Topic on Talk:Page Curation

WereSpielChequers (talkcontribs)

One of the perennial problems at New Page Patrol is the dissonance between the instinct of newpage patrollers to tag everything as fast as it comes in and the desire of article creators to create articles incrementally saving a sentence at a time. At Special Newpages this is a recipe for edit conflicts, bitten newbies and patrollers whose RFAs combust when the community assesses their tagging.

A partial but simple solution would be to put a time delay on certain edits.

So when a tagger uses the new Zoom feature to tag a new article as A1 or A3 the software could simply tell them that "As the article is only 4 minutes old the tag will be added when the article is one hour old, provided it has not been edited in the meantime". If the article then changed colour within Zoom and wasn't shown to other zoomers it would prevent those awkward newbie biting moments. If the article wasn't edited within its first hour it would then be tagged; If the article was further edited then it could in effect go back in the unpatrolled queue for further consideration.

Eeekster (talkcontribs)

I'd certainly like a person re-visit queue of some type. Right now when I see a new article that would qualify for A1 or A3 I have to remember to go back to it later. Of course when I do go back I often find it already tagged by someone that didn't wait. I would also be good to quantify some minimum wait time. As it stands now the time to wait is completely vague. Eeekster 01:48, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Σ (talkcontribs)

Any competent patroller would know about the 10-minute rule. A forced minimum would be helpful, but what about something like an article called "where can i do foobar" with the content "Hey guys i dont know anything about foobar so i was wondering if you could tell me stuff about it", or worse, stuff like "What was today's homework for foobar class?" that are glaringly obvious that the page creator cannot be arsed to expand further on the topic? As A3 was designed to cover those types of pages, the 10-minute rule would be a barrier to preserving Wikipedia's quality.

Eeekster (talkcontribs)

What ten minute rule? I haven't seen any rule specifying a number of minutes.

Kudpung (talkcontribs)

Research and empirical evidence has shown that we don't actually appear to have many active competent patrollers. Unfortunately, even the more experienced ones don't always wait either.

Raindrift (talkcontribs)

Perhaps we could create a hard time limit for inclusion of various templates for new patrollers, and then when they become more experienced, open it up and make it an alert that theyd'd have to click through instead. That way the software can keep track of the time, but with experience it would start trusting you to use your judgement about what to do.

Kudpung (talkcontribs)

This again relies on the possibility of creating a user-group for patrollers

WereSpielChequers (talkcontribs)

Hi Raindrift. At the moment the only ones where we have consensus not to apply them immediately are A1 and A3. Whether other articles and especially some of the A7s should be applied to brand new articles is contentious.

As for the hard time limit idea, I'm not convinced it would work. I think you'd risk having some patrollers get confused, and others use a different speedy tag. What do you think of the idea that taggers could still use zoom to click A1 or A3 but that it would then say "As the article is less than one hour old, Your edit is being stored and the A1/A3 tag will be added in x minutes if the article has not been further expanded." Ideally you'd want Zoom to bring the article to the attention of that zoomer or another if it was subsequently expanded and is an hour old "this article was going to be tagged A1 but has been subsequently edited".

Kudpung (talkcontribs)

I think it's nevertheless important to catch the creators while they are still online and logged in. Perhaps a Twinkle feature to put a message on their talk page such as:

Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for contributing a new page at XXXX. Please consider substantially expanding this article in the next 30 minutes to avoid it eventually being deleted. Alternatively, you may wish to develop it in your user space at User:username/articlename (draft) or through the Article creation Wizard. If you are not sure how to do this, don't hesitate to ask me for help on my talk page.

WereSpielChequers (talkcontribs)

Um actually the idea behind this proposal is to try and not interrupt people while they are creating their new article, and especially not to threaten to delete their article after their first sentence. A Twinkle feature to warn editors to expand their article or see it deleted would be pretty much the same as allowing A1 and A3 tags in the first minutes of an articles life, and that is unlikely to get consensus.

Kudpung (talkcontribs)

Again, this depends entirely on how the messages are worded. Research has shown that most newbies don't know that these messages are templates and that's why they get browned off. Note that the messages I use are not TLDR diatribes with shedloads of links to obscure policies; I tend to think a creator would be really happy if someone came on line, saw what they were doing, and offered some help to get it right. I know I would, but in the days when I created my first pages, I didn't even receive a welcome template for month - and when it came, I had no idea it was only a template and I was overjoyed at thought that someone 'up there' had really noticed my painstaking work on wine. In fact one of my very first edits was to create a cut 'n paste move - I had absolutely no idea where all the rules were, especially for repairing a misspelt page name, and nobody noticed and put me right - or chided me for it!

WereSpielChequers (talkcontribs)

I'm not convinced this is a wording issue, politely interrupting someone to tell them you have a problem with their new article is still going to be perceived as an unwelcome interruption and a rejection of someone's work.

Clearly we have two very different interpretations of newbie behaviour. Some people it important to template them during their first edit session, others including myself think it important not to. A bit of research might establish whether either view is correct, or whether some combination would be better. For example how cool would it be if someone was trying to save a page of Arabic text on the English language wikipedia and the the system said to them in Arabic and English "This is the English language Wikipedia and that page seems to mostly be in Arabic. Would you rather add it it to the Arabic Wikipedia? Yes/No. And if they tick yes it moves them and their page to the Arabic Wikipedia.

The Blade of the Northern Lights (talkcontribs)

For me, it depends on what the new user has done. If I've come across someone who clearly doesn't understand that we aren't MySpace, I will tell them that they should consider going to a social networking site instead; I find that heads off those kinds of problems at the pass. When I encounter the types listed here, a template is fine; I'm not going to spend any length of time writing a custom message to someone whose first edit is to brag about his gigantic penis. However, I think the handwritten approach is effective with people who look like they're well intentioned but just screwed up; those are the sorts we need to focus on. I also really like your idea about redirecting people to the correct language Wikipedia above; I see that happen with some frequency, and I think that would make it a lot easier for everyone.

He7d3r (talkcontribs)

I don't think the problem of articles in other languages is as common on wikis in languages other than English...