Thread:Talk:New Page Patrol Zoom Interface/Default to the back or the front of the queue?/reply (3)

In a normal  situation  it  might  work, but  I  have the following  concerns, so I  hope this posting  is not  TL;DR:
 * 1) We're sometimes forgetting that  NPP  goes far beyond just  tagging  pages for deletion  or attention. Done properly and in  depth, it's an excellent  way  of identifying  Copyvio, slow burning  vandals, and sock puppets, and bringing  them  to  justice. The Copyvio issue is especially  urgent  since Corenbot  is down, so  we don't quite have forever to find an alternative to  ACTRIAL.
 * 2) We're dealing with  a vast  army  of youngsters and/or near-but-non-native English  speakers who  make up  the majority  of the transient pool  of patrollers. I've already  mentioned why  patrolling  pages at  Wikipedia attracts them.
 * 3) We probably don't  have the reserves of people power to  put  the NPP candidates through  the hoops you  suggest. Also, to  do  so  would be to  make them run  a similar gauntlet to  the questions that  get  posed at  Requests for Adminship  (RfA) on the English  Wikipedia, and we all know what  a fiasco the current  RfA system  is.
 * 4) They would soon  figure out  the answers to  the questions  through  their off-Wiki  communications. Just  for example, I  get  candidates asking  me off-Wiki, how they  should answer a question that  has just  been posed on  their RfA. I tell them  they  have to  figure it  out  for themselves, but  NPP is run by  kids, for kids, and kids help  kids - they  even organise competitions among themselves to  see who  can tag the most  pages in  an hour and award each  other barnstars for it.  It's a question of maturity vs.adult responsibility, vs. cognitive levels for grasping  the huge and unwieldy catalogue (and growing) of CSD & often vague and ambiguous notability criteria. To  illustrate this last  point, I've been around on  Wikipedia a while, I'm  even an admin, and I'm  not  a stupid person (I hope) but  even I  don't  have it  all  consigned to  memory and I still  often have to  look  stuff  up sometimes  before tagging  something, or commenting  on  or closing  an AfD. The irony  is, that  by  the time I've found it, and run  all  the other strictly  required NPP controls, an NPPer has tagged the page already, and more often than not, incorrectly  of course.
 * 5) Because of the speed with  which  the kids want  to  patrol  pages - without  doing  the other tasks that  are supposed to  be done as described in  the instructions at  WP:NPP -  as soon  as they  have got  themselves 'qualified' there is a high risk they  will  revert to  their old superficial  patrolling methods.
 * 6) Hence, the idea to  make NPP  a 'gatekeeper' task, which  you  are leary  of on  the one hand, but perhaps coupled with  a test that  on the contrary, you  are suggesting.  It  would still  therefore be a user right  nevertheless, and out  of it we might  achieve quality  patrolling  based on  a carrot  & stick principle., i.e. giving  them  a right gives them  a sense of responsibility and a user right  they  wouldn't  want  to  lose by  abusing  it. As I 've mentioned before, this would be a much  better solution than blocking  them  from  editing  the entire Wikipedia as I unfortunately  occasionally have to  do, i.e. using  a sledge hammer to  crack  a peanut.
 * 7) The challenges of implementing a software controlled environment for this user right  are, however, immense. Whether we select  them  through  a test -  or by  any  other method (see below),  how do  we -  or more accurately, the devs - find a technical method for enforcing it? The vast  majority  of truly  established users are perfectly  capable of patrolling  a new page, and as some  of them occasionally  do -  they  would need to  be automatically  included in  such  a right.
 * 8) If we could agree to  move ahead on that  principle, and continue to  encourage children and offer them a chance to  participate in  the making  and running  of Wikipedia, then your 'Zoom ' control panel  for NPP would be an excellent  tool, and help  avoid mis-tagging -  especially  if a few refinements could be incorporated into  it such  as on  the OTRS  software.

Snottywong, Blade, and I (and a lot of others, as established by the RfC) clearly  identified and classified the Problem, and came up  with  the solution of restricting  the creation  of new pages (as opposed to  new articles) to  autoconfirmed users, while at  the same time offering  some ideas (three) of fast-tracking the creation  of new articles for serious authors. This would certainly have been the simplest solution, and easy for the devs to implement. I nevertheless do now believe that  the WMF, as a result,  is now genuinely committed to  devoting  resources to  finding  better solutions even if those solutions might put  greater pressure on  the developers to  implement  them than ACTRIAL would have done.

Steve's (or your) Zoom is a start, but it's still  a bit  like inventing  the automatic gearbox  for automobiles where everyone who   can drive safely  is already  quite happy  with  a manual gearshift. What we need to  do  is to  teach  the NPPers to  drive the car first, and get  them to  pass their driving  test. Then they can have the luxury  of the automatic transmission.

I think we already have a functioning  system  for according  minor rights, such  as for example a new one for NPPers,  to  users of the right  calibre. It's at Requests for permissions. The admins who watch  that  page regularly and accord these rights are pretty  good at  it. And finally, I still  believe that  ACTRIAL is still  worth  the trial. if not adopted as a permanent  measure, it would certainly  provide us with  a lot of urgently  needed stats that  we still  desperately  need for correctly  focusing  on  any  alternative solutions we suggest. The fears that such  a trial would lose us serious users are totally  unfounded.

Nevertheless, in keeping  with  that important  policy  of user retention and  finding  ways to  make the new user experience more enjoyable, a parallel project  must  be conducted to  develop  those 'fast-track' ideas that  were also  proposed as part of ACTRIAL. I feel therefore  that  it  is also essential for the WMF to allocate discussion and resources to  improvement  of the New Article Wizard, and make it  as much  a priority  as this NPP issue. While it is a separate issue from  the point  of view of those who  can design the GUI and the programmes behind it, it  cannot  be divorced from  this NPP issue -  the two  solutions go  hand in  hand. AFAIK nobody is actively  developing  the Wizard right  now,  but  I  may  be wrong.