Thread:Talk:New Page Patrol Zoom Interface/Default to the back or the front of the queue?

Newpage patrol currently works as a two stage filter, almost everything gets looked at almost as soon as it is created and most articles are marked as patrolled or tagged for deletion in their first few minutes.

The current default for newpage patrol is the front of the queue, but with a small exhortation encouraging editors to also try the back of the queue. This is reasonably effective at recruiting a trickle of newpage patrollers to start looking at the back of the queue after they have gained experience at the front.

The second stage filter is the back of the queue where the oldest unpatrolled articles are looked at by a relatively small group of generally more experienced Wikipedians.

The front of the queue is the principal filter and the vast majority of new pages, especially the clearcut cases for either deletion or inclusion are resolved at this stage. It can seem like supping from the firehose as more new article come in than any one editor can possibly patrol, this can be disconcerting especially at times when the flow of new articles is greater than the patrollers can patrol at that moment. Some editors make the mistake of trying to keep up and that inevitably leads to burnout and stress.

The back of the queue is less frenetic, with typically two to three hundred articles per day of the backlog. But for the most part these are not clearcut cases as those have been resolved up front, so the need for volunteer time may not be as disproportionate as the workflow would suggest.

Shifting the default from the front to the back would have the advantage of being less disruptive for new good faith contributors, but the disadvantages that the really bad stuff would stick around for longer, and there might be more mistakes as relatively inexperienced patrollers no longer thought they had the option of leaving closecalls to the more experienced patrollers at the back of the queue.

On the whole I'd suggest leaving the default as the front of the queue, but I'd be less concerned if you could find an alternative way to filter out the badfaith stuff as it comes in.