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Proposal: Categorize all AfC drafts with ORES topics using a bot

WP:AfC sorting presently lists all pending drafts grouped by ORES-predicted topics. However, once an article is declined, there is no way to know the topics associated with it. This method of using lists does not scale generally — there are 23,000 declined AfC drafts and another 12,000 unsubmitted ones with AfC templates. It's better to use categories rather than lists, as that's what the category system is built for.

Rationale:

  • Recently, there has been a massive discussion at WP:VPP about the inefficiencies of draft namespace. See in particular the section WP:VPP#The real problem is biographies and lack of classification.
  • Having all drafts sorted would greatly improve the productivity of anyone wanting to improve abandoned drafts. It would facilitate using Petscan to find articles older than n days AND belonging to a certain topic, and other such combinations.

Implementation notes:

  • Drafts being edited from now onwards only will be touched, so that the G13 clock of older drafts is not disrupted.
  • Drafts in userspace, and ones declined as as blank or as test, will be skipped (ORES will probably be unable to do it anyway). Drafts not associated with AfC are also skipped.
  • A template called {{draft topics}} will be used. The topics will be passed to it as parameters, and it will cause the categorisation. This is better than adding the raw categories to the page, because it will make it easier for tools like the AFC Helper script to remove the categories when accepting (just the template has to be removed). I can also write the patch for the AFC helper script.

I will develop the bot if there is consensus for this. SD0001 (talk) 10:52, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

  • support - sounds good to me. KylieTastic (talk) 11:02, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Personally I'd rather WikiProject Banners are used than {{draft topics}} Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:04, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
    • One doesn't preclude the other though. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 13:43, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
      • I don't think it precludes the other, but OTOH this would end up creating maintenance categories that basically duplicate the ones that WikiProjects provide in the context of drafts that would need to be another thing to remove when the page is moved out of draft space (in addition to any scoring by the WikiProjects of interest). I agree with Headbomb here that WikiProject banners would be much preferred for me. --Izno (talk) 16:31, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
        • The ORES topics don't exactly co-relate with WikiProjects. See User:SD0001/sandbox for the anomalies. For geographical topics, ORES classifications are continents or sub-continents (like "Eastern Europe", "Western Asia"), not countries. Many of these sub-continental projects are marked as inactive, or they don't exist at all. Even where they exist and they're not marked as inactive, I don't think there's benefit in tagging with those project tags as these are rarely used for mainspace articles. It is nonsense for an article about a street in Moscow to tagged with WikiProject Eastern Europe (anyway an inactive project), rather than WikiProject Russia.
For the many ORES topics which do co-relate with a single WikiProject, like Food & drink, linguistics, literature, physics, chemistry, computing, engineering, technology, biography, women, architecture and possibly others, I can also have the bot add the WikiProject tags. While this is redundancy, I believe it is worth it. The advantage of WikiProject tagging is primarily for AALERTS, which is I guess what Headbomb and Hellknowz are concerned about. I don't think draft categories duplicate the ones WikiProjects provide -- because the WikiProject categories contain the talk pages. Categories anyway aren't a neat navigation tool, their utility is exponentially reduced (for the browsing usecase) if they contain the talk pages rather than the actual drafts. Even a sophisticated tool like PetScan doesn't let you list pages on the basis of categories/templates on their talk pages. Does this sound like a fruitful compromise?

... would need to be another thing to remove when the page is moved out of draft space (in addition to any scoring by the WikiProjects of interest)

No the wikiproject tags don't need to be removed when moving out of draft space. Only the draft cats need to be removed, which is easy as they would all be applied by a single {{draft topics}} template -- which the AFCH script can be coded to remove. I am aware that AFCH presently duplicates project tags if the reviewer chooses to add them but they already existed -- this is also fairly easy to fix in the script. SD0001 (talk) 06:52, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
  • What is ORES? What are the categories in question? McClenon mobile (talk) 14:02, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
  • information Note: {{Draft article}} has |subject=, which adds similar categories to those proposed here. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:55, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Anything that helps potential collaborators find drafts of interest to them makes sense. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:45, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, it is an excellent substitute for WikiProject tagging. At the same time, remove WikiProject taggings from the AfC and NPP processes. Only WikiProject members should be tagging pages with their WikiProject. The force-feeding of dying WikiProjects with masses of new pages only chokes them. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:06, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
    I'm curious how WikiProjects (active or inactive) are supposed to find new pages if someone (NPR or AFC) are not tagging them. Are we going to have a bot post on the project page Article Alert-style that there might be an article that is in their purview? As someone who regularly assesses WP:AST pages, I can tell you that I would much rather remove an invalid talk page template than have to keep an eye on Recent Articles to try and find new articles to assess (especially for AST-related articles about people or non-obvious places/orgs/etc). Primefac (talk) 17:46, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
    • Primefac. How are active WikiProjects going find new pages? By following wikilinks, navigation templates, and the category system. What is a WikiProject doing if not monitoring pages in their subject area?
      My question for you: What is the point of tagging a page with a WikiProject banner?
      --SmokeyJoe (talk) 15:19, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
      The point of tagging a page with a WikiProject banner is so that the project knows there's a page in their purview and can improve it if necessary. That being said, why wouldn't it make sense to tag a page with its related WikiProjects? I've seen inactive WikiProjects become active again, and I've seen inactive WikiProjects be absorbed as task forces of a larger/more active WikiProject. There is zero harm done by adding these tags at the acceptance stage of AFC. Primefac (talk) 21:27, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Is there any opposition to doing both the categorization (for all of them) and WikiProject tagging (for pages in topics which have a matching WikiProject), as mentioned in my comment above? SD0001 (talk) 14:48, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    • SD0001, no, certainly not from me. Bot categorization sounds excellent if you can do it, and it sounds excellent regardless of what happens with WikiProject banners. It sounds like a very good use of the category system. Can a bot really do this? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 15:19, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
      It certainly is possible, though it isn't easy and it will take many hours to write the bot. That's why I wanted to make sure a consensus exists before I start on it, lest it be wasted effort. SD0001 (talk) 16:16, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Before a bot gets programed, I'd like to ask a few questions.

  1. Which WikiProjects/Groups have been approached about having their "organization" be tagged in for these notices?
  2. What is the logic being applied for how to determine if a page is in scope for one or more projects?
  3. What is the process of review to ensure the tagging by the bot is correct and not overly agressive? (i.e. ARS asks to be tagged into everything to save everything)
  4. What is the process of "tagging" a draft in?
  5. Will the tag in being present be allowed to include "Soon to be G13 eligible" notices to the groups that consider the draft in scope?

I ask all of these questions as I've seen this "We should categorize/Tag for WikiProject/Deliver notices" idea at least 3 previous times, and each time the "This sounds like a good idea" gets trumpeted with great fanfare, but never amounts to any real changes. I do not think tagging projects that are moribund or inactive is going to ever net us any benefit, so that is why I would like to see a "positive opt in" by the project (preferably by a 30 day RFC by the project terminable under WP:SNOW) Hasteur (talk) 02:14, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Regarding #3: no such process is required as ORES is generally quite accurate (see WP:AFCSORT). #4: for the categorisation, it'll be done by adding something like {{draft topics|Literature|Western Europe}} to the page. The template will apply the categories (but otherwise will have no visible output). The WikiProject tagging will be done the usual way on the talk page, as a secondary task. #5: I don't understand - none of this will impact anything related to G13. The bot will only edit recently-edited pages, so that there are no concerns over the bot edit changing the G13 eligibility of a page.
Regarding the question of how wikiproject tagging takes place, the taxonomy between ORES topics and WikiProjects is defined here. Based on that, the projects for which WikiProject tagging seem to be appropriate are: Food and drink, Linguistics, Literature, Biography, Women?, Books, Film, Radio, Software, Television, Video games, Visual arts, Architecture, Fashion, Business?, Education, History, Military history, Transport, Biology?, Chemistry, Computing, Engineering, Libraries, Mathematics, Medicine?, Physics, Spaceflight, Technology. (The ones I'm unsure of are marked with a "?") The geographical topics used by ORES are continents, which have inactive or non-existing wikiprojects. Other topics such as "Politics and government" have too many diverse projects in scope so it isn't possible to select one. I don't it is necessary at all to seek pre-approval from the projects as wikiproject tagging of drafts isn't a radical new idea - it's already being done by humans on a smaller scale. If a project does not want the taggings, they can choose to opt out. SD0001 (talk) 14:01, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
You mention "spaceflight" but I think that this should be changed to "astronomy." Many of the categorizations under the space sorting (going off of your current bot) are more astronomy related than spaceflight. The only reason they aren't there anymore is because I've already reviewed them. Anyway, this is a minor comment. Sam-2727 (talk) 16:37, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
@SD0001: you keep saying ORES like it's some magic panacea, but I have to see how it actually works. For my edification, please take Draft:Andrea Gobbi and tell the community what Wikiprojects ORES spits out for this. #5 is a personal ask because I've been requested on multiple occasions to send out notices to "potentially interested" projects that might be wanting to safe a page. Let me present a scenario so you can see how it could work:
As part of it's regular remit of looking for pages that are at least 5 months unedited, HasteurBot can parse the Wikitext, and if it sees the {{draft topics}} template, it'll note which categories/projects are enumerated and up to 1x a day send out a notice to the Wikiproject talk page that one or more drafts are nearing G13 eligibility to give the project an opportunity to review prior to being eligible for G13. Now obviously we don't want to spam wikiprojects, so opting into the categorization (why bother tagging/categorizing if the project isn't intrested/active) is required by consensus. We shouldn't be doing Opt-Out (violation of Consensus). Hasteur (talk) 22:32, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
@Hasteur: I've linked to WP:AFCSORT already 3 times in this discussion. If you'd looked at it, you'd have seen that Draft:Andrea Gobbi was classified under 'Biography' and 'Music'.
Since it's your bot that's going to send notices to wikiprojects, the onus is on you to ensure that the notices are welcome to those wikiprojects, not on me because my bot would simply be taking drafts and marking what topics they can be classified under - this has nothing to do with wikiprojects. Many of these topics don't even have an equivalent wikiproject (as noted before).
Regarding the wikiproject tagging on talk pages, that is not my primary goal and I don't even know whether I'd have time to work on this in the near future. If it's done, I'd do it as a separate bot task, in a sane manner, and only for active and interested projects. SD0001 (talk) 13:32, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Unsourced draft filter

This edit filter is now set to tag unsourced AFC drafts. The question is: should the former (link to WP:AFC) or the latter (link to WP:WPAFC) be used? Thx Eumat114 formerly The Lord of Math (Message) 11:26, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Eumat114, I would tend towards the latter because the first is really just a page to submit to AFC, the second contains all the useful links like the talk page and help desk. Sam-2727 (talk) 03:32, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Linking to AFC is proper, because it is an AFC draft, not necessarily a WikiProject AFC draft. AFC is a good landing page; here we discuss things. Primefac (talk) 22:30, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Fish Coloration

The comment is being frequently made that editors should not start by writing an article. We are all in agreement. However, most generalizations have exceptions. I will point out Draft:Fish Coloration as an example of an exception.

I didn't do a detailed review of this draft. I didn't think that a detailed review was needed. It can be reviewed by the editors who maintain the articles on animals in article space.

Sometimes we wonder whether anything any good comes in via AFC. Sometimes something good comes in via AFC.

Robert McClenon (talk) 18:25, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

  • I agree Robert McClenon it really makes a nice change to see a B or C class submission from a new user in the deluge of effluent that is the norm. However you may like to put the accept on the editors page who wrote it rather than the other new account who submitted it. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
User:KylieTastic - I have never accepted a Class B submission, that is, a submission that I rated as Class B, and I don't really expect to do that. Normally that level of quality requires the sort of collaboration that is done in article space. I'm glad to accept a stub, for that matter. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:24, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Someone may ask when and why I would accept a stub. I have accepted three types of stubs by subject matter. The first is biological species. They are usually Start class, but sometimes they are stubs, and should be accepted anyway. The second is legally recognized named places. The third is people who meet a special notability guide, but the article says nothing except for a verified statement that they meet the special notability criterion, such as having held a general's commission or having competed in the Olympics or having served as a state senator. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:24, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
User:KylieTastic - I copied the acceptance message from the page of the submitter to the page of the author. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:53, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
These days, I'm excited to accept anything that isn't written with a clear conflict of interest and/or paid editing... Sam-2727 (talk) 03:29, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
I may have a somewhat more expansive concept of crud than User:Sam-2727, or maybe they haven't seen some of the stuff that I have. I see stuff that is too clueless even to be conflict of interest. It is no improvement. I think that maybe three years ago I wrote that there were three main categories of AFC submissions that overlapped: self-serving or conflict of interest; completely clueless; and possibly encyclopedic. I still think so. There is overlap, so that some contributions are both completely clueless and conflict of interest, and some are somewhere between being clueless and being good. If it doesn't seem clueless and doesn't seem like advertising, it is probably good.
But wait! There is at least one more concern! That is pseudo-science and woo. In the sciences, except for the medical sciences, we can usually count on the scientific editors to deal with pseudo-science, either by deleting it or by rewriting it to describe it as pseudo-science (so that we do have articles on perpetual motion, but we don't describe them as working). But in the medical area, I prefer to get a knowledgeable review before accepting. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:11, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:IOTA (technology)

IOTA (technology) is creation protected. I think that Draft:IOTA (technology) could finally be moved to the mainspace as there is demonstrated notability, and although there are some parts that are written promotionally, I think the article has a good amount of "criticism" (i.e. hacks) in it as well that makes it neutral enough to be suitable for the mainspace. Could an administrator perform the move? Sam-2727 (talk) 22:04, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Sam-2727, It was DGG who page protected it and policy would be to reach out to the original admin who PP'd it (me pinging them here should be enough) to request unprotection. My personal exceptions would be a couple of times that I've requested unprotection directly at WP:RFP or via twinkle when I see that the protecting admin is inactive and/or it was salted years ago. Sulfurboy (talk) 04:38, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
I shall take a look at it this week, though I'm a little behind at getting to things the last few weeks. DGG ( talk ) 04:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
@DGG: Just a gentle nudge on this. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 10:30, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
I've also reviewed and think it is ready for mainspace. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 11:08, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
The draft has a reference error. Those can be fixed in article space, but I think it should be fixed in submitting it to article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:43, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 Fixed Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 21:02, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
things get done slowly these days. thanks for reminding me. DGG ( talk ) 05:20, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
I unprotected, and it's ready to be moved, though I myself am not going to move it . DGG ( talk ) 19:54, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories/2020-04 and Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories/2020-05

FYI; Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories/2020-04 contains entries for May, and those should be split to Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories/2020-05 to be consistent with other monthly archives from this year -- 65.94.170.207 (talk) 17:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Resolved
Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 09:26, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Non-reviewers leaving AFC comments

I've been stalking a few AFC drafts over the past several months, and find myself leaving the occasional AFC comment using the AFC comment template. I just realized these might be reserved for actual AFC reviewers, so I thought I would ask if it is OK for non-reviewers to leave AFC comments? (I don't want to be an AFC reviewer... I like my talk page nice and quiet.) ThatMontrealIP (talk) 22:49, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

ThatMontrealIP, I don't mind it at all. Most of the time when I see those comments, they're typically quite helpful. However, is there any reason you haven't signed up to be a reviewer? You seem experienced enough to know what's going on. Sulfurboy (talk) 23:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy It looks like a full time job! But I do enjoy stalking your talk page and that of others, as it's a bit like a carnival: many different and varied attractions. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 23:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • If experienced Wikipediansare confused by the AfC comment system (eg. am I allowed to engage) then surely no one can deny that many newcomers are confused (eg Is this meant for me to read? Should I pay attention? Is talking about it even on my radar?).
AfC comments should appear like standard comments, minimal wikimarkup, on the talk page. No one owns pages, anyone can post a comment. That's why talk pages were invented. AfC needs to abandon the relic method of top-of-page commenting, and engage with the talk page capability. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:55, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
You've made your point ad-nauseum; we know you don't approve of {{AFC comment}}. You don't need to bring it up every time someone mentions it. Primefac (talk) 17:40, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Primefac - Yes, User:SmokeyJoe does need to bring it up every time someone mentions it. It is like Carthago delenda est. Maybe we will get tired of hearing from him and submit the issue to the Roman Senate. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:27, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Primefac, are you telling me to “shut up”? I do approve of the {{AFC comment}} tool, as a tool to make it super easy for a reviewer to make their non-committal comment, but it should be putting its output on the talk page. No change for the reviewer, it’s a coding level error needing fixing. You ignore, and don’t deny, the obvious point that a prolific mainspace editor is confused by this AfC culture of template-heavy wrong-side commenting? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:40, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
They asked if it was okay for a non-reviewer to leave a comment. The answer is "yes", not "well, yes, but it really should go on the talk page because clearly the system is broken". My apologies for apparently putting words in your mouth, I meant to imply you disapproved of the system, not that particular template. Primefac (talk) 21:48, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Of course it is OK to comment, but this is a dramatic new datum for the comment presentation causing confusion. I advocate for a modification of the script, not a fundamental change to the system, not in this respect. Reducing the barrier for old-new editor engagement is my driving idea. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:27, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I see more comments as a good thing. At worst, they might be obvious or not matter, but at bets they help everyone, especially reviewers. So I don't think there are any downsides here. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 18:53, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Given that the vast majority of people who review drafts are AFC reviewers using the AFCH tool, is it technically possible to allow newbies to post at the talk page while allowing AFCH users to see any comments on the talk page, and modify AFCH to comment at the talk page instead? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 01:14, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Are you asking me? It's technically possible although prone to false positives. But it's a bunch of extra work, so you should ask the AFCH maintainer. I suppose "talk page has comments from users X and Y and Z who have edited the article" sounds useful. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 10:35, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Hellknowz, let me clarify myself. Currently with AFCH, if there's an HTML comment over 30 characters long it shows a popup "The page contains an HTML comment longer than 30 characters." I'm wondering if the draft talk page contains anything other than WikiProject banner shells is it possible to show the discussion just like how comments are shown. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 11:12, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
I mean, I suppose it is. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 11:25, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
The question: does it solve the previous problems this way? Then discussions can be moved to talkspace while allowing for more ease in checking these comments. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 12:29, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Add "merits oversight" to the quick fail criteria

I have recently done a trawl through a large subset of draftspace, and reported several drafts to the oversight team. If my sample was representative there are many many more in draftspace where oversighters will suppress the draft - usually because a child has given their DOB and often other data. Can we agree to add "if it meets the oversight criteria, email WP:Oversight for suppression" as another quick fail criteria as I am pretty sure that others have seen some of the entries that i have reported for suppression. ϢereSpielChequers 18:09, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. I would wish WMF would put some of their ill-gotten gains into public relations to remind the public about children, personal information, and online profiles. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:12, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes, and I think it would also be helpful to give an explanation of what kind of content qualifies for suppression. I don't think many people are aware that a minor's date of birth is considered oversightable - I have seen those sorts of drafts submitted to MFD by experienced users. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 21:37, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Absolutely. I've been complaining about this recently as I've come across many oversightable drafts that have been declined and left to sit for six months until they're eligible for G13. No bueno.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 21:46, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Totally agree. I've just come across one recently and understand its needs. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 12:30, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Upcoming card game "Tapeworm"

Hello all. It has come to my attention that the publisher of the upcoming card game Tapeworm, that is currently on Kickstarter, has announced that creating a Wikipedia page for the game Tapeworm is part of a social challenge. If they manage to fulfill the social challenge, the backers get additional free "worm heads" added to their pre-release purchased game. There are already four drafts (1, 2, 3, 4). Because those writing the drafts are likely backers, they are officially paid editors (compensated in goods). Of course, they are very much editing in good faith, but it is important for reviewers to keep this in mind when reviewing the drafts. --MrClog (talk) 00:14, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

MrClog, Oh great. Not sure what we can do. Maybe need to take this to WP:ANI. Pinging Primefac and 331dot for idea on what to do here. One looks G11 worthy. The rest, I'm just going to decline with a message saying we'll only consider one draft. Sulfurboy (talk) 00:33, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I think this is bad faith meatpuppetry and the drafts should be deleted and salted. But maybe I just hate fun. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 00:35, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
SpicyMilkBoy, I agree, although it might turn in to a game of wack-a-mole with all the disambs. So far looks like nothing is in mainspace. Sulfurboy (talk) 00:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
They definitely need to declare as paid editors and all be aware that this isn't a contest on our end. Probably should be taken to ANI. 331dot (talk) 01:01, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't necessarily think that by paying money they are paid editors (I would argue they're just COI), but I do agree that pretty much any draft should be declined per the usual reasons; I highly doubt that a game that hasn't even been released yet will reach our notability goals. Primefac (talk) 01:22, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
They are being compensated with an addition to the game that regular people won't get. 331dot (talk) 01:26, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
ANI is the right place for this. The intentions are pretty ill and until October, forget it. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 01:36, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
All right I'll handle the ANI writeup Sulfurboy (talk) 02:12, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
And done Sulfurboy (talk) 02:18, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
See Special:AbuseFilter/1054 for a filter that watches edits to pages with similar names created or edited by new-ish users. -- The Anome (talk) 10:46, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
The Anome, Thank you so much for creating this. I assumed there had to be a way to monitor it, I just had no idea how to do so. Sulfurboy (talk) 18:32, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Phillip Jarrell

I have just started reviewing Draft:Phillip Jarrell. I have two main observations. First, the draft is not in good condition. It has errors of usage and capitalization. It needs copy-editing. Second, the subject satisfies musical notability as the songwriter of Torn Between Two Lovers, which topped the charts in the United States, and he is already listed in the song article as the songwriter. If the primary issue for AFC is whether the page will survive AFD, there is no question that it will survive AFC. In its present state, it will be noted as needing work, so it should be tagged. I will be tagging and accepting. If anyone disagrees, they are welcome to add more tags, remove the tags, or take it to AFD, where I will defend it. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:21, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't meet the requirements for footnotes for a biography of a living person. It would survive AFD, but it wouldn't survive BLPPROD. Declined. Author welcomed. Will someone else please also encourage the author. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, Do we need to be worried that you're having a conversation with yourself? Lol. In all seriousness, the decline for inline cites is appropriate. Also, are we even for sure that the subject wrote this song? I'm not seeing any confirmation of that or how heavy their involvement with it was. Sulfurboy (talk) 04:48, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Sulfurboy - The conversation with myself ended with agreement that the other editors agree with, so that is all right. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:01, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
@Sulfurboy and Robert McClenon: It appears that many users don't know how to format refs properly and end up using this format at ref boxes:
# ^ [http://example.com/ example website] Example Source, January 15, 2001. That isn't the first time I've seen this; I believe there is a need to notify newbies of this problem. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:16, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, Have you ever seen a script that helps fix this? I see it all the time, but to be honest I'm too lazy to fix it (nor do I have the will to do it). I don't want to spend hours of my time on here fixing people's messed up refs. Sulfurboy (talk) 05:19, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, the best way to curb this is to put a reminder in HUGElarge text: Please use <ref></ref> tags. Hope it works. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:22, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, I try to direct people to WP:REFB. That has about a 20% success rate. Sulfurboy (talk) 05:26, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, 20% success rate. I suppose putting such a notice at 5x font (like I did above) could multiply the success rate 5-fold?[sarcasm] Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Sulfurboy and Robert McClenon: I find it a legitimate concern to restructure {{AFC submission/draft}} and {{AFC submission/submit}} so that the really important things (reffing) are put up front and the less important stuff take up less space. I am testing it in my sandbox; please don'e decline it. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:57, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

A few years ago, there was a content dispute, which I think was about the reporting of the historical status of three Baltic republics, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, in which an editor labeled some adjectives in a talk-page post in 36-point type, which really got the attention of the talk-page reader, and was really disruptive to viewing of the page. I gave that editor a trout for Creative Shouting, even more disruptive than ALL CAPS. I think that the end result is that someone, I am not sure who, was indeffed for sock-puppetry, which only proves that troublemakers will make trouble and often will get banned. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, okay, maybe not the HUGE font but at least I believe the important things shouldn't be folded inside hidden boxes in the pending submission interface. Restructuring needed. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 01:28, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Requiring inline references

Currently, the reviewing instructions say: Avoid declining an article because it correctly uses general references to support some or all of the material. The content and sourcing policies require inline citations for only four specific types of material, most commonly direct quotations and contentious material This more or less repeats WP:V which says All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material and WP:CITE which says A general reference is a citation to a reliable source that supports content, but is not linked to any particular text in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a "References" section, and are usually sorted by the last name of the author or the editor.

But in the help desk I see comments such as: Your draft needs use of inline sources. (in the section Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#07:28:29, 28 April 2020 review of submission by Mike 06; When a reviewer approves the article they will give it appropriate name. Until that point, you should consider that the article lacks inline sources (from Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#10:57:30, 2 May 2020 review of draft by Jojo.nguyennga; and It is largely unsourced, the content requires inline citations, not merely a list of sources dumped at the end,... from Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#17:05:20, 2 May 2020 review of draft by MichaelHolemans. All of these from experienced reviewers. Are we serious that AfC accepts general references? Or should we change the instructions to say that inline refs are demanded, even though policy permits them, because they are now disfavored (which they are)? @CaptainEek and Theroadislong: — Preceding unsigned comment added by DESiegel (talk • contribs) 18:18, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

  • Only possibly contentious BLP material *needs* inline sourcing. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:24, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
    • By policy direct quotations require an inline ref to an RS that verifies the quote, SmokeyJoe, unless I have badly misread WP:V. But my question is, should we decline submissions that relay on general refs that are RS, but do not have inline sources, or not as many as we think proper? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:34, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
  • This is a point that I've always found a little bit duplicitous. On the one hand, as SmokeyJoe says, BLPs need inline sources. Companies, sports cars, or web applications only need to meet WP:V (assuming the claims in the article are sourced somewhere). A non-BLP should never be declined as ilc ("in-line citations") but a cite-bombed BLP with no in-line refs certainly could be. As with most things in this project, it's a case-by-case basis. Primefac (talk) 22:32, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
    • But none of the examples I linked toi are BLPs, Primefac, and at least one is telling the user not to use general refs ...the content requires inline citations, not merely a list of sources dumped at the end,.... Is it OK to decline drafts on this basis? If not, what can reasonably be done when it happens? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:39, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
      • I think there are two points to discuss here. Your initial post is asking about declining based on a lack of inline refs, but I would heavily argue that regardless of subject the draft owner be encouraged to use them. Non-BLP (or I suppose medical as well) articles shouldn't be deleted for a lack of inline citations, but telling someone at the help desk that they should have more inline refs is perfectly acceptable. Primefac (talk) 23:06, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
I only decline for inline cites if it's 1) A BLP 2) A medical article (particularly involving disorders, conditions or medications) 3) Potentially controversial topics, think like Israel-Palestine conflict. For everything else that is good otherwise, I approve it and tag it appropriately. Sulfurboy (talk) 23:12, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
That sounds very sensible. I wonder whether the author understands what to do. In the past, years ago, I noted a common tendency to decline in appropriately for no inline citations, by certain reviewers who no longer review. I'm not sure whether the original poster of this thread is saying this is a big problem, or just that the instructions regarding in-line citations needs improvement. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:49, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
  • DES, good point. The WP:BLP lede says:

    All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation to a reliable, published source. Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.

    WP:BLP repeats this a few times further down, but without further detail.
You are right. I had mis-convoluted quotations, contention, and in-line citations. WP:BLP and WP:V do not call for in-line citations for contentious material. However, I believe it should, and especially so in the context of drafts that are typically WP:Reference bombed, as reference bombing, a long list of general references at the bottom of the page, makes it extremely difficult to check a specific claim. I am thinking WP:BLP and WP:V might need improvement in this respect. Note that Wikipedia:Inline citation doesn't define an in line citation as an citation in the line of the material it cites, just that it is associated. I consider a citation to the paragraph to be sufficient, and that citations within a sentence reflects overly terse writing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe, WP:V already calls for inline citations for any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged which might reasonably be considered to include contentious material in any article at all, BLP or not. (Although in a non-BLP, immediate removal is not required, a {{CN}} tag might be used.) However, the three drafts I linked to comments about above do not seem to me to be particularly contentious, and I think the reviewers were incorrect to require inline cites, although such cites would surely improve the would-be articles. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 12:20, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
You ask if I am saying this is currently a "big problem". I don't know. I am saying it is a more than merely theoretical problem. I happened to notice one of those comments while looking at the AfC Help desk to see if I could provide any help. They seemed incorrect to me, and I checked the reviewing instructions and looked for other current help desk entries that insisted in inline cites. I found these three. I have not reviewed the AfC help desk archives, nor the records of AfC declines generally, so I don't know how common such declines have been recently. But the comments were made by experienced reviewers with good reputations, and the sort of relativly new user who uses AfC and comes to the Help Desk would not be likely to know exactly what WP:V calls for. I wasn't sure if reviewers in general have been imposing a de facto requirement of inline cites contrary to the instructions, or if these are rare overstatements by reviewers. I wanted to bring it to the attention of AfC reviewers generally, for discussion. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 12:20, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I see that I was pinged here, but I didn't actually get the ping because the original post wasn't signed. Also pinging @Theroadislong:, who may have missed this thread. The reviewing guidelines note that our standard is WP:MINREF. That means we need inline sources for direct quotations, challenged material, material likely to be challenged, and contentious BLP material. Also, folks can use different styles of inline references if they wish. For BLP's, I naturally expect higher levels of inline references, which reflects the day-to-day editing pressures. Still, for a BLP, having a ref a paragraph, for at least two thirds of the paragraphs, is almost always okay, it just needs to be tagged with "Inline sources needed" when approved. But if a BLP has less, or a regular article has less than a third cited inline, I will take a very close look at the refs. If need be, I will then ask the draftee about their refs. And if I can't find where they got the rest of the info, then I will decline on the basis of verifiability. AfC is mainly for preventing articles from being deleted when they enter mainspace. But is also about quality control and ensuring that contributors don't have their work de facto deleted by people removing all but a few inline cited sentences once it hits mainspace. For better or worse, our belief that material can exist without inline citations is not honored much, especially outside of AfC. From what I've seen, most folks interpret lack of inline source to mean lack of sourcing in general. Thus ensuring that articles are verifiable increasingly means ensuring that they have at least some inline references, especially since most new users don't know how to add references without also adding inline citations. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 17:34, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
One of my AFC comments was quoted above "content requires inline citations, not merely a list of sources dumped at the end" this was a comment only, not a reason for declining. Theroadislong (talk) 17:55, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
It is true, Theroadislong, that you were not the reviewer who declined User:MichaelHolemans/sandbox and the reviewer who did wrote that there were not sufficient reliable sources provided, but didn't specifically mention inline citations. But your comment was the response given to the user who was asking why the draft had been declined, and it certainly seems to say that the draft will not be accepted unless the general references are converted to inline cites. I(t looks to me, on a quick heck, as if at least several of the key issues are supported by thye sources listed. As several of these are not in English, I could not do a full review even if inline cites had been provided. Do you think that this draft mwould be accepted if the same sources were used as inline cites? (The one direct quotation in the draft is cited inline.) Do you think we o0ught to be in effect telling new users here that inline cites are required? Should we change the reviewing instructions, or even the relevant policies, to require them in all o0r more cases? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 20:09, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
I think that mandatory in line citations would be a great improvement for the project as a whole and also helpful for reviewers to more quickly assess drafts. A very large number of the drafts I decline/reject, have no citations at all so new users clearly aren't reading as far as the second instruction at WP:AFC "Articles should reflect only what reliable sources have said about the topic, and all articles need references to reliable sources." Theroadislong (talk) 21:25, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
  • For AfC purposes, I think it might be a good idea to introduce a process for the newcomer drafter to write a WP:THREE-style paragraph on the notability of the subject. This could be rigidly templated as: Statement 1 [ref1]; Statement 2 [Ref2]; Statement 3 [Ref3]. Ask for the references as bare hyperlinks, but accept free text, just in case someone wants to reference something like a real world physical book and they don't have a url. This is different in style to WP:Good articles, where the lede, which looks like the notability statements, is recommended to be unsourced; I wonder whether this is a major source of the problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:26, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I have never liked WP:THREE and i would object to makign it in effect mandatory. I would add that any arricle with a substantial body is advised not to include citations in the lead section (which is not a lede, a purely journalistic term) for any facts sourced in the body.. This is not limited to the GA level. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 18:41, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
    • DES, what do you dislike about WP:THREE? The thing I like about it here is it asks the topic author/proponent to identify the best sources for deciding Wikipedia-notability. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:43, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
      • SmokeyJoe To identify a good subset of sources can be a good thing, and to avoid having to review trivial or duplicative sources can be quite helpful, But I think that often three key sources cannot sufficiently support a topic, or even its notability, and that a reviewer needs to consider a dozen or more. I think that the demand for three and only three sources to support notability leads to the dumbing down of Wikipedia articles, and that it can leads to improper rejection of articles about complex topics. It can be a useful rule of thumb in some cases. It should never be any part of policy or even near mandatory practice, in my view. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 12:22, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Two Notability Questions and a Meta-Question

I have two questions at this time, and a more general meta-question. The meta-question is whether this is the best place to ask questions about notability guidelines as to whether to accept particular drafts, or whether I should go to the notability talk page, or whether I should go to Village pump (policy). Robert McClenon (talk) 14:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

The first specific question has to do with a work of art. Is there a guideline concerning notability for works of art, such as museum paintings, as opposed to when they should be redirected to another article, such as the artist, or the subject of the work of art? Robert McClenon (talk) 14:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: We have of course the SNG WP:ARTIST, but it talks about the artist's work rather than the actual works. My take on individual artworks is that they simply have to meet GNG: lots of coverage in independent publications. I created one recently for TV Buddha, for example, which has tons of coverage. Another might be Bridal_Procession_on_the_Hardangerfjord, which is (apparently!) famous in Norway, and also has lots of sources. All famous artists have created non-notable works, so it is not universal that a work by a famous artist deserves a page. I think it is quite rare actually. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 15:04, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

The second specific question has to do with a movie director who has directed two movies. My reading is that if someone has acted in two notable movies, they probably qualify under acting notability. However, directors are covered by notability for creative professionals, which doesn't specifically refer to multiple films. If the person has directed one film, they can be redirected to it. If they have directed two films, a common sense solution would be to create a stub that lists the two films, which is what the acting guideline does. However, it doesn't say that. In some cases, the director doesn't appear to qualify based on general notability. One possibility would be to rework the guideline for directors to be consistent with the guideline for actors. Is there an answer here, or should I take this somewhere else? Robert McClenon (talk) 14:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I would argue The person has created ... a significant or well-known work or collective body of work indicates that a director creating multiple films might be considered notable, though I think they would need to meet GNG if their films aren't notable. Primefac (talk) 18:46, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
I assume this was in reference to the article that I said I also thought was notable? And I agree with the thought process, one alone is not enough. Two is though. Sulfurboy (talk) 21:09, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes. Cory Finley was the reason why I asked. I can see a reason why one is not enough and two is enough. If someone has had one major role, their name can be redirected, and stub information merged into the target of the redirect. If they have had two roles, there is no single redirect target, so that there could be a redirection stub branch list, which is a silly idea. A better idea then is to have at least a stub article, and then decide what should go in where. That is a reason why multiple roles imply an article, because there is no single redirect target. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:38, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

A restructure of the Template:AFC submission/submit

Hi. As I mentioned above, the AFC submit template might not adequately tell users how to deal with their drafts properly. I propose modifying and restructuring the standard template, as demonstrated at User:Eumat114/sandbox. I aim to make the more important things (referencing etc.) show up more prominently. Could you please have a look? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 07:36, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Other than auto-expanding a few sections, what substantive changes are you proposing? Primefac (talk) 14:12, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Primefac, in fact as I said above "I aim to make the more important things (referencing etc.) show up more prominently." Hence I find it a need to auto expand some sections. To save space, I split the "where to get help" part: putting "how to submit/edit" at the top and placing the "feedback from WikiProjects" part at the "improving the odds of a speedy review" part. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 01:09, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
My only thought would be that the "submit" template is a wasted effort - if they've submitted, chances are they're going to sit on their laurels until it's declined or approved. If any of the templates were to be changed, I would think the "declined" template would be a more appropriate location to increase visibility of "how to" links. Primefac (talk) 14:45, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
The templates are already pretty large, and I don't really see that automatically opening sections will make anyone engage with them more. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:03, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Notes for accepter?

Is there a way to leave a note for whoever accepts a draft? For example, this comment notes the need to edit a DAB page upon acceptance. I often leave such comments myself, but I suspect they're mostly lost in the noise. Other useful comments might be suggestions for redirects that would point to the accepted article. It would be good if, rather than just getting lost in the comments section, they could pop up in the Accept dialog as suggestions for the accepting reviewer to consider. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:23, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, I personally always read the comments before accepting an AfC. In fact, it's typically the first thing I look for when opening a page. I also typically utilize the comments like Robert does, but for pointing out heavily suspected UPEs. I imagine most reviewers are the same as comments I leave are either responded to or otherwise indirectly noticed. Sulfurboy (talk) 01:39, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
I would also be surprised if reviewers didn't read them. Comments that I feel are particularly applicable (and important) to a reviewer instead of the editor I add a nice bold REVIEWER: at the start. How would you make it more obvious? Something to trigger when someone clicked accept on the script? Nosebagbear (talk) 09:52, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Nosebagbear, At one end of the feeping creature spectrum, I could imagine the accept dialog including a bunch of checkboxes like:
and the reviewer would just have to check which ones they wanted to happen. Some, like the first two, could be handled totally by the automation. Others, like the last, might be nothing more than a reminder of an action that needed to be carried out manually. I'm not seriously suggesting we go that far, but it would be convenient.
More rationally, I think just a simple but standardized way for a reviewer to make a short note which would then be brought to the accepter's attention would be good enough. Maybe the REVIEWER convention would be sufficient, if it was socialized to the point where most people adopted it. Just like the Keep / Delete shorthand used at AfD; not enforced by anything, but widely enough done by convention, that we've got software which takes advantage of it for providing summaries and statistics. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:45, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
This sort of integration is not a mandatory task for reviewers so even if the note is noticed by the reviewer, it is not necessarily going to get done. This is another justification for moving our review comments to the draft's talk page so these to-do items don't get lost. If it were on the talk page, a mainspace editor may notice and do the work if no one else has. ~Kvng (talk) 15:08, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree with User:RoySmith that this is a good idea. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:25, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree with User:Kvng that this is another reason either to move the review comments to the talk page when the draft is accepted or to keep the comments on the talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:25, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
There is of course a straightforward way to make comments on a draft that will survive its acceptance, and that is tagging, so that any note that can be made with a tag probably should be. Tags that I sometimes use are {{COI}}, {{copy edit}}, and {{cleanup}}. There are certain tags that should never be used on drafts; in particular, the notability tags should never be used on drafts, which should instead be declined with a notability reason. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:25, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, do you mean that you will never accept a draft with a notability concern? This would mean that you standard for acceptance is higher than for New Page Patrol, which is too high. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:46, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
No. I am not sure whether to appreciate having this opportunity to explain, or whether to appreciate having this discussion so that other reviewers can help clarify what the standards should be, or whether to be annoyed that I am being argued with before I have a chance to explain. No. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Some of the other regular (as opposed to intermittent) editors here may recall that sometimes I have asked this page about drafts where I had notability concerns, and have accepted them anyway. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Since it is very much the Wikipedia way to dump on other volunteers, I am sure that someone will tell me that I am completely wrong, but ... I have sometimes had the idea that the default action by a reviewer is to do nothing. This means that a reviewer can reasonably do nothing when they are in doubt, and so not accept a draft at AFC and not tag a draft at NPP. What this means at AFC that I normally will not accept a draft about which I have notability concerns, unless I have thought those concerns through and have decided that I am prepared to !vote Keep at AFD. If I continue to be in doubt about a draft at AFC, I will leave it alone, which leaves it in draft space waiting for a reviewer. I haven't reviewed at NPP much recently, but if I am in doubt at NPP, I will leave the page alone, neither check it off nor tag it. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
However, what I originally meant, and I recognize that my comment in passing was not clear, was that, in my opinion, the notability tags should not be used on drafts, because I don't see them as having a useful purpose on drafts. I see their purpose on articles as starting a discussion about whether to nominate the article for deletion. If one has doubts about the notability of a draft, it is a draft, and can be left alone. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:31, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you Robert McClenon for your answer and your patience. I guess my question, unstated was grasping with the following: Do you think it unhelpful to put a notability tag on a draft? Or, as I think I assumed, it is not appropriate to accept a draft, and then in mainspace to put notability tags on it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:29, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes. No. User:SmokeyJoe - I think that it is unhelpful to put a notability tag on a draft, unless one is about to accept it anyway. As I concluded with Jane Daly (actress), there are times when a reviewer can accept a draft while tagging it for notability, and it is not important which is done first if they are done within minutes of each other. In the case of accepting a draft while tagging it for notability, it would be especially helpful to explain on the talk page what the issue is, either as a guide to improving the article or for discussion in a deletion debate, and such comments clearly should go on the talk page and not in AFC comments that will be deleted by the acceptance. It is unhelpful to put a notability tag on a draft that is being left in draft space, because notability does not apply to drafts. It is unhelpful to put a notability tag on a draft that is being declined, because notability is a reason for the decline, and is a reason that may sometimes be addressed by reworking and resubmitting. Does that answer the question? I think that it does. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:13, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, thank you. Sometimes I think I should accept a draft, tag it for dubious notability, and tag it for a proposed merge. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:30, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, regarding I have sometimes had the idea that the default action by a reviewer is to do nothing, my most common reason for doing nothing when reviewing drafts is that I know the thing I want to do is contrary to consensus. For example, I feel that the vast majority of BLPs, articles about bands, articles about startups, etc, (in other words, most drafts) are inappropriate attempts at promotion, even if they meet the letter of our various guidelines and policies. I can't bring myself to accept them, and I know it would be wrong to decline them. So I just move on to something else. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
The current instructions "Articles that will probably survive a listing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion should be accepted. Articles that will probably not survive should be declined." aren't just stricter than newpage patrol, they are stricter than AFD. At AFD articles only get deleted for lack of notability if an admin looks at the discussion and considers there is consensus to delete. If I see an article in mainspace that I think would probably be deleted at AFC I can send it to AFC to see if others agree with me. But on current instructions, anyone reviewing a draft is supposed to decline it in effect for meeting the standard that in mainspace would trigger an AFD. Personally I think that one of the anomalies that makes me uncomfortable with the AFC process. ϢereSpielChequers 09:18, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Me similarly. “Would probably survive at AfD” and “Would probably not survive at AfD” has quite a lot of space between. I have long been aware of the common belief that the AfC acceptance bar is too high, but even while being deliberately conscious of that, I have to fight an involuntary terror that someone will find a reason to AfD a draft I accepted. New page patrol feels a whole lot less stressful. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I wouldn't worry if someone has sent a draft you accepted to AFD, first wait 7 days and see if the decision is Keep or at least there was debate as to whether to delete. If it is snow deleted or particularly if it is speedy deleted, then you might need to recalibrate your tagging. At speedy deletion the A7 bar is deliberately set below the level of Notability - if Notability is in doubt you should be in AFD territory. I see the problem as the combination of an auto delete on old drafts and a more deletionist mindset among those accepting them, if drafts had to wait indefinitely before being accepted then there would be sense in not accepting ones that would be marginal at AFD, but an auto cleanout that doesn't differentiate between those that would be obvious A7 candidates in mainspace and those that would have a good chance of surviving AFd is a dysfunctional system. I think that part of the solution would be to allow A7 on month old drafts that met that criteria - and many do. cleaning them out would give us more scope to rescue ones worth spending time on. ϢereSpielChequers 20:53, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
  • It seems people want to be dependent on clever script writers and tools. Why not add a thread to the talk page with the section title "Notes for accepter", and expect accepters to always check the talk page. Sometimes, it might be missed, in which case any normal mainspace editor can fix it later. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:44, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Noting for the record that the "has a good chance at surviving an AFD nomination" came about due to editors promoting drafts out of AFC and then immediately turning around to CSD/AFD them now that they are in mainspace and thereby gaming the system by abusing Wikipedia process to move things that weren't ready for mainspace into mainspace and then either self nominating for one of the deletion policies or letting one of the helpful WikiJanitors/WikiGnomes be an unwitting accomplice to the deletion process game. I agree with the above in that when I accept a draft I feel as though I'm pledging my WikiHonor in perpituity to defend the page from deletion. My acceptance articles are very limited because mainspace already has a lot of content in it that is of disapointing quality, I don't want to add any more. I'm happy to work with submitters who are improving in good faith to get it above the 50% mark, but a lot is just "Paint thrown against a canvas to see what sticks" and if they're not going to put in effort to encourage me to attach myself to the page (as AFD submitters frequently look at who moved the page to mainspace and at what quality was it at), I'm not willing to enable them. Hasteur (talk) 02:03, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Jane Daly (actress)

The mention of applying tags to a draft or an article has, however, helped to answer the questions that I was having about Draft:Jane Daly (actress), who appears to be notable, but to have a draft that needs expansion. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:37, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Welcoming Possible Experts

I have just reviewed a draft by an author who appears to be an expert in a medical area, because they are listed as an author of some of the references. Is there a particular welcome that should be used? I understand that this is technically a conflict of interest that should be declared, but that it is desirable. The draft doesn't look to be in the form and style for a Wikipedia article, but I advised them to confer at WikiProject Medicine about how to present their knowledge and to contribute. Do we have any particular instructions for reviewers for welcoming possible experts? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:34, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, I don't see it and in fact, I won't consider it a COI. The important part of a COI is "interest": one can't expect to gain too much interest from writing about a field one is working in. (Conflict of interest (COI) editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships.  – from WP:COI) I guess that's not really a COI, but it won't affect the way an expert writes about by much. I agree, though, that there must be some sort of welcome for experts since they are some of the most powerful editors on WP. even if they have no interest whatsoever in any other aspect. This is a kind of SPA users that need to be properly welcomed and retained. Cheers, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 04:10, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - Okay. I think we agree on the main points. However, I have seen the situation where the editor is pushing to use Wikipedia to advance their own research. Sometimes the editor thinks that they are an expert, and is pushing to advance their fringe inquiry, which may be original research. In at least one case, a scientific field was divided into two camps, supporting and supported by different scientists, with legitimate credentials, conducting a sort of academic war, and one of them had to be indeffed from Wikipedia for making legal threats. See Talk:Geopolymer. Normally the expert is an expert, and should be welcomed. Occasionally the expert is a pseudo-expert. That is why there can be a concern. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:34, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, Oh – I see. If the editor is obviously an expert (legitimate papers) as in your example, they deserve a proper and unique welcome. If he's just pushing a fringe theory, then a welcome is also warranted, but it needs to be a "sterner" welcome, linking to proper policy pages. From your experience, is it easy to identify such psuedo-experts? They might occasionally be useful to WP as well when editing legitimate fringe theory pages. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 04:42, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - I can usually identify pseudo-experts in physics and in computing (and I am not a physicist because I am a chemist). I can usually identify pseudo medical science by the duck test, and it is important to identify them. There are also occasionally pseudo-historians, and the historians can identify them, and so on. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:15, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
But wait! There's more! It gets worse! The banned editor used sockpuppets. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:39, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, who? I don't get who is the socker. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 04:44, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/JDavidovits. Legitimate scientific credentials on both sides. There were probably profitable patents involved in the geopolymers. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:15, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, so back to the main question is setting up an Expert Identification WikiProject useful? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 13:16, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - Probably. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:39, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Thoughts on an AfC award for new editors once a month or so?

I came across an editor today who created not one, but two C-Class (if not better) articles on their first go. See Charles Callins and Sam Byrne (painter), I've intentionally linked to the articles instead of the user so they're not pinged to this post. I sent them a barnstar and some words of encouragement, which is nice, but you know barnstars seem so meh. I think it would be nice to have a AfC new editor of the month/week or something similar to award new users. Much in the same fashion of Editor of the Week, I think this will help with retaining and encouraging new editors who show immense promise. Thoughts on this? I can do the appropriate write up/page for it if we get a couple of supports on this. I would need someone with some art skills to create an image for the award though if anyone is graphically inclined. Sulfurboy (talk) 02:51, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

If you really want to do more for a good new editor than giving them a barnstar, propose the article they created for a DYK. I have done this a few times from new page patrol, and provided the article is good enough for DYK it gives people a good entry to the community. And gets some diversity into DYK. ϢereSpielChequers 21:05, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers and Sulfurboy, honestly the AFC accept note is a bit dull and meh. Could there be a colorful picture when a new user creates a high-quality article? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:42, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, I'm not very familiar with the DYK process. Is a C-class/possible B-class article high enough quality to qualify for a DYK? Sulfurboy (talk) 03:44, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, anything better than a stub and it is good to go. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:47, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
For more info please see WP:DYKRULES. You might want to try User:SD0001/DYK-helper.js. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:50, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
The two DYK criteria that are most relevant for AFC are 1500 characters of text, and everything in the hook needs to be well cited (note, not everything in the article). So the criteria for DYK is way higher than "should survive in mainspace". But some of the more picky AFC patrollers seem to only accept articles at a higher standard than DYK requires, so they might as well feed the interesting ones into DYK, as for everyone else, it is worth reading Wikipedia:Did_you_know#Eligibility_criteria and remembering that not everything that goes from AFC to mainspace would qualify. But some of the best certainly do - and this thread starts with how do we praise our best new contributors, not the average ones. As for adding the option of a colourful picture for AFC reviewers to say "this has been marked as C class rather than just a stub", sounds good in principle, but I rarely get involved in C or B class, my focus is more usually on "is this enough for a stub article or does it not belong in mainspace". Of course with any templating process you have the option of doing a manual edit that personalises and adds something special where that is appropriate. IMHO "I think the article you wrote worthy of proposing for a mention on the mainpage and so have nominated it for a WP:DYK is a very special welcome for a new or newish editor. ϢereSpielChequers 08:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, most reviewers focus on the "is this enough for a stub article or does it not belong in mainspace" question instead of "is this good enough for a DYK" question simply because there just aren't enough good drafts. Nevertheless what Sulfurboy was talking about belongs to a special case. I agree that your proposed message does create a special welcoming message and encourages a stay. Cheers, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 09:05, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Seeking rough consensus on AfC and paid editing before formal proposal or RfC

So as I understand it, a nice change since I've been back is that now all users who have a COI or are paid editors have to submit their pages through the AfC process. I think it's integral to a proper review to always know when someone has declared as a paid editor or a COI when doing a review, as that review should get an extra level of scrutiny.

However, the problem is, a user to be in compliance with WP:PAID only has to disclose either on their userpage or the page's talk page. I don't know about y'all, but my problem with this is I almost never check someone's user page unless there is obvious POV, SPA, UPE or COI concerns. And even then, I typically just open up someone's talk page. Also, I almost never, check a submissions talk page. My proposal would be that we require a temporary banner placed on all submissions when an editor has declared a COI or is a paid editor. This banner would be removed if and when the article is approved. It would make it much easier for all reviewers to instantly know to add an extra level of scrutiny in review.

Thoughts on this? Glaring issues? I feel like most of us would be on board with this, but I want to check in and have a bit of a caucus before I take the time to write up a formal proposal or RfC. Sulfurboy (talk) 10:37, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I think a PAID editor should use a special declared alt account suffixed with “(PAID)”, and the declaration should be at the top of their main Userpage. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:05, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe, Oh I agree fully. However, the scope of a proposal like that would be a lot more difficult to get through. I think something narrowly tailored to just our AfC process is going to be a lot easier. Sulfurboy (talk) 18:31, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
Cotton glove treatment of long term PAID editors is not going to do anything. We catch the new and inept PAID editors. We are mostly blind to the many experienced editors doing it under the radar, barely within the letter of the rule of WP:SOCK, minimal compliance with declaring (eg a buried statement on the WP:SPA account). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:58, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I believe that the initial statement here is incorrect. COI editors are "strongly advised" to use AfC rather than direct creation., but there is no policy requiring such use. I would strongly object to any policy which mandates AfC use for any draft ever. I would also strongly object to the alternate account proposal above. Requiring the declaration to be on a user page rather than on a user talk page does seem reasonable to me. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
    DESiegel, WP:COIEDIT states "you should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly". Am I missing something there? Sulfurboy (talk) 18:19, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
  • There is a difference between "should" and "must", Sulfurboy. Also, if an editor creat4es a draft and has a willing experienced editor do a reveiw outside of the AfC process, that ought to be fully acceptable. Or if a COI editor is working closely with a non-COI experienced editor that also should be acceptable. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 18:33, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
    DESiegel, Does that then mean disclosing a COI is optional since it states "you should disclose your COI when involved with affected articles"? Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to get clarity. Sulfurboy (talk) 18:37, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes, Sulfurboy such a disclosure is not required in thatr failure to make it is not a valid reason to block an editor or to revert that editor's edits. But if the section you point to is being, or will be intepreted as a requirement to use AfC, then i will seek to have it changed. I think attempting to require AfC review as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card harms AfC seriously, and changes it from the effort aimed at helping develop potentially valid drafts that it was intended to be. There are other ways to get a contribution reviewed than AfC, and the guidelines should say so. I recall a case from last year where an admin draftified an article instead of deleting it, but added as a condition that it not be moved out of draft. The article author (who was not a new editor) objected to this condition, and irt was challanged, I think at WP:DRV. The consensus was that there was no policy or guideline allowing such a condition to be imposed, and it could not be enfoprcewd. The author had as much right to move a draft to main-space as any editor, at the risk of an AfD. I feel that that consensus should bar any idea of mandating an AfC review for the creations of a Paid or COI editor. If any such condition was bneing imposed, I wouild be tempted to approve the draft on principle DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 16:02, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Individual Drafts on Girl Group or Boy Band members

My general question is: In cases where a draft is submitted for an individual article on a singer who is a member of a group, should the reviewer err on the side of accepting, or err on the side of declining? Also, should it make a difference if the same draft is submitted over and over? If a draft is submitted over and over, it may mean either that we, the reviewers, are being too strict, or the submitting fan simply is a persistent submitting fan. How many submissions are reasonable before we either Reject the draft or send it to MFD? This is a relatively common occurrence with K-pop groups, but is more general. This isn't the same as song-album-artist accept-redirect debates, but it is another type of accept-redirect debate in the music area.

I would also be interested in any specific thoughts on Draft:Jung Ye-rin, so far submitted 7 times and declined 6 times by 4 reviewers. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:54, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I would suggest to check the difference of this submission with the previous revision at the time of previous decline. If the contributor has not made sufficient effort to address previous review comments, then declining with comment "Previous review comments have not been addressed", possibly with an extra sentence or two about what they have missed, could sound sensible. Gryllida (talk) 21:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Gryllida - I've declined it again with a note much as you said, and with a further note that it should be discussed on a talk page before any more resubmissions, and that it may be nominated for deletion if it is resubmitted again without adequate discussion. Since it was most recently submitted by an unregistered editor, I don't know whether it is likely to be resubmitted again soon. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:42, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Inclusionists and Redirectionists

This is a type of dispute that is common in the music area. In some of the general areas, there are said to inclusionist and deletionist editors. In music, there are inclusionist and redirectionist editors. Inclusionists take an expansive view of how many articles the encyclopedia should have. In other areas, deletionists favor deleting articles that they do not consider to be notable or encyclopedic. In the music area, the restrictive view is that of redirectionists, who prefer to redirect songs to albums, and sometimes to redirect albums to artists. Disputes also arise concerning performers known as members of a particular group or band, and inclusionists support separate articles, while redirectionists prefer to redirect to the articles on the group or band. The basic issue is usually one of different philosophies of the encyclopedia with regard to how fine a level of granularity is in order for articles as opposed to redirect entries.

Often the interaction between inclusionists and either deletionists or redirectionists can be productive. Sometimes it becomes unpleasant and disruptive.

Some editors like to rely almost entirely on the general notability guideline. Other editors, typically inclusionists, prefer to rely primarily on special notability guidelines, and to write the special notability guidelines broadly to permit as much coverage as possible. There are also questions as to whether the special notability guidelines should be interpreted expansively to call for inclusion or only permissively to allow inclusion. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:42, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Extend A11 and U5 to drafts and AfC

See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Extend A11 and U5 to drafts and AfC. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:47, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Can someone ELI5 the difference between A11 and G3? Like what's an common instance we could use this for in reviewing that we can't use G3 for. Sulfurboy (talk) 02:43, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, what does "ELI5" mean anyway? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:36, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, Explain like I'm 5. [1] Sulfurboy (talk) 03:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, for the difference pls see WP:CSD#cite note-11: "Unlike a hoax, subject to deletion as vandalism under CSD G3 as a bad faith attempt to deceive, CSD A11 is for topics that were or may have been actually created and are real, but have no notice or significance except among a small group of people, e.g. a newly invented drinking game or new word." Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 02:06, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, Or like the fantasy football league we had in MfD. Makes sense. Sulfurboy (talk) 03:22, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, did I miss something or was it 2 years ago? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:31, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, Naw, for some reason I thought you participated in MfD. A lot of the AfC people do, so I was getting confused. I was referencing Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Bush League Fantasy Football. Sulfurboy (talk) 03:36, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:39, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft Is Copy of Article

I have just reviewed a draft which is an almost exact copy of an existing article. The submitter made some edits to the article, and then copied the article to draft space. I am not sure why it was copied to draft space and then submitted as a draft. Is there any particular question or questions that other reviewers would suggest I ask in this case? I have of course declined the draft and have told the submitter that they may edit the article, but I don't know why they copied the article to draft space.

See Draft:Fixation disparity. But this has happened before. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:04, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree, it's not completely unusual. Chances are good they wanted to copy the article into the draft space so that they could make improvements without (as much of) a risk of being reverted. In addition to the decline, I would probably leave them a note to propose their changes at the article's talk page with a link to the Draft in said discussion. Primefac (talk) 18:32, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes. I had left them a note asking them if there was a reason why they did a copy-paste. I think that the copy-paste illustrates a lack of understanding of how AFC and Wikipedia work, which is good-faith cluelessness. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:46, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Bad timestamp for draft submission of the helper script

See Special:Diff/956040392. The timestamp was set to the previous timestamp, not the current time, which is different from {{submit}}. Is this a known bug? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:57, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

It's been a while since I've dug around in that part of the code, but I seem to recall that if {{AFC submission/draft}} is on the page, AFCH just removes the "t" to submit, which is why the date doesn't change. Primefac (talk) 18:30, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Primefac, which, I believe, is undesirable, as old drafts submitted recently often end up in an older category than it belongs. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:57, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Argonne National Laboratories

It appears that Argonne National Laboratories at the University of Chicago has hired a firm to submit biographies of all of their senior scientists via Articles for Creation. What they are doing is entirely in accordance with Wikipedia's rules; we require to get paid editing reviewed by neutral volunteer editors. It is also a cause for concern, and something that we have a right to dislike, although they have a right to do it as our rules are written. These are good-quality drafts that may be approved; they are about people who do seem to satisfy academic notability. Their drafts do need to be reviewed carefully. It appears that one of these drafts has been Rejected because of the conflict of interest, and I would have liked to do that also, but I don't think that we should Reject these drafts simply because of the COI. The COI requires that they submit the drafts for review. They are putting the COI tag on the draft talk page.

I think that what is being done is legal. Yuck. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:57, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Anyone declining a draft for the sole reason that it is a COI should be smacked upside the head with a trout. COI is not a valid reason for declining; a promotional draft can be declined, but a neutrally-written article that demonstrates either GNG or PROF should not be declined purely because someone close to the subject wrote it.
And yes, obviously if they are being paid and have not disclosed, that is an issue with the editor. If they do not disclose they should be blocked, but that is it. Primefac (talk) 14:06, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
I was the reviewer, here's my talk page, and here's a trout: {{trout}}. Squeeps10 Talk to meMy edits 23:13, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

What should I do in this situation?

I recently reviewed Draft:Progress MS-14 because it didn't seem to merit a standalone article, but then the author of the article pointed out to me that all the other spacecraft in this series existed as separate articles. I was then preparing to move it to the mainspace when the author of the article went to another user and asked if they could improve the article for them. That user then copied the text of the article, added some sources, and published it in the mainspace. To preserve the original history of the article currently located in the draft, what should I do? Sam-2727 (talk) 00:22, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I'd request a history merge. Squeeps10 Talk to meMy edits 02:36, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Squeeps10, I requested it. Thanks. Sam-2727 (talk) 02:43, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Any time. Squeeps10 Talk to meMy edits 03:06, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Suppressible drafts

I've noticed an uptick in the number of drafts being sent to the Oversight team for suppression. Thank you for your vigilance in making sure private info (especially that of the under-16 community) stays properly hidden. Primefac (talk) 14:11, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Primefac, that's why some believe it is necessary to add a quick-fail criteria "suppressible material" and as an AFCH option - see #Add "merits oversight" to the quick fail criteria. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 14:55, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
It's a pity Twinkle doesn't have an option as well. KylieTastic (talk) 16:12, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat, that's not really a good idea, because it sheds more light on the situation. As mentioned at WP:PRIVACY and other places, the OS team should be contacted directly to avoid the "spotlight" being shown on this type of draft/article. Primefac (talk) 18:44, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Primefac, perhaps the AFCH option is a bad idea but the reviewing instructions definitely should include this item. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 00:52, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
Primefac, I've never been sure what information about minors would qualify, obviously phone numbers, email addresses, contact details, physical addresses but what about just associating names of kids with other kids such as Draft:Evan Clark? I didn't think this would count but I've seen an someone in the past saying it would, or should it just be deleted - but if so what speedy would count? KylieTastic (talk) 17:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
My general rule of thumb is that if I can reasonably locate an individual based on their own disclosure, it is suppressible. That draft is probably a borderline case, but since the IP geolocates to West Virginia, the name is pretty common, and there's not a whole lot of detail in it I would probably decline suppression. That being said, there is no good CSD criteria (though there is a push to get WP:A11 extended to the draft space) so it would probably take an IAR deletion.
My other general rule of thumb is that I would rather decline a suppression request than have a suppressible draft stay visible.
Now, obviously, there are exceptions, a draft about a child actor or other actually-notable individual would not require complete deletion if the information is well-sourced, but like porn it's usually pretty obvious when a page falls into that category. Primefac (talk) 18:44, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
I've IAR deleted drafts like this for the same reasons you note, generally noting WP:NPF and general privacy concerns. Not quite suppressible, but definitely inappropriate. Putting it up for WP:MFD would only put more eyes on the content, which we really want to avoid. -- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 18:53, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
I suspect I'm responsible for part of the uptick in draft suppression. My suggestion of a Twinkle option would rely on Twinkle gaining an "email oversight" function. and people's AFD logs just getting an "email sent to oversight" entry without naming the article. I appreciate that the other Twinkle options all change the article and message the author, and this option would do neither of those. But it should be possible to train twinkle to do this, and if we don't we continue with the current situation where many AFc patrollers are patrolling pages that oversighters would suppress if they were reported to them. ϢereSpielChequers 21:01, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
@WereSpielChequers and KylieTastic: There does exist a Twinkle extension - User:SD0001/twinkleos for this. I don't think it's particularly well-used so tell me if you want anything in it to be changed. SD0001 (talk) 13:58, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Weird Incorrect G13 tagging

Today, on 6 May 2020, I was notified that Draft:Ute Lotz-Heumann had been tagged for speedy deletion as an abandoned draft. Normally when I am notified of a G13 tagging, it is because Twinkle is notifying every possible editor, which is a feature rather than a bug, although a feature that can be annoying. I looked more carefully at it and saw that the draft is a redirect to Ute Lotz-Heumann in article space. I removed the G13 tag. Then I saw that what happened is that on 5 November 2019, I decided that Ute Lotz-Heumann satisfies academic notability because she is the occupant of a named chair. I saw that the draft, by User:CharlesV5H, was minimally acceptable for article space and should be improved in article space, so I tagged and accepted it. This moved the draft into article space, leaving a redirect from draft space. User:Theroadislong and User:Steve Quinn edited the article to improve it (which illustrates that the draft needed to be moved into article space to be improved rather than incubated further in draft space). User:ThatMontrealIP and User:Bradv then made improvements to the article. So we have an article on Professor Lotz-Heumann, and Wikipedia is working. However, then User:Lapablo tagged the draft as unused in six months. I removed the G13. In further looking at it, we see that on 5 November, there was a tag that says "removed redirect", but that is an incorrect tag. I would suggest that a developer should look at what happened. Nothing serious has gone wrong, because the article on the professor has been there for six months and is still there. The redirect from draft space to article space was almost deleted. The redirect is not important but is a nice-to-have.

To repeat, the article is still in article space where it belongs. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:37, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Is there any particular forum where I should post a link to (or copy of) this report? Robert McClenon (talk) 13:38, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, I'm not understanding the issue. What do you mean by a "tag" that says "removed redirect"? What is the issue you think the devs should fix? – bradv🍁 16:44, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Bradv - If you look at the history of Draft:Ute Lotz-Heumann, you will see this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Draft:Ute_Lotz-Heumann&type=revision&diff=924740775&oldid=924740562&diffmode=source where it says "removed redirect". User:Lapablo thought that it was telling the truth, and thought that I had removed the redirect, so that the draft no longer was redirected to the article. Since this happened six months ago, it probably isn't worth worrying about, but that is what happened. As a result, I was incorrectly notified that one of my drafts was about to be deleted. Well, I get those notifications, and what has almost always happened is that I moved a sandbox into draft space six months ago. Does that finish confusing you? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:54, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, you used Twinkle to apply article templates to a redirect. That made the redirect stop working, and it made the bot no longer recognize it as a redirect, and it triggered it for G13 once it hadn't been edited for 6 months. Other than the fact that you applied the templates to the wrong page, everything appears to be working as expected. – bradv🍁 17:03, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Bradv - I think that I know why I applied the template to the wrong page by accident. I may have done an AFC accept, and then, immediately after doing the accept, I used the 'tag' function of Twinkle to apply the tag. The problem is that the AFC accept had done a page move and created the redirect in draft space, but the redirect in draft space was now the current page, and of course I was thinking about the page with the content in it. So if Twinkle were smarter, it would have asked me if I really wanted to tag a redirect. But if Twinkle were smarter, it would do other stupid-smart things. So the lesson for me is to pause and be sure where I am before clicking the tag button. Thank you. That answers that. I will still get stupid notifications that things have been G13'd. That is also that. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:19, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, yes, Twinkle does not handle edit conflicts particularly well. But in this case you edit-conflicted with yourself, so that's probably on you. ;) – bradv🍁 17:22, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Well, it seems to have worked out. Good job! ---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:02, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
See Twinkle issue. This behaviour might be fixed soon. SD0001 (talk) 15:18, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft: Revelation 13:18 (rapper)

Need informative feedback and edits to get article up to Wikipedia standards and submitted to mainspace thanks KplusWequalsU (talk) 22:19, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

KplusWequalsU, Generally it is better to ask these sorts of questions at the AfC helpdesk, but since you're here I'll try to help. For starters, do you have a conflict of interest to declare? Praxidicae previously asked you on your user talk but you didn't answer. Please reply with a yes or no before we can help you further. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 23:12, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
No, Conflict of interest looking forward to your help with article thanks KplusWequalsU (talk) 23:29, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
This regards Draft:Revelation 13:18 (rapper). I already see numerous problems such as "chemistry class of tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand." Sourcing problems include IMDb (unreliable), UncutHiphop (looks like a blog and says very little about him), CBS8 link is dead, the links about JayZ don't all mention 13:18, IssueWire is a PR site, the tweet says very little about him. Other sources may have issues, but thats what I saw from a first look. Moral: sources need a big cleanup to ensure that they are quality and that the subject is actually notable. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 23:51, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
To echo CaptainEek, anything that cannot be reliably sourced should be removed. It's a lot easier to tell if a draft is suitable if the reviewer doesn't have to wade through a swamp of unsourced and potentially controversial material. Primefac (talk) 00:15, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

(copied from misplaced location above) Is there any way you can take out the material that is not sourced right so it will improve the article citations? Appreciate it if you take a lil time to do that would appreciate your help Thanks KplusWequalsU (talk) 00:44, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Hello I appreciate your feedback on the article can you look at the article and make edits and corrections to the sources and written marterial per Wikipedia specifications so it can be stripped down so the reviewer doesn't have to wade through allot of unnecessary information to make it easier on the reviewer like mentioned. I would appreciate your contribution to the article and Wikipedia. Thanks Allot For Your Time KplusWequalsU (talk) 00:52, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Anyone know what's going on with these?

Anyone know what's going on with Template:Userspace draft/sandbox and Template:Userspace draft/testcases? I'm not even sure how the testcases one ended up in the queue as it hasn't had any edits since 2017? And the sandbox one was submitted by a two day old account? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sulfurboy (talk) 01:33, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Sulfurboy, Someone thought to submit it for review, for reasons unknowable. It showed up in the template test cases because it got transcluded as part of the template and wasn't in the "noinclude" documentation. I have removed the AfC tag, since it doesn't need it, its already in use. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 01:42, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Followup: it is the sandbox, so the point is that it is for testing. Still, the edit was at best a test, and has been undone. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 01:45, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

A new one for me...

Someone using a file on their computer as a reference is a first for me....Draft:Prohor_Račanin Facepalm Facepalm Sulfurboy (talk) 04:08, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

good job, well done. Lol. In all seriousness, the files are PDFs, and the user might have downloaded it from the internet. Funny, but at the same time we'd have to tell the user to use a "cite xxx" template. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 04:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, Yeah, comment to that effect made. If I'm going to razz the source here, then it's only appropriate that I go a little above and beyond the standard boilerplate decline. Sulfurboy (talk) 05:35, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
:-) Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:36, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, I also went WP:BOLD and redacted the name on the draft. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:59, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I've only seen it a couple of times as a ref, but there are quite a few users who have tried to use a local computer file path for an image on an article. KylieTastic (talk) 08:51, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Notability of NKN (software)

Hi, I just want a discussion over what should happen to the above mentioned article, which 1292simon accepted it and Sulfurboy draftified. The best way to resolve an AFC-related dispute is here. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:28, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Response already posted to my talk page: People occasionally accept things that aren't notable for a myriad of reasons. I've done it plenty of times. Moving it back to draftspace after an accept would be pretty unorthodox. AfD is preferable anytime two editors have differing opinions of notability. All sources I'm seeing on this subject are either unreliable, don't show sigcov or are very sector specific publications (also with questionable reliability). If you can find a good reliable sources (or the two or three that would be required for WP:GNG), then I would encourage you to add it to the article. Sulfurboy (talk) 06:30, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, the reason I'm posting here is WP:Dispute resolution. Given that there is disagreement I guess I'd hand it over to the remaining reviewers. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:54, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, Yeah you're sort of making a mountain out of a molehill here. This isn't a situation that dictates special consideration or a DR-like approach. This sometimes happens in AfC and the course of action is just taking it to AfD which is the preferred venue anytime two editors disagree on notability. Sulfurboy (talk) 07:14, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree with Sulfurboy for such things AfD is best as it gets the most eyes on. If sources exist then someone will dig them up. If sources do not exist then they will not be able to improve in draft anyway. If sources become available they can WP:REFUND. I actually think it would be good to give borderline submissions stuck in AfC the option of AfD to go for consensus over individual reviewers opinion - though it would be better and less negative if AfD stood for Articles for Discussion rather than deletion. KylieTastic (talk) 09:24, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I concur with both above responses; being accepted through AFC is not a silver bullet that immunizes a page from being sent to AFD; the general "rule" is that an accepted draft should have at least a 50/50 chance of being kept at AFD. Clearly, some times pages are deleted (I used to keep stats on this, but roughly 8% of accepted drafts are later deleted). I should also note that Sulfurboy is correct in that an accepted draft (not just "moved by the creator") should not be sent back to draft if there are issues. Primefac (talk) 15:36, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:James Britton (badminton)

Will another reviewer please take a quick look and verify that they agree with me? I had to decline this draft because it does not provide a reliable source saying that the subject won medals for badminton in the Olympics. The article on the badminton event also does not appear to have a reference. Was my action correct? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:11, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

I've added a red link for him to the disambiguation page, assuming that he will be accepted soon. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:14, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Changing the nature of the request for a check. Sneaky vandalism. Rolled back. Request another editor to check whether this has been properly cleaned up. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:18, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

ACFH promotion/advert needs G11 option

Anyone else think that AFCH option adv should also have an option to a CSD G11 at the same time similar to the copy vio option? I find that most articles that I reject for adv I think G11, and then often have to report user to UAA. KylieTastic (talk) 08:47, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with User:KylieTastic that building in the tagging as an option would be good. I don't always tag a draft as G11 after declining it as 'adv', because I will decline it for being somewhat promotional, and will only tag it if it is all or nearly all promotional, but I agree that building in the option of tagging would be good. It is true that I also then often go to UAA, but the reviewer should have to think before doing that, and also a lot of spam comes from usernames that are all right (just the spam is not all right). (But I knew someone who had a real reason for hating the canned meat that is called spam.) Robert McClenon (talk) 23:45, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Seems reasonable. Primefac (talk) 00:15, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
agreed, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:46, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
In fact, it should simultaneously add it into the CSD log (just like Twinkle does) as a record. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 10:18, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I finally got around to looking into requesting this and found it had already been requested in 2018 here - I guess no ones interested in fixing. Maybe someday I'll submit a fix myself but for now too much real-life to deal with. KylieTastic (talk) 09:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Geographic Analytics

I believe it is good to go, and hence WP:BOLDly accepting it, but would like to seek some input on my draft. The lack of inline citations might be a minor issue, as is the slightly unencyclopedic tone, but it should be otherwise good. Please comment on my decision; it's part of my learning process at AFC. Cheers, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 13:28, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Notification of new task

Hi all, just wanted to let you know that I have created a category Category:Misplaced COI declarations in draftspace to keep track of misplaced COI declarations. We can cut the backlog down to 0 (from ~100)! Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 7:57, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you User:Eumat114. How is misplaced defined? I agree it is a useful category. McClenon mobile (talk) 14:16, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
McClenon mobile, COI categories are intended to be put on userpages. Any COI declarations on a draft is considered misplaced. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 14:27, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - Okay. Gotcha. That is the COI userbox tag, which is not the same as the COI tag that can be put on either a draft or an article. I do see that some of the drafts that have misplaced COI declarations are Rejected, so I don't think that we will get the backlog down to 0, because the Rejected drafts, or any Declined drafts that are not being resubmitted, will just sit until they are devoured by G13 mold. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:29, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Some of them are non-submitted drafts. I see no reason for a reviewer to do anything with the ones that are not submitted, except to ignore them. If the draft is submitted, it can be declined, rejected, or tagged for G11. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:32, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, Oh yes, thanks. In this case, I shall just deal with those pending drafts. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 00:59, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - Many of them are stupid, which is not surprising, given that the category was misplaced. But "stupid" isn't one of the CSD reasons, although a lot of stuff that does have CSD reasons is stupid. All G3 stuff is stupid, but most stupid stuff is not G3. Most of them should be allowed to die of G13 yellow mold. A few of them do call for G11. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:06, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Also, because many of them are stupid, but there is nothing else obviously wrong with them, and they are in draft space, doing anything with them would stupidly restart the clock on them, and they should be allowed to get G13 blue mold. (It doesn't matter what color the mold is.) Robert McClenon (talk) 03:19, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert and I have long disagreed on how to handle them: I personally try to review;  ; / all drafts listed as about to be deleted, except those in popular music and sports. I usually find from each set of 200, at least 2 or 3 which should immediately be accepted: they have a decent chance of passingAfD as is; they were either declined for an incorrect reason, or formatting changes were requested but were never made. Some of them have been unquestionable accepts like members of legislatures or holders of endowed chairs. I also find from each set at least 5 or 6 that might make reasonable articles: I either start doing do, or make a comment for the changes needed. This will reset he clock, and is intended to--we need more people looking at these and and the very few others paying attention can not do everything. No reviewer should fell required to do this work, but anyone can. Ido not consider having a diversity of practices here harmful, as we do not really know what works best.
I also sometimes encounter a draft that makes usually foolish claims about someone who is presumably a school friend (or sometimes a relative or a teacher). These are true BLP hazards. Unsourced BLPS that may be intended as jokes but can be taken in a negative sense are a violation of BLP policy. ifI can reasonably call them a test page or nonsense or blatant advertisement, I list them for deletion as such at speedy; If they are obviously someone playing around with WP in this potentially harmful manner, i delete them directly, as I would any similar BLP violations. If in doubt, I sometimes use MfD, buI think tn poor practice to call attention to BLP, as MfD discussions remain visible on WP forever. the unwitting butts of bad jokes deserve better. Writing exact rules for this sort of content is difficult; deleting admins are expected to use judgement. DGG ( talk ) 00:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Gianluigi Feliu

Will a script developer or someone please look at this draft? I thought that I had declined it properly to indicate the language that it is in. However, the decline only says that it isn't in English. Looking inside the AFC submit stuff, I see that it did capture my input of Spanish, but it isn't reporting it as Spanish, only as not English.

Should I be reporting this to User:Enterprisey or to the developers or to somewhere in particular? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:44, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

It's trying to put "Spanish" as {{{3}}}, seemingly regardless of the order in which the decline rationale are selected. If |reason2=lang, then it should put |details2=Spanish, not |d|v|Spanish|. Can't tell if it's a bug on our end or on AFCH's end, though. Primefac (talk) 00:42, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Primefac and Robert McClenon, looks like a bug to report to Enterprisey. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 May 2020

HNP News india (talk) 10:53, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
We cannot consider blank requests. 331dot (talk) 10:57, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
User:331dot - Why not? Spoilsport. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:19, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

June 2020 at Women in Red

Women in Red

June 2020, Volume 6, Issue 6, Numbers 150, 151, 167, 168, 169

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--Rosiestep (talk) 17:10, 25 May 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Intellectually independent drafts

Suppose User:A created a draft Draft:(title 1) and works from there. Around the same time, User:B created an article (title 1). The two creations are completely independent of each other, and use different sources etc. What should be done in this hypothetical case? Who should be given attribution for the creation of the page? Thanks, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 02:46, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Eumat114, Is user B creating a mainspace article in this instance? You didn't put draft in front of that one so it's a bit unclear. If there's already an article in mainspace (no matter if it is a newer creation) I would just decline it and request a merge if there's something of substance to be copied over. If it's two competing drafts, then there's typically a UPE or UCOI at play. However, there are some exceptions, particularly in instances of a person/event recently in the news. In that case, I go with the older draft. The exception being if the older draft is still in someones userspace or sandbox and the newer draft already occupies the correct draft title, then I go with the newer one for convenience. E.g. User A creates Draft:Eumat in Jan 2020 and User B created User:Sulfurboy/sandbox/Eumat in Dec 2019.
However, this is just what I do, I don't know if there's some set policy or guideline in place. I imagine it's mostly an at your best discretion type of thing. Sulfurboy (talk) 03:01, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, User B is creating a mainspace article, and the content is pretty intellectually independent of the draft A created. I guess a histmerge is to be done, but the question is that who should be attributed. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:05, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, Oh you mean like how to attribute where the information that was added into the mainspace article from the draft came from? I would just add it and format the edit summary as: Copied content from [[<page name>]]; see that page's history for attribution Sulfurboy (talk) 03:10, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, I guess you're not getting the key of the problem. Under what circumstances should User A be credited with the creation of the article, and under when should User B be? If the draft was a really well-written article while the mainspace one was pretty stubby (but still independent) I think it's unkind to User:A to credit the creation of the article to User:B. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:14, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, It would be User B by default. As they are the creator of the mainspace article. Properly attributing who truly created the article is irrelevant (unless something's changed since my hiatus). I think you can have the same debate if someone takes an article from being a stub to B-Class or above. Who then is truly the creator of that page? The person who actually first created the stub, or the person who to turned the stub into an actual article? Sulfurboy (talk) 03:35, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Indeed, it all depends on circumstance. If User:A creates an Article and User:B creates a Draft, then the Article has priority. If the Draft is better than the Article, then it can be copy/pasted (using proper attribution) or just tell User:B to improve the Article. If the Article is better, then leave the Draft and tell User:B to switch their focus to the Article. Folks sometimes get too hung up on "who created the page" but that's why we have edit histories. Primefac (talk) 00:13, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
No, no, and for a third time no. Two pages that are intellectually independent (i.e. they're nothing alike) should never be histmerged. Ever. Full stop. There is an admin in particular who will histmerge without even looking, and it drives me nuts. Primefac (talk) 00:11, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
I'd defininitely just merge the draft and the mainspace page, and redirect from draftspace. PrussianOwl (talk) 17:20, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

WMF Growth team

Hi all -- I'm Marshall Miller; I'm the product manager for the WMF Growth team, which works on features to increase the retention of new editors. I last worked with AfC reviewers in 2018, on improvements to the New Pages Feed, and I'm back because I know this group knows a lot about new editors and how to help them. I'll keep this brief so as not to take up too much of your talk page with something not directly related to AfC.

Screenshot of suggested edits module in Czech Wikipedia

Over the last year or so, the Growth team has been piloting features in small Wikipedias meant to increase productive edits from newcomers (such as the "suggested edits module" shown here). As our features become more developed, we're planning on expanding to larger wikis, and so I created this project page on English Wikipedia, looking to gather thoughts from English Wikipedians who think about new editors. I hope some of you can check out that page and leave any of your thoughts on the talk page, so that as we think about deploying features to bigger wikis, we'll take your ideas and concerns into account.

The latest idea we're thinking about is called "structured tasks". The idea builds on our previous work of task recommendations for newcomers, but is geared toward breaking down simple editing workflows (like copyediting or adding wikilinks) into steps that are easy for newcomers to accomplish, potentially assisted by algorithms. We are asking for thoughts and opinions on the project here on the talk page. I hope to see some of you in the conversation! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Editor retention is a huge concern in the English Wikipedia, particularly in AFC. COI or not, one of the most satisfying things for a new editor (like me :)) was a new article. Unfortunately, as article reviewing typically takes 6 weeks (up to now) and frankly speaking, I've been through a wait and a 1-month wait honestly isn't the most editor-retaining thing. Hence, I believe that a potential editor retaining way is to review newbie drafts before drafts from experienced users. And of course, the newbie homepage is a terrific idea, and perhaps when faced with a draft, the newbie can ask the mentor to review it? Anyone good enough to be a mentor should also be good enough to review at AFC. Thanks for the great idea, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 01:55, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Eumat114. I'm glad to hear you like the concept of the newcomer homepage, and I think it's a great idea to use it to provide more hooks for mentors to be involved with their mentees. We've thought about whether we can encourage mentors to review the suggested edits that their newcomers do via the homepage, or whether the newcomers could proactively request that mentors review their work. Adding new page creations there would make a lot of sense. Please stay in touch with any other thoughts or ideas! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
I like the idea! Keep up the good work, we've had a long-time problem with editor retention. PrussianOwl (talk) 17:25, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Drafts for pages that already exist

Is there a "speedy" option similar to Speedy Deletion or PROD to address Drafts younger than 6 months that are for articles that already exist? I have Draft:Yugoslavia_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest_1968 (as created) and Draft:Eurovision Choir 2021 (as created) that are no longer being edited because the real articles now exist. Is protocol to just wait out the 6 months until they are automatically deleted or are there housekeeping options? Grk1011 (talk) 13:40, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Two options, the first being to leave it and let G13 take over, the second being to redirect the draft to the main page. The latter is really only necessary if there was more than one (or two) people editing the draft (for attribution issues etc). Primefac (talk) 15:38, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
As always, merge and redirect if you ask me. PrussianOwl (talk) 17:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Another Question About Drafts for Articles That Exist

I have another question about drafts on topics where the article already exists. These are declined with the 'exists' reason. My question is what should be done if the submitter resubmits the stub draft anyway, in particular when a Class C article already exists. (Well, the article was rated Stub class and should have been Class C, and, in the absence of any rule saying that I can't re-rate an article, I re-reated it Class C.) The specific question is about Draft:Sidhauli. The more general question is what to do in a similar situation. Either there is something that I don't understand, or there is something that the submitter doesn't understand, or there may be a language problem, that the submitter may not understand the advice that we are giving. Thoughts? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:55, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

  • Robert McClenon they are two places with the same name in the same state but different district. I've seen a few declines for exists where the subject was different, or in one case just a redirect. I was just about it would be nice if submitters told us why, but then i realised I had not checked - see the talk page they did. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 16:04, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
User:KylieTastic - In that case, we need to disambiguate, and reviewers understand disambiguation better than new editors. That answers that. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:08, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft and Article at Same Time

A situation that I have seen repeatedly in the past week or two is where the submitter has created two nearly identical pages on the same topic, one in draft space and one in article space. Obviously the one in article space was created after they had been registered for four days and made ten edits. The problem is that in these cases it typically isn't clear whether the article should be an article. The draft can be declined because there is already an article. But there are really three possible outcomes. The first is that the article should be kept in article space. It was promoted by the author without review, but AFC review is optional, except for COI editors. If so, the draft can be redirected to the article. The second is that the page should be in draft space, a reasonable topic, but not ready for article space. The author has made draftifying impossible, so the choices are: G11 or A7; PROD; or AFD. The third outcome occasionally is that it doesn't belong anywhere.

Are there any more thoughts on what to do when an editor has created a draft and an article at the same time, and the page isn't ready for mainspace? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:05, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I've usually redirected the article to the draft with a summary of "one copy is enough" (or "one copy is more than enough" if it's particularly poor quality) then tagged the draft with {{subst:AFC draft| username}} and the article (now a redir) as WP:R2. I've not encountered any objection thus far. Cabayi (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2020 1#Dealing with author "accepting" their own draft. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 17:32, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Pearson Regional Transit Centre

Per WP:OUTCOMES, a transit hub in a major metro area would almost certainly be kept at AfD. But what if it doesn't actually exist yet? Am I right in thinking this draft is WP:TOOSOON? SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 16:58, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

There are a lot of things that could happen between now and 2030. If I remember back when I was doing a bunch of maintenance work with the Shanghai and other Chinese metro lines, generally any new expansion would get a paragraph or two on the main "line" page until it had actually been built or was close enough to merit a spinoff. In other words, yes, it's a case of TOOSOON. Primefac (talk) 20:00, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Turkish military intervention in the Second Libyan Civil War

As I write this, Turkish military intervention in the Second Libyan Civil War appears to being nearing the end of the AfC process. I came across the article with the New Pages Patrol and considered it to be incomplete, so I (in good faith) moved it to draft space with a full explanation to the article's creator. This resulted in me being accused by someone else of censorship on the article's talk page and at my own talk page. I can deal with the accuser myself. But AfC reviewers here should be aware that the article has several empty sections, as was also noted by someone else at the article's talk page. My assessment is that it should remain in draft form until it is much closer to the point where interested members of the community have something concrete to work with. That is merely my opinion, but I do hope that the folks here will consider how an article full of holes makes Wikipedia look. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 14:49, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

@Doomsdayer520: Moving it to draft and trying to persuade the author to develop it further is fine, but bear in mind that the terms of WP:DRAFTIFY say that if anyone objects (and, if you're being accused of censorship, it sounds like someone has), you're obliged to move the page back to article space. An article full of holes makes Wikipedia look like what it is, a work perpetually in progress. It isn't pretty, but that's the nature of the beast. --Worldbruce (talk) 18:27, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
No real arguments here, but I received no requests to reverse my draftify move. User:Biomax20 brought the article back to namespace, and then accused me of deleting the article (which I might add would have made his/her own move impossible), and went on to accuse me of censorship at my own talk page. The responses in this thread agree that I should not have draftified, and I will accept that. But allow me to add that the article's talk page, and the personal talk pages of its two main editors, indicate that others have notice a misuse of procedures and WP terminology. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 20:44, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Doomsdayer520, I don't think draftifying was the right move here. Yes it needs expansion, but it would not be unequivocally deleted in mainspace, and it is getting about 5,000 views a month, which is far more than the average approved draft. It has the necessary cleanup tags, and now it will hopefully be seen by a wider audience who would be willing to improve it. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:57, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
I have at least two comments. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Censorship

The policy that Wikipedia is not censored is probably unfortunately titled, because for every dispute that is really about censorship, in the sense intended by the author of the policy, there are several cases where someone is Yelling Censorship in order to "win" a content dispute, as my essay, Yelling Censorship, explains. Usually when someone yells "Censorship", the dispute is really either undue weight or verifiability. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Move Wars

I do not know why some reviewers are willing to engage in move wars over pages that are not ready for article space, and why they insist on moving them back into draft space more than once. If the author of a page insists that they want to publish the page in mainspace and it isn't ready for mainspace, that can be resolved by Articles for Deletion. Move wars are at least as disruptive as regular edit wars. Don't move war. Use a dispute resolution process in place of a war. I don't know why some reviewers think that AFD is more harmful than a move war. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, well I see a reason why sending an accepted draft to AFD soon after the acceptance is harmful, especially for GF content creators. An AFD is one of the most off-putting things that can ever happen to a new user, which is why I left the Classical Chinese Wikipedia and joined the English Wikipedia. I also know, from my experience, that having an article declined is better than having it sent to AFD, even if the response takes some time. AFC is meant to serve new users, and neither a move war nor sending borderline cases to AFD achieve that. That is, unfortunately, one reason why Wikipedia isn't too editor-retaining. But as you mentioned, disputes over suitability (AFD) are best served at the right place (WP:AFD). When the right place defeats the purpose of AFC, we'll have to break out.
In this case, I have a potential idea: set up a "draft discussion area" inside AFC invisible to new users. This behind-the-scene activity can comprise AFC reviewers or otherwise non-AFC-reviewing experienced users; their job is to take some time to "simulate" an AFD as if the draft were in article space. Drafts accepted this way is supposed to be immune from AFD, since the draft discussion acts as an AFD. It might take 1 week or less, but the wait won't be particularly large as compared to the mean AFC waiting time. Is this a good idea? Thanks, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:45, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - I agree that sending an accepted article from AFC to AFD is harmful, and sending an article from NPP to AFD is also undesirable. Sending an article from NPP to draft is less undesirable. (All ways of dealing with a good-faith new editor who has written a page that is completely unready for article space are undesirable. We just have to do the least undesirable thing.) However, my concern about move-warring has to do with the case where the author of an article moves it back into article space after it was already draftified once. This is probably a good-faith editor anyway, but a stubborn good-faith editor. The choices are to leave the bad article in article space the second time, or to move it back to draft space a second time, which is a move-war, or to tag it for AFD. AFD is less harmful than a move-war. We can't "win" the move-war without using admin tools to move-protect the page, and that isn't what admin tools were meant for. The community "wins" the AFD. The AFD does result in some hard feelings, but the move-war also results in hard feelings, and is disruptive. Just conceding and leaving the bad article in article space isn't an option, because someone will either CSD it or PROD it or AFD it. My point is that draftifying an article a second or third time is disruptive and stubborn. Some reviewers seem to think that draftifying it repeatedly is less bad than AFD. Some reviewers apparently think that AFD must be avoided at all costs. I disagree. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, I understand that a move war is undesirable. And I concur with you. And given that a move war represents a disagreement between editors, which must be resolved, an AFD is the standard avenue for resolving this disagreement. But the key point of my argument is that an AFD is so off-putting to editors that this is to be avoided (that's the point of AFC).
Therefore, my suggestion is holding an "invisible AFC" that discusses a draft in "backstage" and ends with a decision to accept/decline, and is seen as a full substitute of an AFD. There can be a user script that shows the "draft for discussion" notice for sufficiently experienced users. I hope this substitute successfully solves the problem. Cheers, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 00:14, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - I agree that some procedure for discussion by other experienced editors of whether a draft can be accepted would be a good idea. I think that suggestions on how to do this would be useful. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:40, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, I'm gonna get WP:BOLD in creating a start-up of a Drafts for Consideration page at User:Eumat114/DFC. Please feel free to work on a basic structure, and then we can bring it to the Village Pump. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 04:27, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Maybe I'm misreading the discussion, but there is zero reason to have any sort of "pre-AFD" via AFC, because that's essentially what AFC is. If a draft is moved to the article space, then draftified, then moved back to the article space, it needs to then go through AFD. It is the epitome of pointless to war over the location of a page; if the creator insists that it be an article, and someone else disagrees, then AFD is the way to go. Primefac (talk) 14:41, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
@Eumat114: You have no consensus for your proposal and you can expect to be rebuked at Village Pump. I agree with Primefac that AfD is the process. I'm sorry but I cannot empathize with your hurt feelings. AfD is a discussion to see if an article meets notability criteria. It is not a referendum on the editor who created the article. It is not a struggle session where the community punishes unpopular people. It's not even a discussion about the subject of the article! It is simply a matter of finding consensus regarding notability. That's it. As for retention, we have editors active on this platform who started 15 years ago. That you, personally, have heartburn does not mean there is something wrong with AfD. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:55, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Well then forget what I have been talking about. Thanks for your input; you may delete any page I have created for this mess. Cheers, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 15:02, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Too far away from the original discussion

I started this whole mess by (in good faith) moving the article to draft space because I thought it was incomplete, and sent a message to the article creator to that effect, which by the way is an accepted procedure at Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol#Tools. I have already admitted above that this was an inappropriate step for this particular article so there is no need for additional argument about that, but I wonder if anybody in this thread actually inspected the history of the article, in which there were calls for more info followed by inaccurate condemnations, long before I came along. Did such accusations spook the AfC process?

I would have reversed the draftify move per reasonable request, which did not happen. Instead, a different user named Biomax20 reversed the move, then used two talk pages to accuse me of two things inaccurately: deleting the article (procedurally inaccurate) and censorship (possibly "yelling censorship" as discussed above). And now I may or may not have been accused here of engaging a "move war", when all I did was read the article as someone who knew nothing about the topic and found that it still taught me very little in its incomplete form. I started the discussion here with the contention that an incomplete article may not be ready to graduate the AfC process, so perhaps that is worth exploring. But THIS article has issues of its own. Oh well, perhaps someday I will learn from a much more informative version, after whatever it is that you guys do to encourage editors to help get it ready for prime time. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 17:52, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Articles for Creation: List of reviewers by subject notice

Hi WikiProject Articles for creation, you are receiving this notice because you are listed as an active Articles for Creation reviewer.

Recently a list of reviewers by area of expertise was created. This notice is being sent out to alert you to the existence of that list, and to encourage you to add your name to it. If you or other reviewers come across articles in the queue where an acceptance/decline hinges on specialist knowledge, this list should serve to facilitate contact with a fellow reviewer.

To end on a positive note, the backlog has dropped below 1,500, so thanks for all of the hard work some of you have been putting into the AfC process!

Sent to all Articles for Creation reviewers as a one-time notice. To opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Regards, Sam-2727 (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

One-time notice to reviewers

It was discussed a while ago about sending out a one time notice to active AfC participants about the existence of the list of active reviewers. The discussion kind of died out, but I still think it's a good idea. I created a draft here of what I was thinking should be sent out: User:Sam-2727/Draft AFC Message. Pinging Sulfurboy as I mainly had the discussion with them. Please look at the draft message I created and think if it would be a good idea to send out. If so, I can organize the mass message list/request the mass message. Regards, Sam-2727 (talk) 21:34, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

User:Sam-2727 - I say yes. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:54, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Sam-2727, Looks great. Primefac, what would need to be done to get this sent out? Sulfurboy (talk) 02:29, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Theroadislong (talk) 02:46, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Sulfurboy, what I need to do is format the participants into a list that is parsable by the mass message sender special page. I'm doing this now. As an administrator, Primefac can send it, although it's probably quicker to just request at Wikipedia talk:Mass message senders, it seems requests are answered within hours there. Sam-2727 (talk) 02:53, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
The list has been created at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Mass Message List. Now all that needs to be done is send it to the mass messagers. I'll send it in 12 hours or so just to solicit other input here. Sam-2727 (talk) 03:02, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Sam-2727, you have my support. I've just done a few tweaks so it looks better. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:52, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, thanks. One quick question: When you change the signature to four tildes, how would it just leave the signature of the mass message delivery vs. my signature? Sam-2727 (talk) 15:21, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Sam-2727, when it is substituted I guess the signature of the mass message sender is generated instead of your signature. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 15:27, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Eumat114, is that desirable? Perhaps change it to noping so there isn't a ping but it stlil has my signature. Sam-2727 (talk) 15:32, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
I changed it, and it seems to be working now. Sam-2727 (talk) 15:55, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Just a thought, I have been thinking that we have a lot of "active" and inactive reviewers that probably don't review because they they were only interested in some subjects, or articles that have a chance rather than just swat the junk. I've ben thinking we need to send a note to all reviewers to inform them to try get more actually reviewing. So maybe add a note that we now have Wikipedia:AfC sorting so reviewers can pick by subject and proposed class. Also I quoted "active" because the list has 442 entries + 12 probation but in the last month approx only 156 reviewed at least one. Then if that encouraged people back we could message the 563 inactive. Regards KylieTastic (talk) 16:38, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
    KylieTastic, Well it was just sent... But maybe in the future we can send out something for that (perhaps a bi-yearly newsletter). Sam-2727 (talk) 16:39, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes worst timing ever... hit publish and it says I have a message....guess what. DOH! KylieTastic (talk)
And to be honest, if anything people should be encouraged to switch their attention to NPP. The AfC backlog is at least decreasing in size. Sam-2727 (talk) 18:39, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd strongly disagree with that - most complete crap in article space still gets caught quickly, so all it means is some low/no notability stuff takes a while to be caught and deleted (and vast amounts of historic junk lives on anyway). The poor suckers submitting to AfC had to wait up to 5+ months to get a first response, even now 5 weeks is way to long and will just put off so many good editors. If I had tactually started with article writing as i intended, and had even had to wait 5 weeks there is no way I would have bothered to continue. AfC is a new editor retention killer in it's current state. The backlog is already creeping up again, and in all the years I've been doing this we've never got it below ~800 and people waiting weeks. This project has never worked as intended (IMHO), yet it seams more people are willing to just draftify over AfD just adding more load, or force editors to use AfC who spam us with 50 poor articles at a time. Most WikiProjects don't care (like we have 50+ football articles). If it's got to the point that even AfC people say don't bother do something else then maybe it's time to just give up on Draft/AfC as a failed idea. KylieTastic (talk) 19:18, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
User:KylieTastic- On the one hand, I agree that AFC is not working well and has never been working well. But if we give up on it, what do we replace it with? Three types of drafts mostly go into Draft space, drafts that are submitted by the author, conflict of interest drafts, and articles that are draftified. Would we be telling the new editors to submit their work into article space, and are we willing to send it to AFD? Would we be telling the NPP reviewers that, without draftify as an option, they should send crud to AFD? And what would we do about the COI submissions? Would we tell them to use Requested Articles instead? That is a black hole that takes not a few months but a few years. I agree that AFC and Drafts are not working well. But what is the alternative? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert McClenon (talk • contribs) 13:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
KylieTastic, While I agree with your point that AfC could certainly be improved a lot, I review NPP from the back occasionally, and still find articles that are blatantly paid for or obvious COI. Sam-2727 (talk) 15:08, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Rebecca Harris (filmmaker)

Will someone please look at this draft? What is the role of Rebecca Harris on The Silent Child? Robert McClenon (talk) 13:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Robert McClenon: She was there when the Oscar was picked up. There is a story with a pic of her holding it. Definitely part of the core team that brought the film to fruition. scope_creepTalk 16:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Inactive thresholds too strict?

I noticed that 37% of the reviewer requests for the past two months have been re-activation requests. That signals to me that our inactive thresholds may be too strict and we are de-activating lots of people who still want to participate. I realize that we want to make sure reviewers are up on current guidelines and practices, but I don't think taking a 2-month break from editing (or a 6-month break from reviewing) is going to cause people to be significantly out of touch with current practices. Kaldari (talk) 15:18, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Agree. SD0001 (talk) 16:20, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
This is a little bit of a false dichotomy, actually; no one has actually been added to the inactive list for quite a while[1], and the only major change is the location of said list. AFCH has (for a while now) been pulling any name on the page (inactive section or not) and allowed them access. I moved the inactives to their own page both to combat this issue and to keep the size of WP:AFCP down to a reasonable level. The reactivations are (as near as I can tell) folks who "went inactive" years ago, then came back and started reviewing (despite being on the inactive list) and are only now being restricted because of the changes I made in February. Primefac (talk) 17:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ I think I stopped pruning back in early 2019

Draft:Jigarthanda (soundtrack)

I would like the thoughts of other reviewers on what to do with this draft. It appears to me that it passes musical notability, and that would be the basis of any AFD. However, the history is that there was an article, and it has been stubbed down to a redirect. I can't find a deletion discussion or merge discussion that was the basis of a consensus to merge, so my first thought and second thought is to accept the draft, but that would seem to involve a history merge. So my third thought is to ask for other opinions before asking for a history merge, and my fourth thought is that asking for other opinions is usually either a good idea or a neutral idea.

What should we do about this draft? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:19, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, that's a lot of thoughts. What you're proposing seems to be the correct course of action here as this version has more content the verison pre-redirect, and redirects are one editor's opinion on a topic. If someone truly wants to turn this into a redirect again, they can bring it to AfD. Sam-2727 (talk) 03:30, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon as it was User:AmericanAir88 that redirected Jigarthanda (soundtrack) to Jigarthanda and merged into Jigarthanda (2014 film) with this stating "Merging per discussion" you could ask for their input as they are still active. ( I have fixed the redirect). Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 11:17, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
See Talk:Jigarthanda (2014 film) for discussion KylieTastic (talk) 11:18, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
User:KylieTastic, User:Sam-2727 - On thinking about it, since there was discussion, I am inclined to think that the redirect needs to be re-discussed, and so my thinking is that I will nominate the redirect at Redirects for Discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:18, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Anniyan (soundtrack)

This is a similar history and the same question. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:26, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Was this one discussed? It isn't obvious to me on first look. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:18, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Draftify from users sandbox issue...

I had previously draftified User:Ipowlick/sandbox and that article was accepted, the user then created a new draft in their sandbox and moved to draft Draft:Tripple X III. They then asked me how to submit which I did for them. However I then noticed the original draftify has left me as the creator of that article which does not seam fair or correct. I've also noticed this has happened before crediting me with creating Asipim and Move/Daisies (song) (now deleted). This is a consequence I hadn't considered and had not seen mentioned before. Not sure what should be done. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 08:36, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Nothing? It's clear by the page history that you weren't the creator of the content, just the redirect, and even if an admin were to delete the page for the sole purpose of restoring it without that initial creation, from a MW standpoint they wouldn't "get credit" on anything like xtools etc. Primefac (talk) 14:08, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Reviewer competent in Ukrainian needed

Most of the sources of Draft:Alen Panov are in Ukrainian,so I'm unable to evaluate them. The acceptance or rejection of this draft depends on the WP:DEPTH of the sources. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:09, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

User:Dodger67 - Is it an autobiography?  Robert McClenon (talk) 21:32, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't think so. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:46, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Dodger67 and Robert McClenon, we can use the new list of reviewers by expertise.
Analysis
There are no reviewers good at Ukrainian, and Russian is the closest possible language. GRuban is the best man for the job, since Hellknowz is not willing to review biographies. In the future, this process may be automated. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:44, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Will review, thanks for asking. --GRuban (talk) 12:42, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Reviewed, as per User:GRuban/Alen Panov. In short,

  • the subject is notable, so I am pushing the article to main space,
  • but the article needs expansion, the Ukrainian Wikipedia article could be a big help for that
  • and the main image is possibly a copyright violation, and needs an email to OTRS to confirm it is freely released by the copyright owner. --GRuban (talk) 14:39, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Automation of list of reviewers by subject

Eumat114, Sdkb and I were discussing potential automation of the list of reviewers by subject, even extending a request for review to be automatic. Feedback and advice would be appreciated at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/List of reviewers by subject#Tie in to userboxes? or here. Thanks, Sam-2727 (talk) 20:54, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Transwiki-ing drafts

I was wondering, do you think it'd be a good idea to transwiki pages from the Draft: namespace to other wikis, to see if they pass muster there? Specifically in this case a Czech draft and a Persian draft. PrussianOwl (talk) 01:45, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

PrussianOwl, If you're familiar with other wiki's notability guidelines, then go for it. Just keep in mind each wiki has different standards for notability. Sulfurboy (talk) 05:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Template merger discussion

Template:AFC submission/draft/HD preload has been nominated for merging. Please see the nomination and comment there if desired. Thanks. Primefac (talk) 23:36, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AfC sorting updates

Hey, Wikipedia:AfC sorting currently only updates once a day, but for those that work at the other end it's already quite out of date (in parts). I'm not sure every hour is needed as Template:AFC statistics/pending does (at least when replag is not too high), but maybe updating a bit more often would be helpful now it's gained some traction. Unless there is a technical reason, or restriction I think it would be helpful due to the amount of submissions each day. Was/is there a reason for daily @SD0001:? — Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 18:51, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I also think that would be nice - I noticed that yesterday (I don't know if this is usually a problem or if it was a one-off) it was at least a couple hours behind. Looking at a couple histories it might have been as much as 18 hours, so I'm going to assume that was a one-off issue. LittlePuppers (talk) 22:07, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
Sure. It takes the bot just about 15 minutes to generate the updates. Would it make sense to update it every 6 hours? SD0001 (talk) 11:47, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
@SD0001: 6 hours sounds good to me, if people want to see newer ones they can just trawl through the latest submits in the 0 Day cat and ignore those not of interest. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 12:07, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Done. By the way, if any developer is interested, some further work related to the various sortlists is planned. See User:SDZeroBot#To do. SD0001 (talk) 17:39, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Football

I notice we have a lot of football submission... I have been tagging them so they appear on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Football/Article_alerts#AFC but the list now shows 56 so I guess the project is not very active (at least in draft). So from WP:AFC/RBS pinging @Drat8sub: @Eagleash: @HitroMilanese: @Number 57: @SK2242: as interested reviewers. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 14:14, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

KylieTastic, the majority of the drafts seem to be from the same user, who used to be under some discretionary sanctions which seemed to be lifted. Given that most of the drafts are of good quality, I don't see a lot of huge problems. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:18, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
This user is also aware of the notability policy around WP:NFOOTY, which puts reviewers in a bind for declining. Bkissin (talk) 16:10, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, but many footballers who fail WP:NFOOTY end up being notable. And most footballers passing WP:NFOOTY already have articles written by fans. So there really is no need to decline, if the player is sufficiently close to notability. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 03:48, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Copy-Paste Question (Draft into Article Space)

I have a question about a situation that seems to be occurring at least daily. I probably have only been noticing it daily in recent days, because it probably has long been happening. A draft has been sitting in draft space waiting to be reviewed. Maybe it has been reviewed and declined at least once and resubmitted; that is not important. Then an editor, often a newly auto-confirmed editor, not one of the previous contributors to the draft, comes along and does a copy-paste of the draft into article space. In that case, attribution has been lost. It is my understanding that a history merge from the draft into the article is required. Twinkle can be used to tag the article as needing a history merge. The draft must be declined for 'exists', and an explanation should be made that the draft was copy-pasted into article space and a history merge is required. Sometimes editors get annoyed about having credit or awards or whatever stolen, but this really is a case where there is a mechanism for restoring credit. Is that correct so far? The copy-pasting editor who put the article in article space can be given a Twinkle template. However, here is the complication. The draft may have been declined for notability or verifiability or tone reasons. I have concerns about the article. The article cannot be draftified. I tag the article as having notability issues. Is there something else that can be done? The article cannot be draftified.

Robert McClenon (talk) 15:49, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, the article could be draftified after the history merge by tagging the redir in draft space for a G6 speedy deletion. This happens all the time for obstructed moves, although not usually to draft space. However, whether a move back to draft is wise is another question. If a good-faith editor thinks it should be in mainspace, move warring is not the best idea. You could: 1) start a discussion on the article talk page about what to do, pinging the original creator and any other interested editors; 2) tag for notability and any other concerns and do nothing further; 3) edit to fix as many concerns as you can; 4) send to AfD. There are drawbacks to each of these. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 19:26, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
User:DESiegel - Yes. Option 2 is the honest lazy way out. Option 1 is a slightly less lazy honest way out. Options 3 and 4 sound like work, and I was already working a queue. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Yep, Robert McClenon, 3 and 4 would entail time and effort, and you may not choose to invest them or have them to spare. If you really think re-draftification is the best solution, tag the draft with {{Db-move}} and I or another admin will address the matter. None of threse is an ideal solution, I'm fresh out of those. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 19:56, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
I never think that re-draftification is a solution to something that has been already draftified once. I think that PROD is sometimes a quick and dirty measure in such cases. If the author de-PRODs it, someone else is likely to do the work of AFD. (Of course, a good PROD requires writing a good PROD reason. Somehow PROD doesn't seem like as much work to me.) Robert McClenon (talk) 23:20, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
To answer the first question, as stated, it should be {{histmerge}}'d. Whether this is a histmerge to article space or a "histmerge" (i.e G6/move/then restore versions) to the Draft space is up to the reviewer. If it's been draftified before, then it should go to PROD or AFD. Primefac (talk) 00:37, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

We shouldn't approve articles with deprecated sources

Is there any way to easily spot and not approve the use of deprecated sources, e.g. the Daily Mail or The Sun? They shouldn't be in almost any Wikipedia article, but almost all new uses of these sources seem to come in via AFC. (Usually on self-promotional articles.) There's an edit filter for deprecated sources - is there a way to get it to kick in here? - David Gerard (talk) 22:52, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

@David Gerard: I don't know the answer to your question about the edit filter, but if unreliable sources is a particular concern for you, you might wish to try User:Headbomb/unreliable. It will make some drafts unpleasant to look at, but they're ones that are usually unpleasant to read anyway. --Worldbruce (talk) 23:24, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
The mere use of a deprecated source should not be grounds for rejection, and almost all of the deprecated sources have some circumstances in which they may properly be used, so I think the kind of automated reaction that an edit filter gives would be a mistake. Now a script to draw attention to such sources, so that the reviewer can point them out and take them into accou8nt in making review decisions, that might well be useful. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:41, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
The language at WP:DEPS is currently being strengthened on this point - see WT:DEPS.
While you could stretch to find a philosophical reason, there are pretty much no reasons why a user new enough to be going through AFC should be using deprecated sources.
In practice, the usages coming through AFC are bad. AFC shouldn't actually be just another inlet for this stuff - David Gerard (talk) 08:07, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Let's remember that the core purpose of AfC is to accept any submission that would probably survive an AfD. That's it. There is no way that using deprecated sources alone would get an article deleted. If they turn up in AfC submissions, just remove them, or if you can't spare the time, tag it with {{Unreliable sources}} and wait for someone else to do it. – Joe (talk) 09:22, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
    • It would be a very strong argument for it, however. If a BLP shows up cited to nothing but the Daily Mail, it usually gets speedied. If that BLP came through AFC, that's absolutely a failure of AFC - David Gerard (talk) 12:12, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft: Avyar

NAC:Draft went to A10 neverneverland. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:22, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

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

I'm going to be entirely honest, I've probably handled this poorly, but would someone mind looking at Draft:Avyar and my talk and providing feedback/advice, as the author seems a bit... confrontational? (Pinging Amkgp and Sulfurboy because why not, and also for having previous involvement with the draft (and user) but being smart enough to not reply too many times.) Should I just ignore it at this point (or rather... a long time ago)?

Also... is it bad that I came back to Wikipedia (after a bit of a break) last week and I already feel like I need to take a break again? LittlePuppers (talk) 01:05, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

LittlePuppers, unfortunately many new editors are quite toxic (and to be honest, some parts of Wikipedia in general) when you decline their draft. In the future for situations like these, I would just say "please direct further comments to the AfC help desk" or something amongst those lines. Editors there have good practice in toning down an argument, and once the conversation is archived, that's the end of it!. Clearly the editor doesn't get what you're saying so at this point I would de-escalate the situation by giving shorter and shorter responses. Sam-2727 (talk) 02:20, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree that it is best not to try to engage in discussion on one's talk page. I usually say that I will request the advice of other experienced editors at the Teahouse; the AFC help desk is another reasonable option. It is hard to say how much of the problem here is a linguistic disconnect. I would also add that in the past some editors have insisted on trying to provide me with the sources or the explanation rather than putting it in the article, which implies that they don't understand the concept that the encyclopedia should speak for itself. That is, they are in good faith confused as to how the encyclopedia works, and we have to keep them straight. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:24, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
I had tried to explain the same when asked via my talk page. I highlighted the problems with that version. But the creator was in a constant denial mode. I also asked to post further queries and assistance at Teahouse. Thank you. ~ Amkgp ✉ 05:46, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for all of your guys' ideas, I'll point them in that direction. I guess I'm just frustrated because I think there's good intent in there somewhere, plus the language barrier. LittlePuppers (talk) 06:44, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
I've rejected it this time, and have told them not to try to resubmit it without discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:37, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
They have responded both at the AFC Help Desk and on some of our talk pages with insults. I said that the subject probably was notable but the draft did not establish notability. I have said that in the past. I think that it means that you need to write a better draft. They said that has a double meaning, which is that the content is not welcome in Wikipedia. That's a really bizarre reply. At this point I am willing to leave them alone and see if they go away. If they do, it is unfortunate that they were a net negative, but have gone away. If they continue to insult us, then either an uninvolved administrator will give them a block, or an editor will report them at WP:ANI, where an uninvolved administrator will give them a block. Oh well. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:46, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
I told them that they are an auto-confirmed editor and can move the article into article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:56, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
I reported them at WP:ANI with diffs of insults to reviewers, and of their strange diatribe at the Help Desk. We shall see. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Polygala Stubs

From User:Starzoner. Another of the occasional reminders that we are letting in good encyclopedic content as well as keeping out crud. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:05, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

hello, yes I've put some effort into creating good plant stubs. Starzoner (talk) 02:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Thank you. I will comment to the other reviewers that I think species with proper taxonomy are one case where we should be not merely accepting stubs but actively welcoming them, because the stubs represent an expansion of knowledge. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Just a quick note

Just a note, I've changed a few of the subtemplates of {{AFC status}} so that if a draft gets submitted with the "wrong" timestamp (usually something old that someone submits without changing the dates) it won't throw off the "danger meter". I will note that {{AfC category navbar}} will continue working as usual, so if you see a single submission in "Very old" even if you don't want to review it, at least bump it to the right submit date. Primefac (talk) 18:15, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Primefac: but what if I want to be in the Danger Zone? Hasteur (talk) 19:49, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
No doubt there's a highway to get there. Careful, though, or you might find yourself in Jurassic Park. Primefac (talk) 19:58, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
User:Primefac - What is the Danger Zone? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
When there are "very old" submissions (i.e. 6-month-old drafts waiting review) the {{AFC status}} template displays a white "overloaded" message. Primefac (talk) 16:47, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Adam Schleifer

Will someone please review this draft? I have declined it twice. As a candidate for the United States House of Representatives, he does not satisfy political notability. The previous two declined drafts were largely about this campaign. The draft has now been trimmed down to where it is focused on general notability. My thinking would be to decline it, but maybe I am biased now. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Accept button won't work

See § Problem with submit button Primefac (talk) 17:04, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

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

I can decline and comment on articles, but for some reason the accept button won't work for me. Is anybody else having this problem? Sam-2727 (talk) 14:15, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes see my comments above, I've been having the same problem for days now. I can only comment or decline but not accept using safari or Firefox. Theroadislong (talk) 14:18, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Theroadislong, I missed that. Thanks for pointing out the previous discussion. Sam-2727 (talk) 14:31, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sarcocornia perennis

I will explain what happened here, which was the result of a good-faith reviewer following the rules when the rule was wrong. User:Sam-2727 draftified this page from article space to draft space as undersourced. It was only a stub with one source. It was then tagged R2 in mainspace, which should be done when an article is properly draftified. The problem is that it should not have been draftified, but there was no way that the reviewer could have known that it should not have been draftified. It was a species, and a species is an addition to human knowledge, and should be in the encyclopedia. About two or three years ago, I proposed a special notability guideline that every species (or other taxon) is ipso facto notable. This was a failed proposal because other editors thought it was not necessary, because it was obvious that a species is notable. Maybe the question is whether a species is sufficiently notable that it should be included with only one source. I think so. There will be other sources later, but we should include the species in a compendium of human knowledge. User:Theroadislong said that it should be accepted, but they didn't have an Accept button. That was because there was a redirect tagged for R2 in the way. So what I did was to move the redirect from article space into user space, and then accepted the stub. So we now have a species stub, which is the desired end result. My question is what can be done to avoid this in the future, to ensure that a species is in article space. First, don't draftify it, but the editor was doing what they should have done. Second, maybe, accept the special notability guide, just for the information of good-faith reviewers? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:45, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree, plant species are automatically notable, and should be accepted even as one source stubs. I do think some better guidance for casual reviewers might be in order, especially for things below the rank of species. Subspecies, hybrids, and varieties need to meet GNG. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:03, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Well although I agree all species are notable I would not have accepted with just the original source if submitted in draft but commented needs more sources or for one source a better one - However I also would not have draftified either but tagged as under-sourced and watchlisted to come back and fix later if no one else had (but the chance of a plant stub not being improved in the first 48hours is very rare). Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 18:09, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Back Market

I am calling the attention of reviewers to Draft:Back Market and Draft:Back Market/2 as what may be a new game by submitters. The submitter is saying, "Please revise this draft for me so that you don't think that it is promotional". If a topic is clearly notable and doesn't have an article, it is the job of neutral editors to develop a neutral article. However, in this case, there are both notability issues and tone issues. This is the sort of page where, in article space, an editor can !vote Delete because, if the promotional content is stripped out, not much is left. As you can see, I Rejected both versions of the draft, and that will probably be the end of that, but it may be a new annoying game that we should be ready for. (I would have declined the drafts, except that asking us to do the work of writing the article annoyed me.)

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this, other than Decline or Reject? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:05, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Highlight the entire article in blue, then link WP:VOLUNTEER. Nothing other than that.
More seriously, I think rejecting it's appropriate. LittlePuppers (talk) 22:09, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
How about WP:STUBIFY? ~Kvng (talk) 22:09, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Unchanged resubmissions

I've been meaning to ask about this for a bit and the discussion about a certain editor prolific at AfC above reminded me to do so: what do you guys do when you come across an unchanged resubmission (and do you check for this)? If the article has been previously declined I usually at least glance through the history to see what's changed, and it's not super uncommon to find resubmissions without changes (although it's not so common that it's a major issue, either). Is there any good response to this other than rejecting it with a custom reason along the lines of "no changes since last submission, previous comments still valid"? LittlePuppers (talk) 23:14, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

A lot of people do just that, decline with the reason "unchanged since last submission". I think some people who don't know how the review system works will resubmit a draft without changes in hopes of getting a more lenient reviewer to see it, and they don't think reviewers can see previous submissions. Basically they're trying to game the system. PrussianOwl (talk) 23:39, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
Ditto that. While there is the occasional new reviewer (or someone not part of this project) declining drafts incorrectly, I have found over the years many times over that in resubmit-without-change drafts the original decline was justified. These days, I don't even look at the draft if no changes have been made. Primefac (talk) 00:06, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
I have a few comments. First, I always check on a resubmission what has changed. Second, I recommend checking the draft talk page to see if the submitter has said something. That is really a better place for comments than AFC comments, because it survives acceptance. Third, if the submitter-author wants to discuss something, we should discuss something. I assume that the question is about resubmissions where it is clear the submitter-author is not discussing. Fourth, sometimes the resubmitter is an IP. IPs have a right to use AFC, because they are required to use AFC, but they should follow the same rules as registered editors of being reasonable and constructive. Fifth, I have a template to insert when there has been no improvement, {{noimprove}}. It is a little harsh, so I try to use judgment as to whether it is in order. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:04, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
First, I'd let this stew in the queue for a while. Second, I'd look at the previous decline. If declined competently for insufficient evidence of notability, I'll check if any new refs have been added and, if not, decline for the same reason and leave a "No significant improvement since last decline" comment. If declined for some other more subjective reason, I'll do a fresh review. ~Kvng (talk) 22:16, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
LittlePuppers, I'm one of those "unchanged since last submission" reviewers, but I usually make it even more emphatic, adding, "Do not resubmit without addressing the concerns of the last reviewer". Sure, some reviews are wrong (and there's a big range for judgement calls), but after a while, you learn to recognize when somebody is just throwing it against the wall again to see what sticks. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:27, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Renaming Drafts Before Acting on Them

I will observe that occasionally giving a draft the name that it will have as an article, even if one is planning to decline it, can be useful, because then the AFC script may find that another article existed with that name. I had that experience with Draft:Sarv Webs, and found that, by giving a draft that name, I find that there had been an AFD. This changed my disposition from a decline to a reject. We already knew what the community would say on an AFD.

Another interesting case where the history is found via the names is more positive and that is Draft:Minx. The draft didn't get accepted, but it is the same as Dreamcatcher (group), and the IP has been advised to expand the article.

Robert McClenon (talk) 17:26, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Interesting idea. I guess I've never thought about this because generally if I'm going to accept I would just change the new name appropriately. I don't think it necessarily needs to be added to the official workflow but it's a good thing to keep in mind. Primefac (talk) 18:05, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
If the draft is no good, then the reason to name it is to see whether to reject it rather than to decline it. If the draft is marginal, I have occasionally asked the submitter to obtain a copy of the deleted article so that I can compare the draft against the deleted article. I do not recall that happening, as in I do not recall when the draft has actually been better than the deleted article, but I have found it worth trying, especially since some submitters can be stubborn. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:07, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
I do that in general. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 10:59, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Getting the title right on a declined draft would help a future reviewer if the draft is resubmitted or G13 reviewed. ~Kvng (talk) 22:51, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject_Articles_for_creation in other languages

The service seems to exist only in 3 other lang-wikipedia than en ( Español, नेपाली, 中文 ). How should the users in other lang-wikis (e.g. fr,de,...) proceed ? By default, should they do it here, or is it exclusively for en.wikipedia ? 2A01:E35:2E4B:8E70:5428:D0E7:D4A6:FE23 (talk) 06:32, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

This is exclusively for the English Wikipedia. Other wikis (eg French, German) do not have this structure, but in most other language wikis new users can create articles directly without using AFC. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:36, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
Some wikis have an AFC process but no WikiProject, like Portugese. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:38, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Can Anyone Help Me

Can anyone help me find a publisher to publish my book? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joe Fahy Author (talk • contribs) 14:07, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

User:Joe Fahy Author - That sounds like a question for the Humanities Reference Desk. But look out for trolls. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:25, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
User: Robert McClenon - Thank you for the advice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joe Fahy Author (talk • contribs) 11:41, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Non-English

I think that, when 'lang' is specified, the option to recognize a language needs to be tested. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, and I haven't determined when it does and doesn't work. However, I think that if the script allows the reviewer to enter a language (and it does) and the reviewer does enter a language, the script ought to put that into the template rather than throwing it away and just saying that it isn't English. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:51, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I think this was discussed earlier - if there are multiple decline reasons, the language isn't passed to the right parameter. As near as I can tell it should (and does) work as it should if lang is the only decline reason, though obviously examples of when it does/doesn't work will help. Primefac (talk) 16:57, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
User:Primefac - In this case, "German" was the only decline reason. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:23, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
Which case? Primefac (talk) 14:02, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

"New" reviewer?

I didn't think RedRiver660 would be able to accept AfC submissions? (Cf. [2],[3],[4], etc.) ——Serial # 08:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

They've been warned before. It's probably time more a more substantive warning, with templates and all. In the future, would it be useful to have a bot to detect every instance of an editor who is not an AfC reviewer accepting/declining articles and then warn that editor not to do so in the future? Sam-2727 (talk) 13:29, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
I've said this a few times on my talk page in as many weeks, but unless the user is performing bad (or otherwise sub-standard) reviews, there is nothing prohibiting them from reviewing and/or "accepting" drafts at AFC. If their reviews are fine, invite them to join the Project and get access to AFCH (if only to make things easier). If their reviews are not fine, then I concur that warnings should be left. Primefac (talk) 14:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC) and... I just realized that I was the one that warned them last time... Primefac (talk) 14:04, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
@Primefac: Just so. This was what prompted me to ask, having, as it has, led to this AfD. So we see that, will the best will in the world, a "noob error" can result in the wasting of the time and energies of multiple reasons for no sound reason. ——Serial # 19:09, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
My number one concern would be a "reviewer" accepting COI drafts. My number two concern would be a reviewer with competency issues. Other than that, I agree that welcoming them is the right approach. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
I wouldn't be concerned if this user is declining/rejecting blatantly unacceptable drafts (e.g. blank, test, adverts). I'd be a bit concerned when one accepts a draft, especially someone with little experience in AFC or deletion (if the user's a regular in AFD then I'm fine with that). Perhaps if an editor who isn't registered as an AFC reviewer and the draft has been previously declined by an AFC reviewer, we can notify the declining reviewer(s) and tell them to have a look? Cheers, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 11:12, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129: Is the user submitting anything to AFC? If not we might ask for a partial block "namespace ban" from Draft namespace to keep them from messing with the process. Hasteur (talk) 12:41, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm against a ban if they're competent -- even if they aren't, we can just ask them to wait a few months. Why use something hard that would leave them with an unclean record if they're not causing mess and harm anyways? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 12:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
According to this, they've agreed to stop reviewing AfCs for now, and based on their comments here, I think they are just overeager rather than doing anything malicious. So while I don't think their AfC work is particularly competent, I don't see a case for a topic ban right now. Spicy (talk) 12:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Any auto-confirmed user in good standing who belies in good faith that a draft is ready for mainspace may accept it. If the judgement i8s way out of the normal guidelines (accepting a BLP with one source, and that na passing mention, say) this might count as disruptive editing, or raise a WP:CIR issue. But moving from draft to mainspace does not require AfC reviewer status, nor any other special rights, adn anyn template proclaiming that doing so is not permitted would be subject to speedy deletion as a template mis0-statign policy. A an editor who is not an AfC reviewer should noty label such a move as an AfC acceptance, but that is minor. I think that such an editor is not authorized to run the AfC script. Changing this wou7lkd require a project-wide RfC, and I for one would oppose it. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 16:45, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Random drafts

It seems like the problem with the "Random Draft" buttons being anything but random has been getting worse and worse. I ran a test by clicking it 25 times, and I got the following:

  • Draft:Ahsan Mohsin Ikram
  • Draft:Ahsan Mohsin Ikram
  • Draft:North Tipperary intermediate hurling championship
  • Draft:Francisco Fernández de Xátiva
  • Draft:Martin Burt
  • Draft:Chetan Singh Solanki
  • Draft:North Tipperary intermediate hurling championship
  • Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories
  • Draft:Picnic Kibun
  • Draft:Beirut Yacht Club
  • Draft:Krav Boca
  • Draft:Beirut Yacht Club
  • Draft:Just d'Urgell
  • Draft:Mahamari
  • Category:Pending AfC submissions in userspace
  • Draft:Chetan Singh Solanki
  • Draft:Just d'Urgell
  • Draft:Krav Boca
  • Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories
  • Draft:2014 Wigan Warriors season
  • Draft:Joaquín de Santiyán y Valdivieso
  • Draft:Ahsan Mohsin Ikram
  • Category:Pending AfC submissions in userspace
  • Draft:Juraj Malevac
  • Draft:Martin Burt

That's only 15 unique values out of 25 tries (or to put it another way, 60% of the unique pages I saw were duplicated or tripled). If it were a truely random draw of 25 pages from a category of 1,350, there would only be a 20% chance of getting any duplicates, and the odds of 10 duplicates is something like 10^-18. To make it worse, of those 25 drafts, only two were pages that I hadn't seen in the last few days of browsing through random items in that category, making it essentially useless.

To that end, I wrote toolforge:RandomInCategory to actually do a random draw. It has the added advantage of being able to filter by namespace and to avoid hitting category pages. You can read the documentation here, but you can essentially just substitute Special:RandomInCategory/Pending_AfC_submissions with toolforge:RandomInCategory/Pending_AfC_submissions and it will work. To only show pages in the User: and Draft: namespaces, use toolforge:RandomInCategory/Pending_AfC_submissions&namespace=2!118&type=page. It will be a little slower to load initially as it accesses the API, but it caches data for 10 minutes so subsequent uses should be fast.

Try it out, let me know if there are any issues that come up, and if it works, we can open a discussion about using it on the various AfC templates and tools. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:38, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

When I was a teenage computer programmer 55 years ago, I remember discussing some of the tests of the quality of pseudo-random number generation algorithms, and the algorithms were not very good, and resulted in oddities like those. There is no excuse for that sort of non-random behavior of pseudo-random numbers in this century. Thank you, User:Ahecht. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:15, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Robert McClenon and Ahecht, I have implemented a user script that uses the new RandomInCategory: User:Eumat114/RandomAfC.js, as an alternative to User:DannyS712/RandomAfC.js. Please feel free to test it out and give feedback. Thanks! Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 13:08, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
I've played with toolforge:RandomInCategory and it seems to do the thing correctly and without significant delay. We should be brave and try it in {{AfC pending submissions by age (category header)}}. Does anyone know whether the problems with Special:RandomInCategory have been reported? ~Kvng (talk) 22:33, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
There has been a phab task open for a couple of years at phab:T200703, but if I'm reading the task correctly, the proposed fix wouldn't apply to larger categories, and it wouldn't allow filtering by namespace. As for integrating the toolforge solution, I've spread the link around a bit and am watching the error logs, but I was planning on trying to integrate it into the template next week. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:03, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
My reading of that phab is that randomization has been fixed for categories with 1000 or fewer entries. If my reading is correct, we only need to use the Toolfoge version for our biggest categories. There are a few in Category:AfC submissions by status but only Category:Pending AfC submissions has or needs a random button. ~Kvng (talk) 19:04, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
Here's a sorted list of 25 random drafts from Special:RandomInCategory/AfC pending submissions by age/3 weeks ago currently with 269 entries:
  • Draft:2019–20 División de Honor Femenina de Balonmano
  • Draft:Alexander Boldachev
  • Draft:Arumugam PK
  • Draft:Darren Sirell Cain
  • Draft:Dorothy Darnell
  • Draft:Feminist Avantgarde
  • Draft:Friedrich Ludwig Diehn
  • Draft:Harri Pälviranta
  • Draft:Jonathan Bright
  • Draft:Klaus Wölfer
  • Draft:Lamar Higgins
  • Draft:M. V. Jayarajan
  • Draft:O dată-n viaţă
  • Draft:Philip Robert Odegard
  • Draft:Polat Kaya
  • Draft:Ralph Debbas
  • Draft:Robert Hobart Davis
  • Draft:Sacred groves of Biodiversity Park, Visakhapatnam
  • Draft:Simon J Collins
  • Draft:Suvicha Mekangkul
  • Draft:Taher Jaoui
  • Draft:Taher Jaoui
  • Draft:The Boat (2018 film)
  • Draft:Werley Nortreus (Haiti)
  • Draft:World Record Certification Limited
Looks pretty good. ~Kvng (talk) 19:17, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
@Kvng: The patch in that phab task hasn't been merged into the codebase, so I don't think anything has been implemented yet. The lack of randomness is because Special:RandomInCategory is choosing a random timestamp and then finding the draft that is closest to that time, so drafts that are before or after a large gap in timestamps show up more often. For a time-limited category like "/3 weeks ago", there will be less large gaps. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:42, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
Ok, but that still means that Category:Pending AfC submissions is the only category seriously affected by this. ~Kvng (talk) 12:36, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Drafts for Discussion

This may be an idea that has been discussed and dismissed previously, but it may be an attempt to provide detail for an idea that has been dismissed due to lack of detail in the past. From time to time, someone has proposed one of three ideas about Miscellany for Deletion. The first is that it should be renamed Miscellany for Discussion. The second and third are that drafts should be split out from other miscellany and have their own XFD, which might be either Drafts for Deletion, the second idea, or Drafts for Discussion, the third idea. The first idea, changing Miscellany for Deletion to Miscellany for Discussion, has been dismissed because it has not been obvious what needs to be considered other than deletion and the usual alternatives to deletion that are implied in any deletion discussion. The second, splitting out Drafts for Deletion, has been dismissed because it has not been obvious why drafts need to be considered separately from other miscellany (user pages, WP pages, portals).

However, I have a suggestion that we set up Drafts for Discussion. I am proposing this in response to the reasonable comment that we need some way of discussing whether drafts will survive AFD. So my proposal is in particular that there should be Drafts for Discussion, but that it deal with two almost opposite questions, should a draft be deleted, and should a draft be promoted. Normally the reviewer will either be nominating the draft for deletion, or asking whether the draft should be promoted, and will know which. I can imagine the situation where a draft has been kicking around so long that a reviewer thinks it should be either promoted or deleted, but I am not sure that will happen in the real world. Anyway, the idea is that if a draft is nominated for promotion, there would be rough consensus after seven days either to promote the draft or to keep the draft. If the draft is promoted, then there is rough consensus against deleting, merging, redirecting, or re-draftifying the article.

If there is a reason why this is a bad idea, or why it won't work, please let me know. Otherwise we can discuss the idea for a while here and then take it to Village Pump. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:37, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that could be a good idea. Perhaps an even larger benefit would be that it might also be helpful for new reviewers - either by asking about a draft directly, or being able to see real examples of good/bad/borderline drafts and discussion. LittlePuppers (talk) 01:54, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
I just feel there would be too much bureaucracy - if people are unsure about whether to kick something on and let AfD have a consideration then just an informal 2nd opinion request here is better. A whole new set-up seems duplicative. And if a DfD is viable to indicate RC against an AfD that's even more problematic, since it would have less participation, and a range of problems if it did then get submitted to AfD. I'd suggest we encourage more reviewers to seek out 2nd opinions rather than leave it in the pile, but not go full formal on it. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:17, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Not a good idea. To keep their finger on the pulse of what's an acceptable draft, reviewers should spend time at actual AfD not this proposed alternative; We don't need our reviewing to diverge any further from the AfD standard. Reviewers already have too many choices for how to process a draft: accept, decline, reject, WP:MFD. Let's not add another. ~Kvng (talk) 22:46, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  • It's a good idea, and I would like to participate. I find when reviewing drafts that I am frequently undecided. I might be able to get more into the swing of reviewing by contributing to a discussion where someone else is already undecided. I assume that this "Drafts for discussion for mainspacing" is only for cases where the first reviewer thinks it is borderline. This exercise would be positively educational for all involved. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:46, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Problem with submit button

I'm able to launch the script to review Draft:Simeon Farr , but it will not let me "Accept" this submission . When I click it nothing happens. I can comment though, is there a bug? Theroadislong (talk) 20:29, 3 June 2020 (UTC).

The accept button worked for me; doesn't seem to be a problem with the script. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 20:50, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
If it's a FloridaArmy submission, it's because they refuse to {{subst:submit}} and just use {{submit}}. Allows AFCH to load but doesn't load any features. Primefac (talk) 00:35, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Problem with submit button

I've got the missing and/or submit button not working problem. scope_creepTalk 08:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Accept button does not work

Other buttons work but Accept button doesn't work. When I click it nothing happens. What may be the reason? ~SS49~ {talk} 06:33, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Courtecy ping Primefac and enterprisey Accept button still not working. I see other editors are accepting drafts. What happened with mine. Please help. Thanks! ~SS49~ {talk} 01:48, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Having ongoing problems with "Accept" script not working, when I click accept nothing happens, have tried clearing cache and using different browser with no joy. Tried accepting Draft:Calabasas Peak and Draft:Richmond Opera this morning but just not happening. Comment and decline working fine Theroadislong (talk) 07:13, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Update, enterprisey the accept button works for me using Chrome but not on Safari or Firefox browsers. Theroadislong (talk) 09:26, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Works fine for me in Firefox. KylieTastic (talk) 10:39, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Not having any luck from Firefox or Chrome. Decline and Comment works fine but Accept doesn't. Has it been figured out by chance or is it something I need to do on my end? --CNMall41 (talk) 06:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
It wasn't working for me last week, and have not used it since. I had to manual move, no redirect. scope_creepTalk 07:38, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I guess I will do that until things get working again. Not a big issue. --CNMall41 (talk) 05:04, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
Courtesy ping Primefac and enterprisey Still no luck accepting drafts with Safari for example Draft:James L. Jamison.Theroadislong (talk) 10:30, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
I just ran into this problem as well. Tried Chrome, IE and Brave with no luck. I haven't had any problems using Pale Moon on my home computer... will see if it works when I get home from work today. Spicy (talk) 15:33, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Just to be clear is this the first "Accept" button to open the accept menu, or the "Accect and Publish" from the sub menu? KylieTastic (talk) 17:30, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Is nobody trying to fix this? I review 20-30 drafts a day but cannot accept any because of this bug, the latest is Draft:Jalonne White-Newsome. Theroadislong (talk) 21:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
I have just poked Enterprisey and he assures me he's on it. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 21:23, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

List

I've checked browsers, everything seems fine for me. From the above:

Could users experiencing this issue please indicate which drafts they had to manually move/accept, and/or ones where the problem occurred? Primefac (talk) 17:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Script updated

Not sure what's causing the current breakage (I couldn't reproduce any errors on my end), but I found another error that might be related and fixed that. If anyone still has issues accepting (quite possible), please post any errors in the browser console (see WP:JSERROR) in a collapse-box. CC a random selection of users from the above: Theroadislong, Worldbruce, Spicy. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Enterprisey: Navigated to Draft:Santuc, South Carolina. Selected "Review (AFCH Beta)" from More drop down. Clicked large green Accept button. There's a slight visual button-push effect, but nothing else happens. Using the default vector skin in Firefox 77.0.1 (64-bit) on Windows 10 Home version 1903. No JavaScript errors are generated when I click Accept, but the following warnings appeared when I loaded the draft page:
Possibly irrelevant gory details
  1. JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed with logging active, version 3.1.0 load.php:280:171
  2. This page uses the non standard property “zoom”. Consider using calc() in the relevant property values, or using “transform” along with “transform-origin: 0 0”. load.php:5:729
  3. This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.tipsy". load.php:536:246
  4. This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.ui". Please use OOUI instead. load.php:542:1009
  5. JQMIGRATE: jQuery.fn.delegate() is deprecated load.php:280:746
  6. Use of "wgPageName" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead. load.php:4:473
  7. Use of "importScriptURI" is deprecated. Use mw.loader instead. load.php:4:473
  8. Use of "addOnloadHook" is deprecated. Use jQuery instead. load.php:4:473
  9. Use of "importScriptURI" is deprecated. Use mw.loader instead. load.php:4:473
  10. Use of "addOnloadHook" is deprecated. Use jQuery instead. load.php:4:473
  11. Skipped unresolvable module jquery.ui.dialog load.php:9:530
Earlier it was suggested that the problem was related to the author, FloridaArmy, but the same thing happens with all the drafts I've tried, such as Draft:Lakhahi Raj, which he has had nothing to do with (I've used these drafts purely for testing purposes, I'm not suggesting that anyone should accept them). --Worldbruce (talk) 01:43, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm having this problem on Draft:Manassa Thomas Pope. It is a FloridaArmy submission, I want to accept it but the button isn't working. I'm using MS Edge, if that's relevant. GirthSummit (blether) 07:30, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I can't accept it either, on Firefox 77.0.1. scope_creepTalk 08:22, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
No, having read the above. I had to manually move a page into mainspace last week after the accept button stopped working. I've not done any review since. scope_creepTalk 08:24, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I don't get the issue on any on the machines/browsers so haven't been able to locate issue. I did think maybe it was a conflict with other scripts but looking at some of the affected users "common.js" I see no pattern. Next thought would be a browser extension so try with them disabled/ or use safe mode (For Firefox "menu button, click Help and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled…" Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 09:03, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I repeated the test with an empty common.js and with add-ons disabled, but no joy. The green Accept button still does nothing. --Worldbruce (talk) 14:10, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for checking Worldbruce. Running out of ideas, as this isn't a script but that affects everyone, or particular drafts, or OS or browser.... I guess it could be a conflict with other wiki preferences but there are so many where would we start! Pity there isn't a way to back up preferences, revert to default, test, then restore (at least I don't think there is?). Hopefully Enterprisey will find the issue, but I'll try find time to have a poke at the code over the weekend if not. KylieTastic (talk) 14:52, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I was just able to reproduce the bug. Excited to see what went wrong this time... Enterprisey (talk!) 20:58, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
The WikiProject list had a parse error; fixed. Because the script caches the list so heavily, it took a while for the script to start breaking, and it broke for seemingly random people (those who had recently cleared their localStorage). The script has been fixed to actually say something when this happens, instead of silently eating the error. I have also changed the content model of the WikiProject list to JSON, to help prevent any parse error-causing edits from being made in the first place. Thank you everybody for your patience, and apologies for all the inconvenience caused by this extended outage. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:58, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
Many thanks, for poking around and fixing! Theroadislong (talk) 07:25, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
+1 :) KylieTastic (talk) 08:59, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Legislator Stubs

Since we have had a concern about an editor, FloridaArmy, who creates a lot of stubs, some of which we argue about, I would like to call attention to another editor who creates a lot of stubs that are of good quality, and that is User:Rhaegar I. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:38, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

For what? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 05:13, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - State legislators. New York State Legislature. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:50, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
They are small, but the 1k, 2k, 3k,3.5k, 5k are fine They are not massively small. That editor has only created 32 articles, and they are decent quality. There is another editor who fits in stubby bracket, doesn't cite properly, but can't remember the name. scope_creepTalk 16:46, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Better submits because they spend a bit longer on each and submit less at a time. In the last month FA has had 147 reviews (94 accepts), Rhaegar 30 reviews 30 accepts. I have noticed on several stubs that FA has edited accepted articles quite a bit after acceptance. It appears to be a case of do you try to create an compete article, submit then move on, or do you create a minimal stub keep throwing it at AfC till it gets though then do the work. Not that I have much of a problem with FA political stubs as most are notable, just very small, and short sentances, it's the old movie stubs that are more a problem. KylieTastic (talk) 17:25, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

What constitutes an "article" edit?

I see in other Wiki pages, they specify "Main" edits, whereas the requirement here is having 500 article edits. What is the difference if any? For example see Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions/AutoWikiBrowser Shushugah (talk)

@Shushugah: They're the same. (It looks like you have 468.) LittlePuppers (talk) 01:22, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Indeed; "mainspace" and "article space" are often used interchangeably. Primefac (talk) 12:46, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Well, technically no. See WP:NS0: In particular, redirects, disambig pages and the Main Page (you can't edit it anyway) are not counted as articles. But who cares????? Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 06:54, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
User:Eumat114 - My guess would be that edits to redirects and to disambiguation pages in mainspace are counted as mainspace edits. I don't think that the software has the complexity to separate article edits from non-article mainspace edits. Any attempt to count them separately would be further complicated by the fact that an edit can change an article into a redirect, or expand a redirect into an article, and there are some odd pages that are sort of hybrids between disambiguation and articles or disambiguation and redirects. We count articles and non-articles in mainspace separately, but I don't think that the software counts the edit count separately. Maybe an admin will know. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:34, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
yes so I hardly think any admin will, when consider AFC membership, take this kind of edits into account and just use the user's mainspace edit count without making further distinction. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 07:35, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Odd recent changes / watchlist format change?

Anyone else getting this issue... the (diff|hist) links have moved so no longer in a convenient place all lined up?

See this image Left is my old style/current logged out view - Right the crappy new style

Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 09:38, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Turned out it was "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" enabled in preferences - not sure how it got turned on. I had tried turning that off but had the watchlist open in another tab and refreshed to see if that fixed it, unfortunately that appears to reset the setting so you see no change. Changing the setting, closing the tabs, and then looking worked! Gah! KylieTastic (talk) 16:16, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
    I hadn't noticed that before, but now that you mention it, it is rather annoying. Thanks for the tip to fix it. Primefac (talk) 17:02, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Getting Auto-Confirmed

I have mentioned this before. Something I have been noticing that is happening more often is that an editor develops a draft, usually a biography of a living person, and puts it in draft space and submits it. Then, four days and ten edits later, with the edits typically to the draft, an identical or almost identical BLP goes into article space. The draft can then be declined as duplicating the article. The draft may or may not also be declined for notability reasons. It may not be necessary to review the draft for notability if we know it is a duplicate.

I see typically three possibilities as to quality. First, and least common, the BLP (or other article) satisfies notability. That is good. If so, the draft can be redirected to the article. Second, the BLP does not satisfy notability. The BLP cannot be draftified. I find the easiest response to PROD the BLP (or other article). (It very seldom is A7, and only seldom is it G11. Usually it just isn't notable.) If it is de-PROD'd, it can be taken to AFD. Third, it isn't clear whether the BLP satisfies notability. In that case, I tag the BLP with notability concerns (and maybe COI concerns, and maybe for whatever), and note that the draft can be redirected to the article if the article is kept.

What happened today is that the BLP had no references, and was already tagged for BLPPROD. If the BLP is improved, the draft can be redirected. If the BLP is deleted, the draft can be kept for possible improvement.

Thoughts? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:09, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

What you're currently doing in these cases is fine. To my mind, anyone gaming the system is WP:NOTHERE. I'd decline the draft as duplicative, send the article to AfD noting the end-run around AfC, and possible notify WP:COIN about possible UPE. We have too many articles, already, and as an immediatist, I think our steps should discourage these drive-by efforts. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:30, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
User:Chris troutman - I always do decline the draft as duplicative. That isn't much of a choice. I have to decline the draft as duplicative, unless I go to the effort of moving the article out of the way. Thank you for agreeing that this is a form of gaming. What is an immediatist?Robert McClenon (talk) 15:54, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Another Draft and Article Duplication Scenario

A different situation came up with a draft that was declined but was also in article space. This was Jump Rope Challenge. What happened here is that two different editors worked on it, and the version in draft space was a stub, and the version in article space is just a little more complete and has better sources. So the draft was properly declined, and the article looks all right, so I redirected the draft to the article, and everyone is WP:HERE. So this is all right. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:05, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:AFC submission/draft/HD preload

Template:AFC submission/draft/HD preload has been nominated for merging with Template:AFC submission/declined/HD preload. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 01:44, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Article start request template

Hi DGG, Gaelan, maybe also Sdkb

Drawing from this discussion at village pump (policy), I've created Template:Article start request. Is it suitable for public use? Could it possibly be included in the article creation wizard, or otherwise made more discoverable to others? The purpose is to position the new article requests in personal talk space, as

  • often the article is started by a single author (particularly in cases of conflict of interest)
  • often the helpee will be interested in discussion where questions can be asked and answers can be given
  • helpers have the opportunity to give feedback on sources alone -- without needing to analyze article text which can be a wasted effort -- before giving feedback on an article
  • authors will understand how to write better, improving their writing performance
  • {{helpme}} seems to work well
  • Category:Article start requests can be monitored for new submissions *(there are established notification and monitoring tools for this for the helpme requests) - can be monitored by volunteers who are experienced in "notability pass or not?" phase of the draft review process
  • This may be a more user friendly system than WP:REQ, and in comparison with it, in this system a non-zero amount of feedback will be available.
  • (This is also a bit similar to {{edit request}} which also seems to work effectively.)

Regards, --Gryllida (talk) 10:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I think there's some merit to this, especially if we can have it be a sort of prerequisite to the article wizard. I think it could help to limit the amount of terrible drafts we get at AfC. There's craptons of new users who write drafts that have no chance of ever being accepted and it's a waste of people's time to review, re-review, argue about sources/notability/etc., then the resulting recrimination... It would be nice to reduce that a bit. Waggie (talk) 02:05, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
I will need a few days to look at it--there's too much else going on, and I am not working at very high efficiency.The easiest way to use it will be a a pre-screen for the article wizard, but I think it would be much better to incorporate it. In deciding where to put it, we need to think about catching all incoming requests, especially those from paid editors, who may avoid the usual routes. Further comment later this week. DGG ( talk ) 03:53, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Ta. (After 1-2 months of work from home my focus started to drop, I'm finding Pomodoro Technique a bit helpful.) Gryllida (talk) 04:17, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
News? Gryllida (talk) 05:13, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
I think the first step is to put it into the article wizard, because we already have that, and it will be relatively easy o do the necessary rewriting, maybe without any programming at all. After that we can figure out how to deal with the new ones that do not go through the wizard. (I'm not sure if we have a tag for the ones that do go through--if not it should be possible to add one) .
the simplest way of checking compliance is manual. we can check either at aformal submission, or hen the draft is started. We seem to have about 100 formal submissions a day, so we might try on that first. ,
I'm going to try a rewrite tf the wizard template text part by part tomorrow and see where we get. Watch this space. I already look at some zero day submissionsevery day, soI'lllmake apoint of doing thisat the same time. Perhaps we need a subpage for the work on this? DGG ( talk ) 05:57, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Thank you. I think wherever this process is mentioned, it perhaps should be clear that
  • an article start request is significantly quicker than draft review (should say how quicker - I hope 1-2 days but this will be seen after this process begins)
  • is staffed by volunteers who specialize in how to start articles
  • be clear what happens after the start, i.e. "Article start request only involves search of references and their description. It does not involve writing any part of the article. Upon successful article start request, you will have completed references search and will be ready to start writing content that will highly likely be notable and thus qualify for inclusion, with you only needing to be mindful of copyright and neutrality" -- this is important I think so that the author will understand better the next step
Maybe if the 'article start request' template which I linked is possibly going to be used, discussions could be placed on its talk page, or subpages of it could be created? Gryllida (talk) 21:00, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
DGG, news, please? :-) Gryllida (talk) 23:32, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Gryllida., even were this normal times, I don't work this fast--there are already more things than I can handle.-- or even think about. I agree with your 3 points; but it is always easier to know what to do than to figure out how to do it. There are 3 potential places--adding it into article requests, making it a part of the Article Wizard, and integrating it into afch. Adding the requirement to article requests should not prevent someone from just asking for an article without saying anything more ,because sometimes the slightest information is enough--and as it is, the procedure its mostly ignored; The article wizard is agood way also but then the problem is how to divert everything through hte article wizard--the AW will need to be streamlined, also;. What I really want to figure out is how to add it as a first step in afch but then the difficulty is separating it from asking for the whole article. It is already a problem at afch when people write very incomplete drafts and never follow them up. In short, we should not add an additional step or procedure---we already have too many, but rather strengthen the existing ones. Probably we should try working on them all and seeing what will happen (In the past I've been more successful in first suggesting & encouraging things at one end--and clarifying & fixing out the problems at the other, but not doing the work in the middle. I've learned to be realistic about what I will accomplish, & I know I get easily diverted by immediate quick things that need doing. Keep reminding me, and I'll keep thinking. DGG ( talk ) 03:45, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Wouldn't expect a need to insert it in "all places", just a passing mention in article wizard should be good as a start? To see a small number of people use this new system and perhaps measure their success rates? I suspect that waiting to insert it everywhere and in afch and so on might cause an unnecessary delay. Gryllida (talk) 04:58, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
I apologize for a delayed response, but the amount and nature of police activity in my area of brooklyn is not conducive to rational thought. DGG ( talk ) 05:26, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
@Gryllida: Thanks for this proposal. I would suggest adding a link to WP:THREE, WP:42 or something that quickly explains notability requirements. {{Find sources}} would also be helpful.
It appears the promise to authors is that performing this step would get an article into mainspace more quickly. How would we fulfil that promise? ~Kvng (talk) 21:49, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
The template adds the talk page where it was placed to a category. Volunteers would need to monitor this category and respond. The idea is that this format would have four advantages;
  • firstly it would encourage authors to find sources;
  • secondly the written submission would be shorter and thus easier to review;
  • thirdly because of its shortness it would also take a lot less time to write;
  • fourthly because it is located (hopefully) at the talk page of the author, they receive more aggressive notifications and respond quicker.
I think it would be interesting to also add the successful drafts for this into a special tracking category, so that it is possible to collect some statistics and compare draft approval times (with prior approved article start request) to the average. It would also be possible to compare the total time (article start request discussion plus draft writing) with draft writing without the prior request, too. Gryllida (talk) 23:20, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
The draft would have to go through the normal AfC process and queue. Wait time is dependent on queue lengh and luck. I don't think we could, in good concience, claim that using this new process would speed up review. Other aspects are good. If we could get this template to cause something to be automatically posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk we would have our existing volunteers monitoring it. ~Kvng (talk) 14:13, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
Another possibility could be to claim that it would possibly make feedback (as opposed to the total review time) more quick.: in this system I would expect a response within a week as opposed to the three months for a full draft review. Perhaps "quicker first feedback and discussion" is a more realistic claim to make?
Automatic posting could be done via a bot that watches a category, if you are interested I can write such a bot in any suitable programming language. Which programming language are the volunteers here more familiar with? Would Python do? Then I can test it by adding a few new test requests, which will already go to the help desk if this is permitted, and then host it at toolforge. Gryllida (talk) 09:54, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
Help desk stuff usually gets a response the same day so definitely quicker feedback than submitting a draft and waiting for a reviewer to respond. ~Kvng (talk) 14:05, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
I think it would be better if people use the "article start request" template at their personal talk page because then they will find it easier to locate the discussion; then a bot could automatically leave a note of their request at the help desk,
As a first start in programming this I will add a watch on the "{{heplme}}" tracking category (instead of the article start request, as currently there is none) and get a bot to post notifications to my personal talk page (instead of the help desk, as it wouldn't be interested in such bot spam).
Then the format of the output can be discussed, and the script can easily be changed to post notifications for this task as required.
(Note: as a first step I will check at the technical village pump whether such a notification bot already exists.) Gryllida (talk) 01:47, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
(link) Gryllida (talk) 01:49, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC on Turning Point USA

An RfC which may be of interest to the members of this project can be found here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:16, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Lynching of Phillip Gathers

I have a few questions about this draft. First, I think it should be accepted as a notable crime (or whatever you want to call it). Second, am I correct that the title should be Lynching of Phillip Gathers and that there should be redirects for the two victims, that is, Phillip Gathers and Anza Jaudon. They are both victims and are both WP:BLP1E, that is, notable for one event, having been murdered. Is the story about the lynching? Should they both be redirects? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:37, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Generally the event is notable (assuming references verify that), not the person. I'm not sure the people are inherently notable though. Fiddle Faddle 17:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Slate Star Codex

What do others think about this draft? Do the sources now demonstrate that it satisfies notability? It's an edge case. Sam-2727 (talk) 01:33, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

(and create protected) Sam-2727 (talk) 01:33, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
It seems to be all the work of one person. Admittedly the site is very busy but the articles are all his. He is not a journalist or a writer, nor an academic or potentially as a psychiatrist, he could be I suppose but there is no peer review or academic rigour. I don't see a huge kind of following, i.e. coverage. Some of his articles has been used and/or referenced in other outlets. There is no editorial control. I don't see it as been notable at the moment. scope_creepTalk 18:27, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Shooting Range Hebertshausen

Dear community, the article has been completed with necessary reliable sources, please note that this is a translation from the existing (and approved) article in the German Wikipedia. Can somebody please review and get it published please. Thanks. --LaraLev33 (talk) 01:27, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

courtesy link: Draft:Shooting Range Hebertshausen Eumat114 (Message) 03:17, 22 June 2020 (UTC) Thanks Eumat114 --LaraLev33 (talk) 13:53, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Hope van Dyne and Hope Pym

I would appreciate a confirmation that this is the correct way to handle this situation. Draft:Hope van Dyne was submitted. Hope van Dyne and Hope Pym are two names for sort of the same fictional character, and the article on Hope Pym says that there are two versions of the character. The more general matter is that there is a draft that contains information that mostly overlaps with an article but has some new information. I think that the way to handle this is to decline the draft with 'exists', but then to tag the draft to be merged into the article. In such a case, I think that the draft should be kept until the merging is complete, at which time the draft should be redirected to the article. Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:39, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

But then my tag on the article was reverted, with an edit summary not to link to draft space from article space. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:12, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
I will repeat my comment from the draft here, for general information. The draft should not have been submitted for evaluation, as the film character does not meet the threshold for inclusion as a separate article. However, there is a general consensus to have separate articles on MCU characters who have a sufficient number of appearances in MCU-specific media (see, e.g., Tony Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Steve Rogers (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Thor (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Loki (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Thanos (Marvel Cinematic Universe)). If this character continues to be depicted in the MCU, and to have MCU-specific story elements reported in reliable sources, it will eventually meet that threshold. BD2412 T 23:19, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
User:BD2412 - You say that the draft should not have been submitted, but there is already an article on the character. Are you saying that the article should be nominated for deletion? If not, please explain. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:34, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I see what you're saying. Generally it is permissible to have separate articles on the comic book and MCU versions (e.g., Nick Fury and Nick Fury (Marvel Cinematic Universe)); here, however, it appears that there is very little to say about the comic book Hope Pym, so content on the MCU character would overwhelm that article. This is the first time I have seen such a situation, so I don't know the best outcome, but I suppose they will need to be merged. BD2412 T 00:46, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
  • If Draft:Hope van Dyne is good enough to be a serious merge candidate, it is good enough to be mainspaced. It is not the junk that draftspace was made for, for keeping out of sight. Mainspace hosts many thin articles. WP:NOTPAPER. Merging looks like hard creative work, and does not look obviously desirable. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:56, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
    • The character has appeared in main roles in two MCU films, and in a short appearance in a third. That falls short of what should qualify for inclusion in mainspace. It does no harm to wait for the third film to come out (and whatever other media may include the character). BD2412 T 02:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
      • You are not distinguishing clearly between “as a stand-alone article”, and “within another article”. Both are in mainspace. I think it should be mainspaced and merged. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:22, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
        • @SmokeyJoe: Sorry, I seem to have misunderstood you. I thought you meant that merging "does not look obviously desirable". Given the state of the article and the draft, I would not particularly object to moving the draft to mainspace and merging the other article into it, as they can be split out into separate articles again if content develops for both subjects. I do think, however, that the MCU character is the primary topic, as the comic book character is relatively minor in the comics (and would likely be in a list somewhere rather than having an article of its own, were it not for the film character). BD2412 T 17:48, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
          • I did, and do, mean "merging does not look obviously desirable". I think it is "probably a good idea". I think it requires engaging with the subject-interested editors, and this means putting the "merge-from" tag on the article. This relates to my opinion that people should NOT use draftspace to spinout topics from existing articles. In this case, Richiekim (talk · contribs) should not have created this draft. On the date of its creation, Hope Pym named Hope van Dyne in its lede, and in Hope Pym is where the content should have been added, in full view of all interested editors and readers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
            • Normally I would agree with such an assessment regarding engaging with the subject-interested editors, but in this case we have a Template:Marvel Cinematic Universe drafts, which lists all of the MCU draft projects underway, and subject-interested editors are very well-engaged with subjects listed in that template. Probably more so than they would be with an article created in mainspace and not included on that template. That just happens to be the way this project is operating, with respect to numerous drafts in this area. BD2412 T 15:22, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
              • Interesting. How to you estimate the number of editors involved? Put me in the camp of people skeptical that this is a good idea. I am much more favoring meta:Eventualism over meta:Immediatism. I believe that by keeping all these developing topics, slightly TOOSOON, out of mainspace, little mention in mainspace, and forbidden from being linked from mainspace, it means a barrier to new editors getting involved. I think once verified, and mergeable, these drafts belong in mainspace, where any reader can edit them right now, even if they are doomed to being smerged if nothing new happens soon. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:10, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
                • How to estimate the number of editors involved? You could look at the revision history statistics, which indicate that 26 editors have edited the page, which is substantially more than you see for a typical draft. Merging the drafts into mainspace topics will, of course, make them that much harder to separate out once individual articles are merited. If keeping them in draftspace is deemed impermissible, I will move the ones that I originated, at least, back to my userspace. BD2412 T 00:33, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
                • By the way, I have 1,295 drafts for missing articles on U.S. state supreme court justices, which are higher on the priority scale for me than these MCU topics. BD2412 T 00:39, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
                  • Just label me "skeptical", with regard to attracting new editors from the readership. Merely skeptical, but interested. I can see there are some advantages. "impermissible"? Certainly not. Certainly it is permissible. My concern is about why it should be declined. Looking, I find more questions. It was submitted by a non-author.
                    Your work on missing jurists is astonishingly impressive. I would not suggest putting poor unready jurist substub articles in mainspace in the hope that readers will become editors and improve them. Jurist articles are very different to MCU topics, comic book stuff that might appear in future movies. MCU topics are suitable for kids to play with in mainspace, I suggest. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:05, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
I see that this was more complicated with more issues than I had thought. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:43, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Draftify Notation

Maybe I should be making this comment in another forum. The issue has to do with the edit summary used by New Page reviewers (so maybe this is a New Page Patrol concern?) when pushing an article back into draft space. The standard edit summary says, "Undersourced, incubate in draft space". I dislike that edit summary because, in my view, it misstates and oversimplifies why articles are draftified, and can mislead honest new submitters, and can be gamed by submitters with conflict of interest. It promotes the myth that adequate sources are a necessary and sufficient condition for acceptance of a draft, when they are only a necessary condition. It encourages the submitter to reference-bomb the draft with low-quality sources. I have, for instance, seen it used on draftifying a stub that had ten low-quality sources but did not satisfy general notability. Could there be an edit summary and a message that says, "Notability not established, incubate in draft space"? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:56, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Submitters more often than not will never even see the edit summary, since new users aren't born understanding history pages. The edit summary does not exist in isolation. User:Evad37/MoveToDraft also leaves a detailed message on the author's talk page, to wit:

An article you recently created, _____, does not have enough sources and citations as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page.

The edit summary rationale is user-customizable, so if you have one you think will perform better, you can test your hypothesis by recruiting frequent users of the script, randomly dividing them into ones that use the default edit summary and your own, then following up to see if there's a statistically meaningful improvement in the perceived problems. --Worldbruce (talk) 19:33, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

July 2020 at Women in Red

Women in Red / July 2020, Volume 6, Issue 7, Numbers 150, 151, 170, 171, 172, 173


Online events:


Join the conversation: Women in Red talkpage

Stay in touch: Join WikiProject Women in Red / Opt-out of notifications

Social media: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest / Twitter

--Rosiestep (talk) 16:10, 28 June 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Persian anybody?

Hi, I had rejected Draft:Suq District as unsourced. User:Mohajeer has added a source and going from this to this it does appear that Kohgiluyeh County has gone from 4 to five districts. We had a mini discussion on their talk page User_talk:Mohajeer#Referance but although I think they are correct if we have any Persian speakers that can verify that would be good? Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 13:16, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@KylieTastic: With foreign language sources like these I open them in Google Chrome which has Google Translate built in. It detects the language and you get a translation button in the address bar. You can select "always translate Persian" and then as soon as you open a page that it detects as Persian it will display the text translated into English. It won't be a perfect translation, and it doesn't work on certain websites, but it is good enough to establish the quality of the coverage or verify a statement. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 16:23, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing restrictions affecting AfC

As others had mentioned they were not aware of the editing restrictions that caused FloridaArmy to submit so much to us I thought I'd list the others currently forced to use AfC as listed at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions and Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log

  • Crouch, Swale - "One new article per week in user or draft space (including redirects and disambiguation pages), submitted to AFC"
This reads like submit one per week, but looks like it's currently being used as one "active submission per week" as the last few (all accepted) were more often
  • FloridaArmy - "FloridaArmy is prohibited from creating new articles in mainspace or participating or AFD. AFC is available for new articles they want to create and it seems reasonable to allow a single comment/opinion to be offered in AFDs created by FA." - plus "The community restricts FloridaArmy to no more than 20 pending Articles for Creation submissions at any time. Their existing restriction on mainspace article creation is still in effect."
  • Soumya-8974 - "Indefinite topic ban on creating redirects, though requesting creation via WP:AFC/R is still (for the moment) acceptable. This restriction can be appealed after 6 months provided demonstration (via AFC/R) that there is a better knowledge of the criteria behind creating redirects."
  • Doncram - "Doncram is subject to an indefinite ban from creating new articles in mainspace or moving articles he has written to mainspace. He may submit draft articles to Articles for Creation for review by an independent editor."
  • Das osmnezz is subject to the following editing restrictions indefinitely, " You may not directly create any article about a living or recently deceased person as defined by BLP in the mainspace of the project. Any proposed new pages must be submitted as a WP:DRAFT to WP:AFC for review and approval. You may not make any edit to any article about a living or recently deceased soccer/football player without first having the edit proposed on the talk page of the article and then reviewed and approved by at least one editor with extended confirmed rights. When making an edit to a BLP article subject to this restriction you will name the editor who reviewed and approved your edit in the edit summary." (From WP:AELOG/2019

— KylieTastic (talk) 17:58, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't see it as an unfair load on the AFC reviewers, but a way of preventing an unfair load on the NPP reviewers or the AFD participants. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:06, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
  • The reason these restrictions are in place is because they have been shown to not be able to create pages worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia. By shifting their focus towards AFC, it gives them an opportunity to demonstrate that they can create worthy pages. With the exception of FA, I don't think that any of the above listed editors are "flooding" AFC; if they were, it probably would have been mentioned here. Each reviewer is of course welcome to review or not as they choose, but I personally don't really care who submitted a draft when I review it. Primefac (talk) 21:44, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I've not noticed a general issue here, it's certainly causes comparatively fewer problems than say our PaidCOI coming through, and that's one of the reasons we really exist. If it was endemic we could register a complaint, but i'd be surprised if more than a couple of % (and probably higher in terms of accepted articles) come from those with editing restrictions. The recent deluge was a rare exception Nosebagbear (talk) 09:19, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Draft:EuroGeoSurveys is a paid submission

I wish neither to review this draft further, nor to interact further with the creating editor on their talk page. I am in danger of being past the end of WP:AGF, thus recuse myself from interactions with this editor. Perhaps another reviewer might take up the challenge? Fiddle Faddle 14:19, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Timtrent, I'll take a look at it. Sam-2727 (talk) 14:52, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
I am, and conceivably the creating editor will be, grateful, Sam-2727 Fiddle Faddle 16:11, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
To keep my patience intact, I never rereview drafts I have declined (unless I'm convinced I made a mistake in the original review). ~Kvng (talk) 16:07, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Normally, nor do I. But this one appeared to be extracting the urine. Fiddle Faddle 16:11, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

What level of backlog is "acceptable"?

I've come back for a bit of relaxation(!) after a significant Wikibreak of several years. The backlog feels significant to me at the moment, with a surprisingly large number in the 5 weeks category.

When I look at them they tend, not unexpectedly, to be the difficult ones to review. I'm getting my eye back in and still finding some of them to resist my being able to decide to accept or decline.

I know there's an obvious temptation to get the low hanging fruit, and I have no objection to that. It allows reviewers to rest! What can be done to encourage reviewers to have a crack at the tough ones, the old ones?

I've always tried to do most of my work at the oldest submissions. I know I'm not unique, nor am I suggesting that others are not doing the heavy lifting. I'd just like to see a lower overall backlog and the oldies to get processed before they hit five weeks, or older. So I thought I'd grasp this nettle and ask for thoughts from reviewers, experienced and inexperienced alike, please? Fiddle Faddle 16:16, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Five weeks is actually a significant improvement, it has been in the months-long timeframe. 331dot (talk) 16:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I remember those days. They come and go. The issue that that AFC users are usually new and usually hope for instant gratification. It's all part of editor retention and attrition. Obviously many create articles just to get a favourite on the site, but our doing a great (greater?) job might just encourage one more in ten to stay. Fiddle Faddle 16:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, we were at 3+ months as recently as April, and for a brief week or two at the beginning of the month we were at 4+ weeks. I'd say we're headed in the right direction (it's been two years since we've had <1000 submissions). Primefac (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm impressed. How do we get better still at emptying this ever filling bathtub? I'm only asking because the question needs to be asked from time to time. Fiddle Faddle 16:44, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I wish we could get it down to an "acceptable" level - which I would say was a week max. I've seen several pushes to get it down, then I think the constant effort wears people down and it starts going up fast again. We've never had enough people reviewing, the project has always relied to much on just a few doing lots rather than lots of reviewers doing a few, so if someone doing a lot stops, slows down or get blocked (as two heavy hitters have been in the last couple of years), it causes the trend to swap depressingly quicker the other way. Some, me included, shy away from some of the borderline ones for various reasons, one being that although the instructions say accept if has a better than 50/50 chance at AfD the reality is no where close to how you will be judged. We've had a reviewer temp blocked for just a couple of percent of there accepts deleted, and a recent RfA where a single bad accept caused numerous opposes (although not a single one of those tagged or AfDed the article in question). Plus borderline accepts/declines tend to get way more criticism. Personally I think we need some radical changes, but so many are resistant to change and don't care how long editors have to wait and how many just give up. KylieTastic (talk) 17:36, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
    I know what you mean; I'm pretty sure the jump from 4+ to 5+ is because someone went on holiday. Not running the numbers as much these days or I could probably figure out who it is! Primefac (talk) 17:57, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I am happy enough to put some borderline ones through. Often the community proves itself a better judge than I am. What I try not to do is to fight for one I've put through. I'd prefer each one accepted to be perfect, but how often does that happen?
We did have backlog drives with exciting(!) prizes, but looking at the history the last was some time ago. Fiddle Faddle 18:13, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
If reviewers here do less work, the backlog grows. It does not grow uncontrollably, however. If we're doing fewer reviews, we're also getting fewer resubmissions.
As for the hard ones at the end of the queue, maybe ab attitude adjustment is all that is needed. If no reviewer has been willing to make a call, perhaps it's time for someone to be brave and accept the marginal draft and let the call be made at WP:AFD. ~Kvng (talk) 20:22, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree. By the time something has been sitting in the queue a month, multiple people have laid eyes on it. Often these are ones that need specialized knowledge/language skills to evaluate, and these tend to be better for AFD to handle than AFC. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:10, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
I tend to concentrate on the oldest though find some of them so tough I go away for a think. I usually relax by doing some easy ones while thinking. Ones where I can't read the language of the refs are easy, I just ask a relevant project to take a look and comment that I have done so on the draft.
I have no issue with borderline ones going through for wider community scrutiny and potential deletion discussions. I try very hard to make sure I err in the right direction though. Fiddle Faddle 22:23, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
What is the right direction for error? If you want to be seen by the community as a good reviewer of difficult submissions, the safe thing to do is to find some way to justify a decline. A bad decline is seen mostly by the inexperienced author while a bad accept is more visible since it spends time in mainspace. If you want to be seen as a good reviewer, err towards decline. If you actually want to be a good reviewer, you need to be braver. ~Kvng (talk) 15:47, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
I expect we all err in both directions. I take the view that the older a submission the more benefit of any small doubt I can give it. Obviously I still aim for a better than 50% chance of it's surviving a deletion discussion. We do not need to review a draft to perfection, just to survivability. That militates towards not declining for the sake of it, but not accepting to give trash carte blanche to exist. Fiddle Faddle 16:03, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I participated in the recent backlog drive where we got down from 3 months to something like 4 weeks. Now it's crept up to 5 weeks again. It may get bigger, it may get a little bigger. It may not get bigger at all. We’ll see what happens. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:21, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
    RoySmith, I must be missing something, or has the Backlog Drives tab fallen into disuse? Fiddle Faddle 17:43, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Indeed, I'd love a week (I think it would add significantly to our retention, even if our pass rate remained the same). Outside of that milk and cookies scenario, a month is probably a more reasonable target. While I don't do the big swathes I once did, I want to get myself back to a standard of 14 a week. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:22, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Place of Birth

When I accept an article on a person, it asks me for the place of birth (and the place of death for a dead person). My question has to do with verifying something that I think is how Wikipedia does it. Am I correct that the country listed should be the name of the country at the time of the birth? In the specific case, the person was born in 1960 in what is now Bangladesh. But I am old enough that I remember that in 1960 it was East Pakistan, and that there was a war of national independence. I see in infoboxes that the place of birth and place of death are sometimes former nations. Is that also the rule on accepting a biography? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:47, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Related question: where dies the birthplace/deathplace info from the form get saved? What is the purpose of filling it out? Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:39, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
I think that's a holdover from when we used {{Persondata}} to store the "important" metadata about an individual. As far as I am aware there is nothing past the category box that is actually translated to the article itself (though it is possible the living/dead switch is used for some categorization and/or WikiProject banners). Primefac (talk) 17:19, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
I've been filling the wretched things out religiously. It would be lovely to get chapter and verse so I can get a different religion. Fiddle Faddle 17:36, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
The living/dead does affect a switch on WikiProject Biography and a category, so that does matter. It appears that it also controls whether the BLP banner is put on the talk page, which does matter. If the birth and death place stuff is written to write-only memory, then I will not worry about spelling it correctly, or whether to include the state or county or whatever. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:23, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Odd category bug - need eyes

I was recently informed that some pages are showing raw Category codes instead of actually categorizing the page - see for example Draft:$aintBandit and Draft:Skoposology. Unfortunately, these are the only two pages I can find that have this behaviour. If anyone else sees any pages like this, please let me know so I can try to figure out what the heck is going on. For reference, there have been zero edits to the AFC templates used by these two pages in months. At first I thought it was a weird date issue but Skoposology is showing a 30 June and there are categories properly populating Category:AfC submissions by date/01 July 2020.

For reference, the category handling that seems to be messing up is: 

[[Category:{{AfC date category
 |ts={{{ts|}}}
}}|{{SUBPAGENAME}}]]

{{AfC date category}} hasn't been edited since 2014. Oh, and another thing, I tested the specific {{AFC submission}} calls from the two pages in my sandbox and they worked as normal. Primefac (talk) 20:40, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

It's at Draft:Aćim Doljanac too. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:22, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
I am seeing it all over the place, like Draft:Dr. William L Randall, Draft:The Other Woman and other stories - indeed looking at Special:NewPagesFeed I would say on all drafts. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 21:30, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
But yet it's not found in places like Draft:Storm Saulter, and it's now gone from Draft:The Other Woman and other stories, and I don't see anything in this diff that would explain it. Primefac (talk) 22:01, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Primefac, I see it in Draft:Storm Saulter in Safari on Mac and not in Opera! Others show in both S and in O Fiddle Faddle 22:06, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I see they've popped up pretty much everywhere I've said they weren't. I wonder if someone is mucking about with the backend like that horrible header issue from a few weeks ago.
Is it only happening in the draft space, or are there any user-space submissions we can check? Primefac (talk) 22:16, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Wait and see, I guess. I know purging makes no difference. I'm surprised different browsers have, though. "the sun will come up, tomorrow ..... " etc Fiddle Faddle 22:20, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I've got the decline notices from one of the drafts above copied to User:Primefac/RandName, so we'll see if things change... Primefac (talk) 22:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Looks like the bug has passed? Primefac (talk) 00:22, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
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