Wikipedia:Peer review/Tools

This page contains a technical description of how the peer review process functions, and a list of templates and other tools associated with peer review.

Advertisement
The following template may be used to advertise the peer review process:

Barnstar
There is a barnstar to thank editors who have made a significant contribution to peer review, or who have contributed a high quality peer review. To use the barnstar, copy and paste the following onto an editor's talk page:. This will generate the following:

To celebrate an editor who has contributed a great peer review, copy and paste the following, and then include the article's name:. For example, will generate:

In both examples, the compliment can be changed if required, for example: will generate:

Userbox
Copying to your talk page produces :

For volunteers, adding Peer review volunteer to your user page produces:

Welcome
To welcome a user, copy Peer review/welcome to their talk page. This produces:

Backlog templates
Two sidebars display backlogs:
 * Peer review/Unanswered peer reviews sidebar for peer reviews that are unanswered and not on the list of unanswered reviews
 * FAC peer review sidebar for peer reviews prior to featured article candidacy

Closure script
Developed by User:Writ Keeper, there is a script to help automate closing peer reviews. To use the script:
 * Copy  into your Special:MyPage/common.js
 * When you view a review, click on the tab that says "More" and then "Close peer review". The tab can be found near the "History" tab
 * The article talk page will have the PR template updated, and the peer review page will be marked as closed.

Technical templates


All pages have the following two templates are on all peer review process pages:
 * Peer review tab header
 * Peer review sidebar, listing pages in more depth

Shortcuts
The following shortcuts are used to represent the peer review process:
 * WP:PR pointing to the main page
 * WT:PR and WT:REVIEW to the main talk page
 * WP:PRL pointing to the list of full reviews
 * WP:PRG and WP:PR/Instructions pointing to the list of instructions
 * WP:PRV pointing to the list of volunteers

Edit notices
Edit notices are displayed to editors who are making edits on these pages:
 * on main peer review page (to warn editors who want to directly put their review there): Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Peer review
 * on the list of unanswered reviews (for the same reason): Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Peer review/List of unanswered reviews
 * on the unanswered reviews sidebar (to instruct editors how to do this): Editnotices/Page/Template:Peer_review/Unanswered_peer_reviews_sidebar

Documentation
Templates used in the peer review process are listed here:

The documentation page for the template set is here: Template:CF/doc

Review list
To transclude the review list onto new pages:
 * 1) To transclude all reviews, insert into a page:
 * 2) To transclude a readable list of entries, insert into a page:
 * 3) To transclude entries in raw form, insert into a page:

Peer review process - technical details
This section is intended to document the technical processes that make peer review work. It is not intended as instructions for editors. Instructions can be found here.

When a review is created
Editors request a peer review by putting {{subst:PR}} onto an article's talk page. The template displays a choice of topics for the review which the user can choose from. Clicking on a topic will create a new page for the review. The new page is preloaded based on the article's topic from templates Peer review/preload1 to Peer review/preload10

These templates create a review by including {{subst:Peer review/subst}},, and some text. "Subst" uses subtemplates to:
 * Generates links to the article, its talk page, and a past review with Peer review links, which in turn utilises Al
 * Provides links to tools via Peer review tools
 * Adds the peer review page to a category formatted "Month Year peer reviews" (eg. Category:March 2015 peer reviews)

How reviews are displayed
The page for the peer review is added to a category via Peer review page, which is included on every review page. Based on the short name of the topic (eg 'langlit') the page is added to a category relating to the topic. The category is named based on the topic's full title (eg. 'Language and literature peer reviews'). This is done via the template Peer review/Topic.

A bot called AnomieBOT (operated by Carl) automatically creates a page listing all the reviews in each category. Reviews are listed in a unique format. Each review is recorded chronologically alongside the alongside the name of the item, its namespace number, and a timestamp indicating when it was added to the category. Reviews are formatted according to PRentry. The short name, long name, category and listing are displayed below.

The list of reviews is then transcluded onto a page in a human-readable format. The full list, separated by subject area, is fully transcluded at: Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews. A parameter called 'mode' can be used to set the format of how reviews display.
 * Displaying a human-readable list of reviews
 * 1) If 'mode' is set to 'transclude', all reviews will be displayed in full., this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer review/Current
 * 2) If 'mode' is set to 'list', all reviews will be displayed by name, with a list of links to the review, the article and talk page, and an invitation to watch the page., this is the default setting for reviews and can be seen at Wikipedia:Peer_review/List_of_active_reviews
 * 3) If 'mode' is set to 'raw', or any other value is used, all reviews will be displayed only by their name and the date and time they were added., this is currently used on Wikipedia:Peer reviews by date


 * Example
 * 1) An editor transcludes Peer review onto a page and clicks 'Language & Literature'.
 * 2) A new page is created for the review based on Peer review/preload4 and preloaded with headings based on {{subst:Peer review/subst}}.
 * 3) The article is added to the category Category:Language and literature peer reviews.
 * 4) AnomieBOT adds the page to a list of all language reviews here: User:AnomieBOT/C/Language and literature peer reviews.
 * 5) These reviews are then transcluded on peer review main page and displayed to the end user.

How a review is closed
When a review is closed, two things happen:
 * 1) On the article's talk page, an editor replaces  with . This changes the statement on the talk page to tell other editors and readers the peer review is closed. It also adds the talk page to Category:Old requests for peer review.
 * 2) On the peer review page, the editor replaces  with Closed peer review page. This removes the review from the category of active reviews of a topic.

Maintenance
This page is intended to provide information on how to maintain the peer review process.

Updating the monthly archive
From February 2015, links to archived peer reviews are provided in category form at Wikipedia:Peer review/Archive. To update the archive for this month:
 * 1) Create the category Category: peer reviews
 * 2) Add a link to the category on the archive page: "*   "

Troubleshooting: The peer review page is listed as a peer review
It happens from time to time that the peer review page is placed in one of the categories for articles under peer review. This causes the peer review page to list itself as a peer review, which is obviously not a good thing (thankfully, the servers do not admit infinite regress, and simply give up trying to display content).

There are several ways this can happen, but they usually involve an individual peer review placing itself in a peer review category, without surrounding this category by "noincludes". Since the review is transcluded on the peer review page, the category gets added to the peer review page too.

To find the culprit, visit the AnomieBOT page corresponding to the topic under which the entire peer review page is listed, and look for strange entries. The entry immediately below the mess is likely to be the cause of the problem.

Troubleshooting: "Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full"
Wikipedia has a limit to how much information can be transcluded onto a page. That is called the post-expand size. This takes into account the reviews that are transcluded and anything that is transcluded onto the review pages (... and anything transcluded onto those pages, and so on). When the post-expand size is about to be reached, AnomieBOT will start posting messages on the peer review talk page. What to do about this?
 * 1) Check the log of reviews, scroll to the bottom for the oldest reviews, and close them.
 * 2) If there is still a problem, then go to the main page, select an active topic, and change  to . This will transclude only the names of the reviews and links to the reviews for that topic. When some of that topic's reviews have been archived, the 'list' can be changed back to 'transclude'

Troubleshooting: No reviews are transcluded
This occurs when the "post-expand size" has been exceeded. See above for methods for dealing with this.

Troubleshooting: A review is "too long" to display in full
In 2015 there came a number of times when the peer review process was so active that the post-transclusion size (see above) was exceeded, or close to being exceeded. At the time, all reviews were always transcluded in full. This was very problematic, because if exceeded editors would not be able to see the list of active reviews. Even closing reviews that were inactive would leave too many reviews open. In order to prevent this, reviews that were over a certain arbitrary length would instead display a message that they were "too long" to display in full. Being so long, such reviews are likely already to be active and are unlikely to benefit as much from being transcluded in full.

Troubleshooting: My review doesn't display on the 'unanswered reviews' list
The unanswered reviews list is automated. It only displays reviews where the date of creation matches the date of the last edit, ie. if they have not been edited.

If your review isn't displaying, it is probably because you've made a slight change to your request (even a small as correcting a typo). Please add your review to the list of reviews not displaying here: Template:Peer review/Unanswered peer reviews sidebar