User talk:Quiddity (WMF)

"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior." - Hippolyte Taine

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 7

A barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar
I just wanted to notify you that after getting started on here that you need some thanks and WikiLove. –MJLTalk 03:50, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I sent a "Thanks" for this, but thanks again. ;) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 8

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
  • Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.
BAG

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

BOTPOL
  • Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
  • Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
  • Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.
BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

  • 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
  • 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
  • In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
  • Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
  • 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).
New things
Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Backlog

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.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 9

New Page Review newsletter November 2019

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

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.


To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 10

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 11

Disregard ping

I think that CKorener (WMF) can probably address my question about web design at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration committee, but feel free to comment if you would like to do so. Thanks, ↠Pine () 18:19, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review newsletter December 2019

A graph showing the number of articles in the page curation feed from 12/21/18 - 12/20/19

Reviewer of the Year

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.

Top 10 Reviewers over the last 365 days
Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 Rosguill (talk) 47,395 Patrol Page Curation
2 Onel5969 (talk) 41,883 Patrol Page Curation
3 JTtheOG (talk) 11,493 Patrol Page Curation
4 Arthistorian1977 (talk) 5,562 Patrol Page Curation
5 DannyS712 (talk) 4,866 Patrol Page Curation
6 CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) 3,995 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 3,812 Patrol Page Curation
8 Boleyn (talk) 3,655 Patrol Page Curation
9 Ymblanter (talk) 3,553 Patrol Page Curation
10 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 3,522 Patrol Page Curation

(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.

Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:11, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Belated holiday greetings

Notification popup image

I've noticed that the notification popup's layout has changed slightly from what's shown in this image. Should I update it, and if so, how would I? TK421bsod (talk) 07:49, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @TK421bsod: Thanks for the note. I've made a simple update to the image, using the same test-account as previously used. I think that might suffice for now?
If you wanted to put more time into doing it more thoroughly (the timestamps are arguably the only thing that needs improving), the process would be: create a test-account (and mark it as connected to your main-account), trigger some simple notifications for that account (as done in the current screenshots, without touching mainspace), and then upload that new image on top of the old one (it could be argued that a new file ought to be started - that would entail digging through all the global-file-usage of the existing file to see which ones need to be replaced - but I think this method of updating the single file is better). Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 12

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Source Guide Discussion

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
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

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:2030 cite

Template:2030 cite has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bsherr (talk) 12:26, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 13

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 14

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 15

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Your help can make a difference

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.
  • A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
  • Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 16

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 17

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 18

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

A chart of the 2020 New Page Patrol Queue

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank Username Num reviews Log
1 DannyS712 bot III (talk) 67,552 Patrol Page Curation
2 Rosguill (talk) 63,821 Patrol Page Curation
3 John B123 (talk) 21,697 Patrol Page Curation
4 Onel5969 (talk) 19,879 Patrol Page Curation
5 JTtheOG (talk) 12,901 Patrol Page Curation
6 Mcampany (talk) 9,103 Patrol Page Curation
7 DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 6,401 Patrol Page Curation
8 Mccapra (talk) 4,918 Patrol Page Curation
9 Hughesdarren (talk) 4,520 Patrol Page Curation
10 Utopes (talk) 3,958 Patrol Page Curation
Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 19

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 20

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 20

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 21

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021

New Page Review queue September 2021

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.

Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.

At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.

There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.

Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.


To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:32, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

November 2021 backlog drive

New Page Patrol | November 2021 Backlog Drive
  • On November 1, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
  • Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive.
  • Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 01:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Bots Newsletter, December 2021
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

  • Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (Dark red X symbolN2 3 denied, Blue question mark? 3 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

September 2019

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!
  • Green checkmarkY Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · Dark red X symbolN2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · Blue question mark? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
  • TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
  • Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

November 2019

Now you're thinking with portals.

December 2019

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

  • What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
  • What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
  • Will reFill ever get fixed?
  • What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
  • Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 22

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Bots Newsletter, January 2022
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with Dark red X symbolN2 8 denied, Blue question mark? 2 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

January 2020

A python
A python
A python
0.4 pythons
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

February 2020

Speaking of WikiProject Molecular Biology, Listeria went wild in February

March 2020

April 2020

Listeria being examined

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots

June 2020

A partial block averted at the eleventh hour for the robot that makes Legos

Conclusion

  • What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?
  • Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
  • What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
  • Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
  • What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]


(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022

New Page Review queue March 2022

Hello Quiddity (WMF),

At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.

Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.

In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 812 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 846 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.

This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.

If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi Quiddity (WMF)! 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.

-- 18:27, Friday, June 24, 2022 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 23

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 24

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]