User talk:Breaking sticks/Archive 3

New Page Review newsletter December 2019


This year's Reviewer of the Year is. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.
 * Reviewer of the Year

Special commendation again goes to who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to and  who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by.
 * Redirect autopatrol

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.
 * Source Guide Discussion

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag. Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * This month's refresher course

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020
Hello ,

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.
 * Source Guide Discussion

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.
 * Redirects


 * Discussions and Resources
 * There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
 * A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
 * A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
 * A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.
 * Refresher

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here 16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020
Hello ,

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference. In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.
 * Your help can make a difference
 * Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate
 * Discussions and Resources
 * A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
 * Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
 * A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
 * Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

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

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter
Hello ,



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

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

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

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

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here 18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021
Hello ,

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

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

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

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

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software. Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022
Hello ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent 05:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022
Hello ,

At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000 at the end of May.
 * Backlog status

Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.

In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).

While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).

A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.
 * Backlog drive

Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.
 * TIP – New school articles

There is a new template available,, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:
 * Misc

There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.


 * Reminders
 * Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
 * If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing on their talk page.
 * If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
 * To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
 * Notes

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:01, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on!
(t &#183; c)  buidhe  20:25, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022
Hello ,

After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators and, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.
 * Backlog status

Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.


 * Coordination: and  have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out.  will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.


 * Open letter to the WMF: The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.


 * TIP - Reviewing by subject: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.


 * New reviewers: The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.


 * Reminders
 * Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
 * If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing on their talk page.
 * If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
 * To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:23, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

NPP message
Hi ,

For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.
 * Invitation

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive
(t &#183; c)  buidhe  21:16, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

New pages patrol needs your help!
Hello , The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.

Reminders:
 * There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
 * Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
 * To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Sent by using  at 06:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)