Hi Erick Shepherd! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia. Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from peers and experienced editors. I hope to see you there! Jtmorgan (I'm a Teahouse host)
Hi Erick Shepherd! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
The article W2S was deleted three times by three different administrators under the same speedy deletion criterion for a lack of indicated significance. I was neither the first nor the only person to conclude that the subject was not significant enough to merit its own article.
I want to create a page that gives history of this company similar to articles like Arup and Cundall Johnstone, I am not that brilliant at editing.....who is best to do this?
Hey, @Flatts01: You may want to start the article off as either a draft or userspace draft if you either don't intend on expanding it right away or think it may take you a while to do so. Drafts allow you to build an article before submitting it for review, so you can take a little more time with it and get other users' feedback before attempting to publish it under its own namespace. However, by your username, you appear like you may have a connection with the subject. If that's the case, I recommend reading the Wikipedia conflict of interest article: Conflict of interest writing and editing is rather strongly discouraged.
I didn't see this message in time to vote on the AfD entry, though I would have moved to keep the article. With that much media coverage, I'm somewhat surprised the notability of the subject came into question. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 15:40, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, @Geckontior: Yes, I recall. I had initially flagged Iraqui Bombing of 2016 for a lack of content, but after you had added in some details about the subject, I did a little searching and found there was already a preexisting article on the same topic under a different name — see Iskandariya suicide bombing — and added the second deletion tag because of that. Normally, I would have proposed we turn the page into a redirect, but I think the title Iraqui Bombing of 2016 is a little to vague to connect to so specific a topic. However, you are more than welcome to edit the existing page! Hit me up if you need any help. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 23:34, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You added the speedy tag less than a minute after its creation. That's way too hasty. Consensus is to wait at least 10 minutes before tagging. Adam9007 (talk) 23:33, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, and normally, unless the submission is in egregious violation, I do try to. However, in this case, within that minute, I was able to conduct a web search and establish that the company itself is not even a month old, that their website was registered under the same individual as authored the article (which their own testimony corroborated three minutes later on the talk page), and that the company has no established notability under WP:CORP as there is a complete absence of coverage in secondary sources. I apologize if it seemed hasty, but the intent of the article appeared to me obviously promotional. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 00:04, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, not sure if you remember User:Giggity giggity goo 69, but it turns out that he was a block evader. Usually when accounts with names like that are created, they don't mean well. I get the asssume good faith and that, but in my WP experience so far, I tend to go with my gut. Thanks again for your input. --TJH2018talk21:54, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@TJH2018: I saw. I had them on my watchlist and got a notification when they were blocked earlier today. I apologize, I never meant to seem like I was trying to discredit your take on the matter — I just didn't quite understand the reasoning behind why their user space was tagged WP:G3 when I first looked at their contributions. Regardless, your gut instinct appears to have been correct. Nice work! ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 22:45, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Erick How about now? I've fixed the citation to a credible source, an article from Forbes :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eh1177 (talk • contribs) 22:40, 11 April 2016
@Eh1177: Better! Though unfortunately, it looks like it may not have been enough. An administrator appears to have deleted the page within a minute of you commenting here about the change. My recommendation is to collect more sources on the subject like that Forbes article and build a draft page. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 02:51, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Erick Shephard,
May you please not delete the Lisson Tchistiakov page because we are trying to inform people about a person that could once become famous. We are talking about his life, age, inspiration, and talent Lisson555 (talk) 01:36, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
He says my edits are inappropriate like I am naked in the street. Please, do something, because I don't want to enter into edit wars. See also Anne McCaffrey bibliography and stop this rogue ruining my work.
To editor Mad Hatter: Your "work" is to the detriment of the encyclopedia, and it will not stand. Calling on other editors to back up your losing argument is tasteless and likely to get you blocked. —swpbT20:08, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Mad Hatter: I wouldn't call swpb a rogue editor, as they appear to have a pretty extensive history on Wikipedia. I happen to agree with them on this one: If you don't want to enter into an edit war, then discuss potentially controversial edits to an article on its talk page before making them. It may take a little longer, but it is an important part of achieving consensus and saves you from having to seek users who support your change after somebody raises an objection. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 20:52, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, Erick, I am stopping. Editors are threatening me and disparaging my edits. I have done more than 20 splits of lengthy, staggering and huge chunks of bibliographies while we have categories of bibliographies in fantasy, sci-fi and even historical novels, but now I am threatened by editors, who are talking only about consensuses, while there are only 3 or 4 major editors like me that are watching and doing work. I have made my mark, but now I am threatened and even trailed not to do anymore splitting work. Experienced users should be quite receptive that this is not done to disrupt the material, but rather lighten up and facilitate the reading and using of Wikipedia.
I understand that your objective is not to be disruptive, and I believe most other users assume your edits are made in good faith as well. Nevertheless, regardless of how good-natured your intentions may be, there is a process to these things that you should follow to the best of your ability. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 20:52, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of work to go around, but I am not on an academic semester system, at least right now. Let me know when you are back and we can defend the wiki against the ego-laden vanity articles! I'm starting to think there should be a vigilante group. Good luck on finals et al. HappyValleyEditor (talk) 05:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor HappyValleyEditor: Thank you! I should have more time near the second week of May, though I still foresee myself checking in intermittently before then, so don't hesitate to drop me a line should you need any assistance. I wish you the best in your own endeavors in the mean time! ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 10:46, 21 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Joseph2302: My apologies. I'm still learning many of the nuances of Wikipedia editing. Thank you for the correction! Though out of curiosity, may I ask what you mean by the page history being necessary for copyright purposes? ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 23:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much for all your help welcoming the newcomers to the Teahouse! You deserve this badge for all your hard work :) Thanks for making Wikipedia a friendlier place!
Hi there. I agree that JFK Was Actually Negro should probably deleted but I'm not sure why you think it should be deleted under WP:G3. How do you come to the conclusion that this is a "blatant and obvious hoax?" I personally believe that this should be brought to AfD due to lack of notability. Looking forward to your opinion. Thanks! --Non-Dropframetalk22:00, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Correct on both counts but that doesn't make a purported hoax "blatant." It would seem to me that such a book probably does exist and an AfD declaring the book non-notable would be more appropriate in this case. That being said, the claim of the book being "best selling" is clearly false so your point of view certainly isn't without merit. --Non-Dropframetalk22:07, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Non-dropframe: Agreed. However, I had also checked the author's contribution history and talk page before adding the tag. They appear to have a history of similar edits tagged under WP:G3 as either vandalism or hoaxes and were blocked for the same just a few minutes ago. I agree that, provided the book actually exists, AfD for notability would be the preferred route to take. However, I believe we must respectfully differ on whether or not the book does in fact exist. While the book being freshly published could certainly explain the apparent lack of coverage, I would still expect there to be some evidence supporting the existence of the author, be it in the form of social media profiles, mentions on genealogy websites, or even passing mentions in sources such as Yellow Pages. The complete absence thereof, combined with the other aforementioned factors, strongly suggests to me that this was a hoax of vandalistic nature. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 22:23, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Zellfaze: You're quite welcome! I plan to start work on a complete overhaul of the task force page over the next few weeks in an effort to improve ease of use. After that, we can work to expand our membership.
I'm currently in Baltimore for school, but I'll be back in Frederick County at the semester's end in just over two weeks. I would love to meet up some time! I've added myself as a potential attendee of the upcoming Frederick County history meetup; I just need to ensure it doesn't conflict with another prior engagement of mine.
Hit me up some time if you need help on any Frederick related articles! I'll be working on revising much of the Frederick Community College page over the Summer as well. I know a few photographers on campus, so hopefully I'll be able to solicit their aid in that endeavor. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 15:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Okay on the article you prodded-Ajith Mohan, there seems to be a bunch of tagging problems when you try to edit it, I had to redo the BLP prod tag even, not sure what is wrong with it (might need to just go to afd or something) Wgolf (talk) 22:03, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Wgolf: I placed a couple tags on that article and cleaned up the lead, but so far as I can remember, I didn't PROD it. I can't see the edit history, as the page appears to have since been deleted, but to my recollection, another user placed the PROD tag there after I tagged it as an autobiography. Nevertheless, I agree: I saw what you were talking about when cleaning up the lead. I'm not entirely sure what that was about. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 13:00, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Eric! You marked my userpage for deletion I think because I already have one in the german Wikipedia. Therefore I wanted to ask how to translate the userpage properly. I would like to have one for the german Wiki and one for the english one. Best regards, Kovah (talk) 05:07, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Kovah: Hey, Kovah! I actually didn't mark your userpage for deletion. The page you created at Benutzer:Kovah is in the wrong location for a userspace on the English Wikipedia. I've moved it to the appropriate page at User:Kovah and have marked the previous page, which is now a redirect, for deletion under Wikipedia CSD R2. You should be good to go now! Let me know if you have any more questions or need any help! ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 05:11, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am very new to this so im sorry for deleting the disruptive editing i wasnt really sure what it was so i removed it. May you tell me whats wrong with my page? Thanks for your help! OfficialReporter (talk) 05:24, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor OfficialReporter: Hey, OfficialReporter! What you saw on DropzZ is a speedy deletion template, which is used when a page falls under one or more of Wikipedia's speedy deletion criteria. Your article was tagged under criterion A7 because the article does not contain a credible claim of significance: That is, credible indication of why the subject is important enough to be in an encyclopedia. A credible claim of significance can either be made explicitly within the contents of the article itself or implicitly through the use of reliable secondary sources. However, I must advise — if you are writing this page about yourself — that writing autobiographies is strongly discouraged.
Concerning the notices for disruptive editing, due to bias, the author of an article is typically not allowed to remove a speedy deletion template from any page they have created. You can continue to improve upon the page while the tag is in place. If those edits result in the page becoming compliant, I or another user can remove the speedy deletion template. If not, eventually, an administrator will review the page and assess whether or not it actually merits deletion and take action from there. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 05:39, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Is my page getting removed and i thoght it was ok to make a page about yourself just as long as im not promoting myself which im not, i am simply showing facts of myself and not to personal OfficialReporter (talk) 05:51, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To editor OfficialReporter: It may be: at this point, that's largely up to the administer who reviews it. Per Wikipedia's policies on autobiographies, writing about yourself, whether promotional or not, is strongly discouraged. Generally, if you're important enough to put in an encyclopedia, you will not have to write your own article: Someone else will eventually do it for you. Conversely, if you have to write your own article, you may not be important enough to be in an encyclopedia. See Wikipedia's entries on notability and verifiability. ~ Erick Shepherd • (Talk) • 06:03, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation has appointed a committee to lead the search for the foundation’s next Executive Director. One of our first tasks is to write the job description of the executive director position, and we are asking for input from the Wikimedia community. Please take a few minutes and complete this survey to help us better understand community and staff expectations for the Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director.
You are invited to participate in the 50,000 Challenge, aiming for 50,000 article improvements and creations for articles relating to the United States. This effort began on November 1, 2016 and to reach our goal, we will need editors like you to participate, expand, and create. See more here!
In order to better control the quality of new pages, keep out the spam, and welcome the genuine newbies, the current system we introduced in 2011 is being updated and improved. The documentation and tutorials have also been revised and given a facelift. Most importantly a new user group New Page Reviewer has been created.
Under the new rule, you may find that you are temporarily unable to mark new pages as reviewed. However, this is nothing to worry about - most current experienced patrollers are being accorded the the new right without the need to apply, and if you have significant previous experience of patrolling new pages, we strongly encourage you to apply for the new right as soon as possible - we need all the help we can get, and we are now providing a dynamic, supportive environment for your work.
Hello, Erick Shepherd. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
We now have 812 New Page Reviewers! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog. Now it's time for action. Mid July to 01 Oct 2016
If each reviewer does only 10 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by each reviewer doing only 2 or 3 reviews a day - that's about 5 minutes work!
Let's get that over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Second set of eyes
Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work. Read about it at the new Monitoring the system section in the tutorial.
Getting the tools we need - 2016 WMF Wishlist Survey: Please vote
With some tweaks to their look, and some additional features, Page Curation and New Pages Feed could easily be the best tools for patrollers and reviewers. We've listed most of what what we need at the 2016 WMF Wishlist Survey. Voting starts on 28 November - please turn out to make our bid the Foundation's top priority. Please help also by improving or commenting on our Wishlist entry at the Community Wishlist Survey. Many other important user suggestions are listed at at Page Curation.
New Page Reviewers are asked to be especially on the look out 08:00-20:00 UTC (that's local London time - check your USA and AUS times) on Thursday 8 December for new pages. The BBC together with Wikimedia UK is holding a large 12-hour editathon. Many new articles and drafts are expected. See BBC 100 Women 2016: How to join our edit-a-thon. Follow also on #100womenwiki, and please, don't bite the newbies :) (user:Kudpung for NPR. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]
We now have 812 New Page Reviewers!
Most of us requested the user right at PERM, expressing a wish to be able to do something about the huge backlog, but the chart on the right does not demonstrate any changes to the pre-user-right levels of October.
Hitting 17,000 soon
The backlog is still steadily growing at a rate of 150 a day or 4,650 a month. Only 20 reviews a day by each reviewer over the next few days would bring the backlog down to a managable level and the daily input can then be processed by each reviewer doing only 2 or 3 reviews a day - that's about 5 minutes work!
It didn't work in time to relax for the Xmas/New Year holidays. Let's see if we can achieve our goal before Easter, otherwise by Thanksgiving it will be closer to 70,000.
Second set of eyes
Remember that we are the only guardians of quality of new articles, we alone have to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged by non-Reviewer patrollers and that new authors are not being bitten.
Abuse
This is even more important and extra vigilance is required considering Orangemoody, and
Kudpung is stepping down after 6 years as unofficial coordinator of New Page Patrolling/Reviewing. There is enough work for two people and two coords are now required. Details are at NPR Coordinators; nominate someone or nominate yourself. Date for the actual suffrage will be published later.
Voting for coordinators has now begun HERE and will continue through/to 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. Please be sure to vote. Any registered, confirmed editor can vote. Nominations are now closed.
Still a MASSIVE backlog
We now have 812 New Page Reviewers but despite numerous appeals for help, the backlog has NOT been significantly reduced. If you asked for the New Page Reviewer right, please consider investing a bit of time - every little helps preventing spam and trash entering the mainspace and Google when the 'NO_INDEX' tags expire.
Hi there, Erick Shepherd. In looking at WikiProject Maryland, I came across your user name as someone who is active in the project. I wondered if you might be interested to assist with an edit request for Stewart W. Bainum Jr. Mr. Bainum is a former state lawmaker in the Maryland House of Delegates and Maryland Senate, and has held leadership positions with Choice Hotels and HCR Manor Care, among other businesses. I'm proposing a new draft seeking to improve the structure of the Stewart W. Bainum Jr. article, fix inaccuracies throughout, and highlight the details of Mr. Bainum's business and political careers. In particular, from news clippings provided by Mr. Bainum and from research on Lexis Nexis and HighBeam, I've been able to find a lot of older sources that provide information about his political career and development of the company that became Choice Hotels. As I do have a COI, I won't make any edits to the live article, and I'm reaching out to get feedback and help taking live appropriate changes from uninvolved editors such as yourself. If you're able to take a look, that would be wonderful, any feedback is appreciated. Thanks in advance, 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 18:03, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Since rolling out the right in November, just 6 months ago, we now have 812 reviewers, but the backlog is still mysteriously growing fast. If every reviewer did just 55 reviews, the 22,000 backlog would be gone, in a flash, schwoop, just like that!
But do remember: Rather than speed, quality and depth of patrolling and the use of correct CSD criteria are essential to good reviewing. Do not over-tag. Make use of the message feature to let the creator know about your maintenance tags. See the tutorial again HERE. Get help HERE.
Stay up to date with recent new page developments and have your say, read THIS PAGE.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!
Backlog update:
The new page backlog is currently at 18,511 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a a day.
Some editors are committing to work specifically on patrolling new pages on 15 July. If you have not reviewed new pages in a while, this might be a good time to be involved. Please remember that quality of patrolling is more important than quantity, that the speedy deletion criteria should be followed strictly, and that ovetagging for minor issues should be avoided.
Technology update:
Several requests have been put into Phabractor to increase usability of the New Pages Feed and the Page Curation toolbar. For more details or to suggest improvements go to Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements
The tutorial has been updated to include links to the following useful userscripts. If you were not aware of them, they could be useful in your efforts reviewing new pages:
User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js adds a link to the new pages feed and page curation toolbar to your top toolbar on Wikipedia
Following discussion at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers, Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Noticeboard has been marked as historical. Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers is currently the most active central discussion forum for the New Page Patrol project. To keep up to date on the most recent discussions you can add it to your watchlist or visit it periodically.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!
Backlog update:
The new page backlog is currently at 16,991 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a a day.
Technology update:
Rentier has created a NPP browser in WMF Labs that allows you to search new unreviewed pages using keywords and categories.
General project update:
The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working with the community to implement the autoconfirmed article creation trial. The trial is currently set to start on 7 September 2017, pending final approval of the technical features.
Please remember to focus on the quality of review: correct tagging of articles and not tagbombing are important. Searching for potential copyright violations is also important, and it can be aided by Earwig's Copyvio Detector, which can be added to your toolbar for ease of use with this user script.
To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!
Backlog update:
The new page backlog is currently at 14304 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a day.
Currently there are 532 pages in the backlog that were created by non-autoconfirmed users before WP:ACTRIAL. The NPP project is undertaking a drive to clear these pages from the backlog before they hit the 90 day Google index point. Please consider reviewing a few today!
Technology update:
The Wikimedia Foundation is currently working on creating a new filter for page curation that will allow new page patrollers to filter by extended confirmed status. For more information see: T175225
General project update:
On 14 September 2017 the English Wikipedia began the autoconfirmed article creation trial. For a six month period, creation of articles in the mainspace of the English Wikipedia will be restricted to users with autoconfirmed status. New users who attempt article creation will now be redirected to a newly designed landing page.
Before clicking on a reference or external link while reviewing a page, please be careful that the site looks trustworthy. If you have a question about the safety of clicking on a link, it is better not to click on it.
To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!
Backlog update:
The new page backlog is currently at 12,878 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a day.
We have successfully cleared the backlog of pages created by non-confirmed accounts before ACTRIAL. Thank you to everyone who participated in that drive.
Technology update:
Primefac has created a script that will assist in requesting revision deletion for copyright violations that are often found in new pages. For more information see User:Primefac/revdel.
General project update:
The Article Wizard has been updated and simplified to match the layout style of the new user landing page. If you have not yet seen it, take a look.
To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!
Hello, Erick Shepherd. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!
Backlog update:
The new page backlog is currently at 12713 pages. Please consider reviewing even just a few pages each day! If everyone helps out, it will really put a dent in the backlog.
Currently the backlog stretches back to March and some pages in the backlog have passed the 90 day Google index point. Please consider reviewing some of them!
Outreach and Invitations:
If you know other editors with a good understanding of Wikipedia policy, invite them to join NPP by dropping the invitation template on their talk page with: {{subst:NPR invite}}. Adding more qualified reviewers will help with keeping the backlog manageable.
New Year New Page Review Drive
A backlog drive is planned for the start of the year, beginning on January 1st and running until the end of the month. Unique prizes will be given in tiers for both the total number of reviews made, as well as the longest 'streak' maintained.
Note: quality reviewing is extremely important, please do not sacrifice quality for quantity.
General project update:
ACTRIAL has resulted in a significant increase in the quality of new submissions, with noticeably fewer CSD, PROD, and BLPPROD candidates in the new page feed. However, the majority of the backlog still dates back to before ACTRIAL started, so consider reviewing articles from the middle or back of the backlog.
The NPP Browser can help you quickly find articles with topics that you prefer to review from within the backlog.
To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your efforts reviewing new pages!
Announcing the NPP New Year Backlog Drive!
We have done amazing work so far in December to reduce the New Pages Feed backlog by over 3000 articles! Now is the time to capitalise on our momentum and help eliminate the backlog!
The backlog drive will begin on January 1st and run until January 29th. Prize tiers and other info can be found HERE.
Awards will be given in tiers in two categories:
The total number of reviews completed for the month.
The minimum weekly total maintained for all four weeks of the backlog drive.
NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your efforts in reviewing new pages!The NPP backlog at the end of the drive with the number of unreviewed articles by creation date. Red is older than 90 days, orange is between 90 and 30 days old, and green is younger than 30 days.
Backlog update:
The new page backlog is currently at 3819 unreviewed articles, with a further 6660 unreviewed redirects.
We are very close to eliminating the backlog completely; please help by reviewing a few extra articles each day!
New Year Backlog Drive results:
We made massive progress during the recent four weeks of the NPP Backlog Drive, during which the backlog reduced by nearly six thousand articles and the length of the backlog by almost 3 months!
General project update:
ACTRIAL will end it's initial phase on the 14th of March. Our goal is to reduce the backlog significantly below the 90 day index point by the 14th of March. Please consider helping with this goal by reviewing a few additional pages a day.
Reviewing redirects is an important and necessary part of New Page Patrol. Please read the guideline on appropriate redirects for advice on reviewing redirects. Inappropriate redirects can be re-targeted or nominated for deletion at RfD.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. 20:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
ACTRIAL's six month experiment restricting new page creation to (auto)confirmed users ended on 14 March. As expected, a greatly increased number of unsuitable articles and candidates for deletion are showing up in the feed again, and the backlog has since increased already by ~30%. Please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day.
Paid editing
Now that ACTRIAL is inoperative pending discussion, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary.
Subject-specific notability guidelines
The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
While patrolling articles, if you find an editor that is particularly competent at creating quality new articles, and that user has created more than 25 articles (rather than stubs), consider nominating them for the 'Autopatrolled' user right HERE.
News
The next issue Wikipedia's newspaper The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it, including ACTRIAL wrap-up that will be of special interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. The Signpost is one of the best ways to stay up date with news and new developments - please consider subscribing to it. All editors of Wikipedia and associated projects are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the The Signpost's editorial team for the next issue.
WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.
Deletion tags
Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.
Backlog drive:
A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.
Editathons
There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.
Paid editing - new policy
Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.
Subject-specific notability guidelines
The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
Not English
A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.
News
Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.
Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!
As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar: . Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards: , , , .
Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. (Purge)
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
June backlog drive
Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers. Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.
New technology, new rules
New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.
Editathons
Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.
The Signpost
The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.
Project news
The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.
As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.
Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.
List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing
Twinkle provides a lot of the same functionality as the page curation tools, and some reviewers prefer to use the Twinkle tools for some/all tasks. It can be activated simply in the gadgets section of 'preferences'. There are also a lot of options available at the Twinkle preferences panel after you install the gadget.
In terms of other gadgets for NPR, HotCat is worth turning on. It allows you to easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions.
MoreMenu also adds a bunch of very useful links for diagnosing and fixing page issues.
User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js(info): Installing scripts doesn't have to be complicated. Go to your common.js and copy importScript( 'User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller.js' ); into an empty line, now you can install all other scripts with the click of a button from the script page! (Note you need to be at the ".js" page for the script for the install button to appear, not the information page)
User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js(info): Creates a scrolling new pages list at the left side of the page. You can change the number of pages shown by adding the following to the next line on your common.js page (immediately after the line importing this script): npp_num_pages=20; (Recommended 20, but you can use any number from 1 to 50).
User:Primefac/revdel.js(info): Is requesting revdel complicated and time consuming? This script helps simplify the process. Just have the Copyvio source URL and go to the history page and collect your diff IDs and you can drop them into the script Popups and it will create a revdel request for you.
User:Evad37/rater.js(info): A fantastic tool for adding WikiProject templates to article talk pages. If you add: rater_autostartNamespaces = 0; to the next line on your common.js, the prompt will pop up automatically if a page has no Wikiproject templates on the talk page (note: this can be a bit annoying if you review redirects or dab pages commonly).
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.
Hello Erick Shepherd, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
Backlog
As of 21 October 2018[update], there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.
Community Wishlist Proposal
There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!
Project updates
ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.
Hello Erick Shepherd,
Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW
Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.
If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.
We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.
Hello, Erick Shepherd. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.
Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001reviews), Semmendinger (8,440reviews), PRehse (8,092reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016reviews), and Elmidae (3,615reviews). Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only sevenmonths, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.
The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.
Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019
At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.
Training video
Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minutevideo was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.
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Our team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on a project to improve the ease-of-use and productivity of wiki talk pages. As a Teahouse host, I can imagine you’ve run into challenges explaining talk pages to first-time participants.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis – to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects and to make decisions. Communication is essential for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities. We're currently leading a global consultation on how to improve talk pages, and we're looking for people that can report on their experiences using (or helping other people to use) wiki talk pages. We'd like to invite you to participate in the consultation, and invite new users to join too.
We thank you in advance for your participation and your help.
The WMF has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the content translation tool. This may result in an increase in machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the {{rough translation}} tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per WP:TFOLWP.
Discussions of interest
Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.
NPP Tools Report
Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828 Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
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Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:
Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.
Reliable Sources for NPP
Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.
Backlog drive coming soon
Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.
More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.
QUALITY of REVIEWING
Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors.
The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.
Backlog
The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.
Move to draft
NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.
Notifying users
Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.
PERM
Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.
Other news
School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.
Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
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Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.
Coordinator
A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.
This month's refresher course
Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired Ballonman, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for making the occasional mistake while others can learn from their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.
Deletion tags
Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.
Paid editing
Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.
Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.
Not English
A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
Tools
Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent enhancements to the New Pages Feed and features in the Curation tool, and there are still more to come. Due to the wealth of information now displayed by ORES, reviewers are strongly encouraged to use the system now rather than Twinkle; it will also correctly populate the logs.
Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.
Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.
DannyS712 bot III is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.
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Mole Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated among chemists, chemistry students and chemistry enthusiasts on October 23, between 6:02 a.m. and 6:02 p.m. This date is derived from the Avogadro number, which is approximately 6.022×1023, and the day is named after scientist Amedeo Avogadro.
This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.
Getting the queue to 0
There are now 812 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.
Coordinator
Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.
This month's refresher course
Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.
Tools
It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
Reviewer Feedback
Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.
Second set of eyes
Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
Arbitration Committee
The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.
Community Wish list
There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.
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This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.
Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.
Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.
Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.
(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)
Redirect autopatrol
A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.
Source Guide Discussion
Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.
This month's refresher course
While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.
The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.
Redirects
New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.
Discussions and Resources
There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.
Refresher
Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095
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NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.
Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate
In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.
Discussions and Resources
A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
