I didn't explain further, the new pages feed ignores creations from users with the "autopatrolled" flag or the "admin" flag. For frequent page creators who have their act together, this helps keep the burden at NPP down, which is a great help. DGG (who did the Zepplin AfC acceptance) and myself are admins. I've suggested allowing admins to turn off their own autopatrolled flag, but that idea has never gotten traction. Finally, I don't actually know if or when NPP sees AfC entries. It could be that none fo them are reviewed by NPP. Or, if some are, I'm not sure whether they're patrolled based on who created the original draft, or who moved them to mainspace. I'd like to know the answer to that too. --j⚛e decker^talk 01:18, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Backlog

Resolved

 – backlog drive under discussion at #July backlog drive needed, ATTN: AFC Script/bot developers

While you guys have been playing with the years-old submissions and I, apparently, have been whining over nothing on the Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Thanks page, the backlog has passed 1300. Do we need another backlog drive? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

My fault too - I've been away from my pc for two whole days! I've been catching up with a huge pile of (WP and other) stuff today. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I was away four days at a conference. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:15, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Frank Scheffold

Resolved

Oops! I declined this article as improperly sourced,Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Frank Scheffold and only later realized that it is a copyright violation of http://www.lsinstruments.ch/company/team/administrative_board/. Can I undo the decline? I guess the message is already sent. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Reverting/undoing the edits at the user's talk page and at the article draft should work fine. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

http://www.academia.edu

Resolved

Dear reviewers:

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/AdSiF seems professionally written, and I would like to check to see if it is copied from one of the cited papers. Does anyone have a subscription to http://www.academia.edu and could check this out? —Anne Delong (talk) 17:45, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

ref 1 appears to be available on-line at [7] --j⚛e decker^talk 17:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but they wanted too much information when I tried to login. ~~

Oh weird, I was able to get a PDF, maybe because I came to that URL via Google Scholar. I have the PDF, I'll check it out and see if I see a copyvio, or I can send it to you. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:10, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a copyvio with respect to that reference after checking three randomly selected phrases from the middle of the doc. I also tried a couple of those phrases on Google Scholar and JSTOR to no avail. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

refs 1 and 2 are primary sources. If 3 and 4 turn out to be primary or non-substantial then it needs secondary sources. I would prefer some sources to indicate actual notability. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. However, I wondered if it might be actual text from the essay. Hard to tell when you can't see it. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:12, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Searching on the title of ref3 via Google I found [8], perhaps that's not paywalled. I haven't been able to find ref2. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:20, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I searched this document and it is about state charts, and doesn't mention AdSif, although the AdSif article does say that it works a lot like State charts. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:34, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

2 articles accepted today

Stale

Just wanted to hear other opinions with regards to DataMotion, Inc. and Zeppelin (iPod speaker system). In my view they fail notability guidelines. On another note, I'm seeing articles with serious flaws being accepted and left without even performing a minor copy edit. Articles have no categories, contain serious MOS faults and various other disturbing shortcomings. It is my view that the least one can do when reviewing (especially when accepting) submissions is correct its most visible problems; It only takes about a minute on average. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 00:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I checked out all of the references for DataMotion and marked three dead links. However, mixed in with the others there are at least two independently written articles, a report in which a major company-rating organization classifies them as "visionary", and a government report indicating the focus of their research and development. It needs a lot of cleanup, but I don't think it should be deleted. Just to be sure, I added another review from a computer magazine. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:19, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

With regard to Zeppelin: First, I made some of those basic improvements you discuss, and in general I agree, I attempt to at least add cats (or at least an uncat tag!), and WikiProjects to articles I promote, these can really help articles get seen by people who would improve them. A good reminder thank you.

For that particular article, I'd cut DGG some slack, DGG rescued that article from the deletion pile--I'd tagged it G13--and I assume he felt that the article was notable enough to pull it from the G13 I'd applied to it. We're sending a lot of stale drafts through CSD right now, and if DGG, a long-time well-respected editor thinks it's notable, I'm delighted for him to pull it from the fire. Given the volume of material that he's trying to scan to pull articles for recovery on, I also understand that sometimes some corners will be missed--triage is never pretty. You may be right about notability, I certainly thought so when I G13'd it. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:33, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I read a lot of tech reviews, and I can attest that the two reviews are legitimate and fairly detailed reviews. Two is a little skimpy, though. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:46, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I added another one. It was easy to find, so there are probably more out there. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! --j⚛e decker^talk 17:16, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Ok, I'll continue cleaning up as many new articles as I can. I'll also have a look at the blank articles page. Cheers, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Don't forget that the Afc is just the first line of defense. There's another whole group of editors doing Page Curation over at the WP:New pages patrol, and they have a set of tools that let them quickly tag articles and send messages to the pages creators asking for improvements. Those who are good at categorization can sort the WP:New Pages Feed to pick out uncategorized articles and fix them up. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you! Note that folks like DGG and myself are exempt from Page Curation (autopatrolled comes, like it or not, with admin), and I suspect, if we're the ones who move things into mainspace, that those submissions don't get reviewed. I've argued in the past that admins should be able to turn off autopatrolled on themselves, that would be useful here. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm also a curator, so I guess that's why I'm pickier. I'm autopatrolled too. Articles we accept are exempt from curation for that reason? That is interesting, and should definitely be addressed. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I am confused. What does Joe mean about being exempt from Page Curation? —Anne Delong (talk) 12:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

When users are granted autopatrolled status, whatever they create skips curation. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:20, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Whoa! I guess that means these guys will have to be careful to do their own curation. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:51, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I was unaware autopatrolled included AfC approvals. I always copy edit articles when I accept them though, but can someone confirm this is true? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Anne, sorry I didn't explain further, the new pages feed ignores creations from users with the "autopatrolled" flag or the "admin" flag. For frequent page creators who have their act together, this helps keep the burden at NPP down, which is a great help. DGG (who did the Zepplin AfC acceptance) and myself are admins. I've suggested allowing admins to turn off their own autopatrolled flag, but that idea has never gotten traction. Finally, I don't actually know if or when NPP sees AfC entries. It could be that none fo them are reviewed by NPP. Or, if some are, I'm not sure whether they're patrolled based on who created the original draft, or who moved them to mainspace. I'd like to know the answer to that too. --j⚛e decker^talk 01:18, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Backlog

Resolved

 – backlog drive under discussion at #July backlog drive needed, ATTN: AFC Script/bot developers

While you guys have been playing with the years-old submissions and I, apparently, have been whining over nothing on the Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Thanks page, the backlog has passed 1300. Do we need another backlog drive? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

My fault too - I've been away from my pc for two whole days! I've been catching up with a huge pile of (WP and other) stuff today. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I was away four days at a conference. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:15, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Frank Scheffold

Resolved

Oops! I declined this article as improperly sourced,Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Frank Scheffold and only later realized that it is a copyright violation of http://www.lsinstruments.ch/company/team/administrative_board/. Can I undo the decline? I guess the message is already sent. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Reverting/undoing the edits at the user's talk page and at the article draft should work fine. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

PLEASE HELP

Resolved

 – Incorrect talk page.

Hi, For the Purpose of this article i wont give my name yet, but if the information is valuable and reliable then i will, I am trying to find out certain details about Dirk K. Stoffberg (Referance, Dulce September and The Z Squad Incorparated) after the careful reaserch that i have done and my Grand Parents, mother, aunties have all told me the same thing and i have no reason to think that they would lie to me, sorry i digressed, anyway i am his grandchild and i need to know more about hime because all over the web information about him is very scarce and censored, ty i will check this page again in a month to see if anything has been done if u need anymore info just make a post on the page and i will see what i can do — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.204.11 (talk) 17:11, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

It's unlikely that you will find information on Wikipedia that is not already well known elsewhere. However, there are 1421 records of people named Dirk Stoffberg at FamilySearch.org, at the following URL: https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results#count=20&query=%2Bgivenname%3ADirk~%20%2Bsurname%3Astoffberg~ —Anne Delong (talk) 18:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, we're not a research service. The chances of this topic still being here in a month's time is zero. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

That was a bit bitey, Dodger. No mention of WP:RD or WP:RA? Anne was kind enough to point him in another direction. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:37, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, the guy acted as if he were hiring a private detective or something. I'm an amateur genealogist, so it only took me two minutes to find the info. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:07, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Who knows what the person's circumstances are. It's best to be gentle with people in general, specially when not facing them. Anyway, that's that :) FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 21:26, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Mea culpa Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

http://www.academia.edu

Resolved

Dear reviewers:

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/AdSiF seems professionally written, and I would like to check to see if it is copied from one of the cited papers. Does anyone have a subscription to http://www.academia.edu and could check this out? —Anne Delong (talk) 17:45, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

ref 1 appears to be available on-line at [9] --j⚛e decker^talk 17:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but they wanted too much information when I tried to login. ~~

Oh weird, I was able to get a PDF, maybe because I came to that URL via Google Scholar. I have the PDF, I'll check it out and see if I see a copyvio, or I can send it to you. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:10, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a copyvio with respect to that reference after checking three randomly selected phrases from the middle of the doc. I also tried a couple of those phrases on Google Scholar and JSTOR to no avail. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

refs 1 and 2 are primary sources. If 3 and 4 turn out to be primary or non-substantial then it needs secondary sources. I would prefer some sources to indicate actual notability. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. However, I wondered if it might be actual text from the essay. Hard to tell when you can't see it. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:12, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Searching on the title of ref3 via Google I found [10], perhaps that's not paywalled. I haven't been able to find ref2. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:20, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I searched this document and it is about state charts, and doesn't mention AdSif, although the AdSif article does say that it works a lot like State charts. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:34, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

young yen shawntez brand

Resolved

 – Incorrect talk page.

Young yen is in Battle Creek Michigan is a very hip hop person he made his debut on YouTube. his birthday is November 4 1994 he works from home he's going to be a star he's in the process of coming up with his blueprint everyday and the hotel is a new day to work shawntez brand will go over the world he says he's an eclipse baby with the Sun in his eyes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.141.213.45 (talk) 18:18, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

This page is for users involved in this project's administration. If you would like to start writing a new article, please use the Article wizard. If you have an idea for a new article, but would like to request that someone else write it, please see: Wikipedia:Requested articles. Citrusbowler (talk) 13:25, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/t of number-one hits of 2013 (Austria)

Resolved

This article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/t of number-one hits of 2013 (Austria) seems to be one of a series. The others from previous years look similar and are all in the encyclopedia. I haven't reviewed anything like this before. Should it be accepted? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:09, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this kind of submission is acceptable. It's a list-class submission, we don't get huge numbers of them but they crop up from time to time. Just check that the single reference actually supports the content of the article. Pol430 talk to me 07:13, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Tikvah Alper

Resolved

Why isn't the photo showing up in this article? Tikvah Alper —Anne Delong (talk) 15:25, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay, never mind, it appears to be working now. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:26, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of number-one hits of 2013 (Austria)

Resolved

Will someone please move this page to the right place? Wikipedia:List of number-one hits of 2013 (Austria) I have messed it up twice now (must be having a brain attack..) and I'm too embarrassed to try again. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:44, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

All fixed Pol430 talk to me 22:05, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Template:Afc decline

Stale

{{Afc decline}} has an additional criteria for use on submissions which are copyright violations. I recently made some changes to the this template's functions that made the template less confusing and misleading when this parameter is employed. Under normal circumstances the template looks like this:

Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please view your submission to see the comments left by the reviewer. You are welcome to edit the submission to address the issues raised, and resubmit if you feel they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, you can find it at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Article Name.
• To edit the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
• If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, or on the . Please remember to link to the submission!
• You can also get live chat help from experienced editors.

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Pol430 talk to me 16:04, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

When used with the optional CV parameter, it now looks like this:

Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. The submission has not been accepted because it included copyrighted information, which is not permitted on Wikipedia. You are welcome to write an article on the subject, but please do not use copyrighted work.

The existing submission may be deleted at any time. Copyrighted work cannot be allowed to remain on Wikipedia.

• If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, or on the . Please remember to link to the submission!
• You can also get live chat help from experienced editors.

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Pol430 talk to me 16:04, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

This set me thinking that perhaps the optional CV parameter should be changed to an optional CSD parameter. One that would be automatically initiated by AFC Helper Script when a submission is declined for a reason that makes it eligible for speedy deletion. The template with this parameter employed would read something like this:

Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. The submission has not been accepted because it violated one or more of Wikipedia's policies and is eligible for deletion under one or more of the criteria for speedy deletion. Please see the comment within the submission for information on the nature of the violation. You can find it at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Article Name.

The existing submission may be deleted at any time. If the submission has already been deleted by an administrator, the reason for the deletion will be indicated in the deletion summary at the page title.

• If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, or on the . Please remember to link to the submission!
• You can also get live chat help from experienced editors.

Pol430 talk to me 16:04, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts?

Looks good. The templates specifically warn you against marking the article under the normal CSD, so it would be nice if the script could automatically mark the pages for speedy deletion. Citrusbowler (talk) 16:50, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Which templates are you referring to? The script can already automatically mark submissions for speedy deletion but only under an unspecified general criteria -- which is not normally a good idea. Pol430 talk to me 17:12, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm talking about the templates that correspond to CSD. For example, once I declined a request due to copyright infringement, and the decline template said that AfC pages don't apply to CSD. Citrusbowler (talk) 19:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of an optional parameter, and that's a nice template for it. There are short copyvios that probably would warrant an edit to correct rather than a G12 in mainspace, I might want the flexibility. I'd also very much like a similar parameter for G11. Going through the list of declined AfCs for promotionally, there are some that never, ever, ever had a chance of being non-promotional, particularly those whose advertising extended to the title. We really need to push back on being abused as an ad site. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:52, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

When a draft is declined for copyvio the option to add a G12 speedy would be is very useful - in which this case the template should inform the submitter that the draft will be deleted, not may be. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand all this. I must be missing something. When I decline copivios the script automatically tags it for deletion under G12. Why are you discussing something that's already in place? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:13, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I think you should re-read this thread from the beginning. I'm discussing turning a parameter within the above template into a general CSD parameter rather than just for copyvios. Copyvios are not the only types of submission we delete on the spot. Pol430 talk to me 21:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, the confusion is my fault, I misswrote my previous post - it should have been: "...a G12 speedy is very useful..." - I should have gone to bed hours ago! Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:57, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Any time the script ads a speedy-deletion tag, please also write any custom-comment and any other information, such as the thing the submission is a copyright violation of, to the user's talk page in addition to the submission page. This "extra stuff on the user's talk page" is only needed for speedy-deletion-tagged items because they may not be there for the submitter to see if they only exist on the submission page. Keeping a copy on the submission page (which is where it goes now) is useful for administrators who may need that information later. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:20, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Good point, thank you. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:59, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Nooksack Loop Trail

Resolved

Dear editors:

Here's an article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Nooksack Loop Trail with three good newspaper references, but it's about something that doesn't yet exist. Should I approve it? —Anne Delong (talk) 17:50, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

My 2 cents says to not approve. All 3 references are from the same "paper" and aren't geographically seperate so there really isnt a broad based notability, a call for WP:CRYSTAL, and looking at the individual references we see that 2 of the 3 are written by the same author. The 3rd has a strange byline to the point that it may have been ghost written by the same author as the other two. I'd suggest that userfication be implemented on the submission until there is either navigable sections of the trail or coverage by multiple sources besides that newspaper. Hasteur (talk) 19:11, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

The topic title could be redirected to a section in, and the material could be used in a section in, the Whatcom Parks and Recreation Foundation article. That is not very longand it already has some of the same material (including i think 2 of the 3 sources). It's just a proposed trail, so an encyclopedia article seems not quite proper to me, too. I am not a lawyer; i am not fully conversant in your criteria here; this is just my 2 cents also. Cheers, --doncram 21:19, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Copyright

Resolved

Could someone experienced and expedient with regards to copyright issues have a look at my talk page and point the latter user in the right direction? Thanks! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:52, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

 Done. I've responded at your talk page and her usertalk. Pol430 talk to me 08:09, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Irony aptness

Resolved

Dear reviewers:

I have been checking out this article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Irony aptness. It seemed like an odd phrase, and I wondered if it was a neologism. The main reference is a journal paper. The second reference does not contain the term. I did a Google search, leaving out the author of that paper, and leaving out the paper archiving web site on which it was posted ("irony aptness" -giora -gruyter) and that left 21 hits, with most of these having punctuation of various kinds between the two words (such as "irony; aptness"). My question is, if this term is mainly used in one journal paper, which was published in a respected journal, can this still be a notable term? The paper archiver says that the paper has been cited 40 times, but I have no way of finding out if any of the citations were about this term. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:11, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:BURDEN. Since you made a reasonable effort to see if the topic was notable and could not, it's okay to decline it saying its notability is not clear and inviting the submitter to either add references or communicate to you through {{afc comment}} or messages on your talk page or the Help Desk enough information so it is clear that the topic is notable. I would also refer him to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary#Neologisms and invite him to seriously consider that the term may be too new and too uncommon to be considered anything other than a neologism. To quote from the above:

To support an article about a particular term or concept we must cite what reliable secondary sources, such as books and papers, say about the term or concept, not books and papers that use the term.

Academic papers are frequently considered primary, not secondary, sources.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:57, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you; I have declined it. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:08, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Restore "Custom Decline Reason" to AfC tool helper.

Resolved

 – Implemented into script version v4.1.18i1, roll out later this month.

I'm sorry, but whoever thought it was a good idea to remove "Custom Decline Reason" from the AfC review tool needs to be trouted quite liberally. What happens when you have to decline a AfC on grounds that aren't in that dropdown? YOU CANT! Take for example the kludged way I had to respond here. If we still had the Custom Decline Reason option I could have asked the question in the decline box... Now it's not possible. Hasteur (talk) 18:10, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I left you a message on your talk page concerning your liberal use of custom declines. The feature was never removed, but it was hidden by consensus on this page. New users were misusing the custom decline reasons and we felt it necessary to remove the feature. It's still available, but I've said how to get to it before, and the users who actually need to use the feature are the ones capable of finding it. Sorry if I sound BITEy, but this was consensus. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:21, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Then add the option back because the pre-built responses cause more problems than they solve. I throw a giant trout at you for being so blockheaded to miss the point. Where was the notice here that the option was going away? Where was the recent discussion to remove this option? But if you want to be more concerned about editors who haven't invested a significant amount of time in the project over editors who have then prepare to go back to the 2 to 3 month backlogs on AfC again... Hasteur (talk) 18:29, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The discussion is located in the archives, specifically 2012 Q3. If you wish to bring the option back up in an RFC, be my guest, but I'm voting to hide it. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:45, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I looked through that entire archived section indicated by Nathan2055 above and can find no consensus or even discussion about removing the custom decline option. In fact, the word "custom" appears only twice, once in support of more use of custom declines, and once by Nathan2055 himself. Is the discussion somewhere else? —Anne Delong (talk) 11:19, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

It appears this is a pretty recent change, but you have linked to an archive from 2012 Nathan? Why implement a change so long after the discussion concerning it? Moreover, I too cannot find any 'consensus' for this change in the linked archive. Nor do I recall it from memory, over the past two years of my involvement in this project. It appears, from where I'm sitting, that you unilaterally made this change and are suggesting there was a clear consensus for it when there is not. Misrepresenting consensus is not something I find acceptable and I would also ask you to reinstate the custom decline reason as Hasteur has requested. Pol430 talk to me 09:22, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Adding my voice too - we want it back. BTW most of the editors who participated in that discussion (which was not an RFC) don't do anything here anymore, we who actually currently do 90+% of all the reviews should be the ones who decide what tools we need. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

This is a bureaucratic motion for all intents and purposes. I simply don't select any option and write a decline reason of my own. It's a practical approach, and even saves you a click! (This doesn't mean I'm not for the option returning) FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:52, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Remember, guys, it took almost a year for those changes to be finished and pushed to stable. The change was made due to new users misusing the custom decline reasons, and with Hasteur IMHO doing the same thing, I will only revert the change if a full RfC is conducted. Not to be rude or anything, but I made this change to prevent the image of "nice helpful reviewer" getting turned into "evil trigger-happy reviewer", like it had back then. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 22:35, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Per discussions on my talk page, the custom decline reason has been written back in, however it will take a while for me to push it. Thanks, Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:58, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Want some easy "accepts"?

Resolved

Strictly speaking, these aren't "AFC submission," but if you need a mental break from the hard work of AFC, Category:Submissions by Doncram ready for review is getting a bit back-logged. I've found that 80-90% of the drafts I review are acceptable with only clerical changes. Note that there is some stuff on each page in HTML comments that is supposed to go on the talk page, that there are some tl'd-out templates, and that the category Category:Submissions by Doncram ready for review needs to be removed entirely after moving the page. These also have to be moved by hand, the AFC Helper Script won't work on them. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:12, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Why does a separate category for submissions by one editor exist? Why do articles written by an obviously experienced editor even need to be reviewed like a newbie's draft? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:29, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

The issue was recently discussed here Thincat (talk) 10:24, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dinesh Bhugra

Resolved

This article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dinesh Bhugra has 48 citations, many of which are independent newspaper articles, and I feel that the article is ready for acceptance. However, all of the sources are listed in the form of bare URLs. Usually I try to fix up this sort of thing, but there are so many that I just don't have the energy to tackle it. Should I accept it anyway? The subject is highly notable. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:13, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, if it's not likely to be deleted if it were nominated at AfD then it should be accepted. The Reflinks Tool will make short work of fixing unformatted bare url's. There is also nothing wrong with accepting submissions and adding maintenance templates to them, but common sense must prevail. Pol430 talk to me 16:19, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Redirects for creation

Resolved

Has anyone noticed what happened to Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects? Some people decided to use it to make an article! I'm going to revert back to the original version and put stern warnings on the people's pages. I'm just telling you guys what happened. THIS IS URGENT, GET OUT THERE! I'm concerned I could go under 3RR to make all the reverts. Citrusbowler (talk) (contribs) (email me) 18:43, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

It will take like 10 revisions to revert it back to normal! Citrusbowler (talk) (contribs) (email me) 18:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I'm at two reverts, and I'm concerned I can violate WP:3RR if I do four. Citrusbowler (talk) (contribs) (email me) 18:51, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Then you apparently haven't really read WP:3RR which says that multiple back to back reverts are counted as a single revert... Also, it does not apply in apparent cases of vandalism. Technical 13 (talk) 19:15, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

All is well, order has been restored. Pol430 talk to me 19:24, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced text submitted by Sharjeel 10

Resolved

 – Incorrect talk page.

Hey admin, I want you to create a page on the famous website techgear8.weebly.com as it provides much information to students with free of cost and also provide the news of latest technology, and the specifications plus details of latest technological devices — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sharjeel 10 (talk • contribs) 21:46, 9 June 2013‎

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. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 23:18, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

The Limits of Individual Plasticity

Resolved

Dear editors:

As per FoCuSandLeArN's suggestion, I have been trying to categorize some submissions, but this one has me stumped. It's an essay by H.G. Wells, but not fiction. He describes his theory that animals or people can be changed by surgery or other means, but would still retain their underlying nature. (Nobody knew about genes back then.) There doesn't seem to be a category to fit. I couldn't find "Scientific essays" or "biological theories" or "essays about biology" or anything else that would fit on the list. There were lots of people speculating about science; what category am I missing? —Anne Delong (talk) 15:57, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Please note, FoCuSandLeArN, that The Limits of Individual Plasticity is NOT a science fiction story, and should not be classified as such. It is an essay with Wells' theories about the biology of animals. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:20, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

It could be considered as such, if you grasp its correct definition. It's important to note that H.G. Wells was a major science fiction writer, and as such, readers will likely be aware of this, and having a correct category will help them navigate the relevant articles. And it's not a story, it's an essay. Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:50, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I've had a go at improving the categorisation. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:23, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Repeated declines for exactly the same reason - questionable competence

Stale

The writer of WT:Articles for creation/Lyceum of the Philippines University-Laguna‎ shows absolutely no sign of even understanding the meaning of the term "independent source" in spite of having it pointed out multiple times. The university is obviously notable but this writer seems to be incapable of proving it. Should we keep declining it ad nauseam or do we "confiscate" the draft due to the writer's apparent incompetence and let an experienced editor fix it? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:38, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I've already raised a question about submission [11]. I think they need more guidance rather than sanctions. I'll clean it up later if no one else has. Pol430 talk to me 11:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

The issue here does not appear to be notability. The generally accepted standard regarding educational establishments is that bona fide universities are considered notable. In fact, places of secondary education and above are generally considered notable, but not necessarily language schools or similar establishments. Moreover, the referencing is sufficient to establish its existence, so any other verifiability concerns are simply a matter for good editing. The real question is: is it just a fork of Lyceum of the Philippines University? My initial reaction is yes, but there are already several other campuses that have their own articles and the article Lyceum of the Philippines University is already quite expansive, so merging content into it might not be the best option. In conclusion, I think this submission should be accepted as a legitimate fork and, together with its parent and sibling articles, subjected to some serous clean-up by a willing editor(s). Perhaps someone from Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities or Wikipedia:Tambayan Philippines would be able to volunteer their time? Pol430 talk to me 16:15, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I think recruiting some help from relevant WikiProjects is probably the best solution. Universities by their nature attract significant press just by their routine activity so getting someone to help the draft witer to insert a few good references would solve the problem. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:41, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Apparently blank submissions which contain commented-out content

Resolved

When dealing with G13s which have been declined as blank I notice that, though many of them are indeed blank, if you click on "Edit" quite a few have actually got some text, invisible because enclosed for some reason within comment tags. In principle, there might be a possible article lurking in there, though I haven't found one yet. Three points:

• We should look at the instructions to see if we can understand why so many submitters put their text between comment markers, and whether the instructions could be made clearer.
• Instructions for reviewers should advise clicking "Edit" on apparently blank submissions to see whether there is in fact some content there.
• Admins doing G13 deletions should also click "Edit" on blank submissions, in case there is something worth saving.

JohnCD (talk) 18:01, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. I don't think it's a mystery, btw, why so many submitters put their text between comment markers, most of the people in this process are new to editing, and most of them are not computer programmers, and have never heard of comment markers, nor do they know Wikitext. As is always the case at Wikipedia, new article creation for new editors is essentially handing a child a hand grenade and walking them through disarming it.

Also, I found article size a good hint as to whether there was hidden text. Not perfect, but most of the 300 byte articles had no surprises. Most of the 1K articles did.

A final note, the declined-as-blank backlog was pretty much cleared this morning. Those with any interest in recovering articles found in that pile that might have some possible mainspace potential are invited to lend their efforts to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Sam Naz and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Royal Lancaster Infirmary. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

The reviewing instructions already ask reviewers to check a submission is blank by putting the page in edit mode. Not sure why submitters have a propensity to put text in comment fields... seems odd. Pol430 talk to me 19:29, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually that is the reason why I added the HTML comment check in the script and the false/positives should be gone since a few months. We had a major problem with this kind of submissions ages ago. ;-) mabdul 06:57, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Hector Rosales

Resolved

I left a message on this submission Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Hector Rosales suggesting that the Spanish newspaper references be made into citations. Here is the response from the submitter: User talk:Anne Delong#hector rosales. Is there a Spanish speaking editor who can assess this article? —Anne Delong (talk) 22:53, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Seems he is probably notable, but currently all the inlines point to the subject's website. I have seconded your request that they re-jig the citations. Pol430 talk to me 13:44, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Freedom fighters list

Resolved

Dear Editors:

Usually when an article contains a lot of original research, I decline it with the "reads like an essay" option. However, this article: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Freedom fighters list, is really a list, compiled by the submitter. There is already an article about the Indian freedom movement. I had been planning to suggest that the author write a short article about the list and its compilation, add references to show that the list was accepted and written about by his peers and the media, and add an external link to the list which is published on a web site. What decline option should I choose? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:05, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

You can use the custom decline option. If you are using the beta and don't have that option, either temporarily switch back to the production script or do the decline "by hand." If you've never done a "by hand" decline, do it - every reviewer should do this at least once so they can appreciate the gift we've been given in the form of the script. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:00, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Unable to figure out how to do either of these things, so I'll eave it to someone else. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:34, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Technically it's a copyright violation, but I suspect the submitter and the copyright owner are one-in-the-same person, so I have left them instructions about how to donate the material or re-license it. Pol430 talk to me 14:08, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

New categories

Resolved

Dear Reviewers:

I have accepted the Gray Tools article and now I would like to add categories. There is no catergory for "Canadian companies" or "Canadian manufacturers". Can I just type them in anyway, or is there some more formal process for adding new categories? —Anne Delong (talk) 14:31, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

You were looking for Category:Manufacturing companies of Canada. While you can just add categories, if a topic that would likely already exist doesn't seem to have one, it's probably just a matter of naming. I find Google more helpful than our in-house search at finding categories, which is sad but, I hope, a helpful tip. --j⚛e decker^talk 15:12, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. There is, however, a category "Canadian companies established in 2007", even though there isn't "Canadian Companies". Is there a task force out there to rationalize categories? —Anne Delong (talk) 15:46, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories does much of that, but it looks at least a little bit promising. I don't frequent "Categories for Discussion", but you will see clear proposals for moving groups of articles there at times for rationalization, too. --j⚛e decker^talk 15:52, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Pichas Goldhar

Resolved

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Pinchas Goldhar was rightfully declined as a duplicate, but it is superior to the existing article. I ignored all rules and boldly moved it to Talk:Pinchas Goldhar/Temp to facilitate merging. See Talk:Pinchas Goldhar for more details.

By the way, this is very "out of process" as it's the exception, not the rule, that someone will use AFC to create an article that is better than the one that already exists. After all, anyone can edit non-protected articles. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:30, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

A rare event indeed, but well handled. Pol430 talk to me 17:55, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages in a foreign language with two terms...

Resolved

I declined a couple disambiguation pages from a Portuguese word that had no incoming links to where the page would have been moved to if it was approved this morning after asking around in IRC if it was what I should do with them... A few hours later, someone asked me why I declined them and I showed them the discussion and asked their opinion of it. They said they should have been approved so now I am confused. One of the two submissions in question is Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Capela (disambiguation) and I can't seem to find the other one. I don't want to decline submissions that should be approved and more importantly I don't want to approve things that should be declined... Looking for a consensus of what should be done with these cases. Thanks Technical 13 (talk) 22:14, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I would've either accepted or recommend a merge of all existing spell-almost-alike and sound-almost-alike disambiguation pages plus this submission into one page. The lack of "incoming links" is expected with DAB pages - incoming links are usually added shortly after the DAB page is created (i.e. dab pages are rarely "wanted redlinks"). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:30, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Most incoming links to a disambiguation page should link to one of the specific articles. Still the main Capela article could do with a {{otheruses}} template, which would then link to the disambiguation page. I have accepted the submission (I don't think "no incoming links" is a proper reason to decline in the first place) and added the hatnote. Huon (talk) 22:39, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Michael Shuisky

Resolved

Dear Editors:

Here's a very good article about an opera singer: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Michael Shuisky. Near the end of the article there are a number of quoted theatre reviews in Russian, followed by English translations. Is it appropriate to have the reviews in the article? —Anne Delong (talk) 00:24, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Typically not, unless the singer is notable because of pioneering work in the field or a unique feature of his voice and a particular review points this out in a way that is "encyclopedic" rather than "promotional." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:23, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

July backlog drive needed, ATTN: AFC Script/bot developers

Unresolved

Unless the backlog is well below 400 well before July 1 we should plan on a July backlog drive.

Among other things this means having

• the scorekeeping bot running every few days instead of only sporadically like during the last backlog drive.
• having a tested, stable AFC Helper Script by June 23 (1 week out) and keeping it as "bug fix only" until the end of the drive.
• to avoid issues with the beta script doing harm during the drive, I recommend having a "release candidate" and "beta" script, with all non-emergency fixes living for at least 24 hours in "beta" before being copied to "release candidate" and all "beta" users 'closely scrutinizing edits the beta script made if the beta script has any recent changes.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:12, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm willing to get the page set up. Also, if User:Excirial is willing to give me "the keys" to the programme, I will run it regularly. Mdann52 (talk) 10:15, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

We also want the custom decline option back! Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:36, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

you can :) Mdann52 (talk) 15:07, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

That diff says nothing about the custom decline option. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:33, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Ummmm.... What do you think I got the script to do :D - "see comment therein" = custom decline reason :) Mdann52 (talk) 20:15, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The custom decline option will be rolled out along with a few other emergency changes in a few days. However, mabdul has vanished again, and I have no idea how to fix the scanner error in beta (which is the only stopper AFAIK). --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:03, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Recommend marking AFC templates as "do not remove" with HTML comments

Unresolved

Before I ask the AFC Helper Script and Article Wizard developers to add this feature, I wanted to get feedback.

The feature is that when these scripts add any AFC template, they add

<!--Do not remove the following AFC template until the submission is accepted, see [insert URL of a future help page here] for details -->

before the template and

<!--Do not remove the preceding AFC template-->

At the same time, {{submit}} and similar typically-subst'd templates that expand to "afc submission" and "afc comment" will be changed so that if they are subst'd (as it should be) it will also pre- and post-pend the same HTML comments.

Any objections before I ask the appropriate people to implement this? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:37, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I like this! It's getting really tiring to keep explaining to writers: "You can't find the resubmit button because you deleted the review template...yadda yadda. I'd actually prefer a thick black line across the whole page with a loud bold "DO NOT EDIT, DELETE OR IN ANY OTHER WAY, SHAPE OR FORM ALTER, MUTILATE, CHANGE, MODIFY OR MESS WITH ANY OF THE STUFF ABOVE THIS LINE!", but civil, bite, be kind to kiddies, etc. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:06, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Any Lua programmers?

Unresolved

Is it feasible using Lua to "encapsulate" existing templates or existing wikicode so that categories are not applied but the code visually looks the same?

In other words, could Lua be used to let navigation, infobox, and other category-including templates be used in submissions without causing the submission to be put in those categories?

Similarly, could the entire body of the submission be encapsulated in a Lua template so that templates like can be used as part of the review process without having the submission put into "articles needing citations since [date]"-type categories?

If this is feasible, are you (you being any Lua programmers out there) willing and able to try to make it work? Bonus points if you can have the page display a list of "would-be in" categories at the bottom. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:53, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't know how to do that with LUA, but you can certainly fix the templates using the existing macro stuff to not assert categories in anything but article space. If you can show me a particular, problematic template, I can dig up how to do that and show you by example. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:23, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I am aware that templates can be fixed one-by-one, but the idea is that neither an editor using an arbitrary template suitable for articles nor I as a reviewer using an arbitrary cleanup template would have to worry "has this template been 'fixed up' to disable categories outside article space?"

One option is to have a project-wide task to fix up all templates that cause pages to be included in categories, but that would be a huge undertaking, even if a bot did a lot of the work. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:45, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay, cool-it would be a lot fo work to fix every template on WP, I'm not sure that we wouldn't get some benefit from doing those that we see when we see them, though, I bet that's a much smaller set. Sorry I don't have an answer for you w.r.t. LUA. --j⚛e decker^talk 22:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Article history messed up

Resolved

Dear reviewers:

A couple of months ago I declined this article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Eurolib, asking for some references, and then later also asked that a section which was a copyvio be rewritten in the editor's own words. Today I received a note that this had been done, but couldn't find any change. Then I realized that the submitter had actually edited an old version of the page which can be found at http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Eurolib&oldid=551625397. The copyrighted history has indeed been rewritten and the outside references added, so I would like to accept it, but how do I go about this? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:54, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Just click 'review' and then 'accept and publish to mainspace'. Pol430 talk to me 17:29, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, it seems that on closer inspection there were still copyright problems, so I have left a message for the editor. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:43, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Blanked submission with comment about copyrights. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 22:12, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Ravi Dhar discusses evolution of Biotechnology in India

Resolved

 – Incorrect talk page.

Our ancient scriptures talk extensively about human intellect contributing to human good and the story continues even today. However, present times are different due to use of electronic gadgets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.176.139.54 (talk) 17:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

This page is for users involved in this project's administration. If you would like to start writing a new article, please use the Article wizard. If you have an idea for a new article, but would like to request that someone else write it, please see: Wikipedia:Requested articles. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 21:17, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

AfcBox proposal

Unresolved

If anyone has been wondering whatever happened to my AfcBox proposal to ask submitters whether they have added sources, Writ Keeper has been helping me out with it, and now I have put a message on Village pump (technical) asking for someone to check the technical aspects. When that's done I will be asking the editors here for some comments about the exact working of the options. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:54, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: New Decline Reason

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

As we've had the free form decline reason taken away I propose the following pre-populated message.

Submission contains references but no in-line citations. Please review WP:INCITE and correct prior to re-submission

The purpose is for articles similar to this. It contains links, but no inline citations to claims in the text. We could do some guesswork as to what link belongs to which portion in the text, but our guess could be wrong, and doesn't correct the underlying issue of the user not understanding the inline citation format that articles must be in.

Hasteur (talk) 14:44, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I would like to point out the following in our reviewing instructions:

"AFC participants should follow the normal standards set by the standard policies and guidelines for what makes an acceptable article. Avoid the following errors: Declining an article because it correctly uses general references to support some or all of the material. The content and sourcing policies require inline citations for only some specific types of material, most commonly: direct quotations and contentious material (whether negative, positive, or neutral) about living persons." —Anne Delong (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Support This reason could be used to flag up that the article has probably been assessed inappropriately and a reassessment is desirable. Thincat (talk) 15:13, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose as per Anne Delong's note about AfC standards. Greengreengreenred 15:24, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose per policy and offer an alternative: "This submission includes either a direct citation, contentious material, or other material in which an inline citation is either required or strongly recommended. Please read Wikipedia:Inline citations for details and see the reviewer's additional comment(s) below for a partial list of places in your submission which require an inline citation prior to acceptance." The script should be configured to put up a notice to reviewers that Unless a prior decline or comment already addresses the issue, a comment listing at least one specific instance where a citation is needed is required for this decline reason. Note: AFC can and should have standards stronger than policy, but we shouldn't have a "no tolerance" policy for inline citations where the benefit would be low. Instead, we should accept the article and slap an "inline citation" or similar template at the top of the new article and ask the submitter on his talk page to fix the problem. Only reject the article for lack of inline citations if either policy anticipates it or if any editor - including yourself - would have slapped a {{citation needed}} template anywhere in the article if you saw it in an actual article. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:04, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Then I hope you enjoy declines for nonsense reasons with the comment giving the real reason. Your clamping down on the nuanced reasoning that free form declines give is going to make more new editors come to individual talk pages. It's not bitey to point out things that would cause the article to move down the path of deletion if it were in mainspace. Hasteur (talk) 16:18, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Hasteur that there are times when none of the canned declines covers the issue. New editors are very creative in finding new ways to write unacceptable articles. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Hasteur - maybe it's lack of caffine, but I'm not making the connection between your comment "Then I hope..." and my comment "Oppose per policy..." above. Please clarify. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - The only time we are allowed to decline something based on inline citations is if it is a BLP that fails WP:MINREF. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 19:50, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
• Comment -- I've been on holiday for 2 weeks and no doubt missed a lot of discussion, but why has the custom decline field been removed? Where was the consensus to remove it? Also, we had a general 'No inlines' decline before, but it was used inappropriately and so it was removed or turned into a BLP inline reason (I forget the exact order of events) Pol430 talk to me 19:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal: Decline for Duplicate Prose

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

As we had the free form decline reason taken away from the automated tool I propose the following decline reason

Duplicated prose sections. Please either unify or delete the duplicate and re-submit.

This type of decline would be used when the author has somehow copy pasted the body of the submission multiple times which makes the submission longer than it needs to be. The AfC reviewer could delete the duplication, but it has been impressed upon me that the reviewer should not take an active role in editing the article and the author may want to keep one version over the other. Yes it pushes more responsibility back onto the creator of the submission, but this way we are helping them learn how to do things and not depend on the kindness of other volunteers. Hasteur (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I would mildly agree with this in cases where the reviewer looks at the article very shortly after it is submitted. After a week in the queue I feel that this would cause an unreasonable delay from the point of view of the submitter. I would also agree in the case where the reviewer can't easily tell which is the latest version. What I have tended to do is just leave a note on the submitter's talk page asking them to fix it, but this doesn't always work. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:06, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Oppose as its usually not the submitter's fault and/or its due to a submitter misunderstanding how to submit things. Either way, rejecting only on this basis might be WP:BITEy. Also it's usually either an easy fix or there are other problems. If there are other problems, add a comment saying to clear out the duplicate parts. If there are no other problems clear out the duplicate and accept the article and notify the user that you cleared out all but one of the duplicates and invite them to make sure you did it right. Once we get the ability to reject for multiple reasons we should add this with the caveat that it should not be used as the ONLY reason for rejection. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:09, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - For pete's sake, how lazy are you? If I encounter this, I just go ahead and fix it myself. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 19:51, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I have to agree with Nathan here. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 20:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
• Not a valid decline reason, nor should it be - Personally, I just delete the portion of duplicate text that is least good. The author's preferred tract of text is largely irrelevant as nobody owns pages on Wikipedia; indeed, the author releases said text per the licensing conditions the moment they click save page. Finally, if something particularly pertinent is removed in error, the text can still be salvaged from the page history. Pol430 talk to me 19:24, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Frivolous [[ ]] redirect requests

Resolved

I have seen many requests with a [[ ]] as the title, often with the target also being [[ ]]. I have seen that the IPs which make these requests are not the same or similar, which means it is not consistent spamming. I think that the Article/Redirect wizard starts you off with [[ ]], so it's probably just a user clicking save without editing anything. However, these requests are annoying. Is it possible that the article wizard can be edited so it will not allow users to save the page without editing? Citrusbowler (talk) 21:44, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The article wizard can't do that at this stage. However, it is possible to decline empty requests via the script. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

BLP violation declines

Resolved

 – Will be fixed in script version 4.1.18i1, to be pushed soon. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Currently, the AFC helper script drop-down menu of decline reasons shows the BLP decline reason with the following description:

blp - Blatant violation of BLP policies (immediately blank and mark for deletion)

Firstly, there is no process in the deletion policy or the criteria for speedy deletion to allow for the immediate deletion of pages which 'violate the BLP policy'. There is only process for the speedy deltion of "biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced." This is done under criteria G10 because such pages are a stones throw away from being an attack page.

In the case that a submission is eligible under criteria G10, the appropriate decline reason is 'test' (as indicated in the reviewing instructions). I have asked for a specific decline reason to be introduced at the script development page. The BLP decline reason is intended for use on submissions that do not comply with the BLP policy, but are not eligible for speedy deletion – they should be blanked as a courtesy and left declined/archived. Please can someone with the required knowledge re-write the description of this decline reason to something like:

blp - Submission does not comply with the BLP policy (but is not eligible for speedy deletion)

This avoids misrepresenting the purpose of this decline reason and several policies. Pol430 talk to me 10:49, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

 Working - Right, will be implemented in the same emergency hotfix that will reimplement custom declines. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:57, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Be aware of Visual Editor changes coming.

Unresolved

In eight days, a limited number of new editors (not a majority, or all) will get Wikipedia:VisualEditor. This may create some signficant limitations for those editors, some of ho may be at AfC, for example, as present, those editors will be entirely unable to create refs with VE. More info at [12] --j⚛e decker^talk 19:21, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh deep, deep joy... Pol430 talk to me 19:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

You can share the experiences of those lucky editors by applying visual editor to User:Joe Decker/Sample. The decision to guide people towards non-inline citations in the template will be a positive. The idea to use comments, which are invisible here, to provide help, will be a negative. That the template shows is probably a positive, that it gets overhatched with green crossbars is almost certainly a negative. What can we do to improve this? (Don't forget to turn on VE as an option at the bottom of Preferences > Editing.) --j⚛e decker^talk 20:40, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Please tell me this will be opt out. If not, then there will be trouble. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 23:20, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I have it turned on, and you can use either editor. However, the VE is marked "Edit" rather than "Edit Source", which is what our current boilerplate tells them to click. They are going to turn this on for new editors in eight days, what can we do to the boilerplate to mitigate the damage? --j⚛e decker^talk 06:17, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

If it's only going to apply to a limited number of new editors I suggest we leave the boilerplate and deal with problems on a case by case basis. If it becomes obvious we need to amend the boilerplate text then we can do so at that time. Honestly, why are they deploying it at all without the ability to add references? Seems dumb for an open access encyclopedia, no? Pol430 talk to me 13:51, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm just the messenger, I pretty much agree with your concern. The complaint department is thataway. As far as leaving the boilerplate as it is, have you turned on VE and loaded up the sample text I linked above? I really suggest you do, it will cure you of any sense that there aren't problems that we can start to address proactively. Finally, I have been assured that there will be some support for references before wider deployment in July, which I retain (as a matter of software development schedules) skepticism about. --j⚛e decker^talk 15:03, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry Joe, I wasn't directing any pique towards you. I've already left them some feedback. I'll have a go with VE on the sample now. Pol430 talk to me 15:24, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

No worries, I didn't take it personally, I just am a bit frustrated myself. Maybe more coffee will help.  :) --j⚛e decker^talk 15:26, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I have commented at WP:VisualEditor/Feedback#couldn't add citation, please add your voices too. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:53, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Has anybody noticed that the WMF have not made it compatible with project space yet? It appears that for AfC at least, this is a non-issue. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I just received a reply to my concern about referencing. Philippe Beaudette suggests they are looking to deploying the ability to add and edit references using VE in "days rather than months" Pol430 talk to me 18:15, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Yup, I saw that about references. I still think there are problems with the combination of our template and VE, however. HTML comments are another example. i don't know what the WMF plans to do about project space going forward. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:45, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

What problems do you envisage Joe? I had a go with your sample page, using VE, and the resubmit link still seems to work, I'm not sure why new editors will need to make any changes to the template or HTML comments? Pol430 talk to me 20:24, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, the hints on how to use references are invisible. That may be made up for by fancy reference features, I suppose. Although if we have fancy ref features maybe we shouldn't have the bulleted source list.

I almost wish that there was a little sample sentence there to get people started--when I open it up, all I see is the big template, and you have to scroll to type below the template. Might be nice to have something to clue people in as to where to start.

Just thinking out loud.... --j⚛e decker^talk 20:31, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd note that the reference-handling stuff should be a lot more intuitive in the VE and have less cognitive overhead, so hopefully that will partially solve for the comments problem. For the rest, working with things like page notices would probably be a better idea. Alternately you could try the Guided Tours extension, which is designed for just this sort of thing - giving someone a step-by-step tutorial on how to complete [task]. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:40, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Guys! No one read my comment-the VE will NOT be turned on for Wikipedia space! There is no problem here. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/John M. Moyer House

Resolved

This article Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/John M. Moyer House by Visitor7 looks oddly familiar.... —Anne Delong (talk) 01:41, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I think there are multiple editors participating in Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places that are creating stub articles using a standard format. Doncram (talk · contribs) uses this format. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:18, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

By the way, Visitor7 (talk · contribs) is an established editor. He wrote Patrick Hughes House using a similar format. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:21, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

My attention was brought here by the "Your notifications" feature. I haven't had previous contact with the contributor, I think, but I just added a bit to the article. Yes, it is a standard genre. This is one topic listed at National Register of Historic Places listings in Linn County, Oregon; I got a DYK once for another Linn County one. And, in this genre, I believe an article should be accepted if there is an assertion of notability (i.e. mention that the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places). Besides lewdness, incredibly bad grammar, grossly unsourced assertions, or I don't know what other exception, any contribution in this genre should simply be accepted and the contributor should be thanked. :) --doncram 03:41, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Just checking....—Anne Delong (talk) 10:37, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Contributers are thanked automatically when their submissions are accepted via the script. Ironically, reviewers are almost never thanked. An even better solution would be for those established users creating articles in this genre to just create them directly. With the obvious exception of Doncram, for whom there is a separate process. Pol430 talk to me 12:38, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I am sometimes thanked by articles creators, particularly if I have left comments that they found helpful or made some small improvements to the pages. Usually it's about articles that I have declined, so the editors are often new and appreciate the help. I value these talk page notes, whereas I see no value in this new "thank" feature in the notifications.—Anne Delong (talk) 13:24, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

An even better solution would be for those established users creating articles in this genre to just create them directly. <---YESYESYES. Unless there is a good reason, established editors should avoid overloading AFC. Good reasons to use AFC include: 1) inexperienced at creating articles and need feedback (I've seen this myself, once, the article was very well written but the editor couldn't figure out the mechanics of creating an article) 2) they want to go through the AFC process once just to see things from "the newbie's" point of view (highly recommended, although I haven't done it), 3) they have a conflict of interest (preferably declared) or are otherwise prohibited or discouraged from creating the article themselves, 4) they are using a non-autoconfirmed special-purpose account (be careful with this - consider publicly or privately declaring the conflict and asking an administrator to "confirm" the account, 5) possibly other rarely-applicable reasons I can't think of. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes please! If you know what you're doing and understand the rules please don't bother us, we're far too busy helping newbies to be dealing with this kind of stuff. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:10, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

+1. DGG ( talk ) 18:18, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

The article has appeared in mainspace and the Afc submission version blanked. I presume that's an indication that we should delete it. —Anne Delong (talk) 09:58, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I've turned it into a redirect to reduce to likelihood of duplication by other editors. Pol430 talk to me 12:09, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Recommendation for later this year: Split submission, status, and "talk" submission

Unresolved

If WT:Articles for creation/Submissionname was just a single "meta-template", WT:Articles for creation/Submissionname/article was the submitted text, WT:Articles for creation/Submissionname/status held what we now see as {{afc submission}} and {{afc comment}}, and WT:Articles for creation/Submissionname/talk held proposed talk page content (in a form that prevented categorization, of course), it would things cleaner. The "meta-template" would transclude the sub-pages into a form similar to what we see now.

I'm just throwing this out as an idea for now, I wouldn't want to even try to do this until we've absorbed the impact of major changes like the new Visual Editor.

By the way, this wouldn't be the first major change to AFC. It underwent a radical change back in '08 or '09. The "old way" was kind of a mess, it was very difficult to create a submission bigger than a stub, and it was nearly impossible to include infoboxes and other visual templates. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:47, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. It would require a script revamp as well, though. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 22:45, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects

Unresolved

Does anybody else have problems getting AFC helper script to work on Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects? Pol430 talk to me 20:14, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Stable, beta, alpha, or mineral? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:20, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I noticed it in the stable script. When I try to click 'review' nothing happens. I disabled stable and tried mabdul's beta script and it half-worked. It made all the redirects and their talk pages, but did not close request at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects. I have removed mabdul's beta script and switched back to stable and it does not work at all, again. I'm using vector skin. My custom JS page has some other gadgets on it. Could one of these be conflicting? Pol430 talk to me 21:31, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Conflicts are pretty much impossible. At this point, it's the same issue that has been causing problems since we picked up the script. The redirect reviewing is not coded as well as the rest of the script and is buggy. We have rolled back to the original version in beta and will resume development on it in the next version. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:51, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

This is not an AFC submisison. There is no AFC submission template. I would not expect the "review" button to do anything. I would say the fact that it doesn't do anything is a feature not a bug. The fact that it shows up at all in the drop-down menu is either a coding bug or a "that's the way we designed it, live with it" issue. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:15, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

@David: The AFC script was designed to process redirect and category requests as well. It was very effective and 12 months ago it worked just fine. Pol430 talk to me 17:55, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

David, I don't believe you understand the functions of the script. It reviews redirects and categories, it's just broken right now. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:41, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Salting solution

Resolved

 – Implementation of RFPP into script is the best option, will be put on to-do list.

I am working on a decline reason for salted pages. But I'm not sure what the correct place to redirect users to to get their pages unsalted would be. What noticeboard should I send them to? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 22:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Usually you'd send people to the protecting admin or the unprotect section of WP:RFPP. --j⚛e decker^talk 22:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

IMHO If the draft would be approved except for the salting then the reviewer should request the salting to be removed and then approve the article as soon as it can be moved. That is assuming the salting was done because of problematic previous article(s) and the new draft does not have the same problem. It's unreasonable to expect a newbie draft writer to deal with an unsalting request, that's what we are here for. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Roger and have done this before. If there are valid reasons for declining the submission, then decline it. If there are not, then request unsalting (it is quick and easy to do, even for retail-obsessed technophobes like myself) and then accept it. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 15:52, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I also agree with Roger (Dodger67). I am now wondering if there is a way to semi-automate such a process? Is there a way for our submission template to know if the destination is salted? If not, is there a way the helper script could know and notify the reviewer of that first? A related question is, when a page is salted, is the talk page also salted? Would it be possible to approve a submission to the talk page and have a top template that requests the page be unsalted and the article moved off the talk? just some ideas... Technical 13 (talk) 16:13, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Excellent ideas. I agree we should handle it for the new editor. I wouldn't be too hard, I would imagine, to automate a submission to WP:RFPP, I don't know if we could expect that the folks there would complete moving over the submission, so we might need to track those articles in a maint. category. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think automatically requesting the unsalting is the correct solution, nor is declining because of salt a solution either. Could you not put the submission in "reviewing" status and manually file the RFPP request? Hasteur (talk) 18:10, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Hasteur, I agree that could be done. My concern is with the fact that the backlog hasn't been under 1000 in quite some time,so anything that can be done to save some time would be beneficial to the project and I'm sure appreciated by most reviewers. I would rather shave time from this kind of process than to skimp on reviewing articles to try and get the backlog down. Technical 13 (talk) 18:18, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

• Sorry for my ignorance, but what exactly is salting? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:45, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

  No worries, WP:SALT just means create protection, that is, protecting an article title without an article in such a way that an article can't be created under that title. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:02, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Salting is wiki-slang for creation-protecting a page title (i.e. preventing anyone but an admin from creating the page). The name comes from a metaphorical comparison with Salting the earth. Pol430 talk to me 18:02, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

As background: This is usually done for a short period, not indefinitely. For me, and for most admins, the period used depends primarily on the history of attempts to recreate the article, and secondarily on the possibility than a reasonable article will ever be possible. If there are repeated attempts in one day to insert a copyvio or hopelessly promotional article on a valid topic, I might protect for a week, so someone else could do it afterwards. If an an attempt is made every few months to insert a promotional article on a very dubiously notable subject, I might protect for 2 or 3 years--some admins would protect indefinitely. If there are repeated attempts to make a completely indefensible article, I and most admins would protect indefinitely. None of these should cause problems at AfC. What will most often cause problems, is when long term attempts are made to write an totally indefensible abusive article on some person with a relatively common name, and another person of that name becomes notable. In this case, while we would certainly permit re-creation, there might be a continuing need to protect the new article, which is almost never desirable for every innocuous edit would need permission--but patrolled edits ought to solve that problem. DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

For now, just put the "ready to be accepted" article under review and post a note here asking an admin to de-salinize the target (and its talk page, if necessary). We've got AFC reviewers with admin rights who visit almost daily if not multiple times a day.

This is a rare enough event that we probably don't need to code this into our scripts. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:31, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I thought that I had come across a candidate today. I requested deletion of a page with silly derogatory comments about someone named Ben Anderson. I saw that the same page had been deleted twice before for the same reason. I was going to ask if something could be done, but then I noticed that the other two were from 2006! So, never mind... —Anne Delong (talk) 01:36, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Automating a submission to RFPP is possible, but we need to get the script to a point where it can understand error messages. I have a criterion asking users to request unsalting, but I agree that it shouldn't be used, so I will remove it soon. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 21:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)