Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/patrolled pages

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Notice Patrolled edits has since been turned on for all autoconfirmed users by Brion per bugzilla:12007

Contents

[edit] No Patrolled link

There is no "[Mark this page as patrolled]" link. SEWilco (talk) 23:11, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Good. I thought it was just me who couldn't find/see it. Does someone know? – sgeureka t•c 23:15, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not seeing it either. I thought it might be a conflict with some script, but SEWilco doesn't appear to be using any, unless he's using something other than monobook. I'll try disabling some of mine to see if that helps. Someone's obviously able to see it, as pages keep getting marked as reviewed. Hersfold (t/a/c) 23:56, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
According to the help page, the function is only available to administrators. I'll fix the page here. Hersfold (t/a/c) 00:17, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
It should be available to all autoconfirmed users (accounts older than 4 days). I've been pestering Brion on IRC to change it. As it appears it might take a consensus to change it, I've begun a quick poll below. Mr.Z-man 01:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm an admin and can't see it either. Where is it supposed to be exactly? --W.marsh 01:24, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, figured it out. --W.marsh 01:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not an administrator. I've been a registered user since 2004 with several thousand edits. I don't see the link. What should I do? Fg2 (talk) 01:48, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
You must be a sysop to mark patrolled currently. The discussion below is trying to get it moved to autoconfirmed users, which is what you and Will are. I (talk) 01:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. Since it's only for administrators, can you make the highlighting and the notification that's on the Watchlist only appear for administrators so that it doesn't confuse the 99% of registered users who aren't administrators? Fg2 (talk) 02:16, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Aha, now it's been enabled. Even better! Thanks Fg2 (talk) 02:17, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I can't see it either. Will (talk) 01:53, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
It's only on pages that are yellow in Special:Newpages. If it's white, that means it's been patrolled already, so no link. --W.marsh 01:58, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Yellow? White? All I'm seeing is blue. --Carnildo (talk) 02:13, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
If it is unpatrolled, the entry will be outlined in yellow. If it has been patrolled, it will look the same as it did before. I (talk) 02:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Still not seeing it. It might be that I'm using Classic rather than Monobook as my skin. --Carnildo (talk) 05:10, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I am an admin and I can only see the link on new pages, not previously existing ones. What's up with that? —Keenan Pepper 01:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Once anyone has flagged it once as patrolled, the link will not appear again. Also, it seems to only appear when you load a page coming directly from special:newpages. --W.marsh 04:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I'd love to see veteran users involved, but the autoconfirmed treshhold is so low that the amount of problem editors in the group is too hight and it's too easy for a vandal to wait it out and become autoconfirmed. The group of people this is available to should expand, but not that much. - Mgm|(talk) 09:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Poll

Question: Who should be given the ability to patrol new pages?

[edit] Admins only

  1. While I understand the desire for autoconfirmed users to be able to mark patrolled, this can defeat the purpose of marking pages. While I assume most pages that are speediable are created by users who only register to do it immediately, if the user waits a few days and becomes autoconfirmed, then he can mark the page patrolled. The purpose of marking is so that others do not need to check it. With the potential for the above scenario, pages that are marked patrolled may not, in reality, be legitimately patrolled, which means the page either survives without inspection, or we have people checking already patrolled pages to make sure that this hasn't happened, which would make patrolling effecitvely useless. Even if the aforementioned scenario never happens, allowing any autoconfirmed user to mark pages patrolled places a lot of trust that the person who patrolled is not in error, and admins who do not neccesarily have that trust in all autoconfirmed users will have to check all new pages. The most secure way to be sure that a mark is correct is if the only person who can mark them is someone who is already trusted, i.e. admins. I actually don't like this update, but if it must happen, I'd rather admins be the one to mark patrolled. I (talk) 01:48, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
    I should have mentioned that users cannot mark their own pages as patrolled. Many newpage patrollers now aren't admins, are they doing a bad job? Mr.Z-man 01:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
    Well that voids the first scenario. But it doesn't change W.marsh's. Most new page patrollers are doing an excellent job. However, there are many people checking most of the pages. Thus, there are usually several people who see a page quickly. If the page were already patrolled, as in W.marsh's scenario, then they wouldn't check it. Or they would, and the patrol system is useless. I (talk) 02:07, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not understanding what's to prevent someone from marking a bunch of pages as patrolled just to be disruptive (it wouldn't be very obvious) or marking their own pages as patrolled when they're not really fit to make that decision. I think non-admins should be able to do this... but something between "autoconfirmed" and "admin" would be good. Maybe a checklist, similar to people who can use AWB. --W.marsh 01:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Autoconfirmed (accounts older than 4 days)

  1. Mr.Z-man 01:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  2. I'd imagine plenty of patrollers aren't admins. (Bad faith patrolling should be easy enough to catch). Bfigura (talk) 01:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
    How will/could bad faith patrolling be caught? Does it mark somewhere the name of the user who patrolled it? -- Quiddity (talk) 06:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
    Yes, if you do traditional new page patrolling and look at an obviously inappropriate page that was marked as patrolled, you can go to the page history and click "view logs for this page" and see who flagged it as patrolled. Then, under that user's contributions list, you can view logs for the user and see what other pages he/she marked as patrolled and deal with it appropriately. Neil916 (Talk) 08:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  3. I was wondering about this... Seraphim Whipp 01:21, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  4. I was going to return to NP patrolling again after a long hiatus, but if the useful new feature is not available to me, I cannot offer the same degree of contribution as admins. Which is silly; it undermines the effort of those without the mop, and reduces its practical worth to some extent in comparison. Adrian M. H. 01:25, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  5. I'd imagine most patrollers arn't admins. else there would be nothing in the category page for speedy deletion requests. And I agree that bad faith stuff will get caught up fairly easily. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 01:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  6. Yes, please :) Spebi 01:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  7. This seems like an extremely useful feature, but it's currently not available to most editors. Chaz Beckett 01:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  8. It should be the same length of time as for semi-protected pages or whatever. But in reality, the vandals, usually kids, don't tend to go on internal wiki bits like this do they? Also, I thought we wanted to encourage more people to patrol here as did when anyone could, not the opposite.Merkinsmum (talk) 01:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  9. I'll go with the stated behavior. I suspect the decision about which users can patrol was already made in some previous discussion, and that is why the instructions don't mention admins. Where was new page patrolled discussed? (SEWilco (talk) 01:56, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
    There was scattered discussion here, and from all previous previosu discussion with developers, it was understood that it was going to be set this way. Mr.Z-man 02:06, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
    I think you need to define what the current meaning of "this way" was. (SEWilco (talk) 02:27, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
    Set so autoconfirmed can patrol. Mr.Z-man 04:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  10. I still think we should look at a slightly better requirement than just autoconfirmed, but even with all eyes on this new toy, we're having trouble flagging everything with just admins doing it. So I think we should open it up to more than just admins for now and see if that's a problem. --W.marsh 02:15, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  11. Unless an improved alternative exists. Mtmelendez (Talk) 02:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  12. I've been experimenting a little, and I like it. I think auto-comfirmed is the right level, it would be too much of a burden if we admins had to do all the work of newpages. DGG (talk) 03:48, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  13. If we only trust admins to do NP patrol, where would we be? Neil916 (Talk) 05:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  14. This seems like a task that any established user should be allowed to do. Its a minor task really; even confirmed pages are not exempt from CSD or any other edits in the future... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  15. As said above, a vast number of new page patrollers are not admins. WATP (talk) • (contribs) 15:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Autoconfirmed (by two users)

I am concerned that autoconfirmed will be susceptible to puppetry (create page with one account; then confirm it with a different account - hard to spot), and people patrolling to allow through pages that suit their own POV. Requiring two users to patrol a page before it is remove from the stack will allow patrollers to police themselves, so to speak, removing the administrative overhead. John Vandenberg (talk) 02:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

  1. If this could be implemented (AFAIK it cannot be right now) it would be a much more ideal system. Mr.Z-man 02:22, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  2. Support if it can be done. Autocomfirmed (status quo) if not. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 02:54, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  3. Strong Support. Marking as patrolled is very quick and easy, and chances are that nobody will ever check the article again once it has been marked as patrolled. When patroling new pages, I quite often still make some changes to them, and it happens too that I notice that other editors edit pages I have patroled, and notice that their edits are actualy much better. Maybe something with a two color scheme? i.e. red for unpatroled, yellow for patroled once, white for patroled twice? Or make it something like patroled, and patrole checked? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:10, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  4. Support - Four eyes are better than two. Also, would it be possible to make it so that the creator of a given article cannot mark as unpatrolled his/her own creation? --Nehwyn (talk) 16:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  5. Strong Support for checking by TWO users (NOT the current ONE user) neither of whom created the page. Other editors, who have tested it, report that the page creator IS blocked from marking his or her own page(s). And "4 days" is a joke - no where near long enough! I know it won't happen but my 2 cents: require a minimum of 30 days + some minumum number of edits (100? - brand new editors tend to make lots of tiny edits, instead of consolidating their edits before posting, so this should be a good number), whichever occurs first. New but efficient editors would time out before reaching 100. Either way you would thus have some history to distinguish morons from true contributors. Badly Bradley (talk) 18:12, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  6. Strong Support (moved from below) We could do a double-patrol system, where it takes two patrols to actually remove something from the not-patrolled list. In color-coding terms, a new page is red if it has not been patrolled. The first patroller sees that it's OK, clicks that he's patrolled it, and it turns yellow. The second patroller also sees that it's OK, and clicks again - now it's green and cleared from the unpatrolled (or in need of patrol) list. It also accounts for the possibility that the first patroller missed a "cocksdickslol" in the middle of the article, or some other nonsense that would justify a speedy. An added bonus would be that it would be that much harder to game the system, presuming that one could not patrol the same article twice. If the concern is that non-admins may not be reliable, then pairing up on patrol would have the effect of moderating shenanigans out of the system. ZZ Claims ~ Evidence 03:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  7. Support if it can be implemented, otherwise support for "Autoconfirmed (accounts older than 4 days)". --Fabrictramp (talk) 20:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  8. Support if it is possible to do this. I also like Ultraexactzz's idea.~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] All registered users

[edit] An alternate solution

Not sure if this is feasible to implement, but would there be a way to automatically mark any page tagged with a speedy as 'patrolled'?. --Bfigura (talk) 01:20, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

  • I like Bfigura's idea. As for who should be authorized, admins only is too much of a burden on admins, as most patrollers are non admins. All registered users is no good, as vandals will just patrol their own pages. Autoconfirm concerns me, because there are plenty of vandal accounts that are older than four days. Yes, they will get caught eventually, but that is still more work. Is there a permission class that can be set by admins that could allow patrollers to apply for permission, and be granted it liberally after a brief review? Just some sort of easy process that requires the person seeking the permission to ask for it, and for a human admin to approve it? Like Bfigura's idea, this may not be feasable to implement, but it would solve a lot of potential issues.- Crockspot (talk) 01:49, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree per my comments below. As noted, the best way to accomplish this (for now) would be to patrol first, then hit edit on the "You've patrolled this page" page, then add tags to CSD. It takes a few clicks out of the process, at any rate, and patrolling the page would lower the chance of someone tagging it while you're tagging it. If there's code that edits a page to flag it as patrolled, then it might be possible to add that code to the CSD templates, so that adding one of those templates to the article triggers the "patrolled" flag. Changing the CSD templates would be a can of worms, but might eliminate some confusion here. ZZ Claims ~ Evidence 03:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
the current way suggested (marking patrolled first, then csd) works, if people remember to use it. DGG (talk) 03:49, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
If I can track AzaToth down, I'll suggest making patrolling an automatic feature in Twinkle. Mr.Z-man 04:02, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a excellent idea but I would hope this would only function for articles actually tagged by a separate edit after creation, rather than articles containing a speedy tag. Many articles are recreated with the previous speedy tag or more commonly, with a hangon in place (which also adds articles to CAT:CSD). If a user recreates, removes the tag and the page is marked as patrolled upon creation, no one may look at it again. This is not the same as when a speedy tag is removed after being patrolled, because the NPP has a good chance of catching the speedy removal while they are active. By contrast, by the time of recreation, the original NPP may be offline or have moved on.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:33, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A concern

Is four days really enough? If a user waits four days so he/she can create a hoax, attack, or spam page, why wouldn't they just create another (sockpuppet) account to mark as patrolled?

There aren't enough admins for new page patrolling, and my experience is that most patrollers are actually non-admins. So I believe this feature should be available to all established users, regardless of their access. But, is 4 days enough to call a user established to patrol and monitor Wikipedia's incoming content? I'd like suggest modifying the patroller criteria, perhaps to 10, 15 days? or 250 edits? Note that this would be different from the current autoconfirm function, which allows editors with more than four days to move and create new pages (and I'm not suggesting we change that). Another alternative is to have admins certify patrollers, but I would tend to oppose that idea. Thoughts? - Mtmelendez (Talk) 01:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I like W.marsh's idea of a list of approved users. However, I believe, after reading Help:Patrolled edit, that this is a user right issue, and we would have to create a new permission level to do this. Although I could be wrong. I (talk) 01:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I share your concern, Mtmelendez, but then I think back to the past discussions about related proposals regarding permissions. Adrian M. H. 02:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I can see the cause for concern, but I don't think most users that create attack/spam/vandal pages are familiar with newpages. (As much as I'm loathe to rely on security by obscurity, I think the autoconfirmed would work). Thoughts? --Bfigura (talk) 02:05, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed then. Unless a viable and consensus approved alternative exists, I think the autoconfirm function is the safest way to go, for now. - Mtmelendez (Talk) 02:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

The idea of allowing users who have only had an account for four days to use this feature seems nutty to me. I think the feature should be confined to users who have held an account at least three months, in fact I think it should probably only be usable by administrators, who by definition are users who have been recognized by the community as reliable and trustworthy. Gatoclass (talk) 02:36, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

This isn't nearly as big a deal as deleting/protecting/blocking, its not like marking a page as patrolled will prevent speedy deletion. Many (most?) newpage-patrollers are not admins. Prohibiting them from being able to use this defeats the purpose (making the patrolling more efficient). Mr.Z-man 02:40, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Do most administrators do CSD work from the category, or do they check newpages? I (talk) 02:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
If an admin wants to work on CSDs, they just work from C:CSD. of course many admins do newpage patrol, and may delete directly from there, or delete already-tagged articles. One prolific admin who does NP patrol seems to delete the obvious ones and tag the less-obvious ones for a 2nd opinion... that seems to be a good way of going about it. --W.marsh 04:21, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I can't speak for most admins, but I generally work from the category. Mr.Z-man 04:03, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I also work exclusively from the CSD category. - Mtmelendez (Talk) 10:40, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I also work (mostly) from the category, unless I happen on something tagged while doing other mopping up work. --Fabrictramp (talk) 20:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the "autoconfirmed" feature would be better if it were based on an edit count rather than based on account creation date. --Iamunknown 04:15, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's possible right now without new software features. I think if we raised the edit count threshold here, it would also apply to the number of edits someone would have to have to edit a semi-protected page. --W.marsh 04:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that the key is for new pages patrollers not to use the patrolled flag as a substitution for what they have been doing all this time, but as an added tool. At a glance, you can see what pages haven't been flagged as nominally appropriate for Wikipedia, then you can go back through the new page log from the bottom and see what needs to be flagged/reflagged for speedy, tagged, etc, just like before. The risk is that NP patrollers will assume that "it's not yellow, therefore it must be just fine". Neil916 (Talk) 08:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Concerned answered?

I think that the new Special:Log/Patrol page possibly answers my concerns. It is a check-tool so users can verify and oversee the process. We could have informal patrol reviewers constantly verify who patrolled the pages. If we see a user with no userpage, no talk page, and very few contribs, it may be a flag to check his/her patrol edit. I'm not saying that they should not patrol, but its a verification mechanism. - Mtmelendez (Talk) 10:53, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandal on Patrol

Should patrolling of pages which obviously don't meet standards be considered vandalism? Can Patrol edits be linked to for vandalism reports? (SEWilco (talk) 01:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC))

I'm not sure about vandalism, but I'd think it would be disruption. --Bfigura (talk) 02:03, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Further, is there any way to tell who marked a page as patrolled? I'm not seeing it show up in my contributions. Cheers, --Bfigura (talk) 02:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Special:Log/patrol. I (talk) 02:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking that one way to deal with vandals using accounts to Patrol vandalism is to simply issue vandalism warnings for bad Patrols. They won't be able to avoid being blocked with Patrol-only accounts. (SEWilco (talk) 02:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
I think if the page is junk, it should marked as patrolled, but tagged as CSD/whatever. This is because the patrolled status just means people won't (necessarily) look at it from the new page feed. Since you've already taken care of the problem, that's all the patrolled status means (ie. not that the page is good, just that it's been seen, and if there's a problem, then it's been taken care of.) Sound about right?– Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Unless the person who marked it as patrolled did in error, whether due to malice or negligence. In which case, the patrol is misleading, and it then goes on without another pair of eyes from newpage patrol. I (talk) 03:02, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Some bad patrols will get spotted, particularly due to update delays causing multiple patrollers. Are vandalism warnings one way to deal with bad patrollers? I don't warn all vandals, but repeated ones are more likely to get my attention. A vandal patrol-only account could be dealt with that way, or do should we figure out a new way of handling them? (SEWilco (talk) 03:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
I am not liking this new feature, it's caused pages that should've been deleted but been marked "patrolled" to be ignored. It lends itself to abuse and if vandals start to understand it all it will mean is that we will need to always check both the patrolled ad unpatrolled pages putting us in the same position we were in before. –– Lid(Talk) 03:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I suspect there are so many patrollers that it's likely that many not-patrolled pages will get several patrollers looking at them. Some bad patrollers will get spotted, and some of their past contributions will be examined. The unpatrolled marking is a help, not a full solution. (SEWilco (talk) 03:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
I see it as on the whole it may have a slight benefit but I see in the future, and probably forever, that even patrolled pages will eed to be checked to see if they were correctly patrolled making the whole system redundant. –– Lid(Talk) 03:29, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I think it might have the advantage of at least making sure the items have been seen once, by someone. I suppose that's a small step forward.DGG (talk) 03:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Status Change

It seems I can mark things as patrolled now. --Bfigura (talk) 02:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I see the link too now. But what are you going to believe, your eyes or the documentation? (SEWilco (talk) 02:19, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
There's a banner at the top of this Talk page now. (SEWilco (talk) 02:21, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
Thanks. Three cheers for responsive devs! --Bfigura (talk) 02:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
What's a cheer in Dutch? (SEWilco (talk) 02:25, 17 November 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Possible to turn it off or at least invert it so that the patrolled edits are in yellow?

I know it says it may take some getting used to but this is really messing with my vision, probably due to that I am colour blind. –– Lid(Talk) 02:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure there are ways to fiddle with your css file to change the colours, although my attempts to invert the colours have been unsuccessful. I have, however, been able to change the yellow to green, if that somewhat solves your problem :) Add the code li.not-patrolled { background-color: red; } to User:Lid/monobook.css. Spebi 02:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Personally I'm not sure this concept is as effective as it is meant to be. I have come across some "patrolled" pages that were in fact speedy deletion pages. The "patrolling capability looks like it may have the effect of people ignoring patrolled pages on the assumption that they are fine rather than checking the pages that need checking. –– Lid(Talk) 02:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
It might be that the person marked it as patrolled first, and then was preparing to speedy / prod / fix. I had that happen to me a number of times last night -- I marked the page as patrolled, and then while I was typing up the prod reasoning, someone came behind me and speedied it. (I tend to lean a bit more towards prodding new pages, in order to not bite the newbies, especially if it's a case of not having asserted notability.)--Fabrictramp (talk) 21:13, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CSD tagging a page AND patrolling it in one edit?

Great work on the function, team. However, I've found several unpatrolled edits that were already tagged for speedy deletion. I marked them as patrolled, but is there a way to automatically mark them patrolled if you add the CSD tag? Perhaps something that checks if the edit includes a db tag, or some such. I only ask because, if the intent is to remove a page from the unpatrolled list once it's csd'd, then adding this sort of auto-tag might be of value. It might also be something to add to the CSD template itself, though obviously that would merit some discussion. ZZ Claims ~ Evidence 02:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps make the patrol link appear when in edit mode, as well? Spebi 02:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
After you mark the page as patrolled, it takes you a "you marked it as patrolled!" page; that page still has an edit tab, which takes you directly to the edit page (ie bypasses the article page). That reduced the required clicks at least. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 02:56, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
The instructions on the main page seem to suggest slapping the patrolled marker on the article first, to reduce duplication of effort by others, and then you can more leisurely add whatever tagging you need. (SEWilco (talk) 05:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC))

[edit] consensus?

Does anyone have a idea how this got approved? last I knew, it was still being discussed as experimental.DGG (talk) 03:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the experiment, DGG. Trial by fire, as it were. So long as it can be turned off (can it?), I don't have a major problem with adding this function to the software. I agree, though, it seems to have been dropped in our collective laps. Perhaps I don't pay attention where I should, though. I will say that, if anonymous page creation is indeed enabled as is (I believe) still under discussion, then a function like this could become absolutely vital. ZZ Claims ~ Evidence 03:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
well, if this is the experiment, I've been experimenting, and I think I like it. It at least makes sure everything will be seen at least once by somebody. And people seem to be skipping the hard ones initially, so they can be looked at a little more slowly--which is I think the right way to use it. DGG (talk) 03:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
It was tested a bit in Gmaxwell's test wiki (he wrote the patch for this) and the code was reviewed by Brion Vibber. I think it might have been tested on the German Wikipedia before being turned on here as well. Mr.Z-man 04:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I too, have been experimenting with this, and I find it really helpful! What a great way to have a very simple, non-disruptive change, that allows experienced editors to go through New Pages, and communicate with others via one simple click. I do, however, realize there will be those that are marked without being properly reviewed, but I think the benefits outweigh that. Honestly I think this is a fantastic thing, at least so far, after having played with it for an hour or so, and I hope it stays, in at least some form. Ariel♥Gold 04:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with ArielGold in that the bar is a helpful visual indicator of pages that have been checked. No more wasting time going to pages that already have been tagged. --Hdt83 Chat 04:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Accountability

An unexpected consequence, I thought of this, might be accountability. Say someone marks a page as patrolled... then that page gets a legal complaint, or some bad press... or even ends up being another Seigenthaler. Wouldn't the finger quickly get pointed to the guy who marked it as patrolled? I'm not saying the patroller is really guilty here, but it's something that might come up. --W.marsh 04:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

No more so than someone marking a new article as a stub without understanding the topic. Patrolling seems intended to mean that someone glanced at the article and it resembled what a Wikipedia article should look like. NP/RC patrol often looks for reasonable edits on random topics which one might not understand, it's not GA review nor peer review. (SEWilco (talk) 04:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
The "mark as patrolled" isn't an endorsement that the page is appropriate, from the way I understand it. It is just a first preliminary step, to quickly "mark off" pages that either are already tagged for CSD, or do establish notability. For the rest, I don't see how this changes anything, the same policies apply with regards to WP:V, WP:N, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP, etc. The only thing this does, is add a visual signal to other NP patrollers that some of the pages have already been looked at. I don't see this becoming any kind of issue, if pages "slip through". Theoretically, the chances of those kinds of issues arising were higher previously, as nobody had any idea if someone had looked at the pages or not. That's just my own opinion, of course. Ariel♥Gold 04:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where is it?

Can somebody show on a screenshot where the 'Mark this page as patrolled' link is? I can't find it anywhere.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 05:16, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

It's in the bottom right-hand corner above the gray box the categories are in. Leebo T/C 05:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Still can't find it. Can you provide a screenshot? A picture speaks for a thousand words. OhanaUnitedTalk page 07:38, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Are you checking articles that haven't already been patrolled? I (talk) 07:44, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
The link appears only when you go directly to the page from Special:Newpages (in my experience). If you then edit the page, say to add a speedy tag, the patrol link is gone. You then have to go back to Special:Newpages and go to the page again from there, and then you see the link in the lower righthand corner in small letters. Someone above suggested that what you're supposed to do is start from Special:Newpages, then mark the page as patrolled, and then after that add some tags to it or whatever. That way you'll probably be the only one editing the page. I think it's good that the link does not appear when you go to the page without going via Newpages, to avoid bringing the whole system to the attention of vandals, but maybe the software could be changed so that if you do see the link and then edit the page, the link would still be there -- just an idea. --Coppertwig (talk) 18:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thumbs up

A big thumbs up for me, I think this is a great feature that if it was expanded to all recent changes could really take a huge amount of work out of RC and NP patrol. If you see an obviously inappropriate page that has been flagged as patrolled by a new user without any action taken, you can check that user's logs to see other pages with similar actions to undo any potential damage. My only concern is that it should be emphasized that people should still take a look at "patrolled" pages in case an article that someone thinks looks fine really isn't. Also, can the person who created the page flag it as "patrolled"? Neil916 (Talk) 05:25, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe you can, but that's described as a conflict of interest. The exceptions are pages created by bots and admins, which are auto-flagged as patrolled. Leebo T/C 05:27, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm... If I was going to be a troll and create some garbage page, if that were the case, I'd just reload the page and flag it as patrolled, thus removing 95% of the usefulness of this modification. It seems that the person who created the page shouldn't be able to flag it as patrolled. I don't know what that would involve on the coding side, though. Neil916 (Talk) 05:30, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Never mind, I created a test page in my userspace and tried to flag it as patrolled, and it told me I couldn't flag my own edits as patrolled. Kudos. Neil916 (Talk) 05:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Neato. Leebo T/C 05:37, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
(Hopefully not stuffing beans up my nose) I also like the fact that the "mark as patrolled" doesn't show up unless you access the page via special:newpages. Neil916 (Talk) 05:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
The only obvious disadvantage of this feature is the potential for bad-faith patrolling, which would be rare. We'll just have to see how it goes with patrolling and if bad-faith patrolling occurs. How about 100 edits minimum before patrolling can be done? It's against the wiki-spirit, but still... we'll just have to wait and see.-h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 06:19, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I've been playing with it a bit, and I find it useful, too. The only problem I've seen is pages that are marked as patrolled without being tagged (because they look OK at first glance), but which a Google search shows to be copy-and-paste copyvios. So I think it's a good idea not to neglect looking at pages just because the yellow highlighting is gone. Deor (talk) 14:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "appropriate"

I can't help wondering whether "Any page that is appropriate for Wikipedia" should read "Any page that is inappropriate for Wikipedia". Surely most articles in Wikipedia are appropriate for it. Lima (talk) 05:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

When you're patrolling and you read a page that is perfectly appropriate and needs no action... you flag is as patrolled. That makes sense, no? And remember that this only applies to new pages. Leebo T/C 05:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, while most existing articles are appropriate for Wikipedia, most new pages are not. I think page deletions are running at around 75% of the rate of new page creation. This difference between new and existing pages exists because the new page filtering system is pretty good. GRBerry (talk) 19:54, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add patrolled status change to page history?

It seems like it would be much better to be able to see the 'patrolled' date/time/etc. in the article's regular page history, instead of only being able to find it via the Patrol log. Ravenna1961 (talk) 05:40, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

When I go to the article history and click "view logs for this article", I can see who flagged the article. Neil916 (Talk) 05:43, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I couldn't find that at all, and agree with Ravenna, we'd benefit from being able to find it in the history, not in a log which doesn't ever show for me. ThuranX (talk) 16:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other mechanisms

Not everyone does NPP through Special:Newpages, yet the "mark as patrolled" link is only available through such special page. I find this somewhat annoying as I use an RC feed (as I can revert vandalism at the same time). I'm sure AzaToth might be able to conjure some javascript magic here, but suggest this should be implemented server-side. MER-C 06:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I sometimes watch contributions of new accounts new accounts and it sure would be handy if this showed up there as well. It'd be nice if this feature were extended to cover all edits by new acccounts (even if it is to something besides a new page) - I think that would also cut down on a lot of duplicate (and manual) work. —Mrand T-C 14:02, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I've asked both AzaToth and Ioeth to include this in Twinkle and [[WP::-)|Friendly]]. Ioeth already said he'll add it in, and AzaToth probably will too. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 22:44, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Query

Is there any way to see which user has marked a page as patrolled? Or to see which pages a particular user has patrolled? I don't see anything in contributions or the article history. If this isn't there, it would be extremely difficult to catch vandals marking pages as patrolled. - Aksi_great (talk) 08:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I see this has already been answered 2 sections back. - Aksi_great (talk) 08:56, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
We now have a special log for patrolled pages - Special:Log/Patrol. - Aksi_great (talk) 08:58, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

The log says "USER (Talk | contribs | block) marked revision 171966890 of ARTICLE patrolled". Does that mean that this feature can be easily extended to recent changes too, as it seems to be marking revisions of articles and not articles themselves as patrolled? - Aksi_great (talk) 09:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Patrolled edits was originally designed for recentchanges patrolling, the split between recentchanges and newpages was a recent software change. Patrolling for recentchanges is turned off here and on other large wikis due to the huge amount of edits we get. You can post on the village pump to get more input and if there is consensus the developers might turn it back on. Mr.Z-man 19:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edited = patrolled

A page that has been edited by any autoconfirmed user other than its creator or a bot should be automatically marked as patrolled. This would eliminate the two-step process of e.g. marking as speedy and marking as patrolled - and generally makes sense, because an edit implies a review, one way or the other. GregorB (talk) 10:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Note sure. There are some users who don't function in the CSD tagging world. It's not uncommon to see a page tagged with {{unreferenced}} or {{notability}}, just with a category or stub tag, or its subject boldfaced, that is patently a CSD candidate.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:19, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree, but - as I gather - "patrolled" means merely "has been quickly reviewed, and appropriate action (if any) has been taken". Of course not everyone will nail the "appropriate action" bit correctly. Still, once Wikipedia standard article tagging mechanisms take over - for better or for worse - the article may nevertheless be considered patrolled. GregorB (talk) 13:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. I can imagine patrolling a page, editing some small things, but thinking the page still needs more patroling. I want to be able to keep it as unpatroled, even if I made edits (for example, bolded the title, but not tagged yet). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:03, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
You have a point. An edit may imply a review, but may not necessarily imply a decision. GregorB (talk) 13:07, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
What I would like to see though, is a checkbox at the save page along with the minor and watch, with an option to 'mark this page as patrolled'. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes - anything that would reduce it to a single step. Another concern are old articles that have never been marked as patrolled (because the feature is so recent); I suppose the not-patrolled list is thus virtually endless (while only the first 1000 can be seen). It would hardly make sense to mark 2 million articles, but there are some that would be worth inspecting (and these are, incidentally, more or less those that have been edited exclusively by their creators, anonymous users and bots). GregorB (talk) 14:24, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, the only function of marking a page as patrolled is to produce the color coding exclusive toSpecial:Newpages. As such, "patrolled older articles" is something of a non sequitur. The only way you would get any use out of, say, a six month old article being marked as patrolled, would be if you had scrolled in newpages back 50,000 or so articles. I don't imagine anyone would be doing that.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, exactly - but when an article is "worth inspecting" (per definition given above), it doesn't really matter whether it's six months or six minutes old. That's why automatic marking (for "old" articles, at least) might be useful - to move them out of the way. GregorB (talk) 16:04, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not understanding, which may just be me, but let me ask a question which might clarify it. Premises: the only use of marking a page as patrolled is for users presently looking at newpages (in the range of the last 1,000), because that's the only place the color markings appear. Older articles never appear at newpages because they are older (once created, a page never appears at newpages again). If you agree with these premises, how then will any older article ever be situated so that it could get in the way?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:17, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
That's right: one sees 1000 newest articles in the list - or 1000 newest non-patrolled, when one clicks on "Hide patrolled edits". But how many are there non-patrolled articles in total? Two million, that's how many. The problem isn't that old articles don't appear in the list; the problem is they will never stop appearing (well, almost never). That's what I meant by "moving them out of the way"... GregorB (talk) 20:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
For my part, I would say the addition of a CSD tag should automatically mark a page as patrolled, but unmark it if the tag is removed. --Blanchardb (talk) 19:54, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm really sorry about this but I'm still not getting it. We seem to be agreeing but still missing each other. I'll let this be my last attempt:-) So, right, we agree that older articles will never stop appearing in the list at newpages. We also agree that in order to see those older articles as unpatrolled one would need to click "next 500" many times and the longer this is up, the more times we would need to click "next 500" to reach older articles. So my question is why would we ever need to go back very far? The list at newpages is seemingly only useful when relatively fresh and older articles never co-exist and impinge on what we see presently.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:27, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

(backdent) OK, I'll either clear this up or confuse it more. The list, if one hides the patrolled edits, contains all non-patrolled articles in order by time of creation, from newest to oldest. The threshold is set by the user, up to 500. Once an article is patrolled, it is removed from this list, the articles older than the newly-patrolled article move up a spot, and an older unpatrolled article is bumped onto the list. Concievably, with a slow day for new articles and multiple diligent patrollers, the most recent articles might all become patrolled. Then, patrollers would begin to work on older articles. The concern is that every article on the site was considered unpatrolled when the ability to patrol was added. So, for every article that is patrolled and removed from the list, older articles will continue to be listed as unpatrolled. Eventually, we'll have articles that have been around for days or weeks on the list, because they are unpatrolled. As most patrollers focus on the newest of articles, this isn't a critical item - but, I agree, it seems to be the most massive backlog in Wikipedia history, sort of. ZZ Claims ~ Evidence 04:48, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Aha! I was not aware of the ability to hide patrolled articles, and without that, this made no sense. I knew there had to be some reason why me and GregorB were talking past each other. Thanks for clarifying ZZ. and yes, what a backlog! I'm guessing that as patrolled articles are pushed back in time we will reach a point of diminishing returns. I doubt we ever get back more than a few hundred thousand:-p --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:11, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New pages patrollers noticeboard

I strongly suggest to start New pages patrollers noticeboard so that new page patrollers can communicate with each others regarding articles. I see complete disorder in strategy to patrol new pages. I saw this and I fail to understand why it was not speeded or proded. sharara 12:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Because "host for Extreme Makeover" is a claim of importance. I think the noticeboard you're wanting is really WP:AFD - a place to get consensus on what to do with articles. --W.marsh 18:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wondering why this page is now yellow?

No, just wondering why some idiot is telling me it is. Gene Nygaard (talk) 12:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

It's good to see somebody fixed whatever other page was imposing itself on this page with that misinformation. Gene Nygaard (talk) 15:25, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions

If the article looks reasonable, but goes over my head, such as Super-logarithm, should i mark it patrolled? If an article doesn't meet any criteria for speedy deletion, but meets criteria for WP:AFD, should i mark it patrolled? Foobaz·o< 19:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

If you aren't sure about an article, don't do anything with it and let someone else review it. If it isn't speedy deletable but should still be deleted, you should mark it as patrolled only if you plan to tag it for deletion. Due to the way this works, it is easier to mark it as patrolled and then tag it for deletion using whatever method. Mr.Z-man 19:44, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Does that mean i only check it as patrolled after fact-checking it? How detailed of a fact-check are we talking about? Foobaz·o< 04:22, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
The great virtue of the patrolled marking, is that if you dont know what to do, or have any doubts, you can just leave it alone and someone will be sure to catch it. Without it, you never could tell and there was a feeling of "if I dont catch it, it might escape altogether"DGG (talk) 04:51, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with the feature

I've been using the mark as patrolled feature, but I've encountered a small problem. After I mark some of the pages for speedy deletion the option to mark it as patrolled disappears. When I return to the new pages screen, and then click on the article, I'm able to mark it as patrolled. Is there a way to fix that? Am I the only one with this problem? Thanks. Icestorm815 (talk) 21:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Same here, curiously enough. --Nehwyn (talk) 21:10, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the patrolled link only appears when there is an rcid specified in the URL (look at the URL of a non-patrolled page when linked from Special:Newpages) - and this is only added by the links on Special:Newpages. The easiest ways to avoid this are marking as patrolled before tagging or using multiple tabs in a browser like Firefox or IE7. Mr.Z-man 21:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Or, you can edit the article, make sure you save your changes, then use the back button in your browser to get back to the version of the page with the patrol link. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Providing deletion log and AfD links on unpatrolled pages

I just found an article that was re-created after being deleted as a result of an WP:AFD. It has now been deleted again.

I noticed that the article had been patrolled and the person doing so had apparently not noticed that the page was a recreation of a deleted page. I don't blame them for this, because I don't think that they would have been aware of the article's history. It's only because I left it on my watchlist after deletion that it I picked it up.

This does, however, raise an issue (feature request?) in my view. If you go to create an article that has previously been deleted, you are informed of that, with a box containing links to the deletion criteria. If pages that have not been patrolled were to show deletion log entries and perhaps also links to XfDs if they exist, an article such as this could have been picked up and tagged {{Db-repost}}, rather than being marked patrolled. --AliceJMarkham (talk) 00:12, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, my reply is sort of not on the topic of the software feature, but just to note that it is not wrong to re-create a previously deleted article. For instance, if someone created a short article about something, with no sources, and no assertion of notability, which was deleted via AfD, but then a different editor took some time, and found out the topic was notable, and appropriate, and re-created it in an entirely different form, neutrally written, with sources, etc., then there is no need to CSD it as "re-created". (This type of thing has happened in the past, with things like buildings, that were articles of no importance, but then became registered as a historical place with the National Register of Historical Places, and proper sources were available.) Now, granted, I don't check every article I patrol to see if it has ever been deleted (and I'm not sure anyone else really does either), but to have the software put a blanket "flag" on any title that was previously deleted, seems like it could cause some assumptions on the part of the reviewers. Just a thought, of course. :o) Ariel♥Gold 04:36, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Articles do get created with the same names sometimes. It would require some common sense in the application. If something went through XfD a couple of weeks ago and a new article shows up that looks like it's a fully wikified start- or B-class article, you'd have to wonder... Perhaps the better course of action, if the article otherwise looks valid, might be to ask someone who took part in the XfD (ideally the person who closed it) if this is a re-creation and let them apply the speedy tag. I'm not aware of there being a noticeboard or category for "possible re-created XfD articles" but perhaps there should be. :) --AliceJMarkham (talk) 05:44, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Patrolling of bad pages considered possibly harmful

I'm glad to see the MediaWiki patrolling improvements that I implemented running on English Wikipedia, but I'm a little surprised to see it being used a bit differently than I expected. I had expected that only good pages would be patrolled, so that we could look for people with a history of bad patrolling decisions simply by checking Special:Log/patrol for users with unusually high numbers of redlinks. On EnWP the new page patrolling feature is being used in a way that I didn't expect: Users are instructed to patrol bad pages which they have marked for deletion. I can see the value in doing this, but I'm not sure how we can easily look for bad patrollers given this style of use.

I think the best approach going forward would be to split patrolling into two types: "Patrol as good" and "Patrol as bad". Patrol-patrol could then be accomplished by looking for users with high levels of non-deleted bad patrolled log entries or high levels of deleted good patrolled entries. Would this be acceptable? Does anyone have any better proposals, keeping in mind that I'm only interested in very simple changes? --Gmaxwell (talk) 15:41, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I think its a great idea. Would you be willing to code it? Mr.Z-man 19:47, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really a fan of the words "good" and "bad" (perhaps something more like "acceptable" and "requires attention"). Does another Wikipedia do what you were expecting would be done here? The only problem I'm foreseeing is that pages are often edited greatly in the minutes after they are patrolled, and there is a lot of gray area between a speedy deletion candidate and one needing major work. Is your idea of "bad" only the ones that need to be deleted? Either way, I can see a lot of them being marked "bad" and then being improved, to the point where you wouldn't really be able to tell much from someone's patrol log. Leebo T/C 19:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
(ec) I think there is not much benefit from patrol as good versus patrol as bad anyway. And what does "good" mean in this context? Good enough to not need speedy deletion? Then many good patrolled pages will still be red soon via PROD or AFD. Good enough to not merit a deletion nomination of any type? The higher the bar is pushed, the fewer pages will merit getting that bar. And the less willing people will be to mark it that way, and the more risk they will take on in so doing. And if the only choices are good/bad, then we've got WP:BITE and WP:AGF problems in labeling a page as bad. Also, what would be the benefits of the split? Knowing which pages have/haven't been reviewed is highly valuable; knowing whether the first reviewer thought them good/bad doesn't seem any where close to being as significant. Also, as an admin patrolling CAT:CSD, I try to rescue articles where possible; many are poor articles but with just a little work can at least turn into a decent redirect or be improved to stub quality. Similarly, there are many subtle ways to make a bad article look good. GRBerry (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with GRBerry. Unless Gmaxwell has an example of another Wikipedia where this works, I don't see the benefit of knowing what a patroller thought of the article at the time of the first patrol. Leebo T/C 21:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of paradoxical and superfluous sentence

I removed

“

Pages you have created, as this would be a conflict of interest. (Admins' and bots' pages are automatically marked as patrolled. Other users are not able to mark their own pages as patrolled; they must be seen by someone else.)”

from the page. As it's paradoxical and superfluous as normal users cannot mark their own edits, and bits and admins MUST mark their edits as marked. →AzaToth 17:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It may be paradoxical, but pages created by bots and admins are automatically marked as patrolled (with on log entry, I think). It is assumed that approved bots (ie with the flat) and admins can be counted on to create good pages which don't need to be patrolled. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I think he's referring to the part about not marking your own pages as patrolled, and then it says you can't mark your own pages as patrolled even if you tried to. Leebo T/C 13:07, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Purpose?

This may be obvious to people who have been following this matter, but what is the PURPOSE of this new feature?

Sincerely,

GeorgeLouis (talk) 19:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It allows new page patrollers to skip new pages that have already been patrolled, so that every single one of them doesn't have to look at every new page. Leebo T/C 19:39, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
If you do new page patrol for long, you may get tired of loading pages that have been tagged for deletion already. This lets a patroller choose to instead look at pages that have completely escaped review. When I use it, I'll look only at unpatrolled pages and go back 1,000 pages or so to look at pages that slipped through the cracks of new page patrol. Right now, that is pages created about 3 days ago. GRBerry (talk) 20:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I try to do similarly, and am glad to have my practice confirmed by someone of such wide experience. And with the new method, I think fewer and fewer will escape. But I fear that the review will be so superficial as to miss many of the problems. DGG (talk) 02:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I've always thought that the bottom of the new pages list was always a better place to patrol from, because there's not much use in jumping on a page seconds after its creation. Leebo T/C 03:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
To DGG: That may be true, but at least we can confirm they are getting reviewed at all. This could also be good practice for a future use of flagged revisions. To Leebo: It does help to identify obvious attack pages and copyvios as well as other pages that have no chance whatsoever of becoming an article. Mr.Z-man 17:44, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
The are exceptions, as you indicated, but the majority of pages requiring speedy deletion don't require that they be tagged within minutes. Especially for things like lack of context or content; lots of new editors don't realize their pages are being jumped on and assume they have a little time to add the content. Leebo T/C 17:50, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

All well and good, but what is "patrolling"? Is there a reference? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 04:40, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

From what I've picked up here, then (without a direct answer having been given), "patrolling" means checking new pages to see that they meet WikiP standards? Is that correct? And how deep are these pages checked? For facts and content, or merely for form? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 20:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mark deletion candidates as patrolled?

What is the consensus about marking pages that you tag for deletion as patrolled? I noticed this version says to mark speedy candidates as patrolled "so that people will not waste time" looking at the page again, but here admin Ral315 seems to disagree. As another admin who's trying to get used to this patrolling thing I've no opinion one way or other, but Ral's edit seems to make the page self-contradictory. Awyong Jeffrey Mordecai Salleh 07:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Revert my edit then; as far as I'm concerned, it was a bold move that can easily be reverted. I didn't see the above conversation about that. I don't think we should be patrolling CSDs, though -- this allows people to recognize bad patrollers from good patrollers. Hell, I nearly warned someone for patrolling bad articles, thinking bad faith was to blame, until I realized how we were using it. Ral315 » 09:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some thoughts

I've just been trying this feature, and I like it. One thought - when I'm uncertain about a page, I don't mark it as patrolled, but leave it for someone else to deal with. I could watchlist it to see what happens, but is it possible to mark it as "needs second opinon" or even to be notified when someone else has patrolled it? Am I right to say that patrolling doesn't show up on a watchlist? You have to return to the article and check whether it has been patrolled? Also, it would be nice if admin-created pages showed up a different colour. I'm not convinced that admin-created pages don't need patrolling. Finally, as this is the first time I've patrolled new pages, could someone check my log and make sure the patrolling was OK. I'm sure people do things very differently and have different standards, and it will be interesting to see this from people's patrol logs. Carcharoth (talk) 12:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the admin auto-patrol. Isn't the point of patrolling to have a trusted user look at the page? If that user is creating the page in the first place (and adminship is a position of trust verified at RfA) then it seems like it would be a waste of time to have more users look at it. Leebo T/C 13:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
It's more being able to distinguish between patrolled pages and admin-created pages. When I look down the list, I also look at some of the patrolled pages, to double-check ones that catch my eye. I'd like to be able to distinguish between pages marked patrolled, and pages created by admins. I'd probably check some of the admin-created pages as well, but would be more likely to ignore them as "probably OK". Does that make sense? Carcharoth (talk) 14:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I suppose it would make sense to have a slightly different identifier for "auto-patrolled" pages. Leebo T/C 14:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
One option is to add User:Ais523 non-admin/adminrights.js to your monobook.js, so that all admins will be highlighted in cyan on the new pages list (and all other pages). Toohool (talk) 20:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed this feature as I am a semi-regular new page patroller, but generally look back a day or two to see what may have slipped by. One comment: AWESOME!. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Showing the patrolled link

I noticed that it only shows the mark this page as patrolled link when you follow the link from the watchlist. It would be much easier if it showed up on all unpatrolled pages, not only those visited from the newpages list. 22:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

But then you would get anyone clicking the link. We really only want people familiar with Wikipedia policies to be patrolling new pages. Carcharoth (talk) 23:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opposite of patrolled?

I don't know if this has been brought up already but maybe there could also be an option for marking a page as the opposite of patrolled. We already have speedy deletion, etc, but it might be nice to be able to mark a page as "I would like a second opinion on this page" or something like that and have it show up as red or some other attention getter on Newpages. -AndrewBuck (talk) 06:57, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I proposed this above at Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/patrolled_pages#Patrolling_of_bad_pages_considered_possibly_harmful. Since the change I received a mostly negative response I will not be doing any further enhancement along those lines in cooperation with English Wikipedia. However, other projects may be interested in that sort of enhancement so I may end up implementing their requests. --Gmaxwell (talk) 21:51, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Identifying self-patrolling

It might be a good idea to make the log page for Special:Newpages highlight in red any pages which were marked as patrolled by the user who created them, another user on the same IP address, or other obvious attempts to sneak something under the radar. If this is too extreme maybe list the original editors name on the log page as well so people can do the check themselves without the highlighting, although I think the highlighting would make more sense. -AndrewBuck (talk) 07:47, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, for the simple case, you can't patrol pages you create (unless you're an admin, in which case they're auto-patrolled). As far as IP matching, I think that would hit privacy issues (given that checkuser isn't used lightly). Best, --Bfigura (talk) 07:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] API

Hey,

I am using api.php fo power a JS extension which uses AJAX to periodically update a box in the sidebar which lists the most recent changes. I am wondering if a change can be made to api.php so I can determine if a new page is 'yellow' or not. I am currently using the url:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=recentchanges&format=xml&rcnamespace=0&rcshow=!minor&rclimit=10

and I guess that another parameter could be added to the <rc> elements, perhaps patrolled = "1" | "0", with 1 meaning yes (dont show yellow), and 0 meaning no (do show yellow).

Thanks, --TheJosh (talk) 12:11, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Variations, e.g. un-watchlisted

There are some variations on this theme that interest me... for example, imagine if all "un-watchlisted" pages appeared in yellow in Recent Changes. (I know there is a contingent that believes revealing watchlist information "helps" vandals, a position with which I disagree. When good-faith users can easily access said data [other than admins, who apparently can already access it], the watchlisting improvements will outweigh the additional info provided to vandals—the same principle operates on Wikipedia writ large, after al!) // Any possibilities? It's not perfect, since a page that is watchlisted once by a user that hasn't edited in a long time is not indicative of anything. Ideally the parameters would then be tweaked—highlighting pages with a number of watchlists below a certain threshold... –Outriggr § 01:33, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

This would be too computationally expensive to include in RC. It could potentially be accomplished if we made a schema change to count the number of watchlisting users per page, but I think the inability to exclude active users really kills that idea.
On this subject, when counting the number of users watchlisting a page I like counting only users which have edited the page in question during that last three months and have edited during the last month.--Gmaxwell (talk) 02:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it would be difficult to implement in a useful way. There would be a lot of debate about what constituted "watched", but if that could be settled upon and an intensive query run once a day or less, well, I think it would really benefit wikipedia with respect to the manageability of the ever-increasing edits. –Outriggr § 02:37, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Score card

I posted a score card at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages/score card. The page doesn't disclose how the scores are generated because I'm still tinkering with it, and I don't want to encourage people to game the system.

My primary motivation in creating it was to help catch users who may be using patrolling maliciously or otherwise incorrectly, but I thought the little ego ranking might be interesting to people as well. I expect this kind of scoring is probably more useful in places where there are substantial backlogs or uncovered times of day... but these don't really exist for New Page patrol on English Wikipedia. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:09, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I have created a Ranking too. Emijrp (talk) 17:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I think this should be userfied, stat pages on project (or project talk) should be open and not using proprietary or secret algorithms. — xaosflux Talk 21:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Fine, delete it. --Gmaxwell (talk) 23:40, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Someone has, please note I never suggested it couldn't be useful; just that didn't think it was project space material. — xaosflux Talk 23:46, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I've never heard of that rule. Was it useful? If so, what was the problem with keeping it? Mr.Z-man 18:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
I did not intend in any way to imply that this should be moved based on any policies, was just my opinion. I don't want to raise drama here by debating my reasoning. — xaosflux Talk 23:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
That still doesn't answer my question. If its useful, why not keep it? Mr.Z-man 07:10, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I originally proposed that it should be kept, but moved to userspace (where if it is useful, it still would be). By using a secret formula, it was not a page that the community would be able to contribute to or maintain, leading a path to WP:OWN issues. As the author has blanked the page, this doesn't seem to be something we need to spend any more time debating, other issues I had with the page are no longer relevant. — xaosflux Talk 08:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Backlog

I think we need more new-page patrollers. If you go back several days in the new page log, typically there are still quite a few pages highlighted in yellow. In my experience/opinion, almost all of these need tags e.g. some of {{wikify}} {{notability}} {{sources}} {{uncat}} etc., and a significant number of them are copyright violations. We need to work together to finish them off -- it's too much for one person. So, if you look at the new pages log and they all look white, go back a few pages/days and you'll find there's still work to do. There are clumps of yellow, e.g. Nov. 28 03:02 to 14:10. --Coppertwig 18:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

You are right. I always start at the pages, which were created a few days ago. It would be fine if the backlog could be split up into days. Would make things much easier. Does anybody know if this is possible? — Tirkfltalk 12:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Now that would be appreciated. --Nehwyn 13:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The backlog is over 11,000 and goes back to 3rd December. This link will save you scrolling through page after page! --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah! Does that mean all pages earlier than 3 Dec. have been patrolled? Is there a central place we can keep track of what the date of the earliest nonpatrolled page is at any time? Re the link: Instead of scrolling past page after page, you can take the url of that link and change the last number to how many pages back you want to go. For performance reasons it may be better not to use limit=500 (i.e. 500 entries on each page) but 50 or 100 or whatever. Actually -- what if there were a way to display only the nonpatrolled pages, and just click "earliest" to get to the earliest one? --Coppertwig (talk) 00:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, everything from when the 'yellow' new page function was turned on in the middle of November to the 3rd December have been patrolled. I can't answer your other questions! --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 06:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Now 12,000+ but all cleared up to 3rd Dec. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible to patrol pages multiple times?

I think that there's a little glitch in the system. It appears that a single page can be marked patrolled multiple times (see here). I believe this is because it is only the addition of code in the URL of the site that adds the "[Mark this page as patrolled]" link at the bottom. Would it be possible to remove this link on pages that have already been patrolled, even if the code is in the URL? Thanks. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 20:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it's not possible to remove the link if somebody patrolled the page while you were looking at it. It is possible to change the system so it would reject the second patrolling action, but maybe the current behaviour is intentional? ∴ AlexSm 20:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
This may be related to bugzilla:12129. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 21:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
In this incident, I couldn't remember if I had patrolled the page, so I viewed it again from the Special:Newpages page. I saw the link at the bottom, and clicked it again. I thought I had patrolled it before, though, so I looked at the logs and saw that I had. I was just wondering if anything can be done about it.
I don't know if it has anything to do with bugzilla:12129. The system appears to have logged both patrols just fine. I provided a link above. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 21:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Patrol in other namespaces

If you really like patrolling new pages, do the same for non-article space pages too! It helps me catch quite a few spam / nonsense (wikipedia, user, category, template-)talk pages. Pegasus «C¦T» 00:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Who's to guarantee that there's always a Wikipedian here to patrol pages?

Just wondering. This can be compared with an airport security scan before people board an aircraft - only difference is here there's no guarantee that anyone's going to be there to be on the lookout to see that something extremely damaging doesn't slip through. Whether that's a gun used to hijack the plane or a BLP violation that causes the next biography scandal.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 13:58, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Which is why there are projects like random page patrol, Dead End Pages, etc.--Fabrictramp (talk) 16:51, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
If there is an user creating an article, there will be 5 users looking. --Emijrp (talk) 17:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Is there a project or similar to co-ordinate the patrolling of pages? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:50, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] People aren't marking as patrolled

The majority of unpatrolled pages seem in fact to have been patrolled - as evidenced by tags placed on them - but the patrollers haven't been marking them as patrolled. I'm curious as to whether there is some reason for this and wondering if there is a good place/method to remind editors to mark pages as patrolled. Sbowers3 (talk) 15:45, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I would welcome more guidance on the following instructions:
  • "Any page that is not speedy deletable but still has issues should be marked as patrolled after it has been fixed or tagged.
What not to mark as patrolled
  • Pages you are not sure about and want a second (or third) opinion."
I am fairly new to New Page Patrol, so I tend to err on the side of caution. I mark as patrolled if I tag something as speedy deletable or if I find an article already so tagged. I also mark as patrolled if there are obviously no problems with the article. Otherwise I sometimes add tags such as Unreferenced, Notability or even Prod but often do not mark as patrolled if I think someone might want to be more bold and mark as speedy deletable or add additional tags, particularly in fields where I am not sure about how to interpret criteria for (claimed) notability (such as such as musicians or sportspeople).--Boson (talk) 18:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible that some patrollers are marking as patrolled only when they mean "approved" or "patrolled as good"? This appears to have been the intention of the original implementor.--Boson (talk) 18:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Are the pages not marked as patrolled having tags added by people who never mark pages as patrolled? If so, maybe they just don't know about the system and a message on their talk page could help. Otherwise, maybe they're not sure. There's no harm if someone else takes a second look at an article. I sometimes tag an article but leave it not marked as patrolled, though I try to mark most pages I tag as patrolled.
If you add a "prod" tag and you're planning to watch the page, ... hmm ... I was going to say you might as well mark it patrolled, but actually, it could still make sense to not mark it patrolled, if you're not sure whether you would AfD the page if the prod is deleted.
If you're not sure whether an article deserves to be deleted, then maybe it's a borderline case, in which case there's very little harm if it's marked as patrolled and sits around for a few months before someone AfD's it for some reason or other. There isn't necessarily one right answer.
Maybe we need to be bolder sometimes and mark some things as patrolled even if we're not quite 100% sure. It's a tradeoff: time spent by another editor giving the page a second look is time taken away from looking at some other page, that might have worse problems; and the page will probably eventually be looked at via some other method I suppose. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:22, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature. When I check a page, and it has the "mark as patrolled" link in the bottom-right, and then I note that the page has issues, such as needing sources. So I add an {{unref}} tag, after which the "mark as patrolled" link disappears. Is this a feature, such that as soon as a page is edited, the assumption is made that it has been patrolled? Or is this a bug? --Elonka 19:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

"Patrolled" means "fine" or "bad, but taken care of." Here's how it's done on other wikis, where it works like a charm:

  1. From Special:Newpages, get your new page
  2. Mark it as patrolled unless you don't know what to do with it
  3. If it's good, you're done
  4. If there are problems, then fix them/tag them/whatever, so long as it's taken care of
    This avoids having pages which have been already tagged but not patrolled. As long as someone's taken care of whatever problems a page has, then nobody needs to patrol it again, and by patrolling the page, we avoid duplication of labour.

This business of whining about pages that have been tagged for deletion (or whatever) but not patrolled is silly; just mark them as patrolled, then add templates/fix problems/whatever. Trust me, it works (if everyone is on the same page). The only problem enwiki has which other wikis may not is the speed at which pages are created. You folks end up with pages from several days ago which slipped through and are still unpatrolled, but that's a totally separate issue. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 19:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Mike, I'm not sure this quite addresses the point. The process above is simply and easily learned - that's how I'm doing it now and it's no problem. But even this simple process is not intuitive nor built into the software, with the result that only a minority of process-minded wonks like me will get it right by following your instructions. The majority of editors, I'm afraid, are never going to see this discussion and are going to carry on tagging for deletion (or whatever) first,then assuming that the page has automatically been marked as patrolled because the link disappears. The problem this causes is that over 50% of pages I view on NP patrol for potential tagging already have a tag on them: this is precisely the problem that marking pages as patrolled was meant to solve. The solution, it seems to me, is to make the 'mark as patrolled' automatic whenever a CSD, PROD or AFD tag is applied. I' m not a developer or markup-monkey, but it seems to me that this must be at least a possibility? If not, then personally I'm beginning to wonder whether this 'mark as patrolled' business is worth bothering with. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 20:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Ahh yes, I see what you're saying. The issue is akin to bugzilla:12572 - the method to patrol pages is rather convoluted. I'm sure there is some way to teach people that you want them to do it in the way described here, though I'm not sure what that would be on enwiki. Also, enabling scripted patrolling will help; not sure how easy that'd be to do, but someone should get on it. As always, a mixture of user education and software changes will optimize for the result we want. But it takes time and effort. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't like to follow that procedure, because while I'm editing to add tags I'm also thinking, and I might realize there's some reason I'm not so sure a speedy tag is appropriate after all or something and decide I want to leave the page unpatrolled. That's why I use the browser back button after editing, to get back to the page with the "mark as patrolled" button. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:03, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tools

Does anyone know if patrolling is included in tools people use for newpage patrol like Twinkle and NPWatcher? If not, the maintainers should be contacted to add it. If it isn't, that could be part of the reason pages are being tagged but not patrolled. Mr.Z-man 21:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I frequently find (and I know this has been mentioned above) that pages marked as unpatrolled actually already have a speedy deletion tag on them (maybe as much as 50% of the time.) I also find myself tagging pages for speedy deletion then failing to mark them as patrolled, because when the page refreshes after tagging (I use Twinkle) the option to 'mark as patrolled' disappears. The only option is to go back to New Pages, click on the article, then click on the reappeared link: three more clicks, no wonder people don't always do it! It is possible to hit the 'mark as patrolled' link after the tag has been applied, but before the page refreshes, but I'm always wary of doing that in case I interrupt the process.
What this boils down to is that I'd love to see the addition of a speedy deletion tag automatically marking the page as patrolled. After all, if the editor reviewing has seen enough to make a speedy delete recommendation, they've seen enough to make a patrolling decision. I have read through the discussions above but still can't quite work out whether this is (a) technically feasible and (b) procedurally desirable. Is it just a problem because I'm using Twinkle? Or could the code be changed so that the addition of a CSD/PROD/AfD template would automatically mark pages as patrolled? Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 10:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I am working on and with NPWatcher, and it is shaping up to be quite usefull. I think a version 1.1.1 (or something) should be out soon,(before the weekend?) which makes it even easer to mark pages as patrolled, but the latest version (1.1.0) has good functionality with marking aswell. I am not sure if it is technicaly feasable from wikipedias side to mark all CSD/PROD/AfD as patrolled, but I don't think it is. Twinkle could be adapted to mark those pages as patrolled as soon as you put the tag on though, at the cost of a small pageload. NPWatchers latest build marks all pages it reports issues on as patrolled by default (but can be turned of per edit witha checkbox). I'll implement the same for deletion tags today. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:28, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
You can mark the page as patrolled before you edit the page. (Only takes one click; you can click the "edit" tab on the page telling you it's just been marked as patrolled.) Another option is to use your browser's "back" button, which tends to be fast IME because the pages are already loaded. That's how I usually mark pages as patrolled; and then I go "back" to the same copy of the newpages list that I was looking at before, to conveniently select the next article. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:13, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
See bugzilla:12572 for a request for a patrol tab which appears on any patrollable, non-patrolled page. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 14:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I think this is related to the bug on the implementation with rcid numbers, but I would love to see that implemented. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oldest first option?

Is it possible to get an "oldest first" option? JASpencer (talk) 10:22, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure this would be practical, all pages from the history of Wikipedia that haven't been patrolled yet are marked as unpatrolled, not just pages created since patrolling was implemented, so you'd be starting with articles created in 2002, as far as I know. --W.marsh 14:36, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Couldn't we simply say the oldest since x date? Anyway I go back using the offset and (at least for articles the oldest currently unpatrolled articles are around 14 December 2007. JASpencer (talk) 16:16, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] proposal - fixing the backlog

As many of us have noticed, there's a huge backlog. I propose that the "mark this page as patrolled" appear to any admin who views an unpatrolled page, even if they're not coming from special:newpages. I think this would really help improve the backlog, as many pages would be marked as patrolled when an admin incidently patrols them for whatever reason, as apparently intentional patrolling (via special:newpages) isn't getting the job done. Can this be done without a software change? --W.marsh 14:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Why just admins? I'm not an admin and would greatly value this. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 14:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps add this on to Twinkle and other recent change patrollers. JASpencer (talk) 16:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I think the option might be confusing to the general public, remember this would appear on millions of pages at first (see my above comment). Another option is to just let everyone - admins and non - turn it on in preferences. --W.marsh 16:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Of course, sometimes it's easy to forget that the general public turn up here every now and again.... I think for a moment I had forgotten that only a minority of people would be able to make sense of the 'Mark page as patrolled' tag. But if there were a way of turning it on via preferences or making it visible only to people with accounts who are signed in, that would be very neat. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 17:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd propose allowing admins to grant +patroller, but on [[Rollbackerasaurus|second thought]], I won't. +Rollback on autoconfirmed on enwiki. You have enough people with the permission, but not enough using it. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 18:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I can haz patrollback, plz? (Only kidding...) Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 18:13, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Ideas:
  1. Have a "mark as patrolled" tab appear at the top of unpatrolled pages for all autoconfirmed users (except the one who created the page);
  2. Have a way to easily display a list of pages starting from the earliest unpatrolled page:
    • By giving newpages display a tab "earliest unpatrolled" and the display will jump to there; or
    • By allowing an option in newpages display to display only the unpatrolled pages;
    • By having some way to find out the date-time of the earliest unpatrolled page, and/or to jump to a specific date/time in the newpages list (so that, for example, someone can work on the backlog of a particular date in the past, then come back later and easily jump to the same date to continue their work)
  3. Let more people know about newpages and newpage patrolling. Rather than avoiding mentioning this information to new users to prevent unscrupulous use, advertise it more widely to get more people doing newpage patrol. Assume good faith.
  4. Provide some way for a person who has marked a page as patrolled to revoke that and mark it unpatrolled again. Advantages: people may be bolder if they know they can revoke it when they realize they've made a mistake on re-thinking it; and when an autoconfirmed user clicks "mark as patrolled" without knowing what the heck it means, they can be presented with a page that tells them what they just did, provides a link to an explanation, and also gives them a link to unpatrol it again. Possibly there would be a time limit on the unpatrol ability. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:56, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

We are about 1,000 newpage patrollers. What if we split the backlog into days, and every patroller choses a day and works through the unpatrolled pages? The only remaining problem is, to find the day of interest. Anybody, who participates in this clearing effort, please add your name below.

  • I make a start with January the 5th (just because I have a page with that date open) — Tirkfltalk 15:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
How is splitting into days going to help? With the yellow color coding, we aren't duplicating efforts as it is -- splitting up into days won't magically make us more productive.--Fabrictramp (talk) 16:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually it'll magically make you less productive. Instead, make some effort to advertise the instructions for new page patrol (watchlist notice?) to a) recruit more people to do it and b) get people who are doing it to be more efficient. Also pestering someone to update TW or some other quick-tag-this-article script to patrol if wgUserGroups=autoconfirmed and the url is appropriate (has &rcid=#) then tag to eliminate the confusion about "you have to patrol then tag" since it'll all happen behind the scenes. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 18:16, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, okay... I just wanted to walk the talk. In my opinion, all major problems were already mentioned on this page, so I wanted to mobilize the troops ;-) Since the start of the feature in the mid of November there have been several requests for improvement, which seems technically not realizable, so we have to live with it. At least this feature exists and I find it very useful! Recruiting people and increasing the efficiency is important. Any strategies? Maybe a short sentence in the edit summary? — Tirkfltalk 08:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Put a "newpages" link in the toolbar links that appear on every page, under "Recent changes" -- at least for a period of time, say a month, to draw peoples' attention to it.
  • Add it to the "things to do" list at Wikipedia:Community Portal. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Splitting into days can help. It would just be more appealing for me to work on newpages if I could jump to a certain backlogged date-time, stake it as my territory sort-of (though others could also work on it if they wished), work on it for a while, and be able to return to the same date-time later to continue working. Two advantages: (1) It would be more rewarding. I could look it over beforehand and get an idea of how many yellow links there were, and then after I finished I could admire the stretches of white links I'd created. Or I could get more of a sense of working together with others by saying "OK, I've finished such-and-such date" and seeing that others had also finished other dates. (2) I could click on a single link and have some confidence that I would arrive at a section that has yellow links to work on -- rather than seeing all white, maybe getting the impression everything is done, and having to spend time searching around for a section that still has some yellow. However, these advantages are not huge; more of a personality thing perhaps; and I'm not sure how the software is set up -- it might not be easy to re-arrange it to work by date-time. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:46, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I added the Newpage patrol to the Wikipedia:Community Portal. I don't know, how to add to the toolbar links. Now I am also signing my patrolling edits with "[[Wikipedia:New pages patrol|New Pages Patrol]] - You can help!" — Tirkfltalk 13:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Anyone have an objection to adding the "[[Wikipedia:NPP|New Pages Patrol]] - You can help!" as a suggested edit summary in the instructions on the project page? That's what originally sucked me in to Dead End Pages. --Fabrictramp (talk) 14:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Striking message

What about placing this wonderful striking message not only to the New Pages Patrol talk page, but on the main project page too?

Notice Wondering why Special:Newpages is yellow all of a sudden? See here for full details about this cool new feature.

Tirkfltalk 09:01, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Done, with a small change in wording. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Flagging the account of User:Blofeld of SPECTRE

I have created around 14,000 articles on wikipedia, higher than anybody, and am currently adding French communes at bot speed around 6 a minute and have requested that my new articles are automatically filtered but noone seems to be concerned. I have addressed this to several people but no one has taken it seriously when I said I was concerned about clogging up new pages. I refused adminship long ago but surely I am respected enough to be regarded as admin level in editing. I always add valuable content and most of my articles are referenced except such stubs. Isn't it time somebody made a decision to help new page patrollers by helping them. I've contributed tens times more than many administrators on wikipedia who automatically have their page unmarked -shouldn't mine be the same on a permanent basis? I consistently add new content to wikipedia. It would help patollers a lot. Any idea if you can help me receive permanent clearance? ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ Talk? 23:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

What usually happens to your articles? Are they generally eventually kept, or are some of them deleted? --Coppertwig (talk) 23:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Response Copperwig does an article like Deforestation in Brazil or regular new shorter article like Tohil Mons etc etc look like the sort of article that would get speedied?. Aside from the French communes most of my articles are well referenced and have some initial content. 99.99% of all the articles I have ever created remain ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ $1,000,000? 15:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I've patrolled dozens of those articles and I would be very happy if they were marked autopatrolled. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I've patrolled 50+ of Blofeld of SPECTRE's articles and all have been high quality stubs with no problems and no further tags required. --Fabrictramp (talk) 18:20, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
All bots do have the autopatrolled permission specifically for this reason. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:12, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Interestingly, I was coming here to ask "is there a way to automatically tag as patrolled the gazillion stubs created by Blofeld of SPECTRE?" It would be a big plus to have a way for admins or even bureaucrats (if this is a concern) to do this in special cases. For instance, can't a bureaucrat temporarily mark Blofeld as a bot account? Pichpich (talk) 13:52, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
You can patrol Blofeld's unpatrolled pages here. Mjroots (talk) 16:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Soon enough the French stubs can be added to like I did with Ottrott but it is very important to set them up first as stubs. IN a few years time when they had developed it will be well worth it and valuable to the project. But I work on many fields on wikipedia so I still think it would make sense for my account to be flagged ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ $1,000,000? 18:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC).

So then get an approved bot account. That's what they're for. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Are we missing something here? I did set a User:BaldBot but the fussy people on here approved it and then started crying that it wasn't an actual bot and was against their principles see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BaldBot. I told them I haven't got time to hang around and continued with my own account as before. The french articles aren't bot generated they are done methodically manually with minimal effort to provide aplatform to build them on. If they aren't created by a bot what is the sense in creating a bot account? This is why it was taken out because it isn't actually an automatic bot ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ $1,000,000? 22:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your replies. It sounds as if there is a consensus here that Blofeld of SPECTRE's articles should be automatically patrolled. At the moment apparently the articles by this user have all been patrolled. Blofeld of SPECTRE, if you don't have another solution, feel free to ask me occasionally at my talk page to mark a bunch of your edits patrolled. The unprincipled bot solution sounds best to me, though. :-) Or you could go through RfA perhaps? I think articles created by admins are automatically patrolled. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:42, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I wrote a quick script (to go with one of my other ones) to patrol his pages at [extremely] high speed.[1] However, this is not very good for my browser (it doesn't like to open 1300 tabs at once for some reason) and probably not very server friendly either. Giving Blofeld some sort of method to make autopatrolled articles would be much better. Mr.Z-man 22:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
It is currently only possible for bot and sysop accounts to have the autopatrolled permission. You'll need way more consensus than this to allow it to be handed out to other usergroups. If the account is a bot, (this may or may not include semi-automated clients) then it should have a bot flag, which will autopatrol it's page creations. If not, then the pages must be patrolled through the normal method. Please also note that mass-patrolling of pages you haven't actually looked at may be (fine|maybe not the best idea|frowned upon|a violation of policy|the end of the world). I personally think it's probably not the best plan. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 19:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Well you;ve made that blatantly obvious. Fine its not my problem if you don't want to do the decent thing here and save people a lot of effort. I was counting on you to save a few lives here, reach out and pray for some light. Just remember that some people need to help somebody and that I'll always be here. ♦ King of Baldness ♦ $1,000,000? 11:26, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hotkey?

Is there a hotkey for this function in the way that alt+l loads the watchlist? I'd very much appreciate one, repetitive strain injury beckons! скоморохъ ѧ 22:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Last 50 new articles?

Can the default be set to display the last 500 new articles and not the last 50? Also, it would be better if people worked from the bottom of the page rather than the to, particularly if only 50 are shown! Mjroots (talk) 14:16, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for a bot solution to the Blofeld of SPECTRE problem

In light of the above discussion, please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#bot_to_auto-patrol_experienced_article_creators. Pichpich (talk) 04:40, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trusted User Status

Could we have a trusted user status for non-admins who create lots of articles? Inviting people who've been on a long time, don't get into arguments (so not me!), create loads of articles and have a high number of other edits. Perhaps getting struck off for bad behaviour should be easy. It may be a useful pre-Admin step. JASpencer (talk) 20:33, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty much what's proposed in the above section. Mr.Z-man 21:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough. JASpencer (talk) 22:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Search facility

I believe a search facility within the results would be a good enhancement. It could be used either to search for maintenance tags (such as the afd or prod tags) and it could also be used to search for specific subjects so that editors can specialise if they so wish. JASpencer (talk) 21:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ClueBot V doing new-page-patrol-like activity

See discussion here about a bot marking new articles with tags such as "uncategorized" and even some speedy-delete tags. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal related to AfD and the patrol function

When patrolling pages, patrollers often come upon a page that is a candidate for speedy or regular deletion and mark the page with the appropriate template. When the page is saved with the template, the button to allow one to mark the page as patrolled disappears, making it necessary to return to the NewPages page and click through again in order to mark the page. Naturally a lot of people don't do this, and so I and others commonly end up clicking on an article marked in yellow only to see that it has already been marked for deletion. This is a trivial but avoidable duplication of effort; would it be possible either to 1) Have the 'mark as patrolled' button persist after adding a deletion template, or 2) automatically mark pages that have been tagged for deletion as 'patrolled'? I think that number 2 would be the more ideal solution. Leoniceno (talk) 23:14, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Another possible solution is to click the "mark as patrolled" button before making the edit. The edit tab still works from the special page. Or you can use your browser's back button to get back to the URL that shows the "mark as patrolled" button. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 01:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)