The editor has a problem with comprehension of instructions. The good-faith assumption is that the problem is with the comprehension of English, and the instructions are in English. She switched from one wrong approach to another after we tried to tell her what was wrong. In particular, first the draft had too much stuff that would have to be removed by reviewers. Then we told her that was problematic. So then she started removing the review record. I have forgotten most of the German that I learned in high school and college. Can someone try to explain to her in German? If not, this may just be a submitter who doesn't understand. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:57, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
Why is that every submitter thinks it is a good idea to enclose off-topic external links in the text? I understand they aren't acquainted with the guidelines... then let's acquaint them with the guidelines! Can we please have an edit notice on "best layout practices" or something? With introductions to headers, sectioning... just a very brief little overview with relevant links?
Let's be clear, I don't blame newcomers for not following the layout guidelines. But let's be up front, and prevent badly formatted drafts. It's less work for everyone, really, because the new users don't have to be told off for not following some "policy" with weird abbreviations after the fact, and I don't have to deal with things like this. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]22:15, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
That diff you gave looks copy pasted from somewhere. Even someone that doesn't know anything about wikicode could figure out how to remove all those spaces and line breaks that shouldn't be there, I think. Overall, looks a bit low effort on their part to just copy paste and submit. Not sure they would read and follow instructions even if we made them prominent. P.S. User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/DraftCleaner.js can help to clean up drafts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:02, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Preventing editors from submitting poorly referenced drafts with an edit filter?
I recently had the time to review more drafts than usual and it became very apparent that most drafts that needed declining have the exact same problem: Poor referencing. I mean this type of referencing that is obviously bad in the way that it is immediately apparent that it is not suited at all for Wikipedia. A tool for reviewers that marks unreliable sources already exists; wouldn't it be a good idea to implement something similar for draft submitters? A very basic tool that checks for the following things would suffice I reckon:
Do refenreces exist?
Do the references contain ref errors?
Do any of the references refer to unreliable sources?
Do any of the references contain implausible author information (e.g., generic names such as "staff", etc.)
Does the draft have an unproportionally large number of external links in the body?
I suppose that implementing such checks could be done using an edit filter. Submitters shouldn't be prevented from submitting bad drafts entirely, but at least should they be informed that their drafts are likely to have obvious flaws that need fixing. What do you think? Best regards, --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 11:27, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
I would very much not be in support of this. AfC should be a venue where editors are encouraged to write, develop, and submit, their imperfect pages, getting feedback from real humans. Any barrier to doing so will negatively impact the process in a way that I can't see being positive for the encyclopedia as a whole. Looking through drafts that have issues and supporting editors through addressing those issues is core to what AfC reviewing should be. Sam Walton (talk) 16:25, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
The problem is that at least 90% of drafts submitted on any given day have zero chance of being accepted because they are unreferenced. Theroadislong (talk) 19:55, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, something that can be bypassed would be fine? Like for example the "whoa, you didn't provide an edit summary!" notice - something that goes "hey, your draft doesn't have any footnotes. are you sure you want to submit?" Very much against anything that tags items 2, 4, and 5 in OP's post - none of these are even close to decline reasons. -- asilvering (talk) 23:29, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
Yes, bypassing it should be fine because if this measure prevents some editors from submitting their hopeless drafts, then it's a good one. I chose Preventing because it doesn't mean Prohibiting. Also note that an edit filter should also be able to tag drafts as "likely to contain unreliable sources" or "likely to contain external links in the body"; you get the idea. User:Theroadislong has said something very true, 90 per cent of the drafts submitted have zero chance of being accepted, and always dealing with obviously unacceptable drafts steals a lot of time from reviewers. Having some sort of sorting system that allows reviewers to deal with drafts that have a higher chance of being improvable would be a good thing. Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 09:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
Possibly related: Wikipedia:Edit check
I see what y'all are talking about here as being very much related to mw:Edit check. "Related" in so far as both (this discussion and Edit Check) seem interested in offering people ways to improve the edits they're attempting to make so they better align with project policies.
...great spot and thank you for the ping, @Novem Linguae!
Which leads me to a question: Is there documentation outside of Help:Your first article that you recommend I/the team read as we think through what 'checks' might need to exist were we to prioritize bringing Edit Check to new article creation [i]?
---
i. Note: I'm using "new article creation workflow" to mean the experience someone would have who clicks on a red link to create a new page as opposed to the AfC process.PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
The Growth team is still in the early stages of thinking about this idea, but what @Johannes Maximilian describes is certainly related to what I've been thinking about. The basic idea would be to build off of the learnings and designs of the Edit check project to fulfill the community wish: Reference requirement for new article creation. However, the Growth team would build that in a way so that admins could decide on the "requirement" part. In other words, we could make the Article "Edit check" Community configurable, so that admins could decide exactly how the check is handled. For example, I imagine communities would want to configure multiple parts of a feature like this:
Who sees the message: does this "Edit check" only trigger for newer editors?
The reference requirement: does this "Edit check" only trigger when no references are added? Or is it triggered if there are less than "x" references?
The contents of the message: is this a helpful tip or a warning?
The consequence of proceedingwithout addressing the issue: can editors proceed after seeing the message? Or, are they funneled into drafts if they don't fix the issue? something else?
I was envisioning the initial version of this feature as only checking two of the requirements mentioned above:
Do references exist? (Or are less than the community mandated minimum number of references added?)
Do any of the references refer to unreliable sources?
But admittedly, I haven't quite figured out how this would work from the AfC perspective. Do we want to implement a similar (but different configuration) for the draft namespace?
What are your thoughts? Does this sound like it could be an idea that would help? What am I missing? Who should I connect with to help improve this idea? Should I move this forward to the design stage, so that I can share some initial design mockups so it's easier to conceptualize and discuss this idea?
From the AfC perspective, creating a draft is quite different from submitting it. I don't think any referencing checks are warranted for draft creation as it's certainly not necessary for the very first version of a draft to be referenced. Checks are however required when the draft is submitted. Drafts are submitted to AFC via WP:SUBMIT (which is linked from various templates), and not VisualEditor. How would (if at all) Edit Check work in such a context? – SD0001 (talk) 05:58, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback, @SD0001! Admittedly this idea is aimed more at newer editors who submit articles directly to mainspace. But perhaps it could be extended to help AfC in some way? I could see this "Article Check" idea either not applying to drafts submitted to AFC, or perhaps the messaging is customized and there is simply a prompt to consider adding references. Like @Novem Linguae mentions below, this warning/prompt could be bypassable instead of mandatory.
Although references aren't necessary for a very first draft, I think it might be good to nudge new editors into starting with solid references before they write a draft article.
Does this seem like a solution that would be a step in the right direction? Or is something else needed to help ensure AfC isn't overloaded with drafts with few or no references? Thanks, - KStoller-WMF (talk) 17:18, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
As an alternative to using an edit filter – we can also implement these checks as part of the WP:AFCSW, as almost all submissions are done through that. Some of the checks mentioned (like checking reliability of sources) may not even be feasible via edit filters. – SD0001 (talk) 11:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
+1. What kind of details are we thinking? A regex that checks for at least one <ref> tag, and provides a little warning/prompt if they try to submit without it, linking to WP:INTREF2? If this is controversial, we can make the warning/prompt bypassable instead of mandatory. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:17, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Maybe the warning language there needs to change from "without which it is LIKELY to be declined" to "without which it WILL be declined" Theroadislong (talk) 16:54, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Better: "This draft doesn't appear to contain any footnotes. Please ensure the article has sources, without which it will be declined."
This more clearly states that a) the problem is that there are no footnotes, not no sources and b) that having no sources means a decline, while implying (correctly) c) it is possible to have clear sources without footnotes. If someone submits a stub with sources that aren't footnotes, it should be accepted if the topic is notable and the sources are sufficient. If it has no footnotes OR sources, it's going to be declined no matter what. -- asilvering (talk) 17:32, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Edit check will check only for ref tags, but it sounds like you might want to check for ref tags or URLs.
Depending on how the work goes in the next couple of weeks, it might be possible to do some initial testing of Edit check on this wiki in September. Don't expect anything fancy for the initial version. It sounds like the first version will be as simple as "Did the edit add 50+ consecutive characters, without also adding a new ref tag?" Once they're sure that the basic process works (e.g., without killing the servers), then they can get fancy about things like whether the added text is in the lead. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
Regarding afc draft
Hi Primefac, Hope you are doing well. For how many times does one reviewer review a single draft? or Can we have a rights to improve or edita draft which is reviewed by me or other reviewer. Fade258 (talk) 10:09, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
It comes down to personal preference and philosophy. Some reviewers will review a draft when it comes across their radar, regardless of whether they have reviewed it before. Others, like myself, will usually pass on a draft that they have previously reviewed. There is nothing inherently wrong with either philosophy, though personally speaking I think that letting other reviewers look at a page is good (with caveat by 331dot below) because it reduces any inherent bias brought about by the previous review(s). Primefac (talk) 10:13, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Ok, Thank you for your valuable opinion. I have asked this to you because accidentally I have reviewed a single draft twice. Fade258 (talk) 10:25, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
I might review a draft again if it was resubmitted without any changes or only superficial changes. If substantial changes are made, I usually leave it for another pair of eyes. It depends on the situation. 331dot (talk) 10:29, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
I review a draft a second time very rarely, and then only if I think there is a good reason for doing so. My 'good reason' is often arbitrary. Different eyes on a draft lead to a better end result. Additionally, a single reviewer reviewing multiple times may start to insist on more quality than we need, trying to pursue excellence instead of acceptability. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 10:59, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
@Fade258 Anyone, reviewer included, can, arguably should, improve any draft and any article at any time. With drafts, that fact that we have reviewed it does not mean we should not improve it. Ideally we should improve it pre-review and consider accepting it rather than post decline, which seems a little rude! 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 13:13, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Agreed with the points above, especially when it comes to rereviewing a draft consecutively - I typically don't review a draft twice in a row (unless there are no changes), I typically don't review if I've had an extended conversation with the author, I might occasionally rereview if the problems are very obvious and haven't been addressed in several intervening reviews - e.g. if I did the first review and it's been submitted a fourth time and still has terrible sourcing, I might review again - although by then you're likely getting near the point of either stern comments or rejection. LittlePuppers (talk) 17:49, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
The eponymous author has resubmitted it moments after I redacted the copyright violations. cv-revdel is awaited, but that need not delay acceptance if acceptance is valid. I am unclear whether the draft passes. Other eyes would be appreciated.
As a sidebar this has been deleted previously as a copyvio. I chose to redact this time because there was probably sufficient remaining for an article, or T LEAST A review. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 07:17, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
This now cites two secondary sources, but they're campaign-related, and in any case two aren't quite enough for WP:GNG. My question when I first reviewed this – if special notability is claimed, then what type and based on what evidence? – still remains unanswered (and I don't see anything that would obviously meet NPOL or NPROF).
This is also a bit promotional: eg. in the 2nd para he appoints himself as "an expert on the Wagner Group", but the source cited against that claim doesn't seem to even mention Blazakis. One would need to go through the source carefully to check that they actually support the draft contents. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:39, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
I've chosen to give it a second review on the basis that the first sorted out the copyvio. I have declined it now based upon the lack of obvious stepping over the notability bar. I will not review it again. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 10:38, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
Probably should be deleted as abuse and clearly a SPA that is a sock-puppet of someone who does not even know what an admin is. The linked users CMacMillan and AntiDionysius are not admins as they claim and in fact very low edit accounts. The quote is not found in a full search or in CMacMillan's edit summaries so looks like a lie/misrepresentation as well.... People are odd :/ KylieTastic (talk) 11:29, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
If the subject is notable (you indicate it is) and the draft does not have WP:CV or serious WP:NPOV issues, you should accept (there are additional considerations for WP:BLPs that don't apply here). I agree with the author that your reason for declining this is unclear and possibly invalid. ~Kvng (talk) 21:29, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
I have just reviewed a strange draft, User:ThisIsSeriouslyMe/sandbox. Everywhere that the title of an article appears, it is enclosed in brackets (as is preferred), but the bracketed title is preceded by a nowiki tag, and then nowiki is turned off after the article title. Does anyone have an idea as to why the submitter would be doing such a counter-productive thing? Does someone know of a reason, either a good-faith blunder or an attempt to game something, why they would disable all of the links?
Judging by the history of the original draft, and a slight promotional tone in the new draft, it's possible there's a COI here, but I can't think of a reason beyond struggling with the syntax. I should point out that the decline reason was not actually valid (at least as I interpret it), as the other draft is not actually a submission, since it had already been declined in June. It's likely the submitter did not know about it. Greenman (talk) 23:35, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
I think that User:Greenman is correct about how the 'dup' decline reason is written. However, I think that a reviewer should be able to decline a draft when there is another draft on the same topic, even if it is not currently submitted. Maybe it would have been better if I had declined the weird draft for a custom reason or for notability. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:16, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
I've seen that happen with templates: when one user is instructing another on the use of a template, they might wrap it inside nowikis to prevent its operation on the page they're at, and the instructee might then just copypaste that whole string with the nowikis, without realising they were meant to be removed. Although why anyone would bother to do that with link brackets, I've no idea. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:05, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
+1. I also suspect Visual Editor here. If you type [[, it'll pop up the "Add a link" box. If you immediately close the box by clicking X, it'll assume you wanted to write [[ literally and it will nowiki it for you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:55, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
Second opinion wanted on Draft:Amalie_Olufsen - it was declined by the initial editor for "lack of notability" without proper reasoning
Hello,
I'd like a second opinion on Draft:Amalie_Olufsen. It was declined by a reviewer due to the subject not being notable enough and the reviewer stating he doesn't read Norwegian, thus he couldn't confirm notability. I have argued that given other persons that has articles on Wikipedia within the same category of notable people exist, and that this person can be proven to be more notable in all major countries through using the Google Trends tool going back three years, that shouldn't be an issue. I have also drawn a comparison to the subjects brother, a soccer player, having a Wikipedia article that was recently created and approved - yet arguably being way less notable - also backs up the notion that the article should be approved, not declined, on the basis of "notability".
This is my first major article submission of many planned for well known Norwegian personalities without a Wiki article. My reasoning for that focus area is that there are very few notable Norwegians covered on Wikipedia - but before proceeding with others I want to see my first article published so I feel certain regarding how to set an article up and how to go through the approval process.
I believe that using a tool such as Google Translate on articles published by major news outlets in other countries, used as source material for the written articles, should be a minimum one could expect a reviewer to do. I have had to provide translated articles myself, use existing articles as examples of notability, showing Google Trends analytics about the subject and more - yet none of this has done anything to change the mind of the reviewer, which has me thinking it's a personal viewpoint regarding what is "notable" in their eyes rather than an objective view on notability. A model that makes headline news in multiple countries and has been cast in a leading role in a biopic feature about one of the most well known soccer players in history should, as I see it, clearly be more notable than other models from Norway that haven't really done anything of note. One of which there's actually a very recent article in the second largest news medium in Norway where the aforementioned model, Lillian Müller, specifically states that this subject is bigger than she ever was and is the "new generation". So I am very puzzled why the article got decined on the basis of "notability". Especially as the article also is a lot more in-depth on both achievements and background for its subject than many other articles about models/actresses on Wikipedia.
Would love to hear the opinion of another editor on the article, what I could do differently in the future to make the process quicker and easier, as well as what I can do differently with this article if there are any problems with it that makes it so it can't be approved following Wiki guidelines (other than "notability", I feel very confident about my arguments for notability and can show these again if requested).
I respectfully disagree with User:331dot about sending users to the AFC Help Desk. Most of the questions asked there are elementary and most of the answers there are elementary, of the nature of "Read the reviewer comments". So I prefer to direct submitters to the Teahouse. But I think that we should try to answer reasonable questions from submitters, although this page is mainly for dialogue among reviewers. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:34, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
That's certainly fine too, though as they are asking about a draft that was declined the AFCHD makes sense. Simple questions get simple answers; more complicated discussions can and do occur there, if rarely. 331dot (talk) 16:40, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Just for reference, I was directed by the user Hoary (the initial reviewer on the article) to post here with a direct link. I am as mentioned new to creating articles here on Wikipedia and apologize for posting in the wrong place. Kaizero (talk) 00:41, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
As long as we're discussing venue, it is best to have discussion about a draft on the draft's talk page, in this case Draft_talk:Amalie_Olufsen. If that doesn't get enough attention, post a link to the discussion somewhere more noticeable like here or an involved user's talk page. A notability discussion is a good thing to have attached to the article in the event someone in the future wants to discuss deletion. ~Kvng (talk) 15:10, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
If I Accept a draft, I am prompted for various things, including to assign WikiProjects and categories to it. I know more about what the WikiProjects are in the sciences than in popular culture. My guess would be that there are reviewers who have more knowledge of the WikiProjects in popular culture than in the sciences. I also don't know that much about categories, other than that arguments about categories get ugly (and recently led to a very experienced editor being banned for personal attacks in those arguments). However, I know that I don't need to spend much effort categorizing articles that I accept, because I can tag the new article for {{Improve categories}}, which signals to gnomes to improve the categories. I almost always tag a new article as needing its categories improved, unless I see that the author has already assigned the categories. So I think that my question is whether the same gnomes who improve the categories will also improve the WikiProjects, or whether there is another tag that I can use for review by a different tribe of gnomes. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any maintenance tags for WikiProjects. NPPs are encouraged but not required to add/improve WikiProject tags, so that is one way that WikiProject tags are improved. There's probably some gnomes that do it too, although I don't know the details. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:55, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
There are a few gnomes that do WikiProject tagging (or de-tagging, in some cases) where pages do or don't meet a Project's criteria for inclusion, but I don't think I would stress out about over- or under-Project-tagging an accepted article. Primefac (talk) 08:05, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
There is some debate at another reviewer's talk page (that I missed prior to my review) where the creating editor suggests there to be notability that I cannot spot. If I have made an error please revert my review and accept the draft. I will not object. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 16:19, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
I recently noticed that Citadeol was making some poor AFC reviews. When I asked them about this on their talk page, they gave the reply that you can say as a new editor i don't know about this copyvio checking tool. This remark from an AFC reviewer surprised me. I initially considered only posting a friendly message on their talk page. But after this reply, it raised severe concerns in my mind when an AFC reviewer claimed they are unaware of checking for copyright violations. Thilsebatti (talk) 04:01, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
No need to raise it on here, as they are saying that they posted a friendly message on my talkpage. also i have accepted my mistakes and they also guided me for that on my talkpage User talk:Citadeol. so why they are posted here I don't know. Citadeol(talk)06:26, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
You don't have to assume that I have bad intensions by bringing this here. Think of this discussion as friendly as well. Only because of your disappointing response to my initial query did I put this here. I would not have brought this up if you hadn't admitted that you were unaware of the copyright violation checking tool. Additionally, other editors will be able to take another look at your reviews and offer suggestions. Thilsebatti (talk) 07:18, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
@Thilsebatti We are all entitled not to know about things we don't know about. The key to mutual success is to give the information to fellow reviewers, even to old hands, about things they do not (yet) know.
We have to be very careful when "bringing" a reviewer here that we do it well, with care for their needs. I'm not altogether sure that your initial wording makes it clear that this was in the forefront of your mind, so I am asking you here to be gentler in your approach, please.
@Citadeol Please be unafraid to ask any of us for any help you feel you might need. Paradoxically, this is a great place to ask for help. I do it reasonably often, sometimes asking folk to check what I've done. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 21:40, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
@Timtrent Thanks for your advice Dear, If i have any doubt sure i will ask here for help. and i am again reading AFC review instructions carefully and will review articles too. Citadeol(talk)08:48, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
It is not ideal that you were unaware of this process of checking copyvios despite reading the reviewing instructions. So here is some mote advice- please be more careful and read the instructions again, and at the bare minimum, please do spot checks or use Earwig for suspicious articles. Thanks for your work in reviewing. VickKiang(talk)22:28, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
Only just seen this draft... and by the looks of it I was probably the only one who hadn't! My first thought was, this is clearly far from perfect, but the subject is notable, and after all, that is what we're mainly here to check, so I'll just accept it and tag it for improvements. Then thought to look at the edit history – oh boy! It's been declined several times, accepted, redraftified at NPP, etc. Then saw the talk page. Then saw the creator's talk page, where Jay was trying to get to the bottom of the COI issues. We could organise an entire conference on everything that hasn't gone right with this draft – including the fact that it is approaching the third anniversary of its creation and yet it still remains just that, a draft. Anyway, thought I'd mention it, in case anyone's interested in sharing their views. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:26, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Only just now noticed that at least some attempt at declaring the COI has been made on the talk page, so I guess that's also okay, even if the author's talk page discussion was a bit inconclusive.
@DoubleGrazing: Thanks for the ping. Every time JoyIto405 would make an edit in the draft, I would ask for the disclosure, knowing that the editor is active but probably not willing to engage in the COI discussion, and probably because this is not one person but a consolidated response would have to come through multiple levels. JoyIto405 may be a shared account. JoyIto405 refers to self as Yanglin but also uses "we", probably representing the company. We don't know if there was a different volunteer in 2021 who was not Yanglin. It also appears that the edits are dictated by Sachiyo Ito which is where the "we" could be coming in. Jay 💬05:50, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
If there's no clear target then there's probably not much point in making a redirect (which likely explains why it's still a redlink). Primefac (talk) 11:48, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
After doing some more Google searches, I realized that, apparently, contrary to what I thought, an entertainment website is not a website that covers entertainment topics (such as new films, video games, etc), but a website that provides entertaining content (by discussing new films, video games, etc). Maybe we should start with creating wikt:entertainment website? --2001:1C06:19CA:D600:2BD8:5934:EB69:C9 (talk) 12:01, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
CuteCat10 I would suggest that you get some more experience under your belt and better demonstrate your understanding of relevant content policies before you get into reviewing drafts. You've written a few drafts but not had one accepted yet- you don't need to be a reviewer to write articles- nor do you need to create new articles to be a good contributor. 331dot (talk) 11:57, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
Draft:Baris Tursun
More than one draft on one topic
I'm flagging this here, in case the matter comes up at the HD, which it may do as the author has been given contradicting guidance by yours truly and Dan arndt. And if anyone has advice or a possible resolution to offer, I'm all ears!
Draft:Baris Tursun was created c 5 months ago by an IP editor, who then seems to have abandoned it.
Draft:Baris Tursun 2 was recently created by another editor, Gitte bei Medienservice UHH Bio, with an obvious and now disclosed COI. When I first reviewed it, I declined it as a dupe of the earlier draft. Some dialogue and a bit of confusion ensued, at the end of which I advised the author to continue developing their own draft (which was their stated preference, rather than taking over the earlier one), on the basis that whichever draft would first get to an acceptable state, that's what would be published.
(For the sake of the argument, ignore for now the question of whether either draft will ever get over the finish line – for all I know, the subject may simply not be notable enough!)
Now Dan arndt has declined the newer (BT2) draft, again on the basis of being a dupe. When I queried this, they expressed the view that the later author should merge their draft into the earlier one, and develop that one instead. I personally don't see much merit in this approach, and I expect the author may feel like being passed from pillar to post, but maybe I'm wrong on that.
Yes. The question is what should be done when there are two drafts for a title, and the second one is the better one. It is a good question. In general, the first draft should be the one that is worked on, and a newer one can be declined as a dupe, with instructions to merge it into the first one. However, if the second one is clearly better, my opinion is that declining the second one as a dupe may come across as biting the editor who did the hard work of developing the second version. So I think that, in some cases, the second draft should be reviewed, and maybe the first draft should be marked as the duplicate. Reviewing the first version and marking the second version is a reasonable general rule that sometimes should be ignored. A complicated way to deal with this would be a round-robin swap, but that is complicated, and can get messy (especially if the page mover forgets to uncheck the redirect check box). Robert McClenon (talk) 20:19, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
This is true, and raises a valid, albeit separate, point: the author clearly shouldn't have used someone else's content without attributing it. But I believe both drafts are actually translations of this dewiki original [2], and neither author has acknowledged that as the source. That would seem to account for the similarity.
Returning to the question of how to move forward from here, I agree with Robert that while the first submission should usually have 'right of way', there are exceptions; that right is not absolute and perpetual. In this case, the earlier draft has apparently been abandoned by its author, whereas the newer draft is being actively developed, so I don't see why we still give such strong preference to the first one as to effectively block the progress of the newer one. Yes, if the author came to me to ask if they should start a new draft or work on the existing one, I'd say definitely work on the existing so we don't create duplicates, but they didn't, hence two drafts exist whether we like it or not.
And now we are effectively not even reviewing the newer draft, we're just dismissing it out of hand as a duplicate. Is this sensible? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:02, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
When there is more than one draft on the same topic, I generally decide which one I think is best, then I redirect the others to it. Not sure how standard this is, but this makes the most sense to me, in order to avoid duplication and split effort. I do not usually favor the "older" draft, I favor the "best" draft, that is, the draft that is closest to being AFC accepted. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:06, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
I would add one more item of advice for a reviewer when finding that there are two or more drafts on the same topic. Check to see if an article on the topic has previously been deleted. If so, and there are two or more drafts on the topic, the editors may be trying to game the system by gaming the naming of articles, such as with different spellings or different disambiguations. In that case, it is still a good idea to look for the best draft, but it is also a good idea to check whether the drafts are better than the deleted article, and whether the draft establishes notability (if, as usual, the article was deleted for lack of notability). Editors submitting drafts about a title that has already been deleted may be mistaken for paid editors, but they are usually ultras, fanatical editors. The draft, or best draft, probably should then be declined, because the topic might not be notable, or maybe rejected. If there are two or more drafts, check to see if there is gaming of the system. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:51, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
@Jyix2944884 your draft will be reviewed eventually, there is currently a backlog of nearly 4000 drafts and an editor will eventually get to it. We're volunteers and review in no particular order. Qcne(talk)09:51, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
This may not be a AfC Talk issue, perhaps a general notifications issue, but I can't see a setting that fixes this...
When I review articles and the templates get dropped onto the User Talk pages, if the User replies to that template I do not get notified of it, which means I am missing quite a few questions about my review reasons. This isn't great from a user experience perspective!
Is there an option somewhere I am missing, so that I get notified when users reply to these templates? I can't imagine why it doesn't notify me but, e.g., a Topic on the Help Desk I'll get notified for every new reply... Qcne(talk)20:44, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
Basically, add something along the lines of: To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Fork99}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)Fork99 (talk) 21:04, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
I often watchlist pages I review and especially their submitters' talk pages (and I think AFCH might be able to do one of those automatically?) but I definitely forget sometimes. A note asking them to ping you probably wouldn't be a bad idea. LittlePuppers (talk) 23:34, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
Having the AFC helper script auto subscribe reviewers (subscribe meaning what DiscussionTools does, adding [subscribe] to level 2 headings that you can click on, and then all new replies trigger a notification in the notification tray) to these sections would be a good approach too. And I think we decided to hide this behind a tick box so reviewers would need to opt in to it. See feature request ticket. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
When you are done creating an article and press publish, does it automatically queue it up for review by staff?
I am a new editor and I have published and article and I am unsure about if it is able to be reviewed yet and if there is anything else I need to do for it to be able to. CCSMwiki (talk) 00:03, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
@CCSMwiki: yes, your draft is in the queue to be reviewed. However, if you want it to be accepted, it would be best if you also include some references that are not written by the village or the fire department. LittlePuppers (talk) 00:20, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Does this backlog drive have any particular effect on AFC reviewers and our backlog? We know that there is a large overlap between the two communities of reviewers and that many of us who are AFC reviewers will also be working the NPP backlog. Does anyone have any particular comments as to what we should and should not do? The AFC backlog and the NPP backlog do not overlap, because the AFC backlog is in draft space and the NPP backlog is in article space. Will the NPP backlog drive increase the AFC backlog by draftifying articles? Should we request that draftified articles be declined at the start? (I think that some versions of the draftify script do this and some don't.) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
We might want to consider having our own AFC backlog drive in December, after giving the reviewers a month to semi-rest, doing only normal reviewing.
Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
There's talk further up of doing it in November, which may work better as I feel like a lot of people may have other plans over the December period already so we may get less buy-in. Turnagra (talk) 07:02, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
In terms of NPP backlog drive boosting our unreviewed draft count, NPP has had backlog drives before and I don't think it's affected AFC much. I can't remember ever hearing anyone say anything about it.
Fair points about November (too close to NPP backlog drive) and December (holiday season) having issues. Could also consider January. I'm open to opinions. Although if we can't overwhelmingly decide on something I say we default to November to avoid decision paralysis. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:47, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
We kind of have decision paralysis already. We have had it for all recent backlog drives. We know we need to do something, we know what it is, we know when it's needed, but we manage to use great skill and avoid the final step 😂 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 20:10, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Let's stick with November. We've got people who have said they're able to coordinate, and if we don't get huge engagement we can try again in the new year. At the very least, doing something in November allows us to get some runs on the board as it were. Turnagra (talk) 04:15, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I would appreciate thoughts as to how this should have been handled. The draft appears to be a copy-paste copy of the article. The article has existed for eight years. The draft appears to have been copied from the article and submitted. I am not sure why the submitter did that. I declined the submission and then redirected the draft to the article. Should I have done something else, such as tagging the draft for speedy deletion as a copy, or tagging the draft for history-merge from the article? I thought that a redirect would be the simplest way to deal with this oddity, but would appreciate comments, or even an explanation.
Robert McClenon (talk) 07:03, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: I think your response was in alignment. If there were changes in the draft from the original, I would have reviewed the draft based on the changes to decide to accept/decline and, if I accepted, would have move the draft over the original and restored the history (or just histmerged, but I'm old school...) If the draft was being used as a sandbox and the article update independently of (but potentially based on) the draft, I might have just done a quiet histmerge then made it a redirect. But I'd probably ask the editor(s) what's going on first. Maybe that's the only thing you could have done differently. - UtherSRG(talk)11:20, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Draft:Joseph Gentile
Would appreciate additional eyes on this Draft:Joseph Gentile. The sources appear enough to meet GNG, but the citing is sparse and leaves quite a lot unsupported (some of which may be OR or the author's conjecture), which is clearly a BLP problem given the contentious nature of this. My bigger problem with it is that this draft just perpetuates the rumours, innuendo and/or conspiracy theory surrounding this individual, which is also how the solid sources came about, with newspapers debunking the social media hullabaloo. IMO this comes under WP:BLP1E, and is a borderline attack page. Thoughts? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm tempted to suggest for both to accept, to flag the inadequacies, and allow the community to decide. If I accept Dincă I will note the rationale on the talk page. I am wondering whether I am reassuring you or reassuring me! 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 18:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
These are the ones I dislike probably the most. This was created back in April and are the only edits by the creator so chances of improvement are next to none. I do not think you should accept it as is because a lot it of it is unsourced, what is sourced is mostly to the production company for which he works and it's a WP:BLP. A compromise might be to tag it with {{promising draft}} which will keep from being deleted for a year and adds it to Category:Promising draft articles then maybe post a note at WT:WikiProject Opera. The other option is to gut it, leaving only the lead and the best sources then accept (and maybe post at WikiProject Opera). S0091 (talk) 19:21, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
@S0091 I have examined it more closely. I see a marked similarity between the creating editor's name and that of the subject.
Hi, @JNOJ1423: please read the top part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation carefully where instructions are listed. However at this stage I do not recommend that you become a reviewer. Instead first look at other people's drafts and articles to determine if they should be improved with better references, or deleted by tagging with suitable tags. The easiest deletions to request are ones for advertising, or for copyright infringement. You can also add comments to existing drafts to assist the writer. And of course you are welcome to write your own articles. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:04, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
The draft Draft:Esther Anatolitis has sources that establish notability ([3][4][5][6]). However the article has a bit of a WP:NPOV issue. Seeing the topic would survive the AFD process on the grounds of notability but would require a bit of work to meet Wikipedia's other policies, should this be accepted or declined? –––GMH MELBOURNETALK06:20, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
@GMH Melbourne The entire key is whether it has a better than 50% chance in your view of surviving an immediate deletion process. If you believe that it does, accept it and tag it for deficiencies. There is a lack of references, certainly, and at least one inline link. And the list of "She has been profiled in" does not help.
An alternative is to choose to be strict and enumerate its deficiencies while declining.
Your decision should be baed upon your trust of the community and of NPP.
I don't know if this is strictly speaking an AfC question, but I'll ask anyway. :) A newish user JRB147MK has created a number of articles to do with academics associated with a Welsh organisation. This user's MO each time is to create a draft with AfC tags, but immediately after submitting it move it into the main space.
It now turns out they're an intern, and have been tasked to do this, presumably by the said organisation. So they clearly shouldn't have been publishing directly.
I looked at a few of them when they showed up in the 'C' subcat, but they either seemed good to go, or were at worst borderline, so I didn't do anything at the time. Someone else must have later removed the AfC tags, so they vanished into the wilderness. One or two have now been passed by NPP, the rest still await patrol.
Should we move them back to drafts? Should one of us (which could be me) quickly patrol them? Or just leave it for NPP, assuming they're probably mostly okay anyway? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:50, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
Assuming the content is accurate (not checked), most of them look to clearly meet WP:PROF: Robert Dodgshon (named professorship), Huw Beynon (fellow of national body, honorary degree), Kenneth Dyson (fellow of national bodies), John M. Pearce (FRS), M. Wynn Thomas (named chair, fellow of national body), Steven Tipper (ed in chief of journal, fellow of national bodies). The only one that isn't an obvious pass based on the material already in the article would be Kirsti Bohata. It seems overkill to move them all back to draft purely on procedural grounds? Espresso Addict (talk) 14:16, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
Bohata has one notable publication (Postcolonialism Revisited: Writing Wales in English) but I'm not sure whether or not she would be deemed to pass WP:PROF; it would depend on whether or not fellow of the Learned Society of Wales was considered adequate. She might pass WP:AUTHOR; I haven't checked for reviews of her other books. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:24, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
I would say in the least the pages need tagged as COI until someone without a COI is able to review for NPOV. Unless you have done so already. --CNMall41 (talk) 05:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I haven't checked them carefully (and haven't clicked through to verify anything), nor checked for copyvio, but they didn't look particularly non-neutral to me. I'm concerned that one has been moved to draft, without submitting it for review; unless the creator submits it themself, that's delayed deletion of an article I am almost certain would survive AfD. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Also I notice that the editor has been since trying to comply with policy and create articles in draftspace via AfC but they've been rejected as having primary sources, without regard for WP:PROF. This is simply absurd. For example, unless it is a total fabrication, Draft:Michael Charlton (academic) plainly meets WP:PROF. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:24, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
New pages patrol newsletter
Hello WikiProject Articles for creation,
New Page Review article queue, March to September 2023
Backlog update:
At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!
October backlog elimination drive:
A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.
PageTriage code upgrades:
Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.
Notability tip:
Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.
Reviewing tip:
If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.
I am not a fan of redirecting drafts to mainspace unless it's because they were moved/accepted. There's no harm in letting non-notable drafts sit for six months, when G13 will eventually kick in. Perhaps more sources are found in the meantime, or perhaps someone finds it useful to see the draft comments and decline reasons. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:10, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
I think the correct course of action here is to revert the redirects. I will go ahead and do so. It is my opinion that drafts should not be WP:BLAR'd like this unless they duplicate the topic of another draft. In six months, G13 will result in these draft's deletion if no one works on them. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:26, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
User:Novem Linguae says that they are not a fan of redirecting drafts to mainspace. I think that is an understatement. I think that redirecting a draft to a related article in mainspace is a bad idea, and that it is a way of biting the originator of the draft, by not giving them a chance to improve the draft. My opinion is that a draft should be redirected to mainspace if there is an article that is almost the same as the draft or is a superset of the draft. Otherwise a draft should be declined, possibly with a statement to merge it into another article Robert McClenon (talk) 01:47, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Agree that we shouldn't be redirecting drafts except in very limited circumstances (such as maybe the situation talked about above in #One teen, many drafts. Don't we already have decline reasons that suggest merging content both where an article already exists and where the draft topic isn't notable enough on its own, that should cover almost all instances where we'd use this anyway? Turnagra (talk) 06:33, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
The "to mainspace" part is important. If you get rid of that, then there are additional times it may be OK to redirect a draft. For example, if there are two drafts of the same thing, and one is better, and a reviewer wants to redirect the inferior draft to the superior draft to reduce duplication and reviewer workload. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:32, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Quite often new threads at the help desk get the link wrong, most commonly by not including the namespace, ie. they put into the draft= parameter just 'Draftname' rather than 'Draft:Draftname'. It's not the end of the world, this is an easy fix manually, but just a bit irritating having to do it over and over. Is there any way the form could check this when submitted, and either prompt the user to correct the link or maybe even add the missing 'Draft:' automatically? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:07, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Maaaaybe. I'd have to look at the code, but if the form is subst'd it should be possible to force a Draft: in there if it's missing. Primefac (talk) 11:19, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the link - if we do go the route of the template and not the wizard, I can throw something together in the sandbox if no one gets around to it before late tonight - I think did something similar with people inconsistently adding percent signs in an infobox a while back. LittlePuppers (talk) 17:53, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
From looking at previous discussions and a sampling of changes to templates, there appear to be about half a dozen templates that call {{Lafc}} and are no longer in use because they've been replaced by the wizard; and, the only obvious difference between them is that they pass different parameters to Lafc... which are then used for the exact same thing, regardless of which parameter is passed. In other words: it looks like there's a lot of cleanup that could take place. LittlePuppers (talk) 19:25, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Okay, I think I have a somewhat decent idea of what's going on here, but I'd like a second (and maybe third) opinion before I start doing anything too crazy.
Redirecting all the preload templates to one (they seem to all do very close to the same thing; we could probably delete them, but this seems slightly safer).
Removing the ability for the wizard to use a different parameter for {{Lafc}} via URL; both per above (all the parameters seem to do the same thing) and because it was seemingly only added on the basis of "this exists and might possibly be used somewhere"; SD0001, do you know if this was ever actually used?
Condense parameters that do the same thing (so we don't end up with stuff like {{{accepted|{{{declinedtalk|{{{declined|{{{pending|{{{draft|}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} taking up most of the template; I'll double check and make sure that the stuff I'm removing does all do exactly the same thing).
And then getting around to the thing that started this in the first place (hopefully with a slightly more legible and intelligible template to work on) and prepend Draft: if needed.
I'm short on time so can't look at this in detail, but it sounds reasonable. As long as you commit to fixing anything that breaks. Thanks for your refactoring efforts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:32, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
From a quick glance it looks fine to me; condensing the dozens of subpages and redirects this project has accumulated over the last decade is on my long-term to-do list so all help in that regard is muchly appreciated! Primefac (talk) 07:56, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for both your feedback. I'll definitely fix anything that breaks; making all the changes might take longer than I expected (...I was planning on doing a lot this weekend) but I've been busier than expected, so it'll probably be piecemeal over the next couple weeks. LittlePuppers (talk) 14:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Going back to the original request: it looks like {{lafc}}already has the ability to work with 'Draftname' rather than 'Draft:Draftname'... you just need to pass a different parameter to it, in which case it'll go through a handful of namespaces and check if the page exists. But I'll get back to that after cleaning up some more code so I have a better idea what I'm doing. LittlePuppers (talk) 03:43, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
Antigoyism
I Coined This Phrase And My Page Was Declined. Does This Constitute A $100 Trillion Civil Action ? And Are I Free To File On Wikipedia.com ? Da2da2 (talk) 16:39, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Draft:Kachin Soldiers: The famous fort from Kachin region is clearly not of a standard to move to mainspace, indeed it does not seem to even have a defined topic, but I can't decline it because the AfC tool keeps freezing when I try to. I reviewed another page after this happened and everything worked fine, but Kachin Soldiers keeps freezing the tool. Is this happening to other people? Devonian Wombat (talk) 04:38, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I've had this before, I think it's something to do with multiple spaces in a row being in the draft somewhere? Let me have a look through this page's archives and see if I can find it for you.Here you go, looks like the patch never went live? Turnagra (talk) 04:45, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I've removed a massive line of spaces from the draft so it should hopefully work now - pinging Novem Linguae though since you mentioned you'd worked on this issue previously. Turnagra (talk) 04:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Someone stepping up to organize the backlog drive that was discussed above at #Backlog drive in September could help the backlog a lot. We ideally need two coordinators for an AFC backlog drive: one person to do the coordination, and one person to run the point tallying bot. We can also have less coordinators than this (if the same person coordinates and runs the bot) or more coordinators than this (to split the workload of announcing the backlog drive on various pages, making pages, passing out barnstars, etc.) Pinging previous backlog drive coordinators since at minimum we'd probably need one of their bots: @Ingenuity and Enterprisey:. I am busy with my day job for a couple months so I can't get into the weeds, but maybe I can provide little nudges here and there. Thoughts? Can anyone step up to do coordination? Can anyone step up to do the bot? Can we agree on a duration and date, such as a one month drive in November? –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:36, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
I'd be able to run the bot, but I'll likely be too busy over the next couple months to run the full drive. If no one's available to run the drive this month, we could run it next month (though that might conflict with NPP's drive), or in November. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 23:27, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
Awesome. We have a bot operator. Thanks for stepping up, Ingenuity. Let's move forward with a goal of November if no one objects. That avoids conflicting with the NPP backog drive in October.
Would anyone like to volunteer to be the backlog drive coordinator? Would handle things like an WP:MMS to AFC and NPP reviewers the week before to let them know we're having a backlog drive, making the backlog drive page, answering talk page questions about the backlog drive, and passing out barnstars at the end. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:57, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
I'd be willing to try and help where I can, but I probably can't commit to the full thing as November is likely going to be the busiest work month I've had in a while. I'm also conscious that it will only be the second backlog drive I've taken part in, and we may prefer someone with a bit more experience if there's someone available for that. Turnagra (talk) 05:48, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
@Robertsky. Yay. Awesome. Thanks for stepping up. Let's move forward with a November, one month AFC backlog drive, with Robertsky as backlog drive coordinator and @Ingenuity as bot coordinator. Unless anyone objects. Robertsky, some good pre-drive stuff to do might be to 1) start copy/pasting/tweaking an old drive page to be the new drive page, and 2) start drafting a WP:MMS message we can send to everyone maybe two weeks before the drive (by copy/pasting/tweaking an old MMS message). I've started a kind of "backlog drive coordinator guide/checklist" over at User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Backlog drive checklist to hopefully assist with making sure nothing slips through the cracks. Feel free to edit/add things if you think of things I missed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:43, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for sorting that! I seem to recall previously that we'd floated the idea of further bonus points for even older drafts (eg. another half point if it's over 90 days), I wonder if something like that could be added? Turnagra (talk) 04:48, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
This request for help from administrators has been answered. If you need more help or have additional questions, please reapply the {{admin help}} template, or contact the responding user(s) directly on their own user talk page.
Would an administrator be able to take a look at this draft? Mizanur Rahman Azhari has been disruptively recreated and speedily deleted in the past, and I didn't want to accept the draft before confirming that it was not the case this time. The page is also salted, for obvious reasons. The main contributor ImranAvenger seems to have translated this version of the draft from the Bengali Wikipedia, so I'm inclined to believe it's legit, but wanted to get a second opinion as well. Thanks! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 18:31, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
Most are easy to review, despite our thinking that the oldest must be the hardest.
Most are suitable for new reviewers at least to look at, even if they decide they are not yet ready to review them.
The ones I find hard (specialist topics) you may find easy if they are your specialist topic.
We're dragging the number of total unreviewed drafts down. What I am finding is that starting at the oldest is a great place to work. Loads of low hanging fruit to pick.
I've been doing mainly maintenance on poorly-formatted or outright unfit drafts recently, but I almost always open up Category:AfC pending submissions by age/4 months ago (or whatever the oldest category is at the time) when I actually sit down for some reviewing. I made a few submissions to AfC myself a couple years ago and know the feeling of getting no feedback for months on end. I've always been confused about the workflow that this project advertises, namely that "submissions are assessed randomly and could be waiting in the cue anywhere from under a day to four months". Shouldn't we be prioritizing the oldest drafts by default? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 14:23, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
I think we do what we can. Newer reviewers often steer clear of the oldest because there is a perception that they re harder, and some are, but at the moment many are straightforward. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 16:14, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Reviewers are all volunteers, and, much like editing, select topics in a variety of ways. Some may choose topics that interest them, others may select randomly, others may look for submissions by date order (ascending or descending). While I've also found many surprisingly easy-to-review submissions among old submissions, I'd have to say that newer submissions tend to be easier on average. There's also an argument that responding to a new submission is more beneficial - the difference between getting a response in a few hours, and two days, may be huge to an enthusiastic new contributor, while the difference between four months and one day, and four months and three, sadly, is probably negligible. Basically, we need more active reviewers! Greenman (talk) 16:23, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Not sure why we would need any policy - just treat the same as any other submission. If the block was for socking and previously blocked G5 may apply; If acceptable - accept; If not decline and it's no different to many other declines where the submitter does not continue for whatever reason. If a reviewer noticed the block and thought it may pass with a bit of effort I guess they could choose to try improve themselves knowing the submitter no longer can... but that would be personal choice. KylieTastic (talk) 15:44, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
Is there a way that people are able to find 'orphan' drafts other than specifically searching for it? That is, if the only editor has been someone who is indeffed and the draft gets declined, how easy is it for someone to pick up the draft and work on the issues? Turnagra (talk) 18:48, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
We don't have a list of "drafts created by blocked users" category, if that's what you're asking, but there are various "WP:G13-ready" categories for the pages that are 5-6 months old that will be shortly deleted. Primefac (talk) 13:35, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
In my experience, it's not the same thing to review a written article than to write an article. The former only requires to know the respective Wikipedia rules (AFC, DYK, GA, and FA all have their own standards). The later requires not only that, but to be familiar with the topic of the article to some degree. So no, I wouldn't put it on reviewers to "complete" the articles. What may be done, if someone finds a case, is to inform the respective wikiproject of the situation, and perhaps someone there may help. Cambalachero (talk) 17:42, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
I've just declined a speedy on this, but it looks from the history as if the creator tried to submit it back in April but the submit wizard did something wrong. Could someone look at it, please? Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 01:38, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks both. I'm relieved the Wizard was working ok; the thought of a host of unhappy newbies thinking they had submitted and waiting patiently for a review that was never going to come... Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 11:23, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I had to jump in here with a bit of a facepalm for Timtrent on the failed verification claim. Please, tell me how this source fails verification. And make sure you read the Wikipedia article carefully before responding. SilverserenC22:01, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
@Silver seren I took it to be cite the date of birth for Sophia, which I cannot find within the reference, nor can I find mention of Sophia. I am obviously missing something and am always willing to learn and to acknowledge my errors. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 22:11, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
Timtrent Fair enough, trout then. As for your question, the answer is in the Wiki article currently. I'll quite the relevant part.
In 2021, Mendonça said that this diagnosis was liberating, but that the biggest "ghost" that accompanied her in life was not autism, but gender dysphoria, which is why she began to feel happier after the gender transition in 2020, since who sees gender expression. as a way to communicate primarily with herself.[10] She did a gender reassignment surgery in June 2022.
@Silver seren A certain light dawns. The challenge is the disconnect between the reference and the draft. Dates are obviously important here. I think I will stick to 50% of my guns on the basis that I am a reader as well as a reviewer, and it took a great deal of study to find out what was wrong. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 22:16, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
I think I might pick up this draft to work on, since she appears notable with coverage. Since non-English sources will require different search methods and I can't access Newspapers.com right now, I need something else to work on. SilverserenC22:25, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
I just want to express my (untargeted) frustration
This is a friendly place to do it. There's no action I need, just sympathetic ears.
I often try very hard to educate "problem" editors, some of whom bypass AFC. Bypassng does not of itself indicate a problem editor.
Sometimes I meet an intractable one, one who keeps adding fluff and clutter to a draft, with references that are disastrously bad, and who rejects guidance and moves poor (my opinion) work to mainspace, and defends it up to but not quite into WP:OWN territory.
The world has always had frustrating people, but recently it feels like the trait is spreading like a contagious virus. I think some nefarious organisation has found ways to turn the traits of frustrating, gullibility and stupidity into digital viruses that spread over unSocial media (probably inspired by Snow Crash). KylieTastic (talk) 16:22, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I am not sure where to turn with this, so I have come here
This is not a typical request for this page, nor is it for this project, but please bear with me and hear me out.
Alan Jackson (businessman) was, at some point a year ago, with a different name, an AFC candidate. That is how I met it. I did not accept it. Probably I declined it, in part as NOTMEMORIAL. If my recall is correct it was moved to mainspace by the creating editor.
I have been concerned about this article and a colleague article Jim May (chemical engineer), currently at AfD where the community will make its decision.
I find I am bewildered by the different interpretations of referencing between me and the creating editor, such that I am double checking myself. It is perfectly possible that I am wrong.
That's where you all come in, because you are reviewers of experience. I hope for this: reviewers with the time to spare and the willingness to do so, to check any and all opinions I have expressed, by edits, on the creating editor's talk page, on article talk pages, and also, please, at Commons, where interactions with the "editor as uploader" have been just as difficult as here.
If I am in error, then I will have learned something very important. I'd like to thank you in advance for that. If I am correct, even broadly correct, please may I have your help to improve the articles such that they become obvious candidates for retention. I will learn from that as well. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 18:53, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
Well the topic Alan Jackson (businessman) appears notable. Some sources are not reliable. Primary sources are those written by the subject or by their employer in this situation. Primary sources can be used to support facts that don't need interpretation. So they do not all need to be replaced. So I would suggest just leave it, instead of overtagging it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Query
User:IMFWHO is a four day old account who has edit summaries that state they are accepting drafts for AFC and moving them into main space. Is this something that a brand new account can do? I would think not but they I thought I'd check in case you all had seen this behavior before from a new account. Thank you. LizRead!Talk!04:42, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Example diff. They appear to be forging the WP:AFCH edit summary. I don't think using this kind of edit summary is appropriate. Editors can move any page from draftspace to mainspace per WP:DRAFTOBJECT, but should not be impersonating AFC reviewers or AFC software. I'll leave them a user talk message. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:05, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
The article they published to mainspace is an exact copy of Koli rebellions (see archive.org here), which was protected following repeated recreations by socks. I've filed SPIs for this editor and the IP who created the draft here. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me!05:45, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Now I am concerned I shouldn't have accepted these three. In any case we've probably got a sock situation going on? Unsure what the best course of action is for the outstanding drafts in the queue. Qcne(talk)20:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
I have been the subject of a nasty accusation at WP:AFCHD
Many of you are aware of this by now.
Until the mist clears and my innocence is established I believe it to be wise that I pause any AFC activity. AFC must be above reproach in matters like this.
I suppose this type of accusation must be endured by those of us who review reasonably frequently, but it is the first time to my knowledge that I have been accused impropriety here.
Personally, I do not see any need to pause your reviewing. I would be careful of letting some person's claim hold power over you, and I would encourage you to continue as normal, unless you actually want to take a break. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:42, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Novem Linguae. I understand and appreciate the sentiment. Since there is no deadline my self chosen standing back for dust to settle is simply the type of action I believe to be required after a serious allegation. I need a break anyway!
Well I would never believe such an allegation, so please feel free to resume whenever you like. It is a bit shocking to read such am accusation. Someone else is responsible, and it's not you! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:35, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
@Graeme Bartlett You are very kind. Thank you. I appreciate the welcome "back" to reviewing. I think it important to be seen to be taking this seriously as well as taking it seriously. AFC and other reviewers and their reputations are more important than one reviewer.
I confess to having been disenchanted over this. I know that no-one holds me responsible for it. OI know that impersonation will take place. It pleases me that I have made a long term decision not to ask for the key to the janitorial cupboard, or I would have been sorely tempted to mete out probably inappropriate measures!
At the same time as this I have been dealing with a COI editor who has chosen to be a stranger to the truth about it until another equally determined editor held their feet to the fire. I note your advice above to set it aside, and I have done so. We can allow ourselves to stand too close to things here if we aren't careful. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 14:46, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Robert McClenon for following this up. I can tell you that WMF legal and I have been in helpful and friendly contact, that they consider me to be blameless, and that they have chosen, quite reasonably, not to share further information, if any, with me. I can tell you that they detest UPE rings, but I think that comes as no surprise to anyone.
There is the soon to be archived Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Abbasshaikh124 which is concerned about the accuser, but cannot go on a fishing expedition. Nonetheless the SPI gang has been alerted.
I keep receiving notifications about articles for which I am credited as the creator. It swells "my" creation stats unfairly.
It happens when I use the review template's box to move a User Sandbox to Draft Space, andthen that editor repurposes their sandbox with a new article title.
Because I moved the initial sandbox contents to Draft, the sandbox, by foible of Wikimedia software, is now "Created by me" and any subsequent draft created in that sandbox carries my name.
Everything works as designed, and my credit is an unintended consequence of the move. Even so, might we prevent this, somehow, so that the user whose sandbox it is retains the credit for articles thus created? 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 09:32, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
@DoubleGrazing, as Timtrent said the issue is caused by moving a users submission in there sandbox to draft, then if they create another article over the redirect you as the mover are the 'creator'. So I just review in the sandbox or leave them rather than move to draft as many do. KylieTastic (talk) 11:55, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Well moving to draft is not really necessary. But the same issue would happen if you move a sandbox to mainspace, and then it gets repurposed. One labour intensive correction is to delete the page, and then restore it without your move-created redirect. I am happy to do this a few times for you, but hundreds would lose my interest quickly. I have the same problem where I created pages for people, giving credit in an edit summary. Almost all the creators though are long gone, and they will not be missing notifications. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:58, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Incorrect Tagging for History Merge
There has been a lot of discussion here about when history merge is necessary, so this may be a stupid question. If I see that an article is incorrectly tagged for history merge, is there anything that I should do? In this case, the article is Priya Devi Elangbam. The article was copy-pasted from draft space into article space, and the draft has been tagged to be history-merged into the article; but both the draft and the article are by the same editor, so there is no attribution issue. My first thought is that the article is incorrectly tagged for history merge, and maybe the tag should be removed. But my second thought is that the administrator who is looking at history merge requests will see that it is an unnecessary request for a history merge. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:41, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
If you are confident that it's not an appropriate histmerge target (and you've been doing this long enough I trust your judgement on such matters), you can remove it yourself. I'm always happy to provide a second opinion if you (or anyone else) are unsure. Primefac (talk) 20:19, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
If you are sure, remove the tag. And then redirect the draft to the article. Then others will not waste their time editing a draft that has been finished with. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:52, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm still missing replies from users who reply to the AfC user page notices, which probably makes them feel a bit ignored and often leads them to adding new topics to the help desk. As I review so many drafts it isn't particularly feasible to watch all the userpages.
A suggestion on that first thread is to replicate the wording from the NPP notices, so something at the end of the notice like:
To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|$USER}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~~
Hopefully this would be a fairly minor but valuable change, and would make a better experience for new editors. So please see this as a formal request for the templates to be edited!
I think these are the templates that need changing:
I think having the helper script automatically subscribe users to the thread would be the better option — I see that you already brought it up on Github. For newer users, it abstracts away the back-end issue of notifications and eliminates the possibility of error on their part. I myself had no idea how to ping users when I started out and kept wondering why no one was talking to me in discussions on my talk page. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 21:45, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Let's check in with the AFCH maintainers to get a sense of approximately how much work the thread subscription would be. If it might be a while before the solution can be implemented, I'm fine going ahead with the template changes. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:11, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Okay, so there are two things here. First is the "auto-subscribe" feature, which is currently being tracked and worked on. The other thing is "add a note so that the submitter knows how to ping people". We really only need to discuss the latter, and how we want the wording to go, etc. On the other hand, if we don't want to tell people how to ping because we are auto-subscribing reviewers to those threads, that is also an option. Primefac (talk) 08:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
That's more or less what I said in my earlier comment as well. I was hoping to get an update from the people working on that project to gauge whether it's worth hanging on a bit longer for those changes to be made, or to edit the templates as a temporary measure. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 13:40, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Generally speaking, if the template is unprotected, you can try boldly editing it and see if the edit stands. If it's protected, probably want to propose your exact wording change and get consensus somewhere first, then put in an edit request on the template talk page using a template such as {{TPER}}. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:46, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
The templates are protected. If we can get the wording hashed out here I can implement and save the trouble of a TPER. Primefac (talk) 06:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
My suggestion is to be consistent with the NPP and so I propose:
To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|$USER}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~
With $USER being the username of the review- I am not so well versed in markup that I know what that code block should be, but I think it is an option? Qcne(talk)11:04, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I accepted the draft after major copyedits, but I am willing to be contradicted by another reviewer if they feel it doesn't pass the criteria. I thought it was borderline personally, but just about squeaked through. Qcne(talk)15:05, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
I think he might be honest, but it doesn't excuse the COI and prior attempts at paid promotion. Reactivated accounts rushing in to !vote makes me think this is less in good faith, unfortunately StarMississippi00:16, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
More paid-review accusations
Further to @Timtrent's earlier thread on this topic, and subsequently someone hinting at the HD that I'm also on the take, now a user has said at ANI that I'm selling draft acceptances for 300 quid a pop, apparently. If you see that (now deleted) thread, there's also a screengrab of a chat that allegedly took place, although quite how it's supposed to tie me into it, other than by the fact that I declined the draft in question, I'm not sure.
Anyway, I came here to ask, unless these sort of accusations have always been hurled at reviewers and I've just been lucky enough to not get them before, has something changed in the operating environment to cause this sudden flurry? Or is it all just a coincidence? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Sounds like someone drew the wrong conclusion from a coincidence. I mean, "Wikipedia administrator's community" lol. Sounds more like a scammer than someone who actually does AFC reviews. For example, I usually charge no more than £50 a pop (double rate for Indian movies tho). — HELLKNOWZ∣TALK17:08, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Wha... £50?! By undercutting decent, hard-working reviewers like that, you're taking the bread from everyone's mouth. It's a race to the bottom, is what it is. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 17:21, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm thinking as you were the last reviewer the user (wrongly) assumed the scammer was you, despite there being nothing to connect you both. I rekon it's bad luck. Qcne(talk)18:55, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Actually, that's a point – where do we flag up the scam issue? This seems to be alluded to in the decline notice (the one that gets posted on the draft 'owner's' talk page, not the one on the draft page), but it's kind of buried in the middle of the last bullet point, and probably easily missed (I didn't know it was there, until I just looked). Do we mention that anywhere else? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:59, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
We have it at WP:AFC, but the "or you can create a draft and submit it for review." link leads straight to article wizard. Most new editors would never read the scam warning. I recommend adding it as one of the steps in Article Wizard. Catalk to me!11:02, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm just thinking when is the user most vulnerable to this particular scam – presumably when their draft has been just declined or rejected, because that's when (I assume) the vultures swoop in? So it makes sense to have it in the decline notice, maybe it just needs to stand out more? (Of course, that location vs. the wizard aren't mutually exclusive; could be in both.) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:10, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Would you mind transcluding a scam warning within the Article Wizard? I tried to BOLDly do so but I dont have template editor rights. Catalk to me!11:29, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
What do others make of this Draft:Oussama Ammar? It's quite a negative BLP, borderline attack page even, although I'm not sure if it's quite G10 speediable. A lot of it is based on allegations and innuendo. It is referenced, but some of the sources may not be entirely RS. Thoughts? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:46, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
It's definitely not neutral (at least from a WP:WEIGHT perspective - 80% of the article is devoted to the legal issues). I also would probably not tag that as G10 since it's at least marginally sourced (and not really "attacking" as opposed to simply providing only negative facts). Could probably use either a blp or npov decline, but I'd have to look more closely at it to make a firm decision myself. Primefac (talk) 15:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Acceptance by the script, categories, and a tag check box?
This isn't about false allegations of paid editing. This is a suggestion about the Accept protocol in the AFC script.
When a reviewer accepts a draft, the script displays the WikiProjects and the categories that are selected in the draft, and the reviewer can add to them. That is good, but I would like to suggest that a checkbox be added next to the list of categories to tag the article for {{Improve categories}}. When I accept a draft, most of them have no categories selected by the submitter, and a few have multiple categories selected, because the submitter is familiar with categories. I don't consider myself an expert on categories, and I understand that tagging an article with {{Improve categories}} lists in, of course, a category of articles tagged for category improvement by gnomes who are experts on categories. If I remember, when accepting an article that isn't well-categorized, I tag it to request gnome review. That requires a few additional clicks, and I might not remember to check, and other reviewers might not know that they can apply that tag to request gnome assistance. So could there be a box for the accepting reviewer to check to tag the new article with {{Improve categories}}? I think that a majority of all accepted articles should be tagged. The average draft submitter doesn't know about categories, and isn't expected to know about them. The average AFC reviewer may not know about categories, but should know that there are gnomes who do know about them.
Robert McClenon (talk) 22:32, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
The draft has been submitted and will be reviewed when a reviewer happens to pick it up. We don't do on-demand reviews. Please be patient. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:03, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
How do I reject a submission?
This HowTo repeatedly gives instructions/options to reject a submission but nowhere can I find a link to how this should or should not be done, never mind the actual instructions. Please can this be added (or, if it already somewhere and I mised it, given more prominence)? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:59, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Steelpillow, are you talking about manually rejecting something, or using WP:AFCH? The "Decline/Reject" option in red in the middle of the AFCH window would (in my mind) be fairly obvious, though I do note the screenshot of the tool is outdated now (I'll work on replacing that). Primefac (talk) 08:03, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Uh... so I also missed the bit about having to be an approved reviewer, my apologies. I'd still recommend a sentence explaining that you just need to follow the tool's instructions. (BTW, what brought me here was a submission which was unchanged from a previous rejection. Maybe that should be in the speedy reasons too? ) Anyway, I'll get my coat now. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Hey Steelpillow, as you have good editing experience including a number of articles and a good AfD "matched result" rate you could just ask to be added to the participant list at WP:AFC/P as it looks like you easily pass the criteria (although that would be up to an admin to decide). Note that all admins and new page reviewers get access to the tool by default. Then you can review any submissions that overlap with the areas your interested/working in. You may also find Wikipedia:AfC sorting useful to find submissions by area, but if this is wikiproject based you probably have your own lists such as Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aviation/Article_alerts#AFC. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 13:51, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
On reviewing the current state of affairs after coming across Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Purge_API_broken?, I discovered that there are 874 pages at the moment that should have been in Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions but are missing, and also realized that this db query provides a scalable solution to the problem which is not being used by the existing purge bot. (We just need to purge the pages returned by this query, rather than all pages in AfC categories - which are significantly more in number.)
I have tried to decline Draft:Moor but every time I go to do so, Wikipedia freezes. I have no problem declining other AfC articles but this one triggers a glitch that causes me to need to restart my browser. I have the same issue using Chrome and Firefox and have even tried Chrome in Incognito to no avail. Spiderone(Talk to Spider)11:17, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
As for me, I think it is best to have placed in a one of the steps/pages within the article wizard so that no single page is overloaded with text. Catalk to me!20:15, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
As you say "long of text can lead to banner blindness" I think the warning can be a lot shorter... I'm too tired to think deeply about it now but I'm thinking more like the banner of Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Scam warning. The only thing I would add is that if I was to read it I would assume it was actual real reviewers/admins are involved, so I think adding something like "the person who contacted you will often be impersonating a real reviewer or administrator". KylieTastic (talk) 20:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
@Ca: Not sure if this is still an ongoing issue, but I feel placing it at https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard/CreateDraft would be best. I've noticed you've moved up the scam warning on the AFC page, but other places linking to the article wizard (WP:YFA, for exmaple) don't have this warning. Regarding the content of the warning, I think the shorter the better, so a shortened version of your example would be fine. Maybe
WARNING! There is an ongoing scam designed to target new users on Wikipedia! Users impersonating volunteers will ask for payment in exchange for assistance, or to have a draft page published. The assistance provided to you by legitimate Wikipedia editors will always be completely free of charge. Real Wikipedia editors will never contact or solicit you for payment or compensation of any kind. See this scam warning for more information.
"Where should we place the scam warning?" How about in newspapers and business magazines? All over social media? On the Main Page, maybe in big, bold, blink text? The people who need to see this aren't the ones trying to write articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
I see your point: a warning on the Article Wizard does not prevent scammers who contact victims in advance, just like what WikiPR did. It's impossible to prevent those scams without going into ridiculous lengths as you said. However, this scam warning is to prevent scammers who target editors who already had their draft declined. Scammer in actionCatalk to me!03:46, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Okay. Then we need both, and possibly in the regular interface, too. Maybe a very brief version should also be added to a message like MediaWiki:Editpage-head-copy-warn, using CSS so that's it's visible only to new accounts (or maybe IPs). There could be some benefit to having your nephew know that articles are free. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:13, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm not so sure we should rush into adding warnings to the base MediaWiki interface. Sdkb put it quite succinctly earlier when we were discussing where to put the template warnings; new editors have a myriad things that we think they should know, but the more information we throw at them, the less likely they are to pay attention to any of it. It's also important that we exercise some restraint instead of making these kinds of changes as a knee-jerk reaction — unless evidence emerges that article creation scams are so widespread that editors need to be warned about them every single time they edit a page, I don't think the broader community is likely to accept these changes. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 18:07, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Seconded. A warning on the article wizard should be sufficient. A more explicit mention on the decline warning might work as well. It's currently linked, but it's called "untoward behaviour" which isn't exactly very clear. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me!18:19, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
"Untoward behaviour" not only isn't very explicit (for fluent English readers), I expect it means nothing at all for many less-than-fully-fluent readers of English. We should definitely improve that wording. -- asilvering (talk) 18:34, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
The character count isn't my concern here, I'm questioning whether this warning is needed for display in such a prominent and widespread view. This are article creation scams, and are most likely not relevant to most other editors who aren't engaging with AfC. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:10, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Prominent, widespread, and, if you look at what I suggested, only for non-autoconfirmed editors. That means you'd see it 10 times per account/lifetime, not every time anyone edits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm proposing to replace it with the following line:
{{hidden|Where to get help ({{Plain link|url={{fullurl:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk/New question|withJS=MediaWiki:AFCHD-wizard.js&page={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}}}|name='''ask us a question'''}} - '''[[Wikipedia:IRC help disclaimer|live help]]''' - [[Talk:<includeonly>{{FULL</includeonly>PAGENAME}}|ask a WikiProject]])
Perhaps it will help more contributors discover the WikiProjects and contact them for assistance, as otherwise most of them don't know how to check the WikiProjects list at the talk page.
Proposed change 2
The template, if clicked the 'unhide' button, says the following text there among other things which I think is outdated because with the newer software the new drafts are already tagged with WikiProjects, and directing the users to the article talk page would be more appropriate:
If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed.
This should say:
If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject, which are listed at the draft talk page [this should link to the draft talk page]. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed.
So just to be pedantic about the first proposal, this is what is in the hidden message:
{{hidden|Where to get help|
* If you need help '''editing or submitting your draft''', please {{Plain link|url={{fullurl:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk/New question|withJS=MediaWiki:AFCHD-wizard.js&page={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}}}|name='''ask us a question'''}} at the AfC Help Desk or get '''[[Wikipedia:IRC help disclaimer|live help]]''' from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews.
* If you need '''feedback on your draft''', or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the [[Help:Talk pages|talk page]] of a [[Wikipedia:WikiProject#Finding a project|relevant WikiProject]]. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed.
}}
This expands to
Where to get help
If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews.
If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed.
So I guess my question is, why do we need to put the links in the hidden message header when it's already in the hidden message? Primefac (talk) 13:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
Is AFC intentionally a higher standard?
I've been active at NPP for a while and saw your requests for help here and thought I might see if I could help. Both from my past observations and now from reading your instructions (including the later items on the flow chart) IMO the standards for passing AFC are higher than Wikipedia standards for existence of an article as implemented by AFD & NPP. By the latter, an article with significant problems / which needs significant work still passes if it meets wp:Not and wp:notability and doesn't have urgent problems like copyvio, whereas it would not pass AFC until further improved. If you agree, is this difference deliberate or does/did it sort of just happen? And if I were to pass AFC's more by the looser criteria described above, would that be considered to be doing the job improperly? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:31, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
I posit that the majority of new articles are sub-standard and that AfC is a single barrier to maintain the standard. Having participating in this month's NPP backlog drive, some stuff is getting by NPP that probably ought not and the aggregate participants in AfDs are more inclusionist than they used to be. The only way to participate in a collective project is to follow the community's rules strictly constructed. To do otherwise is improper, and an arrogation of authority. Chris Troutman (talk)21:58, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
The core question is: What happens if an article is of low quality / substandard but the topic is suitable (per wp:not and wp:notability) for existence of an article? The latter is basically the passage standard at AFD and NPP. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:02, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
@North8000 We should pass inherently notable drafts, but encouraging referencing is kind of important too.
@North8000 The broad premise is that an AFC reviewer should accept a draft that the reviewer feels has a better than 50% chance of surviving an immediate deletion process.
This almost certainly does not answer your question.
Early in their reviewing 'career' a new reviewer is likely to try for a higher quality that is strictly necessary. This may not be a bad thing, but it does tend to discourage new editors. That is not always a bad thing, but often is.
Sometimes experienced reviewers see the need to choose additional strictness on a case by case basis, often unwittingly. When I catch myself doing this I take a hard look at what I'm doing and why.
Drafts by paid editors to me fall into two camps. The good paid editor who is capable of producing mainspace ready material with one or fewer declines at AFC, and the incompetent paid editor who wishes to be spoon fed and gains a torrent of declines and whines about them. I make a conscious decision to hold these to a high standard, and, since they are bing paid, expect them to learn as part of their payment! I have digressed! 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 23:13, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
It has often been said that AfC accepts articles with > 50% chance of surviving AfD based on the WP:AFCPURPOSE. In reality if someone took this literally I doubt they would last long. The trouble is there are many who think we should just act as a low bar junk filter and accept a lot more, but there are also many who will criticise a single accept they do not agree with and just re-dratify. In AfC we can review on what is presented and it's up to submitter to show notability so can look to have a higher standard, however any reviewer can choose to do a WP:BEFORE and accept on nobility. So North8000 you can review AfC as you would NPP by verifying notability considering maybe more than is presented or you can decline if the submitted sources do not yet show that notability. Personally I do both: sometimes decline and leave to the submitter to improve and sometimes if I think notable but the submission does not show I will accept but I personally choose to add the sources and improve before accepting, but you can just tag as you would in NPP. KylieTastic (talk) 23:37, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
OK, my point does depend on if someone only randomly selected submissions which most don't. Yes, if a reviewer has a general good review record you can (and should) afford the 51% chance accepts. As you have a stunning 51% accept rate (project average ~20%) and only ~6% deleted accepts (even before removing reasonable reasons for deletion) that would suggest you have selection criteria or maybe just your idea of 50% chance in one others would see as much higher... as it is very subjective. Regardless, your stats say your an AfC boss with that acceptance and quality rate plus doing this since 2014. Hats off to you. KylieTastic (talk) 19:22, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
It should be passing AfC if it could pass AfD (without new sources being added) and NPP would not draftify it. Basically, if the problems can be fixed "in normal editing", it goes through. If there's some kind of minor dealbreaker in the article (questionable unsourced paragraph, unsourced BLP info, etc) I tend to remove it myself and accept.
Everyone should keep in mind that having an article declined at AfC is incredibly frustrating and demoralizing for new editors. Though I confess I care a bit less about whether paid and coi editors are frustrated. -- asilvering (talk) 23:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
I would agree, and I think it's for a handful of reasons, which vary by editor - one being an intent to help teach people how to write better articles, one being (perhaps) a general distaste and resulting higher bar for coi editors (which you can see a few times in this thread), another the lack of BEFORE, and overall... I don't know quite the best way to word this, and I can't say for sure whether this is the case, but it seems like AfC reviewers, being fairly experienced editors, have seen many quality articles, and that familiarity can lead to disappointment in the reality of what gets written by those who aren't familiar with our policies or encyclopedic/formal writing in general. Again, not sure on that last point... but one last thing, there is a lot of junk that comes through AfC (especially if you look closer to the beginning of the queue) and that I think can color someone's perspective when looking at a draft - if 80% of what they look at is bad, it's easy to ABF and default to reviewing drafts from the view that they're proabably bad.
Thank you everyone for your expert advice which helps me gain a perspective. Of course I'll keep reading here but want to put in a thanks now. I've always assumed that there's another factor for the often defacto higher standard at AFC. Take for an example an article which would pass AFD/NPP but is otherwise in bad shape in many other areas. An AFC reviewer is sort of being asked to put their "stamp of approval" on an article (like "this is OK") but may be reluctant to do so for such an article. North8000 (talk) 14:29, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
@North8000 Honestly, I used to worry about NPP for this reason, since I frequently saw articles draftified that, as far as I could tell, met the basic AfC standard. I often leave a comment with suggestions rather than accepting outright if I notice something problematic that isn't an AfC decline reason. I'm glad to hear that NPP has relaxed somewhat. I did feel that I was seeing less of those draftified articles, but had simply assumed that was because I had switched my focus from the categories-by-topic lists to trying to get through the four-month-old articles instead. -- asilvering (talk) 17:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
I can't speak for NPP as a whole. Partially because it isn't a "whole" :-). Same with AFD. As a side note, the time limit for draftifying is shorter than the time of the que so that might explain the reduction. I think that the experienced NPP's evolve towards applying the standards properly by also following the norm, with a "typical OK AFD" being the guide as to being the norm. My comments about the typical AFC standard being higher than the typical NPP standard is from a lot of observations and involvement in situations. A lot of the AFC rejections are for article quality issues which would not be grounds for rejection under the NPP "should this article exist?" standard. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:54, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
My 2¢, North8000, which you have quite possibly seen me voice before, is that I've had articles that were failed for having a single unreferenced sentence and I've had articles that were failed for claims of non-notability despite full length references about the subject being right there in the reference list, but not as formatted refs. Too much work to look at them, I suppose. It's because of repeated incidents like that that I avoid using AfC whenever possible and always recommend whenever anyone asks for them to not use AfC either. SilverserenC22:01, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I think that RFC is a great concept. However, if the AFC standard is higher than the AFD/NPP standard for existence of the article, then that sort of works against the viability of the AFC route. North8000 (talk) 23:58, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
Rejection
There has never been a consensus about Rejection, either about when a reviewer should reject a draft, or about should be done about the resubmission of a rejected draft. I think that there are three situations in which I think a draft should be rejected:
The draft is resubmitted tendentiously without improvement, or without significant improvement. The topic may not be notable, or the submitter may not know how to develop a good draft.
The draft would be subject to one of the speedy deletion criteria in article space, especially A7.
The draft is not an article draft, but is either a bad joke or some other sort of nonsense.
That is what I think.
I still don't know if there is a consensus about what to do about resubmission of rejected drafts. I think that some reviewers think that there is a consensus, but they have different ideas as to what the consensus is, which is no consensus at all. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:39, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
Apologies for the delay, the message template has been updated: {{WPAFCDrive}}.
Hello WikiProject Articles for creation:
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to eliminate the backlog of unreviewed articles with bonus points being given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.
Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.
There is a backlog of over 1800 articles, so start reviewing articles. We're looking forward to your help!
active participants as at 08:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC), before the removal of participants with New Page Reviewer due to the enablement of this group of editors to access the AFCH script by default.
I don't feel like pinging all 780 NPR editors with the message as not all of them may be interested in doing AfC reviews. However, we can leave the above message on the NPR talk page with an additional line to encourage them to add themselves to a MMS list for future communications. – robertsky (talk) 03:37, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
An inspiration that just came to me after typing the message with respect to NPR editors. TODO: use Quarry to find out NPR editors and admins who have been using the AFCH script in the last 6 months. This eliminates the need for recompiling the list based on the removals of NPR and admins from the Participants list. – robertsky (talk) 03:41, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Honestly, it might not be a bad idea to hit the entire NPR and entire admin lists. That could help recruit us some new AFC reviewers that wouldn't hear about this otherwise.
Maybe consider removing the "Note: If you are re-reviewing other's acceptances" paragraph at the bottom there. That little detail distracts from the main message.
Do we want to put in a request for a watchlist message? Might get declined because it requires a perm to AFC review, but if it's accepted it could help us recruit. MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages
I know I'm late to the party and missed out on the planning, but can we try to avoid indicating that we want to burn everyone out by nuking the entire backlog? Honestly I'd be happy to get down to <2mo on the timescale (i.e. shift the focus of the second sentence to encourage reviews of the oldest drafts). Primefac (talk) 08:24, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac definitely, I have adjusted the text to be less aggressive on that front. We can afford to do so anyway as it seems that the number of pending drafts have been decreasing since the start of September.
For the admin newsletter will the following blurb be sufficient? The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 3,400+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!
@Novem Linguae, good points. My initial hesitation to ping the NPR list was primarily due to a possible burnout of reviewers from there from this month's backlog drive on that side. For the admins, let's go the newsletter route, hopefully catching the next newsletter in time. – robertsky (talk) 08:39, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Have requested for watchlist message. I don't see much of an issue with this given that NPP had theirs up for a week in October. – robertsky (talk) 09:27, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
I'd be happy with casting a wider net, and for the message to be sent whenever from now given how close we are to the start of November. Turnagra (talk) 17:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
The text of the WP:V decline notice currently reads "This submission is not adequately supported by reliable sources." Can we get some form of reference to WP:PRIMARY in there? The kind of thing I have in mind is when people cite, say, a birth certificate or court case - these are unimpeachably reliable but fall under "this article is improperly sourced". If we really want to keep the "improperly sourced" decline to specifically refer to problems of unreliable sources only, can we get a new decline for "overly reliant on primary sources"? (Or does this exist already and I'm misinterpreting it?) I know that a standard "non-notable" decline is probably intended to cover this kind of case (ie, the subject is not shown to be notable because there are not enough secondary sources to show it), but I often really want to avoid that one because the "non-notable" language is often very confusing or even offensive to new editors, and I often don't think it's appropriate to use it. That is, the text of the article makes a very good case that the subject is a notable person, but the sources are all or mostly primary. Imagine, for example, an article on Anne Frank sourced entirely to her diary, Karl Marx sourced only to Das Kapital, Douglas MacArthur sourced only to army records, or something. -- asilvering (talk) 17:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
Honestly, it might be worth it to add another decline reason so that reviewers can make the distinction between unsourced or nearly unsourced submissions and submissions that are sourced to unreliable sources, including primary sources. (That was a lot of "source" words.) Notability is a related but conceptually different decline reason. What do other reviewers think about this? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 02:05, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I do, of course, but that doesn't help with the the "non-notable" language is often very confusing or even offensive to new editors, and I often don't think it's appropriate to use it bit, obviously. -- asilvering (talk) 03:36, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Because many submitted drafts have the same deficiencies, I use canned explanations in templates, such as {{compsays}}, which is short for "the company says" (but we are more interested in what third parties say). Robert McClenon (talk) 03:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I think something like "non-notable" would be better since that response is really confusing. I think "article is improperly sourced", or needs reliable sources often are unclear about whether source quality is the issue (article is perfectly fine but find better sources), vs not established notability with claims, etc. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian)03:46, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Very true, and I also sympathize with Robert McClenon's approach above, but I feel like this particular situation with sources is common enough that having a WikiProject-approved blurb could be beneficial. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 04:18, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Backlog progress chart
As the graph module is still dead jim, I've created a basic progress chart that will need daily manual updates. Added to the top on this page and the backlog page. KylieTastic (talk) 15:07, 1 November 2023 (UTC)things you do while board in a Teams meeting
Our backlog is around 4,000, and the month long NPP backlog drive that just finished lowered their backlog by 4,000. Zero backlog here we come! –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:31, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
fyi, many of these are translations of zh-wiki articles by the Taiwan 1000 project or related editors and aren't described as such in the edit history. Reviewers should double-check to be sure they're not looking at an improperly attributed translation. -- asilvering (talk) 18:09, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
The problem is when it is dependent on non-english sources to establish wp:notability, you really need someone fluent in the language to evaluate them for GNG in a reasonable amount of time. North8000 (talk) 19:44, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I just ran into an editor, User:Micheal Kaluba, who is reviewing drafts and is not listed as a participant on the AFC team. He declined a draft that had already been rejected six months ago and hadn't been resubmitted by an editor. So, I don't know if they are just wandering through Draft space, commenting on random draft articles. I suggested that they come here and submit their name as a reviewer and I reverted their actions, one of which was to move a draft to main space (that action was undone by another editor). I guess my question is, I spend a lot of time in Draft space, reviewing drafts and sandboxes that are nearing their expiration date, what is the typical action that is done when an editor who doesn't work with AFC conducts reviews on their own? I know this isn't common but I have run into it before although typically it is editors approving their own drafts which wasn't happening in this case. Thanks. LizRead!Talk!02:43, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
If someone decides to move a AfC declined to mainspace with the intention of improving it there or as part of WP:DRAFTOBJECT, then that's allowed (even though often not optimal), with the new mainspace article obviously subject to deletion processes or BLARs. However, an editor pretending to be an AfC reviewer (like they did so here) is definitely disallowed. I am also not confident that they would be granted the AfC pseudo-perm given that they have no AfD or CSD experience. VickKiang(talk)02:53, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
You brought up another editor recently who was acting as if they had access to the AFCH script while not actually a reviewer. I think most people would agree that AfC-exclusive processes should be left exclusively to AfC reviewers and patrollers. I'm sure it's also quite confusing for the draft creator to have to deal with a situation where they're getting official-looking reviews from someone who's not been vetted to do so. I'd say that the editor should warned on their talk page and requested to stop, which should hopefully be enough if it was just a good-faith misunderstanding on their part. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 02:54, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the feedback, it's appreciated. Since they don't have access to the AFCH script, I'm not sure how they declined a draft but they could have copied and pasted the code from a previous decline on the draft article and signed their name. Thanks again. LizRead!Talk!03:28, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Categorize the pages you accept
I just went through all of the pages that have been added to Wikipedia:Articles for creation/recent since the drive started and I found 25(!!!) articles that had no categories whatsoever, with at least twice as many BLPs with only 1-2 categories. Many of the entirely uncategorized articles moved to main space were moved by users with the autopatrolled right. For those unaware, if you have AP and you move a page from draft space to the main space, it's automatically marked as reviewed and does not enter the Special:NewPagesFeed. This means a member of the WP:NPP team does not catch these mistakes and that means these articles can sit with these issues for quite a while. I understand that we can't all know every category in existence, but there is no excuse for leaving articles entirely uncategorized. Let's all get it together (not naming names). Hey man im josh (talk) 19:41, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
@Hey man im josh Are these ones that have been up for a while or are you catching them as they come in? If I add categories, I always add them after accepting because I find hotcat a lot easier to deal with than the AFC review script. -- asilvering (talk) 19:48, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I would change Josh's request to "Categorize or tag the pages you accept". I try to remember to tag the pages that I accept as {{improve categories}}. I think that the gnomes who categorize pages as needing categorizing can do a better job with the often-arcane system of categories. The reminder is a good idea, especially since the number of articles accepted will be higher than normal for the next few weeks as the backlog drive succeeds. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:09, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Categorizing used to be a mandatory part of the NPP flowchart, but was made optional a year or two ago. Categorizing has never been mandatory for AFC. I think there are some gnomes that focus on categorizing and that these articles all eventually get fixed, so this may not be particularly urgent. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:11, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I understand it's not mandatory, but not adding any categories is lazy and half-assing things in a way that we shouldn't be. I think I was most annoyed by the instances of autopatrolled users doing it because we typically expect autopatrolled users to work on articles in a way that don't need a second set of eyes. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:15, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I am an unapologetic half-ass then because more often then not I tag drafts I accept with the "uncategorized" or "Improve categories" tag. I have at times spent much more time trying to find appropriate categories than I did reviewing a draft so gave up and figured it's best left to specialists. S0091 (talk) 20:25, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I disagree that even one or two cats should be a hard requirement. The hard requirement should be either two cats or a tag as needing category improvement. The accepting reviewer should be allowed to defer categorization to gnomes, providing that they mark the article as needing gnome review. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:04, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
On a side note, categorizing and stubsorting isn't exactly made easy when these don't work on AFCH mobile. Is this a known thing? NotAGenious (talk) 20:16, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
AFCH seems to work with the Minerva mobile skin. I was able to open the accept menu. Can you go into a bit more detail about what's not working? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:26, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
See screenshot. Is that the bug you're trying to report? (Workaround: tick "Desktop site" / "View in desktop mode" in your browser, which should turn off auto scaling) –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:57, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
The link created by AFCH directing comments to user talk pages doesn't leave signatures
The substitution template at Template:AfC decline/HD preload doesn't include the four tildes when used by the link clicked on at the declination template left by the AFCH script on the submitter's talk page, and the result is that any talk page messages left by the submitter at the reviewer's talk page goes unsigned, and there is no [reply] button following the message. microbiologyMarcus(petri dish•growths)15:52, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
I think the user just edited the response to remove the auto sign.... you can lead an editor to a talk page but you can;t make them sign :) KylieTastic (talk) 16:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
The other possibility is their sig has no link. I thought they removed that option a couple of years ago (i.e. it forces you to have at least one link) but you might be right that they could have manually typed in their sig. Primefac (talk) 16:18, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
There is the outstanding problem, though, that when a user replies to the talk page messages, we never get notified about it. Very often I come across people who have replied to past declines but have been shouting into the void. -- asilvering (talk) 16:18, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Any chance of implementing that wording change to the templates we discussed a few weeks ago? Not sure we got consensus, purely because no one really interacted with the suggestion, but....! Qcne(talk)17:55, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
MicrobiologyMarcus are you talking about when a user selects to leave a message on the "reviewer's talk page" from a message like you left here as I see the reply they left you did not look properly signed. However if you try the link yourself it does have four tildes (or at least it does when I just tried it). KylieTastic (talk) 16:12, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
If I click on that same link, the pre-filled text for me is:
== Request on {{SAFESUBST:#time:H:i:s, j F Y}} for assistance on [[Wikipedia:Articles for creation|AfC]] submission by {{SAFESUBST:REVISIONUSER}} == ::{{anchor|{{SAFESUBST:#time:H:i:s, j F Y}} review of submission by {{SAFESUBST:REVISIONUSER}}}} ::{{Lafc|username={{SAFESUBST:REVISIONUSER}}|ts={{SAFESUBST:#time:H:i:s, j F Y}}|declinedtalk=Draft:Maher_Jarmakani}} ::{{SAFESUBST:Void| ::<!-- First, tell us why you are requesting assistance. Take as many lines as you need. --> }} ::<!-- Start of message --> ::<!-- End of message -->~~~~{{SAFESUBST:Void|<!-- ::Finally, make sure to click the "Publish changes" button below or your request will be lost!-->}} ::
So this is an instance of people just removing those tildes in their message before hitting submit? I'm curious why I never had a review button herepromise to start rereading things fully before responding, answered abovemicrobiologyMarcus(petri dish•growths)16:21, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Incidentally, this is why we've tried to move more towards the script-based wizards - try as we might to say "DON'T REMOVE THIS LINE" people, invariably, do. Primefac (talk) 16:44, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Process for wp:AFC accept when the target is a redirect?
What is the process for accepting an article when the the target is currently a redirect? The example that raised the question for me is Draft:Economy of the Qing Dynasty but I'm also trying to learn in general. The script instructions said to just request a general move but wouldn't that leave the draft open at wp:AFC? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:53, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
I think the correct procedure is first indicate you will accept the draft by a comment (this step is optional), then tag the redirect with this template (mandatory), and finally move the AfC draft to mainspace after the redirect has been deleted under G6.
Of course, for contentious and contested redirects this approach won't work, but for the case you mentioned, doing the above procedure is fine. VickKiang(talk)02:59, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Always worth checking the history on the redirect as well. I remember a situation some time ago where the draft was a recreation of the article that had been taken to AfD and closed as redirect. Also, are page movers able to move drafts over redirects using the AFCH script?(Never mind, just read WP:PMR again.)—TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 03:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Not directly. You can move the current redirect as part of WP:SWAP to a temporary
"Draft:Move/Location X" first, while disabling the leave a redirect option unchecked while performing the move. Then do your acceptance using the AFCH script, and finish off with moving the redirect at the temporary title into the draft title overwriting the new redirect. – robertsky (talk) 15:45, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd like to build detecting this situation and placing the {{Db-afc-move}} template on the redirect into the AFCH script someday, since questions about this get asked several times a year. This workflow is confusing and building it into the software would help. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:38, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Pretty sure the creation of user talk pages with semi-automated tools adds {{Talk header}} to the top by default. I'm not sure if this is the scripts doing it, or if MediaWiki throws that in when it detects you're performing the action with a script. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 03:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
AFCH does it, not MediaWiki. There's a talk page discussion about whether this should be added to all pages somewhere. And I discovered in that discussion that there's definitely a faction of editors that don't like this template. But I like it and AFCH adds it and it doesn't seem to be causing any problems, so I recommend no action at this time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:34, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that's about what I thought, because I just remembered that ClueBot doesn't add this template when it issues user warnings, so it can't be MediaWiki doing it. I'd agree that nothing about the current system seems to be causing problems, so don't fix what ain't broke. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Question About Bot
I have a question that is primarily for User:Ingenuity. How frequently does the bot run to update the leaderboard? As the drive continues, the question becomes less salient, but I would be interested. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:36, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.
I see that there will be awards given at the end of the drive. That implies that there may be a way of scoring reviewers. In previous backlog drives, I have found the method of scoring reviewers to be arcane. Will the criteria for scoring be easy to understand this time? (Sometimes there have been additional activities in the backlog, such as reviews of reviewing, that I have found especially obscure. Fortunately I don't see that mentioned this time.) Do we get different numbers of points for acceptance and for decline? Do we get different numbers of points for 4-month-old drafts and for 2-month-old drafts?
Robert McClenon (talk) 21:21, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
I see that there are zero points for a review that is found to be incorrect. I can see several ways that a review could be said to be found to be incorrect. Obviously, that includes speedy deletion or deletion after AFD. What about acceptance after a decline? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:50, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
User:Asilvering - Yes. That is why I asked. That is the way that the process is supposed to work. An author submits a draft. A reviewer declines it, and says why they are declining it. The author edits the draft, possibly adding text and sources, and resubmits the draft. Another reviewer accepts it. That is the way that the process is supposed to work. So I wanted to be sure that that isn't considered to be a case of the first review being found to be incorrect. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:50, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon I think you may have found the answer to this already, but just to write it here for anyone else who is wondering: "review that is found to be incorrect" refers to the re-review process only. -- asilvering (talk) 19:24, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
To add a question, who is supposed to be doing "re-reviews"? Anyone at all? Or just the co-ordinator? I was alarmed to see a 100% decline rate on the top reviewer (currently GraziePrego), and the two declines I spot-checked look completely out of line to me. One decline is for unsourced statements (there are none), and another apparently for not including a birthday. -- asilvering (talk) 03:25, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae & @Ingenuity, for the re-reviews, I indicated as participants of the backlog drive are eligible to conduct the reviews. But from the bot codes, it seems that it doesn't discriminate on who can do the rereviews. Shall I indicate that anyone can do the rereviews? – robertsky (talk) 11:19, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I think it would probably screw up the bot that is doing the counting, as well. But I'm not sure what it says about AfC if we agree a review is incorrect and then don't do anything about it. I don't want to resubmit and accept, because then the accept notice will go to me. And when dealing with the months-old backlog, the original editor may be long gone and never come back to resubmit it either. -- asilvering (talk) 18:07, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I suppose a compromise might be to contact the first reviewer and have them undo their own work (?), though I can see how that might be impractical in many situations. It just wouldn't sit right with me to remove another editor's good-faith review, even if I believe they were misguided in their reasoning. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 18:15, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
If you think an article is acceptable no reason to wait/hope the submitter re-submits.... they have been put off they may not come back. fix the issue with a re-submit and accept. The only time I would not submit and accept is if an article has not yet been submitted and the author(s) have recently worked on it as they should be able to work in piece till ready. KylieTastic (talk) 19:58, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
If you think the review was definitely wrong deal with it. If it's a bad accept: AfD/draftify as appropriate; If it's a bad decline you think should have been accepted, re-submit as last submitter and accept. For instance on Draft:Ferdinand Jan Ormeling Sr. it was commented "Subject clearly passes WP:NPROF and should be accepted"... so why is it still not accepted? If I was the submitter I would be confused. General principle here is if any of us find and draft we clearly think is in an acceptable state (and has been submitted at some point) then accept it. KylieTastic (talk) 19:48, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I didn't accept it because I was waiting on a response here for what is intended to be done with them as part of the backlog drive. How do you re-submit as last submitter? Hit the submit button and then edit the template by hand to have their username? -- asilvering (talk) 19:51, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
In the last AFC backlog drive I participated in, we told reviewers that re-reviews were mandatory but in practice we didn't penalize if they didn't do it. That worked fine to put a little pressure on folks to do re-reviews so that the re-review system wouldn't just be ignored/collapse. The days/week after the drive was re-review week. Points were recalculated to include re-review points, then barnstars went out.
I think re-reviews should be limited to drive participants. The idea is that they get extra points for re-reviews.
If a review is failed, I think it's fine for the failing reviewer to go fix it if they're confident that they're right and it's not just a borderline case. For example, if an AFC reviewer erroneously declines a draft on a professor because they don't pass GNG, and the re-reviewer finds they pass NPROF, then the draft should be accepted. It is good to fix incorrect reviews. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:00, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
I shouldn't be here at all and I'm sorry I'm being intrusive but isn't doing declines at high speed the easiest way to win your award? Thincat (talk) 20:13, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Invalid declines do not get you points if/when caught. More importantly any reviewer who was found to be doing such a bad job would be removed from the project and/or have NPP permission removed. KylieTastic (talk) 20:20, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I was confused by this as well, as I don't remember ever seeing an option to submit on another user's behalf. It was my understanding that the message is sent to the user provided in the {{AfC submission}} template, which could be manually edited in source if necessary. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 22:37, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Theroadislong, you have to submit from the AFHC tool not from the submit button on the decline. The AFCH one lets you choose: 'most recent submitter', 'page creator', 'Yourself' and 'Someone else' KylieTastic (talk)
Thincat it is early days but acceptance rate is actually higher that the normal ~20% - Day one was ~25.8% and so far day 2 23.3%. Also you and anyone are welcome to be here and part of discussions on AfC (we are not a cabal). You raised a valid concern in the correct place, no intrusion at all. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 15:27, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
I presume this has to do with more attention going to the end of the queue. All the really obvious blink-and-decline-it ones are dealt with on day 0. -- asilvering (talk) 22:50, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
Need help with AFCP
I have been dealing with some IRL issues the couple of weeks, and have been unable to devote the time and space to properly vet the new AFCH access requests. With the backlog drive coming up, as well as just the general idea that folks simply shouldn't be waiting that long to get looked at, I simply need to ask for help.
I have at least been able to go through and find that no one (currently) meets the quick-fail numerical criteria, but I need thoughts on whether someone is a) not meeting the "experience" criteria, b) is suitable for probationary membership, or c) should clearly be a full reviewer straight off. I'll put a subsection for those three options below, and if I don't hear anything before 1 Nov I will assume that there are no issues with the new applicants receiving a probationary membership (which, as a reminder, means nothing other than "any admin can remove the user for any reason") and will give them access. Thanks, Primefac (talk) 17:12, 29 October 2023 (UTC) And just as a note, I don't need to be pinged, I'm watching this page as well as subscribed to the thread.update: removing subthread, there are few enough left (thanks Spicy) that they can just be mentioned/discussed below easily enough. Primefac (talk) 07:24, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
Would there be any objection to other admins handling the requests? I should have the time to look at some of them today. Spicy (talk) 19:17, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
@Spicy just fyi, if you have another moment, there are a handful of people who have applied since the backlog drive started. To save anyone reading this the first round of checking: Styx & Stones (now Donnchadh4) does not have 500 mainspace edits, so can be declined easily. F.Alexsandr only barely meets minimum edit count. The other three (as I write this, Styx & Stones is the most recent) all easily meet the minimum edit count. -- asilvering (talk) 22:47, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
I declined the obvious one; of the four remaining:
R. S. Shaw: seems fine, good AfD stats, seemingly not as active recently as many years ago but no big red flags.
Micheal Kaluba: see #Query below (and details on his user talk); no AfDs that I can find.
F.Alexsandr: 506 mainspace edits, 50% on 2 AfDs. May have some experience at ru.wp.
LEvalyn: seems very strong all around, plenty of edits, good AfD stats, good interactions with new editors.
I would accept (maybe probation, probably not), decline or ask questions, decline for now, and accept (without probation), respectively. LittlePuppers (talk) 23:42, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
I plan on getting to these today at some point; my usual workflow is to deal with AFCH requests on Sundays. Thanks for the feedback on them :-) Primefac (talk) 07:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
If I'm remembering correctly, drafts on topics that are under ArbCom sanctions that only have substantial edits by non-extended-confirmed users are subject to deletion, right? I wanted to run this by someone else before moving forward; I've marked it as under review for now so it hopefully stays in draftspace until we figure something out. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:54, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
Technically, can probably tag it csd WP:G5 (in violation of topic ban) and get it deleted. How bad is it? If its good, you could instead "accept" it and basically adopt it and vouch for it. Up to you! –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd say it's in an acceptable state, and I would have accepted it if not for the fact that it could be merged and that it's in a sanctioned topic. I wouldn't really feel too good about throwing away good-faith contributions from this editor, as it's unlikely that they knew about the extended-confirmed restriction. I was thinking about overseeing the merge myself, since the article creator can't edit the destination page either, and I could use a second (or higher!) pair of eyes on that as well. I think I'll drop a template on their talk page explaining that they've stumbled into an ArbCom remedy, and give them a heads-up that the draft will probably have to be deleted once I've merged over what I can. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 22:22, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I saw his comment about it being "potentially notable, but 2023 Israel–Hamas war protests already covers the topic," but I would say that logic supports a merger. Admins reviewing an AfC do not need to agree. It seems you have already started a merger, from your other comment, which is good. Historyday01 (talk) 14:26, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
My initial thought is to treat something going through AfC on a contentious/sanctioned subject like that sort of like an edit request - I don't have the wording in front of me, but it's not that new editors can't in any way contribute to these topics, it's that they can't directly edit an article and instead must go through a more experienced editor, right? Is that a reasonable way to treat it, or am I just making stuff up? LittlePuppers (talk) 03:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
From WP:ARBECR: Non-extended-confirmed editors may not create new articles, but administrators may exercise discretion when deciding how to enforce this remedy on article creations. In other words, admins are welcome to delete these drafts, but they are not required to, and a "good" draft can probably be accepted if it meets our criteria. Primefac (talk) 09:23, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
IMO it's a bit of wp:gaming but it's probably best to deal with the articles individually rather than acting based on this tactic between the two. If they just tried moving the material over, the new article it would have an even weaker case North8000 (talk) 18:08, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I was debating a history split, but since the topics are somewhat intertwined ("the founder" -> "the founder's company") I think it's acceptable to leave the history alone. I don't think we should keep decline notices for the first iteration, though, if the draft has been essentially rewritten. Primefac (talk) 20:08, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think this is concerning unless there is some other shenanigans. I have at times suggested a draft should be a about different topic in my reviews, for example an author where sources are mostly about a book, companies where sources are mostly about a specific product, etc. S0091 (talk) 20:21, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Scoring for LLM generated Wikipedia Style models.
I am part of a team at a University where we are building a LLM style model which will be given a topic and will generate different subtopics and then text in order to write an informative article. We are going to be using several different types of scoring mechanisms, but we would ideally like to have frequent wikipedia editors collaborate with scoring the articles.
Our goal is only for educational research, and we are not intending to try to publish these LLM generated articles on Wikipedia. Our LLM will ideally generate Wikipedia style articles with citations, and different sub-points. We will also have an automatic scorer that will score the essay based on 1. Well Written, 2. Verifiable with no original research, 3. Broad in its coverage, and 4. Qualitative comments (The first three metrics for a Good Article + Qualitiative comments). We would take a subset of our articles produced and score them by actual Wikipedia editors as a way to verify our scorer is within reason.
Are you sure it's not a bug? Steven Jackson (politician) looks like it was only created on 22 October 2023 and submitted that same day, but shows as being pending for 359 days. The one you mentioned also has that it was submitted in its edit history. Turnagra (talk) 09:17, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
The template does not go off the actual page history, it goes off the timestamp added to the page. In this case, it is {{AfC submission|t||ts=20221107185100|u=MoviesandTelevisionFan|ns=118|demo=}}, which gives a time stamp of 7 Nov 2022. Primefac (talk) 09:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think there is an easy way to fix the scoring for this situation, unless @Ingenuity thinks otherwise. What we can do is to check for any drafts that're more than 150 days pending and adjust the scoring manually at the end of the backlog drive. – robertsky (talk) 13:59, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I think that'd be the best duct-tape solution for now. Since it's been ascertained that the bot is not malfunctioning, there's no urgent need to fix anything at the moment. The AFCH maintainers will probably look into the issue of the script's timestamps when marking as under review, but that could take a minute. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 14:05, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
hey man im josh, could I ask why you have accepted at least 9 pages created by MoviesandTelevisionFan, who is CIR-blocked from editing the article space, without any of those drafts having been submitted? Primefac (talk) 09:30, 7 November 2023 (UTC) Apologies for the ping, I guess I'm just being overly cynical this morning. Primefac (talk) 10:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
The block was because of poor English skills but MaTF appears to understand nobility so I see no problems with getting these into article-space once reviewed. I do think this is a bug in the fact that if a draft is not submitted and you mark under review it should use the current date. If do a submit on behalf of the creator first then mark under review this is what would have happened. In normal times this would not matter to anyone, but this oddity makes it look a bit like gaming the drive points system rather than saving lost drafts which I'm sure was the actual motivation. I assume this is easily fixed with manual timestamp manipulation. KylieTastic (talk) 10:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
An unsubmitted draft doesn't need a timestamp (i.e. there's nothing that uses it) so really what needs to happen is it should be ignored (or better yet, not even added in the first place) until it is either submitted or marked for review. Primefac (talk) 10:20, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Is this a bug in AFCH? When marking an unsubmitted draft as under review (such as here), what should it write instead of {{AFC submission|r||u=MoviesandTelevisionFan|ns=118|demo=|reviewer=Hey man im josh|reviewts=20231101022236|ts=20221107185100}}<!-- Do not remove this line! -->? Should ts= the current timestamp, or maybe be left blank? –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think it's a bug so much as a situation which was not really planned for. If a draft is being pushed straight from /draft to /reviewing the time stamp ideally should be when it was marked as under review, as seen here. That being said, we can likely hash this out in a new section to avoid cluttering up this one, which is definitely not about the template itself. Primefac (talk) 11:03, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Fwiw, if you look at my AfC log, I was going through their drafts before this drive even started. It's a continuation of what I was doing, no gaming. No objection from me if my points are adjusted at the end. Hey man im josh (talk) 10:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac: Just to follow up a bit more now that I'm at a computer, I mark them as under review so I can take advantage of the automation portion of the AFCH tool to add appropriate tags, adjust commented out categories, and to add it to my AfC log so that I can continue to track what drafts I've accepted or declined. Thank you @KylieTastic, you're correct in my intentions. I just wanted to get more drafts from draft space into main space and MaTF has a niche and pattern to the articles they create, so I've looked through their current drafts (found here). In short, they've figured out the formula for creating stubs that pass WP:NPOL and are written well enough to be accepted, so I wanted to clear those away instead of them getting to a point where they get close to expiring. In October I accepted 21 of their drafts, some of which had not been submitted. Thus far, in November, I've accepted 14 of their drafts, none of which had been submitted. When looking through their drafts in progress I made a bookmarks folder of drafts of theirs that I intended to accept, which currently has 4 drafts left in it. I spaced out when I was accepting their articles because I didn't want to flood their talk page with mass accepts all at once.
I want to be absolutely clear I had no intention of gaming the system. I also have no issue whatsoever with removing the entries from the my backlog drive log. With that said, perhaps we should instead consider explicitly allowing drafts that were not submitted to count towards scoring. With the backlog dwindling, and the reviewers on a roll, I think it could be a good idea to help reduce the total number of drafts and save some content from eventually getting G13 deleted. For those who aren't aware, there are roughly ~150-250 articles that appear on User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon each day. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the expanded explanation. Honestly, I wasn't even thinking about the backlog drive or points or anything like that, I was not thinking broader and just saw "AFC reviewer accepting a bunch of unsubmitted drafts". I do apologise for jumping to nefarious conclusions (I obviously shouldn't have) and do feel like a right twit for doing so. I think going through drafts like that is probably a good thing (I know Prax is doing it for FA's creations) since it clears out the unnecessary wait times for good pages. Primefac (talk) 13:14, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
No worries @Primefac, I absolutely see how you reached the conclusion you did and why you felt the way you did at first, so don't be too hard on yourself. Star Mississippi is doing so as well with FA's drafts, which is actually what gave me the idea! Hey man im josh (talk) 13:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
@Hey man im josh thanks for that link, it hadn't occurred to me to go through these. How do you mark them as under review? I've never bothered to do this before and I don't see an option when I run the AFCH script. -- asilvering (talk) 15:13, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
@Asilvering: I click the arrows on the right side when the tool appears at the top of the page (see this image) and then click the "Mark as under review" text that appears. I then am able to refresh the page and accept it. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:19, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
@Asilvering if you fist use the submit from within AFCH, then optionally mark as under review if you need more time, then accept it will get around the date that started all this. KylieTastic (talk) 15:24, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Usually I try to wait at least a few minutes before reviewing (in case they're still making changes), but I didn't check on this one. At least KylieTastic and I are in agreement :P.
In mainspace yes wait as we don't know if they are still changing stuff, but if they hit submit here before ready that is really their issue not ours. Also all they have to do is finish and resubmit so it's not a big issue. KylieTastic (talk) 18:10, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
Also, this reminds me of an issue I had been meaning to bring up earlier: the AFCH script doesn't seem to have a way of dealing with edit conflicts and just overwrites the previous review if two reviewers happen to decline a submission at the same time. It's usually pretty easy to catch and fix, but it'd be nice if it could warn the user if it detects that an edit has been made to the page. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 18:17, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
What Wikipedia calls an Edit Conflict is known more generally in electrical engineering and computer science as a race condition. It is not easy to design systems to handle race conditions optimally. I think that most Wikipedia processes handle race conditions at least as well as could be expected. Most but not all Wikipedia editors understand that race conditions happen, and that results are sometimes unpredictable. The unpredictability is a characteristic of race conditions, and is what makes them difficult to design for. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:24, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
One way to deal with such race conditions is to have the script to check if there was a prior review done in the last hour, or any other suitable duration and warn the reviewer if so. – robertsky (talk) 03:43, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I've had two AfC declines overwritten in a row just now, as can be seen by my edit history. I don't mind being pre-empted by someone else (though whether I agree with the decision is another matter), but I do mind that it glitches out and forces you to revert everything manually, in effect punishing you for being too slow. Hopefully the bug gets fixed. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 09:01, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
You can see all your draft creations here. If you're looking to find just the drafts you've submitted for review, you can head over to {{AfC statistics}}, and then simply press Ctrl+F to search for your username without the 'User' prefix. – DreamRimmer (talk) 02:08, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
@Immanuelle the quickest way to see your active submissions (99% accurate) is with a search like this. Which show you have 45 submissions which is ~2.5% of all submissions and climbing (yesterday it was 2%). Can you please take a break from submitting for a while for the sake of both the reviewers and other submitters and let us catch up. Currently the top submitters list is: Immanuelle: 45, Dogloverr16: 18, 126yt: 10, Liuchinghuang: 9, FloridaArmy: 8, Shan-Chen Lu: 7, Winnie0510: 5. You can also find your declined submission with this. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 10:59, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
@KylieTastic I think I'll just take a general break from Wikipedia. I managed to reorganize my drafts a lot reducing my draft count from 3,946 drafts to 3,522 drafts, after being criticized for having too many drafts. I think I will just take a break for a while. I submitted the drafts I thought were good (although a few weren't that good), and now it's my time to relax for a bit and decompress. I've been acting a bit from a perceived pressure for performance lately, now my drafts are all ones someone else can realistically contribute to if they find them. Might be gone for a week or two Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian)01:47, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
@Immanuelle wow that's a lot of drafts, which means a lot of work, so yes you need to take care not to get overloaded and burnout. Over the years I've seen a number of good editors push themselves then disappear. It's good to recognise when you need to take a break and actually take one for your own health. Have a good chill. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 10:15, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
@KylieTastic I haven't really been very good at taking the break. But do you think it is okay that I am submitting a lot of my drafts that I previously was hesitant to submit due to the backlog being cleared? I really want to take this opportunity before the backlog comes back since I have a lot of years old drafts that I want to get reviewed. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian)19:46, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
@Immanuelle I did notice your taking a break had very little break. Although people would like to see the backlog hit zero that should not stop people submitting as that is what this is here for. Don't spam huge amounts all at once, but it you have drafts that you think are solid then that is what we are all (mostly) here for. You would not be the only one taking advantage of a small queue. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 19:51, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Scoring for Wikipedia type Articles Generated by LLM
Our research team is building a LLM-based system which can generate a full-length Wikipedia page for a given topic without the need for supplemental information (e.g., human written outlines, curated references, etc.). Besides automatic evaluation, we would like to have frequent wikipedia editors collaborate with scoring the articles and providing feedback.
Our goal is only for educational research, and we are not intending to try to publish these LLM generated articles on Wikipedia. Our LLM will ideally generate Wikipedia style articles with citations, and different sub-points. We will be scoring the essay based on 1. Well Written, 2. Verifiable with no original research, 3. Broad in its coverage, and 4. Qualitative comments (The first three metrics for a Good Article + Qualitative comments). We would take a subset of our articles produced and score them by actual Wikipedia editors as a way to verify our scoring is within reason.
We will be providing monetary compensation for work provided. This was posted earlier, but now with next steps. We hope to begin the review process in a few weeks.
This is still extremely low on answers to important questions like "who are you", "what is the purpose of your educational research", and "where are your standards of research ethics". -- asilvering (talk) 23:44, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Hi, I'm glad to answer your questions. I wasn't sure what was permissible by Wikipedias idea of not posting personal information. We are a team of three students working on a project as part of this class [9]Conversational Virtual Assistants with Deep Learning. We are focused on a few things: Exploring if we can reduce LLM hallucination to negligible amounts, exploring if LLM can generate articles with the same high quality as Wikipedia, and exploring if article based information gathering will remain relevant with the advent of informational chatbots.
Filling out the form is obviously not a binding agreement. We would appreciate you filling it out and we can contact you with more details. To be clear, the intent of this is not to build a model that will be used on or with Wikipedia. Rather it is in the scope of the class and of improving LLM models. Terribilis11 (talk) 01:18, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Oh wow ok it is... significantly context-altering to know you are in a 2nd-year undergraduate course. New question: does your professor know that you are recruiting people who are not Stanford students as scorers? The way you've gone about this recruiting set off a lot of my "these people are acting completely without IRB oversight, as though they do not know they need it or for some reason hold it in contempt" alarm bells, which is understandable because you... are students, and indeed probably have never been told about ethics approval at all. What you are proposing is a study with human participants, and, barring some strictly defined cases, studies with human participants require ethics approval and data security standards. Since this is obviously a study with only extremely low risks for your human participants, you can probably get ethics approval expedited, but you probably need it and your professor can get into big trouble if they don't get it. (It's your supervisor's responsibility, so here that's your prof - you're not in trouble.) The compliance office at Stanford closes to new submissions on the 13th ([10]), so you need to work quickly to ensure you're ok here. -- asilvering (talk) 07:05, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Just wait until they hear about the GDPR rules they'll have to meet, given that non-trivial numbers of en.wiki editors are in the EU, and neither the call for participants nor the sign up form filtered those out, so the google docs spreadsheet is already in breach. Stuartyeates (talk) 08:11, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Wonderful point, we will go ahead and limit participation to America. You are correct that I wasn't familiar with the IRB requirements, but after further investigation we do have IRB approval. Below is our Ethical statement regarding our research, and we have an research consent form that is according to IRB standards available to distribute to those who are interested.
In this work, we study the automatic Wikipedia generation problem as a way to push the frontier of automatic expository writing and automatic knowledge curation. All the studies and the evaluation in this work are designed to prevent the dissemination of misinformation by not publishing generated content online and implementing strict accuracy checks. We avoid any disruption to Wikipedia or related communities, as our system does not interact with live pages. Also, although we try to generate grounded articles, we believe there is no privacy issue related to this work as we only use information publicly available on the Internet.The primary risk of our work is that the Wikipedia articles written by our system are grounded on information on the Internet which may contain some biased or discriminative contents. Currently, our system relies on the search engine to retrieve high-quality information but does not include any post-processing module. We believe improving the retrieval module to have good coverage of different viewpoints and adding a content sifting module to the current system will be a critical next step to achieve better neutrality and balance in the generated articles. In our experiment, we manually go through all the topics in the test set to ensure the topics themselves are not biased or discriminative.Another limitation we see from an ethical point of view is that we only consider writing English Wikipedia articles in this work. Extending the current system to a multilingual setup is a meaningful direction for future work as there are more interesting topics that do not have their Wikipedia pages in non-English langua Terribilis11 (talk) 01:04, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
The form appears to miss-understand the Good Article requirements. The zeroth GA requirement is that it's an article. The first sentence on the page A good article (GA) is an article that meets a core set of editorial standards[...]Stuartyeates (talk) 03:29, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what you mean. The results of our model will be an article or rather in the format of an article. We won't be publishing the articles on Wikipedia.Terribilis11 (talk) 05:40, 9 November 2023 (UTC)'
@Terribilis11: By the way, I'm not sure this is the right forum for this discussion. This talk page is used for the administration of WikiProject Articles for creation, which does not actually write new articles, but rather reviews drafts created by other editors so they can be considered for moving into article space. You might have more luck drawing attention from interested editors at, for example, the Village pump. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:23, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Could not help noticing the 'not accepted' and the 'accepted' template messages left on user talk pages have slightly different formats, so that one is indented, the other is not, one has a linespace at the top, the other does not. This can be seen very well at this user's talk page. I wonder if anyone would know where they live & care to amend the formats so that they match?
Almost all of it is @Vanderwaalforces and @WikiOriginal-9, so probably not... I expect they'd burn out if they kept operating at that rate for long. But I do hope that now that the backlog is cleared, us less-prolific reviewers can help keep it under control. -- asilvering (talk) 20:01, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Here's hoping! I concur with Asilvering on the fact that it should — in theory — be easier to simply maintain the status quo if we're able to match the rate that drafts are getting submitted, which is nowhere near the rate at which we were going through the backlog for the drive. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 08:04, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
@TechnoSquirrel69 I’ll also note that I and possibly many other people are submitting drafts at a faster rate now that we feel we can easily get timely reviews for existing drafts. I’ve run up pretty close to my limit on that, although I think @FloridaArmy has a good deal more he’s gonna submit. Once these people have stopped submitting I think the background submissions rate will actually be slower, so I can easily see it as being very manageable in the future. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian)08:16, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
I updated the AFC helper script today. This is my first time syncing the code offwiki to the code onwiki (called "deploying"). Please ping me if anything breaks. Now that I have figured out how to do it, this should be a good step towards getting AFCH updated more often :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:50, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
You mean other than to stop users unnecessarily editing it, eg. by including their name on the list without actually being a reviewer? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:42, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Admins, NPRs, and users listed on the participant page are able to use the AFCH toolbar to review new draft submissions. Anyone who is not an admin or NPR and wishes to become an AfC reviewer must have minimum experience and needs to request the addition of their name to the participant list. Participant requests are only processed by admins, which is why only admins can edit that page to add/remove new users. – DreamRimmer (talk) 08:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Because the AFC helper script reads that page and uses the data. Applicants need to place a permissions request at WT:AFCP, and then an admin will handle the request, editing through the full protection to add the person to the list if the application is approved. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Declined I have just reviewed it, and find it lacking a great deal, most importantly references. I've left a full comment on the draft. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 08:15, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Done Ca talk to me! 00:50, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
- 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 16:31, 30 October 2023 (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. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:31, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
