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We are just becoming a sports statistics website

I'm honestly just fed up with stuff like this: 2020 Fed Cup Europe/Africa Zone Group I – Pool B (Tallinn). Honestly. How the hell are we supposed to keep up with the flood of undersourced blatant fails of WP:NOTSTATS? I have no idea why people keep flooding the wiki with this useless garbage. There are plenty of sports statistics pages that people can go to for this sort of info, why should we be a web host for it? It's such a huge sink on editor and reviewer time. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 10:03, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if it is better or worse that the guy creating these is autopatrolled. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 10:05, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I've had similar frustration with User:Lugnuts. Thousands of poorly sourced BLPs simply containing sports statistics, and the user is autopatrolled... Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 10:43, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Willbb234, Lugnuts recently took me to ANI recently over tagging some of his articles recently... Did you know about that or is this just one of those coincidences? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 11:02, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere complete coincidence! Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 12:55, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Surely, if any group of editors has the sway/authority to request removal of autopatrolled user rights then it's NPP? As much as auto-patrol reduces NPP workload, it shouldn't be used to escape scrutiny. Cheers, Polyamorph (talk) 13:28, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Polyamorph, The main issue is that policy and guidelines don't actually strongly discourage this sort of behaviour. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 16:52, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

• i completely agree. Its not just these type of articles, but there are some other types too. What we need to do is to make the SNGs a little more strict than they currently are. At the top of my head, WP:TVSERIES is way too broad. It allows an article to any TV serial that has been released/went on air. As a result, there has been been spamming of promotional articles from Indian television. Sorry, I went off topic. But I think we (all the wikipedia editors) should update each SNG one-by-one. When they were originally created/drafted, enwiki did not have a problem with SPAs, and UPE among others to extent of current days. —usernamekiran (talk) 19:53, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
• The en.Wiki is becoming a sports statistics/sports biography website, a B2B yellow pages, a Bollywood database, and the South Asia Wikipedia in English. 'Nuff said. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

• It's been a sports statistics website for over a decade. Just look at all the crappy cricketer biographies of guys who played one game, whose full names we don't know, and whose articles that just consist of a match scorecard bloated into a grotesque imitation of prose and disguised as a biography. Reyk _YO! 15:25, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• My perspective on this issue at this point is that at least for sports, fighting this trend is wasted effort due to the significant amount of good faith sports editors who believe that notability guidelines shouldn't apply to them (or else have a ridiculously lenient understanding of GNG). If Wikipedia is a garden, and the editors working in the sports section insist over and over that they like the weeds, then I have better things to do than argue with them at AfD. My attitude is less laissez-faire when it comes to the business spam, which is actually harmful to the encyclopedia, and is not being added in good faith. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

  Rosguill, I agree. I pisses me off a bit but we need to pick our battles. Honestly these articles aren't really doing much damage though. They just get forgotten and ignored. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:04, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

BTW I was recently "informed" atWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lao Division 1 that there is an additional "General Notability Guideline" which is a sub page at project football which further expands the exceptions for sports beyond what the sports SNG grants. North8000 (talk) 19:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

FOOTYN being a guideline is a common misconception. All we can do is hope to educate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:42, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

• I agree that it is getting out of hand, something which has been going on for a long time. Unfortunantely, essays like FOOTYN are commonly used as a reason for keeping an article, when it isn't even a guideline. But WP:NFOOTY - which is a guideline - seems to set the bar for football players way too low. And when someone challanges the notability of a player based on a lack of independent RS with SIGCOV, NFOOTY is raised, even though (according to the SNG itself): "meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept". Such guidelines only show whether a player is likely to meet GNG, not exempt him/her of the guideline. However, this seems to have been forgotten as editors counter claims that a player doesn't meet GNG despite meeting NFOOTY with the argument that NFOOTY is sufficient. We can't do much about the problem, except for praying the Serenity Prayer and focussing our attention elsewhere. --MrClog (talk) 19:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

  The proposal for raising the floor of NFOOTY got some support when we had the big discussion last summer. If the broader wikipedia community thinks it's a problem it can change. If the community doesn't, well then it's not a problem so.... Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, I took a look at which websites get referenced the most in new pages. www.sports-reference.com is the third-most cited source. To base articles entirely on sports-reference, as we do on Victoria Umunna for example, is a copyright violation. It should be possible to G12 such articles. Vexations (talk) 20:41, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Vexations, hmmmm... i'm not sure that would fly.. perhaps we should ask about that on the copyright noticeboard? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, well, one thing to consider is that you have to deal with a user who appears, ahem... combative. I found over 3000 articles that only cite sports-reference.com, and they're almost all by the same author. I'm not sure that I'm willing to challenge them on copyvios. I'm pretty sure that databases are copyrighted. I you copy all the fields from a record, and then re-create that record, that's not "transformative use". So, no, it shouldn't happen. Vexations (talk) 23:16, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Vexations, then again; some statistics aren't copyrightable. There are only so many ways of displaying the same information in a table. Lugnuts I assume? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 00:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, Per https://www.sports-reference.com/sharing.html: "You are free to use this data anywhere, we would just ask that you include the citation at the bottom of the table as a courtesy to us for providing this service". I don't see a CC-BY license anywhere, and I do see "Copyright © 2000-2020 Sports Reference LLC. All rights reserved." so find that confusing, but I suppose a case can be made that we're free to re-publish their data. To me, it just seems pointless. Write a bot to import it to Wikidata and be done with it. Manually copying it to wikipedia in a format that is not machine-readable just seems like an incredible waste of time and effort. Vexations (talk) 00:38, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Saying that Joe Bloggs (born on X) competed in Y sports at Z Olympics isn't a copyright issue. It's verifying the facts of the subject. If you want to help with copyright issues relating directly to Sports Reference, then check this out. This article is an example of the work that is a copyright issue (check the most recent edit history against the SR page). Here is another example, complete with revdel on text taken wholesale from SR. This would be from the "Biography" section on a SR article. If you want to put all my 70,000+ articles and 1million+ edits through WP:CCI, I'm not stopping you, but you will find nothing amiss. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

A discussion

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Rethinking draft space which NPRs might like to see. Regards, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 08:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

thanks for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:59, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

what's the reason

I received this massage on 13 February, unfortunately now at NewPagesFeed the blue review button is not active for me. what's the reason?Saff V. (talk) 12:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Saff V., your new page reviewer rights were temporary and expired in January. If you wanted to make it permanent please head on over to WP:PERM/NPR to make a request. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:51, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

need more energy

• in the last day I did 6 reviews in contrast to my usual 3 reviews/day, unless we all raise the energy level the backlog will never go down, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:49, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

  We have indeed been struggling to get down below 5k articles in the backlog. There has been some support for a backlog drive. I have mixed feelings about such a drive for two reasons. 1) I think it can prioritize speed over accuracy. That should not be our way. Ever. 2) It can burn-out reviewers so progress gets wiped away after the drive. I don't know about how to address 2 other than not doing it. As for 1, I think if the drive perhaps focused more on # of days with reviews rather than total reviews we could incentive participation over just trying to do as many reviews as possible. Thoughts from others? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:20, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

  Barkeep49, mmm - that's a good thought - I believe the young people call them streaks. Awards not for the number of reviews, but for the number of days you can keep a 3+ (or whatever) number up. Might work? GirthSummit _(blether) 22:30, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

sounds good(for my part Ill make 6/day permanent), hope others will increase/day as well--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:36, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa, I'm running on an average of around 2 a day, though I've spent a good amount of time this week refining some queries to identify users that I can invite to join the project. Got a good 150 or so invites out so far, and PERM has seen an influx, so hopefully we will have a few more hands on deck soon. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:54, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

very positive--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:22, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Possible attempts to set up a pov fork of North East Delhi riots

DBigXray, one of our Admins,(sorry, experienced editor) was outed this week on an Indian website in part for their editing of this article. He was also threatened and has retired, which is unfortunate but sensible. The group behind this is having a discussion on the same page, now blacklisted, about setting up forks to tell the "truth" about the riots. It would be appreciated if any attempts to set up a nmw page on this subject was brought to either my attention, any of the other editors at User talk:Doug Weller#ECP for Talk:North East Delhi riots? or WP:AN. THey'd probably use the word Delhi in the title. Hopefully this won't happen, but I'm asking just in case I miss it. Thanks. Oh, almost forgot, I don't watch this page oso if anyone replies here please ping me. Doug Weller talk 19:09, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

And it occurs to me this might not be the best place to put this, so if there's another place better, please let me know. Doug Weller talk 19:12, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller, Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I'll keep my eye out. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 19:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller DBigXray is not an admin. 157.119.186.230 (talk) 11:01, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Oops, what was I thinking. He was a very experienced editor however, with almost 70,000 edits and 9 years here. Doug Weller talk 11:36, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Copyvio tools broken

I've recently found the copyvio tools to be unreliable and broken... Today I keep getting 502 Bad gateway from Earwig-derived tools. I also can't open Earwig's tool directly, so there seems to be an issue with it in general. What's going on? Anyone have a clue? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:05, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T245426

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Sorry I haven't been around much lately but there have been some issues with the tool. That link to Phabricator takes you to a similar issue with mentions to other issues with the tool that I know of. Curb Safe Charmer left a comment on 2/26/2020 getting the same error you did. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 21:29, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

today I reviewed just 1 article 3 articles, then it (copyvio tool) would not work...?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:00, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

If the NPP tool copyvio detector isn't working, try going to the actual website [1], and try searching with "Use search engine" disabled. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:29, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

yesterday I got 6 out of 6 reviews, however today I got 4 out of 6, even following the indications you placed above, Ill just try later again, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I cannot get the Earwig page to load this morning. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 08:51, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

505 gateway

getting the above response again only did 2 reviews today--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: I've been getting that a lot lately which is why I've been spending most of my time over in the edit request area helping out with the COVID stuff lately. Each time I go to try to review a page I can't get the copyvio tool to work. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 14:17, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Can you double check me on procedure?

I'm experienced at policy but brand new at page patrol. I'm about to reject my first one. Andrew James Hartsfield Someone else tagged it as suspected paid editing which is probably true. The user name has only edited this article and appears to have been created from the article subject's name. Obviously written by a much more experienced editor. Fails notability. None of the references cover him, they are just places that mention him or have a sentence about him. The big flow chart ends up at AFD. So should I AFD this and mark it as patrolled/reviewed? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

First a big welcome North8000. I have only do a quick check for sources but it seems like a reasonable AfD target to me and if that's where you ended up on the flowchart, yes go ahead and nominate it for AfD. After nominating it please do mark it reviewed - AfD will decide one way or another whether it should be included. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! North8000 (talk) 20:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I did it from the review page. Is the bot going to put my comments/ reasons that I gave into the AFD page or do should I repeat / do that directly? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 20:54, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, I generally use Twinkle for XfD nominations as that part of the NPP tool is a bit buggy. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:02, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks.North8000 (talk) 21:11, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Reviewer causing issues

Where is the appropriate place for me to suggest that a certain page reviewer is causing issues (although acting in good faith). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Somatochlora#Ways_to_improve_Somatochlora_meridionalis where the reviewer added tags to a page that don't make sense (including suggesting that the lead is an issue on a short stub without a lead). When I asked for clarification they seemed unable to understand my concerns and instead brought up some unrelated issues, including a suggestion that I replace a grammatically correct phrase with a grammatically incorrect one. And since then has not responded despite having made other edits. Not sure what I should be doing here but this does not seem appropriate to me. ThanksSomatochlora (talk) 20:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for raising this issue. I agree with your concerns and left a relevant comment on your talk page. I think any further discussion can be handled there at this time. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

ThanksSomatochlora (talk) 21:19, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Adding short descriptions to new articles

Per WP:SHORTDESC, all articles should eventually have a short description template. It would be helpful to add that in the reviewing instructions. Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions provides instructions on how to add short descriptions. Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 04:06, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I've tried doing it. I've received help by experts at it, but I stopped. The problem comes when the short description conflicts with an incorrect description on Wikidata. There are ways of dealing with it, and I was shown them, but it required too much work to handle the necessary corrections on wikidata also. The need for corrections is very common--there are a great many wikidata descriptions saying no more than "a person" or repeating puffery from the article.Certainly, let those who want to cope with this do so--we do need to get the many errors and inadequacies fixed. But we have an even more pressing need to check new pages for promotionalism and notability and nonsense, and anything which slows this down detracts from the main task. We can mention doing it, but as an optional task for those interested. DGG ( talk ) 19:03, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Mildly promotional but notable topics, a solution?

Mildly promotional but notable topics are the current bane of NPP, and have been for a long time. We currently lack good tools to deal with them. I've thought for a while that suggesting a policy change to the COI guideline that supports stubifying new promo articles on notable topics would be a good idea.

Please see User:Insertcleverphrasehere/COISTUBIFY, where I have a bunch more explanation of why I think this is needed and a draft of the proposed section to be added to the COI guideline. Can I please ask that people provide feedback if they have any, good or bad!​​​​ Thanks. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:32, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Couple of comments:

• 'Demolishing' an article implies that one could be too lazy to do anything thorough about the problem and it can only be seen as aggressive from the creator's POV. We have enough trouble with editor conflict already and to 'encourage' reviewers to potentially increase conflict could be seen as a bad idea.
• We already have a trouble with stubs. They are created in their tens of thousands. We are looking for depth in content and this should be achieved through nurturing problematic articles into fleshed-out, neutral articles. Yes, it can be very hard to neutralise these articles, as you say, but simply reducing an article to stub status doesn't help the coverage that Wikipedia needs. And besides, stubs just cause frustration for editors who have more to watch; either delete it or keep it fleshed-out.

I think that this is a really great idea, but there could be some problems. Regards, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 21:13, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Willbb234, unfortunately "delete it" isn't always an option (AfD can be fickle when the topic itself is notable), and we certainly cannot expect a new page patroller to flesh out a new article themselves. The effort required in dealing with COI articles that are full of mildly promotional content, or content that doesn't mach the sources provided, or content that is filled with dozens of innapropriate links; These are the articles that waste a reviewers time and are bogging down NPP. They aren't quality submissions. The idea behind this proposal is that we are better off dropping back to a well sourced stub that can be expanded organically from there.

I'll try to expand the background section to explain this a bit better. I'll remove the word 'demolished' from the background section, but this isn't going to be part of the proposed changes anyway. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:37, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

IMO stubifying would be tougher / more complicated than it sounds.Maybe a real example of a mildly-promotional but notable one would be good for the discussion. North8000 (talk) 21:46, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, well, digging through the new pages feed the first example I found was: Perfect_Day_(company). Tryptofish (among others) spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up this paid editor's draft at AfC. It ended up as a Histmerge of two different pages created by two COI editors, and AfC was bypassed after the draft was declined by recreation in main space. All of this could have been avoided by stubifying it and informing the COI edtors to edit elsewhere when they tried to re-insert promo and poorly sourced material. Even after all of the above, it still reads like an article clearly written by someone with a conflict of interest. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 22:15, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it's a problem. I asked for an example to see if my "stubifying would be tougher / more complicated than it sounds" is founded. For example, I assume that the October 11th 2019 version is at it's "pre-effort" state. To me that looks like a big tough job to stubify. Selecting large amounts of material to delete which would also mean deleting a large amount of references. North8000 (talk) 03:08, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, I guess it comes down to this: Is New Page Patrol reasonably expected to check every reference for a new promotional article written by a COI editor? Even when it is clear from a cursory glance that some/many of them are junk and/or misused? Are we required to re-write every notable semi-promotional article? I would argue that no, we are not (The Draftify guide supports us, but it also derails us if they are smart enough to re-create it or move it). It isn't practical, and it contributes to editor burnout. As it is we are too shorthanded to be dealing with this stuff properly. I would guess that half of cases like this get some minor fixups and the most egregious 'bad sources' removed, then end up rubber stamped by somebody.

Perhaps I need a better way of framing the argument, but I think we should get the community's approval to stubify promo COI articles on sight. We don't delete them, because they are notable (Per WP:G11, this is preferred to deletion), but we remove the COI editor's contributions and replace them with the bare minimum required to meet A1 and GNG requirements. We need to find a way to process articles like this quickly, even if we have to throw some babies out with the bathwater. Otherwise the paid editors get to buy one, get one free and drain all of our already limited resources.

I guess the issue this causes is edit warring over the COI editor trying to restore their version. Posting at WP:COIN might help here, but I suspect that without something in place that actually stops the COI/PAID editor from editing the article, they'll keep going at it.

This was my first idea... maybe it isn't enough. I dunno. Suggestions? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 03:27, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I dunno. One idea would be to use your idea but a quick procudure to stubify it. Vs. the laborious process of selectively removing material. Like make it one sentence and choose the 1 or 2 best references to keep. Alternatively, maybe it should just get tagged and marked as reviewed. North8000 (talk) 19:32, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

North8000, Hmmm... maybe I wasn't more clear... That's exactly what I'm after. A community consensus to support instant stubification of mildly-mostly promotional COI articles, or COI articles that are problematic in other ways (link spam or just really poor writing). If you look at the 'procedure' that I linked above, it is literally to write a sentence, add two sources that meet GNG, add a reflist, and delete everything else (It previously said two or more sentences, but I think you are right, even one sentence is OK). I think we need to draft a proposal and refine a procedure. I think we need to discuss what appropriate rules regarding what the COI editor/author is allowed to do after the article is stubified:

• Are they allowed to revert it? (if so the entire thing is kinda toothless)
• Are we proposing that they not be able to edit the article at all? (a significant change from existing policy)
• Or do we just rely on listing articles at COIN and getting backup from other editors to retain the stubified version? (e.g. rely on WP:3RR as backup)
• In this case can we trust other editors to give us backup? (I think we probably can, but you will run into situations where some editors think that bad COI content is still better than a one line stub).
• If the author is allowed to edit the article, is the author allowed to slowly insert stuff back in line for line? (this can be fought by reverting individual problematic edits, but might end up in just as much or more work for reviewers, ultimately).

I don't have firm answers for all these questions. What do you think? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:36, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Ultimately the community either is or isn't willing to delete promotional material even at the risk of deleting material which is otherwise notable. If it is willing to do that, then AfD provides a nice forum. If it isn't creating alternative pathways that go against that community consensus aren't going to end well for those of us (and this includes me) that think being firm against SPAM is more helpful in the long run. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:33, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, AfD is not cleanup is the issue. People take that seriously. AfD is (in my opinion as well) a place to assess the suitability of the topic (usually the notability). In this case I'm specifically discussing COI articles on notable topics. In any case, this proposal is meant to be a way to REDUCE the amount of editor time wasted on these articles. AfD is not a solution that helps us do that; nominating articles there actually ends up creating MORE editor time wastage on COI articles. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:39, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, fair enough but I stand by my larger point - there needs to be community consensus that this is a topic worth handling differently than we do now and some way to determine that this remedy is the correct thing to do for a given article. I'm not convinced of the former and threw out AfD as a place for the latter. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:47, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I guess my purpose in bringing this here is to get feedback on what we can propose to the larger community. What would likely be accepted and what would not, in addition to what might actually work. An RfC will certainly be involved at some point if we decide to propose something. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 21:20, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't have the new page review experience to have an overall perspective. So I'm just using the example that you gave. I looked at the Oct 11th 2019 version of it. It has a lot of information and references in it. IMO the wording itself looks neutral, IMO the mildly promotional aspect comes choosing which areas to cover an in what depth to cover them. Being a declared COI, the editor was pretty cautious and open to input. Point being, I don't think that for that example a larger simple nuking of the material would get much support / get supported. North8000 (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I am skeptical that this will be accepted. I think you will have those who are supportive in principle but find enough to quibble about in practice (e.g. there has never been a community endorsed stubify before) and you will have those who are opposed in principle. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:33, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, yeah... that's my thought too... well back to the drawing board. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• Insertcleverphrasehere, I'm not against this idea in principle. If a clear COI could be established, then the user wouldn't be allowed to revert a stubification per our usual COI guidelines - they'd need to make edit requests to get anything changed/added to the page. The problem would be establishing a COI - all the author would need to say would be 'I don't have a COI, I am just a fan/user/someone looking to write my first article, and this subject looked interesting', and per AGF we have to believe them, or we'd have to go through the hassle of a COIN thread to get a consensus that nobody believes them.

An alternative idea popped into my head while I was thinking about this - I haven't thought this through thoroughly, so feel free to pull it apart, but I'm imagining an extra button we could give NPP reviewers to use at the end of their review. COI editors obviously want their page to be indexed by Google so it can easily be found by potential customers. If we see an article that is about a notable subject, but which is written in such a way as to be unacceptable, could we tag it in the normal way, and then get it off the NPP queue by marking it as reviewed and not to be indexed. This ought to be accompanied by a banner saying that the article won't be indexed until it is de-promotionalised, with a button in the tag that would add it back into the NPP queue for re-review after that work had been done. If the original author wants to get it indexed, they'd have to keep working at it, following the advice they've been given to improve the sourcing/remove the puffery/whatever, or alternatively other uninvolved editors might come along and do the work for them.

Just thinking out loud really - I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. GirthSummit _(blether) 12:08, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Just a side note, that would require an additional flag and status for articles, and new review process. Sort of a replication of the whole new article review and flagging process, but on a smaller scale. For "reviewed but not indexed" articles. North8000 (talk) 13:44, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Girth, I wonder if we could somehow add an instruction to the Template:Advert (or create a special tag for NPP only) so that it noindexes an article whenever the template is added. If it would work, we could probably create a few more templates with a noindex instruction for articles that are unsourced, or COI articles, and the like. When the tag is removed, the noindex is removed as well. Maybe RexxS would know if it's possible to incorporate it. There was such a lengthy debate over moving articles to draft space that something like or better than this may prove helpful. Just a thought. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 00:59, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• • Might be overkill considering there are 24000 articles with the advert tag with quite a few wrongly applied or even added by vandals. It would need to be double checked in every case by an experienced editor, and the proposal itself would need an RFC. As things stand ive noticed a NPP patroller is moving a lot of these sort of articles to draft space based on the suspiscion of UPE through the editing history rather than any solid proof, is that ok? imv, Atlantic306 (talk)

• Exactly, and that is why I included (or create a special tag for NPP only) meaning only reviewers that have been cleared for additional user rights. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 01:23, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

  @Atsme: You might take a look at Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing, in particular the template {{noindex}} – which can, of course. be embedded inside other templates. Your 'special tag' could incorporate that, thus removing the article from most search engine results until the tag was legitimately removed. You may need some wider consensus (like Village Pump) to give teeth to sanctions against those removing the tag without fixing the promotion. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 01:33, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

  Atsme, I think the idea of broadening our no index could be a reasonable compromise. I would agree with Rexx that we'd need consensus to make it happen but I think this is a promising idea. Best, 03:01, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Barkeep. Another thought hit me after reading the link provided by RexxS - it tells us that articles >90 days are automatically indexed; therefore, neither NOINDEX__ nor the template work on them. Articles <90 days are not indexed, unless they have been patrolled and do not have the {{NOINDEX}} template on them (or a template that transcludes the {{NOINDEX}} template, such as the speedy deletion template). The latter indicates potential, as does the ability to modify the code so that it fits our purpose (see this link). The template works but not the words alone. Patrolling can be done automatically by the software (which is something we should probably investigate further to avoid garbage making it into mainspace) or by editors with autopatrol or new page reviewer user rights. A special template that contains the no index code would be a useful tool to add to our page curation tools, making it available only to those granted new page reviewer rights. As for giving the process teeth via sanctions for unwarranted removal, perhaps that would fall under GS, which is something that could be decided at ARCA. I'm not sure which is the best & most expedient way to approach applying GS once we (NPP) have determined among ourselves the best tool for the job but I am of the mind that it would serve a beneficial purpose for the project, and once implemented is something we should make well-known as it will send a message to COI editors and their clients that WP is not indexing promotional articles and unless changes are made, the article will not be getting the exposure they thought it would get. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 09:32, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Limit

Is there any limit per day when it comes to patrolling new pages per editor? 157.119.186.230 (talk) 10:59, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

No. However, we look for depth and quality reviewing so there is a limit on how many one can physically do in a day as a reviewer can't simply continually rubber stamp articles. Regards, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 19:16, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

There is a rate limit on approving articles, but it's absurdly high (as far as I can tell, you'd need to be near/exceeding 1 approval per second). The only time it ever becomes an issue is when patrolling redirects which often need little to no investigation. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:33, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Rosguill, Or when you do a bunch of reviews, queue up copyvio checks, and then check back on the copyvio reports and tick them off. I've run into the rate limit before when doing that. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 18:44, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Google Indexing changes?

Have there been any recent changes to when articles are released for search engine indexing? I created a new article 107 days ago (November 19, 2019) and though 90 days have passed, Google hasn't picked it up for indexing, and Wikipedia's policies regarding releasing an article for indexing seem, to me, pretty opaque and hard to find. --Canned Soul (talk) 18:03, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Canned Soul, for unclear reasons, the new page queue doesn't seem to cut off at 90 days anymore. Right now the oldest log day that has a significant amount of articles to be reviewed is October 22, 2019. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:23, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate the clarity, Rosguill, and for the work you do as a reviewer---the experience creating articles has made me realize the vital job of reviewers! I intend to join the group soon!

Applause Entertainment Private Limited

There is a request to have the article title Applause Entertainment unprotected so the article Applause Entertainment Private Limited can be moved there however after looking at the article I felt the article wouldn't have passed WP:NPR and it seems to have skipped WP:NPR according to the logs. I placed the article Applause Entertainment Private Limited back into the NPR queue for a second opinion. Just wanted to give a heads up on what I did. Alucard 16_{❯❯❯ chat?} 08:58, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a perfect example of a "mildly promotional but *perhaps* notable" topic discussed above. Brief mentions in Hollywood Reporter and Variety raise WP:NTEMP and WP:SUSTAINED concerns for me. I note that Applause Entertainment is part of Aditya Birla Group, so if not notable enough for a stand alone article, perhaps this content could be merged under "Telecom services" (perhaps rename to "Telecom and media"?)? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 09:09, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Autopatrol arb clerks

What do reviewers think about Arbcom clerks being granted auto patrolled so that case pages don’t need to be patrolled? Helpful? Not helpful? Thanks. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 15:49, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Levivich, I know it's possible to patrol non-mainspace pages, but I have yet to come across anything suggesting that such pages need patrolling. They don't get added to the queue, and my impression was that our ability to patrol them is just a code architecture quirk, not an intentional feature. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:22, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

+1 on that. Even if they did, I would think it could be done by whitelist/bot along the lines of redirect autopatrol (as ArbCom clerking a whole other skill set than writing articles, so should be handled as such) if they aren't already sysops (in which case any sort of patrol is unnecessary). ComplexRational (talk) 21:58, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I think user space/wikipedia space patrolling is largely obsolete but this opinion does not seem to be held widely among the community. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I would think that when it comes to what should be patrolled and who should be auto patrolled, the opinion of patrollers would matter most. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Unreliable sources highlighter

Reviewers may want to have a look at a recent Headbomb/SD0001 production: a script to automatically highlight various levels of unreliable sources. Very useful for getting a single glance impression of the quality of a reference section. It doesn't find all fluff, but it finds notorious fluff, which is already a big timesaver :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Elmidae, Very useful indeed. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 19:16, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Times of India reliability

A recent RfC on the reliability of the Times of India had an outcome of between no consensus and generally unreliable (RSP entry). It is a source that is used quite a bit for Indian subjects, particularly for films and actors. I'm generally not in favor of hunting down and purging old articles about non-controversial subjects when notability or source-reliability standards change, but new page reviewers should be aware going forward that we can be stricter about articles supported by trivial coverage in the ToI. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:49, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh my, that's going to be a carnival... there's plenty of BLPs where the only non-trivial coverage is from a ToI fluff piece. Hey-ho... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:31, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Sidebar

The sidebar when I was looking through pages has disappeared, how do I get it back? Govvy (talk) 22:17, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Govvy, do you mean the curation toolbar? When it's gone, an option appears under Tools in the left side bar to reinstate it (in the list that begins with "What links here"). Usedtobecool ☎️ 22:48, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Cheers Usedtobecool, that worked, got it back, much appreciated. Govvy (talk) 22:56, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool: New page review thing disappeared again, little confused now as it's not where you said to get it back this time. Govvy (talk) 20:17, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@Govvy: You had been granted new page reviewer priviliges temporarily (until 00:00, 27 March 2020 to be specific). So your NPR privileges have expired. You can request permanent NPR privileges via WP:PERM/NPR. --MrClog (talk) 22:01, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

O, thought you guys needed help, don't know why you temp'ed it. Govvy (talk) 22:29, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@Govvy: The reason you got it temporarily is so that the admin that assigned you the role could evaluate your decisions after two weeks and then decide whether to give you the role permanently. Standard procedure. --MrClog (talk) 22:57, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough, don't know why I didn't notice that! Govvy (talk) 23:06, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Advice on deletions

Advice appreciated here please: a couple of times while reviewing I’ve found a page that I want to send straight to AfD. If I use the curation toolbar it’s easy but doesn’t seem to add deletion discussions. If I use twinkle it’s easy to add the deletion discussions but I presume there’s then no traceable link between the review process and the AfD. What is best to do? Thanks Mccapra (talk) 10:17, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

The curation tool method should work but hasn't for some goodly time. At the moment it's Twinkle or clean up after the semi-broken curation tool results; I think everyone uses Twinkle as a result. AFAIK it's not a big issue that there is no logged connection between review and AfD'ing, since any editor can do the latter, regardless of NPP rights. But one hopes the tool will make it back out of limbo at some point... Do keep in mind that an AfD'd article should be marked as reviewed to get it out of the queue; it's easy to forget about that because Twinkle just takes you to the deletion discussion, while the bar tool would mark the article as reviewed at the same time. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:50, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Great thanks very much. I’ll stick to using twinkle then. Much obliged. Mccapra (talk) 17:41, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Elmidae, the last bit is incorrect. Twinkle will automatically mark the page as patrolled when sending to AfD. While "patrol" is technically a different action than pagetriage reviewing (and it populates the patrol log rather than the page curation log), the effect is the same - gets the article out of the NPP queue. SD0001 (talk) 06:57, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

SD0001, just tested it out with Danny Winn, via Twinkle. You are right that the article is removed from the queue, but if the intention is to actually mark it as reviewed/patrolled, that isn't happening. It still shows as unreviewed. Not sure if this is what is intended, or even a sensible state of things. What happens if it's kept at AfD now? Since it's not in the queue any longer, it may then just stay unreviewed and un-searchable... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:00, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Elmidae, if my memory serves, we decided not to mark AfD candidates as reviewed for 2 reasons: (1) the article gets indexed after it is marked as patrolled, and (2) by showing it's at AfD, other patrollers may be motivated to participate in the AfD where, oft times, there simply isn't enough participation, and bad articles linger for far too long creating a time sink. There is a similar discussion above wherein I suggested a potential change to the template. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 14:30, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

The consensus I always have known is to mark things at AfD as reviewed because one way or another the community will have weighed in on whether it should be included in the encyclopedia and further eyes on it won't accomplish much. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:30, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

So, just to set me straight - are "reviewed" and "patrolled" treated as two separate states that both apply indexing, but leave the other one unchanged? I.e., Twinkle-AfD'ing indexes and patrols, but does not review, BUT removes from the review queue? I think there may be some crossed wires here :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:15, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

This would explain why there are separate "patrol" and "page curation logs". I'm not sure that there's actually a difference as far as how the article is treated afterward by indexing, etc. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:19, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

If so, then I'd suggest that Twinkle be made to mark the article as reviewed as well as patrolled, just for housekeeping. Seems unnecessarily confusing otherwise. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:20, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

@Amorymeltzer: who might have wisdom to share on the Twinkle front. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:17, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Elmidae, No no, reviewing and patrolling will automatically switch the other state. You can verify this by going to an article, hiding the curation toolbar, clicking the patrol button that now shows up on the bottom, then reload the page and open up the curation toolbar again - you'll see that the page shows up as reviewed. In case of Danny Winn, as I said below, what happened was that page was not patrollable, and I did see that page in the NPP queue. SD0001 (talk) 07:06, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

​Okay so I'm a bit out of my element here 'cause NPP ain't my bag, but there are several issues here. To start, "Patrol" is different from "Page curation": the former is part of mediawiki core, the latter is part of the PageTriage extension. I don't know exactly how the various tools work, but AFAICT:

• Page curation (tool or API): Appears in patrol log and page curation log, and is marked as patrolled/reviewed at Special:NewPages/Special:NewPagesFeed (respectively)
  • That being said, undoing page curation doesn't show up in the patrol log, nor does re-curating a page
• Patrol (link or via Twinkle): appears in patrol log only, NOT page curation log, but is marked on both special pages

The different behavior makes sense to me: patrol is the OG, is its own thing, and is part of the main software. Page curation is an extension, a special add-on that builds a new system on top of what already existed, so it tries to play nice and hooks into patrol as best it can. The patrol function has no real knowledge of page curation's existence I don't think. This means that a patrolled page can subsequently be curated, but a curated page is, by default, already patrolled.

As far as Twinkle is concerned:

• Patrol: Twinkle can and does patrol pages
  • There are default behaviors, boxes that can be unchecked, and user preferences to change those defaults. These defaults can be changed fairly easily (see below discussion)
    • tag: On by default
    • xfd: On by default
    • csd: Off by default per request here (minimal discussion of xfd?) (452 and 453)
    • prod: Twinkle doesn't patrol prod nominations.
      • It could probably be made to do, as with the above preferences.
  • HOWEVER: Twinkle currently can only mark a page as patrolled if it finds the mark-as-patrolled link on the page, as that has the rcid needed to patrol the page. This is bad.
    • This means that if you nominate the page from, say, the history page, it won't patrol the page (dunno how you did it Elmidae but that could explain why your page wasn't patrolled).
      • I can probably change this by using the revision ID. Should be done anyway.
• Curation: Twinkle does not do Page curation.
  • Not every wiki supports this.
  • I could probably add this using the API once I play around with it a bit.
• Logging: There is a request for Twinkle to take over logging CSD/PROD (and soon XfD, I suppose) actions made from page curation.
  • MusikAnimal has said he would work on that.

I think that roughly answers/addresses most of the above? If folks want a change to how CSD/XfD/PROD/tag handles patrolling, holla back. I can probably handle the Twinkle side of things in between SAHP and existential dread, but I think my main question for y'all would be, if Twinkle eventually supported both patrolling and curation, how should Twinkle handle a page? If I didn't confuse myself, the options are 1) patrol (patrol log, no curation log); 2) curate (patrol log and curation log); or 3) patrol then curation (patrol log and curation log). It's not clear to me that 2 and 3 are notably different, except that in case 3 the patrol log entry will have the PageTriage tag whereas in case 2 it won't.

On a more personal note, this whole area is fakakta and I have no idea how any of you make heads or tails of any of it! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:23, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Amorymeltzer, thanks for the detailed reply, this is quite helpful. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 03:01, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

It isn't all that straightforward, Amorymeltzer. In fact, there appears to be a bug in mediawiki core because of which the [Mark page as patrolled] doesn't show up on all pages. As Elmidae discovered, Danny Winn was one such page. Even before Rosguill marked that page as reviewed, there was no mark-as-patrolled button on the page. Hence, obviously TW couldn't patrol it. But the page was still unreviewed and was showing up as such on the NewPagesFeed.

A live example is Carmel Secondary School, which is presently unreviewed. Hide the curation toolbar and still no mark-as-patrolled button shows up at the bottom. Trying to use the API to mark it as patrolled results in the error: patroldisabled: Recent changes patrol disabled. Looking directly into the database, the page does exist in the recentchanges table with rc_type = 1 (new page) and rc_patrolled = 0 (unpatrolled), which suggests it should be patrollable. EDIT: trying to patrol it using the API with revid gave that error, but using rcid instead (taken from the db query result) succeeded.

It's worth noting that the recentchanges table does not update the page title if a page is moved. As a result, no pages that were previously moved (such as the ones created by moving from draft space) will have the patrol link. But both the pages mentioned above have no previous moves. But both were previously deleted, and I initially thought this was relevant. But bah, List of 1980 box office number-one films in the United States is an example of a page that has been previously deleted but the patrol link still shows up.

Regarding what we can do, I agree the best thing would be to have TW mark as pagetriage-reviewed directly, rather than tinkering with the patrol business. The stuff about patrol is better discussed on phab. SD0001 (talk) 07:01, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

If my reading of the code is correct, pages can only be patrolled while the creation is in RecentChanges (30 days). That would explain the Danny Winn case. The Carmel Secondary School case is complicated by a history merge, which might cause issues with the patrol link. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Yup, that's definitely it. Makes things simpler actually, thanks you two. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:47, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

So unsurprisingly the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper... staying at the level of the guy on the surface with a loaded Twinkle, it appears to me that both curating & patrolling upon XfD would be a useful step. This does leave open possible issues with curation being applied by any user, regardless of whether they have the NPP right or not; may be exploitable in some way? However as noted, the point of curation is that the article gets scrutinized in some detail, and that should then happen at XfD. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:53, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Redirect class

I’ve just learned there is such a thing as a redirect class rating at AfC. If a new article has already been rated as redirect class should I go ahead and review it? Is there any point? Thanks. Mccapra (talk) 10:41, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Redirects also require reviewing; some NPP folks specially focus on that. The possibilities for creating bogus, misleading, or plain superfluous redirects are vast, so do give them your attention :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:40, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh, just realized you mean redirects coming through AfC? I'd say they will presumably be good but they still need ticking to make them search engine detectable, and honestly it probably takes more time to check rating & pass than to just check content & review. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:54, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I always look on the talk page to see if there are any useful comments there, and if project tags need to be added. That’s where I came across the Redirect class template. What concerned me was adding tags to an article and engaging with the creator, if the article was about to vanish in a redirect anyway. If that’s not an issue I’ll happily continue. Thanks for your guidance. Mccapra (talk) 17:47, 28 March 2020 (UTC)